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Abstract
This article compares the strategies devised by two Salafi-oriented Islamic associations, the Senegal’s Jamaatou Ibadou Rahmane (JIR) and the Burkina Faso’s Mouvement Sunnite (MS). Drawing on extensive field research conducted between 2002 and 2013, it shows that both organizations have been engaged since the 1970s in a similar legitimacy-building process, using contrasting strategies. The JIR intends to build a more constructive relationship with the State and the brotherhoods, while still continuing to cast a critical eye on these two groups. In Burkina Faso, recurring leadership crises and violent incidents has sapped a great deal of the MS’s energy. It therefore has to regain visibility and legitimacy by maintaining a certain distance from political debates. The comparison shows that political Islam has entered in both countries a transitional phase that took into account the emergence and perhaps even the consolidation of a cultural and religious form of citizenship.
Notes
1. Many Muslims interviewed during my various fieldworks reject the labels ‘fundamentalism’ or ‘Islamism’ and prefer to be called Sunni Muslims.
2. In July 2002, June 2005, June 2008 and February–March 2010.
3. In July 2005 and 2009, March 2010, October–November 2011, March 2012 and May 2013.
4. The association’s only Friday mosque in Ouagadougou had been located in the Zangouettin neighbourhood.
5. Several members of the JIR took part in the meetings dealing with the implementation of this programme. Previously, the JIR had repeatedly called on the Abdou Diouf regime to undertake a review of how Arabic was being taught.
6. After violent clashes between 2002 and 2006, the mosques were again closed by the authorities.
7. The term ‘Arabist’ refers to non-native Arabic speakers who got most of their post-secondary education in North African or Middle Eastern universities.
8. He had been President since 1997.
9. He was reappointed to the same position during the 21st congress of the CMBF in February 2010.
10. To ask the entire nation, once a year, to pardon the state for the political assassinations it had carried out since independence.
11. Created in December 2005 and presided over by El Hadj Oumarou Kanazoé, who oversaw a company specializing in construction and public works. He also had ready access to the halls of power.
12. Fifteen in total.
13. Following these local elections, the JIR found itself with 16 elected representatives in the regional councils (Thies, Dakar and Louga region); 18 representatives in borough municipal councils (communes d’arrondissements) and 9 in city municipal councils (communes de ville).
14. « Statue de la Renaissance : Les Ibadous entrent en jeu », leral.net, 28 December Citation2009.
15. Setal, 11 July 2012.
16. Call for moderation in religion.
17. Times have changed. In March 1977, a group of youths left the Union culturelle musulmane, headed by Iyane Thiam, since they considered that the association was co-opted by the regime. The JIR was founded after this split (Gomez-Perez, Citation1997b, Citation2005a).
18. Held between 29 and 31 March 2013.
19. By being too close to the CDP, the leaders of the CMBF seem to have recognized that they were endangering their own legitimacy in the eyes of young Muslims who were very critical of the CDP and the way it wielded political power. Imam Sana invited the opposition leader to the Grand Mosque for Mawlid in August 2014, «François et Assimi veulent la tête de l'Imam Sana», Mutations, 58, 1 August 2014.
21. Burkina24, 22 January 2016.
22. Even if some changes have been noticed since the last decade.