Two More Muslim Countries, Two More Perspectives on Islam, Politics, and Society

Continuing my winter break sojourn, I left Israel just before Christmas and I’ve spent the past 2+ weeks in Tunisia and Mali. I am currently in Mopti, a transit hub on Mali's Niger River. Blocks of salt from Timbuktu, cargo pinasses (dugout canoes with outboard motors) loaded to the brim with food staples and other goods headed up the river, passenger buses headed to Bamako that are relics from a bygone era of transportation – it’s all here! Tomorrow morning, I am going to board a private pinasse and begin a leisurely three day journey up the river to Timbuktu. That world famous town is home to the Festival au Desert, a three day desert music spectacular that features both Malian and international artists. While the phrase “once-in-a-lifetime experience” has turned into something of a cliché, I think that it actually might apply in this instance.

The festival will be the culmination of my winter break travels, but I have also picked up a wealth of other experiences along the way. In particular, I have been fascinated by the different faces of Islam that I have seen in Tunisia and Mali. My reference point for Islam is, of course, Egypt. Thus, whenever I travel to another Muslim country, I find myself comparing it to the land of the pharaohs.

The Tunisian take on Islam is, from what I could tell, fairly similar to Egypt. Both countries are now about to usher in a new era of Islamist government, people who I interacted with asked me similar questions about my religious background and used similar arguments to try to convert me to Islam (they were just as ineffective in Tunisia as they have been in Egypt), and Tunisian Arabic, like Egyptian, is peppered with religious phrases. One major difference, however, is that the Salafi (hardline Islamist) movement that has taken Egypt by storm over the past decade has yet to manifest itself in Tunisia. I saw a few Tunisian men sporting the long beard that has become a Salafi trademark, but the phenomenon was nowhere near as widespread as it is in Egypt. Al-Nahda, the formerly banned Islamist movement that won a majority in the recent parliamentary elections, seems to be decidedly centrist, and people were quite happy about the appointment of a well-known secular politician as the country’s president (the prime minister is an Islamist). Just as many people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told me that they did so primarily because they respected the brothers and wanted to see how they would handle being in power (and not out of a fierce devotion to the party or a desire to see Egypt go the way of Iran), a number of Tunisians told me that they had voted for Al-Nahda for the same reasons. “Give them a chance,” one taxi driver told me, “and if we don’t like them we’ll find someone new next time around.”

Mali, on the other hand, is a world away from Egypt. The most notable difference is linguistic. The country is 90% Muslim and mosques abound, but the vast majority of Malians only know a few token Arabic religious phrases (perhaps a close analogy is that of American Jews who pray in Hebrew but have no practical understanding of the language). I enjoy using those phrases (Peace be upon you, God willing, praise God, etc.) when I speak with Malians, but the only full conversation in Arabic that I’ve had here was with the imam of the Great Mosque of Djenne (pictured below).

I was able to gain some insight into Islam’s place in Malian society when I ate dinner with a volunteer from the Peace Corps who is living and working in southern part of the country. The mosque in her village, she said, is largely the domain of the old men who study and pray there. The youth, she observed, tend to be fairly uninterested in religion. Nevertheless, the whole village does observe Ramadan (even the Christians join the prayers during Eid Al-Fitr at the end of the holy month) and Eid Al-Adha (the day of sacrifice), engaging in practices like fasting and slaughtering a goat that would be instantly recognizable to Muslims around the world.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the beautiful Islamic architecture that I have seen in both Tunisia and Mali. I have included some pictures of the exquisite doors on houses in the city of Kairouan in Tunisia and a white mosque wedged onto a hill in a Berber village in southern part of the country. Mali, on the other hand, is all about mud. The Great Mosque of Djenne surpassed my sky-high expectations that I held coming into this trip – it is, simply put, a stunning building.