Salafism as Gramscian informed vanguardism

Contemporary Islam https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-023-00514-z Salafism as Gramscian informed vanguardism Massimo Ramaioli1,2 Accepted: 17 January 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract In this study, I offer a categorization of Salafism based on the concept of vanguardism. Vanguardism suggests how Salafis inhabit the political domain, by posing as the vanguard of a privileged group endowed with a historical mission. Relatedly, I summon the Gramscian concept of “philosophy of praxis.” With this, I intend to reconfigure Wiktorowicz’s classificatory scheme predicated on too stark an opposition between ‘aqīdah (theory) and manhaj (method). The philosophy of praxis accounts for the inherent tension between these two domains. Such tension is manifest in Salafis’ ambiguities, compromises, internal rifts, ideological adjustments, and revisions. Two related Gramscian concepts, historical bloc and modern Prince, bring such considerations more immediately into the political. They highlight, respectively, the political-historical context in which Salafis operate and the political-historical role they play as instances of vanguardism. I then put forth my classificatory scheme in the form of a typology. One axis is represented by the attitude towards the “historical bloc” (pro or anti) and the kind of vanguard posturing that emerges out of it (support, creation, or activation). The other axis is represented by the specific framing of the “Enemy” category on the part of the Salafi vanguard (historical/institutional or essential/identitarian), and the stance they consequently assume towards it (compromise/accommodation or rejection/denunciation). The resulting classification offers six categories (accommodationists, partisans, delayers, agitators, mobilizers, and belligerents). Stressing the fundamental political nature of contemporary Salafism—its vanguardism—they account for its inscription in a specific, modern way of thinking and acting the political. Keywords Salafism · Vanguardism · Philosophy of praxis · Historical bloc · Modern Prince * Massimo Ramaioli 1 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Ifrane, Morocco 2 German Institute for Global Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany 13 Vol.:(0123456789) Contemporary Islam Introduction Salafism is a religious and social trend within contemporary Sunni Islam. The term refers to the paradigm of the “pious ancestors” (as-salaf as-ṣāliḥ, whence Salafism), the early community of Islam, which stands as a template for the just and virtuous Islamic society (Haykel, 2009). In this study, I argue that Salafism represents a form of vanguardism. I do so by revising Wiktorowicz’s seminal contribution (2006) regarding the logic of classification of Salafi groups, suggesting instead a Gramscian inspired approach. Wiktorowicz posited a fundamental binary. On the one hand, Salafism is characterized by a shared set of core ideational principles (‘aqīdah). On the other hand, it varies in its method (manhaj) of relating ‘aqīdah to political and historical circumstances. The Salafi method informs “the prophetic model of putting beliefs into practice” (Wiktorowicz, 2006: 219). Manhaj becomes manifest as a diverse array of practices stemming from contextual interpretations of core principles. All Salafis are Salafis because of the shared ‘aqīdah; and they can be parsed out in different categories because of the different applications of the manhaj. The growing literature on Salafism has since then adopted the fundamental logic of Wiktorowicz’s work and the categories he suggested: purists, politicos and jihadis. The first ones avoid politics and focus on learning and preaching; they are also referred to as “quietists.”1 Politicos engage actively in politics, at times forming parties and other formal institutions, but they reject the use of violence. Jihadis, instead, are convinced that the deployment of Islamic sanctioned violence can and should be an instrument of political action. The events and dynamics that have impacted the Islamic world at large, and the Arab world in particular, over the last decade (Cavatorta & Merone, 2016) have occasioned a reflection on such categories. The Arab uprisings proved pivotal for the trajectory of Salafi movements in the region. Three processes have been of particular significance. First, the opening of institutional politics (however brief) induced many Salafis to take a more direct and active political role. We have witnessed a “politicization” of Salafism2 in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco (Bonnefoy, 2018; Merone et al., 2021; Azaola-Piazza and Hernando de Larramendi, 2021); in Kuwait, Salafism built instead on a longer engagement with institutional politics (Freer, 2016 and 2018). Second, government surveillance of previously “quietist” Salafis (hitherto mostly espousing a-political stances) increased as a consequence (Al-Anani, 2016; Wagemakers, 2016a).3 Third, the 1 This term, as Wagemakers (2020) argues, is not synonymous with purist, and thus may create some conceptual confusion. Purist refers in fact to the approach to religion, in particular the effort, shared nominally by all Salafis, to “cleanse” and “purify” Islamic doctrine and practice. Quietist is instead an eminently political referent, indicating the relation to political (namely state) authority. 2 An influential thesis in this sense is the “ikhwanization” of Salafism (Utvik, 2014), according to which Salafis modify their ideology and attendant behavior in ways not dissimilar from the Muslim Brotherhood. For a critique of this thesis, see Pall (2020). 3 Wagemakers spoke of a “dual effect” of the Arab Spring onto Jordanian Salafism in this sense. Reading Al-Anani and Torelli in the same edited volume (Cavatorta and Merone, 2016), it seems also Egyptian and Tunisian Salafis underwent the same process. 13 Contemporary Islam rise of militant and violent Salafism in countries experiencing the collapse of central state authority (as in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya) has represented the most dramatic development (Bunzel, 2016; Weismann, 2017; Merone, 2020; Blanc & Roy, 2021). The cumulative result, in Roel Meijer’s estimation (2016), has been the increased conceptualization on the part of Salafism of politics as separate domain from the religious, albeit always couched in a religious language. The fact that Salafism has become more consciously and explicitly political lent credibility to Wiktorowicz’s initial intuition: to classify Salafis according to how they behave towards the political. At the same time, his categories confronted two sets of criticism. From an empirical standpoint, these complex politico-historical processes challenged the neat, ideal type parameters of Wiktorowicz’s framework. Second and related, from a purely conceptual standpoint, scholars had already started debating those categories even before the Arab uprisings further problematized them. Confronting Wiktorowicz’s framework to (...truncated)