The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century

This book brings much needed clarity to the history of Salafism and revises common accounts of a little known yet much talked about Islamic intellectual trend. Henri Lauzière has skillfully fleshed out the genealogy of Salafism, and his work will have an important impact on the field of the history of ideas in the modern Muslim world.

Some Islamic scholars hold that Salafism is an innovative and rationalist effort at Islamic reform that emerged in the late nineteenth century but gradually disappeared in the mid twentieth. Others argue Salafism is an anti-innovative and antirationalist movement of Islamic purism that dates back to the medieval period yet persists today. Though they contradict each other, both narratives are considered authoritative, making it hard for outsiders to grasp the history of the ideology and its core beliefs.

Introducing a third, empirically based genealogy, The Making of Salafism understands the concept as a recent phenomenon projected back onto the past, and it sees its purist evolution as a direct result of decolonization. Henri Lauzière builds his history on the transnational networks of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894–1987), a Moroccan Salafi who, with his associates, participated in the development of Salafism as both a term and a movement. Traveling from Rabat to Mecca, from Calcutta to Berlin, al-Hilali interacted with high-profile Salafi scholars and activists who eventually abandoned Islamic modernism in favor of a more purist approach to Islam. Today, Salafis tend to claim a monopoly on religious truth and freely confront other Muslims on theological and legal issues. Lauzière’s pathbreaking history recognizes the social forces behind this purist turn, uncovering the popular origins of what has become a global phenomenon.

About the Author

Henri Lauzière is assistant professor of history at Northwestern University.

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Being Salafi in the Early Twentieth Century
2. Rashid Rida’s Rehabilitation of the Wahhabis and Its Consequences
3. Purist Salafism in the Age of Islamic Nationalism
4. The Ironies of Modernity and the Advent of Modernist Salafism
5. Searching for a Raison d’Être in the Postindependence Era
6. The Triumph and Ideologization of Purist Salafism
Conclusion
Notes

Bibliographic Information

Title: The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century

Author: Henri Lauzière

Publisher: Columbia University Press

 Language: English

Length: 328  pages

ISBN: 9780231540179

Pub. Date: November 2015