Some say: Why do you call yourselves "Salafis"? Why don't you say: "The People of the Sunnah and the Community"?

The questioner : Some say: Why do you call yourselves Salafis? I am not looking for a dispute over terminology, but he says: Why don't you call yourselves the People of the Sunnah and the Community? The Sufis, the Rafidah, and others from the people of false creeds are very angry at this name, and you... Salafis.

The Shaykh : And praise be to Allah.

The questioner : So he says: Why not... this name, and instead use the name that you are the People of the Sunnah and the Community?

The Shaykh : I think you made a mistake in part of the question when you mentioned the Rafidah. I mean, do you think that if we drop this name and say we are the People of the Sunnah and the Community, the Rafidah would be pleased with this name instead of the first one? Your including the Rafidah in the matter was perhaps a slip of the tongue!
...
The Shaykh: All right, is the one who says this from the People of the Sunnah? Let us assume he is. All right, does he belong to the Salaf? I think he does not, because if he belongs to the Salaf, he is from the People of the Sunnah. In that case, the disagreement between us and him would be a disagreement over the name, not over the thing named. But I know of some groups existing now, from among those who claim to belong to the Sunnah in name but contradict it in action; they do not accept being called Salafis or from the Salaf al-Salih, because this has become a label for a sect of the People of the Sunnah, namely those who actually verify the Sunnah in action, creed, character, and behavior.
The Shaykh: I know that when I was here at the Islamic University as a teacher for about a quarter of a century, there were individuals from some parties who would raise this question: Why do you say Salafi and Salaf? Why don't we belong to Islam, since we are all Muslims, and so on, as our Lord of the Worlds named us, and so forth?
The Shaykh: The truth—and I say the truth—is that we call ourselves by this name for two reasons:
The Shaykh: The first reason is that all Muslims, despite their very severe differences, none of the sects disavow the Book and the Sunnah, and none disavow calling themselves Muslim, even the Rafidah.
The Shaykh: So if we follow their wishes, that we drop the word Salafi and just say Muslim, well, all these sects are Muslims, even the Druze, even the Alawites, even the Nusayris—they also say they are Muslims. Even in the time of the Turks, they would write "Muslim" on the personal ID, but for the Jew it was "Jew," and for the Christian it was "Christian." Included in the term "Muslim" are those who are not Muslim at all in our view, like some of those we mentioned. Then we have the well-known hadith: to the end of the hadith. All these sects are included within the circle of Islam, and the name Muslim is applied to them. If you want to identify yourself to someone who asks you, "What is your religion?" and you say, "Muslim," every one of these Muslims gives the same answer. Have you expressed your direction when you said a name in which the useful and the useless are mixed—as the saying goes? That is one thing. Or to clarify the methodology of the speaker, he says, "I am a Sunni Salafi," because the Ash'ari is Sunni, the Maturidi is Sunni, the Qadiani is Sunni, and so on. But to distinguish yourself from these people by clarifying your choice and your methodology in knowledge and creed.
The Shaykh: The second thing we say to those who deny this attribution and this naming: Can you drop all the other attributions, which the entire Islamic world lives with now? Wherever you go, if you ask a person you do not know, "What is your madhhab?" What does he say to you? Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali, Shi'i, Zaydi, and so on.