Cet article propose une réflexion sur les possibilités inédites qu'offre le numérique pour développer de nouvelles méthodes de recherche et de diffusion de données sur l'histoire de l'islam en Afrique de l'Ouest, ainsi que quelques considérations méthodologiques, technologiques et éthiques soulevées par de telles initiatives. Au centre de ces considérations se trouve la Collection Islam Burkina Faso. Ce projet de base de données numérique en libre accès, que j'ai lancé en 2021 et qui est hébergée par les bibliothèques George A. Smathers de l'Université de Floride (UF), contient actuellement plus de 2 500 documents d'archives, articles de la presse généraliste, publications islamiques sous diverses formes et photographies, en plus de 200 références bibliographiques liées à l'islam et aux musulmans du Burkina Faso (https://islam.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/s/bf-fr). Le texte propose également un bref état des lieux des humanités numériques dans le champ des études africanistes et plus spécifiquement sur l'islam.
This text explore the forms of a religious pluralism abounding in South-Benin and its manifestations in an urban and frontier area crossed by many cultural influences. The contacts between vodun, Islam and Christianity are bound to the urban development for the last three centuries. In the last few decades, one attends a phenomenal flourishing of new churches in the urban area, dominated in number by the prophetic and Pentecostal movements. The absence of a political instrumentalisation of the religious identities is not doubtless alone to explain the durable and peaceful cohabitation between churches. The civil peace constitutes well the main economic resource of the Benin and politicians are used to protect it.
This article deals with the life story of a reformist Islamic scholar, el Hadj Ibrahim Habib, who was appointed imam of the Zongo Mosque in Cotonou by his father, the sheikh of the Tijaniyyah Sufi order. This young imam has developed new tools of communication and has built a very dynamic organization around him. His mosque has become the center of reformist Islam in the southern part of the Republic of Benin, and members of the da’wa have been strongly involved in Islamic associations. El Hadj Habib, who had lived outside the country for a long time, came to be “reconnected” over the last fifteen years before becoming an important local notable. The complexity of the Islamic landscape in Cotonou cannot be reduced to a dichotomy between Sufi tradition and reformist Islam. As such, El Hadj Habib is a good example of possible links between Sufism and reformism, which have been found in other parts of the continent.
In Benin, the general furor surrounding the 2019 legislative elections held without opposition parties caused many to overlook the fact that Ibrahim Ousmane, a wellknown imam from Cotonou, was ultimately elected to the National Assembly. His decision to run in the elections had sparked intense debates over political participation, the criteria used to select the community’s “legitimate” representatives, and, more broadly, the nature of Islamic religious authority in a minority context. In this article, I use the controversy that erupted in 2019 as a starting point for exploring disputes within Benin’s Muslim community and the dilemmas of Muslim minority politics. These disputes center on how its members can engage with national politics to promote their collective interests and maintain their political autonomy from the state. The crisis can also be understood in terms of a “generational” struggle for religious authority, in a context where there are competing sources of legitimacy.
De jeunes musulmans francophones conscients du faible rayonnement de l'islam en milieu francophone ont créé l'Association des élèves et étudiants musulmans au Burkina (AEEMB) et le Cercle d'études, de recherche et de formation islamique (CERFI). Le contexte socio politique les a conduits à se prononcer publiquement sur la gestion de la cité. Quelques fois, ces actions remettent en cause la suprématie de l'establishment islamique dont les responsables ont toujours soutenu le pouvoir de Blaise Compaoré.
Les sorties médiatiques de ces associations rencontrent un succès auprès de la jeunesse car cette dernière a épousé les mêmes ambitions et rêves que ces associations. Les autorités politiques ont une oreille attentive à l'endroit des doléances de cette élite musulmane francophone eu égard à son aura et à son influence sur les musulmans et sur l'ensemble des burkinabè. Ainsi les responsables de l'AEEMB et du CERFI ont fait partie des forces vives qui ont choisi le président de la transition suite à la chute du régime du Président Blaise Compaoré.
Pour parvenir à ces résultats de nos recherches, nous avons adopté l'approche qualitative. Nous avons mené des enquêtes orales, exploité des archives et des articles scientifiques. Notre recherche contribue un tant soit peu à mettre en lumière l'émergence de deux importantes associations musulmanes francophones dans l'univers associatif burkinabè. Ces associations dont les militants sont issus des milieux universitaires et scolaires burkinabè constituent une force citoyenne que les politiques doivent prendre en compte car elles ont conquis l'esprit de la jeunesse.
Le phénomène migratoire s’intensifie à travers le monde au gré des intérêts de ses acteurs. Migrants de tradition, des Sahéliens, pour des raisons diverses, se déplacent à travers la sous-région ouest africaine. Cet article s’appuie sur des données tirées des fonds documentaires et sur des entretiens approfondis avec des informateurs identifiés au moyen de la technique de choix raisonné pour analyser la migration et l’insertion socioéconomique et spatiale des migrants sahéliens au Togo de la fin du XIXe siècle jusqu’à 1975. L’analyse a permis de comprendre que le départ des Sahéliens de leur pays d’origine vers le Togo s’observait déjà avant l’érection des frontières coloniales. De plus, ce mouvement s’est poursuivi pendant et après la colonisation. Mais, les migrants se trouvaient confrontés à des difficultés d’insertion. En réaction, face à ces obstacles, ils avaient élaboré des stratégies de contournement par lesquelles ils ont réalisé, à partir des Zongo qui constituaient leur milieu d’accueil et de résidence, leur insertion socioéconomique et spatiale, même si celle-ci était limitée.
L’Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey (UAM), marquée au début de sa création dans les années 1970 par les idéologies marxistes-léninistes, connait depuis la fin des années 1980 une montée des pratiques religieuses estudiantines organisées par des associations religieuses estudiantines chrétiennes et musulmanes. Basée sur une approche qualitative combinant des entretiens semi-directifs et des observations directes et indirectes, cet article s’intéresse, d’une part, à la mise en place des associations religieuses d’étudiants salafis, évangélique et pentecôtistes dans cette université. Et d’autre part, il analyse l’affirmation de l’identité religieuse par ces étudiants à travers : la diffusion de l’enseignement religieux, les écoles coraniques et les études bibliques. Ceci donne à la religiosité une grande importance auprès des étudiants qui y prennent part.
Over the past three decades, African students have created several religious associations that reconfigured the social and political landscapes of sub-Saharan universities. Scholars often focused on this type of religious activism and yet didn’t study the associations’ educational agenda comprehensively. This article intends to fill this gap by examining the socioreligious activities of the Association des Étudiants Musulmans du Niger (AEMN) and the impact of its educational discourse at the Université Abdou Moumouni (UAM) in Niamey, Niger. Mainly relying on empirical data gained through participant observation and interviews, it explores the ways the association pervades and shapes the educational landscape, notably by establishing partnerships beyond the university. The association’s leaders, so it appears, promote an educational ethos that redefines the role of academia and its benefits for the Nigerien society. Correlating students’ religiosity with academic performance, they try to reconcile Islamic values with scientific knowledge in the process of producing the future elites of the nation.
While jihadism appears to be on the rise in Africa, the explanations of violent extremist groups’ capacity to foment jihadi insurgencies and mobilize recruits remain poorly understood. Recent studies have challenged the assumption that the rise of jihadism in Africa is the result of poor governance in areas of limited state reach, highlighting instead the significance of the (perception of) abuses perpetrated by state authorities. Looking at collective action and its structural determinants, it is rather state action—and not the lack thereof—that best explains the capacity of mobilization of jihadi insurgencies in African borderlands. In order to test this theory in a least-likely case, the article explores the genealogy and evolution of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), mobilizing extensive qualitative evidence. Borrowing the analytical framework from civil war studies, it argues that the contentious political dynamics observed in Niger’s borderlands amount to a case of symmetric non-conventional warfare, where abuses perpetrated by state proxies trigger an escalation of homegrown terrorism. It therefore supplies a further specification of the theories investigating the complex interplay between the processes of jihadi mobilization/rebel governance and the practices of counter-terrorism in weak states.
Recent research points to a renewed scholarly interest in the West African Middle Ages and the Sahelian imperial tradition. However, in these works only tangential attention is paid to the role of Muslims, and especially to clerical communities. This essay tackles theoretical and historiographical insights on the role of African Muslims in the era of the medieval empires and argues that the study of Islam in this region during the Middle Ages still suffers from undertheorizing. On the contrary, by using a ‘discursive approach’ scholars can unravel access to fascinating aspects of the history of West African Muslims and in particular to the crucial role played by clerical communities, who represented one node of the web of diffused authority which is characteristic of precolonial West African social and political structures.
This paper provides a glimpse of Islamic scholarship in Mirriah, Niger Republic, at a particular point in time, 1974–1975, before some of the latest currents of religious unrest erupted in West Africa. Through interviews with local scholars, it examines the degree to which they participated in a West African “core curriculum” shared with other Islamic scholars across the Sahel. It also explores the history of the malamai class in Mirriah, noting significant ties to the Bornu empire. Both the ruling dynasty and Mirriah itself also exemplify the process of “becoming Hausa”: people of diverse origins have come to define themselves as Hausa, adopting the Hausa language and the religion of Islam.
The article examines how four states in the francophone Sahel have managed Salafi activity since independence. States that established institutional oversight mechanisms in the Islamic sphere prior to the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a global exporter of Salafi ideology have effectively counteracted the rise of political and jihadi Salafism in recent decades. Autocratic incumbents created national Islamic associations, determined the leadership makeup of these, and delegated state authority to non-Salafi leaders so as to regulate access to the Islamic sphere. The tacit cooperation arrangements between state and nonstate actors enabled the former to demobilize religious challengers. States that chose strategies other than institutional regulation contributed to the rise of political and security challengers. These findings challenge conventional assumptions about the inability of weak states to regulate their religious spheres and shed new light on the complex relationship between weak states and Islam.
Beyond the violence of terrorism and jihadism that now characterizes certain parts of the Sahel, the region as a whole faces what this paper calls “the question of Islam,” i.e. the tense relationships between a state based on democratic and secular principles and a society in which the cultural hegemony of Islam has grown, especially since the 1990s. This tension, the author argues, has fostered the emergence of a specific political ideology, political Salafism. To illustrate these developments, the paper uses the case of Niger, a country at the heart of the Sahel that seems to be spared by the violence that is affecting its neighbors, but where political Salafism has made some inroads at the expense of its ideological enemy, secularism. The paper also shows that the Salafists’ successes have been tempered by historical, sociological, and economic conditions specific to this Sahelian context.
While many scholars have studied the ways in which the Internet and online social networks are shaping contemporary religious practices and how new information and communication technologies are supporting networked forms of religious activism, only a few have analyzed the relationships between religion and the use of the mobile phone in African countries. However, in Africa as elsewhere, mobile phones are influencing the everyday practices of religion in multiple ways that are not simply anecdotal but affect beliefs and behaviors and raise ethical concerns among believers. In some cases (e.g., divorce, Qur’an verses, ringtones, prayer disruption), religious authorities have been obliged to draw up rules and provide guidance to the faithful. This article seeks to identify the opportunities offered and the challenges posed to religion by the introduction of mobile phones in Niamey, the capital-city of Niger Republic. It specifically examines how believers are using this device to mobilize co-religionists, to maintain religious ties and religious faith, as well as how they are coping with the challenges and seeking to resolve related issues. The article argues that the mobile phone is helping mediate in new ways and in a new context the religious norms and behaviors that have always guided Muslim communities. In other words, the advent of the mobile phone offers new opportunities but also poses new challenges to believers who strive to cope with this new phenomenon by inventing new ways to integrate the device into everyday practices. The article is based on semi-structured interviews carried out in June, July, and August 2009 in Niger’s capital city, Niamey, with ordinary Nigerien Muslims. It combines qualitative data obtained through interviews and observation with demographic statistics and survey results to describe the role the mobile phone plays in the current evolution of Islam in Niger.
In their effort to contribute to Islamic reform in Niamey, young Salafi (Sunnance) have embraced preaching and have made it part of their religious practice. As preachers or audience members, they invest time and energy to imagine various ways to popularize the Sunna, the tradition of the prophet Muhammad. Because of the jokes, mimicry, and theatrics that characterize their preaching style, their critics have rejected their initiatives, claiming they are unqualified and therefore should not be allowed to preach. In response, Sunnance have argued that an effective sermon (wazu) requires art, skills, ingenuity and know-how (iyawa, hikma in Hausa). By examining how aesthetics are central to Sunnance popular and street preaching, this article invites a reexamination of Salafism through its aesthetic forms. Wazu is not just a gathering that seeks to deliver a message, be it divine; it is also a way to promote religiosity through particular cultural and aesthetic performances.
Deadly attacks on Christians and mounting resistance to secularism in Niger raise the question of whether the Muslim-majority country is turning away from democracy and toward a repressive form of Shari'a law. I argue that religious extremism in Niger has largely external roots and that domestic religious leaders are not pursuing a revolutionary agenda, even though they are increasingly involved in organizing social movements. The foreign nature of terrorist threats may even help preserve democracy by raising nationalist support for the state.
To escape the images of Boko Haram portrayed in the media, it is necessary to retrace the outlines of this Islamic uprising, recall its social rooting in trade guilds and crowded mosques, and review the religious underpinnings which, despite the decline of its territorial gains, have preserved their mystical impetus, thus bolstering the “call” to martyrdom. In 2014, a few Boko Haram groups decided to retreat to the Lake Chad region prior to the creation of a coalition piloted by Nigeria and its neighbors to combat the organization. The occupation of the lake by Boko Haram has resulted in a veritable regional security problem, with it becoming an epicenter for armed violence. Niger and Chad have responded by seeking to depopulate their respective parts of the lake, while Nigeria has closed access to the lake and Cameroon has not taken any action. The security response by countries involved in combatting Boko Haram has seriously worsened the disastrous current economic climate.
