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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Youth and Islam in the 1990s : Re-thinking an Inter-Generational Perspective
| Panel |
14. New Modes of Sociality in Muslim Africa
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| Paper ID | 618 |
| Author(s) |
Leblanc, Marie Nathalie ; Perez-Gomez, Muriel ; Savadogo Mathias, Boukary
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Interest in the question of youth and Islam in West Africa stems from the overwhelming demographic weight of youth, their relatively recent incursion into the public domain, as well a wave of Islamic reformism that swept across Africa from the late 1980s onwards. Early studies of Islam and youth located questions of youth agency and social change in the context of intergenerational relations, with a focus on dynamics of gerontocracy. In the 1990s, authors such as Donald Cruise O'Brien went as far as suggesting the today's African youth is a 'sacrificed generation', stripped of economic, political and social power, turning to religion as a source of empowerment. The question of authority and charisma is central to a perspective based on the analysis of intergenerational tensions, frequently clothed in an opposition between Sufism and any type of anti-Sufism, or reformism.
In this paper, we propose to examine the socio-political role of young men and young women in Islamic revivalist movements that marked urban centers in Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Senegal in the 1990s. Such movements were particularly popular among secularly educated young men and women who attended French-speaking schools. While the role of youths in revivalist movements suggests new configurations of authority and charisma, their religious agency remains closely embedded within relationships that extend across generations. We pay particular attention to sites of negotiation and cooperation between generations, such as mosques, associations, pilgrimages and NGOs.
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