SALAFISM AND THE POLITICAL
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2020-03-10
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en
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This thesis examines the relationship between Salafism, the political and politics. The first section presents a theoretical overview of the relationship between the political and Salafism from the perspective of the political philosophy of Claude Lefort. Its aim is to reflect critically on the fundamental characteristics of a democratic notion of the political, and to assess the degree to which the Salafi doctrine reflects these assumptions. The analysis indicates that Salafism neither recognizes the political as an independent sphere of its own, nor acknowledges it radically indeterminate nature. Moreover, the uncompromising and – to a certain degree - totalitarian nature of the Salafi doctrine completely denies the legitimacy of social antagonism and crushes the room for pluralism. Thereby – in theory - the Salafi doctrine stands at odds with the fundamental characteristics of a democratic notion of the political, as formulated by Lefort.
To see whether these theoretical conclusions also reflect the actual political practices of Salafis, the second part offers a case study of the Hizb al-Nour, an Egyptian Salafi political party that rose to prominence in its country’s post-revolutionary politics. The empirical analysis indicates that the party’s entrance into politics did give rise to a modest secular discourse carried out by Salafi ‘politicians’ who believed they should (at least partially) abandon their rigid identity paradigm, accept political pluralism and consider politics as an independent domain of its own. After 2013, however, once the party had fallen under the control of the ‘sheikhs’, this discourse was reversed. Instead of performing ‘politics for the sake of politics’, they regarded politics only as a means to spread, purify and defend their Islamic doctrine.
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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen