Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement

Front Cover
Roel Meijer
Columbia University Press, 2011 M02 10 - 400 pages
"Salafism" and "jihadi-Salafism" have become significant doctrinal trends in contemporary Islamic thought, yet the West largely fails to offer a sophisticated and discerning definition of these movements.

The contributors to Global Salafism carefully outline both the differences among Salafist schools and the broader currents of Islamic thought constituting this trend. Essays examine the regional manifestations of the phenomenon and its shared essential doctrines. Their analyses highlight Salafism's inherent ambivalence and complexities, or the "out-antiquing the antique" that has brought Islamic thought into the modern age while simultaneously maintaining its relationship with an older, purer authenticity. Emphasizing the subtle, local and global aspirations within the "Salafist method," Global Salafism investigates the movement like no other study currently available.

About the author (2011)

Roel Meijer is an Arabist and senior lecturer in the history of the Middle East at Radboud University, Netherlands. He also heads a team at Amsterdam's International Institute for Social History that is building an archive on social movements in the Middle East and Islamist publications on the Internet. His major works include Alienation or Integration of Arab Youth: Between Family, State, and the Street; Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Authenticity in the Middle East; and The Quest for Modernity: Secular Liberal and Left-Wing Political Thought in Egypt, 1945-58.

Bibliographic information