Salafism in Lebanon: From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism by Robert G. Rabil (review)

In this book Robert Rabil attempts to offer an understanding of how Salafism in Lebanon has evolved and transformed within the context of confessionalism. He also wants to show how the ideology of the different Salafi schools has been applied to politics in Lebanon’s multi-sectarian milieu.

In the beginning he discusses the broad belief system of Salafism, and then distinguishes three schools of thought within the movement: the quietist, the haraki or activist, and the jihadi. In Chapter Two he provides some background on Lebanon’s confessional political system and the emergence of Islamic movements within this context. The next three chapters discuss the various ideological positions of different Lebanese Salafis. The last three chapters focus on contemporary sociopolitical developments in Lebanon and their impact on Salafism. These final three chapters cover the period since the end of the 1975–90 civil war until the beginnings of the conflict in Syria.

So far very few scholars have done serious studies on Salafism in Lebanon, and a thorough analysis that would shed light on the development of the movement in relation to the Sunni community’s leadership structure, and to the larger Lebanese and regional context is much needed. Unfortunately, Rabil’s book contributes little to fill this gap due to its shallow analysis, lack of a cohesive structure, and its conceptual misunderstandings.

In the first place, the book is not based on a solid theoretical background: Rabil devotes less than a paragraph to describe the theories he intends to use in his analysis (p. 16). He claims that he deals with Salafism as a social movement. However, he does not explain how Salafism fits into the larger family of social movements, nor does he explain how the logic of Salafism differs from that of other forms of social activism, such as anti-capitalist protest movements.

The book, as Rabil puts it, “heeds Joseph Alagha’s employment of the concept of resource mobilization” (p. 16). But he does not explain how Alagha employs resource mobilization, and how his approach, developed to examine Hizbullah, would be useful to understand Salafism. Moreover, there is no further discussion of social movement theory or resource mobilization.

The author’s seemingly shallow understanding of Islam and Salafism has led to serious factual errors throughout his book. One example among several is in his description of the Islamic Unification Movement (IUM, or Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami in Arabic), which ruled Tripoli from 1983–1985 as a “movement with a Salafi tint.” As he states, “one cannot fail but notice the Salafi component of [IUM founder Shaykh Sa‘id] Sha‘ban’s ideology, reflected no less in the name of the movement than in a fundamental Salafi tenet: to carry out da‘wa [proselytizing mission] in accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunna” (p. 75). Rabil does not seem to recognize that tawhid (the unity of God) is a fundamental Islamic concept; therefore its presence in IUM’s name is no indication per se of Salafi influence. Similarly, all Muslims, not just Salafis, believe in the necessity of da‘wa as laid out in the Qur’an and sunna (the record of sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad).

Rabil also provides lengthy but superficial descriptions of the ideology of the quietist Shaykh Sa‘d al-Din al-Kibbi, and the haraki Zakariya al-Masri. While he gives some information about the former, he fails to provide any background on Masri. We do not know why is it important to dedicate a chapter to Masri’s discourse, and to say little or nothing about that of the most prominent haraki leader Shaykh Salim al-Rafi‘i, who is mentioned several times throughout the book. Rabil also does not explain how these scholars communicate their discourses to their audiences nor why these discourses resonate so powerfully.

The last three chapters of the book are extremely unbalanced. The author gives a lengthy...