5 - Legitimacy in Question: The Challenge of Islamic Renewal

Summary

Introduction

In June 2015, a Friday sermon delivered by a preacher at a mosque in one of Bamako's popular neighbourhoods culminated in the following statement:

our problem is not the Islamists in the north, with whom we can always make arrangements. In fact, the ‘sharia’ they are imposing is not so different from our vision. Our main problem is the secessionists in the north. As long as we stay together as a nation, we can jointly work toward making Mali a country in which the rules of Islam are followed in everyday life.

This statement is remarkable in several respects. It asserts that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the nation-state is of greater import than the secular order to which the Malian nation-state adheres in its present form. According to the preacher, the state is in dire need of reform so as to allow its citizens to live in greater conformity with Islamic precepts aiming at the political and moral ordering of collective and personal life. The statement thus implies a judgement about the sorry state of affairs of the government and of the political order more generally, which is depicted as an order devoid of legitimacy because it cannot ensure the basic conditions for citizens to live in proper moral terms, that is, as believers who abide by God's law.

That ‘Islam’ has become the battle cry to challenge the legitimacy of Mali's political leadership is illustrated by the following sobering journalistic assessment of the political situation under the government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita:

The ruling class in Mali has reached such a state of atrophy, of dejection and flight that is has been relegated to a role of servility vis-à-vis religious leaders who, whether one likes it or not, keep on a leash national public opinion. … (T)his public opinion has become a function of the sermons delivered by these preachers. … This is not surprising because they sell people the dream of a country liberated from corruption, and promise them a revenge on those who profit from being in power. … The imam Haidara is right when he says that the Muslim movement can elect whomever it wishes to run the country. He only declares via loudspeakers what everyone already knows. Indeed, one has the impression to live in a country in which the state and religious leaders seem to have entered a pact.