Fluid, Flexible and Peaceful

By Amil Khan, "Al-Qaeda's spreading tentacles in West Africa opposed by traditional leaders" - Telegraph - London, UK
Sunday, March 29, 2009

Traditional Islamic leaders from across West Africa are meeting to try and form a common front against al-Qaeda's growing influence in the region.

Amid the hectic bustle of people and vehicles on the streets of Mali's capital city, Bamako, there are signs of the growing influence of austere Islamic practice that is causing social rifts across Africa.

In the market next to the grand mosque in the centre of town, Muslim women with their hair covered but their shoulders and arms bare barter for T-shirts emblazoned with photos of US President Barack Obama. In another part of the market, a young man in the austere Saudi-inspired dress of trousers hitched up at the ankle and long beard berates a bookstall owner for not carrying the "right sort of works".

The books the man is referring to are the texts of an austere form of Islam seeping into Africa's Muslim nations that seeks to strictly delineate Muslims by their religious practice and denounce those who fall short as non-believers. It is commonly referred to as "Takfiri".

This interpretation, which counts Osama bin Laden among its supporters, is worrying the continent's traditional Islamic leaders, who are meeting in Timbuktu over the weekend to try and decide on a common response.

"In Africa, extremism is an automatic result of economic disparity... In Sudan, the ideology is there. It is minor at the moment, but it is there and we have to stop it where it is," Shaykh Garibullah, one of the key participants in the conference, told The Sunday Telegraph in an interview.

The conference has been organised by the Radical Middle Way initiative, a British Muslim organisation, led by Fuad Nahdi, a Kenyan-born British Muslim. Mr Nahdi says that in Africa, Islam has historically been fluid, flexible and peaceful.

"The experience of Barack Obama's African family, where you might be Muslim and have a Christian uncle or an aunt who worships traditional tribal gods, is the norm in the experience of Islam in this part of the world," Mr Nahdi told the Telegraph in Bamako before the conference.

Takfiri ideology has a central argument that explains the problems of any group of Muslims as the result of a drift from "true Islam", which it portrays as a "pure" code that shuns all outside influences. Those, like the followers of al-Qaeda who promote extremist violence, target the non-Muslims they see as oppressors as well as Muslims they see as "hypocrites".

The conference organisers say that the suffering of millions through disease, poverty and poor governance make Takfiri ideology attractive, and increases support for groups like al-Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden's organisation arrived in Africa in 2007, when the group incorporated an Algerian extremist outfit that was previously called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Jihad (GSPC). The group rebranded itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Late last year, CIA director Michael Hayden called it a serious and growing threat.

Since then, the group has started running weapons and established a base in northern Mali. It recently kidnapped six Europeans including one Briton, and has targeted Algeria in a bombing campaign. Analysts say al-Qaeda sees West Africa's ungoverned spaces as a potential base like the one it enjoys in Pakistan's border regions. It also seeks to find resources and new recruits.

A Western security analyst based in the region said American forces were operating in the area, providing training and support to regional governments to counter the threat. The support, he said, improved the operational abilities of local police and armies but provided material for al-Qaeda propaganda that Western countries seek influence in Muslim lands to subjugate their populations and steal their resources.
Leaders such as those attending the conference in Timbuktu have the moral authority to challenge such propaganda.

As the conference delegates started arriving in Bamako, the extent of their influence became clear. Shaykh Tijane Cisse from Senegal commands the devotion of over 50 million people in West Africa.

Fifteen minutes after he arrived at the hotel without prior announcement, word spread around the city of his presence and a steady flow of followers formed a line leading to his room.

The tombs of Shaykh Cisse's ancestors, who led the Tijaniyyah Sufi brotherhood before him, are a focal point for followers. In countries, where the austere Takfiri ideology has grown, Sufis – who practice a spiritual and inclusive understanding of Islam – have been targeted.

In Pakistan earlier this month, extremists blew up the shrine of a 17th century Sufi poet.
Back in Bamako's main market, a shopkeeper who spoke Arabic because of his education in one of the capital's Islamic schools, and sold traditional carved wooden statues of nude women said he could not comprehend an Islam that attacked the tombs of revered figures.

"If they did that here, there would be civil war," he said.

Photo: Telegraph/AP