| Salafi - Salafi (Arabic:
Salafiyyah meaning predecessors or previous generations) - A name used to denote various branches of
Islam, which have in common the notion that
the earliest forms of Islam were the purest and most correct, and that Islam must be reformed by returning to those
forms of Islam. The tradition has a long lineage.
Muhammad said, "So fear Allah and have
patience. And I am the best Salaf (predecessor) for you." [Saheeh Muslim: no. 2450], and others also based their
authorities on the practices of predecessors.
Therefore in the most literal sense, Salafism is "fundamentalism" and some forms of Salafism are identical with
Islamism or Jihadism.
There are at least three types of Muslim groups or movements who claim to be
Salafi or are called Salafi:
1- Conservatives like the
Wahhabi
2- Radical
Islamists (or "Jihadists")
such as Al-Qaeda
3- Liberal reformers like
Muhammad
Abduh and
Jamal_al-Din Al-Afghani
Salafi
fundamentalists are not necessarily all violent nor do all schools insist on
interfering in political affairs. Some authorities class reformers such as
Jamal_al-Din Al-Afghani
and Muhammad Abduh
as Salafists because they returned
to early sources, but this construal is often not accepted by others (especially non-westerners), because both Afghani
and Abduh favored reform by
Ijtihad
- innovation. They were only "Salafi" in the sense that they wanted to disown
much of
Sha'aria
law and returnt o what they considered to be "first principles," in order to
liberalize Islam.
Most typically Salafism refers to a number of different flavors of beliefs, most notably, the "Wahhabi" or "Muwahhidun " extremists.
Salafism is a characterized by a kind of pantheism (seeing god in everything) - "Tawhid,"
which also means monotheism. While Islamist extremists like
Sayyid Qutb and
Abul ala Maududi believed in Tawhid in the pantheistic sense (Allah and
Islam is in everything or Allah is everything) , they
have been criticized severely by Salafists for
Ijtihad
- innovation. Qutb in particular
has drawn criticism for rejecting the
Madh'hab,
the traditional Islamic schools of
Fiqh
(jurisprudence), for propagating the use of
Takfir
- declaring everyone who disagrees with him to be heretical, for declaring
active
Jihad
even against non-Muslim states that do not challenge Muslims, for advocating
social and economic reforms that are abhorrent to traditionalists, and perhaps
most importantly, for advocating overthrow of Muslim governments.
The Salafi (in this sense of
Wahhabi,
conservative) attitude toward governance seems to be that it must allow the full
practice of
Islam as a personal religion within the state, as exemplified by
Saudi virtue police for example, but not that Islam must run the state itself or
that the state must further Jihad against non-Muslims. Furthermore, they do not
see Islam as a religion that must further social or economic reform. That
differentiates this variety of Salafism from
Islamism.
A Salafi group has published an extensive critique of the
Muslim Brotherhood:
Historical Development of the Methodologies of the Ikhwan al Muslimeen and their
effect on contemporary Salaafi Dawah. They maintain that
Muhammad
Abduh,
Hassan al-Banna and Muhammad Rashid Rida created an activist movement that was gowned
as Salafiyyah, making false ascriptions to Salafiyyah.
While some Salafi may become Jihadists or Islamists, and may represent the
"pool" from which extremists are drawn to groups like
Al-Qaeda, they are not the same ideological or theological beliefs. The term
"Salafi-Jihadist" that seems to have come into use by some is seemingly
inappropriate, because it doesn't describe an actual theological or ideological
school.
Ami Isseroff
Revised, December 19, 2008
Synonyms and alternate spellings:
Further Information:
Wahhabi
Islamism
Qutb, Sayyid
History of Islam and the Arabs
Maududi, Abul ala
Al-Banna, Hassan
Muhammad Rashid Rida
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