Generations at Odds: The Controversial Political Candidacy of an Imam in Benin (2019)

With the alarming deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso, recent reports have warned about the risk of the spread of jihadism in coastal West Africa. The kidnapping of two French tourists and the killing of their guide in northern Benin in May 2019 have confirmed these fears. However, Islam in the Christian-majority and Francophone areas of the Gulf of Guinea remain mostly unknown apart from Côte d’Ivoire. In Benin, despite the rise of Pentecostal and evangelical movements and the advent of the Catholic Charismatic renewal since the 1990s, Islam has nonetheless seen considerable progress in the religious landscape. This religion, now accounting for 28% of the population, has recently attracted attention for an apparent Islamic “awakening.” Following the major mobilization of the Muslim community in 2017, the government had to reverse a ban on occupying public streets for prayers. In April 2019, the imam of one the main mosque of Cotonou, who is also the vice-president of the Union Islamique du Bénin (UIB)—an umbrella organization considered as the official interlocutor of Muslims with the state—was elected to the National Assembly. In this paper, I use this affair as a starting point to reflect on the ways in which Benin Muslim minorities have engaged with politics in a secular state. I will analyze how perceptions of marginalization have shaped their participation in the public sphere. Special attention will also be paid on the capacity of Muslim youth to publicly express divergent opinions in relation to the discourses of the “official” or “self-proclaimed” representatives of their community. The research is based on recent fieldwork in Cotonou and Porto-Novo in spring 2019. I conducted interviews with imams as well as leaders and activists from most of the main Islamic associations. I also draw on national newspapers and various Islamic publications. I argue that the heated controversy that arose regarding the imam’s candidacy has exacerbated the existing intergenerational tensions within the Muslim community. As pointed out by Masquelier and Soares (2016), positioning oneself as a “young” Muslim can be a way of challenging established hierarchies by claiming leadership and a moral and intellectual superiority over the “old” generation. Beninese Muslims of widely varying age ranges put forward their generational differences by presenting themselves as being more able than the other “generation” to defend the concerns of their community. Beyond these intergenerational and personal rivalries that even led to a split within the UIB, these disagreements reflect more largely the desire of a growing number of Muslim elites to become more actively engaged with politics over issues related to citizenship, secularism, religious pluralism, and economic development. While the surge of interest in the “radicalization” of Muslims in West Africa has helped fuel concerns about Islam and politics in the region, the increased participation of Muslims in the political arena should not be understood as the rise of “Islamism” in Benin, but as a sign that the historical political subordination of Muslim elites may well be a thing of the past.