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Salafi movement

Salafi movement

9.2
A group within Sunni Islam that wants to follow the practices of the earliest Muslims and oppose new religious practices
  • noun
translation icon : movimiento salafista
  • In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour Thursday, Marzouki said the Islamists' movement has a wide spectrum of ideology, and at the far right is the Salafi movement.

Examples

  • Prime among these, and oft decried by the founders of the Salafi movement, are polytheist practices such as the veneration of popular or auspicious shrines.

    Academic text (2007)

  • "Indeed, while being bankrolled by Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, every single activity by any Salafi movement is doomed to failure if it doesn't receive Saudi support."

    Academic text (2011)

  • The city may be a bastion of the Salafi movement, but its roots are essentially non-belligerent.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The Salafi movement is primarily non-combative, its more militant groups having long been defeated and pacified.

    Academic text (2011)

  • Most importantly, many Muslim Bedouin societies had little regard for Islam until the expansion of the Wahhabi and Salafi movements.

    Academic text (2003)

  • So was Sahib Rohullah Wakil, the head of the Salafi movement in eastern Afghanistan, who had been elected to the Loya Jirga, or grand council, that convened in June 2002.

    Academic text (2009)

  • The Salafi movement emphasizes a strict adherence to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.

  • Many followers of the Salafi movement advocate for a return to the fundamentals of Islam as practiced by the earliest generations.

  • In recent years, the Salafi movement has gained significant influence in various parts of the Muslim world.

Synonyms

Wahhabism
vsSalafi movement
2 9.9

A strict, conservative form of Sunni Islam that influences Saudi Arabia

is broader and not confined to that historical or regional origin
Salafism
vsSalafi movement
1 9.9

A group of Muslims who want to follow how the first Muslims lived and strict religious rules

is the same idea but expressed in a different form

Surface Forms

Salafi movement singular
Salafi movements plural

Morphology

Salafi + movement

The phrase is compositionally built: 'Salafi' denotes beliefs/practices of the early Muslims and 'movement' denotes a collective pursuing shared goals, so 'Salafi movement' straightforwardly means a movement of Salafi adherents. This adjective+noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and therefore immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner who already knows the constituent meanings.

Etymology

The Salafi movement gets its name from the Arabic word salaf, which means 'ancestors' or 'the early generations'. Its followers try to copy the beliefs and actions of those first Muslims exactly, so the name came to mean a movement that wants a strict return to the earliest Muslim practices.