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inquiry in political theology. I forgot about it. For various reasons, I have had to revisit that old paper, one o f the reasons being the success o f the Salafist (puritanical) party in the m ost recent Egyptian election. It drew 28 percent o f the votes, a result no one expected. I discovered to my surprise that Salafism is currently the fastest growing religious movement in the world. In my original paper I dealt with the authority o f the messenger o f God and especially the way in which the “People o f the Sunnah” (Sunnah, in the narrow sense, is the way o f life led by the prophet Muhammad and his companions that should be emulated and adhered to by every Muslim) or the “People o f the Hadiith ” (the people o f the tradition) treat the subject o f authority. These two epithets used to be the conventional terms to describe the Salafist—but not anymore. According to Salafist theology, Islamic authority is justified by being based on the m odel o f the pristine Islamic society under the direc