State Control of Religious Activity in Southern Mali Following the 2012 Crisis

This article was external pageoriginally publishedcall_made by external pageNOREFcall_made on 25 August 2015.

Executive summary

Faced with the fear of radicalisation, Malian authorities are attempting to regulate an increasingly complex religious field. Political initiatives include the establishment of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, collaboration with Morocco over the education of imams and renewed debate over the incorporation of Quranic schools into the public school system. This policy brief examines attempts by the state to regulate religious matters and the implications of these efforts. Inevitably, these regulatory initiatives entail the reshaping of state-religion relations. The secularity of the state is being renegotiated and the Malian state is approaching the Moroccan model of state control of religious life.

Introduction

Following the transition to democratic rule in 1992 the freedom of association that was introduced enabled the multiplication of religious organisations across Mali. Over the following years the number of Muslim associations and mosques increased steadily. In more general terms, religion has become more visible in public space in southern Mali, evident, for instance, in the more active participation of Muslim religious leaders in the political scene (see Thurston, 2013). In Bamako, religious leaders have contributed to making Muslim virtues explicitly relevant in public debates about family law, authority structures and gender politics, and they manage to mobilise supporters to an extent that political leaders are unable to do (cf. Schultz, 2003; Soares, 2004; Sommerfelt & Jesnes, 2015).

These developments, combined with the advances of militant Islamic groups and the sporadic application of sharia criminal penalties in 2012 in northern Mali, evoked fear among both Malians and foreign commentators that the country is moving away from the principle of state secularism – “laïcité” – as enshrined in the 1960 Malian constitution and reaffirmed in the 1992 constitution.1 The way that laïcité has been understood in Mali is a direct reflection of its French conceptualisation, which entails the absence of religious engagement in government affairs and the absence of government involvement in religious affairs.

At the same time the state’s formal involvement in religious matters is increasing, which reflects a fear of radicalisation in religious milieus, which has become urgent since the advances of militant Islamist groups in northern Mali and the subsequent crisis in 2012. The attack on a restaurant in March 2015 in the centre of Bamako by the jihadist group al-Mourabitoun, which left five people killed and eight wounded, shows that the threat of attacks from militants in the south is real. In response to concerns about religious milieus hiding extremist elements and religious leaders promoting aggression in the name of Islam, the government is seeking control over the religious sphere in more general terms.

Based on interviews with religious leaders, politicians, experts and lay people in southern Mali in June 2014, this policy brief examines attempts by the state to regulate religious matters and the implications of these efforts. Political initiatives include the establishment of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2012, the education of Malian imams in Morocco and debate over incorporating Quranic schooling into the formal school system.

The state’s wish and concerted efforts to control the radicalisation of religious milieus entail increased involvement in the religious sphere and religious affairs. This is interpreted by many Malians – especially those urbanites who have pursued an education in the French-speaking schooling system – and commentators abroad as a sign of the “Islamification” of the state. In effect, the state has to balance its own wish for control of radical or extremist activity in the religious sphere against these concerns.

Controlling religious practice

The establishment of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Worship in 2012 has been seen by some observers as a sign of Mali becoming a more religious state or of the intention to base political processes on religious principles (Daniel, 2012; Diabate, 2014). The minister of religious affairs and worship, Thierno Amadou Omar Hass Diallo, to whom we spoke in June 2014, emphasised that the mandate of the ministry is to regulate religious matters. This process of regulation includes control of preachers through the development of guidelines for the contents of prayers and sermons presented in mosques and broadcast on Malian radio stations. It also includes the active shaping of the education of imams and overseeing the educational contents in the many Quranic schools in the country.

The regulation of religious matters by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Worship is partly done in close cooperation with the national body of the High Islamic Council of Mali (HCIM), a religious association established in 2000 and intended to serve as an intermediary between the various Muslim communities and the state. This body is an overarching structure that instructs its subcouncils at the regional and local levels on religious issues. In our conversations with the HCIM at the local level in two regions, Mopti and Sikasso, imams of the two councils explained how they focused on practical matters concerning prayer, the regulation of prayer and the timing of Ramadan. They also instruct preachers who they consider to be out of line. In Mopti, council members had taken issue with preachers who had encouraged youngsters in the area to go to the north to participate in the armed struggle and who considered the war in northern Mali to be a holy war (jihad). They had been successful in correcting preachers in this regard, but explained that hypothetically they would report irregularities of this kind to the national body of the HCIM. In this sense, the HCIM at the local level enables state influence in religious matters through its cooperation with the national HCIM. The different levels of the HCIM will become central in the state’s development and application of guidelines for sermons and religious messaging.

A second initiative to control religious life is the education of imams in facilities encouraged by the state. In late 2013 Mali signed a religious affairs accord with Morocco for the training in that country of 500 Malian imams selected by the Malian government (see Waterman, 2013). According to Minister Diallo, this programme is intended to work against extremist viewpoints. Moreover, the initiative should be regarded as a way to strengthen the influence of Sufist Islam, which has traditionally been the main orientation of Muslims in Mali. Even though Sufism is still the mainstream form of Islam in Mali, many Malians are returning from Egypt with a religious education in other, more conservative traditions. The number of mosques sponsored by Saudi Arabia is rising in Mali and the Dawa congregation – a conservative Muslim group of Pakistani origin – has built up a following in Bamako (cf. Sommerfelt et al., 2015). Moreover, there is concern among Muslims in Mali that Salafist Islam (referred to as Wahhabism in Mali) is gaining popularity (cf. Sommerfelt & Jesnes, 2015). By sending imams to Moroccan facilities that teach Sufist Islam the state seeks to balance the influence from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The 2013 religious affairs agreement represents a more general orientation towards Morocco by the Malian government. In Morocco, where Islam is the state religion, the state exercises control over religious affairs. The Moroccan state requires ministry certification of all imams, regulates mosque hours, and seeks to screen sermons and exclude extremist messaging from them (Sakthivel, 2014). The accord with the Moroccan government also encompasses a partnership between the ministries of religious affairs of the two countries in order to “cooperate on Malikite jurisprudence and interpretation in order to promote moderation and fight hard-line ideologies” (Sakthivel, 2014). In March 2015 the king of Morocco opened a large educational centre in Rabat offering religious education to imams from abroad, and Morocco appears to be attempting to establish itself as “the African Muslim hub” for a “tolerance-based religious model” (Alaoui, 2015).

A third initiative to control religious matters can be seen in the debate over the possibility of incorporating current Quranic education into the formal school system. This mirrors longstanding interests by the state in controlling informal religious schools in Mali (cf. Brenner, 2001: 209ff.). It goes beyond the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Worship’s current mandate of overseeing educational contents and potentially entails an attempt to eradicate the informal schooling sector.

The educational system in Mali is complex, with four parallel models of schooling. Currently, the formal educational system consists of French language secular schools and French Arabic schools. The informal educational sector consists of two types of private schools (madrasas), one of which offers an education in Arabic and Islamic studies, while the other only offers religious education. The madrasa sector is growing as a result of the return of many religious leaders from religious education in Arabic-speaking countries. With limited opportunities for employment in the French-speaking school system and unable to further their studies in Malian universities, many establish their own small religious schools or offer their services to already established

Madrasas (Soares, 2005: 85). Many parents send their children to madrasasin order to provide them with religious training, which is not offered in the formal education system at present, given the Malian formulation of state secularism (laïcité).

According to a survey carried out by Fafo in 2014, as many as 29% of the population see madrasas as an alternative to other schooling options (Coulibaly & Hatløy, 2015). Many of the children currently attending madrasas miss out on topics apart from Arabic and Islamic studies. The HCIM is in favour of incorporating religious education into the formal school system, as is Sabati 2012, a political movement rooted in the HCIM and established with the aim of increasing political consciousness among Muslims in Mali (see Sommerfelt & Jesnes, 2015). HCIM and Sabati 2012 thus support the incorporation of religious schools into the formal school system as a way to strengthen religious education rather than strengthening controlof religious education. In any case, the incorporation of madrasas into the formal school system would entail breaking with one of the principles of the version of state secularity practised in Mali since decolonisation. The political debate on this issue is likely to intensify.

Conclusions

The religious affairs accord with Morocco opens up the possibility of the Malian state more heavily influencing the religious sphere. This – as well as other processes currently unfolding in Mali – means that the principle of state secularism (laïcité) is effectively being reshaped. However, this principle has strong support in Malian political circles and its reshaping will most likely entail a more open version of the secularity principle rather than its abandonment. Even so, it means that the Malian government must balance its own wish for control of religious life and radical Islamist activity in the religious sphere against the concerns of the defenders of the stricter versions of the principle of state secularism, as well as against attempts to increase the relevance of religious scholars in state institutions.

With this in mind, any attempt to support the Malian government in its efforts to control the religious sphere should consider the following:

•The debate on the incorporation of informal religious schools in the formal schooling sector must be based on a better knowledge of the current curriculums in the madrasas and of differences in educational quality.

•This debate and other initiatives to tighten state control over the religious sphere – and the viewpoints of various Malian actors regarding these processes – must be understood within a broader political and regional context.

•Support for the Malian government in controlling extremist elements must be sensitive to the tendency to project extremist labels onto non-violent Wahhabi Muslims and other Muslim minorities. Avoiding unconditional support in this regard is particularly important in a country that struggles to control its army and police force.

References

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