Description

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Salafis explicitly base their legitimacy on continuity with the Quran and the Sunna, and their distinctive practices—praying in shoes, wearing long beards and short pants, and observing gender segregation—are understood to have a similarly ancient pedigree. In this book, however, Aaron Rock-Singer draws from a range of media forms as well as traditional religious texts to demonstrate that Salafism is a creation of the twentieth century and that its signature practices emerged primarily out of Salafis’ competition with other social movements amid the intellectual and social upheavals of modernity. In the Shade of the Sunna thus takes readers beyond the surface claims of Salafism’s own proponents—and the academics who often repeat them—into the larger sociocultural and intellectual forces that have shaped Islam’s fastest growing revivalist movement.

About the Author

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Aaron Rock-Singer is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and author of Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival.

Praise For…

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"In the Shade of the Sunna [is] an indispensable reference for those interested in Salafism or Islam and, more broadly, for those intent on exploring the complicated but nevertheless constitutive entanglements between religious tradition and modernity."
— Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"Rock-Singer has done the field a great service by publishing this book.... Theoretically robust, empirically rich...[this is an] excellent book that advances our knowledge of Salafism both in Egypt and generally."
— Die Welt des Islams

"This makes In the Shade of the Sunna an indispensable reference for those interested in Salafism or Islam and, more broadly, for those intent on exploring the complicated but nevertheless constitutive entanglements between religious tradition and modernity."
— the Journal of the American Academy of Religion