Ahmed Daak the Sudanese lecturer of medical biochemistry along with Harry Verhoeven a specialist researcher on conflict, development and environment in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region has published an article titled ‘The battle for the soul of the Islamic world’. The article published on Aljazeera discusses the Islamists and Salafis battle ‘for prominence in forging new political realities in the Islamic world’. They state in the article “The new realities emerging from the Arab Spring are demonstrating that Islam will occupy a key position in the political debate from Morocco to Indonesia. Yet what remains unclear is whether this will lead to greater societal cohesion or increased tensions within the Islamic world and between it and outside actors. To understand what the future might look like, we must analyse the struggle within the camp of the pious believers: reformist Islamists versus archconservative Salafis. …For all their differences, important similarities exist between Salafis and Islamists. The choice is not between “Westernisation” and “traditional Islam”: neither camp belongs to the caricature categories of the GWOT [Global War on Terror]. Both are products of modernity, who think about politics and religion in deeply modern ways and who respond to modernisation through discourses, institutions and ideas that are solidly rooted in 21st century imaginations.”

 

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