Nor was this search confined to those suffering the malaise of generations of displacement in the West—Muslim heritage (MH) respondents from both the global North and South underwent a similar process of deculturalising Islam (albeit in accordance with their own geographical contexts), which has been pejoratively labelled Wahhabism by those who oppose its rejection of all types of folk Islam known for containing Shirk (Farquhar 2017:7; Oliver 2002). Zaynab’s search, which coincided with Islam’s revival in Malaysia, demonstrates the reach of Tawheed and its effect on clarifying the confusion experienced by many who were unable to understand the faith of their heritage. Understanding the concept of Tawheed and the Sunnah reversed Zaynab’s aversion towards Islam, which she felt was caused by the confusions of the different madhaahib (canonical schools of Islamic jurisprudence) popular in her Malaysian religious culture:
I was shocked because I’d never heard of Tawheed and ‘hadith’ 20 years ago! The imam explained that hadith is what the Prophet (ﷺ) did, to follow him, don’t follow anything else. I was so happy because it answered all my questions after so many years. No more confused.dot.com! Life is so easy and simple! Why do we make things difficult? I hate it. I like clear and straightforward.
The deculturalisation of Islam across time and space in this way resembles a process common to all reformist movements[1]. It appears to have both facilitated the purification of Islam in its various local contexts (Roy 2006:11), and to have paved the way for Salafism as a global religious movement. It was aided by Islamic literature previously unavailable in other languages apart from English—one French MH respondent described the sheer excitement, fascination and enthusiasm this stirred within her and her friends. Furthermore, during the mid-1990s to early 2000s onwards, many da‘wa organisations emerged and began to vie for the minds of Muslim youth, especially in the West (Kepel 2004; Leiken 2012) (see Chapter 4). This meant that da‘wa activity was not confined to British universities alone—respondents’ conversion narratives showed that universities in other parts of the global North and South were similarly offering opportunities to those in search of an ‘authentic’ Islam. The following quote from Amal is particularly striking—even in one of the world’s most secular countries, France, Amal discovered her faith after a chance encounter with a Muslim woman on a train:
Once we met a sister on the train who told us to go to a house near the university because they’re going to give a lesson about Islam. We only went for a bit of fun, but we ended up realising that we knew nothing about our religion.
More importantly, the pattern of the da‘wa activity and knowledge disseminated to respondents during Salafism’s early years on both sides of the English Channel and across the Atlantic indicated that the source was the same. Recognisable as a religious framework heavily influenced by Saudi religious establishments and often described as the “Wahhabi influence”, this activity and knowledge was spread by students who had studied in religious institutions in places such as Saudi and Yemen (Farquhar 2017: vii; Bonnefoy 2011) and were now returning to their lands of citizenship in the West to teach others what they had learnt.
One of the most decisive concepts these teachers began to propagate was the importance of reading classical Islamic texts in accordance with the teachings of senior scholars who were well versed in the religion; the dangers of relying on their own interpretations; and the importance of questioning the authenticity of sources. This was Amal’s experience—she began attending a regular Islamic study class, where she studied a classic text by a 7th-century scholar under the tutelage of one of the major contemporary scholars of Salafism in the Arab lands, Shaykh Uthaymeen:
She taught us An-Nawawi’s 40 Hadith, with the explanation of Shaykh Uthaymeen. I didn’t know who he was, so she told us that he is a scholar from Saudi Arabia—he was still alive at that time. She also taught us not to take any knowledge from her unless she brings us proof from the Qur’an and the Sunnah … otherwise we should not believe her. (Amal)
[1] Likewise, Hunt (2003) states, that “movements of renewal and revival, both inside and outside the established churches, litter the history of Christianity in the West. Since the Reformation there have been revivals of piety, such as those of the seventeenth-century Puritan movement, and the holiness and Methodist movements of the early eighteenth-century … These movements were by no means limited to Protestantism. The Orthodox and Catholic churches have throughout histories, also experienced movements of revivalisms and renewals” (Hunt 2003:76).
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