There are tens of tens of millions of Salafis at this time, female and male, and their ranks stretch from the Center East and South Asia to western Europe and the US. Members of this Sunni Islamic motion are sure by shared rules, together with a literalist theological method concerning God’s nature and a dedication to deriving all regulation from Islam’s holy textual content (the Quran) and the authoritative document of the Prophet Muhammad’s life (the Sunna). These shared rules manifest not merely in a complete venture of piety that defines these women and men’s lives, but in addition in a set of day by day practices that visually distinguish Salafis not solely from non-Muslims but in addition from fellow Muslims.
If one is aware of what to search for, one can establish a Salafi by sight. Salafi facial hair contains a trimmed moustache and a beard that could be a fist lengthy, at minimal; Salafis costume in pants or robes which can be shortened to the ankle; and Salafi social areas are outlined by separation of women and men. If one have been to enterprise right into a mosque, one may establish (some) Salafis by the distinctive apply of praying in footwear, which stands in distinction to the apply of the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who pray barefoot (and have performed so for hundreds of years). Collectively, these practices allow Salafis to create a cultural boundary between themselves and different Muslims and non-Muslims with whom they disagree on core points.
It’s straightforward to dismiss bodily practices reminiscent of these as secondary or unimportant. However for Salafis, they aren’t merely highly effective symbols of belonging however a key technique of orienting themselves to God in day by day life. Salafis, impressed by the theological imaginative and prescient of Ibn Taymiyya, a Thirteenth-century scholar from Damascus in Syria, search to reside lives wherein each motion is oriented in direction of worship of God. The facility of this imaginative and prescient derives partly from its problem: to even aspire to reside life in such a fashion, one have to be continuously on guard, ever vigilant not merely to influences from outdoors the Salafi neighborhood but in addition to 1’s materials and bodily needs. For some Salafis, this theological method may also create sensible issues when dwelling below secular states. For instance, does fee of taxes to a state that doesn’t rule by Islamic regulation – whether or not within the Center East and South Asia or the West – represent a rejection of God’s sovereignty over materials wealth? Can males serve within the armed forces of a rustic that requires a specific costume code and no facial hair? And what ought to one do within the case that conscription necessitates service within the armed forces? These are however a number of of the questions that Salafis face in searching for to reside their theological commitments.
This description is probably going not what you anticipated from an article on Salafism. When the time period ‘Salafi’ is used, many within the US consider Osama bin Laden, the founder and late chief of al-Qaeda. And it’s fairly attainable that a lot of those that consider Bin Laden after they hear this time period additionally know a major quantity concerning his objectives (world Jihad), his strategies (assaults on civilians and navy alike), his disdain for native Arab regimes (notably Saudi Arabia) and even his demise in Could 2011 in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. And, as not solely al-Qaeda but in addition ISIS have challenged the worldwide order over the previous twenty years, the widespread reply to clarify this trajectory has been that these teams mannequin themselves after the primary three generations of the Muslim neighborhood, often known as the ‘Pious Ancestors’ (al-Salaf al-Salih).
These associations will not be mistaken however they’re incomplete. Bin Laden was actually a outstanding consultant of Salafi-Jihadism, however Salafi-Jihadism is a minority inside the broader Salafi motion. Equally, it’s appropriate that Salafis take the primary three generations of the Muslim neighborhood as a mannequin but, in doing so, they’re joined by billions of Muslims the world over of vastly completely different views. And whereas it could be correct to notice that Salafis sample themselves after the Prophet Muhammad’s journey – first his preaching in Mecca after which a full-blown venture fusing faith and politics in Medina – an aspiration to breed this mannequin will not be the identical as reproducing it. Put in a different way, whereas Salafis take inspiration from the Seventh century, they emerged within the Twentieth century.
Instead of assuming that Salafism is a copy of the Seventh century and a violent one at that, we’d start within the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. Within the shadow of French and British colonial occupation, Muslims from Cairo to Calcutta debated a fundamental query: who within the Muslim neighborhood ought to have authority? For a millennium, the reply to that query lay with the normal colleges of Islamic jurisprudence, often known as the madhhabs. Students inside these colleges – which weren’t brick-and-mortar buildings however fairly mental and social networks that knit collectively students throughout huge geographic distances – had lengthy served as essential mediators. They not solely bridged the hole between lay Muslims and divine revelation and the Prophetic mannequin, but in addition between the ruler and dominated. Within the face of unprecedented political, social and financial challenges launched by colonialism, nonetheless, Muslim reformers challenged the centrality of madhhab students.
These reformers have been in any other case a extremely various group who had little in widespread besides shared opposition to the madhhab system. They got here from Iran (Jamal al-Din al-Afghani), Egypt (Muhammad ʿAbduh), Syria (Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi and Muhammad Rashid Rida), and even Crimea (Ismaʿil bey Gaspıralı). Some reminiscent of ʿAbduh, Gaspıralı and Al-Qasimi sought change by means of schooling, whereas others reminiscent of Al-Afghani and Rida turned to Islam as a strong supply of solidarity to mobilise Muslims towards colonial occupation. All, nonetheless, embraced the facility of the written phrase to talk to Muslim audiences inside and past their nation of origin and, in doing so, modelled an understanding of a worldwide Islamic neighborhood that trusted students and laymen alike. All have been additionally involved with an interlocking set of questions: what did it imply to protect the Islamic custom within the shadow of modernity? How may Muslims compete with Europe’s mental, political and financial may that manifested itself in colonial rule over Muslim-majority lands? Might the Ottoman Caliphate, which had stood for 500 years, be saved and, in doing so, supply a counterweight to colonial interference? To reply these questions, all proposed returning to Islam’s two ‘pure’ sources: the Quran and the Sunna.
The anti-madhhab reformers of the flip of the Twentieth century have been hardly the primary Muslim thinkers to reckon with the perceived drifting of Muslims from their foundational mannequin of Seventh-century Medina. Most notably, Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and Muhammad al-Shawkani, two main reformers of 18th- and Nineteenth-century Arabia, sought to return Muslims to their two core sources. However Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and Al-Shawkani undertook reform with out want to think about the problem of European colonialism. As a substitute, they positioned themselves inside an extended historical past of revival and reform. These two reformers, nonetheless, modelled a strong rejection of the established order by means of non secular purity from which Salafis would draw inspiration.
Salafis consider that their theological method is the one legitimate option to worship God
Reformers from the flip of the Twentieth century, reminiscent of ʿAbduh and Rida, have been main non secular authorities of their day, however they weren’t Salafis. They have been united by an objection to the centuries-old system of Islamic regulation by which students wanted to assert affiliation with a given madhhab and observe the prior authoritative rulings of that college. In response to these reformers, the issue with the madhhab system was not merely that it was intellectually stagnant however that it was unsuited to deal with the political, financial and cultural problem confronted by Muslims at the moment. Their rejection of the madhhab system’s mental strategies was additionally a political manoeuvre: Islamic reformists reminiscent of ʿAbduh, Rida and others sought to undermine their opponents’ base of political and social affect in order that they may take their place.
Within the Twenties and ’30s, Salafism emerged as a part of the Islamic reformist camp. As they did so, Salafis introduced collectively two beforehand unbiased positions: a literalist method to God’s nature and attributes preserved within the Hanbali faculty, one of many 4 Sunni colleges of regulation; and the rejection of the madhhabs’ authoritative positions in favour of direct recourse to the Quran and the Sunna. Whereas theology may look like an unlikely supply of distinction for a world-making venture, Salafis consider that their theological method is the one legitimate option to worship God.
The Salafi theological and authorized place was not merely a view of theological or authorized reality but in addition a declare to authority and authenticity. Within the shadow of the unconventional adjustments of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries – a interval throughout which Muslims had misplaced management over their lands, wherein the Ottoman Caliphate had fallen, and wherein European colonial penetration had reshaped the political and financial spine of the Center East and South Asia – they argued that Muslims had misplaced their connection to Islam’s founding mannequin. Whereas such an accusation highlighted the rise of secular nationalism in Muslim-majority lands, it additionally utilized to different pious Muslims who additionally prized Islam’s golden interval, such because the premier Islamist motion of the time, the Muslim Brotherhood. Briefly, the Salafi declare was (and is) that their dedication to modelling themselves after the early Muslim neighborhood of Seventh-century Arabia makes them essentially the most genuine and thus legit claimants to Islamic management. Simply as importantly, the repeated declare that Salafis have been topic to God’s authority solely in nations whose leaders and populations have been overwhelmingly Muslim was a transparent rebuke of the authority of secular nationalist states that had arisen following the tip of colonial rule.
It is straightforward to think about Salafism as a throwback to the Seventh century. And certainly, it is a core facet of Salafism’s attraction: a return to the fundamentals, pure and uncorrupted. However aspiring to return to Islam’s founding second may be very completely different from really doing so. And, as Salafis sought to duplicate this very best mannequin, they have been deeply formed by challenges of European rule and Western cultural affect, on the one hand, and the competing ambitions of fellow Muslims to chart a brand new route, on the opposite. As Salafism emerged within the Nineteen Thirties, paths to political energy have been blocked and the battle was to be present in society, with secular-nationalists and Islamists competing to supply distinct visions of the previous and future alike. These bodily practices have been necessary as a result of they have been a key website at which Muslim women and men laid declare to politics in day by day life.
In my current book, Within the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety within the Twentieth-Century Center East (2022), I charted the historical past of Salafi efforts to reshape society with a specific deal with Egypt. Between roughly 1940 and 1950, Egyptian Salafis got here to deal with a largely forgotten apply: praying in footwear. Whereas Muslims had as soon as prayed in footwear – and the document of the Sunna means that the Prophet Muhammad and His Companions did so – this apply had declined with Islam’s emergence as an city civilisation (and the institution of ornate mosques with plush carpets). Right here, for Salafis, was a chance: a apply with clear precedent in Islam’s core sources that may distinguish Salafis from different Muslims in mosques. The autumn of praying in footwear, nonetheless, was as speedy as its rise. Within the Fifties, the prices of spiritual distinctiveness grew below the secular authoritarianism of Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser and the latter’s crackdown on the Salafis’ Islamist competitor, the Muslim Brotherhood. As a substitute of insisting dogmatically on this venture no matter the prices, Salafis shortly marginalised it and didn’t return to discussing this type of prayer for an additional 4 a long time.
The emergence of Salafi facial hair within the Eighties was no extra simple. Muslim males had lengthy worn substantial beards as statements of spiritual piety and masculinity alike. What Salafis wanted, then, was a mannequin of facial hair that might distinguish them from different Muslims and make a believable declare to be derived from the Quran and the Sunna. The eventual consequence may actually cite these sources, notably the Prophet Muhammad’s command to Muslim males to develop a beard and trim the moustache. Simply as importantly, Salafis wanted a apply that may differentiate them from competing Islamic establishments and actions – a lot of whom wore beards – in addition to from their secular-nationalist opponents who paired a shaved face with a moustache.
Instantly, flaunting was not a prohibition towards conceited feminine conduct however a name to gender segregation
This venture pivoted on a seemingly secondary supply: a document of the actions of the Prophet Muhammad’s companion, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar, the son of the second Caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab. What made the Salafi option to cite Ibn Umar’s trimming his beard to a minimal size of a fist so placing, nonetheless, was that this apply was carried out in a selected context: engagement within the Hajj or ʿUmra pilgrimages to Mecca. And, simply as strikingly, the Muslim Brotherhood had crushed the Salafis to the punch on this hadith report: within the early Forties, a number one determine within the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Sabiq, had cited the Ibn Umar report back to justify the carefully trimmed beard sported by the organisation’s founder, Hassan al-Banna. Put in a different way, this was a case wherein the identical hadith report was cited to assist radically completely different positions. Simply as importantly, a core facet of Salafism’s attraction is that the Quran and the Sunna are basically self-explanatory and that Salafis can keep away from being corrupted by un-Islamic influences by means of unique reliance on these sources. The truth that the historical past of the emergence of distinctly Salafi facial hair stretched throughout 4 a long time means that this mannequin was removed from self-explanatory.
At different instances, the apply in query was decidedly novel. Whereas Salafis cited the Islamic society of Seventh-century Medina as a mannequin, they may not level to any proof of texts from the Quran or the Sunna that prohibited gender mixing or required gender segregation. Beforehand, when it got here to the query of gender relations, students of Islamic regulation had been primarily involved with stopping extramarital intercourse. Certainly, to the extent that gender segregation existed in Islamic historical past, it was tough to level to examples past the mosque, the place women and men had lengthy prayed in separate sections. Thus, to make the case, Salafis within the Seventies needed to uncover a new interpretation for an previous supply, particularly the Quranic prohibition towards ladies performing in a fashion designed to attract sexual consideration (often known as flaunting themselves, or tabarruj).
The prohibition towards flaunting was clear and derived from the thirty third verse of the thirty third chapter of the Quran, which commanded ladies, partly, ‘don’t flaunt yourselves’ (wa la tabarrajna). But, to justify gender segregation, a number one Saudi Salafi scholar, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn Baz (Bin Baz for brief) argued that the prohibition towards ladies flaunting was really a prohibition towards women and men mixing. Instantly, flaunting was not a prohibition towards conceited feminine conduct however fairly a radical name to gender segregation. Right here, too, political competitors beckoned: at the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood, together with its allies within the Islamic scholar motion, had begun to supply gender-segregated seating on chosen public buses and had lobbied for gender segregation in a number of Egyptian universities. In response to their opponents’ try and seize the mantle of public piety, Salafis argued for a stricter and extra expansive imaginative and prescient of gender relations.
It’s straightforward to dismiss such bodily practices as ‘secondary’ issues however to take action is to overlook how and why Salafis have emerged as highly effective shapers of the societies wherein they reside. Within the absence of political energy, Salafis search to form the societies from which they’ve emerged and to take action by visibly modelling a dedication to the Prophet Muhammad’s instance. Certainly, from Egypt to Syria to Yemen to Saudi Arabia to the Indian subcontinent to Europe and the US, one can discover Salafis at this time adhering to those theological and authorized approaches and bodily practices.
While Salafis will be discovered throughout the Center East, South Asia, western Europe and the US, it’s tough to come back by agency numbers of adherents. That is partially a operate of how Salafis perceive themselves: most reject the formation of political events not to mention transnational Jihadist teams and, not like their Islamist counterparts, don’t usually pledge allegiance to a specific organisation. Proof of in style assist for Salafism, nonetheless, can generally be discovered when Islamist or so-called Politico Salafis run for workplace. In Egypt, three Salafi teams, most prominently the Nour social gathering, fashioned a bloc within the 2011-12 parliamentary elections, receiving greater than 7.5 million votes, which represented 27.8 per cent of all votes. Typically, although, the first neighborhood for Salafi women and men is native and casual: the students and lecturers, female and male, with whom they examine at native mosques. But, Salafism will not be completely native: specific Salafi students, together with deceased figures reminiscent of Bin Baz, Muhammad ibn Salih al-ʿUthaymin and Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, exercised affect on adherents the world over and proceed to take action by means of their writings.
The modern Salafi scene is defined by three most important contingents: Quietists, Islamists (aka Politicos) and Jihadis. The Quietists consider in obedience to the present ruler and shrink back from any public statements that might be interpreted as criticism. As a substitute, they provide recommendation (nasiha) to the ruler in personal whereas pursuing grassroots reform of Muslims’ theological beliefs and ritual life, a focus that Al-Albani termed ‘Purification and Training’. To the extent that Quietist students touch upon the established order, they achieve this completely from a ‘non secular’ perspective, avoiding any indictments of the political elite. The method of Quietist students to politics, nonetheless, shouldn’t be understood as apolitical, however fairly as a principled view of the hazards of political dysfunction drawn from the Sunni political custom. Quietist Salafis keep away from political competitors and criticism not merely as a result of it’s unwise but in addition as a result of it exaggerates the capability of the state to rear pious Muslims whereas necessitating compromise with non-Salafi Muslims reminiscent of Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s only by means of uncompromising and principled reform of society {that a} correctly Islamic state can come up sooner or later, and shortcuts to such a state will inevitably be tormented by corruption that renders this venture faulty.
For Salafi-Jihadis, dwelling below a secular state and paying taxes to it renders a professing Muslim an infidel
In contrast, these Salafis who belong to the Islamist or Politico camp meld a dedication to Salafi theology, regulation and social apply with a imaginative and prescient of religiopolitical change by means of express critique of the established order and electoral competitors. Whereas they’re conscious of the Quietist concern with compromise, they reject it in favour of the alternatives supplied by state energy and an pressing want to alter the established order. This understanding of religiopolitical change, in flip, is a legacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, notably the concepts of its founder, Al-Banna. In Saudi Arabia, such Salafis emerged within the Sixties and ’70s below what is named the ‘Awakening’ (Sahwa) motion, although the Awakening’s political prospects have been severely restricted by the restrictions of the Saudi political system. In Egypt, alternatively, this camp arose in earnest post-2011 to make the most of the alternatives supplied by the transition after the president Hosni Mubarak. Most prominently, a number one Salafi preaching organisation, the Salafi Name (al-Daʿwa al-Salafiyya) within the coastal metropolis of Alexandria fashioned the Nour political social gathering, which contested parliamentary seats and captured the second largest bloc subsequent to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Occasion. Nour thus retains Salafi views of theology and regulation, however shares the Muslim Brotherhood’s objective of building an Islamic state.
Lastly, the Jihadi camp is most prominently represented by teams reminiscent of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Such teams meld Salafi theological and authorized positions with a set of political ideas impressed by Sayyid Qutb within the Twentieth century on the one hand, and the 18th-century Arabian reformer Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab on the opposite. Particularly, this motion is distinguished by an emphasis on God’s sovereignty (hakimiyya) and declaring different Muslims to be infidels (takfir). Not like the mainstream Sunni place that solely acts of ‘flagrant disbelief’ (kufr bawwah), reminiscent of questioning God’s important oneness, justify such excommunication, Salafi-Jihadis take the view that the mere act of dwelling below the authority of a secular state and paying taxes to it renders a professing Muslim to be an infidel.
The Jihadi motion, nonetheless, was not at all times Salafi: within the Eighties, the overwhelming majority of the fighters (mujahidin) in Afghanistan hailed from diversified theological and authorized approaches, a state of affairs that may start to change solely within the early Nineteen Nineties. Put in a different way, it isn’t solely the case that the overwhelming majority of Salafis will not be Jihadis, but in addition a proven fact that the Jihadi motion emerges independently from the Salafi motion. By the early Nineteen Nineties, nonetheless, the Jihadi motion had melded Salafism’s theological and authorized approaches with an Islamist-inspired revolutionary political ideology and the purist inspiration of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab.
Over the previous twenty years, Salafism has emerged and endured as a key query of US international coverage. First with Al-Qaeda’s assaults on the US on 11 September 2001 after which with ISIS’s announcement of a Caliphate in elements of Iraq and Syria in 2014, Salafi-Jihadis grew to become essentially the most seen representatives of this motion. That Salafi-Jihadis would stake this declare is unsurprising, as they profit from Salafism’s declare to authenticity. Islamists inside the Salafi camp, too, have emerged as outstanding gamers within the post-2011 Center East. But, as a matter of each previous and current, these two segments of the Salafi motion are a definite minority in contrast with the tens of millions of Salafi women and men who adhere to Quietism and reside not solely within the Center East and South Asia but in addition within the US and western Europe.
Given this historical past, how ought to we perceive Salafism at this time? Opponents of Salafism of various political persuasions usually body the motion as ‘backwards’ or as searching for a ‘return to the Seventh century’. Whereas the previous description partakes in a longstanding custom of purist (usually non-Western) non secular actions being assessed negatively alongside a teleological imaginative and prescient of progress, the latter reproduce the Salafi’s personal declare to authenticity, albeit in pejorative trend. Salafis can not, any greater than some other Twentieth- or Twenty first-century motion, return to the previous. As a substitute, like some other motion, they’re firmly rooted within the questions and issues of the current, and interact selectively with previous traditions searching for solutions to those questions and issues.
On this regard, Salafis are essentially just like each non secular and non-religious actions at this time. Like their theologically traditionalist and socially conservative counterparts in Judaism and Christianity, they search to protect an imagined previous wherein faith outlined the goalposts of social life, wherein their non secular custom was dominant, and wherein the data concerning the world that mattered most was that of the students. Salafis, nonetheless, even have an important deal in widespread with their secular nationalist opponents, who themselves attraction to a mythological nationwide historical past, shorn of complication, ambiguity and division, and outlined by unifying dedication to a given objective.
In conclusion, to be a Salafi is to hunt to reside a mannequin within the Twenty first century that first emerged within the Seventh century. But, in doing so, Salafis are aspiring to recreate a golden previous, an idealistic aspiration shared amongst non secular and non-religious actions alike. Salafi claims to basic distinction have endured so long as they’ve as a result of the actions’ proponents and opponents share a fundamental ahistorical view: that Salafism replicates the Seventh century. But it is just by acknowledging the impossibility of such a declare that we will start to have a severe public dialog about Salafism and public life in each East and West at this time.
