Analysis of different forms of modern Salafism: focusing on the concept of Monotheism of Sovereignty

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

1 student of Beheshti University

2 Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations Shahid Beheshti University

10.48308/piaj.2024.234747.1497

Abstract

Following Salaf Saleh is the motto of many Sunni Islamic groups in the present era. Emphasizing the issues of polytheism and its examples, monotheism and how to achieve it, as well as fighting heresies in Islamic society are considered to be the most important goals of these Salafist groups. However, in practice, there are differences and, as a result, categories in this current of thought. The importance of the topic is that, on the one hand, in the last few decades, there have been many political developments in the region and the Islamic world, and on the other hand, there have been changes in the field of thought, which requires a new typology of these currents. Therefore, the basic question of the article is that "according to the intellectual and political developments in the new Salafism, based on what criteria can an objective and appropriate classification of contemporary Salafism be presented?" The proposed hypothesis is that the four criteria of "time", "belief", "political" and especially "sovereign unity"( Monotheism of Sovereignty) provide an inclusive and appropriate typology of this movement. For this purpose, by referring to the YouTube social network, audio and video data of prominent contemporary Salafist and non-Salafist scholars have been collected. In the following, they have been analyzed using the qualitative content analysis software Max QDA 2020. The results show themselves in the form of a flowchart, according to which currents of contemporary Salafism follow four paths, which are: fundamentalism, reformist pragmatism, revolutionary pragmatism and jihadism.

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