Page 153 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Haidara’s rational approach seems to re®ect a similar trend toward the objecti-
¤cation and systematization of religious knowledge as it has been described for
other areas of the Muslim world (see Eickelman 2000). Yet a closer look at his
sermons reveals that the diffusion of religious debate by the media has more
contradictory implications.
Haidara’s sermons (wajuli) are set up in a dialogue with an interlocutor that
bears close resemblance to talk radio programs that are highly popular among
urban listeners (Schulz 1999). In response to questions posed by his listeners, 24
Haidara makes extensive use of a rhetorical style generally associated with pro-
fessional orators (Schulz 2001). His repeated references to the mediated context
create a strong sense of immediacy and an audience of an almost palpable pres-
ence. In emotionally highly charged dialogues, he appeals to feelings of belong-
ing and sharing, and responds to people’s striving for a clearly demarcated
frame of ethical reference. The appeal of Haidara’s sermons thus resides to an
important extent in the illocutionary force of his speech.
Muslims of different orientation and pedigree, who publicly comment on
governmental policy, propose versions of moral community that, they claim,
counter current of¤cial constructions of the nation as a community. The ways
in which they frame their political aspirations and the public prominence of
their alternative community constructions constitute a comparatively new de-
velopment in Mali. The increasing permeation of everyday life with mass media
supports the shift toward a debate of political and social issues that are generally
presented as matters of personal faith and collective well-being. Local radio sta-
tions and cassettes enable a broader constituency of consumers to formulate
their viewpoints on a range of everyday concerns. The growing importance of
media for these opinion-making processes puts an increasing pressure on rival
Muslims (and other interest groups) to compete for a public acknowledgment
of the validity of their position.
Common to the images of community formulated by various branches of
the Muslim establishment and by the intégristes is that they merge national and
Muslim identities, thereby implicitly denying Christians and people of other
religious orientation the right of full participation in the political universe. 25
Haidara’s community of “rightful believers,” in contrast, is more vaguely de-
¤ned. It is precisely the diffuse nature of his precepts for a “virtuous life” that
makes it so appealing to his followers because it allows them to ¤nd various
points of identi¤cation.
Haidara’s indeterminate community construction becomes evident in his re-
actions to the controversy over the broadcasting of beauty pageants. When Mali
hosted the West African beauty pageant “Miss CEDEAO” in Bamako in 1997,
a public controversy arose over the question of whether the event should be
broadcast on national television. Representatives of the AMUPI and some in-
tégristes temporarily allied to denounce what they saw as a governmental en-
dorsement of this instance of moral corruption by Western cultural imperial-
ism. In newspapers and broadcasts on Radio Islamique, the AMUPI’s private
radio station in Bamako, they admonished “decent Muslims, decent Malian citi-

142 Dorothea E. Schulz