The nativist ideology of ivoirité of the 1990s generated brutal discriminatory policies against those labelled as ‘strangers’, especially Muslims. Reversing that perspective, this article focuses on the interface between religion and national identity in twentieth-century Côte d'Ivoire from within Muslim society. The argument is divided into two parts. The first puts forward the counter-hegemonic, patriotic-cum-cosmopolitan narratives that a new Muslim leadership formulated in order to write Islam into national history. The second focuses on grass-roots, demotic, day-to-day realities. It explores Muslim takes on belonging and alienation in practice, paying careful attention to the community's internal diversity. It shows how, over time, Ivorian Muslims have showcased varying degrees of cosmopolitan patriotism but also of their own, local xenophobia. The concluding section returns to the new Muslim leadership and its multifaceted endeavours to reconcile Muslim lived experiences with their cosmopolitan patriotic aspirations. The article ends with a short epilogue surveying the violent armed conflicts of the period 2002 to 2011 and how Muslims were a part of them.
This article presents a synthetic, historical-cum-anthropological overview of the collective trajectory of Ivoirian converts to Islam from southern autochthonous lineages who can be referred to—albeit unsatisfyingly—as ‘native’ Muslims. It focuses on what is effectively an invisible and silent minority within southern native groups and the majority Dioula Muslim society alike: a community that has barely received any attention from social scientists despite the transformative impact of its slow but steady Islamization process. The study aims first at shedding light on salient socio-religious and political aspects of this group’s development, from colonial to postcolonial times. Given that this plural group is situated at the crossroads of various ethnic, national, and religious controversies, having enflamed Côte d’Ivoire in olden days as much as in recent years, the article eventually makes use of this group’s distinct prism to question the contested Ivoirian interface between Islam, ethnic geography, and nationalism at large, and attempt some nuanced answers.
International audienceL’article étudie l’évolution des formes de l’islam d’expression française en Côte d’Ivoire depuis leur émergence dans les années 1970 et leur expansion sur les quinze dernières années. Il pose l'hypothèse heuristique d’un islam francophone à double entente, dans la mesure où il apparaît à la fois tangible par sa visibilité croissante notamment dans l’espace public et simultanément restreint par certaines contraintes qui en limitent l’usage dans divers contextes locaux, intimes et écrits. Pour cerner ces ambivalences, l’approche méthodologique privilégie les questionnements sur les analyses catégoriques et une démarche éclatée plutôt que synthétique. Pour enrichir et nuancer les propos, elle confronte aussi le regard d’un militant et intellectuel musulman ivoirien et celui d’une chercheuse en sciences sociales.The article questions the changing forms of French-speaking Islam in Côte d’Ivoire since they first coalesced in the 1970s, with emphasis on the past fifteen years. It argues that French-speaking Islam is a double-edged phenomenon insofar as it appears both tangible with its increasing visibility in public space, and concurrently restricted due to constraints limiting its development in certain local, private and written contexts. To explore these ambivalences, the methodology puts emphasis on questioning as opposed to categorical analyses, and on case studies as opposed to synthesis. The article also crosses the viewpoints of a Muslim militant-cum-intellectual and a researcher in social sciences in the hope to enrich and nuance the inquiry
Association française des anthropologues 124-125 | 2011 Les rapports de sexe sont-ils solubles dans le genre ? Cyclone post-électoral La production de la violence en Côte d'Ivoire (Janvier 2011
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