Salafi National Politics Between Society & The State

Abstract

Given the distinction between Salafism as a discourse and Salafi movements as the actors that interpret it in real life, it seems counterintuitive that academic discussions often rely on that discourse as an explanation of those movements' role in national politics. There is good reason to avoid overemphasising the influence of Salafism - besides other issues, it cannot explain the record of Lebanon's Shaykh Da'i al-Islam ash-Shahal and Shaykh Salim ar-Rafi'i. As this research shows, those two Salafi shaykhs had inherited the prevailing Najdi or "Wahhabi" Salafi tradition. But their role in Lebanon's national Sunni politics from 2005 to 2014 was easier to understand as a reflection of their local structural context and place relative to the centres of power in it.

This investigation uses documentary evidence to expand on that point by exploring the Najdi Salafi tradition's conceptions of political framing and identity, the shaykhs' shifting political role, and their relationships to authoritarian Sunni national leaders whose power consolidated then nearly collapsed from 2005 to 2014. And by analysing media and academic sources through a framework of resource mobilisation and contentious politics theories it shows that the shaykhs' roles changed as those relationships did, thanks to shifting "demobilisation" patterns of co-optation or repression from above. Despite the apparent inflexibility of their Salafi religious roots they were still subject to Lebanon's authoritarian political realities, and only survived by working within the boundaries that its authoritarian Sunni leaders set.