Few scholars predicted that the Islamists who reluctantly joined the first sparks of the so-called Arab Spring would ultimately reap some of its political benefits. Even fewer anticipated that the 2011 revolutionary wave would trigger an irresistible process of formal politicization of Salafism. Yet that is precisely what happened. This outcome is paradoxical on multiple levels. Except for a minority of jihadists, the overwhelming majority of Salafi groups have long rejected political activism, democracy, and institutional politics while remaining loyal to ruling regimes. Building on the emerging scholarly consensus around this remarkable post–Arab Spring transformation, Frederic Wehrey’s and Anouar Boukhars’s Salafism in the Maghreb: Politics, Piety, and Militancy surveys the rise of Salafi groups as important political forces in five North African countries: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, and Tunisia.
However, the book does not posit a unified regional Salafi movement. In fact, Wehrey and Boukhars argue exactly the opposite. Their central argument is that, contrary to received wisdom, local political contexts are instrumental in shaping the history, political makeup, and behavior of Salafi groups. “Salafism as a lived reality is determined by local dynamics,” they write (p. 17). Drawing on a vast secondary literature complemented by field visits, Salafism in the Maghreb is a well-researched assessment of the Salafi landscape in the Greater Maghreb (al-Maghrib al-Kabīr), a geographical unit seldom covered in a single volume in the otherwise massive literature on political Islam.
What Wehrey and Boukhars believe is missing from the scholarship on Salafism is a special focus on the “political practice at the hands of political parties, activists, dissidents” (p. 3). That might be a bit of an overstatement, because a growing body of scholarship, which the authors themselves duly reference, is focusing on these recent changes. Challenging the view that this conservative and literalist Islamic current is a foreign import, the authors contend that Salafism in the Maghreb is in fact “indigenous, complex, and dynamic” (p. 3). Furthermore, “the Maghreb has emerged as an arena for some of the most important debates within contemporary Salafism” (p. 4). Such “deliberations,” we are told, are not simply theological or religious but also involve increasingly sophisticated political discussions of the nature of the state, the use of violence, and related themes.
Chapter 1 summarizes the ideological nuances of Salafi currents and their transformations over time. The authors propose a reappraisal of Quintan Wiktorowicz’s influential three-legged classification of Salafists into “jihadis,” “quietists,” and “politicos.” Although they readily adopt this much-discussed typology, their findings show how such categories have become even more fluid and porous in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
Throughout the book, the authors unveil a historical pattern across their five cases: as a fringe religious strand of Sunni Islam, Salafism has a long precolonial history in the region where it evolved in the shadow of the much more popular and dominant Sufi brotherhoods. Salafi scholars and ulama (religious scholars) played a central role in fighting colonialism. However, in the postcolonial period, they have mostly kept their distance from politics in the name of political stability. With the rise and defeat of Arab nationalism and the end of the Cold War, Saudi Arabia has increasingly used its immense financial and symbolic resources to spread its version of Salafism (Wahhabism), including in the Maghreb. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, jihadi currents emerged across the Arab world. Most Salafis were neither jihadis nor politicians but were staunch supporters of ruling autocratic regimes, but this changed radically after the Arab Spring. The next five chapters document how this transformation played out in every one of the countries under consideration.
Chapter 2 focuses on Mauritania. Although Wehrey and Boukhars should be commended for including this little-known country, they mostly draw here on other scholars’ findings and materials, including this reviewer’s work, which is abundantly referenced. More importantly, the chapter is not a study of Salafism per se, but rather a reconstruction of state–Islam relations with a special focus on the recent history of jihadism. Although Salafi Mauritanians have a marked presence as respected Islamic scholars in global Wahhabi and jihadi circles, Salafism emerged in the national public sphere only in the wake of the terror campaign that the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (known by the French acronym GSPC) and later al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) waged there between 2005 and 2011. Mauritania ultimately suppressed jihadi activism using a successful combination of conventional counterterrorism policies and formal deradicalization of AQIM detainees. Local Salafi scholars helped with the latter process, gaining the trust of the authorities. However, their modest size and lack of resources will likely prevent them from making any political breakthrough in the foreseeable future.
Chapter 3 shows how the Moroccan state permitted Salafism’s growth in the 1970s to counter other opposition groups. However, the 2003 Casablanca bombings altered the state’s decades-old relationship with the Salafis, leading to a crackdown on Salafi-jihadist groups. Ever since, the Royal Palace has shifted its response over time from marginalizing Salafis to integrating them in an attempt to keep its Islamist opposition divided. The regime has been able to maintain this approach even after it skillfully averted the impact of the Arab Spring. Mass protests in 2011 challenged Salafis’ abstinence from activism and pushed them toward political action to defend their religious interests, mainly in maintaining their Qur’anic schools and mosque-preaching networks. Unlike their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, the traditional leadership of Morocco’s Salafis has remained uninterested in party politics. However, they continue to court the Royal Palace while striking a limited alliance with the Party for Justice and Democracy (PJD), Morocco’s leading Islamist and ruling party. Renewed state pressure caused the Salafis to split, with the majority of their leaders moving closer to the Royal Palace and a minority of cadres being tempted to join the PJD and al-Istiqlal party.
Chapter 4 explores how, given its role in the fight against colonial rule, Salafism became part and parcel of the nationalist narrative, which is a key feature of Algerian politics. Salafis have increased their influence by supporting the state since the civil war of the 1990s and throughout the 2011 Arab Spring protests, thereby providing an alternative to Islamist and Salafi-jihadi currents alike. Algerian Salafism is split between an apolitical majority and an aggressive reformist minority, which is causing increasing discontent within an Algerian society already divided along linguistic, socioeconomic, and cultural lines. The failure of both mainstream political Islam (or rather its systematic co-optation by the regime) and Salafi-jihadism in Algeria allowed a grassroots quietist Salafi movement to take control of mosques and preaching circuits, filling the religious and political void left by both state institutions and moderate Islamist parties.
Chapter 5 describes how the Bourguiba regime hijacked the Salafi project and, later on, how Ben Ali’s repression of Salafi currents empowered Salafi-jihadi recruitment networks throughout the early 2000s. Ben Ali’s fall in 2011 enabled more Salafis to quickly emerge as a social and religious force in the first days of Tunisia’s democratic transition. The 2011 formation of Ansar al Sharia reflected the oversized influence of jihadi groups. The group paid lip service to democracy but pursued violence, leaving the government no choice but to dismantle it. Today, while jihadis have gone underground after several deadly attacks, the Salafi Reform Front Party and other smaller comparable parties seem to have embraced pluralistic democracy while still espousing the Salafist goal of an Islamic state.
Chapter 6 details how the “Madkhalis Salafi,” a quietist current following a famous Saudi cleric, has emerged as a powerful force in Libya. Salafis in general benefited greatly from their sustained relationship with the previous regime, especially in the last months of Qaddafi’s long tenure. After the revolution, the same “quietists,” who had long eschewed political activity and advocated support of the sitting ruler, formed police forces and militias, playing a useful counterterrorism role. These armed groups later became ubiquitous, infiltrating both the “legitimate” government in Tripoli and a number of competing rebel groups, including General Haftar’s ambitious “army.” Libyan Madkhalis today inspire fear, particularly for their antidemocratic agenda and record of violence. While continuing to threaten liberal activists, and mainstream Islamists, Madkhalis have become even stronger in the context of the civil war.
The book concludes that Salafis have become autonomous political forces in the majority of concerned countries. As they were thrown into the political melee, the doctrinal lines between Salafis and other competing groups became blurred in the post–Arab Spring era.
Despite their obvious passion for detailed accounts and analysis, Wehrey and Boukhars left a few stones unturned. First, they rightly show how after moderate Islamists went mainstream, Salafis of all hues stepped in to champion the popular demands for more Islamic politics and fill the void of religious and social conservatism. Yet, the authors do not probe further whether the politicization of quietists and of their interest in party politics could potentially have a moderating effect. Second, for a book seeking to document the politicization of Salafism, its focus on elite politics and major figures is only fitting. It comes, however, at the cost of a more complete picture of the spread of Salafism in Maghrebi societies. Grassroots diffusion of Salafism is mentioned but not systematically documented. Third, some readers might take issue with the causal connection between “social dislocation, poverty” and “conversion” to Salafism that the authors take for granted without addressing head-on. The explanation of Salafism as an expression of frustration and marginalization does not account for other key factors such as history and religion. Finally, although its core argument is neither entirely original nor counterintuitive, Salafism in the Maghreb succeeds nevertheless in conveying a considerable amount of information and insight in concise fashion. The book is indeed a welcome addition to the ever-growing scholarship on Muslim politics.
