Muslim proselytization as purification: religious pluralism and conflict in contemporary Mali

Abstract

This chapter first discusses the nature of religious pluralism in Mali, highlighting some of the practices that many Muslims find objectionable and that, therefore, are a major source of tension between Islam and Muslims, on the one hand, and traditional religions and their practitioners, on the other. The author then considers the proselytization activities of one of Mali's most celebrated, contemporary Muslim religious leaders, Sidy Modibo Kane (1925-1996), examining the actual mechanisms of his campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s to spread Islam among non-Muslims and to extirpate allegedly un-Islamic practices, most notably spirit possession, as well as some of the intended and unintended consequences of such proselytization efforts.