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204 PAULO G. PINTOHabermas, Jrgen1989 [1962] The Structural Transformat ion o f the Publ ic Sphre. An Inquiry into a C a t e g o r y

o f Bour ge o i s Soc ie t y . Cambridge: M IT Press.Hammoudi, Abdellah1997 Mas te r and Discip le: Th e Cultural Found at ions o fM o r o ccan Author i tar ian i s m . Chicago:University of Chicago Press.Haw, Sa'd1979 Tar biyyatun a l-R h i y y a . Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Arabiyya.'Isa, 'Abd al-Qadir1993 Haq' iq 'an a l-T a sa wwu f . Aleppo: Maktaba al-'Irfan.Jong, Fred de1986 "Les Confrries mystiques musulmanes au Machreq arabe." In LesOrdresMys t ique s d ans l ' I s lam : Che m ine m e n t s et s ituation actuelle , edited by AlexandrePopovic and Gilles Veinstein. Pp. 203-43. Paris: ditions de l'cole desHautes tudes en Sciences Sociales.Le Gac, Daniel1991 La Syrie du G n r al A s a d . Brussels: ditions du Complexe.Luizard, Pierre-Jean1991 "Le Rle des confrries soufies dans le systme politique gyptien." M o n d eA ra b e / Ma g h reb -Ma ch rek 131: 26-53.Mauss, Marcel1995 [1934] "Les techniques du corps." In his Soc io log ie et Anthr opo log ie . Pp .365-86. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Mitchell, Richard P.1969 Th e Society o f t he M us l im Br o the r s . London: Oxford University Press.Perthes, Volker1995 Th e Pol i t i c a l E c o n o m y o f Syr ia under A s a d . London: I.B. Tauris.Picard, Elisabeth1980 "La Syrie de 1946 1979." In La Syrie d 'aujourd'hui, edited by AndrRaymond. Pp. 143-84. Paris: ditions du CNRS.Pinto, Paulo G.2002 Mys t ic al Bod ie s : Ri t ua l , Ex p r ie nc e an d th E m b o d i m e n t o f Sus m in Syr ia . AnnArbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.Roy, Olivier1992 L'Echec de l ' I s lam Polit ique . Paris: Seuil, 1992.Salvatore, Armando1998 "Staging Virtue: The Disembodiment of Self-Correctness and th Makingof Islam as Public Norm." In I s la m M o t o r o r Chal le nge of Modemi ty , Yearbook

of th Socio logy o f Is lam 1, edited by Georg Stauth. Pp. 87-120. Hamburg:Lit Verlag; New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.Seurat, Michel1980 "Les Populations, l'tat et la socit." In La Syr ie d'Aujourd'Hui, edited byAndr Raymond. Pp. 87-141. Paris: ditions du CNRS.1989 L'tat de Bar bar ie . Paris: Seuil.Van Dam, Nikolaos1996 Th e Struggle fo r Pow e r in Syr ia . London: I.B. Tauris.Whitehouse, Harvey2000 Ar gum e n t s an d I c ons , Dw e r ge n t Mod e s o f Religios ity. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

CHAPTER NINEISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI*

B E N J A M I N F. SOARESSince the late nineteenth Century and the onset of colonial rule inWest Africa, scholars, including colonial scholar administrators, hvedevoted considrable attention to the study of what has been assumedto be th main institutional form for th practice of Islam in WestAfrica: the Suf i orders, the mystical paths. In an almost unendingstream of studies, various scholarspolitica! scientists, sociologists,geographers, historians, and those in religious studieshave focusedon Sufi orders in various countries of the rgion. It is important tonote, however, that Suf i orders have never had the importance inlarge parts of West Afr icain Mali, Niger, Cte d'Ivoirethat theymay have had, say, in Senegal or elsewhere in the Muslim world(cf. Soares 1997, 1999). When scholars in West Africa have notfocused on Sufi orders, they have tended to study the critics of theSufi ordersso-called "reformists," Salafis, or, more recently, Islamists(for example, Rosander and Westerlund 1997). Most West AfricanMuslims I have encountered during the course of my researchand,

* Various parts of the research for this study, including field and archivai researchin Mali, Senegal, and France in 1991, 1992, 1993-1994, and 1998-1999, werefunded by the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), the Fulbright Programof USIA through the West African Research Association/Center, the Wenner-GrenFoundation, and Northwestern University. The NIMH Program on Culture andMental Health Behavior at the University of Chicago Committee on HumanDevelopment and the National Science Foundation-NATO provided funds in theform of postdoctoral fellowships for the writing. Portions have been presented tothe European and American Young Scholars' Summer Institu te, "Public Sphresand Muslim Identifies" in Berlin; the Department of Anthropology, the LondonSchool of Economies; the conference, "L'Internationalisation du religieux" at theInstitut d'tudes de l'Islam et des Socits du Monde Musulman, EHESS, Paris;th West Africa Seminar, UCL, London; the Islamwissenschaftliches Kolloquium,Universitt Bayreuth; and the Third" Mediierranean Social and Political Meeting,Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute,Florence. I am grateful to those audiences. As always, I am most indebted to them a n y people in West Africa who hve helped me with this material and its analysis.


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20 6 BENJAMIN F. SOARESI claim, many of those I have learned about through reading colonialarchivesare neither formally affiliated with any of the Sufi orderspresent in West Africa nor are they "reformists" or Islamists. Moreover,many West African Muslims categorically reject such appellations.This is not to deny the importance of Sufi orders, Sufism, or"refbrmism" in Mali. Rather, since all of these objects of study areso thin on the ground, it would seem to follow that we should shiftou r attention away from proccupations with such presumed formsof Muslim social activism, no t least since the events of September11, 2001.In this chapter, I do not privilege such catgories in my analysis.During the course of fieldwork in Mali in the 1990s, it would havebeen difficult to avoid, let alone ignore, the many discussions MalianMuslims were having about Islam. Some of these discussions focusedon questions of doctrine and "correct" ritual practicefor example,whether Friday communal prayers had to be performed in a mosque.Others focused on Muslim politicsfor example, whether Muslims

should be opposed on principle to the Gulf War and subsquentU.S. and British air strikes against Iraq in the 1990s. However, manyof the discussions about Islam in Mali centered on more genera!questions of piety and the "correct" ways of being a pious Muslim.Indeed, there seemed to be considrable concern withand oftendebate aboutthe public signs of piety.On numerous occasions during my fieldwork, Malian friends an dinformants asked me whether I had noticed the mark or sign on aparticular person's forehead. They used the term s e e r e in Bamana/Bam-bara, Mali's most important lingua franca (or s e e d e in Fulfulde/Pulaar),which some of my informants told me drives from the Arabic,shah da , meaning testimony or witness, as in the Muslim professionof faith. This term, s e e r e , refers to the sometimes circular spot ormark on some people's foreheads. Many Malians note that such amark indicates regulr prayereven beyond the obligatory five rit-ua l daily prayersand presumably appears from touching the fore-head to the ground. F or many, such marks index piety. By allaccounts, these marks are much more prevalent that they used tobe. I myself have noticed the appearance of the marks on the fore-heads of several friends and acquaintances between different periodsof fieldwork in Mali, sometimes to my astonishment. What followsis an attempt to make sense of such signs. However, I must first

ISLAM AN D PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI 207

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present quite a bit of background information in order to under-stand the link between piety and some of its public signs in Mali.

I s l am i n Ma l ia n HistoryAlthough Islam has been practiced in Mali for at least a millennium,it was only in the twentieth Century that Islam became the religionof the majority. It has largely been through the development of apublic sphre that this Islamization has occurred. Arguably, a publicsphre has been developing in Mali that differs considerably fromthe idealized bourgeois public sphre described by Habermas (1989[1962]; cf. Calhoun 1992), in which there is a space fo r so-calledrational critica! debate, and religion clearly has no place. Elsewhere,I have traced some of the lments of such a public sphre in Maliback to the colonial period, when the spread of newspapers, publi-cations, political parties, associations, and organizations opened newspaces for political and social debate and dlibration (Soares 1996,1997). Following John Bowen, who has written about Aceh inIndonesia, I would argue that in Mali there is a "public sphre ofdiscourse that combines religious, social, and political messages"(Bowen 1993: 325). By considering the development and contoursof this public sphre, I explore hre some of the enduring paradoxesthat have accompanied the spread of more standardized ways ofbeing Muslim in Mali.First, let us examine briefly the features of Islam in the rgion (cf.Launay and Soares 1999). Although it is difficult to speak with greatprcision about the nature and extent of Islamization before thetwentieth Century, we do know that in the precolonial and earlycolonial periods (a t least until the first decades of the twentieth cen-tury), religious practices often reflected membership in hereditarysocial catgories. That is, whether people practiced Islam and theway in which they did so often had to do with their hereditary socialstatus. Certain lineages were known as Muslim religious specialistsor marabouts in French colonial parlance. They historically ha d con-trol over Islande religious knowledge, ducation, and sometimes trade.The hereditary transmission of both learning and sanctity has beenhistorically very important here. Members of lineages of religiousspecialists and their descendants were generally those who performed


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210 BENJAMIN F. SOARESin effect a ne w category of religieus personality. In large parts ofFrench West Africa, public sermons came to be known in variousvernacular languages as waqju (o r warnte in Wolof ) from the Arabicwa'z, meaning sermon (cf. Launay 1992). Such sermons became anincreasingly populr form of communicating to large groups of peo-ple, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Although it is not possible todate the arrivai of this discursive form in West Africa or to trace itsrelationship to developments elsewhere in the Muslim world, it cer-tainly existed prior to colonial rule. The expanded public sphreunder colonial rule facilitated the spread of public sermons, how-ever, and they became one of th principal means for facilitatingthe spread of Islam and for th standardization of Islamic practices,with implications fo r public piety in Mali.It is important to note that there were various kinds of Muslimpreachers who used th public sermon. In fact, preachers from thcolonial-authorized Muslim establishment sometimes gave public ser-mons on subjects of interest to the colonial administration. Frenchcolonial attempts to use Muslim clerics to exert influence over Muslimsin this part of Africa ar e perhaps best exernplified in the career ofone religieus personality, Seydou Nourou Tall. From th 1930sonward, Seydou Nourou Tall was the Muslim religious leader inWest Africa closest to th French, perhaps even the embodiment ofth colonial-authorized Muslim establishment.5 A grandson of al-HajjcUmar Tall, th leader of a nineteenth-century state who had clashedmilitarily with th French, Seydou Nourou traveled thousands ofkilometers across French West Africa on behalf of a succession ofcolonial administrations, encouraging colonial subjects not only toobey th French and its reprsentatives bu t also to pay taxes, towork in colonial projects, to ignore calls to strike, to use colonialhealth facilities, not to immigrate to neighboring colonies, and toperform their Islamic "religious duties."6 Many of Seydou Nourou

5 Seydou Nourou Tall's colomal-era activities are discussed in documents through-ou t colonial archives in Mali, Senegal, an d France. See, fo r example, th collec-t ion of documents compiled upon his behalf in th Archives Nationales du Sngal(Dakar), 19G 43(108), Oeuvres de Seydou Nourou Tall en AOF, 1923-1948. Fordiscussions of his career, see Garcia 1994, 1997; Soares 1997; and Seesemann andSoares n.d.6 See, fo r example, Archives Nationales du Mali, Koulouba (hereafter ANM), 4E2382 (I ) Traduction de s conseils donns par El Hadj Seydou Nourou Tall tous\fi m m n l m a m Tune 95 1941

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI 211Tall's public pronouncementsusually in th vernacular language ofhis audiencetook th form of a public sermon in which he relatedthe topic at hand to the discursive tradition of Islam, and especiallyth Qur'n and th had th . In one of his sermons in th 1940s, hespoke about such "civic" duties as obdience to French authorityand th need to fulfill one's religious obligations as Muslims, whichhe stressed were much casier given th conditions of colonial rule(see also Chailley 1962). In any case, this new form of public ser-monwa qju that sometimes linked Islam with th objectives of thestate spread throughout French West Africa. Such public sermonsalso helped to spread a more standardized Islamic culture premisedon th notion that all Muslims should hve similar duties and rit-ual obligations. Eventually, such preachers would widen their appealsto encourage those who could afford to do so to perform the h a j jand to contribute funds toward the construction of new Fridaymosques in colonial centers, such as Bamako, the Malian capital.7Bu t these public sermons were not to remain the preserve of thecolonial-authorized Muslim establishment, nor were members of thisestablishment the only ones to use such sermons to promulgate theidea that regulr prayer and fasting during the month of Ramadanwere to be ritual norms for all Muslims.Paradoxically, the new colonial public sphre created a space inwhich various kinds of Muslim preachers flourished and made pub-lic pronouncements about the practice of Islam that were nonpolit-ical (at least from the perspective of the French). That is, they didnot contest French authority. In colonial archives, one can read aboutindividual MuslimsI want to call them freelance Muslim preach-erswho gave sermons and sometimes traveled around to do so.Many of these preachers actively sought to convert non-Muslims toIslam; they also admonished people to give up their un-Islamic prac-tices. In many reported cases, they tried to get people to relinquishor to destroy their allegedly un-Islamic ritual objects"fetishes" inthe colonial lexicon. It was usually when such preachers disruptedthe colonial "public order" that they came to the attention of theFrench an d were sometimes arrested an d even sent into exilehencetraces in the colonial archives. Indeed, colonial reports documentnumerous cases in which conversion to Islam and the destruction of

7 S ee Centre de s Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France (hereafterCAOM1 l Aff Pol 99V 5/4 L'Islam au Soudan, Rapports Trimestriels 1954


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212 BENJAMIN F. SOARESritual objects in various places led to open conflict, often along gen-erational lines.8 That is, younger people, frequently migrants, con-tested the authority of non-Muslims, wh o were quite often theirelders. Issues of gender were also important here, since most of thefirst converts seem to have been men. There are also reported casesof certain preachers haranguing those wh o considered themselvesMuslims fo r failing to practice Islam correctly. F or example, somepreachers openly criticized African colonial civil servants fo r drink-ing alcoholic beverages and/or fo r exceeding th maximum of fourwives permitted according to th rules of Islamic jurisprudence.9Many of these freelance preachers, some no t discussed in dtailin th colonial archive or discussed only in passing, carried out thework of spreading Islam. Sources here include triumphalist oral nar-ratives and hagiographie accounts in Arabie (and sometimes in French).One of the freelance preachers frequently discussed today, wh o alsoleft considrable traces in th colonial archives is Cheikh Salah Siby(a. 1888-1982), a Dogon convert to Islam, largely credited withspreading Islam among th Dogon.10 Although those familir withth Griaule school of French ethnology might find the idea of aDogon Muslim an oxymoron, Cheikh Salah is just one of many suchDogon converts to Islam. During the colonial period, Cheikh Salahactively began to instruct people in what he took to be proper Islamicreligious practiceritual daily prayer, fasting during the month ofRamadan, getting people to slaughter animais according to th rulesof Islamic jurisprudence (hall), and so forth-some of the outwardsigns of Islam. From th 1940s on, he mainly directed his attentionto two groups of socially marginal people: first, his fellow Dogon,many of whom took him to be a living Muslim saint, and second,

8 Documents m AN M and CAOM hst many cases from th twentieth Centurythat are too numerous to mention here. For example, see CAOM 75 APOM 4/4,Haut-Sngal-Niger, Internement de Fod Ismaila et consorts, Rapport, September25 , 1911. Early published colonial accounts include some of Paul Marty's writings(for example, Marty 1920), whereas later colonial accounts include one of Gnaule'srare discussions of the spread of Islam m West Afnca (1949) and Cardaire 1954.S ee also Manley 1997.9 See, for example, ANM, 1B 150, Letter, Fama Mademba, Sansanding, to th Administrator, Sgou, April 23, 1909. I am grateful to Richard Roberts for bring-ing this document to my attention.10 See, for example, CAOM l f f . Pol. 2259/4, Soudan franais, Direction Localedes Affaires Politiques (hereafter ff. Pol.), Bulletin No. 2 (Confidential), November1953, "Note sur l'Islam au Macina."

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI 213some of th many former slaves in th rgion. Thse were sizeablegroups whom their Muslim neighbors often treated with disdain. Inany case, such peoplemostly rcent converts to Islamwere begin-ning to emulate th conventions of religious practice, as well as stan-dards of piety, of those with claims to Islamic religious authoritythMuslim lites. Most of the newly Islamized also abandoned otherpublic signssuch as long braided hair for men and certain formsof facial scarification fo r their childrenthat indexed them as non- ^Muslims. In any case, this particular preacher was helping to facil-itate th mergence of a more generally shared way of being Muslim.Such developments were only possible given the complex transfor-mations occurring under French rule and with th expansion of thepublic sphre.It would be hasty, however, to assume that th adoption of out-wardindeed publicsigns of Islam meant that allegedly un-Islamictraditions were no longer important. Over time, various kinds ofsuch "traditions" were desacralized and made into local and regionalfolklore. In some cases, the thrapies or medicines of non-Muslimhealers were also desacralized and, therefore, rendered licit for Muslimswho might seek to use thse along with or as an alternative to thincreasingly available Western biojnedicine. Other "traditions," suchas certain masking traditions, were not so much desacralized as madeinto children's games held at fertain points in th Islamic calendar,and, therefore, rendered "harmlss." Still yet other allegedly un-Islamic "traditions"forms of spirit possession and th use of cer-tain non-Islamic ritual objects have been increasingly relegated toprivate or at least semipublic>enuis, that is, out of the view ofpotential critics, Muslim or othrwis." It is here that one can seesome of those excluded fronr th expiinding public sphre in whichIslam domintes.

Mu sl im Assoc iat ions an d New Mu sl im IntellectualsIn contrast to the freelance Muslim preachers, ne w Muslim associ-ations were founded in urban areas, increasingly from th 1930sonward. These new Muslim associations ostensibly admitted ail

1 1 Since such "traditions" are o f t f T noijpublic or are only semipublic, th ana-lytical optic of "counterpblics"~is'lrgttbly applicable here.


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214 BENJAMIN F. S O A R E SMuslims as members, but tended to attract those who were colonialcivil servants, former soldiers, and others involved in th new colo-nial urban centers of economie activity (cf. Loimeier 1999; Meillassoux1968; and Gomez-Perez 1991, 1997). Some of these early associa-tions sought to encourage an d facilitate the h a j j , which increasinglybecame a goal of an expanding and aspirant African Muslim bour-geoisie.12 Several of the associations organized public meetings whereinvited speakers, including prominent African Muslim intellectuals,talked about such topics as Muslim unity and morality.13 Workingwith one association, Fraternit Musulmane, Mahmoud Ba, a WestAfrican educated in Mecca in the 1930s, gave public addresses inwhich he condemned Muslim youths for being more drawn to drinkand pleasure than to practicing religion.14 According to Frenchaccounts, such meetings were decidedly nonpolitical or at least gen-erally avoided political issues. In 1948, however, after developmentsin Palestine, one organization made public statements that "this dis-pute" did not concern West African Muslims living under Frenchrule.15 It is noteworthy that the public meetings of these associationsgenerally ended with speakers thanking France for her "civilizingmission," however perfunctory such statements might seem.16By the early 1950s, certain West African Muslim intellectuals beganto enter the public arena in new ways. In contrast to those Africanswho had engaged in French-language secular schooling, such as manyof the members of the early Muslim associations, these intellectualswere part of a newly mergent, highly educated Muslim elite, whohad undergone advanced Islamic ducation, whether in Mali, else-where in West Africa, or abroad, at institutions like al-Azhar in Cairo

12 On the %, see Cardaire 1954 and Chailley 1962.13 For example, in the late 1940s, a new organization, Fraternit Musulmane(founded in 1936), organized "des runions publiques o les mmes thmes demorale, sociale et religieuse, sont dvelopps: condamnation du gaspillage proposde mariage; union des musulmans, respect du Coran; condamnation de la fr-quentation des salles de bal." S ee CAOM, l ff. Po l 2259/1, L'Islam en AOF, ff Po l Musulmanes, Rapport Tnm,, 2d & 3d tnm., 1948. Thse same thmesare among those discussed by many Muslim associations m Mali today." S ee CAOM, l ff Pol. 2259 /1 , ff. Po l Musulmanes, Rapport Tnm, 2 dtnm , 1950; see also Kane 1997. 447ff. for a discussion of Mahmu d Ba's preach-mg from th 1940s onward, and Brenner 2000.15 S ee CAOM l ff. Pol. 2259/1, L'Islam en AOF, ff. Pol Musulmanes,Rapport, 2d & 3d trim. 1948.16 See, for example, CAOM l ff. Pol. 2259/1, ff. Pol, Musulmanes, RapportTnm 3d trim 1950

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI 215or th Dar al-IJadth in th Hijaz. Inspired by th nationalism sweep-ing th Arab world, th independence of British colonies, mostnotably, India and Pakistan in 1947 with their large Muslim popu-lations, and th independence of Libya from Italy in th early 1950s,some of thse Muslim intellectuals sought to connect anticolonialistideas with more reformist ideas about Islam. Given that their activ-ities were under constant surveillance, they were not able to act asfreely as th colonial-authorized Muslim establishment. Indeed, some"reformist" preachers were subject to harassment after making theirown public pronouncements that were deemed insulting to th Frenchor other Muslim clerics; they sometimes had their schools closed andwere occasionally imprisoned for allegedly disrupting public order(see Brenner 2000; Kaba 1974).In th early 1950s, "reformist" Muslim intellectuals17 in what ispresent-day Mali (together with intellectuals from th neighboringFrench colonies of Senegal and Guinea) founded th Union CulturelleMusulmane (the UCM, Muslim Cultural Union), a voluntary organi-zation whose stated objectives included "th establishment of areformed Islam [u n I s lam rnov] , ducation, an d th libration of theAfrican Man [l'Homme Afr icain]" (cited in Chailley 1962: 46).'8 Someof thse reform-oriented intellectuals also published pamphlets inFrench and Arabie that explicitly expessed anticolonial views. In theintroduction to one such pamphlet, Cheikh Tour boldly identified"the trio" of the "Capitaist, -Marabout [Muslim cleric], [and]Colonialist," who "exploited, misled, and oppressed" people in WestAfrica (Tour 1957: 1).This author even decried "th collaborationwith th [colonial] authoritis camed on even in our mosques, meet-ings, and [during] religious hoHdays'l (Tour 1957: 9-10; see alsoDiane 1956 and Chailley f96)rln*1954r after th outbfeak of warin Algeria, some of thse inteUectuals demanded that West AfricanMuslims not be sent to serVe JENorth Africa. In some oP their pub-lic pronouncements and purJliiid wrtings, thse reformists criticized" During th colonial period in West Africa, French colonial adm inistrators used"Wahhabi" rather loosely to refer to "reformist" Muslims, and this terminology con-tinues to be used there today in both French and in th region's vernaculars. Onbuch "reformists" in Mali, see Kaba 1974; Hams 1980; Amselle 1985, Triaud1986; Niezen 1990; Brenner 1993^2,000; SofresJ997; ancLHock 1999.18 Mali's first postcolonial sodislfreglme $ModiboJK-eita disbanded th UCM.Following th overthrow of jthe rgime n $6$, theJLJCM was allewed to reorganize,bu t disbanded a second tirne in;!97II Onjthe t|CM jn Soadan/Mali, see Kaba1974 and Amselle 1985. z


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216 BENJAMIN F. SOAREScertain Muslim clerics fo r what they considered to be un-Islamicpractices. They condemned in particular their use of the Islamic eso-teric sciences, those areas of secret or mystical knowledge ("magie"by most anthropological dfinitions), as well as for the pedagogicalstyle of "traditional" Islamic ducation centered on the memoriza-tion of texts. In gnral, these new Muslim intellectuals sought tochange the way Islam had long been practiced in West Africa inorder to bring it more in line with what they deemed to be more"correct" practices, modeled on the presumed center of the Islamicworld, the Arab Middle East. Toward this end, a number of themset up their own "modern" Islamic educational institutions in someof the largest towns, b orrowing their pedagogical style from the colo-nial French-language secular schools (see Brenner 1991, 2000) . '9When these "reformists" entered public debate, they helped toanirnate discussions about what it meant to be Muslimwhat wasthe proper way to be Muslim. An d since the 1950s, some of theongoing debates and sometimes conflicts about Islam in Mali havebeen between the heirs of some of these urban-based reformists andthose we might call "traditionalist" Muslims, who are more closelyidentified with Sufi orders and traditional Islamic ducation. Overtime, there have been heated debates between these groups aboutreligieus doctrine and practicesfor example, about whether to crossone's arms across the ehest during prayer. What is remarkable, how-ever, is the actual convergence between such reformists and thosethey criticize about the practice of Islam and piety over the past fewdecades. In fact, "reformists" and "traditionalists" generally agrethat all Mu slims should practice a m ore standardized Islam regu-lr prayer, fasting during the month of Ramadan , and the h a j ) when-ever possible. They are frequently in agreement about the kinds of"traditional" or "magicoreligious" practices most notably, spirit pos-session and the use of un-Islamic ritual objectsthat they find objec-tionable (Soares 1999). Moreover, they are also sometimes united intheir opposition to the secularism of the postcolonial state.

19 See Brenner's discussion of the colomal-backed "counterreform movement"(2000) There were also other Muslim intellectuals whose perspectives might berallpr) nro-Frpnrh "moHprrmf" Musl im

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALIT h e Public S p h r e , Standardisat ion , a n d D i f f r e n c e

217

The public sphre that developed under colonial raie and throughwhich public sermons spread has only continued to expand in theposteolonial period, in which the Malian state is ostensibly committedto the principle of lacit. Today the public sphre is animatedby religieus ducation, sermons, print and audio-visual media, andthe country's Islamic organizations, all of which have been influ-enced by transnational and global interconnections (cf. Bowen 1993;Eickelman and Piscatori 1996; and Anderson 1991). This publicsphre has helped to make information and ideas about Islam (notto mention other areas of knowledge), including that from beyondthe immdiate area, more reailily available to the public. Althoughthis public sphre is perhaps 'more vibrant in urban areas, it alsoextends into some of the far reaches of the country where fo r manypeople to be Malian means to be Muslim. The public sphre has,if anything, helped to fester a supralocal sense of shared Muslimidentity in Mali, an imagined Community of Muslims often linkedto the Malian state whose members are to varying degrees attentiveto the broader Islamic world that lies beyond the state boundaries.20There are o f course those exclded from such a sphre, most notably,Christians and other non-Mslims in Mali. Although some Malianssee themselves as participating directly and unambiguously in theglobal Islamic community he u m r r f a many other Malian Muslimsrecognize diffrences between thmselyfes and others that cannot beelided in the imaginingjDf such a arsnational community. 21 Thisimagined community oft,Muslirns_ in-Mali helps shape the way ordi-nary Muslims practice Islam. This public sphre has helped to cre-ate pressures to standardiz Islamic practices, especially in their publicritual forms.22With the shift to more standarcJGzejf norms of piety and the riseof an ostensibly more uniform way oj" being Muslim, what Eickelmanhas called a "generic Isllfh" (l9b)/"on rrfght suspect that there

20 This formulation of a Muslim community has been mflenced by van derVeer's (1994) discussion of rehgious nationalismjn=Indta This is not m any way f suggest theZejdstenc8 of anythmg like the AfrcanIslam ("Islam noir") of the colomaMntgirMio1"" The debate about "ortKbpraxy" 'm Is&rrr-is relevant here Cf Smifh 1957,Asad 1986 and EirkHman 1989a J= ~


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21 8 BENJAMIN F. SOARESwould no longer be any place for the hereditary transmission oflearning or hereditary sanctity or charisma. This is not, however,the case. In many places in Mali, including western Mali, lineagesof religieus specialists have been able to retain control over Islamicreligieus ducation and leadership positions such as imam, not tomention rles in the various Sufi orders. This has also been the casein some urban areas where people have objected to recent convertsto Islam and even their descendants acting as imam.23 Members oflineages of religieus specialists continue to have rputations for theirknowledge and use of the Islamic esoteric sciences.24 Almost withoutexception, Muslim saints and other esteemed living or deceased reli-gious personalities corne from thse same lineages thought to haveaccess to such secret knowledge. In some cases, certain living Muslimsaints have flourished along with the expansion of the public sphre(Soares 1997, 1999, 2000a).If these might seem to be examples of all that is "traditional" incontemporary Mali, it is useful to consider one of Mali'smay Idare saymore postmodern religious personalities to understand howdiffrences between Muslims continue to be so important. ChrifOusmane Madani Hadara (b. 1955) is the head (or "spiritual guide")of A n a r D i n e (in Arabic Ansr al-dn), one of the more successful ofthe many new Muslim organizations that have proliferated in Malisince the overthrow of President Moussa Traor's authoritarian regimein 1991 (see Hoek 1999 for an extensive, though necessarily incom-plete, list of such new organizations). He is perhaps Mali's most con-troversial and flamboyant Muslim media personality. Ever since beingarrested and banned from preaching on several occasions in the late1980s for allegedly insulting remarks, Hadara has managed to garnerconsidrable public attention.25 He states quite emphatically that h

uS ee Chailley (1962: 29-31) for a discussion of a case from the mid-1950s whengroups of Soninke and Toucouleur founded their own mosque in Bamako radierthan accept an imam who was Bambara. I learned about similar contemporarycases during field research.24 Such knowledge and its use are no less important to what it means to beMuslim for many whose lives are increasingly associated with the modernherehigher rates of literacy and secular schooling.25 Some of the Malian newspaper coverage of Hadara and his foilowers includeSidib 1993; Traor 1996; Coulibaly 1999, 2000; and Diarra 2003. He is invari-ably mentioned as among the country's most influential preachers in recent news-paper coverage of "Islamic" issues in Mali.

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI 219fashions himself after the Egyptian preacher 'Abd al-Hamd Kishk(see Kepel 1986), and that Kishk's sermons have provided inspira-tion for his own. Hadara appeals to a mass publicincluding manywho are illiteratein Mali and among Malian migrants elsewherein Africa and in Europe largely through his sermons (in Bamana/Bambara) on audiocassette and>video that circulate widely.26 Hadarahas received considrable media"attention for provocative public state-ments h has made about the immorality and dishonesty of politi-cians (much like K ishk), merchants, and other clerics, as well as forhis interventions in debates about public morality and the correctpractice of Islam. His is a project focused on the shaping of moralsubjects in the public sphre, a very public Islam that also includesa social agenda. In this way, his not unlike such colonial-era Muslimpreachers as Seydou Nourou Tall. In his sermons and other publicpronouncements, Hadara has nsisted that Malian Muslimsmanyof whom know little Arabkr^can perform the ritual daily prayers(salt in Arabic) in whatever "yerncular language they speak. Thediscussions and controversy aBut this and other subjects raised inhis sermons have undoubtedly helpd to spread his rputation, evennotoriety.Although the media have been central to the making of Hadara'scareer, his ability to receive a forumeven to enter public debateabout morality and Islamsecms to; relate in no small part to hisstatus as a member ofa lineage claiming deseent from the ProphetMuhammad. In fact, his patronym, Hadara, indicates sharifian de-scent here, as it does in large parts of Muslim West Africa. Howeverimportant his personal charisma, which includes his skills as a tal-ented orator and his media sayvy, athoritative hereditary charismaseems to be the conditibfi^bf plossibility for the making of his career.Furthermore, Hadara-Jvh^ip^sme consider an Islamistis oftenvenerated much like idlirial" Suf i saint. I have watched aspeople have approached hirfFffi kiss his han


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22 0 BENJAMIN F. S O A R E Ssometimes even utter disbelief, most Malians do not find the vnr-ation of Hadara in any way surprising.

Islam in PublicRitual daily prayer and particularly communal Friday prayer havebecome perhaps the most public of all signs of piety in contempo-rary Mali. Fasting du ring R amadan and the breaking of the fast atsunset have increasingly become public acts, especially in urba n Mali.Th e hajjthe pilgrimage to the Holy Citiesis also a public act,when pilgrims embark on their voyage and upon return. Such pub-lic signs have not, however, guaranteed the probity of everyone'spiety. It is interesting to note that those of "caste" and servile sta-tus and recent converts to Islam were among the first to finance theconstruction of large and imposing mosques in their natal villagesthroughout Mali. Even these acts, perhaps the most visible and there-fore public acts of piety, have no t erased individual actor's marginalstatus in relation to Muslim elitesc lerics and maraboutsas far asmatters Islande go. Even today, when such people have been ableto perform the h q j j their motives have been questioned. More gen-erally, as the number of those from broad sectors of the society goingon the h a j j has increased, so have suspicions that many ordinaryMalian Muslims might have less than pious motives for performingthe h a j j . Many Malians joke about their compatriots performing whatthey call "the business hajj" that is, traveling to the Holy Citiesunde r the pretext of the h a j j with the real objective being com-merce to purchase consum er items such as electronics, jewelry, andso forth to resell at a substantial profit in Mali.At the beginning, I mentioned one public sign of piety that isespecially important. This is s e e r e , the dark, sometimes circular, spotor mark on some Muslims' foreheads. As I have noted, some statethat the mark indexes regulr prayer beyond the obligatory five rit-ual daily prayers an d presumably appears on the forehead fromtouching the ground during prayer. Many Malians readily note thatthe Prophet Muhammad's close companions ha d such a mark. Thosewith formal Islande ducation can easily identify textual sources wherethis mark an d those close people to the Prophet Muhammad arediscussedmost importantly in one of the suras in the Qur'an ( a l -fai, 48 : 29) .

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN M A L I 221It is instructive to focus on these publicly visible signs of piety no tonly because they were the subject of considrable discussion in Malibut also because they are not limited to any one group of Muslims.That is, they are not limited in the way that, say, beards and blackveils might be limited to reformists or so-called Islamists. In a sense,they concern all Muslims and the more standardized set of norms

that have become widespread in this setting.When some of my Malian informants and friends spoke about themarks on people's foreheads, they did so as a way to refer to howmuch a particular person apparently prays as a Muslim. In this wayof thinking, the mark indexes piety. Or, at the very least, it indexesperformance of prayer that is regulr, even out of the ordinary inits regularity. Many Malians think and state otherwise, however; theynote that many of the most pious Muslims they know do not havethis mark, though admittedly some do. Some refer mockingly inFrench to those with the dark spot as having Ie ta mp on no ir , the blackstampthe ubiquitous bureaucratie seal the French colonial stateintroducedon their foreheads. Many state that certain Muslims willgo to great lengths for people to think they are pious. Indeed, someeven speculate that many Malians will rub something on the fore-headeven a stoneuntil such a mark appears. Several people toldme that they too could easily have one of these marks if they wanted.Over the course of my fieldwork, I began to notice these markson various people's foreheads, almost all of whom were adults. Theywere from all sectors of society, from schoolteachers and civil ser-vants to market traders, the unemployed, and Muslim clerics. Theyincluded some of my male friends in their thirties and forties, andrelatives of my informants, including a few adult women. Althoughsome of those who have these marks were esteemed religieus lead-ers, including some with saintly rputations, they were clearly notthe overwhelming majority. In fact, the overall pattern was, at leastfor me, entirely unexpected.Prominent Muslim religious leaders aside, many of the MalianMuslims whom I know with these marks fall into two catgories(what follows draws on conversations with some of my more socio-logically minded informants). First, there are those of relatively mar-ginal social status, who, despite the performance of the practices ofa standardized Islam that has become more widespread through thepublic sphre or even the financing of new mosque construction, arenot readily accepted as Muslims on par with the descendants of the


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2 2 2 BENJAMIN F. SOAREShereditary Muslim clerics. F or example, former slaves, members of"castes," and descendants of rcent converts.27 A subcategory hrewould be some of th ordinary Muslim women I know wh o arechildless and hve thse marks. Th e exemplary piety of such womenand th mark that indexes this piety, I suspect, relate to their inabil-ity to bear children in a setting where childbearing is greatly val-ued. Second, there are various persons from all sectors of societywhose moral character is in question, usually because of charges ofcorruption, embezzlement, or illicit sexual activities; or because ofth amassing of considrable wealth under conomie conditions thatare very precarious. For example, I know several civil servantssome of whom are members of prominent lineages of Muslim reli-gious specialists who have been charged with stealing public fundsupon whose foreheads th marks hve appeared. In one case, thmark appeared after a period in prison. Similarly, there is the caseof one friend accused of embezzling money from his father's pros-perous import Company who also had a mark appear. I also knowyoung well-to-do businessmenFrench-educated in some caseswithrputations as notorious womanizers with thse marks.One might read th appearance of such marks as attempts to clearone's name after public embarrassment or to safeguard one's rpu-tation. But it is perhaps unwise fo r th anthropologist to speculateabout the intentionality of actors. Indeed, it might even be churlishto read thse signs as acts of dlibrationthat is, actions of mind-fu l bodies. Be that as it may, it is clear that there is no better wayto prove one's piety than through signs that are publicly recognizedas valid.28 Whether th individual actor uses such signs consciouslyis perhaps beside th point. What is important to note is that actorsexhibit their piety according to certain accepted norms and they doso publicly, that is, in ways that th public sphre encourages. As Ihve suggested, some of thse signs of piety, and th marks in par-ticular, are not unlike what linguists hve called hypercorrection

27 S ee Ahmed 1981, wh o discusses low-status Bengali Muslims whose stratgiesof "upward mobility" included claiming descent from high-status Muslim groups inBengal an d emulating their practices. I am grateful to Naveeda Khan fo r bringingthis source to my attention.28 Cf . Salvatore's discussion of "staging virtue" in Egypt (1998) and Hirschkindon th ethics of listening (2001).

ISLAM AND PUBLIC PIETY IN MALI 223in language use, or th quest fo r what Bourdieu (1984) ha s called"distinction."Unlike Habermas's view that "public opinion" is key to the publicsphre (1989 [1962]), th "consensus" ( i jm ' } of the Muslim com-munity is what seems to be of paramount importance in Mali. Afterail, on the one hand, there does seem to be "consensus" about properIslamic religious conduct, th appeal of a more "generic Islam," andidentifiable processes of th standardization of religious practice andpublic piety. On the other hand, there are real diffrences, whichbelie th existence of any such publicly proclaimed or tacitly accepted"consensus." As I hve argued, hereditary sanctity and distinctionremain very important factors in ho w Islam is practiced in post-colonial Mali. Moreover, th "consensus" about proper public con-duct and piety excludes ail of those whose actions in private or insemipublic venues do not partake of th consensus. It is the much-discussed s e e r e that helps to illustrate some of th paradoxes of the"consensus" about public piety within th broader public sphre inMali. Some of those Muslims with such an ostensibly visible sign ofpiety on their foreheads actually risk publicly betraying their inau-thenticity in short, their very lack of pietyto other Muslims. Thishas been a topic of much discussion, both in public and in private,among many, if not all ordinary Malian Muslims for whom pietyand its public signs hve become in rcent years matters of consid-rable concern.

R f r e n c e s

Ahmed, Rafiuddin1981 Th e B eng a l M u s l i m s , 1871-1&06. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Amselle, Jean-Loup1985 "Le Wahabisme Bamako (1945-1885)." Ca na d i a n Jour nal ofAJhcan Studies19, no. 2: 345-57.Anderson, Benedict1991 Ima g i ned Commu ni t i e s . Rev. d. New York: Verso.Asad, Talal1986 Th e Idea o f an Anthropology of I s l am . Washington, D.C.: Center for Contem-porary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.Bourdieu, Pierre1984 Di s t i nc t i on , translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress.Bowen, John R.1993 M u s l i m s through D i s c o m s e . Princeton: Princeton University Press.


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2 2 6 BENJAMIN F. SOARESSalvatore, Armando1 9 9 8 "Staging Virtue: The Disembodiment of Self-Correctness and the Makingof Islam as Public Norm." In Is lam Motor or C h a l l e n g e o f M o d e r m l y , T e a r b o o ko f th e S o a o l o g ? of I s l a m l, edited by Georg Stauth. Pp. 87-120. Hamburg:Lit Verlag; New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.Seesemann, Rdiger , and Benjamin F. SoaresIn press "'Being as Good Muslims as Frenchmen': O n Islam an d ColonialModernity in West Africa." In Religieus Modemil ies in W e s t Afnca, editedby John H. Hanson and Rijk van Dijk. Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress.Sidib, S .1993 "Islam et socit: Prdicateurs." L'Essor, December 25-26: 4.Smith, William Cantwell1 9 5 7 I s l am in M o d e m His tmy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Soares, Benjamin F.1996 "The Public Sphre of Islam and a Cancelled Christian Crusade." Paperpresented at the African Studies Association annual meeting, S an Francisco.1 9 9 7 "The Spiritual Economy of Nioro du Sahel: Islamic Discourses andPractices in a Malian Religieus Center." Ph.D. dissertation, NorthwesternUniversity.1 9 9 9 "Muslim Proselytization as Purification." In P r o s e l y t i z a t i o n an d C o m m u n a lS e l f -D t e r m i n a t i o n in A f n c a , edited by Abdullahi A. An-Nacim . Pp. 228-45.Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis.

2000a "Muslim Saints in th Age of Neoliberalism." Paper presented at theworkshop, "The Politics of Social R eproduction in Neoliberal Africa,"University of Chicago.2000b "Notes on th Anthropological Study of Islam and Muslim Societies inAfrica." C u l t u r e an d R e l i g i o n 1, no. 2: 277-85.Soares, Benjamin F., and John Hunwick1 9 9 6 "The s h a y k h as th Locus of Divine Self-Disclosure." Sudamc A f n c a : AJour nal of Histoncal S o u r c e s 7: 97-112.Tour, Cheikh1 9 5 7 A f i n que tu d e v i e n n e s un c r o y a n t , Dakar: Imprimerie Diop.Traor, I.1996 "Islam." Le R p u b l i c a i n , December 1 1 : 4 .Triaud, Jean-Louis1 9 8 6 "Abd al-Rahman l'Africain (1908-1957), pionneur et prcurseur du wah-habisme au Mali." In Radical ismes i s l a m i q u e s , edited by Olivier Carr andPaul Dumont Volume 2. Pp. 162-80. Paris: L'Harmattan.Va n der Veer, Peter1 9 9 4 R e l i g i o u s Nat tanahan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress.

CHAPTER TENFRAMING THE PUBLIC SPHERE:IRANIAN WOMEN IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIG*

FARIBA A D E L K H A H

It is possible to understand th 1979 Iranian Rvolution and th Is-lamic Republic that emerged from it in terms of the formation of apublic space. The successive crises that th rgime experienced shouldthen be read according to the splits that such a process crtes.Major political scandais, such as th trial of the former mayor ofTehran, Gholamhossein K arbashi (1998), or mo re recently th SharamJazaeiri Arab affair (2002) , originated with th private appropriationof public funds, although th distinction between private and pub-lic was hardly clear from th perspective of the diffrent protago-nists. Th e repression of Islamic intellectuals critical of the Republic,such as Mohsen Kadivar or Hassan Yossefi Eshkevari, was justifiednot for what they thought bu t because they expressed their views inpublic rather than within the "qualified" circles of the clrical estab-lishment. Not all truths are good to say in public. Th e conflictbetween "conservatives" and "reformers" turns in large measure onth dfinition of public space and th modes of legitimate actionwithin it. The polemics and repression engendered by student dmon-strations, th use of satellite dishes, and women's prsence in sportsstadiums exemplify mis conflict.F or over forty years the relation between the private an d publicsphres has been a subject of constant debate in Iran. It was shapedby th issue of social being (adm-e e j t e m i ) , characterized by com-mitting oneself to others in th public domain and redefining one'srelations with others. Secular and religieus thinkers, as well as socialmovements, have been major contributors to this process. Beginningin th 1960s, this thme wa s developed in the struggle over whathas been called th "modernization" of Iran. It has concerned th

* Dale F . Eickelman translated this chapter from French into English, and GneR Garthwaite orovided assistance in transhterating Persian technical terms.