Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Contemporary Islam
Published in: Contemporary Islam 2/2023

28-04-2023

Contextualizing Salafism as Islamic politics

Author: Fabio Merone

Published in: Contemporary Islam | Issue 2/2023

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

This article examines Salafism as part of what it defines as ‘Islamic politics’, a modern phenomenon of activism and human agency based on an ideological conception of Islam—the ‘Islamic political theology of the praxis’—that is both a comprehensive vision of the world and its pro-active implementation. This article’s starting point is Wiktorowicz’s 2006 seminal article, ‘Anatomy of the Salafi movement’. This article highlights the epistemological underpinning of his work. Analysing Wiktorowicz’s broader intellectual contribution, especially his 2004 book on ‘Islamic activism’, it is possible to emphasize that Wiktorowicz was interested in epistemologically centring the study on Islamic activism (Islamism and Salafism together). From this starting point, the article argues that both Salafism and Islamism should be considered part of the practical activity of ‘doing politics’ within an ideological vision of Islam. The term proposed here is thus ‘Islamic politics’, a frame through which the development of both Islamism and Salafism is examined. In line with Wiktorowicz, this article supports the contention that the context matters, but it also argues that ideology as also a relevant factor.
previous article Salafism as Gramscian informed vanguardism

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
Footnotes
1
While many studies on jihadism are published in the 2000s, a specific literature on Salafism starts to emerge in parallel. See, for example, Rougier (2015), Meijer (2009), Cavatorta and Merone (2015a, 2015b). The beginning of specific studies on Islamism is credited instead to Gilles Kepel’ seminal work ‘Le Prophète et Pharaon: Les mouvements islamistes dans l’Egypte contemporaine’. The book was translated into English in 2003 (1984, 2003).
 
2
This article follows the IJMES transliteration system. The proper names are given according to the commonly used spelling in English.
 
3
Salafism itself was not born in Saudi Arabia. In its politicized form, it is generally acknowledged that it developed in Saudi Arabia as the consequence of the Saḥwa movement.
 
4
His theoretical effort also responded to security issues emerging at the time in response to the 9/11 attacks, and the Unites States preoccupations ‘to influence the Salafi community and prevent its radicalization’ (Wiktorowicz, 2006: 207).
 
5
The principle of ijmāʿ does not mean exactly a general and formal approval of the people. Most of the time, it is expressed through the shared opinions of the most authoritative scholars, who are supposed to represent the community. The consensus is in another words what Muslims generally accept as binding norms in a certain historical period (AA Ahmed, 2019).
 
6
This frame of the state-society relation is valid as a general scheme of the Islamic polity. The balance of power between the two authorities and its practical application could vary in time and according to the different rulers and dynasty attitudes. I’m thankful to the anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this point.
 
7
A prophetic tradition supports this belief. The prophet said ‘The best people are those of my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them. Then, there will come people after them whose testimony precedes their oaths and their oaths precede their testimony’ (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6429, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2533).
 
8
Reform must be understood here as ‘a strong sense of moral righteousness as well as a sense of reshaping for the sake of improving effectiveness’ (Voll, 1983:33), through which the reformer aims to re-establish the original religion from which the people allegedly departed. It does not imply, by any means, the idea of modifying aspects of the doctrines or the law.
 
9
In Massimo Campanini’s words, it is a ‘retrospective’ utopia, in the sense that the perfect society was realized in the past. It is somehow a counter-utopia where utopia was ‘retrospective and involved the idea that, in order to build the future, it was necessary to look at the past’ (Campanini, 2018: 48). Utopia properly—as a ‘non-place’—is a concept that does not exist in the Islamic weltanschauung that conceptualizes the best political system as being realized in a mythologized pristine Golden age of the Prophet Mohammad and the first four Rightly Guided Caliphs. Properly utopian thought was instead that theorized by the philosophers inspired by Greek thought, mainly al-Fārābī (870–950) and Ibn Rushd/Averroes (1126–1198) (Ibid.: 44-45).
 
10
ḥijra and jahiliyya are the other important two pillars of Qutb’s frame.
 
11
The translation from Arabic throughout the article is the author’s.
 
12
The term Salafism comes from salafiyya, the name modernists of the beginning of the twentieth century gave to their project of reform, to which I refer here. Salafism is understood today rather in reference to Ibn Taymiyya, and the neo-Hanbali tradition inherited from historical Wahhabism. Salafism is a devotional religious attitude that aims at giving Muslims a ‘purist’ perspective of religious practice, supposedly ‘orthodox’, based on the way of the salāf al-ṣālih (the pious ancestors) (Wagemakers, 2016). Salāf al-ṣālih usually refers to the first three generations of Muslims. According to the hadith (saying of the prophet): ‘the best people are those living in my generation, then those coming after them, then those coming after them’ (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 57, Number 3). The practical consequence of this approach is that the affirmation of the creed—the affirmation of the oneness of God—cannot be a simple verbal expression of faith, but must be reflected in the practical action of worship. The manifest devotion of anything different from God, like visiting shrines for example, is an act of devotion to something or someone different from God (Haykel, 2009).
 
13
Nationalism and Islamism are two faces of the same phenomenon of nation and nation-state building. While Arab nationalists focused on ethnic Arab identity, they considered Islam as the most important feature of the national character (Carré, 2014). Within the general nationalist trend, a specific ‘Islamist’ trend developed from the salafyya movement. According to Forte, Al Afghani was the first to transform Islam into a nationalist ideology, borrowing from Ibn Khaldun the conceptualization of Islam as the base of the Muslim community’s identity (Forte, 2012: 111).
 
14
‘Renewalist’ is used in the text as synonymous of revivalist (in Arabic: tajdīdī).
 
15
Salafism as a scriptural phenomenon of reform is not specific to Saudi Arabia, though. In Egypt, for example, purist groups such as al-Jam’ya al-Sharia and Ansar al-Sunnah al-Muhammadiya were founded in 1912 and 1926, respectively (Lacroix, 2016; Lauzière, 2015). A Yemeni origin can also be traced back through the influence of the reformer al-Shawkani (1759–1834) (Bonnefoy, 2011), who, together with the reformer Shāh Walīullāh Dehlawī (also Shah Wali Allah, 1703–1762) can be considered the father of the most recent Ahl-e Hadith movement (Abou Zahab, 2009; Amin & Majothi, 2022). The latter’s reformist characteristic is to emphasize the purification of religion, whose most relevant aspect is the authentication of the hadiths. Belongs to this tradition also the very popular sheikh of the hadith Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (1914–1999) (Lacroix, 2009).
 
16
Shiraz Maher highlighted how Salafis’ theoretical departure point is Abd al-Wahhab’s division of tawhīd into three levels, uluhiyya, rabbaniyya and ṣifāt: the first and second being the most important ones for their consequences on activism (Maher, 2016: 146). Abdel Wahhab’s subdivision of tawhīd was intended to warn Muslims on the risks of shirk (associating something or someone to God) (Ibid.: 147). Tawhīd al-uluhiyya was particularly important for activist and revolutionary Salafis regarding the practical manifestation of belief. The latter (Ibn Taymiyya called it tawhīd al-’ibāda) refers to worship (the practical action of the faith) that must be absolutely addressed to God alone in opposition to the other popular form of worshipping, as saints for example (Ibid.:149). It must be also pointed out that in contemporary Salafism, there is a different trend, called neo-hadith movement, that emphasizes instead on purification of hadith (Wagemakers, 2016).
 
17
Wagemakers has given an example of this dynamic dialectic by applying the principle of al-walāʾ wa al-barāʾ (avowal and disapproval) to tawhīd (Wagemakers, 2015:19–23).
 
18
One form of this institutionalizing process was for example the imitation of the Hanbali school of law, which is taqlīd, and therefore against the very idea of Salafism.
 
19
The first to do this was the Syrian former MB activist Mohammad Surur Zain al-Abidīn. In an interview with al-Quds al-Arabi, Surur stated that he ‘transformed Salafism from one worldview to another [and] destroyed the myth of al-walī al-amr [the central obligation in the scholastic/ traditional Salafism to obey the ruler] and the obligation to respect them’ (Al-Saud, 2018:4).
 
20
Wiktorowicz has argued that jihadism is the revolutionary branch of the political Salafi trends within the ṣaḥwa movement (2006: 225-227). Wagemakers has however emphasized that the difference between jihadi and politicos must be understood in the application of the concept of jihād that, contrary to classical theory, jihadis apply against Muslim rulers declared to be apostates (Wagemakers, 2015:18).
 
21
Human-made systems of government, such as democracy for example, are idolatry because worship must be all to God (Maher, 2016:187,200). In al-Maqdisi words, ‘the first duty of al-muwahhid [the monotheist] is to disavow and disbelieve in the scattered gods and the many names that are being worshiped other than God (…) While the tawhīd, which we spoke of, entails al-barāʾ (disavowal) and disbelief in these man-made laws and scattered idols, one of its most trustworthy ties is the subject of al-walāʾ wa al-barāʾ, which requires the disavowal of the authors of these laws and regulations and the people who are applying them’ (quoted in Bin Khaled al-Saud, 2017: 3). Shirk is not only worshipping idols such as a tree or a sculpture; therefore, the only real affirmation of God’s unity is the pure application of sharīʿa to governance (Maher, 2016: 203–204).
 
22
This does not apply to Salafi-Jihadism, which, as mentioned, became a separate trend. In other words, Salafi-Jihadism inherited and re-elaborated revolutionary Islamism (Qutbism), while mainstream Islamism became liberal and tended to overlap with political Salafism.
 
23
It was the Tunisian thinker Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn Ashur’s (d. 1973) who first re-introduced the maqāṣid in contemporary times. He published Maqasid al-Shariah al-Islamiyah in 1946, later translated into English (Ben Ashur, 2006). This book is arguably the most important attempt of the twentieth century to develop and apply the theory of maqāṣid (Rane, 2013).
 
Literature
Abou Zahab, M. (2009). Salafism in Pakistan: The Ahl-e Hadith Movement. In R. Meijer (Ed.), Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (pp. 126–139). Hurst & Co.
Adams, C. J. (1983). Mawdudi and the Islamic state. In John L. Esposito (Eds.) Voices of resurgent Islam (99). Oxford University Press.
Ahmad, A. A. (2019). Ijmāʿ, consensus. In Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law (pp. 171–182). Routledge.
Al-Banna, H. (2012). Majmwʿa al-Risāʾil. Al-Imām Hasan al-Banna. Dār al-kalima li-nashir wa al-tawsiʿ. Al Mansura.
Amin, H., & Majothi, A. (2022). The Ahl-e-Hadith: From British India to Britain. Modern Asian Studies, 56(1), 176–206.CrossRef
Bayat, A. (2005). What is post-islamism? Isim Review, 16(1), 5–5.
Black, A. (2011). History of Islamic political thought: From the prophet to the present. Edinburgh University Press.
Bonnefoy, L. (2011). Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and religious identity. Hurst.
Burke, E., & Lapidus, I. M. (1988). Islam, politics and social movements. University of California Press.
Campanini, M., & Di Donato, M. (2021). Islamic political theology. Lexington Books.
Campanini, M. (2019). La politica nell’Islam: una interpretazione. Società editrice il Mulino, Spa.
Campanini, M. (2018). The utopian dimension of a (possible?) Islamic philosophy of history. Utopia in the Present. Cultural Politics and Challenge, 43–56.
Campanini, M. (2009). Ideologia e politica nell’Islam: fra utopia e prassi. Bologna: il Mulino.
Campanini, M. (2003). Islam e politica. Mulino.
Carré, O. (2014). Le nationalisme arabe. Fayard.
Cavatorta, F., & Merone, F. (2015a). Salafism after the Arab awakening. Hurst.
Cavatorta, F., & Merone, F. (2015b). Post-Islamism, ideological evolution and ‘latunisianité’ of the Tunisian Islamist party al-Nahda. Journal of Political Ideologies, 20(1), 27–42.CrossRef
Cavatorta, F., & Merone, F. (2013). Moderation through exclusion? The journey of the Tunisian Ennahda from fundamentalist to conservative party. Democratization, 20(5), 857–875.CrossRef
Choueiri, Y. M. (1990). Islamic fundamentalism. Twayne Publishers.
Cook, M. (2001). Commanding right and forbidding wrong in Islamic thought. Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Commins, D. (2005). The Wahhabi mission and Saudi Arabia. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Crone, P. (2014). Medieval Islamic political thought. Edinburgh University Press.
Crone, P., & Hinds, M. (2003). God’s caliph: Religious authority in the first centuries of Islam. Cambridge University Press.
Djait, H. (2007). La personnalité et le devenir arabo-islamiques. Amal Editions.
Esposito, J. (1983). Voices of resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press.
Forte, F. (2012). Ibn Khaldun. In M. Campanini Storia del pensiero politico islamico (97–113). Le Monnier Università, Firenze.
Ghannouchi, R. (2022). Public freedoms in the Islamic state. Yale University Press.CrossRef
Gräf, B. (2018). Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In John L. Esposito, Emad El-Din Shahin (Eds.), Key Islamic Political Thinkers (178). Oxford University Press.
Hallaq, W. B. (1999). A history of Islamic legal theories: An introduction to Sunni Usul al-Fiqh. Cambridge University Press.
Haykel, B. (2009). On the nature of Salafi thought. In R. Meijer (Ed.), Global Salafism: Islam’s new religious movement (pp. 33–57). Hurst.
Hourani, A. (1983). Arabic thought in the liberal age 1798–1939. Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Hroub, K. (2012). Political Islam: Context versus ideology (Vol. 8). Saqi.
Hurvitz, N. (2003). From scholarly circles to mass movements: The formation of legal communities in Islamic societies. The American Historical Review, 108(4), 985–1008.CrossRef
Islamy, A., & Haq, S. Z. (2020). Democratic political system in the perspective of Maqasid Sharia: Study analysis of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi’s thought. Al imarah: jurnal pemerintahan dan politik islam, 5(1), 55–66.
Kamali, M. H. (2015). The middle path of moderation in Islam: The Qur’anic principle of wasatiyyah. Oxford University Press.CrossRef
Kepel, G. (1984). Le Prophète et Pharaon: Les mouvements islamistes dans l’Egypte contemporaine. La Découverte.
Kepel, G. (2003). Muslim extremism in Egypt: The prophet and pharaoh. University of California Press.
Khaled, B., & al-Saud, A. (2018). The Spiritual Teacher and His Truants: The Influence and Relevance of Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 41(9), 736–754.CrossRef
Khan, S. R. (2021). Debates on political Islam: Analyzing the writings of Egyptian scholars, Hasan al Banna and Sayed Qutb. Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives (pp. 341–359). Springer International Publishing.CrossRef
Lacroix, S. (2011). Awakening Islam: The politics of religious dissent in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Harvard University Press.CrossRef
Lacroix, S. (2009). Between revolution and apoliticism: Nasir al-Din al-Albani and his impact on the shaping of contemporary Salafism. In In Roel Meijer (Eds.) Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (58–80). London: Hurst & Co.
Lacroix, S. (2004). Between Islamists and Liberals: Saudi Arabia’s New “Islamo-Liberal” Reformists. The Middle East Journal, 58(3), 345–365.CrossRef
Lapidus, I. (1997). Islamic revival and modernity: The contemporary movements and the historical paradigms. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 40(4), 444–460.CrossRef
Lapidus, I. M. (1975). The separation of state and religion in the development of early Islamic society. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6(4), 363–385.CrossRef
Lauzière, H. (2015). The making of Salafism: Islamic reform in the twentieth century (Vol. 31). Columbia University Press.CrossRef
Lewis, B. (2010). Faith and power: Religion and politics in the Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Lewis, B. (2002). What went wrong?: Western impact and Middle Eastern response. Oxford University Press.
Lia, B., & Bannā, Ǧ. A. (2006). The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The rise of an Islamic mass movement 1928–1942. Ithaca Press.
Marath, M. M. (2017). Abul A’la Maududi and Sayyed Qutb on revolution: A comparative analysis. Al-Az̤vā, 32(47), 43–50.
Meijer, R. (2009). Global Salafism. Islam’s New Religious Movement. Hurst & Co.
Maher, S. (2016). Salafi-Jihadism: The history of an idea. Oxford University Press.
Merone, F. (2023). Post-Islamism politics in Tunisia: Ennahda’s evolution since the revolution. In M. Zayani (Ed.), A fledging democracy: Tunisia in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring (pp. 87–102). Hurst Publishers.CrossRef
Merone, F. (2017). Between social contention and Takfirism: The evolution of the Salafi-jihadi movement in Tunisia. Mediterranean Politics, 22(1), 71–90.CrossRef
Nasr, S. V. R. (1996). Mawdudi and the making of Islamic revivalism. Oxford University Press on Demand.
Pipes, D. (2013). Can Islam be reformed? Commentary, 136, 31–34.
Piscatori, J., & Eickelman, D. F. (2018). Muslim politics. Princeton University Press.
Qutb, S. (2009). Maʿālam fī al- ṭarīq.Al-markaz al-ʿarabī li-l-dirāsāt wa al-abḥāth.
Rane, H. (2013). The relevance of a maqasid approach for political Islam post Arab revolutions. Journal of Law and Religion, 28(2), 489–520.CrossRef
Roy, O. (1994). The failure of political Islam. Harvard University Press.
Rougier, B. (2015). Qu’est-ce que le Salafisme? Presses universitaires de France.
Tammam, H. (2011). The Salafization of the Muslim Brothers: The erosion of the fundamental hypothesis and the rising of Salafism within the Muslim brotherhood: The Paths and Repercussions of Change. Marased, 1, 5–55.
Torelli, S. M., Merone, F., & Cavatorta, F. (2012). Salafism in Tunisia: Challenges and opportunities for democratization. Middle East Policy, 19(4), 140–154.CrossRef
Wagemakers, J. (2022). The Muslim Brotherhood: Ideology, History, Descendants. Amsterdam University Press.
Wagemakers,. (2015). Revisiting Wiktorowicz: Categorising and defining the branches of Salafism. In F. Cavatorta & F. Merone (Eds.), Salafism after the Arab awakening (pp. 7–24). Hurst.
Wagemakers, J. (2016). Salafism. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.
Wagemakers, J. (2008). Framing the ‘threat to Islam’: al-wala’ al-bara’ in Salafi discourse’. Arab Studies Quarterly, 1–22.
Warren, D. H. (2014). The ʿUlamāʾ and the Arab Uprisings 2011–13: Considering Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the ‘Global Mufti,’ between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Legal Tradition, and Qatari Foreign Policy. New Middle Eastern Studies, 4.
Wegner, E. (2011). Islamist opposition in authoritarian regimes: The Party of Justice and Development in Morocco. Syracuse University Press.
Wiktorowicz, Q. (2006). Anatomy of the Salafi movement. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29(3), 207–239.CrossRef
Wiktorowicz, Q. (Ed.). (2004). Islamic activism: A social movement theory approach. Indiana University Press.
Metadata
Title
Contextualizing Salafism as Islamic politics
Author
Fabio Merone
Publication date
28-04-2023
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Contemporary Islam / Issue 2/2023
Print ISSN: 1872-0218
Electronic ISSN: 1872-0226
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-023-00527-8

Other articles of this Issue 2/2023

Contemporary Islam 2/2023 Go to the issue

OriginalPaper

How European Salafism can make us reflect on a new typology of Salafism?

OriginalPaper

Quietism versus jihadism: the need to rethink contemporary Salafism

OriginalPaper

Exploring the fluidity of Egyptian Salafism: from quietism to politics and co-optation

OriginalPaper

Salafism as Gramscian informed vanguardism

OriginalPaper

What divides Salafis: how local realities overwrite grand typologies in Cambodia’s Salafi movement

OriginalPaper

‘Ilmi Salafi women in Tunisia after the revolution: what kind of quietism?