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Muslim Minorities in Southern Cities of Benin and Togo Frédérick Madore

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Muslim Minorities in Southern Cities of Benin and Togo Frédérick Madore mUsLIm mINORITIEs IN sOUTHERN CITIEs OF bENIN AND TOgO frédériCK mAdore i joined uf in october 2018 as a banting postdoctoral fellow shortly after having defended my thesis. I spent much of the past year finishing my dissertation, “Rivalités et collaborations entre ainés et cadets sociaux dans les milieux associatifs islamiques en Côte d’Ivoire et au Burkina Faso (1970-2017),” in history at the Université Laval. My disserta- tion entailed a comparative historical study of the role of Muslims from marginalized social categories in the transformations of Islam in these two countries since the 1970s. The parallel religious demography of the two cases—with Islam as a majority religion but one that has historically been in a subordinate political role—makes the comparison of these two specific cases a very compelling one. Adopting an interdis- ciplinary research approach, I conducted ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Benin and Togo—remain mostly unknown. Despite the recent surge in popularity for Ouagadougou and Abidjan (2014–2015) Even if Pentecostal, evangelical, and the digital humanities, very few projects to along with using national newspapers and charismatic churches seem to be exerting date have sought to seriously mobilize the documents produced by Islamic organiza- the most visible growing political influence potential for digital tools to develop research tions. I argue that “social cadets” from in these two countries, Islam has nonethe- on Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. Although various sociocultural backgrounds and less also seen considerable progress in African archives in the postcolonial era are theological currents renegotiated power the religious landscape, especially in large usually scattered, disorderly and partial, it relations to claim a more important place in coastal cities such as Cotonou, Porto Novo, is quite possible to build a rich corpus of the religious field through a process marked and Lomé. This religion—now accounting written sources despite the numerous diffi- by advances—much more noteworthy in for 20–25% of the population in each culties. In the course of doctoral research, Côte d’Ivoire than in Burkina Faso—and country—has also recently attracted atten- I digitized and organized more than 7,000 setbacks. I also employed different concep- tion for an apparent Islamic awakening. newspaper articles on Ivorian and Burkinabe tualizations of agency, as well as the ideas In Togo, the new opposition figurehead Muslim communities, along with material of an “Islamic public sphere” and a “civil of the unprecedented anti-government from some 1,000 varied Islamic publications, Islam” to interrogate the plurality of ways protests that spread across the country in to create a database containing more than in which Muslim youth and women engage 2017 has been regularly accused of links to 12,000 items. I will use Omeka, a free digital in Islamic activism. In the end, I conclude Islamist radicals by pro-government leaders. library management platform which allows that these actors have been at the forefront In Benin, following the major mobiliza- the web-publishing of files of different types of promoting new forms of religious civic tion of the Muslim community in 2017, (video, audio, image, text) and their identifi- participation and entrepreneurship for the government had to reverse a ban on cation by assigning metadata, keywords and socio-economic development in addition to occupying public streets for prayers. From even geotagging for a browsable map. This creatively using media. March 2019, I will be conducting fieldwork allows users to do a simple tags or full-text My new research project focuses in Benin and Togo. search (possible with the OCR) as well as on the history of Muslim minorities in I am also currently working with the advanced searching across all items. southern cities of Benin and Togo since Academic Research & Consulting Services Frédérick Madore is a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Independence era. Apart from Côte group at UF to develop a digital database the Center for African Studies. Funding provided by d’Ivoire, the history of Islamic communities containing archival materials, newspaper the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in the Christian-majority and francophone articles, Islamic publications, and photo- of Canada (SSHRC). areas of the Gulf of Guinea—such as in graphs related to Islam in Burkina Faso. 22 Center for AfriCAn StudieS Faculty Reports 2018–2019.
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