The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth
Century by Henri Lauzière (review)
Joas Wagemakers
The Middle East Journal, Volume 70, Number 3, Summer 2016, pp. 509-510
(Review)
Published by Middle East Institute
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/627165
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MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL ✭ 509
The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform knowledges that early 20th-century Islamic
in the Twentieth Century, by Henri Lauz- modernist reformers may have been adher-
ière. New York: Columbia University Press, ents to this Salafi creed, but he claims that
2016. 317 pages. $55. this does not mean that they constituted a
movement they called Salafism. Moreover,
Reviewed by Joas Wagemakers Lauzière writes that the trend he refers to as
“purist Salafism” as it is seen by its adher-
Many courses on the Islamic intellec- ents today — the meticulous emulation of
tual history of the nineteenth and twenti- “the pious predecessors” in every sphere of
eth centuries feature the famous reformist life — is very much a 20th-century construct,
thinkers Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897) even if it encompasses very old theological
and Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905) as ideas. In his book, the author shows that both
proponents of a movement called Salafism. “modernist Salafism” and its “purist” equiv-
This is not surprising: much of the literature alent were constructed alongside each other
on modernist Islamic thinking claims that and that Salafism increasingly took on a
both men founded or propagated a reform- “purist” character as it developed throughout
ist movement they called Salafism that fo- the twentieth century. This development was
cussed on reverting to the supposed purity strongly affected by the desire on the part
of “the pious predecessors” (al-salaf al-sa- of some Salafi thinkers, faced with Western
lih) — a term often used for the first gen- colonialism, to engage in “strengthening and
erations of Muslims — in order to rebuild uniting Muslims of different regions and cul-
Islam, as it were, and make it compatible tural backgrounds under a common standard
with the demands of the modern age. The of Islamic purity” (p. 24).
book under review by Henri Lauzière, an as- Salafis’ balancing act between an in-
sistant professor of history at Northwestern creasing (but potentially divisive) tendency
University, sets out to debunk this theory. towards doctrinal purity on the one hand and
To the general public, the term “Salaf- the wish to remain united in the confronta-
ism” has become associated with a trend in tion with the West on the other proved dif-
Sunni Islam whose adherents also lay claim ficult, but not impossible. Lauzière notes that
to emulating “the pious predecessors,” but Salafis clearly toned down their desire for pu-
who do so for reasons of “purification,” rity in certain areas, taking a more ecumeni-
not “modernization,” and whose lifestyles, cal approach towards other Muslims in order
Qur’anic exegesis, and general views are not to create division while under foreign co-
therefore often seen as strict and rigid. It lonial rule. This way, nationalism and Salaf-
is precisely the conceptual relationship be- ism went hand in hand, at least to a certain
tween these two trends — “modernist Salaf- extent. With the demise of colonialism, how-
ism” and “purist Salafism,” as Lauzière calls ever, the need for unity in the confrontation
them — that forms the heart of this book. of a shared Western enemy was lost, thereby
More specifically, Lauzière’s goal is “to creating space for Salafis to emphasize their
trace the making of Salafism as a concept “purist” tendencies. Lauzière illustrates this
in both its modernist and its purist versions development towards an increasingly “pur-
to explain how the latter supplanted the ist” interpretation of Salafism during the sec-
former” (p. 19). In his analysis, he shows ond half of the 20th century by analysing the
convincingly that “modernist Salafism” did life of the Moroccan Salafi scholar Muham-
exist, but that a movement whose adherents mad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894–1987).
labelled their trend “Salafism” did not come This publication is a major contribution
into existence until years after al-Afghani to our knowledge of the concept of Salaf-
and ‘Abduh had died. ism, and Lauzière should be commended
Lauzière’s book holds that until well into for critically and meticulously focussing
the 20th century, the term “Salafi” was only on this term itself, precisely because of
used to refer to certain theological views es- the confusion surrounding it. The author
poused by men such as Taqi al-Din Ahmad produces a picture of twentieth century re-
Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328). The author ac- form among North African and, to a lesser
510 ✭ MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL
extent, Middle Eastern thinkers that is not
only highly readable but that also provides
the reader with a great deal of new informa-
tion. That this book successfully challenges
ideas on the early development of modernist
thinking by al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, which
seem to have been the academic consensus
for decades, makes it all the more important.
Still, some readers may struggle with
Lauzière’s focus on the concept of Salafism
and the various ways he deals with it. Al-
though the book is written very well, Lauz-
ière’s juggling with different types of Salaf-
ism, which is clearly unavoidable in a book
like this, may be off-putting to some. This is
underlined by the author’s implicit assump-
tion that readers are at least somewhat famil-
iar with many of the terms he uses. A phrase
like “triple repudiation (talaq)” (p. 55) is left
entirely unexplained, for example. More im-
portant for scholars, perhaps, is the fact that
Lauzière’s argument that the end of colonial-
ism caused many Salafis to double down on
their “purist” tendencies and thereby helped
develop Salafism into what it is today may
be solid with regard to Hilali, but his sugges-
tion that this also held true for other Salafis
(p. 169) appears less convincing. To be sure,
Lauzière offers a long list of Salafi scholars
who moved to Saudi Arabia, a haven for
“purist” Salafis, but they did so for different
reasons, and the end of colonialism may not
always have had anything to do with this, as
the author seems to acknowledge (pp. 195-
196). More research is therefore needed to
find out whether the “end-of-colonialism”
argument Lauzière gives for Salafism’s turn-
ing increasingly “purist” is as widely appli-
cable as he suggests.
Yet these remarks are relatively minor
points of criticism about what is clearly a
great book. While readers looking for a
publication on the history and ideology of
the type of Salafism currently in the news
so much should look elsewhere, for scholars
of both the “modernist” and “purist” types
of Salafism — let alone academics teaching
courses on modern Islamic intellectual his-
tory — this is a must read.
Joas Wagemakers is an Assistant Professor
of Islamic and Arabic Studies at Utrecht
University.
