Moderate Islam, African-style
STERN, WILLY
Moderate Islam, African-style Meet the beer-swilling Muslims of Mali. BY WILLY STERN Bamako, Mali On a Thursday night at the trendy Amandine Fast Food restaurant in Bamako, hip Malian women...
...Did I mention that around 90 percent of these folks are Muslims...
...at Sofi tel's luxury hotel in Bamako...
...No surprise, they’re Arabs—Libyans, Algerians, and the like...
...General Gabriel Poudiogou, chief of the general staff of the Malian army, is a Christian...
...BY WILLY STERN Bamako, Mali On a Thursday night at the trendy Amandine Fast Food restaurant in Bamako, hip Malian women wear stylish blue jeans and tight, cleavage-revealing blouses...
...Regular contingents of Special Forces—all seemingly wearing wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses— regularly swoop down into Mali on C-130 planes...
...They are Sufi s, from the mystical branch of Islam that encourages an individual relationship with God...
...To be certain, some are troubled by aspects of the United States’ focused counterterrorism strategy in Mali...
...They’re on short-term missions to train the well-meaning, if still green, Malian soldiers in how to fi nd and kill terrorists...
...government comes in, spreading its own largesse around Mali...
...Not one of the nine fellows I watched the Germany-Spain finals of the Euro 2008 with even looked up from the black-and-white TV set when the call-to-prayer sounded over the ubiquitous loudspeakers...
...That isn’t to say that al Qaeda doesn’t give it the old college try...
...His fl eet of cars includes a Hummer...
...Sadly, it appears to be a one-off deal...
...To be fair, many Malian imams have problems paying their electric bill...
...Our soldiers’ orders don’t allow them to shoot at the bad guys themselves...
...The idea is that the remote Malian village that has received free eye exams from a U.S...
...government initiative that aims to reduce poverty in the world’s very poorest countries through sustainable economic growth...
...Make no mistake: There is an al Qaeda offshoot roaming around in that vast and inhospitable stretch of sand...
...Malians have been practicing their own lovely, peaceful Islam for more than 1,000 years...
...AQIM pays for its vehicles with profi ts from drug and cigarette smuggling operations, as well as insidious traffi cking in humans and guns...
...they lurk in the desert to the north while Japanese and French tourists snap photos of Timbuktu's picturesque mosque...
...Take the case of Mali's most popular Muslim leader, Imam Ousame Cherif Haidara, who can fi ll a massive stadium with rapt admirers...
...After leaving the State Department, Pringle in 2006 penned a generally thoughtful treatise on “Democratization in Mali...
...The Peace Corps has a huge program in Mali—around 120 volunteers at any given time...
...Timbuktu has become a sad metaphor for Islam's inability to adapt to a changing world...
...The Iranians have also gotten into the game...
...They live in a functioning democracy, are unbridled (if pesky) capitalists, and wonder if Osama bin Laden is deranged...
...owned by Muammar Qaddafi , of all people.Mali offi - cials and other high rollers in $3,000 Italian suits cavort openly with high-priced Ghanaian prostitutes...
...he is among the vast majority of Sufi leaders preaching peaceful Islam in Mali today...
...They developed a complex and sophisticated system centuries ago for coexisting peacefully...
...They’ve learned how to kidnap tourists for hefty ransoms and how to employ IEDs to murder innocents, skills they apparently picked up in Iraq...
...It’s tempting to try to draw conclusions from Mali’s tolerant live-and-let-live Islamic society...
...Still, many mosques do a brisk business...
...Are there lessons here for Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or even Detroit...
...Thanks to Colonel Maiga's soldiers and American satellite technology, terrorists don't dare show their faces in Timbuktu...
...But among his conclusions was this: America’s counterterrorism efforts in the Sahara are “sometimes unduly infl uenced by shallow, worst-case analysis of Islamist potential...
...Yet despite their hardscrabble existence, they are hospitable, open, and friendly—and proud...
...A street vendor hawking cell phones can leave his stall unattended for lunch and be confi dent all his wares will be there upon his return...
...AQIM—ragtag bunch though it might appear—has become Mali’s problem...
...Still, regular elections are held and the losers leave offi ce peacefully...
...Just like the bad guys they chase, the Malian soldiers ride around in Toyota Land Cruisers...
...Meanwhile, virtually all Malians live in the southern part of the country, many near the Niger River...
...Mali’s northern half—about the size of Texas—is the lawless Sahara...
...They are dumping money into Malian mosques to tout the Shia brand...
...Army medic is going to be less receptive should Islamic militants show up a few weeks later...
...Meanwhile, he has congregants who dig through open fi elds of trash for morsels of food...
...This is huge money in Mali...
...Seventy percent of them can’t read the newspaper...
...Enter the U.S...
...But the members aren’t Malians...
...Interestingly, a turf war is just getting underway between traditional, gentle Islam in Mali and the less tolerant forms that are exported primarily from Saudi Arabia and Iran...
...Army has donated Land Rovers and other much-needed items to Colonel Maiga's forces...
...Malians reasonably think their politicians are crooks...
...His home video system boasts the latest Samsung 72" flat-screen HDTV (retail value $2,999...
...Colonel Maiga sends regular patrols out to try to disrupt the terrorists...
...That’s a bit like crediting the fl ea on a dog’s back for the canine’s ability to fetch...
...Take a former U.S...
...As one local government offi cial explains—after diplomatically asking this visiting scribe for $25 to conduct the interview—“If you get sick here, you die...
...Average life expectancy is the wrong side of 50...
...These are honest people...
...And Malians have been Muslims a long time.since the fi rst millennium, in fact, when Arab traders arrived from Northern Africa...
...It's a peculiar, if ambivalent brand of Islam, to be sure...
...If so, Mali, a backward, resource-poor, and landlocked nation of 12.5 million people in West Africa, ought to be the dream enlistment post of every al Qaeda recruiter out hustling the new generation of militant killers...
...USAID supported a bucketload of health and education projects with $40 million in grants last year...
...Nonetheless, local observers believe that the Saudis and Iranians control only 3 to 5 percent of mosques in Mali, although the long-term trend toward radical Islam causes concern in some quarters...
...Their male buddies are chugging Castel beer and, yes, a plate of ham sandwiches...
...So much for the silly leftist babble that radical Islam springs from poverty and ignorance...
...Nobody cares...
...That’s where the U.S...
...The only Malians involved, say military sources, are drivers looking for easy cash in a region where owning three camels makes you rich...
...This system.based on mutual interdependence and humorous insults to erase tensions.still functions well today...
...There isn’t a burkha in sight...
...It ain’t...
...In the 16th century, Timbuktu was a bustling center of Islamic scholarship, where leading theologians and legal minds gathered...
...ambassador to Mali, Robert Pringle, a career Foreign Service offi cer...
...Today, it's a village at the edge of the desert with heaps of donkeys and little in the way of schools or plumbing...
...Probably not...
...There’s no way to trace Saudi and Iranian flows of funds into Mali since the money streams discreetly into sympathetic mosques through embassies, nongovernmental organizations, and cultural centers...
...Welcome to moderate Islam, African-style...
...But that's nothing compared with how the top religious leaders make out...
...Imam Mahamadou Diallo, who presides over a smallish mosque in a rundown area of Bamako, explains that the Saudis will pay an imam $500 a month to do their bidding, while the Iranians pay about $400...
...Largely subsistence farmers using primitive hand tools, they're too busy trying to fi nd their next meal or stave off malaria...
...Nobody with any sense, however, thinks that American aid or fi repower is primarily responsible for peaceful Islam in Mali...
...It works...
...Colonel Maiga's ragged fi ghting contingent is so strapped for cash that his soldiers carry ancient Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifl es left over from Lord knows when...
...These are Malians...
...These terrorists call themselves “Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb...
...Actually, everybody in this former French colony refers to these Muslim extremists as AQIM...
...Diplomats call this global effort “preventive diplomacy,” though a better term might be soft counterterrorism...
...The well-heeled Haidara ends up being one of the good guys...
...The charismatic Haidara's housing compound dwarfs many in Beverly Hills...
...Petty corruption is a way of life...
...No terrorist training camps, thank you...
...When pressed, they say that George W. Bush is a decent, if simple, sort of bloke...
...And to be fair, many Malians, particularly the rural ones, don't touch booze...
...Toleration runs deep...
...There are dozens of ethnic groups in the country.most speaking different languages and with varying skin tones...
...How can it be exported or duplicated...
...Their countrymen stick American fl ags everywhere, notably on the mud-fl aps of taxis that zip crazily around their impossibly crowded and pothole-strewn streets...
...They’re dirt poor—Mali’s per capita income of $380 ranks among the lowest on this planet...
...Army...
...And Malians get along...
...At many Islamic schools, boys and girls study together...
...Willy Stern, an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University’s School of Law, Carleton College, and Colorado College, is a writer based in Nashville...
...Rich or poor, they identify themselves as Malians fi rst and foremost, not as Muslims...
...They meet you as a peer...
...Among the Malian offi cials who believe Pringle’s analysis might be a tad shallow is Colonel Younoussa Maiga, commander of the Malian army forces in Timbuktu...
...Nonetheless, the Bush administration made a reasonable decision that the Sahara of today ought not become the Afghanistan of 2000...
...Most notable: the unheralded but effective Millennium Challenge Corp., a U.S...
...Most Malians have never heard of AQIM and could not care less about Osama bin Laden and his nutty devotees...
...split into three or four splinter groups in the Sahara, they number around 150 adherents all told...
...The amiable colonel keeps an American flag perched on his desk...
...No surprise, a visiting journalist with an American passport is welcomed as a minor celebrity on the Timbuktu army post...
...that's clearly not how it's done in the terrorist-training mills...
...Other federal agencies perform scads of generous acts in Mali that build enormous good will...
...Doing its best to level the playing fi eld, the U.S...
...The Saudis are pouring money into Mali to support their Wahhabi brand of Islam...
...Sufi s are less prone to the herd behavior found among militant jihadists...
Vol. 13 • August 2008 • No. 44
