Current Research at ISERP
Islamic Education and Political Mobilizations in Sub-Saharan Africa
by Ousmane Kane (SIPA)
In the post September 11th world dispensation, there has been a heated debate in academic and policy circles about the origins of terrorism, and in particular terrorist acts carried out by Muslims. Since terrorist groups struck Riyad, Madrid, Casablanca, Istambul, and recently London. Two main schools of thought have attempted to provide answers to the rise of terrorism of global reach. One argues that the roots of terror resides in the ideology of intolerance and hatred advocated by Wahhabi minded groups, and the other that it is the legitimate grievances against the Middle Eastern policies of some Western nations, the United States in particular that feed terrorism and the objective of terrorist groups is to force these powers to withdraw their military troops from a specific region. Due to the geo-strategic interests of the superpowers in this region, the division of labor in the Western academy, and the fact that terrorist groups have been particularly active in the Middle East, this debate has been centered on the Middle East.
The so-called periphery of the Muslim World of which Muslim Africa is said to be part, had been largely ignored in this debate. However, in much the same way as globalization has led to the intensification of global interconnectedness, it has also brought Muslims closer to each other. One could indeed argue that predominantly Muslim societies, whether in North Africa, South East Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa face similar challenges. During the last two decades, Muslim crowds have mobilized in the Middle East, South Asia as well as Sub-Saharan Africa to denounce the publication of Satanic Verses, to support to Intifada against Israeli occupation, to oppose the US led-war for regime change in Iraq to give just a few examples.
Thanks to the revolution in the information technology as evidenced by the accessibility of the internet, satellite television, the fax, ideas and images circulate widely and contribute to cultivating awareness of issues that matter for Muslims in the whole world. Therefore the erection of political boundaries into boundaries for the production of knowledge does not help understand the interactions between different parts of the Muslim world in the twenty first century.
This research, which focuses on the Sub-Saharan African region, aims to contribute to the debate on the roots of political violence. The driving research question is to what extent is the political violence that expresses itself through a religious idiom a product of religious education? To answer this question, the project will collapse two fields of inquiry that tend to be addressed separately in much of the Islamic studies literature: On the one hand the rise of what is called Islamic Â"fundamentalismÂ" Islamism, new Islamic radicalism etc. On the other hand the transformation of the Islamic educational, particularly during the postcolonial period, i.e after Muslim nations became independent from European colonial rule. By articulating these two levels of analysis, this project aims to demonstrate if they are correlated and thus to shed light on the question of how much can political violence be explained by religious ideologies.
Funded by United States Institute of Peace »
