Mark N. Orzech

Media in the Arab World

Salafism and Salafi satellite TV in Egypt.

In this brief paper I will try to summarize most of the things that I spoke about in class, drawn

from the article as well as my own research, though undoubtedly I will leave out many particulars that

can be addressed easier when giving a presentation. In their 2009 article, Nathan Field and Ahmed

Hammam discuss the staggering boom in the popularity of Salafi satellite television programing since

2006, a phenomenon they link with Egypt’s 2005 parliamentary election, wherein the Muslim

Brotherhood took one fifth of the seats of parliament. Claimed by Khalil Anani to be the most watched

shows in Egypt, these Salafi channels are said by many people (including famous author and intellectual

Alaa Aswani) to be supported by the Egyptian government as a more politically quietist counterweight

to the increased influence of the politically-minded Muslim Brotherhood. Whereas the Muslim

Brotherhood, emerging in 1929 as a pragmatic and anti-colonial Islamist group, tends towards activism

and involvement on all levels of society, Salafis (typically) are presented as being rather apolitical, more

concerned with promoting “correct” belief among Muslims according to their innovative (in a negative

sense) ideology drawn from both Saudi-promoted Wahabism and the indigenous Egyptian tradition of

20th century Islamic Modernism. The authors assert that the difference between the Salafis and the

Muslim Brotherhood, despite their competition for support in the Egyptian public, is more a matter of

degree and tactics than underlying Ideology. While both see the world through the lens of “Islam vs. the

West”, the Muslim Brotherhood, due to its political pragmatism, condemns primarily the policies of

western governments in the Middle East, while Salafis see the entire west as the unequivocal enemy of

the Muslim world. The authors also claim that the current popularity of Salafi programming is not due to

the government using them as a political “counterweight”, nor is it the cause of the increased

conservatism in Egyptian society. Rather, the present success of such programs is a reflection of a

gradual shift in Egypt towards conservative religious interpretations caused by primarily economic,

political, and cultural factors.

It is important to understand the history and character of Salafism, as it is a widely-spread

phenomenon throughout the Arab and Islamic world with readily identifiable roots that aid in tracing

the development of Islamism and other extremist Ideologies that plague our world today, and so I will

diverge from the article to give a brief summary of this history. For the purposes of this paper (and since

I kind of rambled during class) I will only talk about the two biggest contributors to modern Salafism,

though it should be noted that it is a much more involved discussion. First of all, Salafism is

characterized by a desire to return to a “pure” age of Islam, untainted by over a thousand years of

Islamic legal and theological traditions, through a strict interpretation and emulation of the actions of

the Salaf al-Saalih (pious predecessors), a term that traditionally in Islamic history referred to those

living within the first 300-400 years of Islam though was limited in more modern Salafi thought to the

first three generations of Islam. As a revivalist movement, it aimed at returning to the primary sources of

the religion, the Qur’an and vast corpus of Hadith literature, as if the Islamic tradition had not been

engaged in interpreting these very texts the entire time. A refutation of Salafi ideology is not the point of

this paper (and would take up too much space), but it is worth noting that two of the Key figures in its

historical development were considered heretical innovators by their contemporaries (and even family

members). The two primary trends that I will summarize are Saudi Wahhabism (a radical and earlier

form of Salafism) and the political Islamism of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ahmed ibn Taymiyyah was a brilliant scholar of Islam that lived from 1263-1328 CE and, while a

fan of one of the greatest Sufi masters ever Abdul-Qadir Gilani, ultimately laid the groundwork for

subsequent Salafi thought. In his youth, Ibn Taymiyyah was known for his zealousness and belief that

Islam needed to be cleansed of all the heretical innovations it had accrued since the time of the prophet,

and he was, in his youth, known to declare opponents non-believers over relatively small issues of

religious law, and advocated the slaying of Shia and other perceived threats to Islamic purity. By the end

of his life however, Ibn Taymiyyah relaxed his stance of many issues and would not declare anyone an

apostate, nor did he believe in eternal hell, even for idolaters. While he had a modest following in his

time, Ibn Taymiyyah would have remained a radical footnote in history were it not for the revival of his

early “takfiri” (declaring others apostates) ideology by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab (1707- 1792),

whose struggle against western and Ottoman occupation in the Arabian peninsula manifested in a

particularly brutal ideology built upon the assumption that the religion must be “purified” by the sword.

It was this ideology that, when pitched to a tribal chieftain named Muhammad ibn Saud, served to

facilitate the conquering of Arabia and establishment of the first Saudi state. Following the discovery of

oil in the Arabian peninsula in the 1970s and Saudi Arabia’s subsequent drastic increase in wealth, the

nation began funding the building of Mosques adhering to their Wahhabi ideology in countries such as

Pakistan and Chechnya, traditionally Sufi areas that have been increasingly radicalized ever since.

Another stream of Islamic thought that is directly linked to the rise of Salafi ideology in Egypt in

particular is Islamic Modernism as championed by Muhammad Abduh. While he himself was very far

from the radical ideology that evolved in Arabia, the foundations that he laid by disposing the authority

of tradition set the stage for more radical and politicized interpretations of Islam. Sayyid Qutb, known as

the father of modern extremism and the ideological grandfather of the Muslim Brotherhood, is known

to have been heavily influenced by Abduh’s innovative approach to religion, though took it in a direction

aimed more at addressing the ills of Egyptian (and Arab) society, which he saw as being a result of the

adoption of western models (coincidentally, it is these models that Abduh himself championed in an

attempt to ‘modernize’ Islam and Egypt). It is significant that both Saudi Wahhabism and the ideology of

the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid Qutb came about as reform movements aimed at eliminating

foreign influences deemed to be corrupt (the Ottomans and Western powers respectively), and so both

ideologies were developed along a fundamental basis of intolerance and polarization between “us” and

“them”.

The preceding summary of the very complicated roots of Salafi ideology is important in

understanding the current popularity enjoyed by Salafism in Egypt. The authors suggest that while some

of the spread of such Wahhabi/Saudi-oriented Ideology in Egypt is likely due to many urban Egyptians

going to the gulf to work and study, it is first and foremost an Egyptian problem (not just an imported

trend), as evidenced by the poor rural Egyptians who travel more often to work in the gulf not adopting

such beliefs. The assertion is made that wherever there are pragmatic Islamist movements such as the

Muslim Brotherhood, the response is always an increase in Salafi puritanism in opposition to the

sacrificing of principles for political gain. An external appearance of piety is very important for Salafis,

whose scrupulous imitation of minor hygienic and fashion practices of the early Muslims gives, to the

uncritical eye, an image of great piety and orthodoxy, despite the fact that Salafis dispose of 95% of the

tradition, including the four major Sunni schools of law and two schools of theology that have built up

over the past 1400 years, favoring a brutal literalist interpretation of religious texts which is, In orthodox

Sunnism, considered to be one of the roots of disbelief. Ignoring such classical Islamic maxims as “out of

disbelief comes faith, and out of faith comes disbelief”, “takfiri” ideologies such as those adhered to by

the Salafis paint everyone that does not agree with their extremely strict interpretation to be a heretic

or innovator, and thus worthy of fighting (a perversion of Islamic law on many levels). For many radical

Salafis, violating their interpretation of matters that were traditionally considered legal issues in Islam

rather than issues of belief or creed (such as the intercession of saints- which most orthodox Sunnis

believe in) results in not only in committing a sin (which does not place one outside of Islam) but in

excommunication from the faith altogether and often a charge of blasphemy or idolatry.

The authors of the article oppose many common perceptions about Salafism and its place in

society, stating for instance that Salafism is not, as popularly believed, wholly apolitical, and Salafi

parties are actual key political actors in countries such as Lebanon, Bahrain, and Kuwait. They do not

play a political role in Egypt simply because it would result in them compromising their principles and

ultimately losing popularity among those who are drawn to their ideology. Salafi preachers are known to

focus primarily on matters of “correct” faith, creed, and external practice, and shy away from matters of

religious law etc. where they may come into conflict with the government. Concerning the simplistic and

fanatical approach that Salafis take towards Islam, Field and Hammam quote a cleric from al-Azhar

university, one of the oldest universities in the world and for centuries the center of the Sunni world, as

saying “Salafism is a misreading of the scriptures that occurs whenever Egypt faces socio-economic

crisis”. The article then goes on to discuss two major Salafi stations in Egypt, An-nass (the people) and

Ar-rahma (Mercy), both of which have different approaches to their programming though both fall

under the pattern that Salafi media gains its viewers not though intellectual worth, but through the star

power of the influential Salafi clerics that they have on.

An-nass, which once aired programs with women, dancing, and astrology, is owned by a Saudi

investor who, following the show’s limited success, brought in three Salafi sheikhs from the gulf, causing

the program’s audience to skyrocket. The owners of this program are primarily concerned with business

and ratings, and are thus not driven by an ideological identification with the opinions being aired. Thus,

the channel lists among the Sheikhs that inspired it some scholars such as Muhammad Ghazali who are

not Salafi (and are, in face, Sufi) though are important in the intellectual history of Egypt. One instance

in which this relative tolerance caused problems was when the show hosted Amr Khalid, a very

influential non-Salafi preacher, and the three Salafi clerics quit immediately in protest. Ar-rahma on the

other hand is owned by Salafi clerics, and is thus much more ideologically invested in the programming,

only allowing Salafi sheikhs on the shows and, of course, no women. Muhammad Hassan is the star of

Ar-rahma and has a wide following throughout Egypt. Concerning Muhammad Hassan, the authors bring

up an important point regarding the difficulty of gauging public support for Salafi ideology as, while

there are 93 Facebook fan groups dedicated to him, most of the women in these groups have pictures

on Facebook showing their faces or not wearing Hijab at all, both of which would be grievous violations

of Hassan’s Salafi ideology. Thus, while these shows are extremely popular, the authors believe that

most people do not identify with the ideology as such, and certainly don’t perceive themselves as

adhering to a radical form of Islam, but rather perceive such shows as displaying a religiosity that they

are drawn to due to Scio-economic factors.