Wikipedia says ‘Salafism takes its name from the term salaf (“predecessors”, “ancestors”) used to identify the earliest Muslims, who, its adherents believe, provide the epitome of Islamic practice.’
Brief research in my diseased brain establishes however that it refers to its adherents’ practice of iPhoning themselves with the severed heads of those with whom they disagree, and is coined from the narcissistic barbarism selfie.
This was noted elsewhere last year.
The jilbab – claimed as traditional dress by Bangladeshi and Pakistani fanatics – is also apparently a modern invention: from the 1970s, sez Fadwa El Guindi.
Daisychaining along, I recently read Tahmima Anam’s The good Muslim, a powerful didactic novel about the replacement of Bangladeshi nationalism by murderous pan-Islamism following the independence war:
Zaid was born, brought into the world by a midwife whose face was covered by a piece of black netting. He opened his eyes to that, an empty space where the welcoming laugh should have been.
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