Postmodern Socialization

Fundamentally, the socialization in Daʾwa Salafiyya is less about an attempt to cut oneself off from the world than about a religious and puritan way of acting as though one were living in the “time of the tribes.” United by spiritual and moral affinities that let them consider themselves separate, Salafists embody the superiority of the affinity paradigm in a society with which they negotiate a contractual relationship. There is no recognition of the religious engagement that legitimizes the modern era and its social, political, or cultural avatars, such as the nation, secularism, citizenship, democracy, individualism, and liberalism, or, especially, the polytheism of values. It is no surprise that the practicant feels ill at ease with them. He finds in his fundamentalist configuration all he needs for leading his life, being focused on his coreligionists and not on the state or the nation.