The Politics of Islam in the Sahel: Between Persuasion and Violence by Rahmane Idrissa (review)

The core problematic explored by this book relates to the rise of religious politics in five Sahelian countries – Niger, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria and Burkina Faso – and whether it represents a clash between 'Islamic' and 'Western' values. The book's nuanced thesis demonstrates that the religious and civil forms of politics in the five countries have been interdependent more than being inimical to one another. Conflicts that have arisen are the result of historical contingencies and the emergence of specific ideologies, not a Huntingtonian 'clash of civilizations'.

While it acknowledges that the rise of Islamic politics in the postcolonial Sahel has been framed by a context in which a 'religious society' is 'ruled by a civil state' (p. 5), it also shows how growing adherence to Islam was brought about by the social and economic transformations associated with colonial rule. In a number of the precolonial Sahelian states, the wider population continued to adhere to animism or a syncretic form of Islam while a thin stratum of merchants and state bureaucrats with political and commercial ties to North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula practised formal Islam. The onset of colonialism brought about urbanization and the formation of a free labour market. This in turn encouraged conversion to Islam, which in the Sahelian context was principally an urban religion. In Mali, for instance, the number of Muslims in the population was estimated at 30 per cent in 1922, 60 per cent by independence in 1960, and then 94.4 per cent in 2015 (p. 160). In each of the countries studied, the colonizers who established the 'civil' regime established cordial relationships with Sufi orders such as the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya as well as Muslim scholarly authorities (p. 243).

It is a specific form of ideological movement that emerged in the mid-twentieth century, based on a politicization of religion, that has at times brought about a more conflictual relationship between state and society. The text is careful throughout to distinguish between religion, religious ideas and religious ideology. Whereas religious beliefs and religious ideas are widespread, ideologies generate more narrowly based political movements. They are characterized by an appeal to emotion, lamentation over perceived social crises, and demonization of specific 'enemies' (p. 19, 240). This book focuses on one particular ideology – 'Salafi Radicalism' (p. 240) – which has sought to contest the 'civil state' in the name of the 'religious society' in the postcolonial Sahel. Even the rise of Salafism, however, did not guarantee a binary conflict with the secular state. In a number of countries, such as Niger, Senegal and Burkina Faso, the state has managed to adapt to the rise of religious politics and sanction institutions through which it can express itself by 'civil' means. The most intense postcolonial conflict has been in northern Nigeria, where British colonialism had imposed itself forcibly on the more deeply rooted Islamic Emirates established in the era of Uthman Dan Fodio's Sokoto Caliphate (pp. 207–10) – but even here the later political crisis was shaped by a number of contingent dynamics, particularly the colonial marginalization of the northern region (p. 215).

The Politics of Islam in the Sahel is extremely thoroughly researched, and represents the strongest coverage of the subject I am aware of in terms of the range and depth of the case studies. The book is also sensitive to political economy and the role of different classes in shaping different forms of Islamic politics. It gives precolonial, colonial and postcolonial dynamics equal attention in its efforts to explore the contemporary relationship between Islam and politics. Although there is no archival research or interview material, it does a good job of mining the memoirs of a number of important protagonists – such as AbuBakr Gumi, the chief ideologue of Nigeria's Izala movement.

My one criticism of an otherwise excellent text is that the argument would have benefited from a clearer definition of the term 'Salafi'. As Henri...