Interviewing Salafis: overcoming fear and mistrust in Middle Eastern and European contexts

In chapter 11, Zoltan Pall and Mohamed-Ali Adraoui provide a snapshot of stories from their practical experiences conducting research on Salafis in Lebanon, Kuwait, and France in order to illustrate how to deal with Salafis as subjects of social science inquiry and to provide broader lessons for future researchers. They discuss the challenges and difficulties they faced while conducting fieldwork that came from the Salafis’ distrust of western researchers. They also elaborate how did they overcome these challenges and difficulties by clearly stating their intentions and embedding themselves to the local societies. The authors also provide insights how local sociopolitical actors might engage with the researchers of Salafism, and share their experiences to deal with them.