Fundamental Normative Frameworks in the Salafi Discourse and Change in the Functionality of Extremist Groups

Salafism and extremist violence, which have emerged in the form of Takfirism in the recent past, constitute one of the most important security issues in the world of Islam and at the international level. Understanding extremism requires a systematic study of this phenomenon and looking at the essence and nature of Salafi extremist groups in a historical context influenced by certain political and social developments. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to look into the normative frameworks of the Salafi discourse and examine how the role and functionality of the Salafi extremist groups are determined. In the course of the research it was observed that while, on the one hand, the existing extremist Salafi trends share certain common norms, they have, on the other hand, undergone some changes in their functionality because of the differences in understanding the exiting situations. The main hypothesis of this paper is that the internal normative framework of the Salafi discourse is supposedly based on such concepts as monotheism, the religious understanding of Salaf (lit. predecessors, derived from the expression of “al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ”, or the pious predecessors, often taken to be the first three generations of Muslims), etc. and such beliefs as innovation, ignorance etc. as well as behavioral rules derived from such conceptions as takfir and jihad on this basis of which their struggle for achieving power has been through the use of violence and arrogance with the false claim of reviving the Islamic caliphate. However, despite the consistency in the internal normative elements of these trends, the external objective changes have led to the formation of three different types of functionalities in the form of three extremist Salafi generations lie Al-Qaeda, Taliban and the ISIS.