The loudest voice in the room usually turns the head.
If you look at al Qaeda, then you could say: Yes, Salafism in the end is at the heart of what we today call Islamist terrorism. But it’s more diverse and one shouldn’t forget that there are other elements to it. There are other movements that feed into it too, like some elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Wahhabi, which is the official form of Islam in Saudi Arabia. We can therefore assume that we’re dealing with an older movement here and that political Islam has been combined with a militant element.
Aren’t we doing some of the Salafists an injustice, if we describe them all as violent?
The Salafists clashed with police in Bonn when protesting against a right-wing demonstration
Of course you can distinguish between those who are prone to violence and those who aren’t. Some experts indeed say that there is an apolitical form of Salafism. But I think it’s problematic to say that the Wahhabi or Salafists don’t have a political element and that they are merely a religious movement. Salafism aims at having an impact on society as a whole.
