Les récits écrits de pèlerinage sont très estimés dans la littérature musulmane. En Haute-Volta/Burkina Faso, l'auteur n'a pas trouvé de documents de ce genre. Il a fallu avoir recours aux musulmans eux-mêmes. Ainsi de nombreux entretiens ont été menés pendant dix ans, de 1973 à 1983, à propos du pèlerinage de la Mecque. Cet article est consacré à l'étude de cent quinze personnes qui sont allées à la Mecque par la route, soit un parcours de 14 à 15.000 km aller et retour. Sont examinés le mode de déplacement (de 1905/1910 à 1974), l'identité ethnique des pèlerins, leur appartenance confrérique, et leur motivation. L'auteur n'a pas interrogé tous les pèlerins originaires des régions voltaïques ayant parcouru le trajet par voie de surface, mais elle a essayé de toucher le plus grand nombre possible. Les premiers d'entre eux avaient pris le 'chemin de la Mecque' entre les années 1905 et 1910.
La proximité de pays étrangers a fait de la région de Bawku au Ghana une zone propice aux échanges d'idées, de techniques, de produits. On y voit coexister plusieurs religions, et, pour ce qui est de l'islam, plusieurs tendances comme des sunnites, des adeptes de la confrérie tidjane, mais aussi des Wahhabites. L'auteur a cherché à comprendre comment s'est propagé l'islam dans la région de Bawku, où vit un rameau de la famille maraboutique, et à quel point l'enseignement coranique a été un agent important à cet égard. L'étude est fondée sur les données d'enquêtes de terrain menées sur place et d'entretiens avec des musulmans appartenant à la plupart des groupes de population présents dans la ville, dont des descendants des premiers enseignants venus au cours de la période coloniale. Elle évoque les liens entre le Ghana et la Haute-Volta d'alors (Burkina Faso). L'auteur a observé l'évolution de l'instruction musulmane de chaque côté de la frontière et les répercussions survenues à Bawku après l'indépendance (1957), quand une certaine orientation politique, au Ghana puis au Burkina Faso, a favorisé la modernisation des méthodes pédagogiques et des enseignements.
Since the pre-colonial period, socio-historical conditions have led to the political subordination and the social marginalization of Islam. With the arrival of Blaise Compaoré to power, a logic of inclusion of formerly marginalized actors, including those of the Islamic milieu, is established. However, despite this policy being introduced in a context of religious revival, Islam only partially succeeds in liberating itself, as shown by the analysis of the Muslims religious authorities and economic operators' status in the semi-authoritarian regime of the 4th Republic.
Whilst religious radicalism is at the heart of media and scientific preoccupations, this study shows that, in Burkina Faso, Muslim authority has experienced a steady regression in the urban environment of Ouagadougou. On the basis of interviews conducted with young Muslims at the University of Ouagadougou, the article proposes a reflection on the factors that are causing such an erosion of authority. If the spiritual dimension of this authority is not being called into question, the temporal dimension is undergoing a process of de-legitimisation, which is increasing in line with the interpenetration of the religious and political spheres as well as the discrediting of the semi-authoritarian regime of Blaise Compaoré. In addition to highlighting the fragmentation of the sectors of authority, the study allows for better identification of the position of youths ("cadets sociaux") in the religious field.
This article offers a definition of the concept of moral economy, first in the general framework of the existing literature, and then in the more specific case of Burkinabè Islam. It then examines the relationship between moral economy and the charismatic figures of Islam in Burkina Faso. The example of two religious leaders (sheiks) in two different contexts, urban and rural, offers examples of how these charismatic authorities manage the economic assets entrusted to them by the faithful in the interests of the community. The article also aims to shed greater light on the strategies adopted by these "social planners" to mobilize and invest the resources generated by migratory flows.
In recent years, Muslim associations in Burkina Faso have undergone a major transformation, driven by the development of the transnational dimension of Islam and a more direct involvement of this religion in the socio-political life of the country. In this article, through the description and analysis of three different Islamic associations, we will try to understand the deep reasons of such evolution, and study the strategies put in place by the religious authorities in order to restructure their zawiyas and reposition them in the public sphere. In this framework, we will also describe the personal trajectory of some religious leaders and propose a possible classification of the aforementioned associations.
Darsalamy is one of the few places in Burkina Faso that were intentionally founded by and for Muslims who wanted to keep a distance from non-Muslims and from practices considered as pagan. Jula Muslims who left Bobo-Dioulasso at the end of the 19th century in order to found Darsalamy wanted to inhabit a place that was not "contaminated" by non-Muslim ways of life such as mask dances. This emigration coincided with the events that shook the entire region: the jihad of Umar Tall, the wars of Samori Touré and the arrival of the Europeans. These events changed the relationship between Muslim scholars, their allies and protectors and the local elites of Bobo-Dioulasso.
On his way back from his first travels to the interior of the Gambia, Mungo Park describes a ‘schoolmaster' who entertained him in the Mandingo country while his principal host was on a slave purchasing expedition. The school of this master consisted of seventeen boys who ‘always had their lessons by the light of a large fire before daybreak and again late in the evening' and who ‘were employed in planting corn, bringing firewood, and in other servile offices, through the day' (Park, 1799: 313–14). Such rural institutions combining elementary Islamic education and farm production must then have existed in the coastal areas of West Africa for at least two centuries, and spread to other parts of Africa as a result of Islamic expansion. They were agents of proselytization and further Islamization. Consequently Quranic schools are often discussed primarily in their relation to Islamic history. In the present day, however, they continue in some areas as viable alternatives to western-style schools and as units of agricultural production. This paper, which stems from research I conducted in the southern part of central Upper Volta on household farms and wealth stratification, underscores the dual function of these farm schools.
This article discusses how young Muslim women negotiate their multiple identities within the context of a predominantly Muslim, secular nation. It focuses on female members of the Association des Élèves et Étudiants Musulmans au Burkina Faso (AEEMB), a nationwide Muslim youth organization, and especially those commonly referred to as "Adja," in reference to their sartorial choice. Although there might not seem to be any malice associated with this common nickname, Adja, given to women who adopt this pious fashion, the experiences of some of these women provide a much more nuanced understanding of media, Muslimhood, womanhood, and dress. Drawing data from an ethnographic study on Muslim youth civic, economic, and social engagement in Burkina Faso, the article discusses how the identity expectations and identity performances of Adjas are constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed along their sartorial choice. It further places the "Adja construct" within the broader discourse on Islam, post-coloniality, modernity, and gender in Burkina Faso.
Le présent article entend proposer une analyse des processus ayant conduit à la mise à l'agenda de la problématique de la gouvernance de la laïcité au Burkina Faso. Dans un contexte de réislamisation en Afrique subsaharienne, il essaie de donner un regard sur l'émergence de l'islam dans l'espace public dans ce pays où le christianisme joue un rôle important. Au Burkina Faso, les associations musulmanes francophones, non satisfaites de la gestion de la laïcité par l'État, engagent une lutte à partir du début des années 1990, non pas pour remettre en cause la laïcité constitutionnelle, mais pour réclamer plus d'équité dans le traitement des confessions religieuses. Elles demandent l'institution d'un observatoire de la laïcité. La question émerge dans l'espace politique à la faveur des réformes institutionnelles entreprises par l'État en 2011. Le forum national sur la laïcité, organisé en 2012, a été un moment fort de débats, qui traduit la légitimation du sujet et qui révèle les différentes conceptions de la laïcité qui traversent la société burkinabè. Les revendications musulmanes ont conduit à une coproduction d'action publique certes, mais elles ont aussi confirmé le développement d'un renouveau islamique et l'émergence d'une société civile musulmane au Burkina Faso.
Anxious to uncover "myths" and "cosmogonies" attesting to an uncontaminated Africaness, Africanist anthropologists have long neglected Islam. However Islam is present even in those societies which have not been islamized in a formal fashion and which, on the contrary, have incorporated certain Islamic features in order to oppose Islam. Such is the case of the Bobo of Burkina-Faso considered in this article.
This paper deals with an association of women « repatriated » from Ivory Coast during the war in 2002. Bringing together several generations, this association now integrates young women who haven't « done the Coast ». The charisma of the president of the association and the performances of songs that the women give out in different kind of celebrations are indeed appealed to the youngest ones. These elements precisely emphasize the way gender is essential for the working of the association and the way it allows to go further than the usual social divisions between migrant and non-migrant people. Through their union around the president of the association, these women can actually face male figures of authority. Our analysis turns toward a negotiation of gender relationship linked with an ideology of social consensus and different norms, articulating religion, migration experience and the contemporary context of the capital of Burkina Faso.
In western Africa, Islam has a renewed vitality in recent decades. Sociopolitical events illustrate this well, even if they are evolving from one country to another. Côte d'Ivoire doesn't escape to this reality. Côte d'Ivoire doesn't escape this reality, with a Muslim community moving from a marginal position to an active social force, led by arabised intellectuals (or not) engaged in the promotion of Islam in sectors of activity where they were previously absents : the humanitarian service. This involvement in this field is part from a political-military crisis in which the living conditions of a large part of the population were not good. This contribution will analyze how, in the absence of transnational Islamic organizations, local actors have succeeded in investing the charitable field by providing assistance to their coreligionists and ta- king advantage of this breach to position themselves in the public space.
After an ill-fated religious revival, the Sufi teacher Yacouba Sylla and his followers became wealthy and politically influential in post-Second World War Côte d'Ivoire. They argued for an understanding of democratization and development that defined both ideas in terms of their community's own mystical experiences and world-historical significance, rather than in terms of modernity. As a way of making sense of their own past and defending their place in an increasingly tense political environment, these efforts achieved their most explicit articulation in a powerful story about Yacouba Sylla's refusal of a gift from Ivoirian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
This article takes on the Islamic association's philosophy and their comprehension of association's work method in Ivory Coast. It also means, the evolution analyzing of the different aspects ideas. Mainly, our work rives on the evolution of different ideals, the function mode of Islamic foundation according to the different ideologies, the way who means the Islamic organization and the path of moving on the association life in Ivory Coast. According to its history and progress, it's doctrinal, cultural, economic and political direction.
For the fulfillment of their daily prayers, muslims build their mosques. These muslim religious building abound, often so uncontrolled, at a rate of the establishment of new communities in Abidjan areas. Symbol of the islamic presence, these mosques differ from each other depending on the funds injected into their building. With imported from arab countries architectures, mosques in Abidjan express most of the muslim community issues, they are religious, educative, socials and economical.
This article discusses the transnational initiatives by Turkey in regard to Africa, where Turkey now includes a number of important socio-economic partners since the launch of its policy of openness on the African continent in 1998. Côte d'Ivoire, a coastal sub-Saharan country, has experienced this bilateral cooperation through secular (business, education and humanitarian) and religious (Islam) programmes since the start of the new millennium. Following a descriptive approach to the evolving mission of these Turkish entrepreneurs, this study attempts to analyse the actions taken by the latter in the Ivorian socio-educational field as well as the related issues, in a period of crisis in Turkey setting the power of Ankara against the Gülen movement.
The walking of Ivory Coast between 1990 and 2010 is marked by crises with political character and religious. The country crossed two black decades when the religious membership and the cultural origin were at the heart of the political fact. The political leaders instrumented and exploited the ethnico-religious fiber in the optics to quench their ambitions. Their religious politics centred on the exploitation of the religious feelings will consist in establishing ambivalent relations with the religion. If president Bédié, in spite of its politics of ivoirité source of frustration and social division, led several operations of seduction towards the Muslims in particular, Laurent Gbagbo, as for him, will make the promotion of the Pentecostalism which he will invite in the political arena by making of men of God, ministers and prophets of the influential members of his seraglio. Following the example of his predecessors, he will not however neglect, to make benefit in the Muslim community his "generosity".
