Re: What is salafite ?
the problem these days with the name 'salafi' is that everyone's jumped on the back of it... the salafi school (not strictly a school, more a methodology) saw a strong wave of popularity and resurgence among Muslim youth in particular, especially in the west, over the past couple of decades, attracted to its evidence-based, outwardly academic approach (unfortunately often at the expense of more spiritual, character-building aspects of faith)... when other groups/cults/sects caught wind they soon leaped on the bandwagon in one way or another in the hope of appearing attractive to the same (impressionable?) audience... so it's a cocktail containing every man and his dog
so what happened? infighting! with every such group out to prove it represents the true salafi way and as often happens the extremists win out since they are always prepared to shout the loudest and hit the hardest... they get the attention and everyone gets tarred with the same brush... yet when recently a salafi group in the UK announced that it, its scholars and Islam "condemn suicide bombers as 'perpetrators of evil'" it's picked up by just a couple of media outlets in India and a couple in Britain...
even defunct groups like Al Muhajiroun (a Hizb ut-Tahrir offshoot) have been known to call themselves salafis and it's no coincidence that two new Al Muhajiroun offshoots have taken on names like Al Ghuraaba (The Strangers) and Al Firqa al Najiya (Saviour Sect or the Saved Sect) knowing full well that both terms were previously popularised by salafis... now the Saviour Sect is busy labelling other Muslims as 'fake salafis'!
whether OBL calls himself salafi or not... i remember one of the first substantive Muslim writings i came across against 9/11 was from a salafi group, correctly denouncing suicide bombers and utterly lambasting OBL for being of the khawarij ilk... a reference to an early Islamic deviant sect known for its fondness for declaring Muslims as apostates and calling for their blood
in fact many (if not most?) jihadist groups are happy to receive the salafi name since they fool themselves into believing their violent brand of religion somehow has an origin in early Islam (the salaf)
BBC, 30 July: "Some western analysts have associated Salafist thinking with Al Qaeda because some militant groups in the Middle East describe themselves by the same name. But British followers of the sect say the association is completely wrong because they themselves have been targeted by militants for speaking out."
if being a salafi means to express Islam according to the methodology of the earliest righteous Muslims (al salaf al saleh) then in that sense many (if not the majority) of Muslims are salafis... the followers of the four famous schools of fiqh trace their school and jurisprudic preferences to one or more Imams of that earliest period...
if (some) salafis (or wahabis) are aligned to saudi arabia and its "official" scholars then one will naturally and rightly expect them to speak out against suicide bombings and terrorism as that has usually been the prominent stance of saudi grand muftis and the country's leading clerics... any scholars expressing an opposing view probably wouldn't get a voice...
so the assertion that salafis believe and encourage this or that only begs the question: which salafis?
p.s.
(you can all wake up now... i've finished)