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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Its All about Morals, Islam and expectations of Social Mobility among Young and Committed Muslims in Tamale, Northern Ghana
| Panel |
30. Islamic education and activism in sub-Saharan Africa
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| Paper ID | 550 |
| Author(s) |
Ihle, Annette Haaber
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | The paper focuses on the character of the religious engagement of young Muslims of Northern Ghana. It reveals how a wide group of students, some engaged in secular educations and some involved in studies related to religious texts and rituals, over the last decade seem to have increased their religious engagement considerably. Taking its departing point in social theories of power and symbolic capital, as presented by Pierre Bourdieu, the paper encircles the relationship between structural forces, which have influenced the political, economic, and religious development of the local Islamic environment of Tamale, the regional capital of the Northern Region of Ghana. The paper furthermore seeks, with inspiration from Axel Honneth, to place the experience of young Muslims’ personal, juridical and social acknowledgement in relation the local Islamic grammar of morals.
The paper states that the importance of management of moral discourses has increased in relation to an increase of both trans-national and local influence related to Wahhabiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood inspired groups on the local Islamic field. Because the moral discourse of the religious authorities since the 1970’s has been emphasizing the authority of the religious texts, the general access to schooling has widened. By stating that engaging in education of almost any kind is to be acknowledged as a religious and thus moral act, it has legitimized young Muslims becoming engaged in further religious and secular studies. The result of this educational development has been that the young generation of Muslims is presently creating informal moral communities across secterian lines, through the engagement of which a growth in their self-respect and an increase in their skills for taking part in the development of civil society have been promoted. Thus, the argument of the paper is that young Muslims, through the enactment of speech acts on morals, a sort of religious capital, expect to become able to move upward socially, and at the same time manage to take steps, which make them become part of a modern world. From the perspective of Islamism, moral activism has replaced knowledge of religious texts. Only by Muslims demonstrating being morally upright can Heaven be brought to Earth.
The empirical data is collected in the period 2001-2002, where over a period of 10 months participant observation was carried out, 24 life stories of young, committed Muslims were collected, and interviews with the main local religious leaders were made.
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