The Salafi Spectrum

One can sometimes get the impression – not from reading this blog, of course – that all Islamists are violent, even if they aren’t all al-Qaeda. For those, I would recommend this piece in the February issue of the CTC Sentinel on “Deconstructing Salafism in Yemen” by Laurent Bonnefoy, a bright young French scholar, who does good work on Yemen. (It should be noted that I consider Laurent a friend, but then again there is a reason I consider him a friend.)

He does a good job of reminding all of us that there is an Islamist spectrum in Yemen, and al-Qaeda and other militants are only on one side of the spectrum.

I have been meaning to post about this since the February issue showed up in my in-box last week, but thought it best to wait until the PDF (yes, PDF!!) was posted on the Combating Terrorism Center’s website. Now that it finally is I can direct your attention to the article on page 13.

From what I hear, Laurent is working on another, long over-due project on Yemen that I can’t wait to read. In the meantime enjoy.