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This book addresses the issue of one of the most visible and debated currents in contemporary radical Islam. It sheds light on the history, the fundamental principles, and the political and religious translations of Salafism and explains current events involving Salafist actors in an objective and dispassionate manner. The author explains with precision the different contemporary Salafist mobilizations by illustrating them with specific cases while shedding light on the main debates related to this mode of understanding of the Muslim religion, such as its potential role in triggering certain forms of violence, the way to compare it to other fundamentalist versions in other religions, or the way to describe, in terms of social sciences, the main concepts and discourses that can be observed in this current of Islam today. Mohamed-Ali Adraoui is Research Fellow and Lecturer in International Relations at Sciences Po Paris, France.

Salafism is a fundamentalist Sunni vision of Islam. Growing in popularity in many countries, it seeks the purification of Islamic culture and religious renewal through a 'de-militantization' of the Islamic corpus. This text examines Salafism in France and looks at how this movement spread from the Gulf to Western countries.

AbstractThis article focuses on contemporary Salafism in the European context and how it speaks to the categories Wiktorowicz put forth in his seminal 2006 article. Specifically, it examines how we can identify, describe, and classify the main forms of Salafist religiosity in the context of Western European countries. Furthermore, by examining the relationship to politics, preaching, and orthodoxy and orthopraxy in several European societies, this analysis contributes to the debate on the typologies of Salafism and proposes new ways of conceiving and distinguishing the forms of attachment to this vision of Islam in the context of countries where this religion is a minority. It also shows that the fundamentalist and radical currents are even more attached to it despite or because of the strong attention they receive from the public authorities and the media.

Si les théoriciens du réformisme islamique au tournant du xx e siècle affirment l'unité de l'islam, ils diffèrent quant aux contours politiques, géographiques et identitaires à donner à un État islamique. Le califat des réformistes montre la perte de légitimité des formes étatiques connues à l'époque, marquées par la colonisation.

This article reports the results of an ethnographic study of migration patterns (al‐Hijra) in French Salafist communities. The study reveals the break that Salafist believers attempt to achieve with their social and cultural environment after they embrace this puritanical, hard‐line form of Islam. For Salafists, migration represents a physical and above all moral exile that begins before converts depart for predominantly Muslim countries. Indeed, the migration process begins gradually as believers seek to distance themselves from 'sources of perversion' in France that Salafists oppose.

AbstractThis article focuses on the long‐term ideological vision of Jews and Israel in radical Islam. By examining, on the one hand, the animosity towards Judeo‐Israelis in the spawning and bolstering of Islamist, Salafist and Jihadist movements, and on the other hand, the sociological composition of Jihadist elites related to the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict, I show the centrality of the Judeophobic discourse in the world of radical Islam as well as the importance of Israel in its reinforcement. By trying to historicize this discourse, as well as political and strategic movements linked with the State of Israel, I also question the nature of the hostility towards Judaism, and more specifically the role of the Israeli issue in the development and evolution of the most radical and violent forms of Muslim identity over nearly a century.

This article sheds light on the way in which activities such as the production and consumption of wealth are conceptualized, interpreted and put into practice within quietist Salafist communities in France. Unlike their jihadi and politicized counterparts, quietist Salafis in lands where Islam is the minority religion are required to emigrate to where Islam is majoritarian. As this article highlights, however, migrating is not necessarily a physical process. What is interesting to underline is that most French Salafists do not perform the Hijra, and favor, for instance, economic strategies allowing them to break with the rest of French society and live in 'isolation' rather than leaving France for good. Although framed as a religious duty, physical migration has been rare among French Salafist communities, whereas other forms of social rupture are emerging. The article explores in detail such economic strategies on the basis of the acceptance of neo-liberal principles allowing for what one can call an internal process of migration/isolation from French society.