Until recently, Côte d'Ivoire mostly appeared as marginal and subaltern on West Africa's Islamic scene partly because of Islam's minority status — no longer a demographic but still a political reality — and the lack of visibility of Sufi orders. By contrast, since the 1990s Ivorian Muslim society and its distinctive "reformist" religious culture, represented by a "modern" élite in Abidjan, have become increasingly influential in the subregion and beyond. This article explores the socio-economic, political, and cultural processes behind this transformation as well as the shifting interface between the local and global in Ivoirian Islam. Specific attention is devoted to international migration to Côte d'Ivoire, as the many and mostly Muslim West African immigrants have sometimes played a role of cultural translators in the transmission of Ivorian reformist ideas and modes of community organizations abroad. Out-migration of Ivorian Muslims to the West and particularly to the United States is also considered. The article further explores why the Ivoirian reformist élite first sought to interact with international Islamic organizations based outside the Arab world and Iran and how exchanges of ideas with Muslims based in the West shaped its development in deeply original ways. These movements of people and ideas have contributed to the local dynamism of Ivoirian Islam and its growing transnational influence in French-speaking West Africa and the African Muslim Diaspora in the United States.
