Research output
Complete citation
Poljarevic, Emin. Review of Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, edited by Roel Meijer. American Journal of Islam and Society 31, no. 3 (2014): 126–129. https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v31i3.1059.
Status
Published (2014)
Publication type
Scholarly book review
Overview
This review examines Roel Meijer’s influential edited volume on Salafism as a diverse global religious movement. The collection seeks both to map the movement’s doctrinal and organisational variety and to move its study beyond the security-centred frameworks that became dominant after 2001. The review highlights distinctions among quietist, politically engaged, and violent Salafi currents while stressing that these categories describe contested methods of interpreting scripture, authority, identity, and communal reform. It considers how effectively the volume connects shared theological orientations to sharply different political practices across local contexts. The review’s contribution is to present Salafism neither as a single ideology nor as a synonym for militancy, but as a heterogeneous field whose internal tensions require theological, sociological, and political analysis.
Research question or central concern
How successfully does the volume explain the relationship between shared Salafi doctrinal orientations and the movement’s diverse political and social expressions?
Main argument, approach, and contribution
The review assesses the volume’s comparative typology and its effort to reclaim Salafism from reductive security studies. Its contribution is to foreground internal diversity while connecting theology, interpretive method, activism, identity, and political practice.
Keywords
Salafism; global Islam; religious movements; scripturalism; activism; political participation; security studies; religious authority
Emin Poljarević 