Page 149 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

position. His claim not to “meddle with (party) politics” counts among the most
important reasons for his astounding popularity, a popularity that intégristes
and his other Muslim critics observe with dismay and allegations of mindless
populism. Thus Haidara’s movement, Ansar Dine, not only re®ects the diversi-
¤cation of Muslim positions and the transformation of Islamic faith into a pub-
licly proclaimed standpoint. It also illustrates that Muslim leaders may win
popular support precisely because they frame their political and social aspira-
tions as a disengagement from immoral politics.
Muslims who support the current trend toward an Islamic moral renewal
(tajdid) organize themselves in associations, located primarily in urban areas,
that have been mushrooming since 1991. Many leaders of these associations en-
ter strategic and sometimes shifting alliances with the current political and eco-
nomic elites from whom they often receive major ¤nancial contributions. While
these devout Muslims become more and more visible and audible in the public
arena, Islam’s place in public life turns into an issue of ever growing contention.
This is partly the outcome of the highly ambivalent attitude of current govern-
ment of¤cials toward Islam, an attitude that undercuts their otherwise explicit
secularist orientation. In a situation of widespread discontent with the regime
in power, party politicians and state of¤cials cannot afford to antagonize promi-
nent representatives of the Muslim establishment whose informal political in-
®uence in towns and in the countryside is based on kin-related and clientelistic
allegiances. President Touré, as well as other members of the current govern-
ment, regularly perform rituals expressing their loyalty to Islamic values, in the
presence of renowned representatives of the Muslim establishment, and thus
gloss over the difference between a national and a Muslim identity.
The social basis of current Muslim activism is characterized by coexisting
types of mobilization. Urban-based Muslim neighborhood associations (some-
times styled after NGOs funded by Western donor organizations) are run ac-
cording to a rationality in which clientelistic and redistributional considerations
intermingle with the logic of the market. Many group leaders once occupied
leading positions in the administration and government under the former presi-
dent. They generally bene¤t from their former in®uential positions to enter into
clientelistic relations with state of¤cials and politicians. Their strategies illus-
trate the absence of any clear dividing line between the state and civil society,
and stand in tension to the rhetoric of a “civil society against the state” that they
employ. Some groups have an impressive number of followers. But people of
various socioeconomic and educational backgrounds look upon them and their
civil society rhetoric with suspicion. They argue that, similar to NGOs spon-
sored by Western donor organizations, the only raison d’être for the Muslim
associations is “economic interest.” Other critics, mostly intellectuals, surmise
that Muslim neighborhood associations are used by their leaders and sponsors
to mobilize gullible voters.
Other networks stretch from rural groups to urban Muslim patrons. Al-
though they are based on conventional notions of trust and mutual obligation,
the conditions under which they come into existence show that they are not

138 Dorothea E. Schulz