Journal articles on the topic 'Salafism'

The importance of Salafism, both in the Muslim world and in Europe, has been quickly grasped by scholars and by governments, and some excellent studies of Salafism in individual countries have been published. Methodological and analytical problems, however, remain. One problem is defining the topic: what is and what is not Salafi? Classification is not assisted by internal divisions within the Salafi movement that result in disagreement among Salafis themselves as to who and what is and is not Salafi, nor by the way in which Salafis do not always describe themselves as Salafi, often preferring ahl al-sunna wa’l-jama’a, sometimes shortened to plain “Sunni,” terms which could, of course, describe almost any non-Shi’i Muslim. A related problem is that the term “Salafi” is sometimes applied by outsiders with little justification, often in the press, but also by authorities such as Hillel Fradkin, director of the Center for Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World at the Hudson Institute, a “conservative” American think tank, who classified the Muslim Brotherhood as Salafi, on the basis that they were part of “the worldwide Islamic phenomenon and movement variously known as Islamism, Salafism, radical Islam, militant Islam, political Islam and the like.”

Albeit sharing “Salafism” in name, Jihadi Salafist movement is different from the mainstream Salafism in multiple respects. Among others, it’s Fiqh (jurisprudence) distinguishes it from other Salfi strands, since Jihadi Salafist established their own underlying fiqh principles. To put it into perspective, their understanding of Salafist jurisprudence principles is characterized by three main features: firstly, it serves collective actions and social agitation; secondly, it excuses its proponents’ autonomous actions: and finally, it theorizes individual instead of institutionalized actions. This study hypothesizes that the Jihadi Salafist movement tends to advance these actions in the light of revisiting the all-important principles of ijtihad, tawhid, iman, tazkya. While complying with official institutes issuing fatwa (religious edict) and dominant social and political order and its gradual amendment is prescribed by Salafism fiqh, Jihadi Salafism demands abiding by Quran and Sunna, and encourages abolishing official institutes in favor of collective and violent actions. The current paper aims to explore Salafists’ atypical understanding of main Salafist theoretical principles and its impact on proceedings and violence in Jihadi Salafist movement.

Tulisan geneologi dan gerakan militansi salafi jihadi kontemporer ini, berusaha menjelaskan bagaimana suatu ide tertentu dalam salafi-jihadisme muncul, tipologi dan doktrin jihad salafism, dinamika gerakan jihad salafism dan karakteristik yang menentukannya. Tulisan ini juga akan menjelaskan cara yang unik dan berbeda yang mana para salafi-jihadis memahami, mengembangkan atau menterjemahkan ide-ide tersebut yang berbeda dengan bagaimana kelompok Muslim yang lain mempersepsikan ide tersebut melalui sebuah gerakan. Salafisme sendiri menurut penulis adalah sebuah konsep yang masih terlalu luas untuk dimaknai. Penulis mengutip perkataan Bernard Haykel bahwa Istilah salafi, dan hal-hal lain yang dikaitkan dengannya, masih belum didefinisikan dengan baik dan sering difahami secara salah dalam banyak literatur tentang pergerakan ini, dan dalam kajian Islam yang lebih umum. Dalam konstruksinya yang paling sederhana, salafisme Mengacu pada para pendahulu yang sholih dari tiga generasi awal Muslim. Karena itu salafisme adalah pandangan keagaaman yang menginginkan untuk menghidupkan kembali praktek-praktek tiga generasi awal Islam yang secara kolektif dikenal sebagai as-salafush shalihin. Penulis menjelaskan adanya banyak opini yang berbeda dari para ilmuwan tentang karakteristik tertentu yang secara presisi mendefinisikan gerakan salafi-jihadi sebagai sebuah kesatuan, yang merupakan salah satu bagian dari spektrum salafi yang luas. Dengan mengacu dan mengkompromikan pendapat yang berbeda dari para ilmuwan, penulis berpendapat bahwa ada lima ciri/fitur mendasar dari gerakan salafi-jihadi yaitu: tauhid, hakimiyyah, wala’ wal baro’, jihad, dan takfir. Kelima ciri ini dipilih berdasarkan arti pentingnya terhadap gerakan salafi-jihadi.

This article examines how use of the Prophet Muḥammad’s Khuṭbat al-ḥāja (Sermon of Necessity) became a distinguishing marker of Salafism. To understand the Sermon’s role, the article draws on the notion of “coded language,” messages that communities use to communicate with insiders while excluding outsiders. The article analyzes the content of the Sermon and describes its spread among Salafīs. The Sermon was championed by Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (1914-99), who played a pivotal role in shaping Salafī practice. Relating the Sermon’s spread to methodological debates about studying Salafism, the article suggests that the Sermon furnishes one empirical criterion that can be used to date Salafism’s crystallization to the mid-twentieth century. The article closes by examining how jihādīs selectively use the Sermon to “Salafize” their speech, and by discussing how instances of opposition to the Sermon’s use were connected to debates over the validity of Salafism and the status of al-Albānī.

Abstract The special issue “Empirical Approaches to Salafism: Methodological and Ethical Challenges” addresses urgent methodological and ethical issues in qualitative research on Salafism. The contributing authors discuss these in relation to their fieldwork on Salafi beliefs, practices, life courses and world views. The contributions problematize the limits of the usual academic definitions of Salafism by confronting the conventional categories of quietist, political and jihadist Salafism with first-hand field data. Thereby, the authors show how categorial lines begin to blur and to shift when exposed to the ambiguous and dynamic characteristics that are inherent to virtual and real-life fieldwork with Salafis.

This article aims to explain the ideas and the significance of Dr. Bilal Philips, a prominent ‘Salafi‘preacher, a major proponent of Neo-Traditional Salafism, and how his writings and activities can aid us in understanding the dynamics regarding the nature of Salafism in the West as a discursive tradition with deep roots in the Islamic intellectual history, as well as an element of global Salafi movements. As such, the article focuses primarily on identifying and analyzing Philips’ ideas on what constitutes a proper approach to interpreting the Qur’ān and Sunna in the light of the Islamic legal and exegetical tradition. After discussing the reasons why the ideas of Philips are significant for understanding Salafism in the West, the article focuses on his views on the conceptual relationship between sunna and hadīth, the broader hermeneutic characterization of the main four Sunni schools of thought (madhāhib), and issues pertaining to the correct methodology of Qur’ānic exegesis (tafsīr). The article also discusses the internal factionalism and the contentedness of the category of Salafism among western Salafis by examining one critique levelled at Philips by his fellow Salafis residing in the West, with the view of not only understanding and situating the views of Philips more accurately but also to provide an avenue to understand the internal Salafi dynamics in the West in particular.

AbstractWhat shape does Salafism take in Tunisia after the ban of the Salafi-Jihadi group Ansar al-Shari‘a and the wave of securitization carried out by national authorities? This article argues that a constraining legal context put Salafism's doctrinal rigidity in tension with its survival and ultimately prompted a residual current of Salafi actors to accommodate their stance toward Malikism, the prevalent school (madhhab) in the country. This adaptation is at odds with contemporary Salafism, which traditionally dismisses all four law schools (lā madhabiyya), rejects their blind imitation (taqlῑd), and claims the superiority of the Qur'an, hadith, and consensus of the salaf (pious predecessors) over jurisprudence (fiqh). To account for this puzzle, this article scrutinizes the historical development of Salafism and the evolution of its stance toward Malikism across three generational waves. It notably shows how religious securitization associated with the promotion of a “moderate” Islam pushed Salafi actors to redefine their ideology to preserve their preaching and teaching activities. We call Salafi-Malikism the outcome of this adaptive strategy. Drawing on the Tunisian case, we argue that, despite its purist claims, Salafism is not an immutable religious current, but can take different trajectories to survive in constraining environments.

Salafism has developed into different interpretations and understandings. Every da’wah movement claims to follow Salafi way of its own interpretation. This study aims at portraying one of Salafi understandings and its Salafi da’wah. This research used literature review to reconstruct the model of first emerging da’wah according to Shaikh Muhammad Al-Ghazali, a 20th century da’wah thinker and practicioner. It used his works that are supposed to bear objective, original views, and understanding on Salafism and Salafi da’wah. The study shows that since the time of the prophet the core characteristics of Salafi da’wah are criticism, constructivism, and moderation. Salafisme telah berkembang menjadi beragam interpretasi dan pemahaman. Setiap gerakan dakwah mengklaim mengikuti cara Salafi dalam interpretasinya. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menggambarkan salah satu pemahaman Salafi dan dakwah Salafi. Penelitian ini menggunakan analisis literatur untuk merekonstruksi model pertama kemunculan dakwah menurut Shaikh Muhammad Al-Ghazali, seorang pemikir dan praktisi dakwah abad ke-20. Ia menggunakan karya-karyanya yang seharusnya memiliki pandangan objektif, asli, dan pemahaman tentang Salafisme dan dakwah Salafi. Studi ini menunjukkan bahwa sejak masa nabi, karakteristik inti dari dakwah Salafi adalah kritis, konstruktivisme, dan moderasi.

The global spread of Salafism, though it began in the 1960s and 1970s, only started to attract significant attention from scholars and analysts outside of Islamic studies as well as journalists, politicians, and the general public following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Central. After the attacks, Salafism—or, as it was pejoratively labeled by its critics inside and outside of the Islamic tradition, “Wahhabism”—was accused of being the ideological basis of all expressions of Sunni militancy from North America and Europe to West and East Africa, the Arab world, and into Asia. According to this narrative, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Za- wahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other Sunni jihadis were merely putting into action the commands of medieval ‘ulama such as Ibn Taymiyya, the eighteenth century Najdi Hanbali Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and modern revolutionary ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam. To eradicate terrorism, you must eliminate or neuter Salafism, say its critics. The reality, of course, is far more complex than this simplistic nar- rative purports. Salafism, though its adherents share the same core set of creedal beliefs and methodological approaches toward the interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith and Sunni legal canon, comes in many forms, from the scholastic and hierarchical Salafism of the ‘ulama in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries to the decentralized, self-described Salafi groups in Europe and North America who cluster around a single char- ismatic preacher who often has limited formal religious education. What unifies these different expressions of Salafism is a core canon of religious and legal texts and set of scholars who are widely respected and referenced in Salafi circles. Thurston grounds his fieldwork and text-based analysis of Salafism in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to one of the world’s largest single Muslim national populations, through the lens of this canon, which he defines as a “communally negotiated set of texts that is governed by rules of interpretation and appropriation” (1). He argues fur- ther that in the history of Nigerian Salafism, one can trace the major stages that the global Salafi movement has navigated as it spread from the Arab Middle East to what are erroneously often seen as “peripheral” areas of the Islamic world, Africa and parts of Asia. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in Nigeria including interviews with key Nigerian Salafi scholars and other leading figures as well as a wide range of textual primary sourc- es including British and Nigerian archival documents, international and national news media reports, leaked US embassy cables, and a significant number of religious lectures and sermons and writings by Nigerian Salafis in Arabic and Hausa. In Chapter One, Thurston argues that the Salafi canon gives individ- ual and groups of Salafis a sense of identity and membership in a unique and, to them, superior religious community that is linked closely to their understanding and reading of sacred history and the revered figures of the Prophet Muhammad and the Ṣaḥāba. Salafism as an intellectual current, theology, and methodological approach is transmitted through this can- on which serves not only as a vehicle for proselytization but also a rule- book through which the boundaries of what is and is not “Salafism” are determined by its adherents and leading authorities. The book’s analytical framework and approach toward understanding Salafism, which rests on seeing it as a textual tradition, runs counter to the popular but problematic tendency in much of the existing discussion and even scholarly literature on Salafism that defines it as a literalist, one-dimensional, and puritani- cal creed with a singular focus on the Qur’an and hadith canon. Salafis, Thurston argues, do not simply derive religious and legal rulings in linear fashion from the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunna but rather engage in a co- herent and uniform process of aligning today’s Salafi community with a set of normative practices and beliefs laid out by key Salafi scholars from the recent past. Thurston divides the emergence of a distinct “Salafi” current within Sunnis into two phases. The first stretches from 1880 to 1950, as Sun- ni scholars from around the Muslim-majority world whose approaches shared a common hadith-centered methodology came into closer contact. The second is from the 1960s through the present, as key Salafi institutions (such as the Islamic University of Medina and other Saudi Salafi bodies) were founded and began attracting and (perhaps most importantly) fund- ing and sponsoring Sunni students from countries such as Nigeria to come study in Saudi Arabia, where they were deeply embedded in the Salafi tra- dition before returning to their home countries where, in turn, they spread Salafism among local Muslims. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, as with other regions such as Yemen’s northern Sa‘ada governorate, proved to be a fertile ground for Salafism in large part because it enabled local Muslims from more humble social backgrounds to challenge the longtime domi- nance of hereditary ruling families and the established religious class. In northern Nigeria the latter was and continues to be dominated by Sufi or- ders and their shaykhs whose long-running claim to communal leadership faced new and substantive theological and resource challenges following the return of Nigerian seminary students from Saudi Arabia’s Salafi scho- lastic institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapters Two and Three, Thurston traces the history of Nigerian and other African students in Saudi Arabia, which significantly expanded following the 1961 founding of the Islamic University of Medina (which remains the preeminent Salafi seminary and university in the world) and after active outreach across the Sunni Muslim world by the Saudi govern- ment and Salafi religious elite to attract students through lucrative funding and scholarship packages. The process of developing an African Salafism was not one-dimensional or imposed from the top-down by Saudi Salafi elites, but instead saw Nigerian and other African Salafi students partici- pate actively in shaping and theorizing Salafi da‘wa that took into account the specifics of each African country and Islamic religious and social envi- ronment. In Nigeria and other parts of West and East Africa, this included considering the historically dominant position of Sufi orders and popular practices such as devotion to saints and grave and shrine visitation. African and Saudi Salafis also forged relationships with local African partners, in- cluding powerful political figures such as Ahmadu Bello and his religious adviser Abubakar Gumi, by attracting them with the benefits of establishing ties with wealthy international Islamic organizations founded and backed by the Saudi state, including the Muslim World League. Nigerian Salafis returning from their studies in Saudi Arabia actively promoted their Salafi canon among local Muslims, waging an aggressive proselytization campaign that sought to chip away at the dominance of traditional political and religious elites, the Sufi shaykhs. This process is covered in Chapter Four. Drawing on key sets of legal and exegetical writ- ings by Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and other Salafi scholars, Nigerian Salafis sought to introduce a framework—represented by the canon—through which their students and adherents approach re- ligious interpretation and practice. By mastering one’s understanding and ability to correctly interpret scripture and the hadith, Salafis believe, one will also live a more ethical life based on a core set of “Salafi” principles that govern not only religious but also political, social, and economic life. Salaf- ism, Thurston argues, drawing on the work of Terje Østebø on Ethiopian Salafism, becomes localized within a specific environment.As part of their da‘wa campaigns, Nigerian Salafis have utilized media and new technology to debate their rivals and critics as well as to broad- en their own influence over Nigerian Muslims and national society more broadly, actions analyzed in Chapter Five. Using the Internet, video and audio recorded sermons and religious lectures, books and pamphlets, and oral proselytization and preaching, Nigerian Salafis, like other Muslim ac- tivists and groups, see in media and technology an extension of the phys- ical infrastructure provided by institutions such as mosques and religious schools. This media/cyber infrastructure is as, if not increasingly more, valuable as the control of physical space because it allows for the rapid spread of ideas beyond what would have historically been possible for local religious preachers and missionaries. Instead of preaching political revo- lution, Nigerian Salafi activists sought to win greater access to the media including radio airtime because they believed this would ultimately lead to the triumph of their religious message despite the power of skeptical to downright hostile local audiences among the Sufi orders and non-Salafis dedicated to the Maliki juridical canon.In the realm of politics, the subject of Chapter Six, Nigeria’s Salafis base their political ideology on the core tenets of the Salafi creed and canon, tenets which cast Salafism as being not only the purest but the only true version of Islam, and require of Salafis to establish moral reform of a way- ward Muslim society. Salafi scholars seek to bring about social, political, and religious reform, which collectively represent a “return” to the Prophet Muhammad’s Islam, by speaking truth to power and advising and repri- manding, as necessary, Muslim political rulers. In navigating the multi-po- lar and complex realm of national and regional politics, Thurston argues, Nigerian Salafi scholars educated in Saudi Arabia unwittingly opened the door to cruder and more extreme, militant voices of figures lacking the same level of study of the Salafi canon or Sunni Islam generally. The most infamous of the latter is “Boko Haram,” the jihadi-insurgent group today based around Lake Chad in Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, which calls itself Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li-l-Da‘wa wa-l-Jihad and is led by the bombastic Abubakar Shekau. Boko Haram, under the leadership first of the revivalist preacher Mu- hammad Yusuf and then Shekau, is covered at length in the book’s third and final part, which is composed of two chapters. Yusuf, unlike mainstream Nigerian Salafis, sought to weaponize the Salafi canon against the state in- stead of using it as a tool to bring about desired reforms. Drawing on the writings of influential Arab jihadi ideologues including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the apocalyptic revolutionary Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the lat- ter of whom participated in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Yusuf cited key Salafi concepts such as al-walā’ min al-mu’minīn wa-l-bara’ ‘an al-kāfirīn (loyalty to the Believers and disavowal of the Disbelievers) and beliefs about absolute monotheism (tawḥīd) as the basis of his revival- ist preaching. Based on these principle, he claimed, Muslims must not only fulfill their ritual duties such as prayer and fasting during Ramadan but also actively fight “unbelief” (kufr) and “apostasy” (ridda) and bring about God’s rule on earth, following the correct path of the community of the Prophet Abraham (Millat Ibrāhīm) referenced in multiple Qur’anic verses and outlined as a theological project for action by al-Maqdisi in a lengthy book of that name that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Sunni jihadism. Instead of seeing Boko Haram, particularly under Shekau’s leadership, as a “Salafi” or “jihadi-Salafi” group, Thurston argues it is a case study of how a group that at one point in its history adhered to Salafism can move away from and beyond it. In the case of Shekau and his “post-Salafism,” he writes, the group, like Islamic State, has shifted away from the Salafi canon and toward a jihadism that uses only stripped-down elements from the canon and does so solely to propagate a militaristic form of jihad. Even when referencing historical religious authorities such as Ibn Taymiyya, Thurston points out, Boko Haram and Islamic State leaders and members often do so through the lens of modern Sunni jihadi ideologues like Juhay- man al-‘Utaybi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, figures who have come to form a Sunni jihadi canon of texts, intellectuals, and ideologues. Shekau, in short, has given up canonical Salafism and moved toward a more bombastic and scholastically more heterodox and less-Salafi-than- jihadi creed of political violence. Thurston also pushes back against the often crude stereotyping of Af- rican Islamic traditions and movements that sees African Muslims as being defined by their “syncretic” mix of traditional African religious traditions and “orthodox” Islam, the latter usually a stand-in for “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” Islam. Islam and Islamic movements in Africa have developed in social and political environments that are not mirrors to the dominant models of the Arab world (in particular, Egypt). He convincingly points out that analysis of all forms of African Islamic social and political mobi- lization through a Middle East and Egypt-heavy lens obscures much more than it elucidates. The book includes useful glossaries of key individuals and Arabic terms referenced in the text as well as a translation of a sermon by the late, revered Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani that is part of the mainstream Salafi canon. Extensive in its coverage of the his- tory, evolution, and sociopolitical and religious development of Salafism in Nigeria as well as the key role played by Saudi Salafi universities and religious institutions and quasi-state NGOs, the book expands the schol- arly literature on Salafism, Islam in Africa, and political Islam and Islamic social movements. It also contributing to ongoing debates and discussions on approaches to the study of the role of texts and textual traditions in the formation of individual and communal religious identity. Christopher AnzaloneResearch Fellow, International Security ProgramBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University& PhD candidate, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

The global spread of Salafism, though it began in the 1960s and 1970s, only started to attract significant attention from scholars and analysts outside of Islamic studies as well as journalists, politicians, and the general public following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Central. After the attacks, Salafism—or, as it was pejoratively labeled by its critics inside and outside of the Islamic tradition, “Wahhabism”—was accused of being the ideological basis of all expressions of Sunni militancy from North America and Europe to West and East Africa, the Arab world, and into Asia. According to this narrative, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Za- wahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other Sunni jihadis were merely putting into action the commands of medieval ‘ulama such as Ibn Taymiyya, the eighteenth century Najdi Hanbali Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and modern revolutionary ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam. To eradicate terrorism, you must eliminate or neuter Salafism, say its critics. The reality, of course, is far more complex than this simplistic nar- rative purports. Salafism, though its adherents share the same core set of creedal beliefs and methodological approaches toward the interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith and Sunni legal canon, comes in many forms, from the scholastic and hierarchical Salafism of the ‘ulama in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries to the decentralized, self-described Salafi groups in Europe and North America who cluster around a single char- ismatic preacher who often has limited formal religious education. What unifies these different expressions of Salafism is a core canon of religious and legal texts and set of scholars who are widely respected and referenced in Salafi circles. Thurston grounds his fieldwork and text-based analysis of Salafism in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to one of the world’s largest single Muslim national populations, through the lens of this canon, which he defines as a “communally negotiated set of texts that is governed by rules of interpretation and appropriation” (1). He argues fur- ther that in the history of Nigerian Salafism, one can trace the major stages that the global Salafi movement has navigated as it spread from the Arab Middle East to what are erroneously often seen as “peripheral” areas of the Islamic world, Africa and parts of Asia. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in Nigeria including interviews with key Nigerian Salafi scholars and other leading figures as well as a wide range of textual primary sourc- es including British and Nigerian archival documents, international and national news media reports, leaked US embassy cables, and a significant number of religious lectures and sermons and writings by Nigerian Salafis in Arabic and Hausa. In Chapter One, Thurston argues that the Salafi canon gives individ- ual and groups of Salafis a sense of identity and membership in a unique and, to them, superior religious community that is linked closely to their understanding and reading of sacred history and the revered figures of the Prophet Muhammad and the Ṣaḥāba. Salafism as an intellectual current, theology, and methodological approach is transmitted through this can- on which serves not only as a vehicle for proselytization but also a rule- book through which the boundaries of what is and is not “Salafism” are determined by its adherents and leading authorities. The book’s analytical framework and approach toward understanding Salafism, which rests on seeing it as a textual tradition, runs counter to the popular but problematic tendency in much of the existing discussion and even scholarly literature on Salafism that defines it as a literalist, one-dimensional, and puritani- cal creed with a singular focus on the Qur’an and hadith canon. Salafis, Thurston argues, do not simply derive religious and legal rulings in linear fashion from the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunna but rather engage in a co- herent and uniform process of aligning today’s Salafi community with a set of normative practices and beliefs laid out by key Salafi scholars from the recent past. Thurston divides the emergence of a distinct “Salafi” current within Sunnis into two phases. The first stretches from 1880 to 1950, as Sun- ni scholars from around the Muslim-majority world whose approaches shared a common hadith-centered methodology came into closer contact. The second is from the 1960s through the present, as key Salafi institutions (such as the Islamic University of Medina and other Saudi Salafi bodies) were founded and began attracting and (perhaps most importantly) fund- ing and sponsoring Sunni students from countries such as Nigeria to come study in Saudi Arabia, where they were deeply embedded in the Salafi tra- dition before returning to their home countries where, in turn, they spread Salafism among local Muslims. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, as with other regions such as Yemen’s northern Sa‘ada governorate, proved to be a fertile ground for Salafism in large part because it enabled local Muslims from more humble social backgrounds to challenge the longtime domi- nance of hereditary ruling families and the established religious class. In northern Nigeria the latter was and continues to be dominated by Sufi or- ders and their shaykhs whose long-running claim to communal leadership faced new and substantive theological and resource challenges following the return of Nigerian seminary students from Saudi Arabia’s Salafi scho- lastic institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapters Two and Three, Thurston traces the history of Nigerian and other African students in Saudi Arabia, which significantly expanded following the 1961 founding of the Islamic University of Medina (which remains the preeminent Salafi seminary and university in the world) and after active outreach across the Sunni Muslim world by the Saudi govern- ment and Salafi religious elite to attract students through lucrative funding and scholarship packages. The process of developing an African Salafism was not one-dimensional or imposed from the top-down by Saudi Salafi elites, but instead saw Nigerian and other African Salafi students partici- pate actively in shaping and theorizing Salafi da‘wa that took into account the specifics of each African country and Islamic religious and social envi- ronment. In Nigeria and other parts of West and East Africa, this included considering the historically dominant position of Sufi orders and popular practices such as devotion to saints and grave and shrine visitation. African and Saudi Salafis also forged relationships with local African partners, in- cluding powerful political figures such as Ahmadu Bello and his religious adviser Abubakar Gumi, by attracting them with the benefits of establishing ties with wealthy international Islamic organizations founded and backed by the Saudi state, including the Muslim World League. Nigerian Salafis returning from their studies in Saudi Arabia actively promoted their Salafi canon among local Muslims, waging an aggressive proselytization campaign that sought to chip away at the dominance of traditional political and religious elites, the Sufi shaykhs. This process is covered in Chapter Four. Drawing on key sets of legal and exegetical writ- ings by Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and other Salafi scholars, Nigerian Salafis sought to introduce a framework—represented by the canon—through which their students and adherents approach re- ligious interpretation and practice. By mastering one’s understanding and ability to correctly interpret scripture and the hadith, Salafis believe, one will also live a more ethical life based on a core set of “Salafi” principles that govern not only religious but also political, social, and economic life. Salaf- ism, Thurston argues, drawing on the work of Terje Østebø on Ethiopian Salafism, becomes localized within a specific environment.As part of their da‘wa campaigns, Nigerian Salafis have utilized media and new technology to debate their rivals and critics as well as to broad- en their own influence over Nigerian Muslims and national society more broadly, actions analyzed in Chapter Five. Using the Internet, video and audio recorded sermons and religious lectures, books and pamphlets, and oral proselytization and preaching, Nigerian Salafis, like other Muslim ac- tivists and groups, see in media and technology an extension of the phys- ical infrastructure provided by institutions such as mosques and religious schools. This media/cyber infrastructure is as, if not increasingly more, valuable as the control of physical space because it allows for the rapid spread of ideas beyond what would have historically been possible for local religious preachers and missionaries. Instead of preaching political revo- lution, Nigerian Salafi activists sought to win greater access to the media including radio airtime because they believed this would ultimately lead to the triumph of their religious message despite the power of skeptical to downright hostile local audiences among the Sufi orders and non-Salafis dedicated to the Maliki juridical canon.In the realm of politics, the subject of Chapter Six, Nigeria’s Salafis base their political ideology on the core tenets of the Salafi creed and canon, tenets which cast Salafism as being not only the purest but the only true version of Islam, and require of Salafis to establish moral reform of a way- ward Muslim society. Salafi scholars seek to bring about social, political, and religious reform, which collectively represent a “return” to the Prophet Muhammad’s Islam, by speaking truth to power and advising and repri- manding, as necessary, Muslim political rulers. In navigating the multi-po- lar and complex realm of national and regional politics, Thurston argues, Nigerian Salafi scholars educated in Saudi Arabia unwittingly opened the door to cruder and more extreme, militant voices of figures lacking the same level of study of the Salafi canon or Sunni Islam generally. The most infamous of the latter is “Boko Haram,” the jihadi-insurgent group today based around Lake Chad in Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, which calls itself Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li-l-Da‘wa wa-l-Jihad and is led by the bombastic Abubakar Shekau. Boko Haram, under the leadership first of the revivalist preacher Mu- hammad Yusuf and then Shekau, is covered at length in the book’s third and final part, which is composed of two chapters. Yusuf, unlike mainstream Nigerian Salafis, sought to weaponize the Salafi canon against the state in- stead of using it as a tool to bring about desired reforms. Drawing on the writings of influential Arab jihadi ideologues including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the apocalyptic revolutionary Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the lat- ter of whom participated in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Yusuf cited key Salafi concepts such as al-walā’ min al-mu’minīn wa-l-bara’ ‘an al-kāfirīn (loyalty to the Believers and disavowal of the Disbelievers) and beliefs about absolute monotheism (tawḥīd) as the basis of his revival- ist preaching. Based on these principle, he claimed, Muslims must not only fulfill their ritual duties such as prayer and fasting during Ramadan but also actively fight “unbelief” (kufr) and “apostasy” (ridda) and bring about God’s rule on earth, following the correct path of the community of the Prophet Abraham (Millat Ibrāhīm) referenced in multiple Qur’anic verses and outlined as a theological project for action by al-Maqdisi in a lengthy book of that name that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Sunni jihadism. Instead of seeing Boko Haram, particularly under Shekau’s leadership, as a “Salafi” or “jihadi-Salafi” group, Thurston argues it is a case study of how a group that at one point in its history adhered to Salafism can move away from and beyond it. In the case of Shekau and his “post-Salafism,” he writes, the group, like Islamic State, has shifted away from the Salafi canon and toward a jihadism that uses only stripped-down elements from the canon and does so solely to propagate a militaristic form of jihad. Even when referencing historical religious authorities such as Ibn Taymiyya, Thurston points out, Boko Haram and Islamic State leaders and members often do so through the lens of modern Sunni jihadi ideologues like Juhay- man al-‘Utaybi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, figures who have come to form a Sunni jihadi canon of texts, intellectuals, and ideologues. Shekau, in short, has given up canonical Salafism and moved toward a more bombastic and scholastically more heterodox and less-Salafi-than- jihadi creed of political violence. Thurston also pushes back against the often crude stereotyping of Af- rican Islamic traditions and movements that sees African Muslims as being defined by their “syncretic” mix of traditional African religious traditions and “orthodox” Islam, the latter usually a stand-in for “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” Islam. Islam and Islamic movements in Africa have developed in social and political environments that are not mirrors to the dominant models of the Arab world (in particular, Egypt). He convincingly points out that analysis of all forms of African Islamic social and political mobi- lization through a Middle East and Egypt-heavy lens obscures much more than it elucidates. The book includes useful glossaries of key individuals and Arabic terms referenced in the text as well as a translation of a sermon by the late, revered Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani that is part of the mainstream Salafi canon. Extensive in its coverage of the his- tory, evolution, and sociopolitical and religious development of Salafism in Nigeria as well as the key role played by Saudi Salafi universities and religious institutions and quasi-state NGOs, the book expands the schol- arly literature on Salafism, Islam in Africa, and political Islam and Islamic social movements. It also contributing to ongoing debates and discussions on approaches to the study of the role of texts and textual traditions in the formation of individual and communal religious identity. Christopher AnzaloneResearch Fellow, International Security ProgramBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University& PhD candidate, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

There is a major assumption regarding the politics of the neo-Salafis in South India (especially in Kerala) widely shared in the political, media and academic circles; their everyday life and religiosity do not provide a conscious address to things such as state and politics and they are confined to the social and religious sphere rather than the political one . The recurring question in this study is, therefore, how to make sense of the political expressions of a group, which apparently shows no direct inclination towards the ‘mainstream’ politics. This study also tries to address the ambiguity about the role of Salafi ideology in everyday conduct of politics among the neo-Salafis. What is the position of Salafism in the scheme of political thinking and how it relates to the political imagination of neo-Salafis, are examined taking cues from the experience of some of the neo- Salafist groups, which keep a strong open disbelief in the secular polity.

The term Salafism refers to an interpretation of Islam that seeks to restore Islamic faith and practice to the way they existed at the time of Prophet Muhammad and the early generations of his followers. Since this early period represented the golden age of Islam in its pure form, Salafis believe it should be the example followed by all Muslims today. Salafism as a trend and theological movement has been a point of interest to many researchers due to the current global political escalation. It has been a focal point of issues related to global terrorism, radicalism, post-Arab Spring politics, religious trends as well as theological debates. Salafism, more often known as Wahabism, has come to Malaysia at different times and with different motivations. The early brand of Salafism in pre-Malaysia Tanah Melayu, or Malaya, was the emergence of the early 20th century reformist Salafi movement, known as Kaum Muda, inspired by the Middle Eastern Abduh-Afghani Pan Islamism. Despite the differences between that and the current global Salafism they share the same roots. Additionally, according to numerous historical accounts, the current Salafi trend in Malaysia is closely related to the global Islamic revivalism of the 1970s and 1980s, and was also affected by the return of Malaysian students studying abroad during the 1990s and early 2000s. Evidence has shown that the emergence of Salafism in Malaysia has contributed directly and indirectly to the mainstream discourse of Islamic theology and Islamic worldview amongst Malaysian Muslims in general, and Islamic organizations in particular. This paper employs a historical approach in explaining the emergence of Salafism in Malaysia and offers a critical examination of certain historical events that led to the existence of the different trends and groupings of Salafism in Malaysia and its implications for Islamic discourse in the country.

This article addresses two related problems in the current ethnographic study of Salafism. First, it draws attention to the lack of positionality exhibited by many commentators on Salafism; second, and more crucially, it highlights the reluctance of scholars to engage with what is here labelled Salafi "oppositionality". By oppositionality, I refer to a set of attitudes (non-compliance, defiance, hatred) which are formally prescribed to, and informally generated by, Salafis in their dealings with non-Muslims and very often with lapsed and/or errant Muslims. Through two case studies in pre-Arab Spring Cairo, I explore the workings of Salafi oppositionality in practice. By so doing, I highlight the often fragile and ephemeral nature of relationships that can be formed between a Western-trained ethnographer and his/her Salafi respondents, and demonstrate the ways in which instances of opposition are mutually constituted. Both the researcher and the Salafi, I argue, present each other with a dilemma. In my experience, Salafis have no problem identifying the essence of this dilemma; it is time for Western ethnographers to exhibit a similar degree of transparency.

[This article primarily discusses the links between Saudi Arabian Islamic charity organizations and the development of Salafism in Indonesia and how these links facilitate the institutionalization of Salafi groups. It specifically deals with the issues of how Islamic charity help Salafi groups create their institutions and how the Salafis distribute these charities to their own members. It also describes how they managed to survive when the flow of Saudi funds was no longer reliable. The primary focus of this article is on the way Islamic charity and Islamic charity organizations respond to existing social and political conditions by engaging in social and political activism. International Islamic charity organizations have shaped the transformation of Islamic movements over the last decades. Indonesian Salafi groups have benefitted from charities in various ways and they have enabled Salafi groups to create their institutions in Indonesia. It is no exaggeration to say that Indonesian Salafi groups have become the major players in the distribution of Saudi Arabian charities in the country. This process is inescapably linked with politics which further shapes the transformation of Salafism in Indonesia.[Pembahasan utama artikel ini adalah menjelaskan keterhubungan antara lembaga amal Arab Saudi dengan perkembangan kelompok Salafi di Indonesia dan bagaimana hubungan ini memfasilitasi penguatan organisasi kelompok tersebut. Lebih khususnya adalah bagaimana lembaga amal Islam tersebut membantu mendirikan yayasan serta membagi dana tersebut kepada anggota-anggotanya. Selain itu juga menjelaskan bagaimana yayasan yang terbentuk itu bertahan ketika tidak lagi menerima sumbangan dari Arab Saudi. Intinya adalah tulisan ini menjelaskan cara kerja filantropi Islam dan organisasi amalnya merespon kondisi sosial dan politik dengan terlibat dalam aktifisme. Organisasi filantropi Islam internasional pada dasarnya telah membawa transformasi gerakan Islam lebih dari satu dekade terakhir. Kelompok Salafi Indonesia dengan berbagai cara telah mengambil keuntungan dari dana amal ini dan untuk menguatkan organisasi mereka di Indonesia. Tidak berlebihan jika disebut bahwa kelompok Salafi merupakan pemain utama dalam distribusi dana amal ini di Indonesia. Proses ini merupakan hal yang tak bisa dihindarkan dari kaitan politik dimana telah banyak berpengaruh pada trasnformasi Salafisme di Indonesia.]

This article seeks to identify the driving factors, features, and significance of the transformation of Salafism in contemporary Muslim societies, a development labeled ‘post-Salafism’. Throughout the 20th century, Salafism grew into a global religious movement, with distinctive local characteristics. Its post-Salafi transformations have likewise been diverse and reflect local conditions. ‘Post-Salafism’ is a term employed congruently to point at the fragmentation of Salafi religious authority; the emergence of Salafi alliances with other Muslim groups, which challenge Salafi conceptions of doctrinal superiority; in Salafi softening of sectarian rhetoric as a way of distancing from militant groups; in Salafi “indigenization”; and in social and political transformations that overlap with post-Islamism. Post-Salafism refers additionally to debates within Salafi circles, reflective of emerging internal doctrinal contradictions. Since the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932, the kingdom has played a unique role in promoting, financing, and building the institutional network of global Salafism. The transformation of Saudi Salafism, therefore, resulting from changes in government policy, public pressure, and internal revisionism, will effect Salafism globally, pointing at a transformative moment in Muslim religious thought and authority structures.

This article will discuss the ideological roots of jihadists who use religious propositions for acts of violence, including terrorism. Ideologically, a group that is characterized by salafism or what is often called Wahabism, is an understanding that wants the purification of Islamic teachings by rejecting various interpretations other than referring to the Al-Qur'an, the prophet's hadith and the words of friends. Although in terms of faith, all Salafi factions have similarities, in terms of the application and actualization of the faith, salafism is divided into three factions, namely the puritan salafi, the political salafi and the jihadi salafi. Puritan salafis represent old groups who are anti-political, while class political salafi groups use politics as a means of defending their faith, especially jihadist groups who use revolution and even acts of violence in applying the principles of their creed. The main issues discussed in jihadiism include jihad, takfir, and al-walaa 'wa-l-baraa'.

This article explores the shifting trajectories of Salafi-inclined reforms in Ghana since the 1950s. I illustrate that Ghanaian expressions of Salafism emerged in the 1950s from local doctrinal debates between members of the Tījāniyya Sufi brotherhood and those who opposed Sufism. The opposition against the Tījāniyya evolved to become part of the worldwide Salafi reform movement. Tracing the movement’s development, I illustrate further that the Ghanaian expressions of Salafism was neither homogenous nor static in its strategies of proselytization or its doctrinal emphases. Rather, many local Salafi scholars continuously defined and sharpened their ideas and strategies to accommodate changing local and global realities. Moreover, while seeking intellectual and financial support of Salafi sponsors in the Arab world, Ghanaian Salafis remained focused on local needs. The history of Ghanaian Salafiyya will thus sharpen our knowledge of the dynamism of global Salafiyya, and the processes by which local doctrinal concerns find affinities with debates in other parts of the Muslim world.

The Salafist community, which is marginalized from mainstream media in Indonesia, represents the ideology of Salafus Salih through the mediatization of religion. Salafists originally preached traditionally but later utilized radio and television and then websites and social media. This ideological representation through the mediatization of religion increases the number of followers so that they can reproduce social formations to maintain the status quo. For this reason, this study aims to reveal how Salafists represent the conservative ideology of Salafus Salih through the mediatization of religion on Rodjatv's Instagram. Using a critical paradigm and mediatization of religion theory with virtual ethnographic methods, this study explains how the conservative ideology of Salafus Shalih in the mediatization of religion through three media metaphors, media as a channel, language, and environment, is instilled by the Salafi group to its followers. The results revealed that the Salafi da'wah content in Rodja's media interpellated the new Salafis and imitated the religious way of Salafus Salih while creating a large number of communities or congregations. The new Salafi followers then interpellated (re-interpellation) and imitated (reimitation) to the next follower. The series of re-interpellations and limitations ultimately constituted the Salafi da'wah and the ideological congregation of Salafus Salih

Roel Meijer’s edited Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, oneof the first collected works to broadly analyze contemporary Salafism as aglobal religious movement for English-speaking audiences, presents thismovement as a string of methods for approaching Islam’s canonical sources.Its many methodological ambiguities and tactical classifications enable it toincorporate a variety of local and international religious groups: those that rejectpolitical participation (e.g., “Scholastic Salafis”), embrace their society’sestablished political rules (e.g., “Sahwah Movement”), and seek radical transformationoften through violent means (e.g., “al-Qaeda”). In part, Salafismsymbolizes a varied scholarly attempt to disentangle long-simmering questionsabout conservative forms of Muslim activism, most of which concernthe ethics of how Muslims are to conduct their lives, perceive their individualand group identities, and understand the pious order of political and socialarrangements.The volume has two primary goals: (1) to reveal the diversity among themovement’s various groups and streams and (2) to reclaim the study ofSalafism from the field of security studies, which has, since 2001, influencedmuch of our overall understanding of this rather new religious phenomenon.The contributors challenge the widespread notion of Salafism as an exclusivelyviolent and intransigent Islamic movement by addressing the tensionsbetween basic Salafi doctrines (e.g., scriptural literalism, a sharp distinctionbetween in- and outsiders, and an active program for individual and communalreform), its supposed attraction to growing numbers of Muslims, and its intrinsiclinks to politics as well as to violence. The contributors argue that thesetensions have produced a whole range of consequences for primarily Muslim ...

<p>The relationship between salafism and indigeneous moslem at Lombok caused several contestations and needed to be studied deeply. In this study, salafism and indigeneous moslem will be classified into rural and urban. This classification based on their unique relations: (1) salafism gets high resistence from rural indigenous moslems, (2) meanwhile, salafism receives tolerance from urban indigenous moslem. This study uses qualitative approach with interpretive paradigm to answer causes of rural indigeneous moslems resistences toward rural salafism, causes of urban indigeneous moslems tolerance toward urban salafism and how to formulate conflict management based on multicultural competences. This study shows that different responses of indigenous moslems toward salafism aren’t only caused by the contestations of Ahlu-al sunnah but also many other elements. Then, multicultural competences needed to be developed by religious elite as an alternative to manage conflict in plural society for the sake of peace built on reciprocal multicultural values.</p><p>Relasi antara antara salafi dan pribumi di Lombok telah melahirkan berbagai kontestasi yang perlu diulas secara mendalam. Dalam kajian ini, salafi dan pribumi diklasifikasi menjadi dua yaitu salafi desa dan kota serta pribumi desa dan kota. Klasifikasi ini didasarkan pada keunikan relasinya: (1) salafi desa mendapat resistensi tinggi dari muslim pribumi desa, (2) salafi kota mendapatkan toleransi dari pribumi kota. Kajian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan paradigma interpretatif untuk menjawab penyebab resistensi pribumi desa terhadap salafi desa, penyebab toleransi pribumi kota terhadap salafi kota serta bagaimana rumusan model manajemen konflik berbasis kompetensi multikultural. Kajian ini menunjukkan bahwa perbedaan respon pribumi terhadap salafi tidak hanya disebabkan oleh kontestasi ahlu al-sunnah tetapi juga banyak unsur-unsur yang lain. Selanjutnya, multicultural competence perlu dikembangkan oleh elit agama sebagai alternatif manajemen konflik dalam realitas sosial yang plural demi kerukunan yang dibangun oleh nilai-nilai resiprokal-multikultural.</p>

Abstract In this article, I trace the history of the label ‘Salafi’ in the UK to show that there has been a marked change in its desirability and use within some ‘Salafi’ circles. Drawing on interviews conducted with members of various streams of the Salafi movement as well as content analysis of the websites, social media pages and audio-visual content of ‘Salafi’ groups, I argue that while the oftentimes unqualified association between Salafism and terrorism in public discourse may have had a negative impact on the label’s desirability, intra-Salafi politics shed more light on why some ‘Salafis’ adopt the label while others do not.

This article examines the history of Salafism within the Kurdistan Region of Iraq using interviews, archives, social media, and an online survey. Despite Salafism and nationalism generally being seen as rival political ideologies, Kurdish Salafis have over the last decade increasingly linked their sectarian struggle to the Kurdish ethno-nationalist cause. Such efforts provide new understandings both of Salafism and of Kurdish nationalism while also potentially destabilizing the alliance between Kurdish nationalist and Shi'i sectarian parties that has governed Iraq since 2003.

In western public discourse, as well as in parts of academia, Sufism and Salafism are sometimes portrayed as arch enemies in Islam. However, so far, very few studies have analyzed in detail the polemics between Sufis and Salafis in a western setting. This article tries to fill this gap by providing a snapshot of the critique of Salafism by the Sufi Nāẓimiyya order, as well as the response from the British Salafi spectrum. It will argue that although both protagonists would perceive themselves in the same way as outlined above, in fact both groups are influenced by each other with regard to the benchmark of what constitutes “authentic Islam”, as well as the ways in which arguments are portrayed as legitimately grounded in Islamic thought. These insights may help in better understanding the complexities of contemporary intra-Muslim debates and representations.

Indonesian Islam has become the point of contestation of ideologies, particularly between the so-called globally-inspired and locally- rooted views of Islam. This article deals with the Salafism struggle in da’wah on the airwaves through the radio as locally rooted in Indonesia with a special reference to the Salafi radio highly popular in Batam of Riau, Hang Radio. It analyzes two main issues, first on the growth of religious thinking in Indonesian Islam and its relationship with media propaganda, and second on the Salafi struggle for Islamic identity by means of broadcasting through radio. It argues that through the radio the Salafists implement their ideology as part of their socio-religious identity in a public sphere. Through a hermeneutical-phenomology analaysis, this article finds thatthe Salafism struggle of Islamic identity by means of radio is fragmented rather than cohesive and solid. Moreover, this struggle is not immune to capitalism. Above all, this struggle is also influenced by transnational and local elements.

This article focuses a Swedish puritan Salafi group that advocates a clear stance against the immorality and impurity that they perceive the surrounding Swedish (or “Western”) society to represent. “Members” advocate a puritan Islamic lifestyle, based on what they perceive to be the examples of the prophet Muhammad and the “pious predecessors”. The article analyzes issues pertaining to segregation/integration and emigration (hijra), according to the official ideology, and attempts to probe into how the group negotiates their particular minority situation being Swedish Salafis. Questions often touched upon, more or less explicit, concern whether a Salafi at all should live in Sweden and how he or she should relate to the surrounding Swedish society and to “others”, those not considered part of the in-group. The article analyses ideological and normative claims and frames this within the contemporary Swedish setting and the presumed growth of Salafism.

The Muslim demonstrations in Addis Ababa 2012–2013 have intensified claims that Islam in Ethiopia is becoming increasingly radicalized, and it is particularly the Salafis who are labeled as the “extremists”. My argument is that the word “extremism” is not very fruitful for understanding these developments or Salafism as a phenomenon. The intention of this article is to analyze Ethiopian Salafism as a product of both trans-local ideological impetuses and local particularities, and to demonstrate how these factors have proved pivotal the Salafis detachment from public and political life.

This article aims to explain how the development of salafi’s exegesis from the classical era to the contemporary era which is currently starting to enter online media spaces such as Youtube. In particular, the author wants to reveal how the change in the concept of al-walā' wa al-barā' which is the basic religious foundation has turned into a basis for carrying out a political-jihad movement by the salafi group, while in answering this question the author uses a historical criticism approach, namely tracing how history the emergence of the salafi then the history of the development of interpretation among them. Next is the hermeneutic approach, which is to analyze the context of the lectures from the preachers of the Masjid Mujahidi TV channel and the context of the audience.The author concludes that the development of salafi’s exegesis is inseparable from the emergence of the works of Ibn Taymiyyah who are considered the most authoritative figures in discussing religion, including al-walā' wa al-barā', one of the works that has been used as a reference until now is Majmū'u al-Fatwā. In Indonesia, the salafi in expanding their religion is to use popular media such as Youtube, one channel that is very loud in voicing the notion of salafism is the Youtube channel of Masjid Mujahidin TV. In Indonesia, the salafi in expanding their religion is to use popular media such as Youtube, one channel that is very loud in voicing the notion of salafism is the Youtube channel of Masjid Mujahidin TV. the channel contains a lot of content that characterizes their teachings such as al-walā' wa al-barā'. But the fact is that gradually the concept of al-walā' wa al-barā' which was originally a dīniyyah concept for the salafis turned into the basis for the salafi jihadist movement. Artikel ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan bagaimana perkembangan tafsir salafi dari era klasik hingga era kontemporer yang saat ini mulai memasuki ruang-ruang media online seperti Youtube. Adapun fokus dari kajian artikel ini adalah terkait konsep al-walā’ wa al-barā’ dalam pandangan para dai salafi online yang terunggah dalam channel Youtube Masjid Mujahidin TV. Secara khusus penulis hendak mengungkap bagaimana perubahan konsep al-walā’ wa al-barā’ yang merupakah landasan dasar keagamaan berubah menjadi landasan untuk melakukan gerakan jihad-politis oleh golongan salafi, sedangkan dalam menjawab pertanyaan tersebut penulis menggunakan pendekatan kritik historis, yaitu penelusuran bagaimana sejarah kemunculan salafi kemudian sejarah perkembangan tafsir dikalangan mereka. Berikutnya adalah pendekatan hermeneutik, yaitu menganalisis bagaimana konteks cramah dari para dai channel Masjid Mujahidi TV dan konteks para audiens. Berdasarkan dari hasil analisis penulis menyimpulkan bahwa perkembangan tafsir salafi tidak terlepas dari munculnya karya-karya Ibnu Taymiyyah yang dianggap sebagai tokoh paling otoritatif dalam membicarakan perihal keagamaan termasuk al-walā’ wa al-barā’, salah satu karya yang dijadikan rujukan sampai sekarang adalah Majmū’u al-Fatwā. Di Indonesia sendiri kaum salafi dalam mengekspansi paham keagamaannya adalah dengan menggunakan media populer seperti Youtube, salah satu channel yang sangat lantang dalam menyuarakan paham salafisme adalah channel Youtube Masjid Mujahidin TV. Dalam channel tersebut banyak mengandung konten-konten yang mencirikan ajaran mereka seperti al-walā’ wa al-barā’. Namun nyatanya lambat laun konsep al-walā’ wa al-barā’ yang tadinya merupakan konsep dīniyyah bagi kaum salafi berubah menjadi dasar bagi pergerakan salafi jihadis.

One of the significant developments to occur after more than two decades of Islamists’ rule in the religious domain in Sudan is the emergence of Salafism. The increasing political pragmatism of the Islamists and the lenient policy towards most of the religious trends have contributed largely to the proliferation of Salafi activities including political militant Salafism. The rise of militant Salafism and Salafi political actors created a space of concurrence with other religious groups particularly with the dominant Sufi brotherhoods leading sometimes to the eruption of violence. This has destabilized the longstanding peaceful cohabitation among opposing religious groups with the Islamists progressively moving towards the centre of the religious spectrum and emerging as a mediator. This article studies two trends of the Salafi spectrum in Sudan representing different models. It highlights their respective relations with the Islamists regime while highlighting the underlying religious driving principles.

In this article I explore Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct to make sense of the types of activism and resistance among Dutch Salafi Muslims. Salafism, a utopian trend within Islam, has become the main target of the Dutch counter-radicalization policies and the debates about Salafism are dominated by ideas about integration, security and secularism. By focusing on three modes of activism (spiritualisation, reversal and exit) I explore how Salafi Muslims try to escape the regulation of Muslims while at the same time trying to become steadfast and pious Muslims; it is this attempt to de-regulate the regulation of Muslims that makes them radical. I will argue that although the state cannot fully control the Salafi Muslims, Salafism in turn is not immune to the dominant discourses on Islam and Salafism either. On the contrary, their resistance is enabled, informed and limited by oppositions such as religious vs secular and by Islamophobic tendencies in the public debate and while they indeed destabilize the regulation of Muslims, at the same time they enforce it.

In the present article, the authors argue that the study of Salafism as a contemporary Islamic new religious movement could benefit from an analytical perspective separating fundamentalism into the modes of inferentialism and deferentialism. The basics of these concepts are outlined and discussed in relation to different aspects of contemporary Salafism as well as in relation to previous tendencies in Islamic history. As a case study, the authors employ the concept in an analysis of a contemporary Swedish Salafi discourse on the ‘wiping of the (leather) socks’ in the context of ritual purity. The authors argue that the concept of ‘deferential fundamentalism’ has a potential in the study of Salafism in that it allows for comparative analysis, both cross-religiously and diachronically, in contextualising Salafism historically. It also allows for an analysis of Salafi thought and practice in relation to theories of how human beings in general process social information.

Salafism has been evaluated at various stages in the historical process. The view that the Salafī approach includes Muslims, especially the first three generations, is generally accepted. Here Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ḥanbal (died 241/855), the muḥaddiths, in which he was included, lead. Salafism, on the other hand, is a method of thought that systematized with Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350), who said that they followed this first Salafī generation. Later, in the 18th century, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1202/1792) Salafism came to the fore again. Since the 19th century, the efforts made for Islam and Muslims to return to their essence, stand up and progress, have been named as Neo-salafism. One of those who positioned itself in Salafism is Jihādī Salafism, which consists of many groups among itself. Jihādī Salafism has been criticized in terms of accepting violence as a method, especially attributing Muslims to takfīr and shirk and to impose their own truth on others and has led to the questioning of the nature of Salafism's lines. With these attitudes, they have come to a situation that will damage both the general belief structure of Muslims and the tolerance, well-being, notification and invitation method of Islam.

The Salafi community is known as a group of Islamic conservatism that seeks to preserve the rules of the Prophet Muhammad. Salafists, in general, seek to purify the teachings of Islam by rejecting modernity. However, Salafi media, Rodja, instead of utilized advances in modern communication technology to spread conservative ideology. Through Instagram, Salafi virtual communities practice digital capitalism. Therefore, the study aims to reveal how Salafi media Rodja utilizes features on Rodjatv's Instagram social media to attract followers and gain financial benefits through the practice of digital capitalism virtually. Using new media analysis in a qualitative approach to virtual ethnographic methods, the study explained how two characteristics of new media, namely interactivity and digital capitalism, could drive the participation of Salafi virtual communities. The results uncovered that religious content uploaded on Rodjatv's Instagram became a means of aggregation of Salafism followers, which were then employed to accumulate capital in media business activity. This practice of digital capitalism by Salafism later became an inspiration for other da'wah groups. On the other hand, communication and informatics authorities, together with legislative institutions, need to make clear regulations regarding the use of social media for the benefit of religious da'wah, because in addition to legal loopholes from the economic side, such as taxes and others, social media used by certain ideological groups tend to invite socio-political insecurity in the long term exclusively

The development of electoral politics in Banyumas which led to the increasingly strong economic and political domination of Arab business groups influenced the development of Salafism especially in urban areas. This is due to the construction of sites spreading Salafism, such as foundations. Islamic boarding schools, mosques, mosques, schools and hospitals come from donations that they provide from the benefits of doing business in the fields of property construction, furniture, education and health. Banyumas as a "bull pen" gives an illustration that the majority of the population is not too attached to religious primordial ties (abangan). This background fosters the development of kejawen Islam and Christianization. The flourishing of kejawen Islam and Christianization responds to the increasingly rapid spread of Salafism. That is because the main purpose of Salafism is the purification of Islam from heresy, shirk, and khurafat which are closely related to Islam and Christianity. In addition, Banyumas as a "bull pen" shows the strong dominance of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). This region even had a significant impact in winning in Central Java. Therefore, this region has always been the target of winning. However, as Salafism strengthens, the effort to win this time has been challenged by a challenger. Salafism which is included in the line of challengers is trying hard to "whiten" this region. So the use of religious issues in mass mobilization efforts is inevitable. By looking at some of these cases the dynamics of the Banyumas community which has been known as Brayan Urip (living in harmony) in a way of socializing saving time bombs that can lead to conflict due to a struggle for stronger identity and unequal control of economic resources in the implementation of electoral politics in Banyumas.Perkembangan politik elektoral di Banyumas yang mengarah kepada semakin kuatnya dominasi ekonomi-politik kelompok bisnis Arab berpengaruh terhadap perkembangan Salafisme terutama di perkotaan. Hal tersebut karena pembangunan situs-situs penyebaran Salafisme, seperti yayasan. pesantren, masjid, musala, sekolah dan rumah sakit berasal dari donasi yang mereka berikan dari keuntungan menjalankan bisnis di bidang konstruksi properti, furnitur, pendidikan dan kesehatan.Banyumas sebagai “kandang banteng” memberikan ilustrasi bahwa mayoritas penduduknya tidak terlalu terikat dengan ikatan primordial keagamaan (abangan). Latar belakang tersebut menyuburkan perkembangan Islam kejawen dan kristenisasi. Tumbuh suburnya Islam kejawen dan kristenisasi merespon penyebaran Salafisme yang semakin pesat. Hal tersebut karena tujuan utama Salafisme adalah pemurnian Islam dari bid’ah, syirik, dan khurafat yang erat kaitannya dengan Islam kejawen dan kristenisasi. Selain itu, Banyumas sebagai “kandang banteng” menunjukkan kuatnya dominasi Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDI-P). Wilayah ini bahkan memberikan dampak signifikan dalam meraih kemenangan di Jawa Tengah. Oleh karena itu, wilayah ini selalu menjadi target pemenangan. Namun, demikian seiring menguatnya Salafisme, usaha meraih kemenangan tersebut kali ini mendapatkan tantangan cukup kuat dari penantang. Salafisme yang termasuk dalam barisan penantang berusaha sekuat tenaga “memutihkan” wilayah ini. Sehingga penggunaan isu agama dalam upaya mobilisasi masa tidak dapat terelakkan. Dengan melihat beberapa kasus tersebut dinamika masyarakat Banyumas yang selama ini dikenal brayan urip (hidup rukun) dalam cara bergaul menyimpan bom waktu yang dapat menimbulkan konflik karena pergulatan identitas yang semakin menguat dan penguasaan terhadap sumberdaya ekonomi yang tidak merata dalam penyelenggaraan politik elektoral di Banyumas.The development of electoral politics in Banyumas which led to the increasingly strong economic and political domination of Arab business groups influenced the development of Salafism especially in urban areas. This is due to the construction of sites spreading Salafism, such as foundations. Islamic boarding schools, mosques, mosques, schools and hospitals come from donations that they provide from the benefits of doing business in the fields of property construction, furniture, education and health. Banyumas as a "bull pen" gives an illustration that the majority of the population is not too attached to religious primordial ties (abangan). This background fosters the development of kejawen Islam and Christianization. The flourishing of kejawen Islam and Christianization responds to the increasingly rapid spread of Salafism. That is because the main purpose of Salafism is the purification of Islam from heresy, shirk, and khurafat which are closely related to Islam and Christianity. In addition, Banyumas as a "bull pen" shows the strong dominance of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). This region even had a significant impact in winning in Central Java. Therefore, this region has always been the target of winning. However, as Salafism strengthens, the effort to win this time has been challenged by a challenger. Salafism which is included in the line of challengers is trying hard to "whiten" this region. So the use of religious issues in mass mobilization efforts is inevitable. By looking at some of these cases the dynamics of the Banyumas community which has been known as Brayan Urip (living in harmony) in a way of socializing saving time bombs that can lead to conflict due to a struggle for stronger identity and unequal control of economic resources in the implementation of electoral politics in Banyumas.

The infiltration of the Salafis into the Muhammadiyah organization became a continuing reality. This reality is driven by symptoms of the strengthening of the concept of salafism in the organization that founded by KH. Ahmad Dahlan. This study seeks to analyze the Salafi da’wah against the Charitable Business of Muhammadiyah in Taman, Sidoarjo, which is always resistant. This research uses a qualitative method with a naturalistic interpretive approach. The findings of this study reveal that Salafis offer "thinking" in every Muhammadiyah Business Charity institution in Sidoarjo. Salafis try to "dress" Muhammadiyah, but still have their mindset and ideology. With the thought movement, the Salafi propaganda model is carried out through infiltration, agitation, and propaganda within the Muhammadiyah Charitable Enterprises. This is not uncommon to cause resistance and even conflict between the two. The author recommends several efforts that must be made by the Muhammadiyah management: First, the power approach. The Muhammadiyah leadership must act firmly against Salafis through established rules. Second, the intellectual approach. This approach can be done by way of scientific dialogue in the public sphere, criticizing Salafis, as well as affirming the Muhammadiyah manhaj.

AbstractTurkey has been absent from the growing literature on the phenomenon of transnational Salafism. A tendency among Middle East specialists to focus on Arab regions and in Turkey on the Islamist movement and its long struggle with the Kemalist establishment has perpetuated the notion of Turkey as a category apart. This article argues that, on the contrary, Salafism is a fringe strand of Turkish Islam that began to evolve in the context of the state's effort in the 1980s to recalibrate religion as a complement to nationalism. Salafism became a topic of discussion in media and scholarly writing in Turkish religious studies faculties, while self-styled Salafi preachers trained in Saudi Arabia found a niche through publishing houses. These publishers facilitated the translation into Turkish of Arabic texts by important Saudi religious scholars in an effort to change the discursive landscape of Islam in Turkey. I show that contra assumptions of a rich Sufi tradition acting as a block against modern Salafi ideas, Salafism managed to gain a foothold in Turkey, facilitated in part by the republic's experience of secular materialism.

Seeking knowledge from scholars is an imperative for Salafis. But what does that mean for Salafis in the West who deny that there are any scholars among them? Since the 1960s, Western Muslims have been taking advantage of the scholarships available for Islamic studies programs in Saudi Arabia. A steady stream of students has gone, studied with leading Salafi scholars in the heart of the Muslim world, and returned home to promulgate Salafi teachings and lead their communities. Why do none of these former students count as scholars? If they are not scholars, then what is the nature of their role as local leaders? To answer these questions, this study looks closely at the predominantly African American Salafi affiliate community in Philadelphia. The arguments here contribute to a growing body of literature on global Salafism and specifically studies of so-called Madkhalī communities tied to the Islamic University of Medina. Primary fieldwork from 2010 to 2013 and interviews as recent as 2021 inform the conclusion that this community’s pattern of knowledge transmission perpetuates and even celebrates the continual reliance of Philadelphia’s Salafis on scholars abroad.

In M.Nesprava’s article "Theoretical Foundations of Radical Salafism", the presence of a conceptual core in the radical Salafism doctrine is shown and the main formation stages of this core are analyzed. Also, the role of the ideas by such authors as Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd alWahhab, Syed Abul A'la Maududi and Sayyid Qutb in the formation of the conceptual core is argued. The characteristic aspects of the interpretation by radical Salafists of such concepts as tawhid, takfir and jihad are demonstrated.

The study of Salafism in Indonesia has been narrated its presence, development, activities and ideology in Java. In-depth research on Salafism in Papua is relatively inadequate. This article aims to fill the gap by studying Salafism, specifically the Salafy group of Jafar Umar Thalib (JUT) in Jayapura City and Keerom Regency, Papua. In addition, the responses of local community and Nahdhatul Ulama (NU) Papua toward JUT group will be reviewed. This article is based on the author's field research in Papua in 2018. The main data was collected from interviews, observations and publications related to Salafi-Wahhabi groups. Meanwhile, to explore the perceptions and responses of stakeholders, local communities and organisations, the authors interviewed informants from local residents and leaders of the Papua and Keerom NU Region. This article argues that the presence of Salafism tends to disrupt community harmony and peacebuilding in Papua. Such understanding provides a holistic view of how Salafism has sought to shape its narrative in Papua and NU Papua has rejected the narrative, which has received less attention from researchers in the past.

AbstractSalafism has become part of a public discourse in Cape Town since the last decade of the 20th century. Drawing on extensive interviews with a number of such Salafis and anti-Salafis, this article examines how this search was manifested and then negotiated within the local religious sphere of the city. This article confirms the view presented in the general literature that Salafism represented the aspiration of individuals who desired to chart an independent approach to Islamic practices. Nevertheless, by focussing attention on a number of individuals and measuring their successes, strategies and life-trajectories, the social dimension of Salafi practices is brought into sharp focus. Salafis were not only effective as lone figures who were prepared to break away from everybody; they were also involved in founding communities for their ideas. And in this regard, they could not escape the social contexts in which they found themselves.

The article deals with the problem of Salafism politization. The process of politicization of traditional salafi ideas led to the emergence of conservative Islamism, which eventually moved away from medieval traditionalism and adapted to modern political conditions. The process of Salafism politicization was initiated by the Salafi reformists al-Afghani and M. Abdo in the early XX century. However, reformists Salafi ideas were modified into political ideology by the Mus-lim Brotherhood, which was strongly influenced by Salafism in its early stages. During the 50–60s of the XX century, the emerging conservative Salafi Islamism was on the defensive, as it faced the ideas of Arab nationalism. It is emphasized that the forced relocation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia, in parallel, marked the movement of Islamists ideas, which received significant devel-opment and organizational form due to the financial power of the Gulf monarchies. At the turn of the 70-80s of the XX century thanks to the efforts of the Saudi government throughout the Middle East region, Salafi movements were strengthened, which enjoyed diplomatic and finan-cial support from Saudi Arabia and were engaged in promoting Salafi-Wahhabi ideas. However, the further politicization of Salafi ideas and, as a result, the development of conservative Salafi Islamism slowed down the end of the XX century being connected with the invasion of Kuwait.

The article examines the complexity of Tunisian Salafism in the context of the Tunisian transition to democracy. Building on primary sources and original field work, the article highlights the theoretical and practical divergences that affect the Salafist camp in Tunisia in its struggle to continue a revolutionary project for a sector of disenfranchised youth unwilling to support a process of renewal of political institutions that they perceive as contributing their marginalization. In addition, the article explores the ways in which, paradoxically, the emergence and public presence of Salafism can contribute to the strengthening of democratic debate in the country.

Is it possible to develop a theory of Salafism, the school of thought which affirmsthe authority of the first three generations of the Prophet’s pious followers,that is based in heterodoxy, theological disorder, innovation, sensation,and the body? One normally finds in Salafi thought support for the Hadithcorpus over the Qur’an, a scathing critique of the madhhab system of scholarlyauthority, and a preference for a strictly literal interpretation of the Qur’an andSunnah. But with new scholarship in this field, we must recognize the widediversity of Salafi thought and begin to avoid reductive clichés.Fortunately, Salafism has recently come under increasing scrutiny in academicstudies. For example, we have movements such as “neo-Salafism” inpolitics and “sophisticated Salafism” emerging today, which are open to formsof knowledge outside the Sunnah. It is in this vein of new scholarship onSalafism and western expressions of Islam that Michael Muhammad Knight’sWhy I Am a Salafi (2015) should be read.The book combines an academic and journal-based reflection on the author’sevolving religious identity as an American Muslim. It begins in thewake of Knight’s experience of ingesting ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plantknown to promote spiritual epiphanies and insight. This experience was thefocus of his last book, Tripping with Allah (2012), that documented his psychedelicjourney. Why I Am a Salafi is written less as a travelogue or an openjournalformat than were his previous books Journey to the End of Islam(2009) and Tripping. For example, in Journey Knight documents his adventuresand travels in Pakistan and India, throughout the Middle East, to wherehe lives in America, and finally in Makkah, where he performs the hajj ...

This introductory article frames the special issue’s examination of social aspects of Salafism in terms of Roel Meijer’s observations on Salafism’s capacity to empower and change identities, and in terms of the wider contexts of the resurgence of Islam and of the global resurgence of religion. It argues that while the study of doctrinal aspects of Salafism is important, the study of the social aspects is more neglected, and that this is where the special issue makes an important contribution.

This article analyses the process of reversion to Salafism in Pekanbaru, Indonesia in the context of Muslims who have returned to Islam as a solution to their sense of deprivation. This return to Islam is considered by many as an initial solution to a feeling of deprivation which often manifests itself as a form of spiritual ‘emptiness’, accompanied by anxiety, depression and a lack of direction in life. The analysis in this article is based on extensive reading of relevant literature, participatory observation, and interviews conducted during fieldwork in Pekanbaru from July 2015 to June 2016. The discussion is based on three case studies of Salafi members, detailing their reversion to Salafism and the personal and sociological reasons for their choice to return to Islam, i.e., Salafism, after a certain period of time in their lives. Findings show that those who join the Salafi movement have previously experienced relative deprivation which led to a sense of existential deprivation.

Abstract Defining re-conversion as the re-embracement of one’s (neglected) faith, this article deals with the question of what relations can be identified between conversion/re-conversion to a Salafist reading of Islam, on the one hand, and life course circumstances, identity transformation, and social network features of the individuals concerned, on the other. Combining narrative, autobiographical interviews with qualitative social network analysis, four activists of a Muslim organisation in Switzerland known for its Salafist orientation are portrayed. The comparative analysis shows that, despite sharing the same approach to Islam, the four cases exhibit different modes of the impact of life course and social network on spiritual transformation and vice versa. The paper also discusses the term Salafism and its applicability to the interviewees.

This paper explores the role of Salafi formal schools in the increasing influence and proliferation of Salafism in Lombok, East Indonesia, alongside the impacts of this process on educational culture and broader social contexts. Despite intense resistance from, and even violence by, traditionalist mainstream groups, the Salafi movement has developed steadily. This paper argues that the growth of Salafism in Lombok is influenced by contextualizing of proliferation strategies by integrating into Indonesian national education system and selecting of the greater Islamic traditions, rather than ideological and financial support from the Middle East, as it has been highlighted in previous studies and literature. By establishing officially certified schools and formal recognitions from the Indonesian government, the Salafi schools have found a way to successfully recruit a new young generation of Muslims in Lombok and beyond.

This article examines the rise and fall of the “Assir movement,” a neo-Salafist campaign led by a charismatic local sheikh who, after years of community activism, rose to prominence in the wake of the Syrian uprising (2011–present) protesting the Sunnis’ political decline and disempowerment. To understand the Assir movement’s popular appeal, it is necessary to examine the pathways of contention in specific urban contexts and the extension of Salafism to secondary cities such as Sidon, where Sheikh Ahmad Assir’s neo-Salafism became a political force and can be classified as a new social movement. Neo-Salafism combines populism with sectarianism, and this accounts for its widespread support after 2011, when the Syrian uprising increased Sunni-Shia tensions and shifted the locus of contentious politics from the capital, Beirut, to Sidon, a Sunni-majority city and the seat of the Assir movement. Ultimately, this led to an armed confrontation that crushed the movement, eroded its popular support, and was followed by an electoral defeat in which local elites reasserted control.

As is also the case in other parts of the world, Salafi interpretations of Islam appear to be on the rise in Sweden, especially among young people turning to Islam. One of the most active and visible missionising Salafi organisations in Sweden is called islam.nu. It is based in Stockholm but has a national outreach programme and a very active online presence. This article focuses on islam.nu and a dawa campaign called #karavanen (the Caravan) and how it was advertised and developed on the social media platform Instagram from March 2018 to March 2020. By using market and consumer value theories to analyse the Instagram content related to the #karavanen, the article is an explorative attempt to approach contemporary Salafi missionising and growth from a new perspective.

Abstract This article analyses the social media activity of Swedish Salafi missionaries in the light of theories about influencer marketing and branding. Making use of source material from the Instagram accounts of the preacher Anas Khalifa and the preachers Abdulwadud Frank, Abdullah as-Sueidi, and Moosa Assal, the last three of whom are associated with the organisation Islam.nu, this article investigates how social media can be used as tools for missionary endeavours, how Salafism might be branded on Instagram, and how religious authority and authenticity are fashioned online.

Abstract Salafism is a global religious movement whose male participants often distinguish themselves from their co-religionists by a particular style of facial hair. Historians have focused largely on this movement’s engagement with questions of theology and politics, while anthropologists have assumed that Salafi practice reflects a longer Islamic tradition. In this article, I move beyond both approaches by tracing the gradual formation of a distinctly Salafi beard in the 20th century Middle East. Drawing on Salafi scholarly compendia, leading journals, popular pamphlets, and daily newspapers produced primarily in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I argue that Salafi elites revived a longer Islamic legal tradition in order to distinguish their flock from secular nationalist projects of communal identity and Islamic activists alike. In doing so, I cast light on Salafism’s interpretative approach, the dynamics that define its development as a social movement, and the broader significance of visual markers in modern projects of Islamic piety.