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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Islam in Mali in the Neoliberal Era |
Author: | Soares, Benjamin F. |
Year: | 2006 |
Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society |
Volume: | 105 |
Issue: | 418 |
Period: | January |
Pages: | 77-95 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Mali |
Subjects: | Islam politics values Religion and Witchcraft Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence gender law |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3518789 |
Abstract: | If before 11 September 2001, many praised Mali as a model of democracy, secularism and toleration, many have now begun to express concern about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Mali. This article considers a number of recent public debates in Mali over morality, so-called women's issues, and the proposed changes in the Family Code and shows how the perspectives of many Malians on these issues are not new but rather relate to longstanding and ongoing debates about Islam, secularism, politics, morality and law. What is new is the way in which some Muslim religious leaders have been articulating their complaints and criticisms. Since the guarantee of the freedom of expression and association in the early 1990s, there has been a proliferation of independent newspapers and private radio stations and new Islamic associations with a coterie of increasingly media-savvy activists. The article explores how some Muslim activists have used such outlets to articulate the concerns of some ordinary Malians, who face the contradictions of living as modern Muslim citizens in a modernizing and secularizing State where, in this age of neoliberal governmentality, the allegedly un-Islamic seems to be always just around the corner. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] (Also published in: Islam and Muslim politics in Africa, ed. by Benjamin F. Soares and René Otayek, 2007, p. 211-226.) |