Creating Frankenstein: Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative footprint in Africa
Creating
Frankenstein: Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative footprint in Africa
By James M. Dorsey
Annotated remarks at Terrorism in Africa seminar,
Singapore 18 January 2017
There is much debate about what spurs political violence.
The explanations are multi-fold. There is one aspect that I’d like to discuss
tonight as it relates to Africa and that is the role of Saudi Arabia. Let me be
clear: With the exception of a handful of countries, none of which are in
Africa, Saudi Arabia, that is to say the government, the religious
establishment and members of the ruling family and business community, does not
fund violence.
It has however over the last half century launched the
single largest public diplomacy campaign in history, pumping up to $100 billion
dollars into ultra-conservative interpretations of Islam.[1]
That campaign has succeeded in making ultra-conservatism a force in Muslim religious
communities across the globe. It involves the promotion of an intolerant,
supremacist, anti-pluralistic interpretation of Islam that even where it
rejects involvement in politics creates an environment that in given
circumstances serves as a breeding ground, but more often fosters a mindset in
which militancy and violence against the other is not beyond the pale.
What that campaign has done, certainly in Muslim majority
countries in Africa, is to ensure that representatives of Saudi-backed
ultra-conservatism have influence in society as well as the highest circles of
government. This is important because contrary to widespread beliefs, the Saudi
campaign is not primarily about religion, it’s about geopolitics, it’s about a
struggle with Iran for hegemony in the Muslim world. As a result, it’s about
anti-Shiism and a ultra-conservative narrative that counters that of Shiism and
what remains of Iran’s post-1979 revolutionary zeal.
The campaign also meant that at times resolving the question
whether the kingdom maintains links to violent groups takes one into murky
territory. Again, I want to be clear, certainly with the rise of the Islamic
State (IS) and its affiliates in Africa and elsewhere, and even before with the
emergence of Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia has made countering jihadism a cornerstone
of its policy. That is however easier said than done.
What is evident in Africa is that the kingdom or at least
prominent members of its clergy appear to have maintained wittingly or
unwittingly some degree of contact with jihadist groups, including IS
affiliates. What I want to do in the time I have is anecdotally illustrate the
impact of Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism on three African states – Nigeria,
Niger and Mali – and how this at times relates to political violence in the
region.
Let’s start with Nigeria. One of the earliest instances in
which Saudi Arabia flexed its expanding soft power in West Africa was in 1999
when Zamfara, a region where Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram has been
active, became the first Nigerian state to adopt Sharia. A Saudi official stood next
to Governor Ahmed Sani when he made the announcement. Freedom of religion
scholar Paul Marshall recalls seeing some years later hundreds of Saudi-funded motorbikes
in the courtyard of the governor’s residence. They had been purchased to
enforce gender segregation in public transport. Sheikh Abdul-Aziz, the
religious and cultural attaché at the Saudi embassy in Abuja declared in 2004
that the kingdom had been monitoring the application of Islamic law in Nigeria
“with delight.”[2]
Like
elsewhere in the Muslim world, local politicians in Zamfara were forging an
opportunistic alliance with Saudi Arabia. If geopolitics was the Saudi driver,
domestic politics was what motivated at least some of their local partners.
Nonetheless, the lines between militant but peaceful politics and violence were
often blurry. Political violence analyst Jacob Zenn asserts that Boko
Haram even has some kind of representation in the kingdom.[3]
A Boko Haram founder who was killed in 2009, Muhammad Yusuf, was granted refuge
by the kingdom in 2004 to evade a Nigerian military crackdown. In Mecca, he
forged links with like-minded Salafi clerics[4]
that proved to be more decisive than his debates with Nigerian clerics who were
critical of his interpretation of Islam.[5]
Once back in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno
state, Yusuf built with their assistance a state within a state centred around
the Ibn Taymiyyah mosque and a compound in the city centre on land bought with
the help of his father-in-law. Yusuf’s group had its own institutions,
including a Shura or advisory council, a religious police force that enforced
Islamic law, and a rudimentary welfare, microfinance and job creation system.[6]
It operated under a deal struck in talks in Mecca brokered
by a prominent Salafi cleric between a dissident Boko Haram factional leader
identified as Aby Muhammed and a close aide to former Nigerian President
Jonathan Goodwill.[7] Under
the agreement Yusuf pledged not to preach violence and to distance himself from
separatist groups, an understanding he later violated. Boko Haram has further
suggested that before joining IS, it had met with Al Qaeda operatives in Saudi
Arabia.[8] Moreover, a Boko Haram operative responsible for attacking a church in Nigeria
reportedly spent months in Saudi Arabia prior to the attack.[9]
Yusuf’s religious teacher, Sheikh Ja’afar Adam, a graduate
of the Islamic University of Medina, presided over a popular mosque in the
Nigerian city of Kano that helped him build a mass audience. Adam’s popularity
allowed him to promote colleagues, many of whom were also graduates of the same
university in Medina, who became influential preachers and government
officials. Adam was liberally funded by Al-Muntada al-Islami Trust, a
London-based charity with ties to Saudi Arabia[10]
that has repeatedly been accused by Nigerian intelligence a British peer, Lord
Alton of Liverpool, of having links to Boko Haram and serving as a platform for
militant Islamic scholars.[11]
Al Muntada, which operates a mosque and a primary school in London, has denied
the allegations while a UK Charity Commission investigation failed to
substantiate the allegations. Kenyan and Somali intelligence nonetheless
suspected Al-Muntada of also funding Al Qaeda’s Somali affiliate, Al Shabab.[12]
Among scholars hosted by Al Muntada are Mohammad Al Arifi, a
Saudi preacher who argues that “the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls and
to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is,
undoubtedly, an honour for the believer.” He also reasons that the Muslim world
would not have suffered humiliation had it followed “the Quranic verses that
deal with fighting the infidels and conquering their countries say that they
should convert to Islam, pay the jizya poll tax, or be killed.”[13]
Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi academic, is another
Al Muntada favourite. Al-Fawzan advises the faithful that “if (a) person is an
infidel, even if this person is my mother or father, God forbid, or my son or
daughter; I must hate him, his heresy, and his defiance of Allah and His
prophet. I must hate his abominable deeds.”[14]
Organizationally, the charity also maintained close ties to major Saudi funding
organizations, including the Muslim World League (MWL), the World Assembly of
Muslim Youth (WAMY), International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), and Al
Haramain Islamic Foundation,[15]
a Saudi governmental non-nongovernmental organization that was shut down in the
wake of 9/11 because of its jihadist ties.
Adam publicly condemned Yusuf after he took over Boko Haram.
In response Yusuf in 2007 order the assassination of Adam, a protégé of the
Saudi-funded Izala Society (formally known as the Society for the Removal of
Innovation and Re-establishment of the Sunnah), which sprang up in northern
Nigeria in the late 1970s to campaign against Sufi practices and has since
gained ground in several West African states. Much like Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism’s
relationship to jihadism, Izala after spawning Boko Haram became one of its main
targets. The group has since the killing of Adam gunned down several other
prominent Saudi-backed clerics.
Nigerian journalists and activists see a direct link between
the influx of Saudi funds into Yusuf’s stomping ground in northern Nigeria and
greater intolerance that rolled back the influence of Sufis that had dominated
the region for centuries and sought to marginalize Shiites. “They built their
own mosques with Saudi funds so that they will not follow ‘Kafirs’ in prayers
& they erected their own madrasa schools where they indoctrinate people on
the deviant teachings of Wahhabism. With Saudi petro-dollars, these Wahhabis
quickly spread across towns & villages of Northern Nigeria… This resulted
in countless senseless inter-religious conflicts that resulted in the death of
thousands of innocent Nigerians on both sides.” said Shiite activist Hairun
Elbinawi.[16]
Adam started his career as a young preacher in Izala, a
Salafist movement founded in the late 1970s by prominent judge and charismatic
orator Abubakr Gumi who was the prime facilitator of Saudi influence and the
rise of Salafism in northern Nigeria. A close associate, Gumi represented
northern Nigeria at gatherings of the Muslim World League starting in the
1960s, was a member of the consultative council of the Islamic University of
Medina in the 1970s and was awarded for his efforts with the King Faisal Prize
in 1987. All along, Gumi and Izala benefitted from generous Saudi financial
support for its anti-Sufi and anti-Shiite campaigns.[17]
Adam and Gumi’s close ties to the kingdom did not mean that
they uncritically adopted Saudi views. Their ultra-conservative views did not
prevent them from at times adopting positions that took local circumstances in
northern Nigeria into account at the expense of ultra-conservative rigidity.
Adam’s questioning of the legitimacy of democracy, for example, did not stop
him becoming for a period of time a government official in the state of Kano. In
another example, Gumi at one point urged Muslim women to vote because “politics
is more important than prayer,” a position that at the time would have been
anathema to Saudi-backed ultra-conservative scholars. Similarly, Adam suggested
that Salafists and Kano’s two major Sufi orders, viewed by Saudi puritans as
heretics, should have equal shares of an annual, public Ramadan service.[18]
Peregrino Brimah, a trained medical doctor who teaches biology,
anatomy and physiology at colleges in New York never gave much thought while
growing up in Nigeria to the fact that clerics increasingly were developing
links to Saudi Arabia. “You could see the money, the big ones were leading the
good life, they ran scholarship programs. In fact, I was offered a scholarship
to study at King Fahd University in Riyadh. I never thought about it until
December 2015 when up to a 1,000 Shiites were killed by the military in northern
Nigeria,” Brimah said.[19]
“Since I started looking at it, I’ve realized how successful, how
extraordinarily successful the Wahhabis have been.”
Brimah decided to stand up for Shiite rights after the
incident in which the military arrested prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Ibrahim
Zakzaky following a clash with members of Shiites in Kaduna state.[20]
The Nigerian military confirmed that it had attacked sites in the ancient
university town Zaria after hundreds of Shia demonstrators had blocked a convoy
of Nigeria's army chief General Tukur Buratai in an alleged effort to kill him.
Military police said Shiites had crawled through tall grass towards Buratai's
vehicle "with the intent to attack the vehicle with [a] petrol bomb"
while others "suddenly resorted to firing gunshots from the direction of
the mosque.” Scores were killed in the incident.[21]
A phone call to Nigerian President Mohammed Buhari in which King Salman
expressed his support for the government’s fight against terrorist groups was
widely seen as Saudi endorsement of the military’s crackdown on the country’s
Shiite minority. The state-owned Saudi Press Agency quoted Salman as saying
that Islam condemned such “criminal acts” and that the kingdom in a reference
to Iran opposed foreign interference in Nigeria.[22]
Brimah’s defense of the Shiites has cost him dearly and
further illustrated the degree to which Saudi-funded Wahhabism and Salafism had
altered the nature of Nigerian society. “I lost everything I had built on
social media the minute I stood up for the Shiites. I had thousands of fans.
Suddenly, I was losing 2-300 followers a day. My brother hasn’t spoken to me
since. The last thing he said to me is: ‘how can you adopt Shiite ideology?’ I
raised the issue in a Sunni chat forum. It became quickly clear that these
attitudes were not accidental. They are the product of Saudi-sponsored teachings
of serious hatred. People don’t understand what they are being taught. They
rejoice when thousand Shiites are killed. Even worse is the fact that they hate
people like me who stand up for the Shiites even more than they hate the Shiite
themselves.”
In response to Brimah’s writing about the clash, Buratai, the
Nigerian army chief, invited him to for a chat. Brimah politely declined. After
again, accusing the military of having massacred Shiites, Buratai’s spokesman,
Col. SK Usman, adopting the Saudi line of Shiites being Iranian stooges,
accused Brimah of being on the Islamic republic’s payroll. “Several of us hold
you in high esteem based on perceived honesty, intellectual prowess and ability
to speak your mind. That was before, but the recent incident of attempted
assassination of the Chief of Army Staff by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria and
subsequent events and actions by some groups and individuals such as you made
one to have a rethink. I was quite aware of your concerted effort to smear the
good name and reputation of the Chief of Army Staff to the extent of calling
for his resignation. He went out of his way to write to you and even invited
you for constructive engagement. But because you have dubious intents, you
cleverly refused…. God indeed is very merciful for exposing you. Let me make it
abundantly clear to you that your acts are not directed to the person of the Chief
of Army Staff, they have far reaching implication on our national security.
Please think about it and mend your ways and refund whatever funds you coveted
for the campaign of calumny,” Usman wrote in the mail.[23]
Brimah’s inbox has since then been inundated with anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian
writings in what he believes is a military-inspired campaign.
Brimah was not the only one to voice opposition to
Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism. Murtada Muhammad Gusau, Chief Imam of
Nagazi-Uvete Jumu’at Mosque and Alhaji Abdurrahman Okene’ s Mosque in Nigeria’s
Okene Kogi State took exception to the kingdom’s global effort to criminalize
blasphemy, legitimize in the process curbs on free speech, and reinforce growing
Muslim intolerance towards any unfettered discussion of the faith. In a lengthy article in a Nigerian newspaper,
Gusau debunked the Saudi-inspired crackdown on alleged blasphemists citing
multiple verses from the Qur’an that advocate patience and tolerance and reject
the killing of those that curse or berate the Prophet Mohammed.[24]
Brimah and Gusau were among the relatively few willing to
invoke the wrath of spreading ultra-conservative, sectarian forms of Islam across
a swath of Africa at an often dizzying pace. In the process, African
politicians and ultraconservatives in cooperation with Saudi Arabia have let a
genie of intolerance, discrimination, supremacy and bigotry out of the bottle. In the Sahel state of Niger, Issoufou Yahaya recalls
his student days in the 1980s when there wasn’t a single mosque on his campus. “Today,
we have more mosques here than we have lecture rooms. So much has changed in
such a short time,” he said.[25]
One cannot avoid noticing Saudi Arabia’s role in this
development. The flags of Niger and Saudi Arabia feature on a monument close to
the office tower from which Yahaya administers the history of department of Université
Abdou Moumouni in the Niger capital of Niamey. Sheikh Boureima Abdou Daouda, an
Internet-savvy graduate of the Islamic University of Medina and the Niamey
university’s medical faculty as well as an author and translator of numerous
books, attracts tens of thousands of worshippers to the Grand Mosque where he
insists that “We must adopt Islam, we cannot adapt it.”[26]
Daouda serves as an advisor to Niger president Mahamadou Issoufou and chairs the
League of Islamic Scholars and Preachers of the Countries of the Sahel. “Before,
people here turned to religion when they reached middle age, and particularly
after they retired. But now, it is above all the young ones. What we see is a
flourishing of Islam.” Daouda said.[27]
What Daouda did not mention was that with Africa, the
battleground where Iran put up its toughest cultural and religious resistance
to Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism, was witnessing the world’s highest rates of
conversion to Shi’a Islam since many Sunni tribes in southern Iraq adopted
Shiism in the 19th century. Shiites were until recently virtually non-existent
in Africa with the exception of migrants from Lebanon and the Indian
subcontinent. A Pew Research survey suggests that that has changed
dramatically. The number of Shiites has jumped from 0 in 1980 to 12 percent of
Nigeria’s 90-million strong Shia community in 2012. Shiites account today for
21 percent of Chad’s Muslims, 20 percent in Tanzania and eight percent in Gaza,
according to the survey.[28]
Source: Pew Research Center
Ironically, Mali a nation where Shiism has not made inroads
and where only two percent of the populations identifies itself as Ahmadis, an
Islamic sect widely viewed by conservative Muslims as heretics, is the only
country outside of Pakistan that Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat
(AMTKN), a militant anti-Ahmadi, Pakistan-based group with a history of Saudi
backing, identifies by name as a place where it operates overseas.[29]
The fact that AMTKN, which says that it operates in 12 countries, identified
Mali is indicative of the sway of often Saud-educated imams and religious leaders that reaches from the presidential
palace in the capital Bamako into the country’s poorest villages. The
government at times relies on Salafis rather than its own officials to mediate
with jihadists in the north or enlist badly needed European support in the
struggle against them. Moreover, cash-rich Salafi leaders and organizations provide
social services in parts of Mali where the government is absent. In 2009, the
Saudi-backed High Islamic Council of Mali (HICM) proved powerful enough to
prevent the president from signing into law a parliamentary bill that would
have enhanced women’s rights. Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
reportedly phones HICM chief Mahmoud Dicko twice a week. Malians no longer
simply identify each other as Muslims and instead employ terms such as Wahhabi,
Sufi and Shia that carry with them either derogatory meanings or assertions of
foreign associations.[30]
Dicko condemned the November 2015 jihadist attack on the
Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako in which 20 people were killed but argued that
world powers cannot enjoy peace by fighting God through promotion of homosexuality.
Dicko said the perpetrators were not Muslims but mostly rappers with
drug-related charge sheets. “They rebel and take arms against their society.
This is a message from God that the masters of the world, the major powers,
which are trying to promote homosexuality, must understand. These powers are
trying to force the world to move towards homosexuality. These world powers have
attacked the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) into his grave... These masters of
this world, who think that the world belongs to them, must understand that we
will not attack God and escape safely. They cannot provoke God and get his clemency,
his mercy. They cannot have peace and peace with such provocations towards the
Creator of the world down here. They will not have peace. God will not leave
them alone.”[31]
Like elsewhere, ultra-conservatism as a cornerstone of Saudi
soft power has proven in Mali to be a double-edged sword for the kingdom and
its beneficiaries. Iyad Ag Ghaly nicknamed The Strategist, a Malian Tuareg
militant who led tribal protests in the 1990s and emerged in 2012 at the head
of Ansar Eddine, one of the jihadist groups that overran the north of Mali,
found ultra-conservative religion while serving as a Malian diplomat in Jeddah.
A Sufi and a singer who occasionally worked with Tinariwen, the Grammy Award
winning band formed by veterans of Tuareg armed resistance in the 1980s and
1990s, co-organized an internationally acclaimed annual music festival outside
of Timbuktu that attracted the likes of Robert Plant, Bono and Jimmy Buffett, and
hedonistically enjoyed parties, booze and tobacco, Ag Ghaly grew a beard while
in Saudi Arabia. His meetings with Saudi-based jihadists persuaded the Malian
government to cut short his stint in the kingdom and call him home.[32] Pakistani
missionaries of Tablighi Ja’amat, an ultra-conservative global movement that
has at times enjoyed Saudi backing despite theological differences with
Wahhabism and Salafism, helped convince Ag Ghaly to abandon his music and
hedonistic lifestyle. He opted for an austere interpretation of Islam and
ultimately jihadism.[33]
This pattern is not uniquely African even if Africa is the
continent where Iranian responses to Saudi promotion of Sunni
ultra-conservatism have primarily been cultural and religious in nature rather
than through the use of militant and armed proxies as in the Middle East. It is
nonetheless a battle that fundamentally alters the fabric of those African societies
in which it is fought; a battle that potentially threatens the carefully
constructed post-colonial cohesion of those societies. The potential threat is
significantly enhanced by poor governance and the rise of jihadist groups like
Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb and Al Shabab in Somalia, whose ideological
roots can be traced back to ultra-conservatism but whose political philosophy
views Saudi Arabia as an equally legitimate target because its rulers have
deviated from the true path. At the bottom line, both Africans and Saudis are
struggling to come to grips with a phenomenon they opportunistically harnessed
to further their political interests; one that they no longer control and that
has become as much a liability as it was an asset.
Thank you.
[1] Sohail
Nakhoda, Keynote: Workshop on Islamic Developments in Southeast Asia, Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies, 15 November 2015; Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad Bin
Talal, “What Has Broken? Political, Sociological, Cultural and Religious
Changes in the Middle East over the Last 25 Years”, S R Nathan Distinguished
Lecture, Middle East Institute, 17 November 2015,
https://mei.nus.edu.sg/themes/site_themes/agile_records/images/uploads/What_has_broken_v.8,_As_Given_14.11.15.pdf
/ David Aufhauser, An Assessment of
Current Efforts to Combat Terrorism Financing, Testimony of Hon. David D
Aufhauser, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, June 15, 2004, p. 46.
[2] Email
exchange with the author, 11 January 2016 / Pew Research Center, The Global
Spread of Wahhabi Islam: How Great a Threat? 3 May 2005, http://www.pewforum.org/2005/05/03/the-global-spread-of-wahhabi-islam-how-great-a-threat/
[3]
Jacob Zenn, Boko Haram’s International Connections, Combatting Terrorism Center
at West Point, 14 January 2013, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/boko-harams-international-connections
[4]
Andrew Walker, Join us or die: the birth of Boko Haram, The Guardian, 4
February 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/04/join-us-or-die-birth-of-boko-haram
[5]
Ahmad Salkida, Muhammad Yusuf: Teaching and preaching controversies,
Salkida.com, 28 February 2009, http://salkida.com/muhammad-yusuf-teaching-and-preaching-controversies/
[6] Ibid.
Walker
[7]
Agence France Press, Nigeria not talking to Boko Haram Islamists, president
says, 18 November 2012, https://www.modernghana.com/news/431127/1/nigeria-not-talking-to-boko-haram-islamists-presid.html
/ Ibid. Walker
[8]
Monica Mark, Boko Haram vows to fight until Nigeria establishes sharia law, The
Guardian, 27 January 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/27/boko-haram-nigeria-sharia-law
[9] Ibid.
Zenn
[10]
Alex Thurston, How far does Saudi Arabia’s influence go? Look at Nigeria, The
Washington Post, 31 October 2016,
[11]
Jamie Doward, Peer raises fears over UK charity's alleged links to Boko Haram,
The Observer, 8 September 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/09/uk-charity-boko-haram
[12]
Interview with Islam scholar, 04 November 2016
[13]
The Middle East Media Research Institute, Saudi Cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi: 'The
Desire to Shed Blood, to Smash Skulls, and to Sever Limbs for the Sake of Allah
Is an Honor for the Believer,' 12 August 2010, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print4523.htm
[14]
Stand for Peace, Briefing document: Month of Mercy Conference, 2012, http://standforpeace.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Month-of-mercy-briefing-updated.pdf
[15] Samuel
Westrop, Grooming Jihadists, Gatestone Institute, 28 July 2014, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4521/grooming-jihadists
[16]
Hairun Elbinawi, How Wahhabism Made The North Lethally Intolerant: Gratitude To
Nigerian Christians, Newsrescue.com, 7 February 2016,
[17]
Ousmane Kane, Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria, Leiden: Brill, 2003
[18] Ibid.
Thurston
[19]
Interview with the author, 8 February 2016
[20] Hadassah
Egbedi, The Arrest of Sheikh Ibrahim Zazaky Revealed these Four Things,
Ventures, 17 December 2015, http://venturesafrica.com/four-things-the-arrest-of-sheikh-ibrahim-zakzaky-reveals/
[21]
Al Jazeera, Nigeria accused of killing hundreds of Shia Muslims, 16 December
2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/nigeria-accused-killing-hundreds-shia-muslims-151216032540123.html
[22]
Arab News, King Salman vows support to Nigeria’s fight against terror, 19
December 2015, http://www.arabnews.com/featured/news/852581
[23]
Email dated 9 January 2016 from Col. SK Usman to Peregrino Brimah, provided by
Brimah to the author.
[24] Murtada
Muhammad Gusau, Kano Killing: What Islam says about blasphemy and killings, The
Premium Times, 5 June 2016, http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/204702-premium-times-special-kano-killing-islam-says-blasphemy-killings.html
[25] Ibid.
Trofimov, Jihad Comes to Africa
[26]
Abdourahmane Idrissa, The Invention of Order: Republican Codes and Islamic Law
in Niger, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Florida, 2009, http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0024288/idrissa_a.pdf
[27] Ibid.
Trofimov
[28] Pew
Research Center, The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity, 9 August 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-executive-summary
/ Yaroslav Trofimov, With Iran-Backed Conversions, Shiites Gain Ground in
Africa, The Wall Street Journal, 10 May 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/with-iran-backed-conversions-shiites-gain-ground-in-africa-1463046768
[30] Jack
Watling and Paul Raymond, The Struggle for Mali, The Guardian, 25 November
2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/25/the-struggle-for-mali
[31]
Kassim Traore, Mali : L’Imam Mahamoud Dicko à propos des actes terroristes dans
le monde : «Les maîtres du monde doivent cesser de faire la promotion de
l’homosexualité. Ceux qui posent des actes terroristes sont des anciens
rappeurs, ceux qu’on appelle la racaille…, MaliActu.net, 29 November 2015, http://maliactu.net/mali-limam-mahamoud-dicko-a-propos-des-actes-terroristes-dans-le-monde-les-maitres-du-monde-doivent-cesser-de-faire-la-promotion-de-lhomosexualite-ceux-qui-posent-des-acte/
[32] Julius
Cavendish, The Fearsome Tuareg Uprising in Mali: Less Monolithic than Meets the
Eye, Time, 30 March 2012, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2110673,00.html?xid=gonewsedit
[33]
Joshua Hammer, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the
World's Most Precious Manuscripts, New York: Simon & Shuster, Kindle
edition
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