Electoral Religion: Salafis and Muslim Brothers Competing for Votes in Kuwait The Kuwaiti Parliament has the distinction of being both the oldest and the most vibrant in the Arab Gulf states. Its position is clearly the strongest in relation to the monarch. This is a result both of the struggles of a vital civil society, and of a historical relationship between the merchant class and the royal family marked more by a division of tasks than by the one side ruling the other. Perhaps it is no accident, then, that the Kuwaiti National Assembly (majlis al-umma) is also marked by being an arena for various Islamist tendencies competing with each other and with the still strong power of the ruling family. In the elections in May 2008 Islamists of various persuasions strengthened their position from a combined total of 21 deputies to 26, which gives them a slight majority of the 50 elected members of the assembly (in addition the government ministers appointed by the emir join the assembly as voting members ex officio). The three mainstream Sunni Islamist groups, the Islamic Constitutional Movement (Muslim Brothers), the Salafi Movement and the Islamic Salafi Alliance together with independents control 21 seats, while the main Shia Islamist group, the National Islamic Association had 5 deputies elected. The participation of salafi groups in electoral politics is special, since in the Middle East region in general the conservative salafiyya tendency remains either apolitical, contenting itself with preaching religion and doing social work, or (for a small minority’s part) is engaged in violent struggle to topple regimes considered to have strayed off the true Islamic course. In both cases the salafis maintain a harsh criticism of the Muslim Brothers for being both to open to what the salafis see as Westernising modernisation, and to lenient towards the existing regimes. The paper will discuss the impact on the various Islamic faction of their long-time participation in electoral politics, with special emphasis on the competition between the Muslim Brothers and the salafi tendency. It will argue that the openness of the electoral competition in Kuwait has hastened the crystallisation of competing Islamist tendencies, and, as importantly, that participation triggers among the salafis processes of moderation and modernisation, and of openness towards cooperation with other groups.