Abstract
This chapter describes the process whereby the Jordanian regime has endeavoured to make the local Salafi movement into a politico-religious minority. It does so by making reference to the Gramscian concept of subalternity. The concept of subalternity allows to elaborate upon the relational, dynamic and constructed nature of a minority status. Salafism is a particularly rigid and dogmatic approach to Sunni Islam, whose adherents, while it is hard to establish their exact numbers, represent a numerical minority in the kingdom. However, their activism, proselytism and regional ties make them an important social actor. The regime intends therefore to relegate this trend, in its various manifestations, in a position of political and ideological marginality above and beyond their sheer numbers. In addressing different manifestations of Salafism, the Jordanian regime has deployed a combination of tactics to achieve this goal: the construction of an officially sanctioned discourse about Islam; a bureaucratic management of Salafism; and last, its outright repression. The chapter finally contends that, in line with Gramscian theory (in particular the concept of ‘double-siege’), the current success of the regime may not be considered permanent, especially when considering the vitality and reach of Salafism as a sociocultural phenomenon.
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Notes
- 1.
Conversation with T. K., Amman, 5 March 2016. T. K. worked for me a translator during my field research in Jordan. I prefer not to disclose his full name here for security reasons.
- 2.
I adopt the English noun for the sake of expediency and readability in lieu of the original Arabic noun, salafiyya. I will use however Arabic terms for the majority of the concepts relating to Salafism as they have no good equivalent in English.
- 3.
A note on the term madhhab: a proper translation is difficult, meaning at times ‘school’, ‘method’, or ‘approach’, or ‘paradigm’. Here, for instance, it is best rendered as ‘doctrine’.
- 4.
Suffice to say that groups like Al-Qa‘ida or ISIS are examples of Salafism, albeit on the fringes.
- 5.
Salafism remains however close to Hanbalism, the most rigid of the four schools, and the one adopted by Saudi Wahhabism.
- 6.
This makes Salafis particularly disparaging of ‘shirk’ or ‘associationism’, i.e. associating God with other entities in ways that could compromise its absolute ‘oneness’. The socio-political implication of this precept is also momentous: the unity of God should be also reflected in the unity of its community, the Islamic ummah. Yet, divisions abound. Given that for Salafis only one true Islam is given, alternative views represent a violation of tawhīd.
- 7.
The specific contours of which are left quite vague.
- 8.
Liguori shows how the subaltern, in Gramsci’s Notebooks evolves during the drafting of his notes.
- 9.
For Gramsci, the political party was to accomplish this goal.
- 10.
Green blames this on the so-called censorship thesis. See Green (2011) for a detailed discussion on this issue.
- 11.
The storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in 1917 best captures this idea.
- 12.
Gramsci calls the dialectical unity of the political and civil society the “integral state” (“lo stato integrale”).
- 13.
If we were to consider Gramsci’s Marxist thought, the subalterns were indeed the demographic majority in a capitalist society.
- 14.
His legacy is still in fact matter of contest both amongst his immediate disciples as well as between the quietists at large and the politicos.
- 15.
The only available study about this group, to my knowledge, is Wagemakers “The Dual Effect”. The name of the organisation can be roughly translated as “Group of the Book and the Tradition of the Prophet”.
- 16.
Moaddel (2002) describes Jordan as “authoritarian pluralism”.
- 17.
Robbins and Rubin (2013, p. 61) define Official Islam as, ‘elements of religious authority that are under the direct or indirect control of the regime. These elements are a part of the bureaucracy, meaning that they have some autonomy from the regime itself but that this autonomy can be checked by the regime as with any other bureaucratic department’. See also Robbins and Rubin (2017).
- 18.
Available at http://ammanmessage.com/, accessed May 8, 2019. Italics in the original.
- 19.
The Jamʿiyyat al-Kitāb wa-l-Sunna is still active today and has provided support to the many Syrian refugees that Jordan hosts.
- 20.
In the Arab world, the term is used generally to indicate secret services and secret police, especially when tasked to repress political dissent.
- 21.
See International Crisis Group (2005).
- 22.
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Ramaioli, M. (2021). The Making of a Minority: Subalternity and Minoritisation of Jordanian Salafism. In: Maggiolini, P., Ouahes, I. (eds) Minorities and State-Building in the Middle East. Minorities in West Asia and North Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54399-0_9
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