Quietism versus jihadism: the need to rethink contemporary Salafism

This article re-examines the relevance of the typology Quintan Wiktorowicz put forth considering the process of rupture between two of three categories of Salafism he had identified: Quietist Salafism and Jihadi Salafism. Salafism is traditionally understood as the attempt of a part of the Muslim clergy to return to the fundamentals of Islam through a literalist approach. Accordingly, for several authors, jihadism has its ideological roots in Salafism. This theoretical perspective is based on the work of Wiktorowicz, according to whom there are three sensibilities or strands within Salafism (purist, political and revolutionary) when it comes to its relationship with the political. This typology, which has the epistemological merit of accounting for the plurality of the different trends in Salafism, implies that they belong to the same ideological family and that they share a common background. This approach, which has flourished in the academic literature on Islamic radicalisation, subscribes to the idea that quietist Salafism and jihadist Salafism share a common base and the same objectives, but are opposed in terms of how to achieve them: quietist Salafism focuses on preaching and jihadi Salafism on violence. However, this article questions the links between these two categories and argues that they have become increasingly weaker and have now virtually disappeared because of the political and religious events that have affected the Muslim world over the last four decades.