Shaping futures and feminisms: Qur’anic schools in West African francophone fiction

Abstract

This article examines the representation of female education in Qur’anic schools in a selection of West African francophone novels. I argue that in being the earliest form of education for most Muslim women and also a neglected topic of scholarly interest, the Qur’anic school shapes their feminisms in more significant ways than has been acknowledged since scholarly attention to Islamic education in West Africa has mostly focused on the experience of boys in Qur’anic schools, and since theories on feminism in Islam have primarily articulated feminism as a politically oriented project. Using Islamic feminism as a disposition that is not always coterminous with activist objectives within the sociohistorical context of Islamic education in West African Muslim societies, this paper emphasizes the need to focus on forms of female literacy other than secular education.