Abdul Ali and his wife had been attending al-Furqan, the Dawa’s theological academy, and he was eager to explain to me what the Salafis mean when they say they take a “scientific” approach to applying religion to the problems of life. “When you study philosophy,” he said, “you read Plato and Aristotle. When you study English literature, you don’t read books from today, you read the classics. You must go back to the origins. For us, the first generation of the Prophet and his companions -- this is the most important source of truth. The next generation is the next most important, and then the one after that.” Beyond that, revelation subsides into history, with all its errors.
That, in a nutshell, is the Salafi worldview: Allah disclosed the truth during the first half of the seventh century, and then stopped; it is up to man to apply those eternal verities to life today.
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