Stigmates sociaux et discriminations religieuses : l'ancienne classe servile au Fuuta Jaloo

Abstract

R. Botte — Social Stigmata and Religious Discrimination : Former Slaves in the Fuuta Jalloo. During the early 18th-century insurrection led by pious Muslims in the Fuuta Jalloo, religion was, from the outset, a political ideology of domination. Although the jihad— the pretext for conquering heathen lands—fed on sincere religious passions, Islam was soon being spread for more profane motives. Proselytizing was over as soon as it was proclaimed. The decisive distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims came to jus-tify the production of both slaves for the domestic market and captives for the international market. The theocratie state's economie System was based on slavery and the slave trade. Drawn from Islam, this state's world-view governed ail social relations. Nowadays, 90 years after the beginning of the abolition of slavery, the old forms of political and economie hegemony by Fulani rulers have vanished. But the latter still exercise an intellectual domination based on religious knowledge. This is used to jus-tify prejudice against former slaves (runndebe) and to treat them like outcasts. Whether with regard to land ownership, marriage prohibitions, political duties in the nation state, ranks in mosques, or the individual's condition when facing death, religious criteria cannot hide the worldly stakes in this tenacious discrimination. For this reason, former slaves still consider access to Koranic knowledge to be a means of emancipation and liberation.