Salafi

"I'm not a Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi or anything. I'm JUST a Muslim!"

This is something we see and hear a lot, especially during arguments on social media. 

Many make this declaration quite passionately and they feel that it's contradictory to Allaah's saying and damaging to divide among ourselves with different labels.  Quite simply, we are all "Muslims", so we should all hold hands and skip down the rainbow.

To be very frank, this is something only an ignorant would say.

In today's world, the term "Muslim" does not have the same pristine and pure meaning it had during the time of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and his Companions. It does not denote a single unified Aqeedah and Manhaj upon which the people are united upon.

Today, being a Muslim means that you maybe an adherent to a number of different belief systems. So if all of these people call themselves "Muslims", how would we recognize the original path from those that deviated?

This is why we call ourselves Salafi. And to find out who exactly a Salafi is, please see here and here.

To read Shaykh al-Albaani's رحمه الله beautiful explanation of why we call ourselves Salafi, please see this link: