Facoh moods: Arab women from Mali
There is a fundamental difference between the practice of Islam, being Muslim and Arabism which is a lifestyle specific to Arabs.Our compatriots do not seem to understand this.The various Muslim peoples around the world keep their customs and traditions while respecting Islamic rules and are no less Muslim for this that the Saudi or the Iranian women.
But under our skies, in the Middle Niger Valley, the confusion is such that, playing on the ignorance of the masses recently in Islam, some preachers simply ask them to live like the Arabs of the time of Muhammad (PSL), in other words, to eat and dress like them.Historical time does not count for them, they recommend that they return to the low Middle Ages when they themselves enjoy the advantages of evolution.
Little enlightened and out of traditional Koranic schools, they knowingly distort the Koran data either to make a sensation, or to be more educated than their colleagues in religion.If the men follow them little in their rantings from Overseas, women, on the other hand, drink their words like whey.In this way, novelties were introduced into our practice of Islam as the celebration of Maouloud, that of the Night of Destiny and the promotion of certain women as preaching or mistresses in Islam bearing the name of Malimatou but will know whatmeans.
However, travelers in the Arab and Berber countries in the Middle East report that they have never seen in these countries women preach, but this species is now abounding in our societies often against sound and stumbling species.
This is also the result of the clothing on which certain scholars teach that the woman, an object of natural desire, must be used as an Arab woman, the whole body covered with clothing from head to toe with only two small orifices forallow the eyes to operate normally.
In the streets of Bamako, we are faced with seeing women sewn in black shrouds that they take for a sign of certain devotion while their spouses cry in despair to see them thus manhandling by medieval preachers.Religion is certainly what it is and culture something else.All the peoples of the world have made this difference except perhaps our societies which continue to confuse both.
Charles Baudelaire, a French poet of the 19th century said about Christianity that it is from God's Blessed but that it was necessary to swallow it with caution.Islam, on the other hand, should not disrupt the lifestyle of its practitioners.El Hadj Oumar Tall, after having shot down the political power of Ségou, tried to implant Islam throughout the country, but could not sow only a court Islam, the surrounding countryside remaining in their pagan.
Muslim women in cities seem to forget that before Islam, this country had a great culture whose clothing was one of the most important and envied aspects in neighboring countries.And taking themselves for Baghdad sultanes, they clutter our streets with their perfumes from the Far East, which also prevents them from being otherwise, side morals.But, as Stendhal would say in "La Chartreuse de Parma", too much devotion leads to debauchery.
Facoh Donki Diarra
Konibabougou writer
