Research

My current project entitled "Constructing religious authority and transnational Muslim community in the militarized border zone of Mali/ Niger", investigates how rising levels of insecurity and related international efforts of “securitization” in the context of a Global War on Terror in the Sahara and northern Sahel, affect constructions of religious authority, proper Muslim identity and transnational community in the militarized border zone of Mali and Niger. For this purpose, the project focuses on the religious self-understandings, discourses and practices, and transborder economic activities of the Dabakkar, a Muslim group that, centered on its spiritual leader, shaykh Abdousalam ag Mohammadan, has remained outside the radar of scholarly interest and investigation. By addressing the highly topical question of how the militarization of the Western Sahara/ Sahel affects Muslim religious authority and identities in the area, and by focusing on the practices and understandings of a Tuareg status group whose distinctive social and religious practices of the Tijanyya spiritual path have gone unnoticed so far, the project fills in an important lacuna in the scholarship on Islam in West Africa. It redresses the conventional narrow scholarly focus on noble Tuareg religious clans, their religious expertise and authority credentials. Also, by examining the Dabakkar’ changing understandings and material practices of religious authority, community and proper Muslimhood under present conditions of physical, material, and political insecurity, the project places scholarly debate on Muslim religiosity and authority in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of an increasingly globalizing politics of religion.

Research Focus

• Islam in Africa, intra-religious conflict dynamics, anthropology of religion
• political anthropology, anthropology of war
• humanitarianism
• gender studies
• youth studies
• anthropology of music
• methods and methodology, theories and practices of anthropological film making  

Research Area

• West Africa, (in particular) Sahel/Sahara 

Teaching Approach

Will follow soon