Arab Money in Malian Islamic Schools: Co-optation of Networks, Domestication of Educational Sectors, and Standardization of Knowledge

Abstract

Malian médersas are private primary and secondary Islamic schools where both secular and Islamic courses are part of the curriculum, and where Arabic is the language of instruction. Médersas are attended by and produce a more or less self-aware and homogeneous group of teachers, students, and graduates referred to as “arabisant” who, first and foremost, self-identify as Muslim. I discuss here the historical struggles between the Malian Government and the arabisants of Bamako’s médersas over the curriculum and the desire to harness foreign sources for funding, which need to be addressed in parallel. Indeed, the international funding of médersas in Mali during the oil-boom decade of roughly 1973–1983 and its later consequences in terms of government control and curricular changes have combined to lead toward a standardization of Islamic knowledge within Islamic schools. However, within the constraints and at the fault lines of government and donor control, Bamako’s arabisants create, maintain, and improve this educational system, which provides the tools for young Malians to be pious Muslims and productive citizens of the Republic of Mali. Bamako’s médersas thus function as a lens to view the complicated interaction of Islamic religious actors, the exercise of power by local government, and the influence of foreign capital in Mali and in the development of religious education and of the class of religious citizens emerging from them.