Abdullah Azzam and the formation process of jihadist salafism

Salafism is a theological-political Islamic school of thought that holds the principle of maintaining unchanged the beliefs of the first three generations of Islam. Salafism has survived primarily as part of the Hanbali School founded by Ahmad bin Hanbal (d. 241/855). This sect, which rejected distortions on theological issues, along with Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728/1328), became a school that used sharp rhetoric against political power and intellectual opponents and sought to dominate power and society by taking initiatives in political-social events. Salafism acquired a different identity after Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1206/1792) along with Ibn Taymiyyah and his followers, thus evolving into a school that used takfir and violence as a means of struggle, persuasion, and a conversion mechanism. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, Dr. Abdullah Azzam, (d. 1989) a Palestinian scholar, went to the region to establish the Office of Service to the Mujahideen, which brought tens of thousands of Salafist volunteers to the region with the support of Osama bin Laden (d. 2011). Azzam, who defined himself as a Salafist, in a sense laid the physical foundation of Jihadist Salafism, then the latest version of Salafism, through the organization's activities, and the intellectual infrastructure of jihadist Salafism through his works on jihad. The Arabic adjectival abbreviation "السلفية الجهادية/as-Salafiyetu'l-Jihadiyya" means "jihadist Salafism" according to the dictionary meaning. Terminologically, it refers to the doctrinal teaching of Salafism and, in terms of the movement's methodology, to the contemporary ideological current revolving around the concept of jihad, represented today by al-Qaeda and its derivatives. With the handover of this physical-intellectual infrastructure to Osama bin Laden after Azzam's assassination in 1989, Jihadist Salafism in a sense completed its organizational processes and became a global actor without its own state, but with a very broad base and domain. This study aims to address the emergence process of Jihadi Salafism, the intellectual background and the role of Azzam's theory and practices in the emergence process of Jihadi as the main objective. Keywords: Salafism, Jihadist Salafism, Jihad, Abdullah Azzam