Références (Burkina Faso)

Items

• Thesis

  Muslim Education Between Adab and Employability: The Ecoles Franco-Arabes (EFAs) in Burkina Faso

  This thesis investigates the complexities, dilemma and potential of French-Arabic schools in Burkina Faso under the name of Ecoles Franco-Arabes (EFAs) which provide schooling for more than 8% percent of school children nationally. However, on one hand, EFAs’ values and certificates are not officially recognised because they are not “French” enough. On the other hand, while a few EFAs wholeheartedly embrace French and are doing better than some public schools in State certificate exams, most EFAs neglect or reject French, as a strategy for Arabic to be officially recognised or simply because French is considered a neo-colonial or anti-Islamic language. More importantly, most research participants said they consider EFA the better choice between traditional Qur’anic schooling and secular education. To analyse the possible causes of this situation and the educational potential of EFAs, this research was conducted in fifteen schools in five of the seven most EFA populated regions of the country over a period of eight months. Research activities included in-depth interviews in four languages including Moore, Diula, French and Arabic, field observation, participation in teaching and various activities, and a thorough analysis of the schools’ teaching programs in Arabic. The data and analysis show that, unlike in the most recent literature, EFAs consider their value not as prioritising technological progress, though this is not excluded, but as combatting “non-Islamic” (i.e. French) ideologies trying to control the Muslim mind. As such, EFAs try to instil what they consider adab or good conduct or choices of educational contents that must be both “Islamic” and contemporary at the same time. This led to a diversity of viewpoints in interpreting the concept EFA, teaching practices, schools’ regulations and life, and motivations in joining EFAs. Added to this are the tensions surrounding the lack of recognition of the school certificates, tensions between the parties involved with EFAs including parents, school owners, learners, foreign sponsors and education authorities. Therefore, this thesis argues that EFAs are in an adab (good conduct/choice) dilemma of how to keep an authentic Islamic profile while embracing French as a necessity to meet both the “Islamic” and formal educational needs of their Muslim constituents who must also be good Burkinabe citizens. By analysing these complexities, dilemmas, and what EFAs consider to be their values and challenges, the thesis also argues that the schools can play a significant role in religion and development because most research participants considered the EFA educational concept as a bridge between traditional Qur’anic and secular education. Moreover, considering that 60% of Burkinabe are Muslims, the importance of identity politics and the increase and rural nature of EFAs, the schools are here to stay and may have great potential. This includes improving on the low literacy rate, promoting social cohesion against current and future socio-religious and political tensions, and spreading their spirit of entrepreneurialism against that of elite and bureaucracy of formal education. However, this can only become a reality if educational reforms understand and take into account these complexities, priorities and dilemmas of EFAs by giving them a sense of belonging in the socio-professional space.
• Academic Article

  Muslim women and pious fashion in Burkina Faso as identity, pose, and defiance

  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.
• Academic Article

  Muslim Women in Burkina Faso since the 1970s: Toward Recognition as Figures of Religious Authority?

  This paper examines how visibility and legitimacy have been defined and achieved by Muslim women who have contributed to the development of Islam in Burkina Faso since the 1970s. We undertake a transversal study of the trajectories of women belonging to different cohorts of Arabic- and French-educated Muslims. In doing so, we highlight identity markers closely associated with key moments in their lives (activism through associations or personal initiatives, religious studies, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and media activities). Through the lens of performativity, we show how women have progressively gained visibility within the Muslim community. And although figures of religious authority remain uniformly male, women are increasingly able to claim legitimacy thanks to their flexible approach.
• Thesis

  Muslim Youth at a Crossroads: Media and Civic Engagement in Burkina Faso

  This dissertation examines the civic engagement as well as the online and offline discursive and performative practices of faith among Muslim youth in Burkina Faso. It specifically maps out how members of Association des Élèves et Étudiants Musulmans au Burkina (AEEMB), a Muslim student organization with over 100,000 members, negotiate the meanings of their Islamic faith and participate in debates on issues of national and global interests. Since the emergence of violent radicalism in the French speaking, Sahelian West African region over the past decade, scholars have turned their attention to political Islam with a focus on established branches of Islamic denominations such the Sunni movement, the Ahmadiyya, and the Wahhabi and salafist reformist groups. Most scholars are now widening this scope to include less well-established Muslim groups including youth associations and student militancy. One of the major underlying assumptions in this surge of research on religion in the Sahel is the persistent belief that, somehow, there is a correlation between the region being predominantly Muslim and the rise of non-state armed forces. This study challenges such assumptions and examines the communication practices of Muslim youth with a specific focus on those educated in the secular education system of Burkina Faso. It analyzes the complexity of youth activism and how youth claim their religious and other various social identities online and offline.
• Chapter

  Muslim-Christian Relations in Burkina Faso
• Academic Article

  Négocier le genre par les normes et le consensus : une association de femmes "rapatriées" à Ouagadougou

  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.
• Chapter

  Negotiating Secularism in the Sahel

  French-style secularism or laïcité is part of the constitutional order and the elite political culture in most of the Sahel. Yet in this region, laïcité—sometimes defined as the effort to protect the state from religion, as opposed to the American style of protecting religion from the state—does not entail complete aloofness on the part of the state. Rather, Sahelian laïcité has tended to involve: (i) state regulation of religion; (ii) strategic partnerships between politicians and religious leaders; and (iii) recurring renegotiation of the role that religious ideas and actors will play in political culture, elections, and policymaking. The foremost explicit and implicit defenders of Sahelian laïcité include French-educated politicians and intellectuals, while various clerics, activists, and politicians have questioned the meaning of laïcité or even the need for it. Conversations surrounding laïcité involve and affect a number of actors, including ordinary Muslims, Sufis, Islamists, jihadists, and Christians.
• Report

  Non-State Armed Groups and Illicit Economies in West Africa: JNIM

  This is the first in a joint series of publications by ACLED and the GI-TOC profiling non-state armed groups in West Africa and exploring the intersections between their involvement in illicit economies and the provision of governance. The series brings new material and updated analyses using the ACLED database and qualitative research, examining how armed groups survive in their political and economic environments. Each paper will examine the evolution, structure and tactics of armed groups, as well as their transnational relationships, means of financing, and governance practices. The series will offer a closer look at Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), bandit groups in north-western Nigeria and Ambazonian separatists in Cameroon, with a summative paper reflecting on broader findings.
• Report

  North of the countries of the Gulf of Guinea: The new frontier for jihadist groups?

  It can be observed that jihadist groups in West Africa are increasingly expanding their areas of activity from the Sahel to the coastal countries along the Gulf of Guinea for some time now. Especially from Burkina Faso, where entire regions are already outside state control, these actors are advancing further and further south. This current development is the focus of the new study "La nouvelle frontière des groupes djihadistes", which the KAS Regional Programme Political Dialogue West Africa (PDWA) has implemented together with partner Promédiation. One of the study's key topics is the importance of national parks in border regions, which are increasingly used by jihadist groups as strategic retreat and activity areas and whose local resources are used for financing.
• Academic Article

  Notes sur l'islam et le christianisme dans la subdivision centrale de Ouagadougou
• Chapter

  ONG confessionnelles au Burkina Faso
• book review

  Ousman Murzik Kobo. Unveiling Modernity in Twentieth-Century West African Islamic Reforms. Leiden: Brill, Islam in Africa Series volume 14, 2012. 384 pp. $186.00.
• Chapter

  Parents' motivation for sending their children to an Islamic school: A case study from Burkina Faso
• Chapter

  Pluralisme et concurrence islamique dans l'appropriation d'un espace public religieux : analyses comparées au Sénégal et au Burkina Faso
• Chapter

  Politics of Humanitarianism: The Ahmadiyya and the Provision of Social Welfare

  Ahmadi Muslims have combined local contributions and financial support from overseas to support various development projects since the 1920s when they started their mission activities in West Africa. The chapter outlines contemporary social welfare activities of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Humanitarian aid provided by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and its NGO Humanity First is one of the issues favouring public recognition as well as interreligious dialogue to which the Ahmadis are equally strongly committed. Most of the donations for Humanity First come from members of the Ahmadiyya community, as zakat or sadaqa donations. Public recognition is particularly important with regard to the idiosyncratic situation of the Ahmadiyya movement in the Islamic world. The Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim, but they are not recognized as such by the majority of Muslims. While cooperation with other Muslim Groups or Islamic NGOs in Burkina is difficult for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, it clearly expresses its willingness to cooperate with the state.
• Chapter

  Politiques du genre et féminisme islamique au Burkina Faso
• Chapter

  Postponing Piety in Urban Burkina Faso: Discussing Ideas on When to Start Acting as a Pious Muslim
• Academic Article

  Prêcheurs(ses) musulman(e)s et stratégies de communication au Burkina Faso depuis 1990 : des processus différentiés de conversion interne

  Depuis le tournant des années 1990, la visibilité accrue de l'islam dans l'espace public au Burkina Faso s'est manifestée entre autres par l'émergence de prêcheurs et prêcheuses de plus en plus médiatisés. La participation active tant des hommes que des femmes invite l'ensemble des membres de la communauté musulmane du pays à faire évoluer les discours religieux pour atteindre des fidèles aux profils diversifiés et tenter de répondre à la concurrence des chrétiens. Il s'agira ici de proposer un regard croisé entre prêcheurs et prêcheuses du Burkina Faso afin de relever les permanences et les ruptures dans leurs stratégies de conversion — à savoir le raffermissement de la foi des croyants et les tentatives de rejoindre de nouveaux profils de fidèles — et leur utilisation des médias. La médiatisation croissante de l'islam a favorisé l'émergence de trois figures de converti à travers lesquelles l'expérience religieuse oscille entre individualisation et individuation. Selon qu'il s'agisse d'un homme ou d'une femme, d'un arabisant ou d'un francisant, d'un jeune ou d'un aîné, différentes logiques se dégagent que ce soit la recherche d'une plus grande légitimité, visibilité ou autonomie dans une perspective individuelle et communautaire.
• Academic Article

  Prêcheuses arabisantes à Dakar et à Ouagadougou : des logiques d'individualisation et d'individuation

  From a series of ethnographical grounds led to Dakar and to Ouagadougou, the logics of spiritual ascent of women's various generation's preachers and the social uses that they make as means of communication are examined. This article demonstrates that their ascent results from the link in the community. Although the logic of individuation is highlighted, signs of emphasis of their individuality, without abandoning the community, allow reporting a subtle process of hybridization between individualization and individuation. This prospect is also analyzed through certain speeches of preachers, which reveal how the latter navigate between various registers of agency (compliant agency, pious agency and pious critical agency) according to their distance, resistance or acceptance in front of logics of social reproduction, in front of the standards of religious order and in front of the reports of authority.
• Report

  Preventing Violent Extremism in Burkina Faso: Toward National Resilience Amid Regional Insecurity

  The Global Center on Cooperative Security is pleased to announce the publication of the report, "Preventing Violent Extremism in Burkina Faso: Toward National Resilience Amid Regional Insecurity." The report is coauthored by Profs. Augustin Loada (Executive Director of the Ouagadougou-based Centre pour la Gouvernance Democratique) and Peter Romaniuk (Senior Fellow at the Global Center in New York). At a time when violent extremism in West Africa and the Sahel is at the top of the regional and international agenda, the report assesses the threat to Burkina Faso and surveys sources of resilience. The report finds that Burkina Faso is vulnerable to violent extremism but the threat is not imminent, while arguing that stakeholders (the Government of Burkina Faso, its international partners and civil society groups) should take steps to prevent the emergence of violent extremism and build resilience. The report was formally launched on Thursday 12 June at the United Nations in New York at a side event during the biannual review of the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy. Speakers at the event included H.E. Dr. Jerôme Bougouma (Minister of Territorial Administration and Security, Government of Burkina Faso), H.E. Mr. Ib Petersen (Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of Denmark to the UN), Mr. Jehangir Khan (Director, UN Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force) and Prof. Loada. The report follows the publication by the Global Center in 2012 of "Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Community Engagement in West Africa and the Sahel: An Action Agenda." The report was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.
• Thesis

  Promoting the good and forbidding the evil: a comparative historical study of Ahl-as-Sunna Islamic movements in Ghana and Burkina Faso, 1950-2000
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  Personal Communication

  Publishing the Islam Burkina Faso Collection with Omeka S
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  Personal Communication

  Publishing the Islam Burkina Faso Collection with Omeka S

  Despite the growing popularity of digital humanities, a limited number of initiatives related to Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa have attempted to mobilize digital tools to analyze and disseminate research data. Launched in 2021, the Islam Burkina Faso Collection (https://islam.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/s/bf/) is an open-access digital database published by the LibraryPress@UF, which contains more than 3,100 archival materials, newspaper articles, Islamic publications, photographs and bibliographical references related to Islam and Muslims in Burkina Faso. “Digital exhibits” with interactive timelines, which include a selection of documents from the database, contextual information for approaching this material and a selective bibliography, serve as entry points for the larger collection. In the medium to long term, the Islam Burkina Faso Collection will be part of a larger collaborative digital database on Islam in West Africa, which will include material that Frédérick Madore has already digitized as part of his research on Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Togo.
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  Personal Communication

  Publishing the Islam Burkina Faso Collection: Collaboration for Digital Scholarship

  Despite the growing popularity of digital humanities, a limited number of initiatives related to Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa have attempted to mobilize digital tools to analyze and disseminate research data. Launched in 2021, the Islam Burkina Faso Collection (https://islam.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/s/bf/) is an open-access digital database containing more than 2,700 archival materials, newspaper articles, Islamic publications, photographs and bibliographical references related to Islam and Muslims in Burkina Faso. “Digital exhibits” with interactive timelines, which include a selection of documents from the database, contextual information for approaching this material and a selective bibliography, serve as entry points for the larger collection. This project is one of the first digital humanities initiatives to be published under a new University of Florida Libraries program, LibraryPress@UF. This program, an imprint of the Libraries and the University of Florida Press, seeks to develop public scholarship across formats that extend and complement the work of traditional academic publishing. Alongside its value as a scholarly and educational resource, Islam Burkina Faso Collection has benefited LibraryPress as a case study to explore and refine three major areas: (1) publishing workflows and human resources, including evaluation of digital publications and multi-expert collaboration; (2) technical infrastructure and expertise, including defining services for web hosting and design; and (3) sustainability, including feasible expectations for maintenance and archiving. Throughout all of these areas, the project has modeled an approach to digital scholarship and library publishing that balances experimentation and ambition with realistic goals and an eye toward replicability in future work.
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  Personal Communication

  Publishing the Islam Burkina Faso Collection: Collaboration for Digital Scholarship