The Politics of Islamism and Salafism Revisited: A Review Essay

Abstract

This review essay critically assesses Esen Kirdiş’ The Rise of Islamic Political Movements and Parties, Frederic Wehrey and Anouar Boukhars’ Salafism in the Maghreb, and Mohamed-Ali Adraoui’s Salafism Goes Global: From the Gulf to the French Banlieues in light of the post-Islamism hypothesis. In Asef Bayat’s formulation, post-Islamism refers to a shift in discourse among Islamist movements de-emphasising a complete societal Islamisation and centring issues of civil liberties and democracy. These three works complicate this picture through introducing greater varieties of movements within local religio-political fields. Adopting a comparative approach, Kirdiş explores how Islamic movements respond to opportunities and threats to employ strategies of party formation or non-participation in formal politics. Wehrey and Boukhars demonstrate Salafism’s local embeddedness within the Maghreb, which conditions how Salafi actors react to local circumstances to justify different modes of action which transcend strict categorisations of moderation and radicalisation. Finally, Adraoui’s sociological approach to Salafism in France confronts whether French quietist Salafis represent a manifestation of post-Islamism through exhibiting a disillusionment with Islamist politics and the consequent formation of a Salafi counter-hegemonic sphere. Altogether, these studies amount to a more nuanced understanding of the political and apolitical beyond participation in formal politics.