Description:

Henri Lauzière (Department of History, Northwestern University)presents his new publication, The Making of Salafism, with special discussants Brannon Ingram and Ahmed el Shamsy, in an open book colloquium hosted by the Global Politics and Religion Research Group. In this work, Lauzière investigates the history of the highly influential Salafi movement in Islam. A bewildering array of Muslims, from the modernist reformer Muhammad 'Abduh (1849-1905) to ISIS, have been called 'Salafi'. Lauzière untangles the complicated history of this term through the biography of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894–1987). Traveling from Rabat to Mecca, from Calcutta to Berlin, al-Hilali interacted with high-profile Salafi scholars and activists who eventually abandoned Islamic modernism in favor of a more purist approach to Islam. Today, Salafis tend to claim a monopoly on religious truth and confront other Muslims on theological and legal issues. Lauzière's pathbreaking history recognizes the social forces behind this purist turn, uncovering the popular origins of what has become a global phenomenon.

Prior to his doctoral studies in Washington D.C., Lauzière received a Bachelor's degree in history from Université Laval in Québec City, Canada, and a Master's from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He has been a Davis fellow at the Department of History at Georgetown University in 2005-2006, and served as adjunct professor in 2007. He has served as contributor to the second edition of The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa (2004), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (forthcoming), and has also published twice in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (2005 and 2010).