Page 159 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

17. This celebration revolved primarily around the display of emblems of conspicu-
ous consumption and of the regime’s capacity to exert physical violence.
18. The of¤cially declared motivation for the creation of the Association Malienne
pour l’Unité et le Progrès de l’Islam (AMUPI) was to reconcile the two major wings of
the Muslim camp (established families of religious specialists and their opponents, the
“Wahhabi” merchants and scholars) whose competition had resulted in open hostilities
and confrontation (Brenner 1993b).
19. Popular disillusion with the governmental rhetoric of popular participation and
discontent with its seeming lack of authority comes out most clearly in the widespread
representation of “demokrasi” as anarchy (see Schulz 2001, chapter 3).
20. Also see Eickelman 1992, 2000. For a different situation in northern Nigeria, see
Reichmuth 1996.
21. Group members call themselves simply “Muslim women” (silame musow), thereby
setting themselves apart from “other women” (muso tow) who have not (yet) engaged in
a quest for religious virtue.
22. For the social standing of the Haidara lineage in the area around Segu, see Manley
1997.
23. According to Brenner (2000), the “rational episteme” gradually but never fully
replaced the esoteric episteme of religious knowledge in the colonial period, under the
in®uence of the pedagogy and ideological value of French-language schooling and lit-
eracy.
24. Many letters come from neighboring countries and from France and the U.S.
Other listeners send audio-recordings of their questions to Haidara.
25. This is not to say that they are static, internally fully consistent, or always comply
with “Islamic principles.” For example, during the reform of the family law, representa-
tives of AMUPI sometimes defended a regulation as “Islamic” that was, in fact, a local,
non-Islamic rule, such as the prohibition for a woman to exercise a trade without her
husband’s authorization (Schultz 2003b).
26. The Ministry of Communication ¤nally authorized the broadcasting of the en-
tire event, except for the round in which the mannequins presented themselves in bath-
ing suits.
27. As he declared, not only had he enjoyed watching the pageant but he also made
the broadcasting accessible to neighbors and followers by placing his three television sets
in the street. Rather than holding the government responsible for offering a “free ticket”
for moral corruption, Haidara appealed to his listeners’ individual consciousness and
their obligation to make their daughters aware of their responsibilities as mothers and
wives. This position contrasts with the conservative and patriarchal gender ideology
Haidara endorses otherwise and in which he depicts women as less reasonable beings
who need the guidance of men.
28. Haidara’s explication of the differences between his “path” and that of the
Qadiriyya and Tijaniya orders illustrates the diffuse nature of the common good to
which Haidara appeals, and his ambivalent positioning vis-à-vis established Su¤ orders.
Asked whether doctrinal or ritual disagreement were at the origin of his departure from
his original initiation into (Tijaniyya) practice, Haidara asserted that doctrinal differ-
ences mattered less than the propriety of individual conduct. He thereby subtly called
into question some traditional credentials on which the authority of established religious
lineages is based. At the same time Haidara repeatedly capitalizes on his own genealogical
prestige by stressing his descent from a highly renowned religious lineage (see Schulz
2003a).

148 Dorothea E. Schulz