This article explores the Islamic dynamics of the Yoruba community in Ivory Coast drawing on the activities of two associations operating on Ivoirian soil, NASFAT and NAMFAT. The first is the counterpart of the eponymous organization created in Nigeria in 1995. The second was born in 2005, in Ivorian territory. Both are linked to the personal work of Adeniran Ramon who imported Lagos-based NASFAT to Abidjan where he was living. Despite internal dissension which led to the creation NAMFAT, a distinct religious-based organization, both associations have operated rather similarly and by promoting cosmopolitan values, both have played the role of creating a space for the socialization of Nigerian Muslims. This has involved the organization of religious activities and actions promoting common goods. In a context of increased visibility in the public space of the Muslim religion in Ivory Coast, in recent decades, this article explores the patterns of these two transnational organizations, through their organization model, their use of the religious terrain, and their involvement in common goods services.
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.
Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted in the cities of Bouaké and Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire between 2011 and 2017, this chapter examines the recent growth and institutionalization of Islamic voluntary, humanitarian and charity actions. The past two decades have been marked by the multiplication of formal and legally recognized Islamic NGOs in the country. The chapter focuses on the transformation of Islamic charity work and the emergent ethics of volunteerism that stems out of the institutionalization of Islamic charity. Contemporary Ivorian Islamic NGOs adhere to an ethic of volunteerism that builds on older-standing Islamic charitable principles based on personal zakât and sadaqqa donations. The emergent ethics of volunteerism emphasizes values of self-responsibilization, individual accountability and long-term development that converge with neoliberal development logics and prioritize private entrepreneurship while transferring responsibilities for humanitarian assistance to communities and individuals.
This article analyzes the career path of Aminata Kane Koné, a highly educated Ivorian Muslim woman, who has emerged as a female figure of success. A prominent activist of the Association des Élèves et Étudiants Musulmans de Côte d'Ivoire in the 2000s, she has become a self-made religious entrepreneur through media and social initiatives. She has overcome social constraints to establish herself as a highly mediatized Muslim public intellectual, influential not only in Islamic circles, but within the broader society. Her case illustrates ways in which relationships between gender and Islamic authority are changing in West Africa. She embodies a uniquely hybrid feminism, influenced by her secular education and her Muslim faith.
This essay is an ethnographic response to Habermas’s estimation of the place of religion in the political public sphere. It examines a network of initiated hunter-healers, called dozos, in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. Since the 1990s, they have drawn on their ritual practices to integrate themselves into Ivoirian public life, often to controversial effect. Their success in this regard, mitigated as it has been, has seen them transform into semi-official security agents and, subsequently, rebel soldiers. These developments follow a history of participation in a precolonial, West African public sphere that oriented dozos toward difference, an openness that continues to infuse their rituals. Because dozos drew on ritual practice to define their security-related and military roles, they introduced religion into the Ivoirian public sphere in unexpected and innovative ways. But because their ritual practices have long mediated their devotion to both Islam and their professed encounters with spirits and other invisible forces in the forest, dozos’ so-called “religion” contains within it dialogical elements that have contributed to broadening the political public sphere in Côte d’Ivoire. Their activities ultimately inspire an alternative definition of religion that concedes the possibility of the public sphere’s encompassment within religion as much as religion’s potential integration into the public sphere.
Depuis le milieu du XXème siècle, l'Islam est en pleine transformation en Côte d'Ivoire sous l'impulsion d'intellectuels formés non plus suivant le modèle traditionnel des marabouts (karamogo), mais conformément aux normes éducatives des prestigieuses universités du monde· arabe-musulman. Ils se caractérisent par un savoir qui s'énonce essentiellement en arabe. Cette élite . ivoirienne agit dans un domaine purement religieux où elle appelle au retour d'une pratique islamique purifiée, débarrassée des coutumes et des . innovations, mais conforme aux sources originelles de l'Islam (le Coran et la Sunna). Cela, indépendamment de la maîtrise de la langue utilisée pour exprimer ces idées. L'apparition de ces intellectuels musulmans arabophones, nantis d'idées novatrices, apporte de profonds bouleversements dans le développement de l'islam en Côte d'Ivoire. Dans ce pays, l'islam amorce ainsi un nouveau tournant. Les manifestations les plus significatives de ce "réveil" résident dans la plus grande visibilité de l'Islam, le développement communautaire et organisationnel de l'Islam en Côte d'Ivoire: le Conseil Supérieur des Imams (COSIM) et le Conseil National Islamique (CNI) représentent des interlocuteurs privilégiés de la communauté musulmane auprès de l'Etat et auprès des institutions internationales islamiques.
Based on fieldwork beginning in 2008, this text addresses the manage- rial strategy adopted by young people, organizing themselves within a bureaucratic structure – The Union des talibés de Matié Boiké Samassi (UTMBS) –, to supervise and support a religious enterprise initiated by social seniors in the North of Côte d’Ivoire. This project, started in the village of Kélindjan, is an annual meeting organized by a Qadiri Sheikh – Matié Boiké Samassi – and his talibés to carry out acts of devotion to the Prophet Muhammad on the occasion of Maouloud. Halting at first, these celebrations, given the reputation of its organizer for the benefits of his baraka, began to gain social visibility thanks to the involvement of young people. In a context of return to normality, at the end of the decade of military-political crisis that the country experienced, these religious occasions took on new forms and propelled the Maouloud (including its rituals) beyond this region.
Sous la révolution sankariste, des centaines de scolaires musulmans burkinabè, auparavant militants de l'Association des élèves et étudiants musulmans de Côte d'Ivoire (AEEMCI), ont commencé à rentrer de ce pays pour poursuivre leurs études à l'université, au Burkina Faso. Dotés d'une expérience en gestion d'associations islamiques en milieu académique, ils trouvent sur place une association islamique non officielle de scolaires, basée à Ouagadougou.
Ce retour a coïncidé avec la création de l'Association des élèves et étudiants musulmans au Burkina (AEEMB) en 1985. Comment le retour de cette diaspora burkinabè a-t-il influencé l'évolution de l'islam en milieux scolaire et estudiantin ? En quoi les autres associations musulmanes en ont-elles été influencées ? Quels sont les signes manifestes de l'impact de la diaspora musulmane sur tout le territoire burkinabè ?
Pour y répondre, nous avons adopté une approche qualitative, en menant des enquêtes de terrain et en faisant immersion dans de nombreuses activités de l'AEEMB dans plus de quinze villes, dont Ouagadougou, Bobo – Dioulasso, Ouahigouya et Koudougou. En outre, des recherches documentaires ont permis d'approfondir notre investigation.
Nous avons constaté que l'AEEMB est présente dans toutes les provinces du pays, dont les lycées publics de ses principales villes et ses universités publiques disposent d'une mosquée en lien avec cette structure. En outre, des milliers de ses militantes portent le voile et fréquentent la mosquée. Enfin, l'Association a des relations avec les autres associations islamiques nationales et sous-régionales.
This chapter presents an overview of Islam and the Islamic landscape in the contemporary Sahel and points to broad patterns and major trends as they relate to the practice of Islam in the region. After discussing the conventional wisdom about Islam in Africa, in which Islam is frequently equated with Sufism and “reform,” this chapter addresses several interrelated themes: Islam and its broad appeal in the region; intra-Muslim debate; global interconnections and the media revolution; and Salafism and Islamism trends, as well as jihadism. As it suggests, the Islamic landscape in the Sahel is much more diverse and complex than most commentary usually suggests. It also underscores the importance of understanding how the practice of Islam in the region has been changing in recent years in an increasingly globalized world. Finally, the chapter emphasizes how much more there is to know about Islam and Muslim societies in this region in flux.
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.
