Posted on 07/02/2004 6:45:55 PM PDT by tlrugit
From Timbuktu and Bamako comes a lesson for the entire Muslim world: a secular detachment from politics and peace with the other religions. The Muslim president asks for the blessing of the Catholic archbishop
ROMA – Is Islam compatible with democracy? Yes and no, replies the Vatican. “La Civiltà Cattolica” – the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed with authorization from the secretariat of state for each issue – is the “No” voice. In an editorial last February 7, they wrote that because democracy “takes the sovereignty away from Allah and transfers it to the people,” this “for a faithful Muslim is an act of disbelief.”
But one country in sub-Saharan Africa is a living contradiction of the skeptics. Islam has been present there for almost a thousand years; 82 percent of its inhabitants are Muslim. They belong to the Sunni tradition, with a contingent that follows Wahhabi rigorism. They are extremely poor, with an average annual per capita income of 230 dollars, and poverty and freedom almost never go together. They belong to various tribes, which in many African countries is the root of incurable conflicts. And yet, democracy flourishes there. The country is Mali, between the Niger river and the Sahara desert (in the photo, a mosque).
Among the 47 countries in the world with a majority Muslim population, there are only two that the New York think tank Freedom House classifies as fully “free”: Mali, and neighboring Senegal.
Mali’s behavior is also impeccable in terms of religious liberty. The Italian section of Aid to the Church in Need, which publishes every year a report on religious liberty in the world, has never noted any abuses there. In Mali, they wrote, “there are no legal obstacles to conversion from one religion to another, and missionaries may work freely; the Muslim majority is tolerant toward the other confessions.”
A year ago, in the Vatican, the fear was that the war in Iraq would make this oasis of religious peace fall prey to Islamic fundamentalism. But nothing of the kind took place. Amadou Toumani Touré, currently the president of Mali, says: “What we have here is an Islam that is very ancient, tolerant and enlightened. We see nothing in our religion that would prevent us from being democratic.”
Yaroslav Trofimov, who published a long correspondent piece from Mali in the June 23, 2004 edition of “The Wall Street Journal Europe,” highlights the native historical roots of this peculiarity: “Unlike in much of the Muslim world, democracy is seen here as an outgrowth of hallowed local traditions, not an alien innovation.”
In Mali, Songhay farmers, Arab merchants, Peul breeders, and Tuareg nomads all live together. For centuries, before the arrival of the French at the end of the 1800’s, there was an alternation of multiethnic empires which, together with religious tolerance, cemented the coexistence of the different tribes and generated a solid national awareness. Ethnic conflicts were healed by creating kinship bonds between victors and vanquished. Crossroad cities like Timbuktu, the “city of 333 saints,” a landing point for the merchants who returned up the Niger river and a departure point for the caravans heading toward the Mediterranean, reinforced these bonds.
In the second half of the 1900’s, after the end of French domination, Mali fell victim to a pro-Soviet dictatorship and to terrible famines. In 1991 Touré, at the time lieutenant colonel, headed the revolt that overthrew the dictatorship. But the military strike ended there. Touré organized free and peaceful elections for the next year, without running in them. A history scholar, Alpha Oumar Konaré, was elected and then re-elected in 1997, removing himself after the second four-year term, in obedience to the limit fixed by the constitution.
One of the last gestures of outgoing president Konaré, on June 5, 2002, was to go and pray, he being a Muslim, in the Catholic cathedral of the capital of Mali, Bamako, at the tomb of the venerated archbishop Luc Sangaré, who had recently died. At his first inauguration, in 1992, Konaré had gone to the archbishop to ask for “words of wisdom for the challenging task awaiting him,” and had received his blessing. Now he was returning to give thanks and to “ask forgiveness for everything he had been unable to achieve.” This gesture and these words were made known by the new archbishop, Jean Zerbo, in a testimony made public by the Vatican news agency “Fides.”
In 2002, during the last presidential election, Touré, the author of the 1991 revolt, presented himself as an independent candidate; he won, and he included in his government representatives of all of the parties, including the main party among those defeated.
In 2003, Touré’s mediation was decisive in the liberation of the European tourists kidnapped by Islamist guerillas in nearby Algeria, and held in the north of Mali. The United States included Mali among the beneficiaries of the “Millennium Challenge,” an aid program for poor countries with good standards of government.
On May 30, 2004, regional elections were held in Mali. Abdramane Ben Essayouti, the imam of the principal mosque of Timbuktu, told Trofimov on the eve of the vote: “I am neutral and I will vote for no one. In case of problem between parties, it will be up to us in the civil society to intervene and restore peace, and how could we do it if we’re not impartial?”
This distance from politics on the part of religious leaders also belongs to the traditions of Mali. And hence the coexistence among Islam, the African animist religions, and the small but vibrant Christian minority.
In spite of the Muslim prohibition of alcohol, in the villages they make and drink millet beer. Nude men and women bathe tranquilly in full view, in the Niger. In Bamako, the faithful who gather in the new mosque built by the Saudis do not forswear the symbols of the animist religions: monkeys’ heads, dried mice, and snake skins.
Even the rigid Wahhabis make adjustments. “It is in everyone’s interest for Mali to remain secular,” opines Mahmoud Dicko, the imam of the Wahhabi mosque of Bamako and director of the Islamist radio station of the capital.
So I am to believe the pinacle of Islamic government is a Nation "with an average annual per capita income of 230 dollars"?!
Dang, the Islamic Empire has a lot to look forward to if they by accident win this war.
Judge not a nation by the amount of it's dollars. Rather, judge it by the amount of it's sense.
250 bucks a year is a great indicator of just how much the Nation has helped its people. In this case I will have to judge the Nation by its cents, as the working class makes less than a dollar a day.
Most people do not think living in a mud hut and eating bugs a suitable form of living. To hold this Nation up as the pinacle of Islamic achievment is to say they not only have reached backwards to the seventh century, they are reaching the stone age.
Fine, may all Islamic Nations be converted to the stone age. There certainly will be more peace on earth. Perhaps that is what the author was hinting at.
bump
There was a book about the history of Timbuktu's Jewish communities published in Mali about 15 years ago. I forget the title, but it's worth looking around for.
http://www.kulanu.org/timbuktu/index.html
is also very interesting, as you probably know, although it makes too much of 1492 as a year and misleadingly associates Askiya Muhammad's rise to power as the beginning of a Muslim state in Timbuktu.
Scholars in Timbuktu (particularly Mr. Haidara) have been looking towards Morocco and Spain recently. Luckily, since Alpha Oumar Konare, Mali's previous president was an archeologist and his wife a historian, scholars from around the world have been graciously welcomed in Mali, resulting in a wealth of historical studies. Look for some exciting books on West African Jews in the next few years.
"Most people do not think living in a mud hut and eating bugs a suitable form of living."
I don't know where the article says that Malians think any differently.
You are sound very biased against Mali just because it was a poor country, which you seem to attribute to Islam. Do you care to explain why it was one of the richest countries in the world in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries? This happened centuries after Islam was widely adopted.
Maybe a 23-year military dictatorship and 90 years of French occupation, both much more recent, might be more likely causes of Mali's economic problems.
FYI
Be careful, you're making sense.
As all REAL freepers know there is nothing good in the Islamic world.
You'd better watch that sarcasm, Buddy. ;~ )
Interesting article. Thanks for the ping.
Sarcasm? ME? :-)
A very encouraging article to read in the midst of all that's wrong with Islam recently.
My biggest concern is in the second from last paragraph where reference is made to a new mosque that was built by the Saudis.
That fact alarms me. The Saudis export their malignant strain of Islam by financing the construction of mosques and madrassahs in other countries.
I hope Malians realize the strings that come attached to their new mosque and keep the Wahhabists at bay.
The "new" in "new mosque" is relative. It was built at least 30 years ago.
King Fahd funded a new bridge over the Niger River 15 years ago and there are lots of villages with Saudi-funded water pumps and deep-ground wells, but Saudi Wahabbi teachings don't appeal to the people in Mali.
The Wahabbi mosque in Bamako is a differnt brand of Wahabbism, brought to Mali by students who had traveled to Egypt in the 1940s and 50s. They don't espouse the rigid intolerance of the Saudi "moral police", etc.
Not controlled for purchasing power parity, Mali still ranks last with 72% of the population surviving on less than $1/day.
Here's a table of data culled from the Central Intelligence Agency.
* = GDP is per-capita gross domestic product purchasing power parity in United States dollars adjusted for inflation to 2004 purchasing power parity.
| year | GDP* |
| 1986 | $311 |
| 1987 | |
| 1988 | $352 |
| 1989 | $381 |
| 1990 | $383 |
| 1991 | $368 |
| 1992 | |
| 1993 | $850 |
| 1994 | $766 |
| 1995 | $744 |
| 1996 | |
| 1997 | $707 |
| 1998 | $916 |
| 1999 | $931 |
| 2000 | $933 |
| 2001 | $897 |
| 2002 | $904 |
| 2003 | $925 |
In addition to the French domination and Soviet-style dictatorship, much of the northern Sahel suffered a severe muti-decadal drought that began about 1970. Although the rains have returned somewhat in recent years, the degree to which they have returned is a matter of considerable debate in scientific circles. Whether these sort of multi-decadal droughts are cyclical or exceptional in the Sahel is also debatable, as is the degree to which intensive agriculture and farming techniques inappropriate to dry land regions have contributed to the crisis. Desertification may be cyclical, anthropogenic, or more or less progressive, or some combination of the three, at present.
Although not quite Communist anymore, Mail still has the hallmarks of socialist economic policy, which typically leads to general poverty. These include modestly prohibitive trade barriers, confiscatory taxation, government meddling in economic production, barriers to foreign investment, a small and largely government-controlled financial sector, a corrupted judicial system, excessive bureaucratic regulation, and an overwhelming black market. On the positive side, Mali features slight inflation and few wage-and-price controls.
Good post.
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