The Salafi Search for Authenticity

Salafism has gained a great deal of media attention over the past twenty years, but for all that remains poorly understood. Part of the reason is a paradox at the heart of the name and goals of the Salafis themselves. In taking their name from the pious ‘ancestors’ (al-salaf)—the first generations of Muslims in the seventh century—the Salafis are deeply concerned with following the original and authentic Islam practiced by those who were closest to the Prophet Muhammad. But since the Salafi movement developed in the twentieth century, it inevitably emerged in modern settings, begging the question of its relationship with modernity. Focusing on the majority non-violent Salafi movements, this episode begins by defining Salafism, before identifying its key concerns—not least with the outward visible expressions of ‘ancestral’ piety that, surprisingly, include wearing shoes within mosques. We’ll then dig deeper into the entanglement of Salafi practices with the no less radical transformations of modernity to which the Salafi Muslims have responded.  Nile Green talks to Aaron Rock-Singer, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East (University of California Press, 2022).