Salafi Challenge and Maturidi Response: Contemporary Disputes over the Legitimacy of Maturidi kalam

Abstract

Salafi refutations of Sunni kalam have long been focused almost exclusively on the Ashariyya. In recent decades, however, Salafi authors and activists have also turned their attention towards the Maturidi current, which has been historically predominant in those parts of the Muslim world dominated by the Hanafi madhhab. In the present article, the characteristics of the Salafi challenge to the Maturidiyya are presented and the main factors behind its emergence and dissemination are traced. It is shown that the recent growing awareness of the Maturidiyya as a theological other among adherents of Salafi Islam owes much to the efforts of the Pakistani scholar Shams al-Din al-Salafi al-Afghani, a graduate of the Islamic University of Medina. It is argued that his work, which was influenced both by his specific South Asian background and by his exposure to established forms of Salafi education and dawa in Medina, was instrumental in raising the spectre of a "modern Maturidiyya" as a serious doctrinal challenger and impediment to Salafi expansion in South Asia and elsewhere. Hereby it was specifically the late Ottoman scholar Muhammad Zahid al-Kawthari and his followers, as well as the South Asian Deobandi and Barelvi (i.e., Ahl-i Sunnat) masalik, which were identified as prime representatives of the contemporary Maturidiyya. Finally, it is shown that the Salafi assault on the Maturidiyya seems to have resulted in a revival of theological madhhab-consciousness, as well as in growing cooperation between Hanafi scholars in different parts of the Muslim world.