Page 154 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

zens” not to watch the pageant on television and to prevent children and women
from exposure to “this dishonorable event” which was a “disgrace to the Malian
nation and to the dignity of our traditional values.” Only a few days after the
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pageant had been broadcast, Haidara released a tape in which he expressed his
concern over the degradation of ethical standards of public conduct. However,
the target of his attack was not the government but those Muslim ¤gures who
had decried the broadcasting of the event. Without giving out their identity,
he characterized them as “Muslims who preach one thing, yet do another” and
who “let their daughters go loose,” that is, engage in activities that come close
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to prostitution. If someone was concerned with fending off moral corrup-
tion, he argued, it was not the public lip service that mattered. Crucial was
“any rightly guided individual’s” conduct and that of his (!) daughters. Haidara
concluded that the Muslims’ interventions constituted a proof of their own hy-
pocrisy.
Haidara’s reasoning illustrates that he seeks to present himself as a rightly
guided Muslim who espouses the values of education, personal strength, and
accomplishment. His attack on “hypocritical Muslims” involved a rhetoric that
was simultaneously inclusive and exclusive: exclusive insofar as he appealed to
a moral community in which only “true” Muslims could partake (as de¤ned by
their virtuous conduct and regular prayer); inclusive because he addressed all
“rightly guided” and “sensible” people, a characterization that potentially also
included Christians. Haidara’s emphasis on the importance of moral integrity
deeply resonates with people’s sensibilities in a situation in which many urban-
ites, especially adolescents, feel disillusioned about the unrealized promises of
political reform. His oscillation between inclusive and exclusive de¤nitions of
community allows him to captivate the moral imagination of listeners, that is,
not only of his followers but of a broad range of people who support his cause.
Of similar vagueness were Haidara’s comments on the criticisms launched
by representatives of the AMUPI in 1991 against the transitory military re-
gime under Colonel Toumani Touré, when the latter publicly announced a de-
cision to keep bars and dancing places open during the month of Ramadan.
Haidara publicly denounced “deceitful Muslims” who publicly displayed their
righteousness during Ramadan but surreptitiously drank alcohol and engaged
in prostitution. Similar to his denouncing of his Muslim brethrens’ hypocrisy,
he never speci¤ed whose behavior was under scrutiny. In his combination of
unspeci¤ed criticism with a ¤erce rhetoric of moral righteousness, Haidara
made it easy for listeners to view themselves as proper members of an imaginary
moral community. 28
At ¤rst sight Haidara’s claims appear to perpetuate an older “discourse of
truth and ignorance” that re®ected and created difference among Muslims in
Mali throughout the colonial era (Brenner 2000, chapter 6). But his argumen-
tation also marks a departure from previous assertions of difference. At the
heart of Haidara’s appeal to an alternative moral community is a void, as he
refrains from de¤ning Muslim identity in any substantial terms. In this fashion
he leaves the line of demarcation between “true Muslims” and other Muslims

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