BENJAMIN F. SOARES. Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 306. $29.95
2007; Oxford University Press; Volume: 112; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/ahr.112.1.317
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture analysis
ResumoIn an era dominated by debate about what is loosely referred to as “fundamentalist Islam,” Benjamin F. Soares's study of the shifting history of Islamic religious authority in the religious center of Nioro in Mali comes as a breath of fresh air. Soares shows that to understand any particular strand of Islam, one must see it as part of a broader spectrum of discursive traditions within Islam, each of which is shaped by relations of power at a variety of different scales, from the local to the international. Often in West Africa debates among Muslims about religious authority are more salient than debates between secularists and fundamentalists. Such debates adhere to what one might refer to as an esoteric orthodoxy: that is, power in the region has long been understood to be founded upon access to important spiritual secrets. Sufism and the hierarchy of access to secret knowledge Sufism entails are not marginal or heterodox in such a setting, they are central to religious authority and to contemporary debates about Islam and modernity.
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