Editor note: This article is part of a lengthy study by Dr. yasir Qadi, that will be republished here, with the author’s permission, as a series of articles. In this part and the next one, Dr. Qadhi explores Salafism’s positive aspects and points of criticism.
Points discussed in Part 1 and 2:
1. Definitions: What is Salafī Islam?
1.1 Points of consensus among Salafī movements
1.2 Points of contention among Salafī groups
2. Positive Aspects of Salafism
Salafism, in representing a methodology espousing the aspiration toward a pristine Islam, has been a positive force. There was a time in the 90s when the Salafī methodology, as represented by popular international English-speaking clerics, attracted large segments of Western youth.
Some positives of the Salafī movement are:
1) Primacy of the Sacred Texts. The Salafī methodology of taking recourse to the Qur’an and Sunnah challenges Muslims to approach the Sacred Texts for guidance and understanding, and not just spiritual blessings.
This is in stark contrast to some other traditionalist schools that discourage their adherents from deriving any meanings or rulings for fear of misunderstanding them, so much so that some Muslim sects claim that ḥadīth books should never be read except by specialists and perhaps even discourage an active and academic study of the Qur’an.
2) Encourages critical engagement with modern customs and cultures in light of the Qur’an and Sunnah, with a marked emphasis on solid evidence, as opposed to what Shaykh so-and-so said or what one’s forefathers practiced.
As such, Salafism appears to be liberating from the confines of ‘cultural Islam’, offering an avenue toward an unadulterated universal Islam that transcends time and place, and is true to that practiced at the time of revelation.
3) It eschews the syncretism of superstitious practices prevalent in folk-versions of Islam, such as the unfounded veneration of saints or the invoking of other than God for one’s needs.
In this regard, it can be said that Salafism aims to offer a pristine, unmolested framework within which the rituals of Islam ought to be practiced.[13]
4) Ḥadīth authentication. An undeniable effect that Salafism has had across most Islamic movements is an awareness of the necessity to verify the authenticity of ḥadīth.
Even those who oppose Salafism are now more precise and exact when quoting ḥadīths in their books, and verifying them with verdicts of classical and medieval scholars. This is an extremely positive contribution, and one that can be credited as a legacy of Shaykh al-Albānī and his writings.
5) A general and more comprehensive awareness of the branches of academic Islam. An average Salafī would be cognizant of the role of uṣūl al-fiqh, the importance of muṣtalaḥ al-ḥadīth, the basic structure and scope of ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, and so forth.
It is safe to say that an average follower of Salafism is more aware of the academic disciplines underpinning Islam than an average follower of any other tradition.
6) Salafīs have an enviably pure theology. Any objective researcher will find that the Atharī creed is the earliest documented Sunnī creed, pre-dating the kalām based creeds of the Ashāʿirah and Māṭūrīdiyah.[14]
This is manifested in numerous theological treatises that still exist from the late second and early third Islamic centuries (some of which predate ʿAqīdah al-Ṭaḥāwīyyah).
The Atharī creed was the dominant strand of Sunnī Islam in the fourth and fifth Islamic centuries,[15] and although it came to be limited to the Ḥanbalī School of the sixth century as a result of political changes, it received a reviving boost from the ever phenomenal Ibn Taymiyya, from whom it still continues to receive vigor.[16]
7) Dispersal of Islamic knowledge and the revitalization of the Islamic libraries. Salafism has contributed immensely to research via the mass printing of thousands of edited manuscript works, on all sciences of Islam.
Even detractors of Salafism take recourse to books printed at Salafī publishing houses, and academics continue to benefit from their online Islamic search engines, electronic repositories, and forums.
Any Islamic library in the world today will have a good percentage of works edited and printed by Salafīs because Salafism concerns itself with the classical tradition of Islam.
8) Avoidance of most shirk and innovations in rituals. No matter what its faults, as a whole, the Salafī movement has avoided falling into most categories of shirk, and its over-cautious vigilance against innovations has safeguarded for it an enviable purity in the rituals of Islamic worship.
Erring on the side of extreme caution (while no doubt problematic in its own light) saves the Salafī creed from the more egregious examples of heresies that most other movements suffer from.
In all of this, Salafism is a dynamically oriented movement that aims to empower individual Muslims via direct access to the Qur’an and Sunnah, and thus equips its adherents with knowledge to challenge authoritarianism, question blind-allegiance, and correct the corruption of cult-leaders.
No wonder then that Salafism, as a methodology, appeals to the rational and inquisitive mind, and sits comfortably with the human fiṭrah.
[13] In many says, Salafīs wish to do with Sufism and folk-Islam what the Protestant Reformation aimed to do with Catholicism (with obvious dissimilarities as well of course).
[14] This is the view of almost all non-Muslim academics who specialize in Islamic theology, from Ignaz Goldziher to Richard M. Frank, George Makdisi and Joseph van Ess. While it is true that most of these names are dismissive of the Atharī creed because they view it as being overtly simplistic, they acknowledge that this trend of proto-Sunnism pre-dates the kalāmtrend of Ashʿarism.
Some modern Ashʿarites, despite all evidence to the contrary, continue to paint an incorrect picture of this reality, in which it is alleged that Ibn Taymiyya ‘founded’ a new understanding of Islam. In my own personal library, as I write these lines, I can see around a dozen theological treatises in my bookshelf written before al-Ashʿarī, all of which affirm Allah’s Attributes completely and unconditionally, and refute kalām. One may disagree with Ibn Taymiyya, but one cannot historically deny that the general creed that Ibn Taymiyya preached pre-dates him by at least five centuries.
[15] My doctoral dissertation at Yale, which was an analytical study of Ibn Taymiyya’smagnum opus entitled Averting the Conflict Between Reason and Revelation, began with an introductory chapter of around a hundred pages in which I documented the rise of the Asharite school. In it, I clearly demonstrate that the school began as a small, outcast movement, was initially persecuted by other movements, and due to historical reasons (which I delineate there in detail), eventually manage to supplant the dominant Atharī creed and become the official creed of the Seljuqs and later Islamic dynasties. The claim of modern Ashʿarīs that they have always been the dominant understanding of Sunnism is historically untrue.
[16] It has been my contention that if Allah had not blessed the Atharī creed with someone of the caliber of Ibn Taymiyya as a defense lawyer and public advocate, it would have long dwindled into a miniscule movement. On a personal note, the towering personality and sharp insights of Ibn Taymiyya have had a profound impact on my own thought as well, and I consider him to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, intellectual minds that our Ummah has every seen. Sadly, almost all Salafīs suffice in reading Ibn Taymiyya (while they themselves are not qualified to understand some of his own writings, particular those sections that deal with Hellenistic thought and falsafa), but don’t dare follow Ibn Taymiyya’s footsteps. Had Ibn Taymiyya been alive today, he would not have written the works that he did; rather, he would have paid attention to the intellectual threats the Ummah is currently facing. Ibn Taymiyya wrote in response to the challenges of his day; modern Salafīs are, for the most part, unwilling to venture outside of the territories and ideas that Ibn Taymiyya wrote about seven hundred years ago and face the challenges of our day.
of the seventy-three groups, and explained that it has been misunderstood by many groups. You can find one such lecture here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fDXifZ5jnY.