Competing Assertions of Muslim Masculinity in Contemporary Mali

Abstract

This article counters the ‘female bias’ of scholarship on Islam and gender in Africa by exploring competing understandings of ideal masculinity and what it means to be a respectable Muslim in urban Mali. Special attention is paid to competing constructions of Muslim masculinity that inform the project of Islamic moral and political reform that has gained currency in southern and northern Mali in recent decades. The article scrutinizes the double idiom of reform and conservation articulated by leading spokesmen of Islamic renewal in different parts of Mali and their varying ways of incorporating transnational Islamic intellectual influences. While living conditions in the urban south and north of the country grant young men unequal chances for economic success and political influence, they all face a situation in which education generates and reproduces structural inequality, granting uneven chances for employment, social maturity, and respectability. It is because of their shared dilemmas that many young men support moral and political reform that allows them to gain respectability as a man and ‘proper’ Muslim. By considering the political aspirations, social grievances, and constructions of masculinity articulated by different categories of young men, the article demonstrates the heterogeneity and entanglements of the visions and measures promoted under the heading of political and moral Islamic renewal in Mali.