462 Annabelle Böttcher
broad scale of Ibn Taymiyya’s attraction among Salafis. Ibn Taymiyya
is a household name in the Islamic world with a popularity reaching
far beyond the circles of radical Islam on the one hand and advanced
scholarship on the other. While the historian and famous traveler Ibn
Baṭṭūṭa (d. 1217), who met Ibn Taymiyya during a stay in Damascus,
said his behavior made it seem as if he had “a screw loose”^5 , others have
bestowed the honorary title of shaykh al-islām on him,^6 thus acknowl-
edging his contributions to the Sunni scholarly tradition. Apart from
being recognized as an erudite scholar, theologian, and jurist among
Sunni Muslims in general, he and his students turned into positive
icons for a growing puritanical reform movement with deep roots in
the Islamic Salafi tradition. Citing their names has become a trademark
in the Salafi global “reference space of the soul”, in which humans,
goods, ways of thinking, ritual practices, political and cultural values,
and ideas circulate irrespective of national, ethnic, and linguistic bar-
riers.^7 In this reference space, Salafis are engaged in the production and
maintenance of meaning, which social movement scholars call a “fram-
ing process”.^8 In this process, Salafis diagnose political, economic, and
social problems and reach some sort of consensus about their causes
and the need to alter them. These changes target their own private lives
as well as those of others. Some might even feel obliged to urge others
to act according to their recommendations. The means of implement-
ing change vary from peaceful to violent, representing a wide spectrum
of Salafis from the pacifist citizen to the armed combatant engaged in
violent opposition to the state structure. In this process, the works of
Ibn Taymiyya and his students play an important role even though
they are not easy to understand for the average reader. Salafi framing
efforts are embedded in a particular environment with varying sets of
political, social, and economic factors and actors.^9 In the Islamic world,
the latter represent the political power-holders, the army, and non-state
5 Little, Donald P.: Did Ibn Taymiyya Have a Screw Loose?, in: Studia Islamica 41
(1975), pp. 93–111, here p. 95.
6 Ibid., p. 99.
7 Allievi, Stefano: Islam in the Public Space. Social Networks, Media and Neo-
Communities, in: Stefano Allievi and Jorgen S. Nielsen (eds.): Muslim Networks
and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, Leiden and Boston 2003,
pp. 1–27, here p. 10.
8 Benford, Robert D. and Snow, David A.: Framing Processes and Social Move-
ments. An Overview and Assessment, in: Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000),
pp. 611–639, here pp. 614–615.
9 Ibid., p. 628.
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