In 2015–16, Griffel engaged in a debate with Henri Lauzière about the proper understanding of the label “salafi.” Intellectual historians of Islam use this term to describe two groups of thinkers and activists. First, a group of reformers, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose most influential members were
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani,
Muhammad Abduh and
Rashid Rida. Then, second, a group of contemporary Sunni activists who often reject any affiliation with the four schools of law (referred to as an attitude of “
lā madhhabiyya”) and who try to establish norms of correct Islamic behavior and action by direct recourse to the sources on the Prophet Muhammad’s life, most importantly by an independent study of the
hadith corpus. In a 2010 article and in his subsequent 2016-book, Lauzière argues that the conflation of these two groups in one (analytical) label is a mistake, for which the French scholar of Islamic studies
Louis Massignon is responsible. Starting in 1919 he identified al-Afghānī and ʿAbduh as leaders of the
salafiyya. These two, however, never used that word and have no connection to the contemporary movement of Salafiyya, whose members reject any affiliation with them. To this, Griffel responded in 2015 that the modern usage of the Arabic word
“salafiyya” indeed only starts in the first decade of the 20th century among a group of ʿAbduh’s students and that neither al-Afghānī nor ʿAbduh themselves used the term. Still, Massignon was right, Griffel argues, because both employ a strategy of reforming Islam where they aim to go back in history to an age of
“al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ” (“the pious forefathers”) that was unaffected by the intellectual decline they identified with the Islamic era that immediately preceded colonial defeat. For early Salafis such as ʿAbduh, that era could include any Muslim thinker from before ca. 1200 CE. The contemporary movement that today claims the label
“salafiyya” grew out of a group of Rashid Rida’s students in the 1930s. For them,
“al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ” is a much smaller group, mostly limited to the Prophet Muḥammad’s companions. Both the modernizers of the late 19th century and the contemporary Salafis, however, employ the same intellectual and political strategy. They wish to go back to sources that pre-date Islam’s post-classical era, which is associated with the onset of Western hegemony. Lauzière responded to Griffel’s article, to which Griffel also wrote a response, arguing that the modern Salafis’ rejection of any kind of affiliation with ʿAbduh and his movement is not a decisive criterium and that “the historian’s task is to develop analytical criteria of what we mean by [words such as “salafī”] and what kind of activism falls under than umbrella.” ==Recognition==