8 - Reclaiming the Canon

Summary

Salafism has never been a completely unified movement. The canon, this study's central framework for understanding Salafism, constitutes an evolving and contested terrain; the canon is a template for unity, but cannot guarantee it. The Salafi community as a whole negotiates, over time, who is admitted into and excluded from the canon, and who has the authority to determine the rules for inclusion and exclusion.

When scholars analyse intra-Salafi divisions, the Salafi community has famously been categorized into “purists,” “politicos,” and “jihadis.” Yet it is easy to overstate the degree of internal division within the Salafi fold. It is possible to discern a mainstream within the Salafi community, namely the so-called “purists” or “quietists,” although this label is misleading. As Jacob Olidort writes, Salafis whose “political actions are quiet, but [whose] political voice is loud” likely represent a majority of the movement worldwide. The political behaviors of “quietists” move and shift along a continuum of political action, ranging from a steadfast refusal to engage politics to an active participation in party politics and political dissent. The boundary between “quietists” and “politicos” can be permeable and even meaningless. We have seen an example of this in Shaykh Jaʿfar Maḥmūd Ādam, an intellectual devotee of “quietist” Salafi scholars but also an outspoken political commentator and activist himself.

Perhaps it is simpler to talk not of three types of Salafism but of two: mainstream Salafis who are not involved in promoting aggressive jihad or working to carry it out, and Salafi-jihadis who are. At the same time, even the lines between jihadis and nonjihadis are blurred when it comes to the question of canons; as the previous chapter showed, Salafi-jihadis like Boko Haram and ISIS work hard to present their discourses as the latest and most authentic instance of continuity with the canon as they define it.

In the face of jihadi violence and propaganda, mainstream Salafis are struggling to impose standards for who is and who is not a Salafi. Jihadis powerfully threaten mainstream Salafis, both intellectually and physically. Jihadi violence and propaganda now dominate outsiders' impressions of Salafism. For mainstream Salafis, this development can lead potential audiences astray; it also attracts hostile scrutiny from their own governments and from the West.