(Hello again)

To understand that we have to grasp the context of Salafism both in when it began, the era of its first revival and the era of its modern revival. As well as that understand why it had to be ‘revived’ at all (to explain away your marvel at its failure to stick).

Because of that, and because it covers such a large expanse of time, and, by necessity, has to deal with some fine points of Muslim jurisprudence, what follows is merely a brutal summery, as the true answer would require perhaps several books.

The format of the sub is to provide scholarly answers to questions, but given the limitations of time and forum, I hope you will accept this broad general explanation for what it is; a starting point to hopefully encourage you to dive into the issue deeper.

To understand Salafism one must understand the unique set of circumstances that gave birth to it. Salafist thought, as you know, was born of a crisis. The brutal onslaught of the Mongols had utterly usurped the Muslim world. They had inflicted a series of horrendous military defeats upon Islam, but the defeats did more than just destroy armies and cities.

It shook the faith.

The idea that Allah did indeed bless the umma was as self-evident to contemporaries as the reality of the size, scale and might of the nations of Islam. While division, civil strife and bloodshed did exist previous to the Mongol’s, one can see that from a contemporary perspective it was still always Muslim’s impacting upon Muslim’s.

The brief intrusion by the Western European’s during the Crusader era had after all made no lasting impact. The status quo geopolitically and theologically has not been usurped.

And then along comes Chengez and his grandson Hulagu and they destroy cities and infrastructures; they burn documents, they erase history. It was, in the words of the historian Ibn al-Athir, “a tremendous disaster”. Some even speculated that Allah had abandoned Islam.

In amidst the post-crisis reckoning along comes the response of Ibn Taymiyah, the Syrian jurist, who had fled Harran in the face of Hulagu’s forces with literally nothing but his family. We can only imagine how traumatised he had been as a child as he had become part of the flotsam and jetsam of refugees caused by the horror the Mongols inflicted. We get some idea of this trauma from his later writings.

Ibn Taymiyah’s ideas work around three central themes:

-There was no fault in Islam, or in its revelations, but Muslims has ceased to practice true Islam and so Allah had removed his blessing from them; to return to tradition of winning, one had to purge all modern ideas and interpretations and innovations

-Second that jihad meant not just struggle inwardly, nor defend your homeland; to the traumatised war refugee overcoming an intense feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, jihad literally meant everyone strap on your sword and actively fight to expand the lands of Islam. (This was seen in his most famous fatwa issued in 1303 against the Mongol invasion of Ghazan Khan).

-Third, he THEN decides to expand the target list for who is worthy of Jihad. It’s not just pagans like Mongols. Or the likes of Christians etc. No, by now the Mongol’s had began converting. He tied this to his first part. He went beyond any Hanballi jurists before and demanded heretics, apostates and schismatics (aka anyone who had innovated a single thing) also appear in the list of those to condemn, extolling the virtues of al-salaf al-salihin (the pious originals) to grant him legitimacy.

Salfism from the start then was an idea who was caused by external factors to Islam but who said the cure was to be found internally. In crude terms ‘we can defeat the ‘other’ if folks stop backsliding’.

Salafist thought when it first emerged was, because of this, somewhat unpopular and didn’t gain much support (proof of this? His funeral saw a massive outpouring of grief, and respect, which shows he was much revered and yet it was interesting that for a man who had spent his entire life as a Jurist demanding the end of veneration of tombs, his own tomb immediately becomes a place of veneration- suggesting the man’s piety was revered but his beliefs were utterly ignored).

Why was his beliefs unpopular? Mostly because of Ibn Taymiyah’s willingness to judge everyone around him and pour scorn on other Muslims. Which is why he ended up dying in jail. His was one of many ideas and responses to the Mongol’s that emerged and like many, they disappear into the sands of time. Why did the ideas NOT take root?

In the simplest way to explain it? Islam recovered.

They converted the Mongols in large numbers; and Salafists could not compete with the gentler, more spiritual reaction to the Mongol conquests, Sufism. As time passed the sense of crisis and trauma receded and with it the sense of hopelessness and despondency.

Ibn Taymiyah’s words were born from this sense of defeat, and helplessness. This meant that they found fallow ground within Islam for the next few hundred years.

Until around the 19th century. Continued below