5

Imaginary Socialization

Imaginary socialization refers to the gap between the perception of an identity that makes no concessions and the leeway for interpretation permitted by authorized clerics. It relates more generally to the part of reciprocal construction between the subject and the object. The manner in which the former constructs, and is constructed by, the latter is the source of a vision of the world and the different positions that derive from it. Imaginary socialization echoes the polysemy of religious concepts but also the different ways of apprehending the social space, with a single one perduring in this socialization in order to render coherent the acts and positions taken by the practicants. In other words, the believer finds on this path what he looks for.¹ Consequently this imaginary socialization allows hatching a “utopian mentality,”² which will frame the process of reifying the space and time on which this construction is based.³

A New Age of Orientalism?

The first domain in which an imaginary vision of religion and of the world unfolds is geography. Those in the Salafist viaticum promote a look at the territories that make them the physical support for a symbolic dichotomy whose foundation is the respect or lack of it for Islamic morality. Everyone defines himself according to his religious essence. This Weltanschauung determines the hierarchical relationship with and immunization against anything that is not Islamic and on which, among other consequences, is based the duty of salutary migration. The territory is therefore perceived through the prism of religious imagination, which splits the world between those who identify with Islam and those who assign no importance to it.

This division has the principal effect of producing a view of the Muslim world imprinted by an Orientalist dimension. This is possible only because the practicants view the world of the exterior as socialized actors in a context that is first European or Western. For this part, we adopt Edward Saïd’s definition of “Orientalism,” which entails a conception of this artistic and intellectual tradition that permits grasping and criticizing its epistemological and moral postulates.⁴

As an intellectual and imaginary construction, the Orient is an object of reification in that it is in outline, content, and specificity the receptacle of a Western regard that thinks of itself as superior and seeks to confine itself within precise anthropological rules. One of the principal consequences of this construction is of a political nature, because this essentialist and particularist vision of the Orient lets the Westerner compare himself favorably with the Oriental. Thus a relationship of superiority is legitimized and comes to justify the European domination of the colonial era.

The Salafis have an Orientalist view of the Muslim world because they develop a discourse about the Orient, an entity to which they above all give a religious consistency. The theme of the “Orient refuge” encapsulates their relationship with this world of Islam as supposedly grounded in an ethical perspective diametrically opposed to what prevails in the West. The religious reference makes of this part of the world a veritable symbolic place of asylum. To cite an example, Saudi Arabia is represented as the most telling illustration of perpetuating the time of the Pious Ancients. A pole of religious stability remaining distant from the intellectual and political evolutions that have touched the rest of the world,⁵ this country is lionized because it symbolizes a constancy lasting centuries. The archaism and anachronistic character that some people paint it with, beginning with certain modernist Muslims, cannot be understood as anything but a critique actually aimed at pristine Islam.

However, the study of Orientalist socialization highlights certain peculiarities of this view, reifying as much the world of the Muslim Orient as the Muslim Oriental. It nevertheless needs to be said that this Orientalism turns most of its historical postulates on their head. The Salafist conception of the Orient is therefore distinct from the tradition born in Europe, which saw a mirror flattering the self when looking at this part of the world.

The Orientalism of the French Salafis: To Begin with, a Western View of the Orient

Presenting the world of Islam like a unidimensional entity corresponds to an attempt at reification of these societies through a grid of culturalist reading. The Oriental is a Muslim. However, the relation to the Orient is not so much linked to a sensory or potent vision as it is to a scientific examination. Its principal attraction is the fact that it shelters the scholars, human vectors for transmission of sacred knowledge without which the human being cannot access the Truth. A land of science, the Muslim Orient first of all distinguishes itself by representations linked to the ʿoulama. These are in effect the most powerful symbols of the singularity of this world. Because they call forth grace on the rest of society by preaching an authentic teaching, they incarnate the spinal column of the Islamic civilization. The Oriental is no longer a body, an impassioned character, or even a human being inclined by nature to a magical reading of the world, but a person who rationalizes his relationship to religion and thus to the world by the scientific intervention of the authorized clerics. By refusing to consider the Muslim religion, it is the Westerner who is revealed as the passionate being. Unified in the Salafist perception, the world of Islam is foremost that of the scholars who are meant to rule over it, making it the form of social organization most antinomic to the West. Rootedness in history being its greatest advantage, the Muslim world thus separates itself from the Western sphere. The various divisions that arise from this furnish the substrate for the Salafist imagination. Cut off forever from the West, the Orient becomes the receptacle for a purely Occidental vision. Reducing the Oriental identity to the Islamic identity, the social rules that predominate in it are perceived as emanations from scholarly opinions. Consequently, more than being a Homo islamicus, the Oriental is seen as a being fortunate to live under legal aspects judged to be more favorable in the land of Islam than in the West. He is thus understood as Homo legalis to the degree that he escapes from a context that looks down on all religious references. As for the Islamized, super-Islamized, or “Koranized” Saudi country, it is valued because all that happens in it is interpreted as emanating from the basic social compact that connects the political power and the religious magistery.

To fully grasp this, it pays to look at this country’s image projected by the Salafist web and, more precisely, the fact that it jumbles together clerics and institutions. The video The Nation of Tawhid, Like It or Not⁶ had more than a thousand hits. It must be understood on at least two levels. It is first of all clearly a defensive message made by a pious contemporary under the pseudonym of frioum. It expresses itself through images and stances tending to exceptionalize the Saudi Kingdom de facto and de visu as the state and social model for Muslims. The nineteen-minute video is essentially a defense of the Saudi state as Islam’s protector, namely of the tawhid, and it is thus an element in the religious debate and competition sought by the practicants. We underline the second part of the title, Like It or Not, which seems to thumb its nose at Muslims who vilify the Saudi state. In making it the incarnation of the defense of divine unicity, the quietist Salafis reify this country, thus confirming a unidimensional—because specifically Islamist—vision of the Orient and of Saudi Arabia especially.

Another interesting thing about this video is how it captures part of the Salafist imagination by projecting the symbols that carry along Saudi society and, beyond it, the Orient. We may note in this regard that the images correspond generally to those conveyed by numerous Western media in reporting on the societies of the Middle East. The video opens with these words written in white against a purple background, after which rapidly scrolls the ritual formula “In the name of God the merciful in essence and excellence”(written in phonetic French):

We hear Saudi Arabia criticized a great deal and it seems to me wise to tell you one thing. . . .

It is a strange fact. . . . Have you already asked yourself to what this stupefying consensus is due. . . ?

The following frames contain extracts of speeches, television broadcasts, and classes taught by imams or selected clips of believers engaging in acts that Salafism disapproves of. For instance, during a phone interview on the news program of the Shiite Sahar TV network, you can hear the journalist Thierry Meyssan evoke the intent of the Saudi state to destroy Hamas during the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. Also, in a clip with an echoing soundtrack played against a galactic background, we hear a Muslim belonging, according to the video’s author, to the Ahbaches (Islamic branch related to Abdullah al-Harari who passed away in 2008) and declaiming that it is time to finish off the Salafis and the sect they represent. Then there is a Shiite imam, calling the Wahhabis a monstrous people, evildoers who must be killed. The journalist Mohamed Sifaoui during the “trial of the cartoons” in 2006 in a Paris court is also presented as an enemy of Saudi Arabia. He answers a journalist while holding up a Saudi flag and accusing that country of also making “an amalgam of Islam with violence because the profession of Muslim faith there is sustained by the sword.” Tariq Ramadan is paraded in a clip of his debate with Abdelwahab Meddeb on the Ce soir ou jamais program, broadcast under the headline “Islam: Is It in Need of Being Cured?,” in which he exposes his opinion “of the country of holy places.” Finally, there is President Nicolas Sarkozy, the only non-Muslim appearing in this video, described as the “CEO of the fifth world power [who] has to duck,” who is inveighed against while images march across the screen of him delivering a speech in Riyad during his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 2008, in which he speaks of “[his] dear friends of Saudi Arabia” and his refusal to see “imposed a sole model of civilization.” At the end of the Sarkozy clip the video segues into a second half. Now comes the moment when the filmmaker slips in the following comment, sounding like a quip aimed at the ensemble of the figures in the first part displaying their hostility or their self-interested allegiance to Saudi Arabia. We note, in passing, that the language echoes a suburban argot as well as an elevated language when things need to be spelled out. Beyond that, we also note the recourse to a metaphorical construction, reflected in talking about the tawhid as if it is an essence that envelops all things, starting with the Saudi environment, where the defense of this principle has been erected into a cardinal institution:

Less relaxed than usual this Sarko . . . What’s he feeling? Well, if it isn’t . . . the presence of the tawhid.

Still not convinced of that which pushes toward so much hate, that of so many people gathered together.

An odd consensus nevertheless? Isn’t it? Listen, over there is where it’s happening.

The video moves on to a call to prayer in the background. Next is a brightly lit scene where a crowd of people are lined up listening to an imam recite verses from the Koran. In these verses, the imam droning out the Koran promises moral victory and divine approval to all those among the believers who have shown patience, righteousness, a spirit of justice, and honesty. The next image is of the Saud family attending this recital. King Abdullah is clearly recognizable, as are many of the princes. One Koranic verse follows another; you can hear an exhortation to patience and wisdom in the face of adversity that the preceding images are meant to depict. Also noteworthy is the mention of a pivotal verse in the quietist Salafi doctrine, number 59 (and the following ones) of the sura The Women, which here seems purposely aimed at the subjects of the Saudi monarch:

O faithful ones! Obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those among you who hold command. Then if you quarrel about anything, send it to Allah and the Messenger, send it to Allah and the Messenger, if you believe in Allah and in the Last Day. That would be much better and a better interpretation.

The rest of the video consists of a dialogue between images in other televised reports and responses mostly written in white on the freeze-framed images. This is how the filmmaker responds to the various points raised in the reporting and debates inserted into the video. What emerges is that Saudi Arabia is not a hypocrite country but one of the tawhid. As proof, non-Muslims are prohibited from entering into the sacred precincts of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Stolen images of the ʿalim Sheikh Ibn Baz delivering a sermon to Muslims on the subject of how they neglect their duty of dying in defense of the religion fade into images of King Faisal (ruled 1964–1975) in discussion with a cleric of his time, one Ibn Houmeyd, a former member of institutions responsible for legal opinions at the highest level of the state. These last images symbolize practically all on their own the image the Saud Kingdom projects to the French Salafis: that of a bicephalous pairing of the scholars of Islam and the holder of legitimate political power, on the understanding that the former legitimize the latter.

Another sequence revolves around a prince paying a visit to Sheikh Ibn ʿOtheimine during his lifetime and seating himself close to him in a room in his modest house. Once again the filmmaker slips in a remark addressing the viewer: “There he is, the prince, seated on the ground. . . . How much time do you spend on the ground? Two, three minutes?” Then, while the now-deceased cleric accompanies the prince, you see him kiss the ʿalim, which, once again, moves the maker of the video to ask ironically, “See who is kissing whom on the forehead? The scholar . . . or the governor?” More glimpses follow of other ʿoulama on good terms with princes and Saudi kings.

The questions put by the filmmaker always make reference to the same attacks launched against the House of Saud and, by proxy, against the “nation of the tawhid”: “These are the people who honor the scholars and not the Egyptian singers that you call apostates?” “Power and religion as one, hand in hand. . . . We, too, have our strong signs.” The images of Sheikh Ibn ʿOtheimine’s “last journey” after his death are still more revealing of the vision of the Orient prized by practicants. The crowd accompanying the cleric’s mortal remains conveys the image of a people unified in suffering at having lost a great “servant of the tawhid.” The exclusively masculine crowd represents, after a fashion, the deserved crowning of a life of authentic preaching: “Where did he die? How many prayed for him? How many still weep today? . . . But how many eat of his flesh?⁷ And you, how many will pray for you?”

Images of the sacred cube of the Kaʾba surrounded by a crowd of believers accompanying the deceased sheikh on his last journey reify an Orientalist vision of this country, understood solely through the prism of religion. The crowd’s behavior, its movements, even more the political dynamics existing at the top of the state have no way to escape being filtered through a purely Islamic analysis. The scholar is the guarantor of order and the explicit circumstances prevailing in the country. Inserted in a passive vision of history, by virtue of which Muslim Orientals do nothing but reproduce gestures and the sayings of the first Muslims, the Salafist representations find in the Saudi example the paragon of authenticity what they are looking for. The video continues in this logic, repelling each attack launched against “its country of the heart” by putting in evidence a report, a Koranic verse, or a video clip aiming to shine a light on the “Saudi reality” as of a country viscerally attached to Islam’s precepts and defender of the integrity and dignity of the faithful throughout the world.

This Orientalism leads to assumed pro-Saudi positions and organizes a symbolic allegiance to a favored state because it is supposedly under the influence of clerics who are unyielding in promoting the dogma. The French Salafi, in solidarity with this country, can be viewed as the guardian of the Saudi throne in the name of a reterritorialization of the religious identity that sees in this society the most excellent country for a purified practice of Islam. This Saudiism induced by the love of scholars equally touches the political power heading the country, just as it can be confirmed with the defense of King Abdullah basking in the aura of the ʿulama. By its moral ascendancy the Saudi state thus is able to control the representations and the feelings of allegiance of most of the practicants the world over. Despite a discourse notably preaching denationalization while the Salafi belongs to an impious society, the imaginary socialization in fact engenders a return of the feeling of belonging to the Orient. Improvising himself as the guardian of legitimacy of Arabia, the French Salafi is the loyal “defender of the throne of Saud.”⁸ In addition to rediscovering the Arab heritage, the Salafist career is equally synonymous with a certain pro-Saudi nationalism. The symbolic centrality of Arabia thus makes space for a true feeling of allegiance that—as shown in this video—can engender a militantism geared to defending that country.⁹

An Orientalism of the Interior, or How to Reify the Orient When You Are from It

The Salafi Orientalist view is also distinguished by the fact that it is a Western look at the world of Islam cast by actors who, for the most part, come from families native to this reconstructed Oriental space. The Salafist vision is not only a Western Orientalism, allowing one to build a knowledge of the Muslim world from the outside and turn it into a homogeneous society, but also an Orientalism by the Oriental for those who never stopped thinking of themselves as Arabs. This view of the Orient, endogenous because of its provenance from believers who resisted the discredit cast on the Muslim world in Western countries, thus manifests itself as a paradox. The positive vision of the Orient proceeds from a form of reification that finds its justification in part in socialization within European society, even while the Salafi refuses to think of himself as belonging to this society. His Orientalism is typically Western in the way it represents the world of Islam as a world apart but also specifically Oriental and thus in a sense endogenous by insisting on constantly valorizing this part of the world. Echoing the necessity of setting up a model of society as an entity of refuge, Salafist Orientalism interprets itself as stemming from a phenomenon of inertia caused by a parental education that insists on nostalgia for the native country.

Salafist socialization, if it opens into a sort of pro-Saudi nationalism, leads the practicants to perpetuate the “paradise lost” syndrome characterizing the psychology of some parents who migrated to France and conceive of a permanent return home as too difficult. The love of Arabia, that country showing a genuine rigor in applying Islam’s norms, is motivated by strictly religious reasons. When it comes to the Maghrebian countries, it is more emotional, since it involves personal and familial history as well as a vision of the Maghrebian man as generous, warm, and simple, in contrast to the European man. The bled is valorized as a society that remained apart from modernity’s bad aspects. While housing construction or increasing access to information technologies are hailed as signs of economic progress, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are regarded as havens of tradition that contrast with the frenzy of Western societies. The fact that the Orient is experienced as an allegory for a world that has not fallen into modernity’s torments, where even poor people have not forgotten the essence of existence, namely by remembering God, must be seen as reconnecting with a deep self whose roots are sunk south of the Mediterranean.

Reverse Orientalism: An Orient Better than the West

The imagined nature of the Oriental makes him superior to the Westerner; therefore Islam serves as a value scale for comparing the two societies. This view of the world of Islam valorizes the countries that make it up, starting with Saudi Arabia. The image conveyed by the country of Holy Places is an illustration of the fact that a Muslim society that applies its precepts transparently is not to be compared with the societies of the West. Perceived as the country of scholars, Arabia is valorized for being continually irrigated by the preaching work of the ʿulama. We see it in the images of order and justice mirrored by the Saudi reference. Orientalized by a Salafist view that Islamizes the Saudi reality, this country becomes a model for the world. Embodying all the West does not want to be, Saudi Arabia illustrates both temperance and strictures. By initiating a globalized preaching whose aim is to socialize all Muslims in a purified framework, this country is undeniably a vector of rupture in numerous cases. However, it is also a country that puts on a show as an agent of moderation on a political level, since it has the same clerics calling for a sociocultural rupture while condemning useless dissent, disorder, and confusion within a society.

If it is a matter of not recognizing any morality in the values that undergird the current social contract in France, there is no question at all of entering into a logic of confrontation or, in a different register, of negotiation. Withdrawal and militant apoliticism alone are justified behaviors. Saudi Arabia’s role thus is ambiguous, because by the intervention of the scholars it is truly a project of sociological rupture that is fostered globally in parallel with a de facto legitimization of all sociopolitical orders. A practice like the hijra must consequently be understood as a way of overcoming this tension almost in a dialectical fashion. Saudi Arabia’s place in the epicenter of the mobilizations and demobilizations of the practicants hence finds itself reinforced. Reflecting an image opposed to the Muslim Orient, the West is the negative counterpart of the Saudi model of society. The Janus-faced aspect of Saudi Arabia, itself echoing the bicephaly of power in that country, plays a role in the impossibility of evoking Salafist Islam in unambiguous terms.

This double dimension of preaching forms the basis of the reverse Orientalism that French Salafis adopt when they pay attention to the Muslim world, especially Saudi Arabia. The images they associate with it in this respect are explicit, as illustrated by the words of Samir. Thirtyish, with a neotraditionalist profile, the son of a Tunisian merchant, Samir distinguishes himself by having a critical view of other Salafis. According to him, a number of his fellows are too inclined to think of themselves as “unique” Muslims. While disapproving of the “deviationism” of other tendencies, he exhibits a certain disdain for his peers who, barely converted, make a point of rejecting other believers. The principles of Salafism may be paradigmatic for him, but that does not justify vanity. On the contrary, in the manner of the ʿulama he admires, many of whom live in “the country of the two sanctuaries,” his religiosity first of all commands a spirit of responsibility. One day he hopes to settle in this country so that he can be inundated by the “sacred science” behind which the “scholars” are the moving force.

AUTHOR:How would you define your practice of religion?

SAMIR:. . . Let’s just say I try to follow my religion . . . in a non-Muslim country

AUTHOR:Which means? Can you elaborate?

SAMIR:Well, without being paranoid, you can easily see . . . The Muslims, they are treated like . . . Anyway, right, and you’ll tell me that’s nothing new. When I became interested in Islam, I read a book. A book of history-geography, published in 1962, as I recall. It talked about Muslims, but you know what it said?

AUTHOR:What was it?

SAMIR:They called them “the Mahometans,” “the Mahometan sect.” See, okay, there, when you don’t even call people by their right name . . . Fine, like I told you, without being paranoid, you can easily see that it doesn’t reflect today. The Muslims, this is my impression, they pose a lot of problems for some people in this country. Okay.

AUTHOR:You just said that you became interested in Islam. What does that mean, that before it wasn’t the case?

SAMIR:No . . . well. [Brief moment of reflection.] Well, I come from a Tunisian background, my father, my mother, my family, all Muslims. Well, all right, one day I started to ask myself questions, I chose my own path, in a sense. I read books, I found it interesting. I put a lot into it, I studied sects, all that. In Islam, there are sects. Now, I didn’t get everything. This division, I didn’t get it . . . when the Prophet preached to a single community.

AUTHOR:That, then, is how you discovered the Salafis?

SAMIR:The. . . ? You mean the ahl sunna wa jamʾa [the people of the Sunna and the consensus]? Me, no, I don’t describe myself as such. I’m Muslim, that’s all. I don’t like labels. I’m French, a Muslim by confession. Good, sure, if you talk to me about Shiites, I’ll tell you I’m Sunni. What is Sunnism? It’s what the Prophet says. I do what he says, I accept it.

AUTHOR:So, as far as you’re concerned, you apply Islam, full stop?

SAMIR:Yes, that’s it, when I see something, I do it. You notice I wear the beard, I’m dressed a certain way. I see there’s a certain something in Islam. I do it.

AUTHOR:For example, talking about the beard: you saw it in Islam, and so you did it?

SAMIR:Yes. There are seventeen hadiths that talk about the beard. So there it is, I have no excuse. I wear the beard they wear in the Sunna. We know that certain beards and mustaches, for example, are not Sunna. One day the Prophet received the ambassadors of Chosroès [emperor of the Sassanid Persians during the era of Muslim revelation], who wore mustaches that were long and covered part of their faces. They had mustaches à la Frédéric Thiriez [president of the Professional Soccer League, who wears a handlebar mustache]. He criticized these people. He turned away from them in disgust. The ambassadors told him, “But our emperor commands it.” And the Prophet said, “As for me, my God commanded me.” There you have it, to answer your question, they talk about a look. Me, in my look, I take after the Prophet.

AUTHOR:And when you were talking about sects in Islam, you wanted to talk about who?

SAMIR:Lots of groups. The ikhwan, for example. The Muslim Brotherhood, who engage in politics. Their aim is to engage in politics, to politicize Islam, while Islam is all. For if there’s a confrontation, conflict follows. In Islam there’s no party, no hizbiyya [partisan spirit].

AUTHOR:So, for you, politics is too little for you?

SAMIR:Listen . . . In fact, I know politics. In the 1980s, I don’t know if you recall, the March of the Beurs,¹⁰ all that. Hey, I knew that, I remember the marches, the demonstrations. Good, I didn’t vote during my youth, and I’ll tell you it’s not for lack of a card. Anyway. I remember that time: Mitterrand (French President from 1981 to 1995), the Socialist Party. Today I know that all of it didn’t do a thing. The rose, as they used to say back then . . . The people who trusted in the 1980s, what did it get them? There was a slogan at the time: “Mitterrand took the rose, he kept the petals and left us the thorns.” [Laughs.] The Beurs, as they said at the time, let themselves be had. Supposedly they were going to change to Giscard (French President from 1974 to 1981), he did nothing for the suburbs. . . . The politics of hope of the left at the time went nowhere. Most of the brothers who were part of the time are in din [religion] today. Why? Because it was a human utopia, not a divine one.

AUTHOR:You mean to say that you were militant as a youth in this type of association? How old were you at the time?

SAMIR:No, well . . . I was young, but during my youth, I was in this delirium. After, there were the Muslim associations, all that. All right, so that’s where you had the UOIF, for instance. It did no good in the end.

AUTHOR:But there are Beurs who quote unquote succeeded. Some are in Sarkozy’s government.

SAMIR:Who do you want to talk about? Rama Yade (former Minister under Sarkozy’s presidency), Fadela Amara (another Minister under Sarkozy’s presidency)? Yeah, it’s clear, they made it. [Ironic chuckle.] Rama Yade, she gave up Islam. Fadela Amara, she, she got going, you can at least say that about her. [Another ironic laugh.] . . . But if that’s not being Sarko’s puppet, what is?

AUTHOR:Did you vote in 2007?

SAMIR:No, I don’t vote. But, honestly, you want to know? If I had to vote, I’d vote for Sarko.

AUTHOR:Oh, really! Why?

SAMIR:Because the other one, she has a thing I’d never accept.

AUTHOR:Ségolène Royal?

SAMIR:Yes, gay marriage. I’d never accept that....

AUTHOR:And, in your view, who defends the true Islam?

SAMIR:There are scholars, there’s science. We know all that’s needed is [to] return to the scholarly texts. I know what they often say. They say that some young people apply what they hear, they dress like I do, they have the beard, but their behaviors, let’s say . . .

AUTHOR:Who do you mean by that?

SAMIR:Just now we talked about the Sunna. Me, I’m Sunna. There are the Salafis. Some of them you could compare to cholera. They have a sickness. They didn’t purify their souls before doing all they do. But, well, that’s how it is. At first they are interested in the symbols: to call themselves Salafis. Just because you recite Verlaine, Baudelaire, doesn’t make you a poet. You can study Ahmad [Ibn Hanbal], Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Qayyim [a student of Ibn Taymiyya and the other great name in Sunni Islam], Ibn Kathir [exegete of the Koran, famous in the Sunni tradition], but they weren’t disparaged. That’s why they are still current.

AUTHOR:And which scholars do you identify with?

SAMIR:Frankly, well . . . I say that the scholars, you find them in great numbers in Saudi Arabia already. Well, it’s the country . . . the country which . . . where . . . Right. We know that Saudi Arabia distributes cassettes for learning how to do the hajj [pilgrimage]. All right, after that, what can you say? They have scholars there, the masheikh [another plural of “sheikh”] who teach Islam correctly. You know where you’re headed. There’s one book, one Koran. Everything that’s added on is not my religion. There are movements that are heading for disaster trying to introduce things that are not in Islam.

AUTHOR:Which ones, for example?

SAMIR:Bah, you know well that I’m talking about the ikhwan for one. Hamas is driving into the wall, the ikhwan are heading for disaster, the khawarij [reference to the jihadists] are also. From the start, they have not been in Islam.

AUTHOR:What do you reproach Hamas for, for example?

SAMIR:Let’s say, all right, with them you’re far removed from religion. If you look at the Palestinians, well, you see that they are carried away by politics. There’s one thing that always struck me about the Palestinians and that’s their keffiyeh. I’m sorry, but it has become a curse, this keffiyeh. When I read magazines or newspapers, I often see mannequins now wearing the keffiyeh. In the fashion magazines, I see keffiyehs now! It’s even become a symbol of resistance among the anarchists. It’s a politicized sign today.

AUTHOR:So, for you, it’s the Islam practiced in Arabia which is the most . . . ? The truest, the most authentic?

SAMIR:Like I told you. It’s a country that practices the Daʾwa. It translates Korans, it prints Korans. Under King Faisal, Arabia has built mosques. There has been a historical continuity all along. A king, it’s a sheik with a thousand times the power, in a sense. If he decides to do the Daʾwa, then the country turns into a center of the Daʾwa.

AUTHOR:So, for you, the truth, then, is found over there?

SAMIR:The truth is known. The unfortunate thing is ignorance. All right, I won’t hide my dream from you, it’s to live in Saudi Arabia. It’s the dream of all who follow the Sunna. I went there on the hajj. I touched the dream with my finger for three weeks.

AUTHOR:So Arabia is the dream for you?

SAMIR:It’s the country of scholars. That’s where they are, the scholars of the Sunna.

AUTHOR:And what do you answer to those who say that over there the scholars obey the people in the royal family? The political power is still in the hands of the monarchy.

SAMIR:Let’s imagine it’s a pear cut in half. Or an orange, if you like. In this country, there is an eternal pact. The scholars and the king march hand in hand. Not like in other Muslim countries, like Morocco, for example. In Morocco, it’s a picture of modernity. In Arabia, you can’t. It’s a pact between the two that dates back to . . .

AUTHOR:And what do you say to those who say Arabia isn’t what it pretends to be? That there’s a great difference between the country and the image it wants to project?

SAMIR:They attack Saudi Arabia, but I understand why. It is Islam’s base. The Prophet warned against a time when Islam would be persecuted and Islam would find its home like the serpent returns to its burrow. This is Medina. Me, I don’t reject anyone, but they reject the whole world. The Prophet, in a hadith, he said that the entire world will go to Paradise except those who turn it down. By that he wanted to say that you have to follow the Koran and the Sunna. We know therefore that religion is finished and that there is a sole path to follow. This road we know is the one they follow in Saudi Arabia.

Constructing a West as a Negative Mirror of the Orient, or Salafi Occidentalism

For Edward Saïd, the main consequence of the Orientalist tradition in the political domain has been to justify the domination of the Oriental countries by the Western states, starting with the Europeans launching a colonial enterprise. The Salafist view runs counter to that conception: in a reverse move, the Western world, essentialized in turn, becomes the negative of the Muslim Orient. Burdened by all the defects that can plague a civilization when it does not recognize Islam as the foundation of its values and its laws, the West finds itself reduced by virtue of the same reflex by which numerous men of letters, artists, and politicians for centuries conceived of the figure of the Oriental. This reversal of representations is at the heart of a veritable Occidentalism. Because they are all attached to values that deprecate Islam, this collection of supposedly homogeneous or even identical societies is the favorite target of the practicant’s duty of rejection. The West becomes the negative mirror of the Islamic countries. Shriveled spiritually and built on sand, the Western way of life is decadent, removed from the “divine utopia” Samir describes. The essence of the West reflects madness; it is a society that lives too fast, which makes even more important the need to structure the Muslim personality around representations that offer refuge and the certitude of revering an eternal dogma. The Westerner has nothing to teach the Muslim, the technological superiority of some countries reflecting divine benefaction and not the model of a virtuous society. Having everything but the essential, the tawhid, Westerners are left with nothing. Their feeling of superiority is a mirage; they think they can influence the world in a positive manner but wind up corrupting it and distancing it even further from the straight and narrow.

The Invention of Tradition: Reifying Saudi Politico-religious Power

The Salafist Sphere’s Harmonious Character as Construction

On closer inspection of its genesis in the contemporary era, the heterogeneity of the Salafist sphere is real. It highlights the gap existing between some clerics and numerous practicants on the issue of mobilization even of Salafism. Comparable to a religious enterprise started by individuals setting themselves up as producers of an unsurpassable norm, Salafist preaching is far from being a homogeneous whole. The field can be understood as a construction that proceeds from the imaginary aspect of Salafist socialization. Some preachers, even though regarded as spokesmen for the movement, themselves remain neutral if not unwilling to promote a Salafist identity, overdetermined though it is in France. This symbolic deficit affects numerous young Muslims in French society.

Salafist socialization rests on an internalized presupposition that is taken for granted: the fact that the Salafist realm is a preexisting given, based on the predicative work performed by scholars clearly identified and deriving their legitimacy from the lineage that links them to the Pious Ancients. The principal manifestation of this in the current era is most famously furnished by Sheikh Al-Albani, for whom claiming an Islamic identity would not seem to suffice: it also has to be accompanied by religious worship in the Salafist, i.e., orthodox mode, without which purity is lost. Sheikh Al-Albani is doubtless the main figure of the past few decades in the Salafist sphere. Held to be the reviver par excellence of Islam in the contemporary age, it is he who has worked the most to focus the Muslim identity on the Salafist model, all the rest representing nothing but deviance and impurity. This is how Salafism little by little broke through the surface, benefiting from Saudi punching power. Finding an attentive ear among the ʿulama of the official establishment, Sheikh Al-Albani’s preaching coupled with Saudi Arabia’s historical specialization in large part explains the reemergence of a Salafist domain during the twentieth century. Additionally, it is by reason of the founding pact between scholars and politicians that the institutional structures that today are so dependent on Saudi political power support a kind of homology between the political constraints weighing on the kingdom and the religious discourse emanating from official bodies.

The imaginary character of identification with the Salafist ethos here is due to the imprecise and largely artificial dimension of the Salafist sphere. More precisely, while many clerics, with Sheikh Al-Albani in the lead, have made the necessity of reproducing the original norm the heart of their teaching, others, including some of the most revered names, have not put Salafism forward as a first element in their preaching. This is where we encounter this domain’s specificity, which is due to the fact that the ordering principle is invoked much more loudly by the practicants than by the movement’s cadres. More heterogeneous than it appears, the position taken by many scholars is that constant promotion of the Salafist identity has to be relativized. This lets us grasp the symbolic value and the quest for prestige that characterize the identity strategy consisting of subjecting all of the Islamic sphere to the Salafist tension. The act of mobilizing capital that is lived as both exclusive and objective has to be interpreted as the fruit of a psychological and symbolic quest for differentiation aiming to give birth to a countersphere with a hegemonic calling. The fact that many clerics contribute to de-Salafizing not the preaching but the language of differentiation, even though they are important figures within it, illustrates the socialization’s imaginary character.

The willingness of many clerics to adopt a less divisive language constitutes a form of delegitimization of the breakaway project prized by many of the practicants. Certainly the content of the teaching coming from individuals like Sheikh Fawzan, the great Saudi establishment figure, does not diverge with respect to the exigencies of dogma; nonetheless Sheikh Fawzan is known to have nuanced the necessity of posturing as Salafi in the community of the faithful. The cleric, less attached to this term than numerous French practicants who see in it the very reason for their existence, embodies in this regard the evolving and reflexive aspect of this habitus. One of his talks on the necessity or lack thereof of calling yourself Salafi is explicit on this issue. Warning against the pride and vanity that could lead to seeking the etiquette rather than the morality inherent in Salafism, he calls on believers to deepen the value of things behind the statutes, the names, and other denominations. The following passage transcribes a question-and-answer audio recording session that touches on the act of constantly referring to oneself as Salafi or Athari (He who follows the trail):¹¹

Question: Some people put assalafi or al athari after their names. Should this be considered a form of boasting [Tazkiyatou-n-nafs]? Where does it say so in the law?

Answer: What is called for is for the individual to follow the truth. What is called for is for the individual to seek the truth, to require the truth, and to act according to it. As for the act of calling yourself assalafi or al athari or something else, nothing says that is required. Allah subhānahu wa taʾālā [God the glorious and the exalted] knows better. . . . Hence the act of calling yourself Salafi, Athari, and other names, this has no origin. We ourselves look at reality: we do not look at the word, the name, or the pretensions. It may be that he calls himself Salafi and he is not Salafi, Athari and he is not Athari, or it may happen he is Salafi and Athari without saying “I am Athari or Salafi.” Therefore we look at the realities, not the names, nor the pretensions. And the Muslim must be humble before Allah subhānahu wa taʾālā. . . . You owe it to yourself to search for the truth and act in conformity with it. Reform the intention, and Allah will know the realities, glory be to him.

Service to authentic Islam and the Saudi social contract: the two organizing tensions of the Salafi clerics and the invention of a new Tradition.¹²

The Turning Point of the Gulf War: Explosion of the Salafist Sphere and Debut of a Defensive Salafism

Religious proselytism, backed by an economic powerhouse multiplied by the soaring price of oil starting in the 1970s, structures a true Saudi soft power¹³ that is legitimist and conservative on the domestic front, dynamic and image-conscious toward the outside. That Saudi Arabia is assured a choice place within the space of Islamic meaning is thus at the heart of the politico-religious contract. The double developmental movement, economic and religious, allows the puritan religion, identified with the Islam practiced in Saudi society, to feed its prestige within the Muslim world. The bicephalous Saudi regime nevertheless does not hesitate to deploy the most authentic religious rhetoric to disqualify its political and ideological adversaries, domestically as well as abroad,¹⁴ the puritan project acting every time to legitimize Saudi positions.

This “blessed time,” during which the strategic and religious bet looked like it would pay off, coincided with a religious conception that can be seen as dynamic and extensive. By this we mean that, although the Islamic principles defended were those of Salafism, the leaders relying on the religious authority did not engage in the logic of blame that characterizes the country’s scholarly production particularly since the 1991 Gulf War. The Saudi strategy at the time consisted more of a quest for expanding the country’s audience. Under this heading, these are the elements of similarity and politico-religious synergy that dominate, as illustrated by the hand extended by Faisal to the Muslim Brotherhood persecuted by the Nasserite government from 1954 on, or the financing of movements based on Salafist rhetoric for violently defending specific “Muslim causes.”¹⁵ Saudi state doctrine is satisfied with conspicuous emulation within the space of Islamic meaning, this Salafism of accommodation moreover accepting the political intersections between Saudi power and other movements of re-Islamization, despite strictly religious quarrels.

This syncretic moment within Sunni Islam, guided by the consolidation of Saudi leadership, because of political evolutions leaves room for a return to the ultra-legitimist Salafist discourse marked by defiance toward competing offers of Islam. This is why the religious authority integrates more of the constraints linked to the explosion of the Salafi sphere, which touched the Saudi power notably under the effect of the bin Laden factor. In this regard, one event marks a decisive turning point in the official Saudi positioning that materialized as the severe opposing scission in the Salafi realm between revolutionaries and legitimists. This tension, taking shape starting with the Gulf crisis, is another illustration of the organic link between political power and religious authority at the summit of the Saudi state. The greater solidarity between the two pillars of the state engenders a radical change of discourse concerning the “false Salafis” who committed the error of turning against the leaders regarded as the legitimate governing power in the state. The “Islamist consensus,”¹⁶ which had been the source of the central position conceded to Saudi Arabia, from that point on was undermined by the action of delegitimization pursued by the “revolutionary” Salafis, who also presented themselves as the defenders of authentic Islam. Opposed by the palace scholars (al-ʿulama al-balat), who distanced themselves from the “corrupted Salafis” particularly with regard to taking up arms to combat attacks on the divine sovereignty on earth, these antiestablishment Salafis felt the full wrath of the preaching initiated by yesterday’s ʿulama who today vilify the “khawarij of the present times” as truly the “lost of contemporary times.” Perceived by the protesting Salafis as “blind scholars” who abandon the theoretical core of preaching, even the Islamization of the power and the law,¹⁷ the official clerics support Saudi political power by virtue of their anti-anarchist conception of the dogma.

The presence of Western troops in the country of sacred places of Islam is why “the conquerors of Afghanistan” went after the monarchy, in order to bring to light its duplicity and hypocrisy. The defense of Islam going forward must be entrusted to this avant-garde more cognizant of the hatred of Islam than the establishment’s scholars. The objective is to discredit the bicephalous Saudi powers that be.

Toward a Salafism of the State?

Saudi Arabia is the source of a change of scale in how to think about and transmit the Tradition. The practicants in France find themselves in the original position of being intransigent outsiders, in conflict with any element that does not correspond to their ideal, in parallel with an institutionalization and growing bureaucratization of the religious references at the summit of the Saudi state. The passage from a Salafism of accommodation to a defensive Salafism poised to become a Salafism of state opens a large gap in the perception of the practicants intent on serving an orthodoxy that more and more bears the seal of the Saudi state. Drawing on the most authentic Sunni tradition, in other words, the corpus of the school that is most attached to scripturalism (the Hanbalite school) complementing the apostolate of Sheikh Abdelwahab and of his heritage, “the sultan’s scholars” unquestionably make an impact on the conceptions of initiates in France. For an Islam antagonistic to modernity, the production of the norm linked to the Sauds suffices to deradicalize morals even more. An organizational and political consequence of defensive Salafism, this state religion contains a kind of controlled puritanism.

Awareness of the circular transaction¹⁸ is raised by the scholars who, within a specifically “Hanbalowahabite” framework, accept a secularization inside this fundamentalism to negotiate in addition other margins of freedom and thus end up eventually in a cooperative re-Islamization of society. Proceeding from a rational vision of the links between religion and politics that must eventually engender a religious enterprise with a bigger hold over society, this Salafism of the state is an updating of the foundational contract between scholar and politician on Saudi soil. As such, the permanent institutionalization of the body of the ʿulama is the last stage in constituting a clergy linked organically to the Saudi monarchy. In exchanging a religious legitimization for expanded social control, the clerics, assuming the function of a crutch for the regime, participate in an original mutation of the Tradition. Religiosity rendered capable of being historicized, the Minhaj Salafi in its inclinations is explained in large part by the nature and objectives of the organizing interaction between religious men and political men at the summit of the state.

Today the evolutions characterizing the politico-religious domain in Saudi Arabia have brought about a reworking of the religious institution around specific reforms, most notably because of the legitimacy crisis that the monarchy had to confront after the Gulf War. Nabil Mouline, for example, shows that while the official establishment figures mainly come from the region around Najd, among others the “co-founding ʿalim” of the Saud family state (Muhammad Ibn Abelwahab), geographical origins becoming a factor in religious reproduction, the rupture today has all the traits of a real process of clergification of the ʿulama.¹⁹ This indicates, for example, the dynamic of globalization of the religious degree program, which explains why, along with striving for the title of sheikh for obtaining the religious diploma (al-ijaza),²⁰ some in other domains seek the title of duktur (doctor, holder of a doctorate). This clergification also concerns the careerism of the scholars under whose terms those who ascend to the Council of Senior Scholars become high functionaries or ministers. But beyond the religious competencies and academic success in this cursus honorum, the principal vector for promotion and integration within the highest instances of the religious authority is political quietism.²¹

It is therefore in a number of political positions promoted by Arabia that we can identify the evolutionary potential of the French Salafis, be it in the sense of moderation or of radicalization. The Saudi power today is undeniably a factor in deradicalization, in particular since the strengthening of Saudi hegemony over the globalized quietist Salafi landscape that started with the Gulf crisis. This phenomenon is corroborated by the revolts in the Arab world since the winter of 2010, which led to the fall of the presidencies of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. We can see it in the statement issued on the occasion of demonstrations touching Saudi Arabia in March 2011, which provoked not only a religious call to order critical of these events but also a summons to the battlements to defend the regime as an organic supporter of Islam:²²

As‑Salāmu ‘alaykoum wa rahmatoullahi wa barakatouh. Bismillāhi r‑Rahmāni r‑Rahīm. Praise be to Allah, the Ruler of the Universe! May the Salvation and the Prayers of Allah be on the master of the first and last generations, our master and our Prophet Muhammad, as well as on his family, his Companions, and all those who follow in their way and who hold fast to their tradition until the Last Judgment! This is a fatwa from the Council of Senior Scholars of Saudi Arabia exhorting Muslims to maintain the union and the prohibition on demonstrations. I ask Allah Soubhaanahou wa ta3aala [sic] [Glory to Him in the Highest] to make this fatwa beneficial for Muslims throughout the world and especially the Muslim countries touched by these fitan [turpitudes, great corruptions] because it is necessary to obey the scholars when they counsel us. . . .

The Council of Senior Scholars implores Allah (the Exalted) to accord to all Muslims the help, the stability and the regrouping of the governing and governed around the Truth. The Council praises Allah for having accorded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the favor of joining its word and unifying its ranks around the Book of Allah (the Exalted) and the Tradition of the Prophet (Salla Allah ʿAlaihi Wa Sallam) in the shadow of a wise governance legitimized by a legal allegiance, may Allah grant it affirmation and permanence and may Allah perfect for us this act of generosity and make it last forever. . . .

Allah (the Exalted) has allowed the people of this country to unite with their governors around the guide of the Book and the Tradition, without straying or dispersing their word according to currents coming from elsewhere, or parties with antagonistic principles. . . .

The Kingdom has succeeded in conserving this Islamic identity. Thus, despite the progress and development the country has experienced and the recourse to legal means of this earth it does not permit nor will it ever permit—by the Strength of Allah and his Power—currents of ideas proceeding from the West or East to sap this identity or to disperse this group. . . . By the grace of fulfilling this mission, the Kingdom possesses this special status in the world of Islam. Thus, it is the Qibla (the direction a Muslim should be faced to whenever comes to time for prayers, foxed as the direction of Mecca) of the Muslims, the country of the two holy Mosques, and it is the country to which Muslims from all regions of the world are coming on the great pilgrimage during the season of the Hadj and for the small pilgrimage (ʿmra) of a year’s duration.

Conscious of this act of generosity, which consists of the unification of the word around the guide of the Book and the Sunna, in the shade of a wise governance, the Council of Senior Scholars invites everyone to expend every effort to reaffirm unity and consolidate solidarity. Also, the Council warns against any cause that can lead to the opposite of this. To this effect, the Council insists on the necessity of installing the dialogue, the harmony, and cooperation around the good and devotion to avoiding the bad and transgression; and, on the contrary, to fear all cause of transgression, injustice and smothering of the Truth. . . .

Thus, seeing that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the guardian of the Book, of the Sunna, of the allegiance to and the prescription for preserving the Group and submission, reform and counsel in this country may not use as means demonstrations and other measures and proceedings that foster stagnation and fracture the Group. It is of these that this country’s ʿoulemas, the old ones as well as the recents among them, have offered proof of their illicitness and warned against them. . . .

Let the prayer and salvation be on our Prophet Mohammed, his family and all his Companions.

The Council of Senior Scholars in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

¹ Patrick Legros, Frédéric Monneyron, Jean-Bruno Renard, and Patrick Tacussel, Sociologie de l’imaginaire (Sociology of the imaginary) (Paris: Armand Colin, “Cursusm,” 2006), 2.

² Ibid., 61; Karl Mannheim, Idéologie et Utopie (Ideology and utopia) (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1929), 127.

³ The utopian construction may just as easily refer to “the Golden Age” or “the Land of Plenty.” See Mircea Eliade, La nostalgie des origins (The nostalgia of origins) (Paris: Gallimard, 1991); Alexandre Cioranescu, “Utopie: Cocagne et âge d’or” (Utopia: Land of Plenty and Golden Age), Diogène, no. 75 (1971): 86–123.

⁴ Edward Saïd, L’Orientalisme: L’Orient créé par l’Occident (Orientalism: The Orient created by the West) (Paris: Seuil, 2005), 15.

⁵ Eric Hobsbawm, L’Âge des extrêmes: Histoire du court vingtième siècle, 1914–1991 (The age of extremes: History of the short twentieth century) (Brussels: André Versaille Éditeur, 2008), 155.

⁶ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8mv6u.

⁷ The reference to the hadiths here is explicit, warning believers against the bad speech uttered against the scholars and emphasizing the fact that eating their flesh is metaphorically equivalent to speaking ill of them. http://www.3ilmchar3i.net/article-26962002.html.

⁸ Rémy Leveau, Le Fellah marocain, défenseur du trône (The Moroccan fellah, defender of the throne) (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, “Références,” 1985).

⁹ Jean‑François Mayer coins the term “theopolitics” to describe the religious dynamics that structure new forms of solidarity with entities all or part of which attach to a religious resource. See Jean‑François Mayer, “Facteurs religieux et relations internationales: Une approche théopolitique” (Religious factors and international relations: A theopolitical approach), Religioscope, Études et analyse, no. 8 (August 2005), http://www.religion.info/pdf/2005_08_theopol.pdf.

¹⁰ [Henry Randolph’s note: Young Frenchmen or -women of North African origin.]

¹¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ba3DDiiIcE.

¹² Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), L’invention de la tradition (The invention of tradition) (Paris: Amsterdam, 2006).

¹³ Joseph Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1991).

¹⁴ In 1986 the Saudi monarch’s religious preeminence is reaffirmed when he added to his title of sovereign that of guardian of the holy places of Islam (khadim al‑haramayn al‑charifayn) as part of the rivalry with Khomeini’s Iran, which every year sent activist pilgrims to erode the monarchy’s symbolic authority over Islam’s most holy places.

¹⁵ Kepel, Jihad; Olivier Roy, Généalogie de l’islamisme (Genealogy of Islamism) (Paris: Hachette, “Pluriel,” 2002); Gilles Dorronsoro, La révolution afghane des communistes aux tālebān (The Afghan revolution from the Communists to the Taliban) (Paris: Karthala, 2000).

¹⁶ This expression describes the political and religious configuration that assured Saudi Arabia a central place for several decades, until the crisis precipitated by the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990. The Islamist consensus referred to a Saudi hegemony accepted as beneficial for a majority of Muslims within the space of global Islamic meaning. At the end of this explosion, the “sprinkled Saudi sprinkler” (Kepel, Jihad, 330) found itself in need of reactivating as never before the historic alliance with the body of the ʿulama by conferring more prerogatives in return for legitimization of the kingdom’s policy, including what there was in the way of an alliance with the American power. See James Piscatori, Islamic Fundamentalism and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fundamentalism Project, 1991).

¹⁷ This is the reason why the revolutionaries pejoratively call the legitimist clerics “scholars of the menses” (‘ulama al‑haïd), to indicate that the object of their teaching leaves out the essential, i.e., the Islamic morality of the exercise of political power.

¹⁸ Mouline, Les clercs de l’islam, 126.

¹⁹ Ibid., 223–258.

²⁰ Each of the Islamic sciences corresponds to a precise ijaza: exegesis of the Koran, knowledge of the hadiths, jurisprudence, etc.

²¹ Mouline, Les clercs de l’islam, 256.

²² “The Council of Senior Scholars calls for maintaining unity and stresses the prohibition on demonstrations”: https://www.islamsounnah.com/les-manifestations-sont-interdites-par-les-grands-savants-de-lislam/, my emphasis.