By Virginie Collombier
This paper attempts to make sense of the ‘Political’ and ‘Quietist’ Salafis currents’ relationships with ‘politics’ and state institutions in times of turmoil.
.PART (I)
Abstract: Academic literature has tended to divide Salafis into three main categories – jihadi, political and quietist – distinguished by ideological and methodological differences, notably pertaining to the Salafi groups’ varying relationships with the state and political authority and their use of violence.
What happens, then, when state institutions collapse, when there is no state authority or when state authority is highly contested between different groups, none of which is able to definitively assert itself over the others?
In a context of political upheaval and armed conflict, how do Salafis relate to the state and to ‘politics’?
Developments in Libya between 2011 and 2019 have provided an ideal opportunity to look into these questions.
Actors that identify with Salafism have played important roles in Libya’s various stages of conflict and political transformation since 2011. However, they have reacted to these transformations in a way that to some extent blurs the lines conventionally drawn between Salafi currents.
Focusing on two currents, ‘political’ Salafism, represented by leading figures in the former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and ‘quietist’ Salafism, represented by the so-called ‘Madkhali’ Salafis, this paper analyses the two currents’ relationships with ‘politics’ and state institutions in times of turmoil.
It counters the idea of a fault line between so-called ‘political’ and ‘apolitical’ Salafis and unpacks the different strategies deployed by the two groups to deal with state institutions and the political, albeit different, natures of the objectives that they have pursued.
Introduction
Salafism is, at its broadest, a particular interpretation of Islam that seeks to recapture the pristine religion of the early generations of Muslims, the salaf al-salih, with a view to (re- )building a sharia’- compliant community (umma).
Members of the Salafi current essentially envisage this as a ‘mission’ to be achieved through belief and everyday behaviour, ‘a moral project’ based on the implementation of a core set of beliefs and practices and ‘transcending worldly politics’. As a matter of fact, the majority of Salafis do not engage in either politics or in violence. However, the link between Salafi followers and politics has proven to be more ambiguous, and the challenge of ‘acting non-politically’ in a ‘political world’ has been highlighted in numerous circumstances.
The academic literature after has therefore tended to divide Salafis into three main categories – jihadi, political and quietist – distinguished by ideological and methodological differences.
It is generally assumed that to change the political order jihadis are willing to use violence against rulers considered illegitimate, whereas political Salafis welcome participation in formal political processes and institutions.
As for quietist Salafis, they essentially focus on spreading the faith (da’wa), privileging obedience to the ruler and neither employing violence against rulers nor participating in institutional politics. It is clear, therefore, that the state looms large in the divisions within the Salafi sphere that have crystallised in recent decades.
What happens, then, when state institutions collapse, when there is no state authority or when state authority is highly contested between different groups, none of which are able to definitively assert themselves over the others?
In a context of political upheaval and armed conflict, how do Salafis relate to the state and to ‘politics’?
Developments in Libya between 2011 and 2019, and the important role played by actors belonging to the Salafi trend in the various stages of conflict and political transformation have provided a major opportunity to try and answer these questions.
While they borrow from a common ideological matrix, Libya’s Salafi currents have reacted to political transformations in a way that often seemed to blur the lines conventionally drawn between them on the basis of their relationships with politics, the state and political authority, and their use of violence.
Focusing on two currents, ‘political’ Salafism, represented by leading figures in the former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a Salafi jihadi organisation active in Libya in the 1990s which renounced the use of violence to achieve political change in the late 2000s.
‘quietist’ Salafism, represented by the so-called ‘Madkhali’ Salafis, have gained prominence more recently in Libya’s religious and security spheres.
This paper attempts to make sense of the two currents’ relationships with ‘politics’ and state institutions in times of turmoil. It analyses the strategies that they have pursued since 2011 and during the various phases of the conflict – which were characterised by:
(a) regime and state collapse (2011),
(b) competition for the reconstruction of political authority (2011-2014), and
(c) division between state institutions and political authority (2014-2019) with a view to better understanding the relationship of the two currents with political authority.
The start of the 2011 uprising radically altered the context in which the two currents had evolved under the Qadhafi regime. In February 2011, they first had to make decisions regarding their stance and behaviour during the uprising.
After the collapse of the regime in October, the political transition and the intensifying conflict over the construction and control of new state institutions required them to clarify their stances towards politics and political action – in the sense of both institutional politics and their relationship with the nascent state institutions and also towards the use of violence.
This was in some respects an ideological decision. However, developments between 2011 and 2019 also showed that the way ‘political’ and ‘Madkhali’ Salafis interpreted the evolving context and assessed the resources available to them played a major role in the shaping of their respective strategies.
Countering the idea of a fault line between so-called ‘political’ and ‘apolitical’ Salafis, analysis of the way the two currents related to political authority sheds light on the political nature of the strategies implemented by the two groups and on the profound differences between them.
The ‘political’ and ‘quietist’ Salafi currents studied here do not correspond to clear institutional groupings and are to some extent ill-defined. Their ‘members’ themselves do not necessarily identify as ‘political Salafis’ or ‘Madkhali Salafis,’ let alone use the term ‘Salafi’ to refer to themselves.
However, the existence of the two currents is evident in shared member trajectories, common references and shared group behaviour.
Each of the two currents also includes key figures who represent them internally and externally and exert influence over followers and sympathisers.
In this paper, particular attention is paid to a small number of key figures from the two currents who seem to have contributed significantly to shaping ideas and behaviours. The research for this paper was principally conducted between 2018 and 2020.
It was based on desk study of existing literature on Salafism in Libya and beyond together with continual monitoring and analysis of political, social and security developments in Libya since 2011, including regular trips to the western part of the country between 2012 and 2018.
Because of the renewed and intensified conflict since the end of 2018 and the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, the author could only conduct one field trip to Tripoli during the period of the project, in spring 2018.
In addition, the research for this paper also involved numerous written and oral interviews conducted remotely by phone and through social media platforms with Libyan civil society activists, religious scholars, former government officials and academics from across the country or established abroad.
While the followers and leaders of the two Salafi currents could not be interviewed remotely, the analysis presented here also stems from regular monitoring of a variety of social media platforms associated with different Libyan Salafi groups.
These constitute an important source of information as many of these groups privilege this way of communicating with their followers.
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Virginie Collombier, Middle East Directions Programme European University Institute. She has been a Research Fellow at the European University Institute of Florence, Italy (EUI) since September 2013. Her main research interests are in social and political dynamics in Libya, with a focus on processes of mediation and reconciliation; the political economy of conflicts; security issues.
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