African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on December 5, 2005
African Affairs 2006 105(418):77-95; doi:10.1093/afraf/adi088
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Islam in Mali in the neoliberal era
Benjamin F. Soares (bsoares{at}fsw.leidenuniv.nl) is at the Afrika Studiecentrum, Leiden.
If before 11 September 2001, many praised Mali as a model of democracy, secularism and toleration, many have now begun to express concern about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Mali. I consider a number of recent public debates in Mali over morality, so-called women’s issues, and the proposed changes in the Family Code and show how the perspectives of many Malians on these issues are not new but rather relate to longstanding and ongoing debates about Islam, secularism, politics, morality and law. What is new is the way in which some Muslim religious leaders have been articulating their complaints and criticisms. Since the guarantee of the freedom of expression and association in the early 1990s, there has been a proliferation of independent newspapers and private radio stations and new Islamic associations with a coterie of increasingly media-savvy activists. I explore how some Muslim activists have used such outlets to articulate the concerns of some ordinary Malians, who face the contradictions of living as modern Muslim citizens in a modernizing and secularizing state where, in this age of neoliberal governmentality, the allegedly un-Islamic seems to be always just around the corner.
Portions of the paper have been presented at the workshop, ‘Islam, Society and State in West Africa’, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 29 March 2003; at the symposium, ‘Construction and Dissemination of Islamic Knowledge in Africa’, Indiana University, Bloomington, 19 April 2003; and at the conference, ‘Governance and Insecurity in West Africa’, Northwestern University, 13–15 November 2003; and at Universität Bayreuth.
1. United States Agency for International Development, ‘Assistance environment’, in USAID MALI: Country Strategic Plan 2003–2012 (USAID, Bamako, Mali, 2002), p. 11.
2. Economist Intelligence Unit, ‘The political scene’, in EIU Country Report: Mali (EIU, London, March 2002), p. 47.
3. See Joshua Muravchik, ‘Freedom and the Arab world’, The Weekly Standard, 31 December 2001.
4. ‘Overview’. USAID MALI: Country Strategic Plan 2003–2012 (USAID, Bamako, Mali, 2002), p. 18. Such sentiments were also expressed in journalistic accounts published shortly after 11 September 2001. See, for example, Douglas Farah, ‘Mali’s Muslim clerics send troubling message: fragile democracy seen as vulnerable to extremism’, Washington Post, 30 September 2001, p. A24; Kader Konaté, ‘Mali. Le danger islamiste’, Le Continent, 14 September 2001, p. 1.
5. See Joan Baxter, ‘Challenging tradition’, BBC Focus on Africa Magazine, January-March 2002, pp. 48–50. Other examples include Nicolas Colombant, ‘Mali’s Muslims steer back to spiritual roots’, Christian Science Monitor, 26 February 2002, p. 8.
6. These included various Western media outlets and several Malian newspapers.
7. James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, ‘Spatializing states: toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality’, American Ethnologist 29, 4 (2002), pp. 981–1002.
8. For critical perspectives on the fashionable civil society approach to ‘good governance’ in Africa, see John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff (eds), Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1999); Béatrice Hibou and Richard Banégas, ‘Civil society and the public space in Africa’, CODESRIA Bulletin 1 (2000), pp. 39–47.
9. For example, Sunjata, the mythical founder of the medieval Malian empire, Mansa Musa, the Muslim rulers of Macina (r. nineteenth century), al-Hajj Umar Tall (d. nineteenth century), the Kunta shaykhs of the Timbuktu region, and Shaykh Hamallah (d. twentieth century), to name only some of the most prominent.
10. For an example of how such ‘orthodoxy’ changes over time and space in Mali, see Benjamin F. Soares, ‘Muslim proselytization as purification: religious pluralism and conflict in contemporary Mali’ in Abdallah A. An-Na’im (ed.), Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa (Orbis, Maryknoll, NY, 1999), pp. 228–45.
11. Two studies that have received quite a bit of attention are Anna L. Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an out-of-the-way place (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1993); Charles Piot, Remotely Global: Village modernity in West Africa (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1999).
12. See Gregory Starrett, ‘The political economy of religious commodities in Cairo’, American Anthropologist 97, 1 (1995), pp. 51–68.
13. On these developments, see Robert Launay and Benjamin F. Soares, ‘The formation of an "Islamic sphere" in French colonial West Africa’, Economy and Society, 28, 4 (1999), pp. 497–519; Benjamin F. Soares, ‘Islam and public piety in Mali’, in Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman (eds), Public Islam and the Common Good (Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2004); Benjamin F. Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and authority in a Malian town (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh and the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2005).
14. Malians with access to satellite television have a wider array of choices, which are hard to quantify.
15. Some of the themes in this section are treated at greater length in my book, Islam and the Prayer Economy.
16. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1993).
17. See Seydina Oumar Diarra, ‘Haut Conseil Islamique du Mali’, Info-Matin, 18 January 2002, p. 5.
18. Benjamin F. Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy, p. 212. See also David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim societies and French colonial authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Ohio University Press, Athens, OA, 2000); David Robinson and Jean-Louis Triaud (eds), Le temps des marabouts: Itinéraires et stratégies islamiques en Afrique occidentale française v.1880–1960 (Karthala, Paris, 1997).
19. Many Malians also regularly apply diverse principles from ‘custom’, which is often referred to as laada (from the Arabic) in the region’s vernaculars.
20. For one example, see Benjamin F. Soares, ‘Notes on the anthropological study of Islam and Muslim societies in Africa’, Culture and Religion, 1, 2 (2000), pp. 277–85.
21. Ahmad Uthman Bah, Diya’ al-ghasaq manzuma nasihat al-shabab (Matba’at al-najah al-jadida, Casablanca, Morocco, 1992).
22. See, for example, Amadou Tall, Dimensions de l’Islam (Dar El Fikr, Beirut, Lebanon, 1995–1996).
23. On Haïdara and his career, see Soares, ‘Islam and public piety’ and Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy. Cf. Dorothea Schulz, ‘"Charisma and Brotherhood" revisited’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 33 (2003), pp. 146–71.
24. See Louis Brenner, Controlling Knowledge: Religion, power and schooling in a West African Muslim society (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IL, 2001).
25. Cf. Olivier Roy (trans. C. Volk), The Failure of Political Islam (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1994); Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam (Columbia University Press, New York, NY, 2004).
26. Cf. Armando Salvatore, ‘Social differentiation, moral authority and public Islam in Egypt: the case of Mustafa Mahmud’, Anthropology Today, 6, 2 (2000), pp. 12–15.
27. For a discussion of Haïdara and his association’s relation to Sufism and Sufi orders, see Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy.
28. This was also a topic of discussion in some print media. See, for example, Cheick Sidya Diombana, ‘La jeunesse et la foi en l’Islam’, La Roue, 25 October–3 November 1993, p. 5.
29. I am grateful to Roman Loimeier for making his copy of this sign available to me.
30. See, for example, ‘Déclaration finale des associations islamiques du Mali concernant les valeurs islamiques et à propos du programme d’action de Beijing rélatif aux droits des femmes’, La Roue, 22–31 January 1996, pp. 3–5.
31. For a discussion of some of the controversy around excision, see Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund (eds), Female ‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, controversy, and change (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, Colorado, 2000). For campaigns against excision in Mali, see Claudie Gosselin, ‘Handing over the knife: Numu women and the campaign against excision in Mali’, in Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund (eds), Female ‘Circumcision’ in Africa, pp. 193–214; Jean Sanou, ‘Lutte contre les mutilations génitales feminines’, Le Soudanais, 22 November 2000, p. 3; Yousouf Camara, ‘Réligion et excision’, Le Tambour, 22 June 2001, p. 3; Mamadou Blodin Sissok, ‘Religion et excision. Quand les chrétiens s’engagent contre les mutilations génitales féminines’, Info-Matin, 29 June 2001, p. 8.
32. See, for example, Mady M. Dembélé, ‘L’excision est un poids des traditions, elle n’a rien de religieux’, Les Echos, 18 July 2001, p. 5.
33. See C.H. Sylla, ‘Interview exclusive. Le Président du Collectif des islamistes parle’, Le Républicain, 16 May 2001, pp. 1, 4–5; Mohamed Kimbiri, ‘L’excision au Mali. La position des musulmans’, Nouvel Horizon, 30 January 2001, p. 5; Mohamed Kimbiri, ‘Interdire l’excision est une atteinte grave’, Le Républicain, 31 January 2001, p. 5.
34. ‘Brèves’, Le Politicien Musulman, 18 March–18 April 2002, p. 8.
35. Leaflets produced and distributed by AISLAM (Association islamique du salut) in the author’s possession.
36. See Mamadou Keïta, ‘Les imams à l’affût des jouisseurs’, Nouvel Horizon, 23 November 1998, p. 4.
37. Mohamed Kimbiri, ‘Boycottons "Miss Cedeao" ’, Nouvel Horizon, 16 October 1998. See also Mamadou Keïta, ‘Miss Cedeao’, Nouvel Horizon, 2 November 1998, p. 5.
38. Yoro Sow, ‘Incertitudes pour la tenue du Congrès des homosexuels’, Sud Info, 8 December 1999, p. 4.
39. However, some prominent Muslim religious leaders, most notably Chérif Haïdara, would eventually take positions in support of condom use. See Benjamin Soares, ‘Mali: Im Visier der Islamismus-Fahnder’, INAMO 41 (2005), pp. 16–18.
40. Talal Asad, ‘Religion, nation-state, secularism’, in Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1999), p. 191.
41. Djibril Traoré, ‘El Hadji Mahmoud Dicko,’ Le National, 2 October 2000, p. 5.
42. El Hadj Mahmoud Dicko, ‘Declaration du Collectif des associations islamiques du Mali’, Info-Matin, 7 May 2001, p. 7. See also El Hadj Mahmoud Dicko, ‘Déclaration’, Le Républicain, 4 May 2001, p. 7; Amara Diapy Diawara, ‘Meeting du Collectif des associations musulmanes du Mali’, Info-Matin, 13 February 2001, pp. 4–5.
43. See, for example, Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity (Routledge, New York, NY, 1993); Homi Bhabha, ‘Of mimicry and man’, in The Location of Culture (Routledge, New York, NY, 1994), pp. 85–92.
44. On this heightened sense, see Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996). For Malian press coverage of the OCI meeting, see, for example, ‘Organisation de la Conférence islamique. Le monde musulman’, Liberté, 3 July 2001, p. 4.
45. See the extensive coverage of the meeting in a special edition of Le Continent, 2 February 2001.
46. For a discussion of some of the proposed reforms and specific controversies, cf. Benjamin F. Soares, ‘The attempt to reform family law in Mali’, in Margot Badran (ed.), Gender and Islam in Africa (Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, forthcoming); Dorothea E. Schulz, ‘Political factions, ideological fictions: the controversy over family law reform in democratic Mali’, Islamic Law and Society, 10, 1 (2003), pp. 132–64.
47. Birama Fall, ‘Islam et politique. La colère des islamistes contre le pouvoir’, Le Républicain, 23 April 2001, p. 1; Belco Tamboura, ‘Le front religieux, un front de plus pour Konaré’, L’Observateur, 14 June 2001, p. 6.
48. C. H. Sylla, ‘Code de la famille et excision. La dernière victoire des islamistes sur Alpha’, Le Républicain, 10 June 2002, p. 5.
49. See Christian Coulon, Le marabout et le prince: Islam et pouvoir au Sénégal (Pédone, Paris, France, 1981).
50. Boukary Daou, ‘Code de la famille et excision. Les musulmans disent non à Alpha’, Le Républicain, 5 June 2002, p. 1.
51. Cf. Michael Bratton, Massa Coulibaly, and Fabiana Machado, ‘Popular views of the legitimacy of the state in Mali’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 36, 2 (2002), pp. 197–238; Michael Bratton, Robert Mattes and E. Gyimah-Boadi, Public Opinion, Democracy and Market Reform in Africa (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005).