Salafiy(y)a

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Salafiy(y)a. Movement founded by Jamal al-Din al-Afghānī and Muḥammad ʿAbduh, which sought to reconcile Islam with the advances of Western science and rationality. It received its name from the phrase salaf al-ṣāliḥīn, ‘the virtuous ancestors’, but it was not regarded by its opponents as preserving the essence of the past, but rather as subverting it.

In contrast, the same word is now used to translate ‘fundamentalism’.

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