More Africa

Daniel Drezner writes on a piece from the Chicago Tribune about Islam in the nascent African democracy of Mali. This article points to two things, one positive and one negative from the US perspective. First, Mali shows that democracy and Islam are compatible, something about which some Americans are skeptical. This is the good news. The bad news is that outside influences, mostly Wahabbis from Saudi Arabia, are trying to change the traditionally tolerant Malian Islam to a more severe or "fundamentalist" Islam. (I dislike the term "Islamic fundamentalism" because it suggests a return to "fundamentals" or the beginning, while it seems most Muslims view the "fundamentalists" as innovating or even perverting Islam. ) Here the analogy often made by Bernard Lewis is apropos. Imagine the KKK or some such group captured the oil wealth of the US. They then used this money to fund schools all over America to advance their particular view of Christianity. This is something of what is happening within the Muslim world. The most extreme and dangerous Muslims, the Wahabbi of the rather extensive Saudi royal family, have untold wealth. They are using this wealth to promote their brand of Islam. This is even worse than the analogy Lewis posits because most of the areas of Wahabbi hegemony have no public school system, so the Wahabbi schools may be the only ones in existence. Further, the Wahabbis build mosques all around the world. Indeed most mosques in the US are owned by Wahabbis. This does not mean that those worshipping there are Wahabbi, just that the ownership of the mosque is. One worries that in desperately poor places such as Mali the money of the Saudi Wahabbis will have much influence, and undermine the noble experiment in democracy that Malians are attempting. Where are the US foreign aid dollars to combat this?