Muslim charisma in Burkina Faso

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Book chapter

Title:	Muslim charisma in Burkina Faso
Author:	Otayek, R.
Book title:	Charisma and brotherhood in African Islam
Editors:	Coulon, C. Cruise O'Brien, D.B.
Year:	1988
Pages:	91-112
Language:	English
City of publisher:	Oxford
Publisher:	Clarendon Press
Geographic term:	Burkina Faso
Subject:	Islamization
Abstract:	This chapter examines the absence of Muslim charisma in precolonial and colonial Burkina Faso, compared with its relative abundance elsewhere in West Africa. The most important factor which held back the growth of charisma in Burkina was the political structure of what was to become the independent Republic of Upper Volta. Centred around a group of societies which were particularly impervious to external influence (the Mossi kingdoms), it was a country where Islam had achieved only minor influence. A consequence of the weak impact of Sufism in Burkina was a growing legalistic tendency within Islam. Before the colonial period, the Muslims' subordinate status had forced them to reduce their religious practices to a purely formal level. At the arrival of colonialism the legalist trend was strengthened, even though this was also the time when Mahdist and prophetic phenomena began to emerge. Charisma remained a marginal phenomenon, not only socially, but also ethnically and geographically. Notes, ref.