Locating the truth within Salafism also proved the most significant juncture at which the paths of all respondents, irrespective of social and cultural backgrounds, intersected based upon the foundational principle of Islam known as Tawheed, the first pillar of Islam, and a keystone concept pivotal in convincing them that Islam was the final religion sent down by God to the whole of mankind. This caused many to reinterpret previous feelings of being ‘lost’ or of ‘something missing’ from within Salafi discourse and as a natural part of their fitrah[1]—an innate inclination towards the truth—and that has been characterised as the “hard-wiring” through which a person acquires “a basic sense of purpose, common sense and morality, and is predisposed towards sound beliefs and beneficial actions” (Rafīq 2017:9).
Moreover, the Islamic perspective of the fitrah’s vulnerability as “a raw, crude, malleable faculty [which] can be easily affected and moulded away from soundness to corruption during early childhood and beyond” (Rafīq 2017:8) intersects closely with Giddens (1991) theory on personality development, ontological security and existential angst (Giddens 1991/2018:3). As Saffa explains:
When I understood Tawheed, that it’s the worship of Allah alone, about His names and attributes, everything in my heart felt like this is what I needed for that emptiness I had in my life. This is what I was looking for. This is the truth. I found the peace and serenity which is connected to mankind’s natural disposition—their fitrah. There are many people out there who are in a state of loss, as Allah says in the Qur’an, they just live for this world, but don’t look to where they’re heading. I know there’s more to life than this, and if Allah created me then there’s a reason for that. I have a purpose. We all have a purpose, and we have to meet that purpose as we’re all going to die … we need to consider the afterlife.
Therefore, it appears that respondents’ understanding of how their fitrah connects to Tawheed was a crucial step in enabling them to break away from what postmodernists would consider socially constructed and arbitrary “axioms” or “beginning Truths”, and to use their intellect to make objectivity possible in discovering an absolute truth (McCallum 1996:35).
Viewing fitrah and how it connects to Tawheed from such an angle also explains why it features so heavily within Salafism as a reformist sect—without Tawheed, it would not be possible for the mind to be liberated from what is believed to be a state of decline connected to paths of superstition and misguidance, which are known to permeate Islamic tradition over time (see Chapter 4) (Fārūqi 1991:xx). This approach, whose call always uses the Qur’an and the Sunnah as its signposts, helps explain both how Salafism operates as a purist (purifying) sect throughout the ages in relation to the reform and revival of Islam,[2] and how it manages to remain so “markedly secularization resistant” (Gellner 1992:6). Gellner concludes that the “emphatic and severe monotheism” in the central doctrines of Islam dictate “both faith and morals”, and that its “doctrine and the law” are the main reason for its survival (Gellner 1992:6).
In sum, Tawheed revives and purifies Islam as well as brings an individual back to the belief in, and worship of, God. The concept of Tawheed in Salafism is thus seen as engendering the capacity to re-centre individuals without causing them to lose their faith in God, and helps explain the “born-again” experiences (Rambo 1993:3) that many respondents described feeling:
When you take your Shahada (testimony of faith) it’s like you’re a baby again. It’s a blessing to be in a Salafi Masjid that is upon authentic Islam. (Akila)
[1] The concept of fitrah is mentioned in the Qur’an 30:30.
[2] Within Islamic thought, the perspective exists that “in its entire history, humanity has never strayed from this innate, intuitive default, [fitrah] except after the spread of conjectural, pessimistic materialist philosophy over the past century or so” (Rafīq 2017:9).
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