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- Convenors:
-
Vincent Favier
(Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Koudbi Kabore (Joseph Ki-Zerbo University Burkina Faso)
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- Chair:
-
Koudbi Kabore
(Joseph Ki-Zerbo University Burkina Faso)
- Discussant:
-
Vincent Favier
(Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient)
- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Religion (x) Decoloniality & Knowledge Production (y)
- Location:
- Neues Seminargebäude Seminarraum 13
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel discusses the ways in which university students engage with academic training and religious practice. It interrogates youth's individual and collective aspirations and how religiosity affects higher education in sub-Saharan Africa.
Long Abstract:
Manifestations of religiosity have increasingly pervaded public universities in sub-Saharan Africa during the past decades and shaped social interactions within these spaces. This panel discusses the ways in which students engage with academic training and religious practice at the university, and how religiosity may affect higher education in sub-Saharan Africa. The panel focuses on Pentecostal and Salafi discourses and practices as these groups have recently gained a strong foothold in public universities across the continent. The objective is to understand the motivations of these actors and the influence they may have on the educational landscape. They are not only “reformers” within their respective religion, but also social leaders who try to shape students towards academic excellence, professional success, and religious practice. In other words, a sense of moral accountability and decolonization drives their social and political agendas. University campuses become a privileged ground for religious training and a competition arena between religious elites. How does this competition materialise on campus? What do religious leaders preach to students and how does their audience react? How do religious discourses affect the academia as a site of knowledge production? How do religious leaders, students and lecturers define the mission of institutions of higher education for their society? Taking into account the religious movements’ social and historical trajectories in their contexts, the panel interrogates the aspirations of an educated and religious youth as it envisions the future individually and collectively. The convenors welcome contributions that address these topics from different perspectives and disciplines.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 June, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Focusing on University graduate Muslim women in Ethiopia this paper explores how participating in the Universities’ faith-based student associations equipped them to negotiate opportunities, boundaries, and expectations and form a Muslim woman identity that is pious, productive, and nurturing.
Paper long abstract:
The concurrence of political reformism and religious revivalism can describe Post-1991 Ethiopia. Muslim revivalism was facilitated by the political reform that championed diversity, religious freedom, and equal identity rights. The new political leadership also configured a human and economic development project emphasizing active involvement of the underprivileged including Muslim women. Thus, many female Muslim students joined public universities, establishing faith-based on campus associations that run Islamic teachings, piety training, and ideological discussions. Becoming aware of their faith, many students made a conscious pious turn expressed by adherence to personal and public piety. The programs and projects run by these associations also shaped the students' everyday live aspirations and modes of interaction, even after graduating. Ethiopia is the home of over eighty ethnic groups,however, its people are still influenced by the legacy of historic Ethiopia's monocultural tradition with one religion(Orthodox Christianity), one language (Amharic) supremacy. Therefore, besides gender inequality, Ethiopian Muslim women had to deal with the interlock of religious and cultural inequalities. Moreover, when they are educated, they need to deal with contemporary expectations: the state that attracted women to join the workforce and the Muslim revivalist teaching that emphasized Islamic gender norms and gender roles of women being good wives and good mothers. This paper explores how participating in the University Muslim associations equipped the women to use Islamic concepts to negotiate opportunities, boundaries, and expectations in their everyday public and private life aspirations and cultivate the Ethiopian Muslim woman identity that is pious, productive, and nurturing.
Paper long abstract:
L’Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey (UAM), marquée au début de sa création dans les années 1970 par les idéologies marxistes-léninistes, connait depuis la fin des années 1980 une montée des pratiques religieuses estudiantines organisées par des associations religieuses estudiantines chrétiennes et musulmanes. Les étudiants salafis, regroupés au sein de l’Association des Étudiants Musulmans du Niger (AEMN-UAM), et pentecôtistes, membres du Groupe Biblique des Élèves et Étudiants du Niger (GBEEN), restent les plus actifs parmi la diversité de courants religieux présents sur cet espace. À travers des cours islamiques et bibliques, ils diffusent leurs valeurs religieuses auprès de leurs camarades. Cette communication interroge, d’une part, les stratégies de diffusion de telles valeurs développées par chacun de ces deux groupes et, d’autre part, l’appropriation de ces valeurs par les étudiants.
Paper short abstract:
This paper offers an assessment of the current situation of Islamic and Christian student activism at the University of Lomé (Togo) and the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) by placing the narratives of past and present actors on these two campuses at the center of the analysis.
Paper long abstract:
Although religious student movements have been present at the University of Lomé (Togo) and the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) since the creation of these two public institutions in 1970, these organizations are at a crossroads according to many former activists. This paper offers an assessment of the current situation of Islamic and Christian activism on these campuses by placing the narratives of the former and current actors at the center of the analysis.
The paper is divided into three sections. The first one discusses the disengagement from activism and the problem of maturity that is central to the narratives of elders who critically assess the current state of faith-based associations on campus. The second part presents more nuanced analyses from other former activists, but also from students themselves, who point out that these new dynamics characterizing activism today are a testimony to the significant transformations of the university and the exacerbation of the difficulties faced by students in recent years. Finally, the last part deals with university authorities, who are less receptive to the demands of faith-based organizations. This leads to the question of the application of secularism, but also the place occupied by Freemasonry, the competition of endogenous religions, which is particularly noticeable in Benin, as well as the strategies adopted by the associations.
This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Togo (2019, 2021, 2022) and Benin (2019, 2022) as well as the reading of the mainstream and Islamic press in both countries.