The Citadel of Salafism

“Salafism [...] is a danger to Muslims themselves and thus a danger to France as well.” This is how former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls referred to Salafism in late July 2016. A certain level of hyperbole in talking about Islam was perhaps to be expected a few weeks after the French city of Nice had been the target of a terrorist attack by what appeared to be a radical Islamist, killing over eighty people. Yet it was significant that Valls apparently felt the need to single out Salafism, which he blamed for having “destroyed and perverted part of the Muslim world,” despite the fact that the perpetrator of the Nice attacks did not appear to be a Salafi at all (AFP 2016). A French Member of Parliament, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, even went so far as to call for a ban on Salafism altogether (Lefeivre 2016). Such criticism of Salafism as being dangerous and even calls for banning this trend altogether are not limited to France. A similar call was heard in the Netherlands, for instance, from Ahmed Marcouch, a former Member of Parliament for the Dutch Labour Party, who considers Salafism a “breeding ground of jihadism and the ideological cradle of [the Islamic State (IS)]” (Marcouch and El Bouch 2015). In Kazakhstan, to mention one more example, a Muslim-majority country with an officially secular regime, President Nursultan Nazarbaev indicated in October 2016 that his country intended to ban Salafism, which he said, “poses a destructive threat to Kazakhstan” (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2016). Salafism, in other words, is controversial. Ironically, this is also the case among Salafis themselves. Issues such as who may be labelled a Salafi and what types of Salafism exist are highly contested among adherents to this branch of Sunnī Islam themselves, which—as we will see later on in this chapter— indicates that Salafis are far less unified than the politicians quoted above appear to believe. This chapter will shed light on such contestations by dealing with the definition, history and ideological development of Salafism, the means adherents to this trend use to defend their doctrinal turf, its spreading throughout the Muslim world, Salafis’ everyday practices, and the faultlines that exist within the trend.