Methodological and Ethical Challenges in Empirical Approaches to Salafism

Abstract

The special issue “Empirical Approaches to Salafism: Methodological and Ethical Challenges” addresses urgent methodological and ethical issues in qualitative research on Salafism. The contributing authors discuss these in relation to their fieldwork on Salafi beliefs, practices, life courses and world views. The contributions problematize the limits of the usual academic definitions of Salafism by confronting the conventional categories of quietist, political and jihadist Salafism with first-hand field data. Thereby, the authors show how categorial lines begin to blur and to shift when exposed to the ambiguous and dynamic characteristics that are inherent to virtual and real-life fieldwork with Salafis.