made clear in a fatwa that, according to their understanding, the Ahl as-Sunna wa-l-jama only refer to those Muslims who are Ashʿarites or Maturidites. The rivalry between Ashʿarīyya and Salafiyya became visible again at the two Sunni conferences in 2016, which were directed against the terror of the IS organization. The first conference with the title "Who are the Ahl al-Sunna wa al-jama?" took place in the Chechen capital Grozny in August 2016 under the patronage of Ramzan Kadyrov. Numerous religious figures from Egypt, India, Syria, Yemen and the Russian Federation took part, including Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam the Azhar, and Sheikh Aboobacker Ahmed, the Grand Mufti of India. According to its organizers, the conference should "mark a blessed turning point in efforts to correct the serious and dangerous distortion of religion by those extremists trying to usurp the venerable name of Ahl al-Sunna wa-al-Jama'a, him to coin exclusively on itself and to exclude its true representatives from it." In the final declaration the Salafis and Islamist groups like Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, etc. and the Takfiri organisations like ISIL were excluded from Sunni Islam. In response to this, various prominent Salafiyya figures held a counter-conference in Kuwait in November 2016 under the title "The Correct Meaning of Sunnism" (al-Mafhūm aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ li-ahl as-sunna wa-l-jama), in which they also distanced themselves from extremist groups, but at the same time insisted that Salafiyya was not only part of Sunnism, but represented Sunnism itself. The conference was chaired by Ahmad ibn Murabit, Grand Mufti of Mauritania.ʿAbdallāh Maṣmūdī: Tauṣīyāt Muʾtamar al-Mafhūm aṣ-ṣaḥīḥ li-ahl as-sunna wa-l-ǧamāʿa wa-aṯaru-hū fī l-wiqāya min al-ġulūw wa-t-taṭarruf. Howiyapress.com 13. November 2016. A few days later, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb publicly distanced himself from the final declaration of the Grozny conference, reiterating that he had not participated in it and stressed that he naturally viewed the Salafists as Sunnis. See also References Further reading Ahmed, Khaled. Sectarian war: Pakistan's Sunni-Shia violence and its links to the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2011). Charles River Editors. The History of the Sunni and Shia Split: Understanding the Divisions within Islam (2010) 44pp excerpt; brief introduction. Farooqi, Mudassir, Sarwar Mehmood Azhar, and Rubeena Tashfeen. "Jihadist Organizations History and Analysis." Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies 43.1/2 (2018): 142–151. online Gesink, Indira Falk. Islamic reform and conservatism: Al-Azhar and the evolution of modern Sunni Islam (Tauris Academic Studies, 2010) Haddad, Fanar.