Paper short abstract:

This paper opens up perspectives on urban/rural dynamics organized by the Ahmadiyya movement to legitimize their religious minority in the public space. It investigates the ways by which the movement’s vision of a modern society accompanies the constitution of an formalized normative system.

Paper long abstract:

The religious movement of the Ahmadiyya was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, an Indian Muslim scholar (1835-1908). It reached West Africa in the 1920s, but it grew more important in French-speaking West Africa only in the 1990s. In this paper, I will use the example of Burkinabe society to analyze how the Ahmadis are negotiating their place in the urban space of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso with the objective to achieve social recognition of their religious group while helping those in need.

Ahmadis combine the will for the restoration of true Islam with active proselytism - which partly resembles the Christian evangelical media campaigns, and the profound veneration for their spiritual leader, who manages the international community on a centralized basis. Since the beginnings of the movement until today the Ahmadis are part of a Muslim elite. Their cosmopolitan urban habitus goes hand in hand with the engagement of the Ahmadi community for rural areas and their poorer inhabitants via community facilities such as schools, tutoring systems for students and development projects. The Ahmadis are negotiating their place in the religious plurality of Burkina Faso by disseminating their message via humanitarian assistance for the rural population, via active proselytism by an integrated global media network which links urban and rural spaces and via education and training particularly for the urban elite.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and the results of work-in progress, this paper opens up perspectives on urban/rural dynamics organized by the Ahmadi missionaries to establish and legitimize their minority movement in the public space.