“Just Admit it Man, You’re a Spy!”
Fieldwork Explorations into the Notion of Salafi “Oppositionality”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.37640Keywords:
Salafism, ethnography, oppositionality, Egypt, da‘wa, al-wala’ wa’l-bara’, maslahaAbstract
This article addresses two related problems in the current ethnographic study of Salafism. First, it draws attention to the lack of positionality exhibited by many commentators on Salafism; second, and more crucially, it highlights the reluctance of scholars to engage with what is here labelled Salafi "oppositionality". By oppositionality, I refer to a set of attitudes (non-compliance, defiance, hatred) which are formally prescribed to, and informally generated by, Salafis in their dealings with non-Muslims and very often with lapsed and/or errant Muslims. Through two case studies in pre-Arab Spring Cairo, I explore the workings of Salafi oppositionality in practice. By so doing, I highlight the often fragile and ephemeral nature of relationships that can be formed between a Western-trained ethnographer and his/her Salafi respondents, and demonstrate the ways in which instances of opposition are mutually constituted. Both the researcher and the Salafi, I argue, present each other with a dilemma. In my experience, Salafis have no problem identifying the essence of this dilemma; it is time for Western ethnographers to exhibit a similar degree of transparency.
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References
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Farquhar, Michael 2017 Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education, and the Wahhabi Mission. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9780804798358.001.0001
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----- 2011 New Media and Islamism in the Arab Winter: A Case Study of Huda TV in Pre-revolutionary Egypt. Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research 4(2-3): 237–52.
Mahmood, Saba 2005 The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Meijer, Roel (ed.) 2009a Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement. London: C. Hurst & Co.
----- 2009b Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong. In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by R. Meijer, 189–200. London: C. Hurst & Co.
Olsson, Suzanne 2016 Contemporary Purity Salafism: A Swedish Case Study. New York: Equinox.
Østebø, Terje 2012 Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.
Pall, Zoltan 2013 Lebanese Salafis between the Gulf and Europe: Development, Fractionalization and Transnational Networks of Salafism in Lebanon. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
----- 2018 Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parvez, Z. Fareen 2016 Prayer and Pedagogy: Redefining Education among Salafist Muslim Women in France. Journal of Religious and Political Practice 2(1): 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2016.1085245
Poljarevic, Emin 2016 The Power of Elective Affinities in Contemporary Salafism. The Muslim World 106(3): 474–500. https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12159
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Said, Behnam T., and Hazim Fouad (eds) 2014 Salafismus, Auf der Suche Nach dem Wahre. Freiburg: Herder.
Salomon, Noah 2017 For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400884292
Salzman, Philip Carl 2002 On Reflexivity. American Anthropologist 104(3): 805–13.
Selim, Hebatullah Nazy Sayed 2016 Religionizing Politics, Salafis and Social Chance in Egypt. PhD diss. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
Shavit, Uriya 2014 Can Muslims Befriend Non-Muslims? Debating al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ (Loyalty and Disavowal) in Theory and Practice. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 25(1): 67–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2013.851329
Thurston, Andrew 2016 Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316661987
Vidino, Lorenzo 2013 Hisba in Europe? Assessing a Murky Phenomenon. European Foundation for Democracy. Online: http://europeandemocracy.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Hisba_in_Europe1.pdf (accessed October 20, 2018).
Wagemakers, Joas 2009 The Transformation of a Radical Concept: Al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ in the Ideology of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer, 81–106. London: C. Hurst & Co.
----- 2012 The Enduring Legacy of the Second Saudi State, Quietist and Radical Wahhabi Contestations of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44: 93–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743811001267
----- 2016a Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316681534
----- 2016b Salafism. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.255
Wiktorowicz, Quintan 2000 The Management of Islamic Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan. New York: State University of New York Press. https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100500497004
----- 2006 Anatomy of the Salafi Movement. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29(3): 207–39.
Worth, Robert F. 2009 Credentials Challenged: Radical Quotes West Point. New York Times, 29 April.
Wright, Robin 2012 Don’t Fear all Islamists, Fear the Salafis. New York Times, 19 August.
Zayd, Abu Bakr 2004 Hajr al-mubtadi‘. Cairo: Maktabat al-Sana.
Bangstad, Sindre 2009 Contesting Secularism(s): Secularism and Islam in the Work of Talal Assad. Anthropological Theory 14(1): 110–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499609105477
Baylocq, Cedric, and Akila Drici Bechikh 2012 The Salafi and the Others: An Ethnography of Intracommunal Relations in French Islam. In Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices, edited by B. Dupret and T. Pierret, 105–114. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Bonnefoy, Laurent 2011 Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and Religious Identity. London: Hurst & Co.
Burns, Emily 2015 Thanks, but No Thanks: Ethnographic Fieldwork and the Experience of Rejection from a New Religious Movement. Fieldwork in Religion 10(2): 190–208. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v10i2.27236
Duderija, Adis 2014 Neo-traditional Salafis in the West: Agents of (Self)-Exclusion. In Muslims in the West and Social Exclusion, edited by S. Yasmeen and N. Markovi?, 125–41. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Falcone, Jessica Marie 2010 “I spy…” The (Im)possibilities of Ethical Participant Observation with Antagonists, Religious Extremists, and Other Tough Nuts. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 18: 243–82.
Farquhar, Michael 2017 Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education, and the Wahhabi Mission. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9780804798358.001.0001
Gauvain, Richard 2013 Salafi Ritual Purity. New York: Routledge.
----- 2015 Egyptian Sufism under the Hammer: A Preliminary Investigation into the Anti-Sufi Polemics of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Wakil (1913–70). In Sufis and Salafis in the Contemporary Age, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon, 33–57. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press.
----- 2019 Nothing has Changed/Everything has Changed: Salafi Da‘wa in Egypt from Rashid Rida to “The Arab Spring”. In Culture of Da‘wa: Preaching Islam in the Modern World (forthcoming), edited by Itzchak Weismann and Jamal A. Badawi. Utah: Utah University Press.
Gerges, Fawaz 2005 The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511512049
Gilliat-Ray, Sophie 2005 Closed Worlds: (Not) Accessing Deobandi Dar Ul-Uloom in Britain. Fieldwork in Religion 1(1): 7–33.
Hage, Ghassan 2010 Hating Israel in the Field: On Ethnography and Political Emotions. In Emotions in the Field, edited by James Davies and Dimitrina Spencer, 129–54. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Hassan, Muhammad 2006 Khawatir ‘ala tariq al-da‘wa. Mansura: Maktabat al-Fiyad li’l-Tijara wa’l-Tawzi‘.
Haykel, Bernard 2009 On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action. In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer, 33–57. London: C. Hurst & Co.
Hegghammer, Thomas 2010 Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA515098
Inge, Anabel 2016 The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman: Paths to Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190611675.001.0001
Kaag, Mayke 2008 Transnational Islamic NGOs in Chad: Islamic Solidarity in the Age of Neoliberalism. Africa Today 54: 3–18. https://doi.org/10.2979/AFT.2008.54.3.2
Koning, Martijn de, Edien Bartels and Danielle Koning 2011 Claiming the Researcher’s Identity: Anthropological Research and Politicized Religion. Fieldwork in Religion 6(2): 168–86.
----- 2014 How Should I Live as a True Muslim? Regimes of Living among Dutch Muslims in the Salafi Movement. Etnofoor, The Netherlands Now 25(2): 53–72.
Lacroix, Stephane 2011 Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia. London: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061071
Maguire, Thomas E. R. 2009 A Light in Every Home: Huda TV’s Articulation of Orthodox Sunni Islam in the Global Mediascape. PhD diss. Austin, TX: University of Texas.
----- 2011 New Media and Islamism in the Arab Winter: A Case Study of Huda TV in Pre-revolutionary Egypt. Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research 4(2-3): 237–52.
Mahmood, Saba 2005 The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Marcus, George E., and Dick Cushman 1982 Ethnographies as Texts. Annual Review of Anthropology 11 (1982): 25–69. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.11.100182.000325
Mårtensson, Ulrika 2014 Harakî Salafism in Norway: “The Saved Sect” Hugs the Infidels. Tidsskrift for islamforskning 8(1): 190–222.
Meijer, Roel (ed.) 2009a Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement. London: C. Hurst & Co.
----- 2009b Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong. In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by R. Meijer, 189–200. London: C. Hurst & Co.
Olsson, Suzanne 2016 Contemporary Purity Salafism: A Swedish Case Study. New York: Equinox.
Østebø, Terje 2012 Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.
Pall, Zoltan 2013 Lebanese Salafis between the Gulf and Europe: Development, Fractionalization and Transnational Networks of Salafism in Lebanon. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
----- 2018 Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parvez, Z. Fareen 2016 Prayer and Pedagogy: Redefining Education among Salafist Muslim Women in France. Journal of Religious and Political Practice 2(1): 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2016.1085245
Poljarevic, Emin 2016 The Power of Elective Affinities in Contemporary Salafism. The Muslim World 106(3): 474–500. https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12159
Rabil, Robert 2014 From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Said, Behnam T., and Hazim Fouad (eds) 2014 Salafismus, Auf der Suche Nach dem Wahre. Freiburg: Herder.
Salomon, Noah 2017 For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400884292
Salzman, Philip Carl 2002 On Reflexivity. American Anthropologist 104(3): 805–13.
Selim, Hebatullah Nazy Sayed 2016 Religionizing Politics, Salafis and Social Chance in Egypt. PhD diss. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
Shavit, Uriya 2014 Can Muslims Befriend Non-Muslims? Debating al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ (Loyalty and Disavowal) in Theory and Practice. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 25(1): 67–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2013.851329
Thurston, Andrew 2016 Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316661987
Vidino, Lorenzo 2013 Hisba in Europe? Assessing a Murky Phenomenon. European Foundation for Democracy. Online: http://europeandemocracy.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Hisba_in_Europe1.pdf (accessed October 20, 2018).
Wagemakers, Joas 2009 The Transformation of a Radical Concept: Al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ in the Ideology of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. In Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer, 81–106. London: C. Hurst & Co.
----- 2012 The Enduring Legacy of the Second Saudi State, Quietist and Radical Wahhabi Contestations of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44: 93–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743811001267
----- 2016a Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316681534
----- 2016b Salafism. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.255
Wiktorowicz, Quintan 2000 The Management of Islamic Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan. New York: State University of New York Press. https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100500497004
----- 2006 Anatomy of the Salafi Movement. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29(3): 207–39.
Worth, Robert F. 2009 Credentials Challenged: Radical Quotes West Point. New York Times, 29 April.
Wright, Robin 2012 Don’t Fear all Islamists, Fear the Salafis. New York Times, 19 August.
Zayd, Abu Bakr 2004 Hajr al-mubtadi‘. Cairo: Maktabat al-Sana.
Published
2018-12-20
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Gauvain, R. (2018). “Just Admit it Man, You’re a Spy!” : Fieldwork Explorations into the Notion of Salafi “Oppositionality”. Fieldwork in Religion, 13(2), 203-230. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.37640
