Laurent Bonnefoy

Many still consider it to be a Trojan horse of Saudi interests and describe it as a product of a centralised foreign policy. Based on extensive research carried out in various parts of Yemen, Laurent Bonnefoy’s book offers a counter-narrative to the emergence of Salafism.
In doing so he focuses both on decidedly non-violent Salafi doctrines propounded by the renowned Yemeni Salafi thinker and teacher, Muqbil al-Wadi’i (d. 2001), and on the everyday practices of his activists. Rather than show more emerging as the result of specifically planned policies, Salafism in Yemen appears to have developed since the early 1980s through spontaneous mechanisms that highlight the irrelevance of the dominant state-centred narrative. Laurent Bonnefoy demonstrates how this new religious movement then underwent complex, subtle yet tangible translocal transformations linked to migration, the individualisation of religious identities and globalisation. As such, far from being an ‘imported product’, Salafism in Yemen is deeply rooted in its local context. show less