The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century.

• Author: Chenganakkattil, Muhamed Riyaz
• Position: Book review

The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century By Henri Lauziere New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 317 pages, $55.00, ISBN: 9780231175500

The Making of Salafism is an extensively researched book on the concept of Salafism, about which a plethora of ambiguities prevail among historians of Islamic intellectual history. Henri Lauziere traces the genealogy of the term and concept of 'Salafism.' His well-considered endeavour for conceptualizing Salafism departs from the methodologies of other historians who have misunderstood the term and thus misrepresented the history of Salafism. Lauziere, throughout the book, shows the complexities of defining Salafism, which has gotten a different semantical thrust in different temporal and spatial contexts. For him, grappling with the question, 'what is Salafism?' has been the contentious part of the project of defining the term, which cannot alone resolve the deep-seated confusion surrounding the meaning and historical origins of this concept.

Lauziere's project in this book is not to give the proper definition or even attempt to comprehensively define the term. His project here is to untangle the ambiguities and confusions that have emerged across space and time. He offers a critique of the existing trend among the scholars who uncritically take up the concept for further analysis without giving much heed to the mistakes inherent in the concept, and thus become trapped in the web of ambiguities that surround it. According to Lauziere, confusion over the term Salafism has created a number of mistaken and false narratives in the history of the development of Islamic thought and reform.

Lauziere's aim is to go back to the primary sources which have been neglected; he argues that study of the concept of Salafism has until now been based on secondary sources, and that this problem has to be confronted by proposing new methodologies for the concept. This brings him to a "methodological reversal" of the primary sources to find out the different historical and intellectual engagements with the term. As he says in the Introduction, "I examine the historical process by which various intellectuals came to shape and defend the concept of Salafism in ways that we now take for granted" (p. 3).

Lauziere's task of reconceptualizing the term 'Salafism' involves two methods: deconstructive and constructive; the former involves a rejection of the presumptions and pre-conceived notions regarding...