Muslim Activists and Political Entrepreneurs in Northern Mali
This article reflects on the arguments according to which the Tuareg former slaves, Bellah from/around Menaka resignified the chari’a rule implemented by Muslim activists as a corrective to an existing political imbalance in northern Mali. An examination of these arguments, I argue, allows us to view contemporary Muslim activism as a religious phenomenon that brings new ways of understanding politics, religious pluralism and social conflicts in the northern Sahel. As a result, the article places scholarly debates on religious pluralism and social conflicts in the northern Sahel in the context of increasingly transnational politics of religion.