Partly inspired by saudi arabia 's strict wahhabism , egypt 's salafists seek to purge the faith of modern accretions and impose literal interpretations of dogma .
Part of that was his iconoclasm , and his eagerness to sweep away all the mediaeval accretions that humanised the faith of the desert fathers ; but much of the impulse also was to sweep away everything that separated man from god , so that we could stand as close to him as a separate nature allows .