A Salafi is a Muslim who emphasizes the Salaf ("predecessors" or "ancestors"), the earliest Muslims, as model examples of Islamic practice.

The term has been in use since the Middle Ages but today refers especially to a follower of a modern Sunni Islamic movement known as the Salafiyyah, which is related to or includes Wahhabism, so that the two terms are sometimes erroneously viewed as synonymous.

Salafism has become associated with literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islamic theology and, in the West, with the Salafi Jihadis who espouse violent jihad against civilians as a legitimate expression of Islam.

Academics and historians use the term to denote "a school of thought which surfaced in the second half of the 19th century as a reaction to the spread of European ideas," and "sought to expose the roots of modernity within Muslim civilization."

(''Jihad'' By Gilles Kepel, Anthony F.

Roberts.

)Just who, or what groups and movements, qualify as Salafi remains in dispute.

In the Arab World, and possibly even more so now by Muslims in the West, it is usually secondary to the more common term Ahl-as-Sunnah (i.e., "People of the Sunnah") while Ahl al-Hadith (The People of the Tradition) is more often used in the Indian subcontinent to identify adherents of Salafi orthodoxy, a term used more in Arabic academia to indicate scholars and students of Hadith.

All are considered to bear the same or similar connotation and have been used interchangeably by Muslim scholars throughout the ages, Ahl al-Hadeeth possibly being the oldest recorded term used to describe the earliest adherents, while Ahl as-Sunnah is overwhelmingly used by Muslim scholars, including Salafis as well as others, such as the Ash'ari sect, leading to a narrower use of the term "Salafi".

The Muslim Brotherhood includes the term in the "About Us" section of its website while others exclude that organization in the belief that the group commits religious innovations.

Other self-described contemporary salafis may define themselves as Muslims who follow "literal, traditional ... injunctions of the sacred texts" rather than the "somewhat freewheeling interpretation" of earlier salafis.

These look to Ibn Taymiyyah, not the 19th century figures of Muhammad Abduh, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and Rashid Rida.

According to the 2010 German domestic intelligence service annual report, Salafism is the fastest growing Islamic movement in the world.