Page 152 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

broadcast on local radio. He thereby reached a constituency of listeners that
stretched further into rural areas than competing Muslim activists do. In other
words, he made up for his exclusion from a state-controlled arena of public de-
bate by creating a parallel sphere of discursive exchange. Small media were in-
strumental but not decisive in this strategic move.
Haidara’s stronghold in the countryside manifests itself in numerous letters
in which rural listeners address him as their “spiritual guide” and request advice
on questions of proper conduct. Haidara’s numerous enemies from the Muslim
establishment never cease to stress that his training in religious sciences is very
thin. Still, they cannot deny that his rhetorical skills and charisma, his extensive
use of broadcast technology, and, ¤nally, his ferocious attacks on the Muslim
establishment’s “hypocritical” position vis-à-vis politicians have earned him a
wide following among the urban population. Many men, especially among the
urban youth discontented with the unful¤lled promises of “demokrasi,” en-
dorse Haidara’s denouncing of political and moral corruption as “truthful” and
“courageous.”
Haidara’s embattled positioning in public debate is indicative of a conver-
gence of several processes. His attacks on, and rejection by, prominent clerics
illustrate the ongoing struggle over the authoritative use of Islam as a source of
moral order. Furthermore, that his participation in public debate is most con-
tested by other Muslims reveals that the strategies of exclusion that structure
public debate in Mali do not separate an of¤cial secular public from an Islamic
“counterpublic.” Rather, the practices of silencing and mutual accusation create
and re®ect the segmentation of the Muslim discursive ¤eld. Exclusion is at work
within the ¤eld of Muslim debate, a ¤eld structured by people’s unequal access
to technologies of media production and to opportunities for consumption. In
contrast to the public claimed by Habermas for eighteenth-century Western Eu-
rope, Muslim activists in Mali do not simply bring their religious identity to the
public arena but, instead, claim, challenge, and incessantly create that identity
in public interaction. Muslim actors differ in status and scholarly pedigree, and
in their unequal access to the resources and privileges provided by the state.
Given that Haidara mobilizes his followers through networks that operate
largely beyond state control, one could surmise that the moral order to which he
appeals constitutes a substantive alternative to that constructed in of¤cial dis-
course. The following discussion scrutinizes Haidara’s teachings and the kind
of moral community he proposes.

Sermons, Argument, and Advertising:
Competing Constructions of Community
Haidara’s preaching style seems to be inspired by a “rational episteme.” 23
His marked emphasis on the rational character of the Quran, the meanings of
which can be debated in a systematic fashion, is reminiscent of Habermas’s
notion of critical argument as the procedural norm of the bourgeois public.

Morality, Community, Publicness 141