Muslims and New Media in West Africa: Pathways to God

Notes

NOTES Preface 1. Islam has enjoyed a certain presence in the area surrounding San since the early eighteenth century, but its practice remained limited to relatively few urban elite families . Even in the first two decades of French colonial rule administrators repeatedly reported on the limited number of Muslims in town. See, e.g., Archives Nationales du Mali, Fonds Anciens, Rapports Politiques San, IE-67, 1903 (FA); Politique Musulmane, 4E-66, 1911 (FA). Starting in the 1940s Islam was gradually adopted by broader segments of the population in the region surrounding San. See Archives Nationales du Mali, Fonds Récents, 1E-38, Rapports Politiques et des Tournées, Cercle de San, 1921–1960. 2. Unless indicated otherwise, foreign terms are rendered in Bamanakan, the lingua franca of southern Mali. 3. The literal meaning of “Djenneké” is “a person from the town of Djenne.” Archival documents suggest that at least in the first decades of colonial occupation of the town, administrators used the term “Djenneké” as an “ethnic” denomination. See, e.g., Rapports sur l’islam et les confréries musulmanes, San, 1911 (ANM FA, 4E66); Circulaire, surveillances des marabouts et personnages religieux, San, 1911 (ANM FA 4 E97). 4. These characterizations are taken from the French Colonial Rapports Politiques covering the period between 1897 and 1919, e.g., February and March 1898, February and December 1903 (Archives Nationales du Mali, Fonds Anciens, 1E-67). Overture 1. Although some Muslim families in San were associated with the Qadiriyya, the town, like the capital Bamako and most towns of southern Mali, was never a stronghold for prestigious religious clans associated with Sufi orders as in the Sahelian and Saharan towns to the north, such as Nioro, Djenne, and Timbuktu. See ANM FA, IE-67, Rapport Politique San, May 1903; see, too, Mann 2006, 27). 2. Conversation with the late Yero Haidara, Bamako, August 1998. 3. Certain features of the renewal movement date back to the 1930s and 1940s (see chapter 2). Since the 1980s, funding has been directed to Muslim sub-Saharan Africa by the League of the Muslim World (Rabitat al-alam al-islami), created by the regime of the al-Saud in 1962 with the aim of spreading the regime’s understanding of da‘wa (literally , “mission,” “appeal,” “summons”) and Wahhabi doctrine (Schulze 1993, 26–29; Gresh 1983; Otayek 1993; Kane and Triaud 1998, 15). 4. In the absence of statistical data on the number of “Muslim women,” I estimate that they comprise between 40 percent and 65 percent of the married, middle-aged women who live in the popular neighborhoods of Bamako, San, and other towns of southern Mali. 5. The Association Malienne pour l’Unité et le Progrès de l’Islam was created by the former president Moussa Traoré in the early 1980s to end conflicts between established families of religious specialists (often associated with Sufi practice) and those who, under 238 n NOTES TO PAGES 2–8 the influence of reformist trends in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, challenged the establishment for dominance. The AMUPI is run exclusively by men; only the 1996 creation of the UNAFEM extended membership to women. 6. Bamana (in Bamana, Bamanakan; literally, “the Bamana language”) is the lingua franca of southern Mali where this ethnography is situated. Unless indicated otherwise, local expressions are rendered in Bamana. 7. Because these women link proper Muslim practice to a quest for collective and personal reform, I refer to them as “Muslim activists” or, following their self-description, as “Muslim women.” 8. The other term for “religion” is dina (from Arabic, din). 9. This is so because mediation always involves, and necessitates, a reduction of the complexities and particularities of individual experience into commensurable “units” or data that are recognizable and thus communicable to others (e.g., Mazzarella 2004, 475) 10. The principal criterion for membership in a Muslim women’s neighborhood group is that a woman be married. 11. This argument, articulated by Kandiyoti (1997; see Eickelman 2000) echoes the work of Abdelkar (1991), Göle (1996), and Hale (1997), and resonates with an earlier argument about the emblematic role of women in nationalist discourse (e.g., Kandiyoti 1991b; Moghadam 1994). 12. This perspective attests to the historical and cultural diversity of Islam-inspired social movements, to which the label “fundamentalism” does not do justice (see Caplan 1987; Nagata 2001). 13. This point has been addressed by Jalal (1991), Joseph (1991), and Poya (1999). See, too, Kandiyoti’s (1991a) argument about the significance of the...