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This book addresses the issue of one of the most visible and debated currents in contemporary radical Islam. It sheds light on the history, the fundamental principles, and the political and religious translations of Salafism and explains current events involving Salafist actors in an objective and dispassionate manner. The author explains with precision the different contemporary Salafist mobilizations by illustrating them with specific cases while shedding light on the main debates related to this mode of understanding of the Muslim religion, such as its potential role in triggering certain forms of violence, the way to compare it to other fundamentalist versions in other religions, or the way to describe, in terms of social sciences, the main concepts and discourses that can be observed in this current of Islam today.

Understanding Salafism

1. Understanding Salafism: A Few Introductory Remarks
2. Defining Salafism: What is at Stake?

• Salafism: An Attempt at a Definition
• Understanding Salafism: The Need to Reflect in Terms of Mental Topography

3. Salafism: A Brief History
4. The Basics of the Salafist Ethic

• The Cleric, or the Cornerstone of the Salafist Meaning System
• Literalism or Scripturalism?

5. The Globalization of Salafism

• The Statization of Salafism with the Birth and the Rise of Modern Saudi Arabia 
• The Saudization of Salafism in the 20th Century: When Saudi Arabia Speaks for Islam and the Umma
• A Two-Level State Salafism: Clerics and Kings

6. The Fragmentation and Crisis of Salafism: The Saudi Turn and the Rise of New Ideological Contenders

• From Consensus to Crisis of Legitimacy: The Fragmentation and Explosion of the Global Salafist Field around the Question of the Sa'ud: The Challenge of Islamism, Jihadism and Democratization
  
  From an Offensive Salafism to a Defensive form of Salafism
  The Emergence of Salafism-Jihadism and the Crisis of Saudi Religious and Political Legitimacy 
  
  
• Since the Arab Revolutions: Saudi Arabia between Positive and Negative Centrality
• The Rise of a 'Soft Salafism': Religious Reformation in Saudi Arabia?

7. Salafism and Modernity: Beyond Politics

• Crisis of Traditional Authority and Divorce between Culture and Religion
• Islam of Globalization? When Fundamentalism is Modern
• The Salafist Economic Ethics: Salvation by Worldly Success?
• Salafism and Migration: The Case of Hijra
  
  The Hijra in Salafism: The Fulfilment of "Allegiance and Disavowel"
  
  The Internal Hijra: Between Symbolic Withdrawal and the Premises of Departure
  
  The Short-Term Hijra: A First Step Towards a Final Break
  
  The Final Hijra: Completion of the Rupture?

8. Understanding Past and Today Jihadism

• From Jihad to Jihadism
  
  Armed Jihad between Historical Exception and Today Systemization
  
  The Contemporary Origins of Jihadism
  
  
• The Core Questions of Jihadism
  
  Who is the Enemy?
  
  Who must Lead Jihad and Jihadism?
  
  The Role of Jihadist Endeavour in the Definition of Being a Muslim
  
  How to Strategize and Lead Jihadism Militarily?
  
  Joining a Foreign Jihadist Movement
  
  Terrorist Radicalization 

9. Salafism in Context: Understanding the Issue of Ideological and Social Permeability, and the Value Places on Quietism, Political Participation and Violence

• Salafism and Violence: Is Political Change Desirable? If Yes, How to Achieve It?
• Beyond the Fragmentation of Salafism: Is Jihadism Getting Autonomized?
  
  Salafism and Jihadism: A Common Doctrinal Heritage
  
  Jihadist Differentiation from Salafism
  
  Empowerment of Jihadism: Violence without Religious Socialization
  
  Apocalypticism of Islamic State Jihadism 
  
  Post-Islamic State Juhadism

10. By Way of Conclusion: Salafism as a Vector: A Containers More than a Content? Beyond the Essentialization of a Fundamentalism