Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya as Changing Salafi Icons 471
adherence to a particular confessional group within Islam. Umm ʿAbd
Allāh met her husband in Germany. Their marriage was not arranged
by either of their families. What brought them together is their com-
mon origin and their quest for true Islam. Umm ʿAbd Allāh described
her marriage as an ongoing and heated discussion about Islam because
in the beginning the two of them could never agree on anything. In
the end, her husband often succeeds in coming up with the necessary
evidence from the holy sources of Koran and Hadith to convince her
of his arguments.^39 Both Shaykh Ḥasan and Umm ʿAbd Allāh are the
main actors for shaping Salafi religious knowledge emanating from this
centre. They also strongly influence the choice of religious authorities
and the modalities of access to them.
Since the process of acquiring Salafi religious knowledge is, as a
rule, gender-segregated and because relevant female activities have
been neglected in the academic literature, I will focus in this section
on Umm ʿAbd Allāh. What seems to fascinate her most about Salafi
Islam is the direct access to the sources of Islam, the Koran and the
Sunna of the Prophet Muḥammad. The Koran is God’s revelation to
mankind in the Arabic language; the theological, legal and other rules
are derived from it. As an additional source, the Sunna of the Prophet,
which includes narratives of statements and actions of the Prophet
Muḥammad, is consulted. Because the Prophet Muḥammad is the seal
of a long chain of prophets, his behaviour serves as model for all Mus-
lims; this model is called the Sunna. He was followed by his compan-
ions and other meritorious members of the two following generations,
called “the pious ancestors” (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ). Umm ʿAbd Allāh tries
to discover these sources on her own as a way of self-empowerment.
Instead of relying entirely on (male) Muslim legal scholars and theo-
logians for references and thus submitting to their monopoly of inter-
pretation, she is making an effort to assume this time-consuming chal-
lenge of verifying the sources. As will be outlined further on, she does
accept a certain tradition of legal scholars and theologians. Her aim
is to reconstruct every detail of the Prophet Muḥammad’s life from
the Koran and the Prophetic traditions (aḥādīth) in order to derive a
proper code of conduct for her personal orientation. Since many of
these traditions are forgeries, Umm ʿAbd Allāh is particularly scep-
tical about the trustworthiness and reliability of Hadith-collections;
39 Informal conversation with Umm ʿAbd Allāh on May 29, 2004 in al-Nūr
Mosque in Berlin.
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