The al‑Nour Party(), or "Party of The Light", is one of the political parties created in Egypt after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. It has an ultra-conservative Islamist ideology, which believes in implementing strict Sharia law. It has been described as the political arm of the Salafi Call Society, and "by far the most prominent" of the several new Salafi parties in Egypt, which it has surpassed by virtue of its "long organizational and administrative experience" and "charismatic leaders". Its political aim is to establish a theocratic state on the lines of Wahhabism like in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was found to be the main financer of the party according to the public German television news service ARD (broadcaster). In the 2011–12 Egypt parliamentary elections, the Islamist Bloc led by al‑Nour party received 7,534,266 votes out of a total 27,065,135 correct votes (27.8%). The Islamist Bloc, of which al-Nour was a member, gained 127 of the 498 parliamentary seats contested, second-place after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Al‑Nour Party itself won 111 of the 127 seats. In December 2012/January 2013, a new Watan party led by Emad Abdel Ghaffour splintered off from Al-Nour. From January 2013 the party gradually distanced itself from President Mohamed Morsi's Brotherhood government, and came to support the military's July 2013 coup which overthrew Morsi. In September 2020, Al-Nour failed to win any seats in the Egyptian Senate election, an event described as "additional indication of the collapse of the Salafists' popularity." History "For decades" before the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Salafists "stayed away" from politics and focused on "religion and inviting people for prayer". Al‑Nour was set up after the 2011 Egyptian revolution, when the interim military government allowed the formation of new parties, and legally recognized on 13 June. It was established by one of the largest Salafist groups in Egypt, the Salafist Call (Al-Da'wa Al-Salafiyya), also known as the Al-Dawaa movement. (The Salafi philosophical movement has been associated with literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islam.) The Salafi Call group started began the 1970s and was firmly established in the 1980s in Alexandria University after students refused to join the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to clashes that impelled the Salafis to institutionalize their activities within the city. The Salafis in the past had refused to take part in politics because they believed that the democratic system that existed at the time was un-Islamic, though