By Grace Mubashir
The Saudi-Yemen conflict highlights the limitations of certain forms of Salafism that have struggled to reconcile religious purity with political power, justice and human dignity. Although Salafism is diverse and does not inherently promote violence, some of its political expressions have encouraged unquestioning obedience to rulers, while extremist groups have used religious arguments to justify violence and sectarian hatred. In India, many Ahl-i Hadith and Salafi organisations have rejected violence and participated in democratic politics, but challenges remain in addressing religious intolerance, pluralism and social justice. To remain relevant, Salafism needs to encourage critical thinking, recognise legitimate scholarly disagreement, protect human life, hold political leaders accountable and engage more seriously with poverty, discrimination and inequality. Islamic reform should not focus solely on purifying religious practices; it should also promote justice, compassion, peaceful coexistence and public welfare.
This crisis does not prove that every Salafi belief has failed or that all Salafi movements endorse violence. The tradition includes quietist scholars who avoid political confrontation, activist movements that take part in political life, and jihadist groups that justify armed struggle. These tendencies differ considerably in how they understand religious authority, political obedience and the use of force.
The more defensible argument is narrower: certain political and theological approaches associated with Salafism have not offered adequate answers to questions of power, pluralism, social justice and the moral limits of political action.
The failure of religious puritanism
Salafism emerged as a diverse movement seeking to bring Muslim belief and practice back into line with the example of the Salaf al-Salih, the early generations of Muslims. Its emphasis on the Qur’an and the Prophetic traditions, its criticism of religious innovation and its desire to reform Muslim society have shaped important debates within modern Islam. The trouble starts when the wish to purify religious practice hardens into a wish to control every aspect of religious life through a narrow and exclusive reading.
Purification can foster intellectual discipline, ethical responsibility and a healthy scepticism toward inherited customs. It becomes destructive when disagreement is taken as proof of corruption, when other Muslims are cast as enemies of true Islam, or when complicated historical questions are flattened into a contest between true believers and misguided communities. Under those conditions, reform loses its capacity for self-criticism. Scholars spend their energy hunting for the errors of others instead of examining the weak points in their own arguments and institutions.
The problem is not that the Qur’an and hadith are used as sources of guidance. They are foundational for Muslims across every legal and theological tradition. The problem is the assumption that one particular reading of these sources is so obviously right that alternatives deserve neither recognition nor serious discussion. Islamic legal history shows scholars disagreeing over the authentication of hadith, their interpretation, legal method and the application of general principles to specific circumstances. A movement claiming to restore authentic Islam therefore has to explain how it handles disagreement, rather than simply insisting that its own conclusions are authentic.
From religious reform to policing religious identity
One of the most significant shifts in puritanical thought has been the move from reforming practices to policing identities. Debates over shrine visitation, devotional gatherings, the celebration of the Prophet’s birth and the authority of Sufi traditions have sometimes become markers of who belongs to the correct religious community. In that climate, disputes that could have stayed matters of juristic disagreement turn into struggles over legitimacy.
The consequences are especially grave when these disagreements connect to takfir, the declaration that another Muslim has left the faith. Not every criticism of innovation leads to takfir, and many Salafi scholars explicitly reject such declarations when they lack adequate grounds. Still, extremist movements have used exclusionary arguments to justify hostility toward Muslims who disagree with them. Once a community is portrayed as fundamentally illegitimate, violence against it can be presented as religious duty rather than a moral failure.
This transformation also weakens the intellectual foundations of reform itself. A movement that claims to challenge unthinking imitation (taqlid) should encourage independent reasoning, careful examination of evidence and intellectual honesty. If its followers simply swap one unquestionable authority for another, the result is not liberation but a new form of conformity. Rejecting taqlid means something only when it opens space for responsible reasoning, not when it demands unquestioning loyalty to a particular preacher, organisation or ideological reading.
The global crisis of Salafism has unfolded along two different but related paths. The first involves movements that put obedience to established rulers first and warn against political opposition in the name of preventing disorder. The second involves jihadist movements that regard existing governments as illegitimate and try to replace them through violence. These approaches look like opposites, yet both struggle to explain how political authority can be held accountable to justice and the common good.
Quietist Salafism has often argued that rebellion against Muslim rulers can bring civil war and greater suffering. This concern is not without historical or moral grounding. Political violence can tear down institutions, deepen divisions between communities and expose ordinary people to enormous harm. Still, a doctrine of obedience becomes a problem when it discourages honest criticism of injustice or lends religious legitimacy to political repression. Avoiding civil war is an important goal, but stability alone cannot be the measure of a just political order.
Jihadist Salafism presents the opposite problem. Groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have claimed that existing political systems are illegitimate and that violence is necessary to establish a supposedly authentic Islamic order. Their campaigns have instead produced civilian deaths, sectarian persecution, displacement and the destruction of Muslim societies. Their record shows the danger of treating political power as a religious end in itself and assuming that violence can build the moral community religious life is meant to nurture.
The experience of the Arab uprisings also showed that Salafi movements have not responded to political change in a single way. Some entered electoral politics, some expanded grassroots activism, and jihadist organisations pursued armed struggle. Research published in 2026 on Salafi mobilisation in Tunisia and Egypt highlights the range of these strategies and the ways they shifted in response to political openings and institutional pressure.
The failure, then, is not that Salafism has never engaged in politics. It is that its different strands have not consistently developed a convincing and shared framework for joining religious conviction with political accountability, equal citizenship and peaceful disagreement.
Saudi Arabia and the contradiction of state-sponsored religion
Saudi Arabia holds a central place in the global history of modern Salafism because the Saudi state helped finance and spread particular interpretations of Islamic teaching abroad. The historical alliance between the Saudi ruling family and the religious tradition associated with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab gave the state religious legitimacy while giving religious scholars an influential role in public life. Salafism is broader than Wahhabism, however, and neither term describes a single, uniform political ideology.
The Saudi-Yemen conflict exposes a contradiction in the relationship between religious legitimacy and state power. A government may support religious institutions and present itself as a defender of Islam, yet its foreign policy is still shaped by national security, regional rivalry and strategic interests. When those interests produce prolonged warfare and civilian suffering, religious legitimacy does not remove the need for political and moral accountability. Nor does the religious character of a state’s institutions automatically guarantee that its decisions reflect Islamic principles of justice.
Saudi Arabia has also been changing how it approaches religious influence abroad. A 2024 analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued that the kingdom was replacing parts of its earlier Salafi-orientated religious outreach with a different form of international influence.
This shift suggests that state-sponsored religious authority is not independent of political priorities. When governments change course, the religious institutions linked to them may face questions about their autonomy, credibility and capacity for independent moral criticism.
The lesson is not that Saudi religious scholarship is inherently responsible for extremism, nor that the Saudi state speaks for all Salafis. Rather, religious scholars need enough intellectual independence to assess state policy by ethical standards, rather than letting political alliances dictate their religious judgement. A credible religious establishment must be able to criticise unjust policies even when they are pursued by governments with which it has long had close ties.
The challenge for Indian Salafism is twofold. It must keep distinguishing religious reform from violence, and it must develop a more convincing account of pluralism and equal citizenship. Indian Muslims live under a constitutional system in which religious freedom, equality before the law and democratic participation are essential protections. Salafi organisations need to explain these principles not as temporary concessions or practical necessities, but as commitments that fit with their own understanding of Islam.
This matters most when Muslims face discrimination, political marginalisation or communal violence. Religious leaders should help their communities defend their rights through lawful and democratic means, while resisting sectarian hostility and avoiding the romanticisation of violence elsewhere. The suffering of Muslims in Yemen or other conflict zones should generate solidarity and humanitarian action, not the assumption that every conflict can be understood as a simple confrontation between Islam and its enemies.
The changing meaning of jihad and religious violence
One of the most troubling developments in modern political Islam has been the transformation of jihad from a complex religious concept into an ideological justification for armed struggle. Classical Islamic scholarship discussed jihad through different legal, ethical and political frameworks, including armed conflict, the authority to wage war, the protection of non-combatants and the obligations of political leaders. These discussions were not identical across legal schools, nor can they be reduced to a single modern doctrine.
Modern jihadist movements have often lifted these questions out of their historical and legal contexts. They present violence as a direct expression of religious authenticity, sometimes treating the world as a battlefield between believers and enemies. The result is a serious narrowing of Islamic moral reasoning. Questions of legitimate authority, proportionality, civilian protection, the consequences of warfare and the possibility of peaceful political action get pushed aside by claims that violence is necessary to defend Islam.
The Yemen conflict shows why this approach fails. Military campaigns can weaken opponents or shift territorial control without resolving the political grievances that sustain a war. The United Nations has stressed that battlefield gains cannot substitute for negotiations and a credible political settlement. The same principle applies to religious movements: the ability to mobilise fighters or capture territory does not establish moral legitimacy, popular consent or the capacity to govern justly.
A meaningful reconstruction of jihad must therefore restore its legal and ethical limits. Religious scholars should distinguish clearly between spiritual striving, peaceful political struggle and armed conflict. They should reject the unauthorised use of violence, the targeting of civilians, collective punishment and the declaration that entire communities are legitimate enemies. The moral credibility of religious teaching depends not on how readily it invokes struggle but on how seriously it takes the sanctity of human life.
What changes does Salafism need?
The first necessary change is a more serious engagement with the Islamic tradition of legal disagreement. Salafi scholars should acknowledge that using the Qur’an and hadith requires interpretation, linguistic judgement, historical knowledge and legal reasoning. Rejecting blind imitation should not mean rejecting the accumulated intellectual resources of Muslim scholarship. The tradition contains methods for evaluating evidence, weighing competing arguments and recognising uncertainty. These resources should be used to encourage responsible interpretation, not to establish a new monopoly over religious truth.
The second change concerns the relationship between religious authority and political power. Neither obedience to rulers nor opposition to them should be treated as an absolute principle detached from circumstances. Religious scholars need clearer standards for judging injustice, public welfare, political accountability and the consequences of resistance. They should be able to criticise governments without automatically endorsing rebellion, and to defend political stability without excusing oppression. This requires greater independence from state patronage, political parties and armed organisations.
The third change involves a broader understanding of the objectives of Islamic law, often discussed through the concept of maqasid al-sharia. The preservation of life, religion, intellect, family and property has long featured in Islamic legal discussions, although scholars have differed over how to formulate and apply these objectives. They should not be used as slogans to justify predetermined political positions. Instead, they should provide a framework for assessing whether religious arguments and political actions actually protect human dignity and the public good. When an ideological project produces widespread civilian suffering, social fragmentation or the destruction of essential institutions, its claimed religious purpose must be examined critically.
The fourth change concerns the treatment of other Muslims. Disagreement over ritual practice, legal schools, theology and religious custom should never be used as grounds to deny other communities their dignity or their right to practise Islam. Salafi scholars can, and should, distinguish between criticising a belief and excluding its adherents from the Muslim community. Doing so does not mean giving up their theological convictions. It means recognising that religious commitment does not grant any movement unlimited authority over the rights and standing of others.
Salafism also needs a broader social vision. Religious reform cannot be judged only by changes in dress, ritual, devotional habits or personal morality. It has to engage with poverty, education, corruption, unequal access to justice, women’s participation in public life and the protection of vulnerable communities. When religious organisations pour enormous energy into regulating private conduct yet say little about exploitation, arbitrary power or the material hardship of ordinary people, their claim to embody a comprehensive Islamic ethic becomes harder to believe.
From puritanism to ethical reform
Salafism’s future depends on whether it can separate a sincere wish to follow the earliest Muslim generations from the assumption that every modern problem has a simple answer in a narrow reading of scripture. Those early communities themselves faced disagreement, shifting circumstances and hard questions of political judgement. Invoking their example should therefore encourage intellectual seriousness and moral responsibility, not a rejection of history or a refusal to acknowledge complexity.
For Indian Salafism, the opportunity lies in building a model of reform that joins scriptural commitment with constitutional participation, peaceful political engagement, social responsibility and respect for the diversity of Muslim life. For Salafi movements worldwide, the challenge is to show that religious authenticity can coexist with political accountability and that defending Islam does not require hostility towards everyone who reads it differently.
The Saudi-Yemen conflict is not proof that Salafism as a whole has failed. It shows that religious claims cannot make up for failures of political judgement, moral accountability and institution-building. The deeper crisis appears when movements claim exclusive access to authentic Islam but lack the means to manage disagreement, restrain political power and protect human life.
The central question for Salafism, then, is not whether it can restore a supposedly pure religious past. It is whether it can offer an intellectually responsible and ethically convincing response to the realities of the present. Its credibility will depend on whether it can defend religious conviction without legitimising violence, challenge injustice without glorifying rebellion, and pursue reform without treating other Muslims as enemies. That distinction separates a movement preoccupied with policing religious boundaries from one capable of contributing to the moral and social renewal of Muslim societies.
(CREDIT: NEW AGE ISLAM)