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Islamic Schools And Branches: Part IV
Regional Groups And Movements
Saudi Arabia (Wahhabism)
Wahhabism is a more strict, Saudi form of Salafism, according to Mark Durie, who states that Saudi leaders “are active and diligent” using their considerable financial resources “in funding and promoting Salafism all around the world.” Ahmad Moussalli tends to agree with the view that Wahhabism is a subset of Salafism, saying “As a rule, all Wahhabis are salafists, but not all salafists are Wahhabis.”
However, many scholars and critics distinguish between the old form of Saudi Salafism (termed as Wahhabism) and the new Salafism in Saudi Arabia. Stéphane Lacroix, a fellow and lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris, also affirmed a distinction between the two: “As opposed to Wahhabism, Salafism refers […] to all the hybridations that have taken place since the 1960s between the teachings of Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab and other Islamic schools of thought.” Hamid Algar and Khaled Abou El Fadl believe, during the 1960s and 70s, Wahhabism rebranded itself as Salafism knowing it could not “spread in the modern Muslim world” as Wahhabism.
Its largesse funded an estimated “90 percent of the expenses of the entire faith, ” throughout the Muslim World, according to journalist Dawood al-Shirian. It extended to young and old, from children’s madrasas to high-level scholarship. “Books, scholarships, fellowships, mosques” (for example, “more than 1,500 mosques were built from Saudi public funds over the last 50 years”) were paid for. It rewarded journalists and academics, who followed it and built satellite campuses around Egypt for Al Azhar, the oldest and most influential Islamic university. Yahya Birt counts spending on “1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centres and dozens of Muslim academies and schools” at a cost of around $2–3 billion annually since 1975. To put the number into perspective, the propaganda budget of the Soviet Union was about $1bn per annum.
This spending has done much to overwhelm less strict local interpretations of Islam, according to observers like Dawood al-Shirian and Lee Kuan Yew, and has caused the Saudi interpretation (sometimes called “petro-Islam” to be perceived as the correct interpretation – or the “gold standard” of Islam – in many Muslims’ minds.
Salafis are often called Wahhabis, which they consider a derogatory term.
South Asia (Ahl-i Hadith movement)
Ahl-i Hadith is a religious movement that emerged in Northern India in the mid-nineteenth century. Adherents of Ahl-i-Hadith regard the Quran, sunnah, and hadith as the sole sources of religious authority and oppose everything introduced in Islam after the earliest times. In particular, they reject taqlid (following legal precedent) and favor ijtihad (independent legal reasoning) based on the scriptures. The movement’s followers call themselves Salafi, while others refer to them as Wahhabi, or consider them a variation on the Wahhabi movement. In recent decades the movement has expanded its presence in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
Syed Nazeer Husain from Delhi and Siddiq Hasan Khan of Bhopal are regarded as the founder of the movement. Folk Islam and Sufism, commonly popular with the poor and working class in the region, are anathema to Ahl-i Hadith beliefs and practices. This attitude toward Sufism has brought the movement into conflict with the rival Barelvi movement even more so than the Barelvis’ rivals, the Deobandis. Ahl-i Hadith followers identify with the Zahiri madhhab. The movement draws both inspiration and financial support from Saudi Arabia.
Egypt
There are five to six million Salafis in Egypt. Salafis in Egypt are not united under a single banner or unified leadership. The main Salafi trends in Egypt are Al-Sunna Al-Muhammadeyya Society, The Salafist Calling, al-Madkhaliyya Salafism, Activist Salafism, and al-Gam’eyya Al-Shar’eyya. Since 2015 the Egyptian government has banned books associated with the Salafi movement.
Al-Sunna Al-Muhammadeyya Society, also known as Ansar Al-Sunna, was founded in 1926 by Sheikh Mohamed Hamed El-Fiqi (d.), a 1916 graduate of Al-Azhar and a student of the famed Muslim reformer Muhammed Abduh. It is considered the main Salafi group in Egypt. El-Fiqi’s ideas were resentful of Sufism. But unlike Muhammed Abduh, Ansar Al-Sunna follows the tawhid as preached by Ibn Taymiyyah.
Salafist Call is another influential Salafist organisation. It is the outcome of student activism during the 1970s. While many of the activists joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a faction led by Mohammad Ismail al-Muqaddim, influenced by Salafists of Saudi Arabia established the Salafist Calling between 1972 and 1977.
Salafist Call created the Al-Nour Party after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. It has an ultra-conservative Islamist ideology, which believes in implementing strict Sharia law. In the 2011–12 Egypt parliamentary elections, the Islamist Bloc led by Al‑Nour party received 7,534,266 votes out of a total 27,065,135 correct votes (28 percent). The Islamist Bloc gained 127 of the 498 parliamentary seats contested, second-place after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Al‑Nour Party itself won 111 of the 127 seats. From January 2013 the party gradually distanced itself from Mohammad Morsi’s Brotherhood government, and came to join the opposition in the July 2013 coup which ousted Morsi. A lawsuit against the party was dismissed on 22 September 2014 because the court indicated it had no jurisdiction. A case on the dissolution of the party was adjourned until 17 January 2015. Another court case that was brought forth to dissolve the party was dismissed after the Alexandria Urgent Matters Court ruled on 26 November 2014 that it lacked jurisdiction.
According to Ammar Ali Hassan of al-Ahram, while Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood agree on many issues such as the need to “Islamize” society and restricting private property rights by legally requiring all Muslims to give alms, the former has nevertheless rejected the flexibility of the latter on the issue of whether women and Christians should be entitled to serve in high office, as well as its relatively tolerant attitude towards Iran.
Tunisia
Salafism has been dismissively labeled as “ultra-conservative,” in the context of Tunisia after the 2011 revolution.
France
In France, in 2015 police say that salafism is represented in 90 out of 2,500 investigated religious communities, which is double the number compared to five years earlier.
Germany
Salafism is a growing movement in Germany whose aim of a Caliphate is incompatible with a Western democracy. Estimates by German interior intelligence service show that it grew from 3,800 members in 2011 to 7,500 members in 2015. In Germany, most of the recruitment to the movement is done on the Internet and also on the streets, a propaganda drive which mostly attracts youth. There are two ideological camps, one advocates political Salafism and directs its recruitment efforts towards non-Muslims and non-Salafist Muslims to gain influence in society. The other and minority movement, the jihadist Salafism, advocates gaining influence by the use of violence and nearly all identified terrorist cells in Germany came from Salafist circles.
In 2015, Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, spoke out, saying “We need Saudi Arabia to solve the regional conflicts, but we must at the same time make clear that the time to look away is past. Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities.”
In November 2016, nationwide raids were conducted on the Salafist True Religion.
According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne, the number of Salafists in Germany grew from 9,700 in December 2016 to 10,800 in December 2017. In addition to the rise, the Salafist movement in Germany was increasingly fractured which made them harder to monitor by authorities. According to the office, street distributions of Qur’an took place less frequently which was described as a success for the authorities. Radicalisation changed character, from taking place in mosques and interregional Salafist organisations to more often happening in small circles, which increasingly formed on the internet. A further development was a rise in participation of women.
According to the FFGI at Goethe University Frankfurt, wahhabist ideology is spread in Germany as in other European country mostly by an array of informal, personal and organisational networks, where organisations closely associated with the government of Saudi Arabia such as the Muslim World League (WML) and the World Association of Muslim Youth are actively participating.
In February 2017, the German Salafist mosque organisation Berliner Fussilet-Moscheeverein was banned by authorities. Anis Amri, the perpetrator of the 2016 Berlin truck attack, was said to be among its visitors. In March 2017, the German Muslim community organisation Deutschsprachige Islamkreis Hildesheim was also banned after investigators found that its members were preparing to travel to the conflict zone in Syria to fight for the Islamic State. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, these examples show that Salafist mosques not only concern themselves with religious matters, but also prepare serious crimes and terrorist activities.
China
Salafism is opposed by a number of Hui Muslims Sects in China such as by the Gedimu, Sufi Khafiya and Jahriyya, to the extent that even the fundamentalist Yihewani (Ikhwan) Chinese sect, founded by Ma Wanfu after Salafi inspiration, condemned Ma Debao and Ma Zhengqing as heretics when they attempted to introduce Salafism as the main form of Islam. Ma Debao established a Salafi school, called the Sailaifengye (Salafi), in Lanzhou and Linxia. It is completely separate from other Muslim sects in China. Muslim Hui avoid Salafis, even if they are family members. The number of Salafis in China are not included on percentage lists of Muslim sects in China. The Kuomintang Sufi Muslim General Ma Bufang, who backed the Yihewani (Ikhwan) Muslims, persecuted the Salafis and forced them into hiding. They were not allowed to move or worship openly. The Yihewani had become secular and Chinese nationalists; they considered the Salafiyya to be “heterodox” (xie jiao) and people who followed foreigners’ teachings (waidao). After the Communists took power, Salafis were allowed to worship openly again.
Bosnia And Herzegovina
Many Islamic religious buildings were damaged or destroyed in the Bosnian War during the 90s, estimates say up to 80 percent, and some are rebuilt with the aid of funds from Saudi Arabia in exchange for Saudi control which became the starting point of the wahhabist influence in Bosnia. According to a some study from 2005, over 3 percent of the mainstream Sunni Muslim population (around 60,000 people) of Bosnia and Herzegovina identified themselves as wahhabist. Despite the wahhabism that came along with Saudi aid to rebuild the mosque and with Gulf-trained imams, all-covering veils such as niqab and burqa are still rare sight.
Vietnam
An attempt at Salafist expansion among the Muslim Chams in Vietnam has been halted by Vietnamese government controls, however, the loss of the Salafis among Chams has been to be benefit of Tablighi Jamaat.
Sweden
Representatives from the mosque in Gävle are promoting this variant of Islam, which in Sweden is considered extreme. According to researcher Aje Carlbom at Malmö University. The organisation behind the missionary work is Swedish United Dawah Center, abbreviated SUDC. SUDC is characterized as a salafist group by a researcher of religious history at Stockholm University and it has many links to British Muslim Abdur Raheem Green. According to professor Mohammed Fazlhashemi, salafists are opposed to rational theology and hate Shi’a Muslims above all. Three Muslim community organisations in Malmö invited reportedly antisemitic and homophobic salafist lecturers such as Salman al-Ouda. One of the organisations, Alhambra is a student society at Malmö University.
In Hässleholm the Ljusets moské (translated: “the mosque of light”) is spreading salafi ideology and portray Shi’a Muslims as apostates and traitors in social media while the atrocities of the Islamic state are never mentioned. In 2009 the imam Abu al-Hareth at the mosque was sentenced to six years in jail for the attempted murder of a local Shi’a Muslim from Iraq and another member set fire to a Shi’a mosque in Malmö.
In 2017 Swedish Security Police reported that the number of jihadists in Sweden had risen to thousands from about 200 in 2010. Based on social media analysis, an increase was noted in 2013.
Salafists in Sweden are supported financially by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. According to police in Sweden, salafists affect the communities where they are active.
Puritan or quetist Salafists have been known to counter radical extremism and so-called Salafi-jihadists and challenging their influence among vulnerable Muslim communities.
According to Swedish researcher Magnus Ranstorp, salafism is antidemocratic, homophobic and aims to subjugate women and is therefore opposed to a socital order founded on democracy.
Qatar
Similar to Saudi Arabia, most citizens of Qatar adhere to a strict sect of Salafism referred to as Wahhabism. The national mosque of Qatar is the Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque named after the founder of Wahhabism. Similar to Saudi Arabian sponsorship of Salafism, Qatar has also funded the construction of mosques that promote the Wahhabi Salafism.
Unlike the strict practice of Wahhabi Salafism in Saudi Arabia, Qatar has demonstrated an alternative view of Wahhabism. In Qatar, women are allowed by law to drive, non-Muslims have access to pork and liquor through a state-owned distribution center, and religious police do not force businesses to close during prayer times. Also, Qatar hosts branches of several American universities and a “Church City” in which migrant workers may practice their religion. The adoption of a more liberal interpretation of Wahhabism is largely credited to Qatar’s young Emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Yet, Qatar’s more tolerant interpretation of Wahhabism compared to Saudi Arabia has drawn backlash from Qatari citizens and foreigners. The Economist reported that a Qatari cleric criticized the state’s acceptance of un-Islamic practices away from the public sphere and complained that Qatari citizens are oppressed. Although Qatari gender separation is less strict than that found in Saudi Arabia, plans to offer co-ed lectures were put aside after threats to boycott Qatar’s segregated public university. Meanwhile, there have been reports of local discontent with the sale of alcohol in Qatar.
Qatar has also drawn widespread criticism for attempting to spread its fundamental religious interpretation both through military and non-military channels. Militarily, Qatar has been criticized for funding rebel Islamist extremist fighters in the Libyan Crisis and the Syrian Civil War. In Libya, Qatar funded allies of Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadist group thought to be behind the killing of former U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, while channeling weapons and money to the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group in Syria. In addition, Qatar-based charities and online campaigns, such as Eid Charity and Madid Ahl al-Sham, have a history of financing terrorist groups in Syria. Qatar has also repeatedly provided financial support to the Gaza government led by the militant Hamas organisation while senior Hamas officials have visited Doha and hosted Qatari leaders in Gaza. Qatar also gave approximately $10 billion to the government of Egypt during Mohamed Morsi’s time in office.
Non-militarily, Qatar state-funded broadcaster Al Jazeera has come under criticism for selective reporting in coordination with Qatar’s foreign policy objectives. In addition, reports have condemned Qatar’s financing of the construction of mosques and Islamic centers in Europe as attempts to exert the state’s Salafist interpretation of Islam. Reports of Qatar attempting to impact the curriculum of U.S. schools and buy influence in universities have also spread. The nearby Persian Gulf States of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates have been among the countries that have condemned Qatar’s actions. In 2014, the three Persian Gulf countries withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar referencing Qatar’s failure to commit to non-interference in the affairs of other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Saudi Arabia has also threatened to block land and sea borders with Qatar.
United Kingdom
A 2017 report found the number of Salafi and Wahhabi mosques in Britain had increased from 68 in 2007 to 110 in 2014. The report found that Middle Eastern nations are providing financial support to mosques and Islamic educational institutions, which have been linked to the spread of extremist material with “an illiberal, bigoted Wahhabi ideology.”
Statistics
Worldwide there are roughly 50 million Salafi Sunnis, including roughly 20 to 30 million Salafis in India, five to six million Salafis in Egypt, and 1.6 million Salafis in Sudan. Salafi communities are smaller elsewhere, including roughly 10,000 in Tunisia, 17,000 in Morocco, 7,000 in Jordan, 17,000 in France and 5,000 in Germany.
It is often reported from various sources, including the German domestic intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst), that Salafism is the fastest-growing Islamic movement in the world.
Other Usage
Modernist Salafism
As opposed to the traditionalist Salafism discussed throughout this article, academics and historians have used the term “Salafism” to denote modernists, “a school of thought which surfaced in the second half of the 19th century as a reaction to the spread of European ideas” and “sought to expose the roots of modernity within Muslim civilization.” They are also known as Modernist Salafis. However contemporary Salafis follow “literal, traditional […] injunctions of the sacred texts”, looking to Ibn Taymiyyah rather than the “somewhat freewheeling interpretation” of 19th-century figures Muhammad Abduh, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and Rashid Rida.
There has been some confusion in recent years because both the Islamic modernists and the contemporary Salafis refer (referred) to themselves as al-salafiyya, leading some observers to erroneously conclude a common ideological lineage. The earlier salafiyya (modernists), however, were predominantly rationalist Asharis.
Inspired by Islamic modernists, groups like Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami etc. are called Salafis in this context.Muslim Brotherhood include the term salafi in the “About Us” section of its website.
In this context “in terms of their respective formation, Wahhabism and Salafism were quite distinct. Wahhabism was a pared-down Islam that rejected modern influences, while Salafism sought to reconcile Islam with modernism. What they had in common is that both rejected traditional teachings on Islam in favor of direct, ‘fundamentalist’ reinterpretation. Although Salafism and Wahhabism began as two distinct movements, Faisal’s embrace of Salafi (Muslim Brotherhood) pan-Islamism resulted in cross-pollination between ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings on Islam in favor of direct, ‘fundamentalist’ reinterpretation. Although Salafism and Wahhabism began as two distinct movements, Faisal’s embrace of Salafi (Muslim Brotherhood) pan-Islamism resulted in cross-pollination between ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings on tawhid, shirk and bid‘ah and Salafi interpretations of ahadith (the sayings of Muhammad). Some Salafis nominated ibn Abd al-Wahhab as one of the Salaf (retrospectively bringing Wahhabism into the fold of Salafism), and the Muwahideen began calling themselves Salafis.”
“In a broad sense, Salafism is similar to Non-denominational Islam (NDM), in the sense some of its adherents do not follow a particular creed. Salafi (follower of Salaf) means any reform movement that calls for resurrection of Islam by going back to its origin. In line with Wahhabism they promote a literal understanding of the sacred texts of Islam and reject other more liberal reformist movements such as those inspired for example by Muhammad Abduh or by Muhammad Iqbal.
Criticism
Islamic opposition
Scholars from Al-Azhar University of Cairo produced a work of religious opinions entitled al-Radd (The Response) to refute the views of the Salafi movement. Al-Radd singles out numerous Salafi aberrations – in terms of ritual prayer alone it targets for criticism the following Salafi claims:
The claim that it is prohibited to recite God’s name during the minor ablution [Fatwa 50]
The claim that it is obligatory for men and women to perform the major ablution on Friday [Fatwa 63]
The claim that it is prohibited to own a dog for reasons other than hunting [Fatwa 134]
The claim that it is prohibited to use alcohol for perfumes [Fatwa 85].
One of the authors of al-Radd, the Professor of Law Anas Abu Shady states that, “they [the Salafis] want to be [of the Ẓāhirī scholar Ibn Hazm], but they also are convinced that they alone understand the hidden (al-batin)!”
The Syrian scholar Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti wrote a number of works refuting Salafism including Al-La Madhhabiyya (Abandoning the Madhhabs) is the most dangerous Bid‘ah Threatening the Islamic Shari’a (Damascus: Dar al-Farabi 2010) and Al-Salafiyya was a blessed epoch, not a school of thought (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1990). The latter is perhaps the most famous refutation of Salafism in the twentieth century.
Numerous academic rebuttals of Salafism have been produced in the English language by Khaled Abou El Fadl of the UCLA School of Law, Timothy Winter of Cambridge University and G.F. Haddad. El Fadl argues that fanatical groups such as al-Qaeda “derive their theological premises from the intolerant Puritanism of the Wahhabi and Salafi creeds”. He also suggests that the extreme intolerance and even endorsement of terrorism manifest in Wahhabism and Salafism represents a deviation from Muslim historical traditions. El-Fadl also argues that the Salafi methodology “drifted into stifling apologetics” by the mid-20th century, a reaction against “anxiety” to “render Islam compatible with modernity,” by its leaders earlier in the century.
According to the As-Sunnah Foundation of America, the Salafi and Wahhabi movements are strongly opposed by a long list of Sunni scholars. The Saudi government has been criticised for damaging Islamic heritage of thousands of years in Saudi Arabia. For example, there has been some controversy that the expansion projects of the mosque and Mecca itself are causing harm to early Islamic heritage. Many ancient buildings, some more than a thousand years old, have been demolished to make room not only for the expansion of the Masjid al-Haram, but for new malls and hotels. Though some Salafis who attended a lecture by The City Circle in the UK, were equally as opposed to it as other Muslims. The Salafi movement has been linked by Marc Sageman to some terrorist groups around the world, like Al-Qaeda.
Sociological criticism
Although Salafist claim to re-establish Islamic values and protects Islamic culture, sociological observations show that they often interpret it in a manner which does not match with Islamic traditions, with some members of the movement regarding inherit elements of Islamic culture, such as music, poetry, literature and philosophy as works of the devil. Generally, Salafis do not adhere to traditional Islamic communities, and those who do, often oppose the traditional Islamic values.
Innovation
Salafis are accused of having a double-standard on their views on innovation, rejecting good innovations and unwittingly accepting harmful ones. Classical scholars (including imam Nawawi, who is widely praised by Salafis categorized innovation into fivefold types, yet Salafis consider all innovation to be sinful. This creates a strange paradox where they unwittingly accept some innovations and reject others. The compilation of the Qur’an under Abu Bakr’s caliphate was an innovation, yet is accepted by Orthodox Muslims as an obligatory innovation to preserve the Qur’an. The notorious Salafi creed, which divides tawhid into three types, is itself an innovation which leads to liberal excommunication, prolific accusations of shirk, and violence against other Muslims.
German Government’s Statement On Salafism
German government officials have stated that Salafism has a strong link to terrorism but have clarified that not all Salafists are terrorists. The statements by German government officials criticizing Salafism were televised by Deutsche Welle during April, 2012.
Islamic Schools And Branches: Part IV
301 – 001-d
https://discerning-Islam.org
Last Update: 03/2021
