Salafism is arguably the most successful Islamic reformist movement of the 20th and 21st centuries, spreading across the Middle East and South Asia as well as Western Europe and the United States. This movement’s proponents, in turn, ground their claim to authenticity in a seemingly straightforward legal claim: a commitment to deriving all law from the Quran and the Sunna. In turn, Salafis have often been understood in both academic and normative settings as reproducing the 7th-century golden model of the first three generations of the Muslim community (known as the “Pious Ancestors” or al-Salaf al-Salih). And indeed, madhhab-aligned scholars critique Salafism on precisely this point: their rejection of the Islamic scholarly tradition in favor of a narrow set of sources understood to document Islam’s founding moment. The question of whether Salafism’s self-depiction is accurate, however, is rarely asked. In this paper, I will draw on a wide range of Salafi periodicals published in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Kuwait to challenge the hermeneutical assumption that undergirds a great deal of analysis of Salafism. To do so, I will specifically focus on two aspects of Salafism’s interpretive method: first, its approach to the boundary between acts of worship (ʿibadat) and those of custom (ʿada or ʿurf) and second, the reconceptualization of facial hair as a matter of worship rather than custom. By telling this story, I will explore the role of concepts and terms from both the madhhab tradition and secular nationalism in Salafism’s interpretive practices, arguing that Salafism’s normative commitment to the Quran and Sunna must not be taken as an analytical approach for understanding its legal process. Instead, I place Salafism’s interpretive project in conversation with that of not only its madhhab counterparts but also with its ideological competitors.