The Third Challenge: The New Literacy

Paradoxically, whereas the Wahhabis themselves continued to be rejected by the Koko Dyula community, many of the ideas central to their conception of Islamic reform have become increasingly attractive. More than anything else, the spread of Western-style secular education has been indirectly responsible. Western education came very late to Koko. Northern Côte d'Ivoire, far removed from the capital and particularly impervious to missionary influence, had always lagged considerably behind the rest of the country. Only after World War II did any children from Koko attend Western-style schools, and only because they were recruited by force. Such force quickly ceased to be necessary, as it became clear that Western-educated youths had access to relatively lucrative salaried employment, but the north continued for a long time to lag far behind Côte d'Ivoire as a whole. As late as 1963, a survey of the Korhogo region indicated that only 17 percent of school-age children were enrolled in primary school (SEDES 1965, 1: 60). As a result, the first generation of educated males in Koko are only now in their fifties. They are old enough to be considered elders, though not senior elders, but a few are quite wealthy, and others relatively well-to-do, giving them a far greater influence than their age would normally merit. Partly as a result of their example and their influence, the number of educated, among women as well as

men, has increased steadily, though the employment prospects for the educated have proportionally diminished at an even faster rate.

The spread of Western education has altered Dyula perceptions of Arabic literacy. The Suwarian tradition of scholarship stressed rote learning. Texts, beginning with suras from the Qur'an, were memorized. The written word functioned partly as an aid to memory, as a means of assuring that texts were properly learned and as a corrective to faulty recall. Even among karamogos , knowing a text meant in the first place knowing it by heart, as well as understanding the meaning of particular words and passages. I was constantly impressed by the facility with which scholars could reproduce Arabic texts from memory, rather than relying on the books in their libraries.^[6] It must not be forgotten that the Suwarian tradition developed at a time when copying was the only means of procuring a text, when paper was a scarce and valuable commodity, and when libraries were highly perishable. Nowadays, when printed books in Arabic are readily available in the marketplace, human memory is not the only means of storing knowledge. Western education furnished another model for acquiring literacy. Of course, Western education also involved considerable amounts of rote learning, but children were from the very beginning introduced to the alphabet, to the meanings of specific words, and to basic principles of grammar. French, moreover, was also a spoken language in Korhogo, and could be used to communicate, not only with French administrators, but with Africans from other parts of Côte d'Ivoire. In the Suwarian tradition, the first use to which reading was put was the recitation of texts; in secular education, reading allowed the literate both to speak French and to understand various kinds of written texts at their disposal.

One of the first actions of the Wahhabis in Bamako had been to establish Arabic schools modeled to some extent on the Western secular school system—not a surprising idea from individuals trained at al-Azhar and fluently literate in Arabic. The idea of a madrasa , a school that taught Arabic literacy like French, did not remain a Wahhabi monopoly. Such

schools constituted an alternative to a purely secular education.^[7] The idea spread late to Korhogo, precisely because of Korhogo's lag in the field of Western education, but in 1971 the first such school, the Ecole Franco-Arabe, was founded in town. The purpose of the school was to educate children, both in the standard primary school curriculum—French, mathematics, history, and so on—and in the Arabic language and Islam. Pupils were prepared for the primary school certificate as a means of entry to modern employment, but in a way that would reinforce religious values rather than conflict with them. However, such schools were not officially recognized by the government, and thus could not furnish an official transcript, required for admission to secondary school. Initially, this discouraged most parents from enrolling their children, but as employment prospects for secondary school leavers became more bleak, the benefits of such a combined system of education seemed more attractive. The Ecole Franco-Arabe has not only survived, but has spawned a host of imitators in Korhogo. In 1973, it was common to pass groups of boys sitting outside, reciting texts from writing boards under the watchful eye of an adolescent with a rod ever ready, poised over their heads, to strike pupils whose memories faltered. By 1984, two scholars from Koko had opened their own madrasas , complete with schoolrooms, blackboards, and French- as well as Arabic-language instructors, and the old system of Qur'anic education was virtually defunct in town.

The hope of such students and their parents is that they may pursue their education in the Arabic-speaking world. Various Arab countries offer scholarships to such students from time to time. The head of the Ecole Franco-Arabe keeps in constant touch with various embassies in the capital, hoping each year to extract promises for a few reserved slots. In 1985, for instance, he was offered three scholarships from Egypt, and graduates from that year's class were urged to travel to the capital in order to take a competitive examination to determine who would go. In past years, I was told, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, various Gulf emirates, and even Syria offered scholarships. (Admittedly, the Syrian case was a fiasco; almost no parents were willing to send their children. This

reluctance may have stemmed from the fact that Lebanese traders, who are either Christians or Shi^c i Muslims, used to be known as "Syrians." As a result, African parents may have felt that "Syria" was hardly the place to procure a worthy Sunni Muslim education.) The winners of such scholarships might even obtain a university education in the Arab world, either in religion or in some secular subject. One could never be sure in any particular year which countries, if any, might offer scholarships, but as long as some pupils were chosen from time to time, the hope remained.

I do not know what has happened to individuals from Korhogo who left for study in the Middle East, as this is such a recent development. However, other communities in Côte d'Ivoire, most notably Abidjan and Bouake, as well as in other African countries, began sending students rather earlier. Such students, if they do not return with marketable technical skills, are prime candidates to teach in the new madrasas. They have firsthand experience of classroom teaching in Arabic, and they have achieved a considerable degree of fluency in spoken as well as written Arabic. Those who study in Saudi Arabia have a particular advantage, as the Saudi government has apparently been interested in underwriting some of the costs of such madrasas. According to the director of the Ecole Franco-Arabe, two Saudi teachers were originally sent to a school in Bouake, but they suffered from severe culture shock and had to be recalled. Since then, the Saudi government has preferred to pay the salaries of African-born teachers, trained in Saudi Arabia, as a form of assistance. One such teacher, a young man from Sierra Leone, was on the staff of the Ecole Franco-Arabe in 1985.

Aside from classroom teaching, individuals trained in the Arab world may choose to become full-fledged Islamic scholars. One such young man passed through Koko in 1985 and delivered a sermon. Local Dyula, particularly those educated in French, were impressed. It was pointed out to me that he could pronounce Arabic in the way that Arabs do (the mass media have familiarized Dyula with "Arab" Arabic pronunciation), and not with the heavy accent of locally trained

scholars. He read texts fluently out loud (rather than reciting them from memory) and could comment readily on the meaning of different words, glossing them in Dyula with greater ease, in the opinion of his audience, than local scholars could.

Locally trained and foreign-trained scholars thus possess two distinct styles of Arabic literacy. For Suwarian scholars, knowledge is first and foremost memorized knowledge of a relatively standardized corpus of texts; as one of them commented to me quite explicitly, "It's what's in my head, not in my library, that counts." Foreign-trained scholars have a conception of knowledge that more closely resembles Western notions. Knowledge consists in large measure of the ease with which information can be retrieved from written texts, as well as the fluency with which individuals can write and speak, as well as read and understand, Arabic. Literacy, in short, is a skill rather than mastery of a relatively fixed body of texts. For Western-educated Muslims, study in the Middle East is valued for the new style of Arabic literacy to which it gives direct access.

Fluency in Arabic, however, is not the only quality that attracts the Western-educated to this new generation of Arab-trained scholars. Among students in the secular school system, there is a revival of interest in Islam, associated with the emergence of the Muslim students' association of Côte d'Ivoire, (AEEMCI), which is officially recognized, and indeed partly funded, by the national government. The AEEMCI broadcasts a popular weekly program on state-run television, and organizes study sessions for students, as well as an annual national conference. Indeed, the conference was held in Korhogo in 1985, and was heavily attended by local residents, as well as by delegates from around the country. Significantly, the association has links with the Arabic-speaking world and with Africans trained there. For example, the director of the Ecole Franco-Arabe in Korhogo is active in the local chapter, and the guest speakers chosen for its television show are frequently young scholars trained in the Middle East. Like the Wahhabiyya, the association and its

Arab-trained scholars represent a "reformist" style of Islam. It preaches above all an Islamic morality—against drugs, alcohol, delinquency, prostitution, and premarital sex, stressing the importance of prayer, fasting, and the hajj. In itself, such moralizing does not conflict with the Suwarian tradition of scholarship; local scholars preach on much the same issues. The difference lies in what the AEEMCI and the Arab-trained scholars choose to ignore and in subtle ways to devalorize—those rituals, typical of local Islamic traditions, associated with life crises and Muslim calendar holidays.

This devalorization—one television show, for example, warned against overly ostentatious funerals—is consistent with the attitudes of a younger generation of Western-educated Dyula Muslims. Unlike the first generation of school graduates, they are not assured of lucrative employment. Many of them can hope for a reasonably cozy living, but hardly for senior appointments in the foreseeable future. They are neither old enough nor wealthy enough to have much voice in local community affairs, but many of them are (or can aspire to be) prosperous enough to attract demands from their kin, particularly on such occasions as funerals and weddings. Their attitude to such rituals can be summed up by a comment made privately to me by a young military technician during his grandmother's funeral: "Ça pue le fric" ("It stinks of cash"). These young educated Muslims feel attached in important ways to their home communities, but in other respects wish to distance themselves, and feel unconcerned by many local goings-on. The Suwarian tradition, stressing so heavily the importance and obligations (monetary and otherwise) of community membership, is associated in their minds with the heavy demands that the home community makes on them. The kind of Muslim identity advocated by the AEEMCI still permits them to express their solidarity with their home communities—Islam is, after all, a minority religion in Côte d'Ivoire—without making the same kind of demands on their resources.

Like the Wahhabiyya, the AEEMCI and the younger Arab-trained scholars thus constitute an ideological alternative to

the local scholarly tradition. However, unlike the Wahhabis, the AEEMCI rigorously avoids confrontation. On the contrary, individuals active in the AEEMCI make every attempt to maintain cordial relations with locally trained scholars, inviting them, for example, to the graduation ceremonies at the Ecole Franco-Arabe. This policy is dictated in the first instance by the national government, which underwrites some of the association's expenses, and without whose cooperation a weekly television show would be unthinkable. Indeed, the government is quite willing to foster the association's co-operation with conservative Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and in this way counteract the possible appeal of the "radical" ideology of states such as Libya or Iran. However, the association's conciliatory stance toward local scholars is not simply dictated by the state. Unlike the Wahhabiyya, the association neither rejects Maliki "formalism" nor seeks to distinguish itself doctrinally from the Suwarian scholars. The differences are primarily those of style and emphasis. This allows the association to seek the support of local scholars for some of its goals, and gives scholars no legitimate grounds for denouncing its activities. Ordinary Muslims are thus not faced with choosing definitively between local scholars trained in the Suwarian tradition and Arab-trained scholars associated with the AEEMCI.

Individual preferences for one or the other group are not the subject of controversy and consequently do not split the Muslim community. Paradoxically, this peaceful coexistence of two scholarly styles is the greatest threat yet to the survival of the Suwarian tradition. More and more Muslims now own television sets; a novelty in Koko in 1973, they are now a common sight, even in relatively poor households, and villages in the north are beginning to receive electricity, which will permit villagers to own their own sets. The younger Arab-trained scholars' access to television is a considerable boost to their prestige. Their new style of literacy in Arabic is intuitively perceived as superior, not only by Muslims with Western secular education, but also by those educated in the madrasas. The fact that the Arab-trained scholars distance

themselves morally from the practice of ostentatious prestations during life-crisis rituals without denouncing such practices vocally attracts younger Muslims, particularly educated Muslims living away from their home communities, who privately resent the demands on their resources that such practices entail but do not wish to make a public stand against them that might alienate their older kinsmen.

In short, the spread of new forms of education, both in French and in Arabic, have led to a certain disenchantment with the Suwarian tradition and its scholars. An isnad tracing one's intellectual pedigree directly back to al-Hajj Salim Suware is no longer a sine qua non for being acknowledged a Muslim scholar; training in the Middle East now constitutes a universally accepted alternative. This is not to say that the Suwarian tradition is defunct. Karamogos are still being trained in the Suwarian tradition, though these are usually older men, villagers, or scions of locally established scholarly families. However, as more and more generations of educated Dyula Muslims accede to edlerhood, it seems likely that the Suwarian tradition, once the only legitimate scholarly tradition in the region, will become more marginal.