I have taken a look at this matter for some time to get a clear picture. From my observation, i found that a lot of Sufis/shia use this term because it goes against their ideology. Then we have the non-Muslims that use the word "Salafi/Wahhabi" as a political term. If we take a look at it from the context of Islam, and what the Scholars say about the term Salafi then we will get the following answer. The word "Salafi" comes from the word "salaf". The word salaf comes from the full word salaf as-salih or in English the 3 golden generations. The prophet/Sahaba, then the tabeen ( Succesors of sahaba), and then finally the tabee tabeen ( The successor of the 2 generation that was the successor of the sahaba).
Hope it made sense..
Thank you for your explanation, not to brag about my self but just to let you know, i have a B.A. in Islamic studies So yeah, i have the chance to fairly know all of these things somewhat in details.
It is not that, Sufis/Shia folks labeled them with that designation at first. But it is a term more like they choose for themselves.
The problem with the so called Salafies is, they reject all widely recognized Fiqhi schools of thoughts/Madhabs that has been developed over thousand years by hundreds of thousands renowned Islamic scholars.
And not just that, they also tend to think, most of these historic scholars were MISGUIDED cause they made tons of different interpretation/Ijtihad of Quran and Sunnah over the course of history to derive Fiqhi rulings according to their own understanding and their own contemporary circumstances.
And obviously, as we all know, these highly developed madhabs/school of thoughts created lot of flexibility and ease for average Muslims as you can follow any of these and do just okay.
It is very important to note that, when it comes to all traditional Fiqhi schools of thoughts even they have different interpretations and they disagree with each others a lot, STILL THEY RECOGNIZE EACH OTHER. So, as long as you follow any one of these traditional schools of thoughts, you will do just fine with the others.
However, when it comes to hardcore Salafies this is not the case at all, as i stated previously they reject all of these other Fiqhi schools of thoughts/Madhabs, Thus creating a lot of difficulties and unease.
And the problem doesnt stop there. To make matter worse, not just only they reject all of these Fiqhi schools of thought/Madhabs and call them misguided, but they reject the very idea of INTERPRETATION/ IJTIHAD itself!
And want to follow the text TOO LITERALLY without any context, understanding or consideration of the contemporary social environment and other factors that are usually taken in to account when it comes to conventional IJTIHAD as we know it.
For Salafies, following text too literally and without any so called interpretation is the PURITY that actual
AS SALAF US SALEH had. And now, in their mind, they are emulating what the actual SALAF did.
Now, i know that, my explanations, description and generalization is too incomplete and faulty and does not take into account a lot of variable among so called Salafies themselves and leaves out other important stuff, but this is a causal discussion not an academic one.
So i dont have any obligation to be super precise and back my every premises with loads of evidences and references.
