Twilight of the Saints: The History and Politics of Salafism in Egypt

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• MED: Middle East Directions Programme

Stéphane Lacroix, professor at Sciences Po, presents his most recent book on the socio-history of Egyptian Salafism.

What is Salafism? And how has this ultraconservative movement grown in influence to take its place at the heart of Sunni Islamic normativity? What is its relationship with politics? And why is it important to distinguish it from the Muslim Brotherhood in order to decipher its evolution? 

During this lecture, Stéphane Lacroix invites the audience to unravel these questions in this socio-history of Egyptian Salafism. Based on research carried out in Egypt from 2010 onwards, before, during and after the revolution that led to the fall of Mubarak and the rise to power of political Islam, this book traces the history of this movement and its players. 

This publication introduces the reader to the Salafis' grammar of action and analyses the mutations that Egyptian Islam underwent throughout the 20th century, and until very recently. Far from constituting an immutable ideology, Salafism itself emerged transformed from this process, to the point of becoming a central player in the aborted democratic transition of 2011. It represents a major contribution to the study of the transformations of Islam and its relationship to politics in contemporary times.