Salafism

• is an ultra-conservative reform branch (movement) within Sunni Islam that developed in the Arabian Peninsula in the mid to late 19th century.
• It advocated a return to the traditions of the Salaf, who are the first 3 generations (Al-Sahaba, Al-Tabi'in, Tabi' al Tabi'in) of scholars after the Prophet Muhammad.
• Going to the source of religion/original Islam of the 7th century Arabia

The Salafi Doctrine

• is centered around the concept of looking back to a prior historical period in an effort to understand how the contemporary world should be ordered.
• They reject religious innovation (bid'ah), and support the implementation of the Shariah (Islamic law).

The movement is divided into 3 categories:

• the quietists (or the purists):
  - the largest category
  - avoid politics
• the activists:
  - second largest group
  - involved in politics
• the jihadists:
  - form a minority

The name "Salafi" comes from "as-salaf as saliheen" meaning "the pious predecessors" of the early Muslim community.

The Salafis set out to rationally reinterpret early Islam with the expectation of rediscovering a more "modern" religion.

Wahhabism rejected modern influences, while Salafism sought to reconcile Islam with modernism.

Groups differ from the early generations in certain aspect and very specific teachings. Thus, they appear as Salafis and hidden amongst the followers of the Salafi traditions (Neo-Salafis).

New-Salafis

They tend to differ from traditional Salafis:

• by adding many conditions not found in the Quran or Sunnah or the understanding of the companions to many of the rulings.
• In the definition and practical implementation of Iman (faith).
• In rejecting the understanding of the companions and earliest generations in some matters/issues, instead referring to a modern 'Ijmaa' or consensu of scholars instead of the consensus of the companions when the companions dealt with the exact same given issue/matter.
• believing only the people in their particular Neo-Salafi group will enter paradise.

According to Salafists, it's first of all the Sunnah (tradition) of the Prophet Muhammad (his words, gestures, attitudes), and not the exercise of individual reason, which must be used to interpret the Quran.

One of the most important markers of Salafism is the considerable importance accorded to the practice of the Prophet.

Salafists have standards of behavior at all times and in all places due to:


• Quranic verses
• The Sunnah of the companions of the Prophet, beginning with the first four caliphs and the ancient scholars of Islam.

The ideo(theo)logical origins of Salafism

Hanbalism considers religious innovation is bad and human reason pushes away from the divine message.
• The expression "attributes of God" refers to all the words that relate to the way in which God speaks of himself in the Quran
• A quarrel around this question was brought, from the 8th century, by philosophical thought "Mu'tazilite" (Mu'tazila: school of Islamic theology).
• According to the Mu'talizite thinkers, the Quran is created by God, but it is intended for men. The Quran does not fall underthe divine eternity; its interpretation is historically situated and its reader is called to give it meaning.
• For the Salafists of the middle ages, grouped around the figure of Sheikh Ibn Hanbal (died around 855), to speculate on the nature of the divine attributes was synonymous with perdition: one must say of God only what is written in the Quran.
• From the point of view of Hanbalism, the Quran and the Sunnah are the only sources of religious faith

Hadiths in Hanbalism

(Hadith: sayings, customs, gesture of Muhammad)
• What are the conditions that the close people to Muhammad had to fulfill to enter the category of sahabah (companions of the prophet)?
• Should this category be reversed for those who followed Muhammad when he had fled Mecca - "the emigrants" and those who had supported him in his refuge at Medina - "the auxilaries"?
• Should we expand the category and integrate, in the manner of Ibn Hanbal, "all those who had accompanied the Prophet of God for a year, or a month, or a day, or an hour, or who had only seen him"?

The science of Hadith has distinguished different categories of hadith(s): according to the number of transmitters and the quality of chain of transmitters.
- Hadith is "mutawattir" when reported by a large number of transmitters.
- The hadith is "unilateral" (ahadi) when it is transmitted by a small number of people.

Note: Even if their validity is doubtful, hanbalis has chosen to validate unilateral hadiths.

The hadith has been used to disqualify in advance the role of reason in the decoding of the divine text.

The Sunnah acquires a status equivalent to that of the Quran. Some salafist theologians even considered that ultimately it should prevail over the Quran and not t he other way around.

The legacy of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab

Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1327)

• His work was annexed by radical Islamism because of the primordial role given to jihad in his work.
• At the end of the 13th century, the Mamluk sultanate in Cairo asked the Sunni law scholars to decide whether it was lawful to proclaim jihad against the (now Muslim) Mongols during the sieges of Damascus in 1260 and 1300. Ibn Taymiyyah answered "yes".
• Because of the massacres committed by the invader (Mongols) and a conversion to Islam, which was considered circumstancial and inauthentic.
• He interpreted the verses of the Quran in their literal senses. He was in opposition to the Sufi brotherhoods (especially the Cult of Saints), which constitutes, with the hostility to Shi'ism, one of the innovations of Salafism, from the medieval period until nowadays.
• - Contemporary Islamist militants exploited Ibn Taymiyyah's texts on the "suspicious and superficial" character of the conversion of the Mongols to Islam to justify the passage of violence against the leaders of Muslim countries.

Mohammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792)


• The preacher Mohammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab is one of Ibn Taymiyyah's great readers in 18th century Arabia.
• In 1740, he composed a treatise (textbook, writing) on Divine Unity in which from a demanding conception of monotheism, he asserted that his contemporaries had departed from divine wholeness to the point of becoming worshippers who had fallen back into pre-Islamic ignorance ("jahiliyya").
• His theology is essentially an exclusive view of divine unity:
  If God is unique ("Tawhid al-rububiyyah"), he alone must benefit from the adoration of believers ("Tawhid al-uluhiyyah").