Contemporary academics struggle to arrive at a consensus of the terms they use. This complication is exacerbated by the work of sociocultural anthropology which has taught us that many modern conventions are themselves social constructions, finding a place in our vocabulary only after the advent of Orientalist taxonomies. In his book The Making of Salafism, Henri Lauzière follows the use of the term ‘Salafi’ to reassess nineteenth and twentieth century Islamic historiography constructed by both Orientalists and Salafis. He guides us toward a different set of constellations by distilling modern Salafism into two types: modernist and purist. The book elaborates on the tension between modernists and purists, and how purists eventually win following political independence from colonialism.
Lauzière demonstrates that the growing confusion surrounding the term ‘Salafism’ (Arabic salafiyya) was due to historical negligence, over-reliance on secondary sources, and equivocating Salafism with modernism. Historical antagonists and opposing intellectual positions all maintained a false uniformity under the label ‘Salafi’. This problem remains with us today given that salafiyya continues to imply a range of incommensurable positions: progressive modernism, medieval Wahhabism, anthropomorphism, Athari doctrine, quasi legal Hanbalism, anti-Sufi, or simply those who adhere to the teachings of the prolific yet controversial thirteenth century jurist and theologian Ibn Taymiyyah.
Who is to blame for this debacle? According to Lauzière, the first culprits are continental Orientalists for dubiously constructing the term, beginning with Louis Massignon, and second, Salafis who read and came to believe the constructs imposed upon them by Orientalists—such as al-Fasi and Taqi al-Din al-Hilali in Morocco. Lauzière places his intervention in this ironic space between Orientalists and Salafis, arguing for a prescriptive “deconstruction” of historiography while simultaneously offering a “construction” to clarify our use of Salafism. The former shows how historical tools to understand Salafism are unreliable, constructing a mythical Islamic past. The later accepts Salafism as a modern construction that differed from its pre-twentieth century use. Prior to this period, Salafi was used to represent adherence to Hanbali theology. Thus, Salafism in its contemporary form cannot be used to study anything prior to this period. Secondly, Salafism had a political function for achieving independence for indigenous populations from colonial rulers. Reformers like Rashid Rida made alliances with the Saudi-Wahhabi state to unite their people against colonial rule, while also sympathizing for a return to a pure creed free from cultural accretions over time. Finally, after the 1970s, the purist Salafis dominated the landscape due to decolonial efforts leading to political independence.
The book consists of six informative and dense chapters, briefly summarized here. Chapter 1 expands on Louis Massignon's error, the ramifications of labeling this error on reformers like ʿAbduh and Afghani, and the dialectics of al-Hilali's conversion to Salafism from Sufism. Chapter 2 turns to Rashid Rida and al-Hilali's role in mediating their message of a progressive yet “balanced reform” to an uncompromising Saudi-Wahhabism. Chapter 3 outlines purist Salafism and its ascendance during the period of Islamic nationalism. Chapter 4 discusses modernity and the ironic inception of modernist Moroccan Salafism. The juxtaposition of these two chapters is intentional since purist and modernist Salafisms rose together in the 1920s. Chapter 5 offers a persuading account that political independence of Muslims from colonial rule bifurcateted purist Salafis from their modern counterparts. Finally, chapter 6 explains how purist Salafism came to dominate the post 1970s global Salafi landscape.
Lauzière's efforts are ultimately aimed at a critical reinterpretation of Islamic historiography. Concepts like Salafism were complex terms made simple by historians in order to “organize the messiness of history” (3). Such terms would later direct the way scholars would assess primary and secondary sources, distorting and complicating—often with irreconcilable outcomes—the term itself. Lauzière is most critical of three “coping mechanisms” used by Western scholars to make Salafism appear singular. First is the lack of attention to primary sources and how the original authors used salafiyya in distinct ways. Thus, different historical actors operating from distinct perspectives, working towards separate goals across space and time were all erroneously deemed Salafi. Second was to remake and expand this category to include non-Salafi agents. Finally, was the invention of an inaccurate equivocation between modernism and Salafism. While actors like ʿAbduh and Afghani never used the term salafiyya in their writing, and Rida only once, all were placed under this misleading label. Since primary texts were ignored in this process, the secondary literature perpetuated the myth without check. As Lauzière astutely warns, “As long as we allow preconceptions and ready-made paradigms to determine the parameters of our historical investigations, we shall remain prisoners of our own mythologies” (13).
We have come to realize, at least since Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953), that instead of trying to laboriously define our terms, one must examine the use of a word in the context of a sentence to extract its meaning. But what happens when the use of a concept itself becomes too ambiguous for use? Henri Lauzière demonstrates that attempts at defining Salafism through the question “What is Salafism?” offer us little insight into how the label gained popularity, notoriety, and perpetually shifted in the past century. The breadth of complexity, wide use of primary sources, coupled with crisp and non-convoluted writing make this book an enviable intervention in revisionist histories of contemporary Islam. Further, the prescriptive historiographical nature of the book offers hopeful guidelines for aspiring historians and serious scholars in any field. There is little doubt that Lauzière has written the best book we have on Salafism. By providing a comprehensive critical reading of historiographical scholarship spanning late Orientalist and Salafi discourses, The Making of Salafism will impress a wide readership with interdisciplinary interests in history, contemporary Islamic studies, anthropology, religious studies, and political science.
