Shaping futures and feminisms: Qur’anic schools in West African francophone fiction

Abstract

This article examines the representation of female education in Qur’anic schools in a selection of West African francophone novels. I argue that in being the earliest form of education for most Muslim women and also a neglected topic of scholarly interest, the Qur’anic school shapes their feminisms in more significant ways than has been acknowledged since scholarly attention to Islamic education in West Africa has mostly focused on the experience of boys in Qur’anic schools, and since theories on feminism in Islam have primarily articulated feminism as a politically oriented project. Using Islamic feminism as a disposition that is not always coterminous with activist objectives within the sociohistorical context of Islamic education in West African Muslim societies, this paper emphasizes the need to focus on forms of female literacy other than secular education.

Keywords:

• femininities
• girls
• faith and religion
• Islam
• education
• Muslims

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Alejandro Latinez for a preliminary discussion that led to the development and writing of this essay.

Notes

As early as 1967, Malick Fall described the Qur’anic school in La plaie as did Ahmadou Hampaté Ba in La vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar, le sage de Bandiagara (1980) and Amar Samb in Matraqué par le destin: Ou la vie d’un talibé (1973). More famously, Cheikh Hamidou Kane portrayed the tension between Qur’anic and French colonial education in L’Aventure ambiguë (1960), and more recently a relatively lesser known writer Khady Fall wrote about the Qur’anic school in Mademba (1989). The Qur’anic school has also been the urgent focus of cinematic productions eventuated by the abuse of young children in Souleymane Cissé’s Cinq jours d’une vie (1974) and Mahama Traoré’s Njangaan (1976).

Debra Boyd-Buggs elaborates on the culture of Islamic education in Senegal, and analyses examples of marabout cruelty by citing the physical abuse by Thierno who threatens his pupils with burning logs if they fail to pronounce the Qur’anic verses correctly (Kane 1960, 14–15). Other examples of cruel marabouts are strikingly presented in the example of the abusive teacher, Oncle Tolé, who whips the students and pinches their ears for not submitting to him in complete obedience (Samb 1973, 46–7), and where young boys are mercilessly beaten by the teacher and the older boys of the Qur’anic school (Fall 1989, 71).

In an explanation of this verse, Ibn Kathir (vol. 6, 399: Al-Mubarakpuri 2002) notes that Ibn Uyaynah said ‘The Prophet did not cease increasing (in knowledge) until Allah, the Mighty and Sublime, took him (i.e. he died)’ This verse appears in relation to those that describe the purpose of the Qur’an, that is to learn from it. As the verse preceding verse 114 states ‘In order that they may have Taqwa, or that it may cause them to have a lesson from it’. In this sense the Qur’an is the text that is to be learned.

Several verses stress the importance of acquiring religious knowledge in the Qur’an – 3:7, 3:18–19, 21:74, 22:54, 27:15–16, 27:40, 29:49, 35:28, 43:9, 49:13, 53:30, 58:11.

Sunan Ibn Majah (vol. 1, 222, hadith no. 224; Al-Qazwani 2007) reported by Anas ibn Malik. The Sahih Muslim (vol. 7, 73, hadith no. 6853; Hajjaj 2007) also reports a similar hadith emphasising knowledge, ‘Whoever follows a path seeking knowledge, Allah will make a path to Paradise easy for him’.

Although the madrasa emerged in the first century of the Islamic era in the Arab world, it developed only three centuries later in the tenth century. Hefner (1998) attributes the transmission of Islamic knowledge to the madrasa since the Muslim world’s Middle Period or Middle Ages (roughly 1000–1500), and Hefner points out that in most non-Arabic-speaking countries, the term madrasa refers to an institution offering intermediate and advanced instruction in the Islamic sciences.

Loimeier describes the decrees that were passed in an effort to control Islamic education and other measures such as the imprisonment of marabouts who lived off their students, and the need for proving their credentials by obtaining a licence to teach Islam. Furthermore, Qur’anic schools comprising less than 20 students were to be closed down.

All unattributed translations are mine.

Delgado-Norris (2001, 43) makes a point similar to Stringer’s by noting that Diallo provides authentic historical backgrounds in her novels (the other one being Fary, The Princess of Tiali) and places fictional characters in them to underline ‘the ideological basis of her narrative, which is to rewrite the history of Senegal, to mould new images of African women and reestablish them as “privileged actors”’. Stringer (1987, 168–9) also notes that through the fictional character of Thiane, Diallo’s feminist purpose is twofold. First, as noted in the article, that in traditional African life women had a heroic role to play, and second, for modern women to emulate Thiane in her determination to do what she felt was right.

Enumerating the various names of Eid al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice, the Eid al-Kabir, Gulevich (2004, 363) devotes an entire chapter on this important festival, also known as the feast of ‘Tabaski’ in West Africa, to trace its origin, relevance, and religious observances. Eid al-Adha is celebrated annually on the tenth day of the month Dhul Hijja of the Islamic calendar and coincides with the performance of the pilgrimage or the Hajj that is also performed during this month. The Qur’anic basis of the Hajj and the festival is found in the chapter Al-Baqarah, verse 196.