Tracing the development of the term Salafiyya long has proved vexing for intellectual historians of twentieth-century Islam. In the early twentieth-century, the term arose in multiple contexts that bespeak a deeper underlying shift in Islamic intellectual history. My paper compares notions of the Salafiyya in the pre-independence work of Moroccan ʿālim and political activist ʿAllal al-Fasi (d. 1974) and relevant sections of Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) and Rashid Rida’s (d. 1935) Tafsīr al-Manār. It takes their outward reference to the salaf al-ṣāliḥ as a starting point for discussing two fundamentally different constructions of Islamic modernism. Whereas Abduh uses the concept of the doctrine of the salaf (madhhab al-salaf) to prescribe stringent restrictions on ascertaining God’s knowledge, al-Fasi professes the Salafi movement (ḥaraka salafiyya) as a directive for spiritual, social, and political liberation. At first glance, the relevant texts of the two authors may seem incongruent for comparison. On the one hand, Abduh’s madhhab al-salaf is firmly set in the tradition of metaphysics derived from proper scriptural interpretation. On the other, al-Fasi’s elaboration of the “Salafi movement” (al-ḥaraka al-salafiyya) amounts to a broad call to engage with worldly phenomena as a means to spiritual revival. However, looking beyond each author’s attachment to the term salafī reveals a more foundationally divergent modernist outlook that this paper seeks to explicate. My paper argues that the specific role that each envisions for the individual Muslim represents a paradigmatic shift in the history of Islamic modernism more significant than reference to the salaf. In particular, their diverging visions of individual’s subjectivity vis-à-vis the Islamic tradition demonstrates this difference. Whereas Abduh sharply circumscribes access to the metaphysical tradition to protect it from unqualified “commoners” (ʿawām), al-Fasi implores his masses of listeners to liberate their minds and spirits as a means of liberating their society. Al-Fasi thereby encourages the individual’s participation and requires acute engagement with the world around them. In doing so, he shows only nominal concern for the scriptural and metaphysical tradition to which Abduh emphatically gives ultimate primacy. In the end, I contend that al-Fasi’s focus on forming individual mentalities in worldly terms points to the replacement of metaphysics by politics in Islamic modernist paradigms. The political teleology that al-Fasi conflated with spiritual revival provides a lens into this shift that dominated Islamic modernism for the rest of the twentieth century.