Understanding Salafism: Seeking the Path of the Pious Predecessors

by Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

Genres: Islam, Religion, History, Theology

596 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 12, 2025

About the author

Dr. Yasir Qadhi is a prolific author and Islamic teacher who has written several books about Islam. He is a popular speaker in many Muslim circles in the United States, Canada, England and Australia. His lectures at different locations can be found on YouTube. He is one of the few people who has combined an Islamic seminary training (from Islamic University of Madinah) with Western education (from universities of Houston and Yale).

Dr. Qadhi was born in Houston, Texas, to Pakistani parents, in 1975, went to high school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, graduating valedictorian of his class, and completed a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston. After working for Dow Chemical for a short stint, he decided to pursue an education in Islamic studies, and left for the Islamic University of Madinah. There, he completed a second bachelor's degree, specializing in hadith studies, and then went on to complete an M.A. in Theology. Presently, he is in the final stages of completing his Ph.D in Religious Studies from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

He is the Dean of Academic Affairs and an Instructor in the AlMaghrib Institute. He appears on a number of Islamic satellite channels (Islam Channel in England; Al-Huda Channel in Egypt; Al-Fajr Channel in Egypt; and Peace TV in India, U.K and U.S), where he teaches theology, Seerah, Tajweed, and other topics. He gives regular sermons and lectures. He also blogs at MuslimMatters.org, where he is the group-blog's lead specialist.

Reviews

[Alamgir · Rating 2 out of 5]

While Understanding Salafism is accessible and well-structured, it ultimately fails to meet the standards of serious academic scholarship. The book is largely descriptive, offering summaries of theological terms and historical events without engaging in sustained analysis or theoretical framing. Qadhi presents Atharī and Ḥanbalī figures as "proto-Salafis," flattening centuries of doctrinal development and reproducing Salafi internal narratives rather than interrogating them. He overlooks the complexity of Ḥanbalī Atharism and neglects major scholarly critiques, such as those by Henri Lauzière or Mohammad Gharaibeh, that problematise the very lineage he assumes. Compared to more rigorous works on Salafism, this book lacks the critical distance, methodological clarity, and intellectual depth necessary for a meaningful contribution to the field. Qadhi remains an insider negotiating a theological inheritance, not an academic interrogating a historical movement.

[Talhah · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have mentioned, this is not a work of serious academic scholarship: in addition to the issue of labeling most Atharī/Ḥanbalī figures pre-Ibn Taymiyya "proto-Salafīs," Qadhi also snatches the term "Salafism" away from those who first used it and uses definitions of it invented later by those who co-opted it, as he inherits that tradition. The first edition of this book also has numerous spelling, transcription, and grammar mistakes that must be fixed.

My overall positive rating remains as this book does a good job of describing late 20th- and early 21st-century developments in the Salafi world, both theological and sociopolitical. Much of what is discussed is difficult if not impossible to find in English, and Qadhi also includes a few personal anecdotes from his time in Medina (both in the body and in the footnotes). The book also benefits from a rare non-adversarial tone towards Islamic traditionalists.

[Jaylani Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book by a Muslim scholar and not by non-Muslim scholar. However, he failed to mention that scholars who did their studies at Islamic University of Madina, including himself became tv presenters for Huda TV and Peace TV. Aren't they the media for Salafi scholars or are they the media for ordinary scholars?

[Shakiru]

I am yet to read it. I will do so only after I read it.