Contemporary Puritan Salafism

Salafism is a contemporary multifaceted and global phenomenon that represents a fundamentalist interpretative stance which appears to be growing among minority Muslims. This book studies a Salafi group in Sweden that is puritan in the sense of avoiding political participation and rejecting jihadism.

This book addresses the issue of one of the most visible and debated currents in contemporary radical Islam. It sheds light on the history, the fundamental principles, and the political and religious translations of Salafism and explains current events involving Salafist actors in an objective and dispassionate manner. The author explains with precision the different contemporary Salafist mobilizations by illustrating them with specific cases while shedding light on the main debates related to this mode of understanding of the Muslim religion, such as its potential role in triggering certain forms of violence, the way to compare it to other fundamentalist versions in other religions, or the way to describe, in terms of social sciences, the main concepts and discourses that can be observed in this current of Islam today.

On Salafism offers a compelling new understanding of this phenomenon, both its development and contemporary manifestations. Salafism became associated with fundamentalism when the 9/11 Commission used it to explain the terror attacks and has since been connected with the violence of the so-called Islamic State. With this book, Azmi Bishara critically deconstructs claims of continuity between early Islam and modern militancy and makes a counterargument: Salafism is a wholly modern construct informed by specific sociopolitical contexts. Bishara offers a sophisticated account of various movements—such as Wahabbism and Hanbalism—frequently collapsed into simplistic understandings of Salafism. He distinguishes reformist from regressive Salafism, and examines patterns of modernization in the development of contemporary Islamic political movements and associations. In deconstructing the assumptions of linear continuity between traditional and contemporary movements, Bishara details various divergences in both doctrine and context of modern Salafisms, plural. On Salafism is a crucial read for those interested in Islamism, jihadism, and Middle East politics and history.

"Salafism has emerged as one of the most visible and questioned faces to contemporary Islam. In many countries from the East to the West, this fundamentalist vision seeking to restore a vision of Islam that is supposed to be pure and unchanged is increasingly successful. This is the case in France where thousands of Muslims are now dedicated to living this puritanical and fundamentalist religiosity. In connection with some Islamic countries, starting with Saudi Arabia, they appeal to a transnational narrative through which they promote a new face of globalization today. Reacting both political Islam and Jihadism, they prefer becoming entrepreneurs in order to seek for economic success. Splitting from the rest of the society, they prefer building a counter-narrative on behalf of which they represent the purest form of the Islamic identity nowadays. Through a prolonged immersion in French Salafist communities for several years, this book sheds light on the lifestyle, representations, profiles, and trajectories of these communities. By focusing on quietist Salafism and its formative ties with several Gulf countries, especially with Saudi Arabia, this book is also an attempt to understand contemporary religious globalizations. Besides this political globalization of Salafism, this also sheds light on a dynamic that is less centred on formal political entities, and which primarily refers to a globalization taking place in the margins that have been little studied for too long"--

Provides a detailed reconstruction of the heated debates between Salafis and Traditionalist over the contested role of Islamic scholarly authority.

A detailed analysis of the Modern Day Salafiyyah Sect: their beliefs, practices and influences upon the religious landscape of Muslim America. In particular the indigenous American Muslim population.

Salafism, comprised of fundamentalist Islamic movements whose adherents consider themselves the only “saved” sect of Islam, has been little studied, remains shrouded in misconceptions, and has provoked new interest as Salafists have recently staked a claim to power in some Arab states while spearheading battles against “infidel” Arab regimes during recent rebellions in the Arab world. Robert G. Rabil examines the emergence and development of Salafism into a prominent religious movement in Lebanon, including the ideological and sociopolitical foundation that led to the three different schools of Salafism in Lebanon: quietist Salafists, Haraki (active) Salafists; and Salafi Jihadists. Emphasizing their manhaj (methodology) toward politics, the author surveys Salafists’ ideological transformation from opponents to supporters of political engagement. Their antagonism to Hezbollah, which they denounce as the party of Satan, has risen exponentially following the party’s seizure of Beirut in 2008 and support of the tyrannical Syrian regime. Salafism in Lebanon also demonstrates how activists and jihadi Salafists, in response to the political weakness of Sunni leadership, have threatened regional and international security by endorsing violence and jihad. Drawing on field research trips, personal interviews, and Arabic primary sources, the book explores the relationship between the ideologies of the various schools of Salafism and their praxis in relation to Lebanese politics. The book should interest students and scholars of Islamic movements, international affairs, politics and religion, and radical groups and terrorism.

In this unique analysis of Muslim population shifts in the Western world, geographer Barry A. Vann provides fresh insights into the theological factors that play into these demographic trends. Vann examines the “imagined geographies” of Muslims with a puritan orientation. People with this mind-set are little inclined to accept a pluralistic, multicultural, live-and-let-live concept of society. And conflicts between conflicting value systems are almost inevitable. Vann notes that this purist approach to Islam is certainly not universal among Muslims, and there are many varying interpretations that are more moderate in outlook. Nonetheless, the undeniable theological background of all Muslim communities colors their values and attitudes, and must be taken into consideration when attempting to understand the potential conflicts between contiguous Muslim and non-Muslim groups. Given the fact that the population of Muslim immigrants is growing in traditionally Christian and increasingly secular countries of the Western world while the resident populations are either stagnant or declining, Vann’s insightful analysis of the ways in which Islam influences perceptions of community and geography is of great relevance.