i REPRESENTING ISLAM IN AHMADOU KOUROUMA’S ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED AND MOHAMMED NASEEHU ALI’S THE PROPHET OF ZONGO STREET BY KOFI DARKOH-ANKRAH (10239411) THIS THESIS IS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, LEGON, IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF A MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY DEGREE IN ENGLISH. JULY, 2013 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh ii DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my original work and to the best of my knowledge, it does not contain any material published by any other person, or any material accepted for the award of any degree except where due acknowledgement has been made in this work. CANDIDATE’S NAME: KOFI DARKOH-ANKRAH ----------------------------- ------------------- (SIGNATURE) (DATE) CERTIFIED BY: PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR A. N. MENSAH---------------------------- ------------------- (SIGNATURE) (DATE) CO-SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR K. LARBI KORANG -------------------- ------------------ (SIGNATURE) (DATE) University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iii DEDICATION To the One whom no human fully understands –the Almighty God –and to my father, Kwesi Siah-Ankrah University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To God be thanks for my life, health, strength, and the ideas that came to me to start and complete this work. I express unqualified gratitude to my principal supervisor, Professor A. N. Mensah, for his reading speed, meticulousness and suggestions which helped me to complete this work on time. And to my co-supervisor, Professor Kwaku Larbi Korang, I express thanks for his time, guidance and the relevant reading materials he offered me. Professor Kari Dako and Professor Helen A. Yitah (Head of Department) expressed interest in the progress of my work and also offered me a lot of encouragement. Thank you I say. My thanks also go to Professor A.A. Sackey who would always tell me to work harder and harder because that is the greatest secret to research work. To all other lecturers of the Department of English, I express my appreciation. How else could I have been successful but for the vast knowledge I had from you all? I also thank the staff of the General Office of the Department of English for their support. Mr. Samuel K. Aning, teacher cum writer, and a past student of the Department of Commerce, University of Cape Coast, was very helpful to me with my computer. Thank you, brother. Last but not least, to all my family, friends, and well-wishers I say „May God bless you.‟ University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh v ABSTRACT Islam is one of the major religions of Africa. Islamic issues in society are prominent in some contemporary African fiction, and often these issues are in conflict with social, economic and political forces. This thesis studies the conflict between Islam and the socio-economic and political forces in Ahmadou Kourouma (2000) and Mohammed Naseehu Ali (2005). One observation coming from the study is that Islam succumbs to material realities. Muslim characters often adulterate or renege on their faith in ways that contradict the dictates of the religion. The next observation is that Muslim characters often find no protection in Islam when they are confronted with material realities. How these writers portray Islam as it confronts socio-economic, political, and other religious forces, is what this thesis examines. It makes a comparison between the two works set in different socio-economic and political spaces –Kourouma‟s in war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone on the one hand and Ali‟s in the relatively peaceful Ghana on the other. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS PAGES Title Page i Declaration ii Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Table of Contents vi 1. CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.0 Background to the Study 1 1.1 Islam in African Fiction 3 1.2 Statement of the Problem 6 1.3 Objectives of the Study 7 1.4 Significance of the Study 7 1.5 Theoretical Framework 9 1.6 Justification for the Choice of Theories 15 1.7 Methodology 15 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh vii 1.8 Challenges 16 1.9 Scope and Limitations 17 1.10 Organization of the Study 18 2. CHAPTER TWO : LITERATURE REVIEW Review 19 3. CHAPTER THREE: ISLAM IN ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED 3.0 Introduction 41 3.1 Islam, Wealth and Marxist Aesthetics 43 3.2 Islam and Violence: the Nexus and Paradox 48 3.3 Islam and the Elderly Characters: the Parody of Morals 55 3.4 Islam and the Child Character 59 3.5 Islam and Women Characters 63 3.6 The Portrayal of Allah in the World of Allah Is Not Obliged 69 3.7 How Islam Relates with other Religions in Allah Is Not Obliged 77 3.8 Islam and Politics: the Marxist Underpinnings 79 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh viii 4. CHAPTER FOUR: ISLAM IN THE PROPHET OF ZONGO STREET 4.0 Introduction 90 4.1 Islam and other Religions and Traditions 91 4.2 Of Socio-economic Realities and Islamic [Religious] Issues and 102 the Portrayal of Allah in the World of the Text with Particular Reference to „Live-In‟ 4.3 Islam, Gender, Marriage, Sex and Related Issues in 105 „The Manhood Test‟: the Humour Displayed 4.4 Of Socio-economic Realities, Marriage, Peace, and Violence: 111 an Islamic Response in „Mallam Sile‟ 4.5 The Tension between Creed and Morals; Theism and Atheism 118 in „Faith‟ 5. CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION Conclusion 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY 142 University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.0 Background to the Study Religion is one of the most emotive of human phenomena. It turns some people into fanatics while others do not follow it with much passion. It seems that religion has become embedded in the lives of many Africans. John Mbiti (1969) observes that „Africans are notoriously religious‟ (1), and that „…where the individual is, there is his religion‟ (3). But we discover that even as they are caught in its grip, they find it difficult to maintain a fidelity to its ethical demands in the face of inescapable social pressures. This is to say that the religious person is often faced with adjustment difficulties –whether to satisfy the spiritual or the material needs. The African continent has three main religions – indigenous African Traditional Religion, Islam and Christianity. This thesis however focuses on the representation of Islam in Ahmadou Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged (2000) and Mohammed Naseehu Ali‟s The Prophet Of Zongo Street (2005) to expose the conflicts and contradictions that occur as Islam confronts other religions and social reality. Some African writers view Islamic characters as faithful to their religion but that is not the case with other writers. Islam in some works is portrayed as being adulterated and subordinated to social context to satisfy the survival needs of its followers. The followers are largely „notoriously religious‟ often when the faith serves their basic needs; their hearts do not really follow the commandments of the religion. It can be observed that where the commandments impede their need to survive, the Islamic University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 2 faith is often compromised. This tendency in some African fiction which features Islamic issues will be examined. The study looks at how these Muslim writers present Islam in relation to African social problems. Ali addresses Islamic and other religious issues as they confront socio-economic and political issues in Ghana. Kourouma also addresses Islamic and other religious issues along with those dealing with society, politics and economics during the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Apart from important issues like politics, violence, children‟s and women‟s issues, language and culture, Ahmadou Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged and Mohammed Naseehu Ali‟s The Prophet Of Zongo Street feature the problems that result from Islam‟s contact with other religions. The religion the children in Allah Is Not Obliged, inherited, for example, is powerless in stopping them from becoming child soldiers and thereby committing the most heinous of war crimes. This therefore necessitates a discussion, via these two West African literary works, of ethical questions in Islam and the conflicts and contradictions that socially beset and often undermine Islamic ethics. The study examines how the choice of settings by the two writers affects their representation of Islam in their works. Whereas Kourouma‟s novel is set in an environment of turbulence in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the period of their civil wars, Ali‟s work is set in a relatively peaceful environment largely in Ghana in the fourth republic. The writers also portray the role Allah plays in the world of their works. The question which is repeatedly asked in Kourouma‟s novel is, „Is Allah obliged to be fair about the things he does here on earth?‟ In Ali‟s short story the question on Islam, though not explicitly stated, is whether Allah is fair only to his followers for the Islamic creed University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 3 they observe or the moral values they follow. I will assess the authors‟ suggested responses to this question. Also in this discussion is the question of theodicy: if there is a good and perfect God why does he allow evil to exist for people to suffer battling it? Why then should people be blamed when they do all manner of things to escape suffering since suffering is distasteful? These are pertinent questions since it will be found in the discussion that exposure to suffering causes many characters in the texts to act in contradiction to their faiths. That however is not to suggest that suffering is the only reason for the characters‟ deviation from their faiths. For, it will be found that some characters betray their faith because they are hypocrites and such characters the writers mock and expose. 1.1 Islam in African Fiction Mbye B. Cham (1985) looks at Islam in some West African literature. He identifies two main opposing critical approaches to writers‟ views about Islam. He notes that: on the right pole is that ensemble of attitudes shaped by a zealous embrace and vigorous advocacy of Islam as the best, indeed the only, legitimate and effective vehicle for integration of the individual and society while the left pole posits a fundamentally materialist ideology and artistic creed which portrays Islam as colonial in nature and therefore, an impediment to secular, individual and social fulfillment (Cham 1985: 447). Given these conflicting groups above Cham cites Chaikh Hamidou Kane (1962) and Aminata Sow Fall (1976) as products of Arab-Islamic, African and Euro-Christian education. He notes that they have embraced the option of combining Islam and tradition and rejecting Euro-Christianity as an intruder into Arab-Islam Africa. According to Cham, Kane‟s work Ambiguous Adventure explicitly represents the rejectionist trend. The conflict between the Euro-Christian and Arab Diallobe results in the death of the central character, the young Samba Diallo. In Cham‟s view Kane‟s University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 4 novel „vindicates the view of the ephemerality of mortal existence and primacy of the spiritual‟ (Cham, 1985: 451). For Samba Diallo, „Islam is Diallobe and Diallobe is Islam.‟ For him, furthermore, the West and its materialistic credo is the antithesis of Diallobe spiritualism and communalism (ibid). Kane therefore elevates and glorifies the spiritual and plays down the mundane, earthly, and physical which in the framework of this thesis are the social, political and economic. By contrast, Kourouma and Ali appear to turn Kane‟s view of Islam on its head. In Allah Is Not Obliged, Kourouma would therefore be found at the left polar end where, to quote Cham, his „artistic resolution of the conflicting opposites invariably projects the triumph of the material over the spiritual in different ways.‟ Cham notes this as characteristic of Sembene Ousmane‟s declared atheism and Marxism (Cham, 1985: 458,459). To Cham, religion is rendered more or less powerless when it is confronted with practical problems of hunger, poverty and the law of the state which appears to favour the educated and the wealthy. He adds that „the opposition between the spiritual and the material laid out in Ceddo (1977), Ousmane‟s first film, becomes one of the main building blocks of each of his subsequent works. The artist systematically undermines the reign of the religious while at the same time glorifying the virtues and practice of practical human action, individual as well as collective‟ (Cham, 1985: 459,460). And, Kourouma is no less on the materialist side. Ali also elevates the mundane, earthly and physical above the spiritual, though the ethical dimension of Islam is more of a concern to him. On the left pole, Cham notes a range of African literary works that he describes as „the irreverents‟ citing Ousmane‟s aforementioned Ceddo as an outstanding example. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 5 The image of Islam, he notes, is not a good one, because in this work Muslims are presented as scheming fanatics. In the group of irreverent works he also includes Yambo Ouologuem‟s Bound to Violence (1968) and Ayi Kwei Armah‟s Two Thousand Seasons (1973) and the nonliterary work of Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization (1974). Reading Allah Is Not Obliged, it is evident that the spiritual is in no way elevated and that when Islam confronts individual and societal problems, Kourouma gives existential priority to individual and societal needs which are secular and not spiritual. Ali adopts a similar style except that he praises his few spiritually inclined characters especially when they show high ethical standards. In his categorization Cham notes another group that comes midway between the two mentioned above. „Between the extremes‟, he writes, is a range of artistic responses which are an acceptance of the basic details of Islam, yet are separated here by less zeal and didacticism, thereby a constant alternation between reverence and mockery of Islamic holy men, and again a strident iconoclasm which indicts religious charlatans and distorters of Islam and its institutions (Cham, 1985: 447). This is the case for certain writers who think that both the positive and the negative elements of Islam should be discussed. These writers render praise where it is due the religion and criticism where they find that some untoward behaviour of some Islamic holy men dents the image of Islam. It can be argued that Ali, unlike Kourouma, falls into this group. Cham suggests that these trends of irreverent attitude toward Islam show a growing current of thought in African literature that brings up Islam as a subject of discussion. My work therefore seeks to expose the problems that emanate from the literature as the Islamic religion is put to the test by other religions and secular society. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 6 1.2 Statement of the Problem Ali Al Amin Mazrui (2002), talking about Edward Wilmot Blyden who was the Director of Muslim Education in Sierra Leone in 1902, says that although Blyden himself was a Presbyterian Minister he argued that „there was an enriching marriage between Africa and Islam‟ (190) and that „Blyden came close to saying that Islam was the right religion for Africa‟ (ibid). Mazrui adds that „Blyden‟s is what we may call “Islamophilia” (ibid)‟. Mazrui notes though that: over a century later, however, the scene in Africa is virtually dominated by the opposite orientation towards “Islamophobia”. This is the central thesis that the author [Ahmed S. Bangoura] seeks to elucidate with particular reference to African literature and its critics. He traces this tradition of hostility toward and distortion of Islam to the Orientalist construction of the religion that has been so well documented by Edward Said. This influence of Orientalism is supposedly rooted in the European colonial legacy that has continued to determine the politics of (re) presentation in Africa to this day (190, 191). Mazrui has thus noted two opposing views of Islam –one positive which he terms „Islamophilia‟ and the other negative term, „Islamophobia‟. Cham (1985) also notes that there are two main opposing attitudes to Islam among writers that take up the religion in their works. One attitude is positive while the other is negative. To writers that represent Islam in a positive way, Islam is the best means for the good of the individual and society. However, to those that represent the religion negatively, Islam is an impediment to the realities of life. The thesis posits that unlike the African writers who look at Islam in a positive way, Kourouma adopts a radically negative attitude while Ali „vacillates between the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 7 positive and negative‟ but he portrays a more negative orientation than the positive. They play down the spirituality of the religion while elevating the matter of its contradictory implication in socio-economic and political realities. Therefore, they represent Islam as an impediment to the material desires of its followers. 1.3 Objectives of the Study The objectives of this essay are to: 1. Examine the common portrayal of Islam in the two works. 2. Show how the works present the conflicts and contradictions that beset Islam as it comes face to face with social, political and economic difficulties. 3. Investigate the way in which Allah is conceived, the role he plays in the world of the texts and how this conception is different from or similar to the presentation of Allah in works by other writers, Muslim and non-Muslim. 4. Explore how the writers use literary devices to portray the problems that occur as Islam confronts social realities. How these devises are deployed will help to settle the question of whether or not the Islamic outlook is promoted or criticized. 5. Explore the points of convergence of Islam with and divergence from other religions and how they expose doctrinal conflicts and contradictions. 1.4 Significance of the Study This study extends into a new context of comparison and contrast in the way Islam is portrayed in African literature. One aspect of Islam under exploration as the two works are compared and contrasted is whether it is the creed or the moral demands of this religion that are privileged as it confronts social realities. This study also seeks to University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 8 find out how and why the positive image painted by some Muslim writers is sometimes countered by a negative portrayal by other Muslim writers, as in the case of the two under review. Writers who display a negative orientation to Islam expose the weaknesses through characterization, satire, settings, situations, and irony. This research is also significant as it investigates the role Allah plays in the world of the texts as Islamic characters confront social difficulties –whether he supports or abandons them. Doctrinal conflicts and contradictions that occur from this are revealed. Also, my work is significant for contributing to scholarship that shows and analyzes the negative portrayal of Islam. It has been observed that many literary discussions lately have tended to be on politics, women‟s issues, language use and others but discussions on religion, especially Islam, seem to have been ignored. Kenneth Harrow (1991) observes that Islam forms a major part of the works of many renowned writers, but unfortunately Islam has not been given the needed attention in literary criticism. Therefore, in his work he discusses Islam in the fictional works of Camara Laye, Chaikh Hamidou Kane, Sembene Ousmane, Birago Diop and Hampate Bâ among others. In fact, Harrow has, to emphasize the importance of critical discourse on Islam, also taken up a discussion of Islam in Kourouma‟s The Suns of Independence (1968). In this work he largely discusses Malinke culture and its blend with Islam and how the religion influences the life of the traditional Malinke people. He observes that Islam and Malinke culture have blended. My work, however, seeks to show the contradictions that blends of any kind bring about. And, sometimes there is no blend at all; the doctrine of the religion is overturned by the characters to meet their socio- political and economic needs. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 9 Ahmed Bangoura (2000) also discusses West African fictional works that have Islam as a subtext. His discussion largely focuses on the historical and sociological contexts of Islam in the West African sub region. To him Islam in such works is (mis)read especially from the point of view of Western readers. He opines that Western readers have provided only a prejudiced image of Islam in their criticism. However, Bangoura discusses Islam in Ibrahim Tahir‟s The Last Imam with a positive orientation toward Islam to show that it is not always the case that Islam is represented negatively in contemporary African literature. 1.5 Theoretical Framework The key theoretical approaches will be Marxism and Cultural Poetics (formerly called New Historicism). The preliminary justification for the choice of these theories is that they are materialist, and in being materialist their confrontation with the religious and spiritual will help reveal the doctrinal problems that result as Islam confronts socio- political and economic realities. i. Marxism Karl Marx (1845) notes that the whole of a people‟s experience arises out of their social interaction and other daily activities which are responsible for shaping and developing an individual‟s personal consciousness. Charles E. Bressler (2003) notes that “Marxism is first a set of social, economic and political ideas that its followers believe will enable them to interpret and more importantly, change their world.” (170). Marxism has it that: Ultimate reality… is material, not spiritual. What we know beyond any doubt is that human beings exist and live in social groups. All of our actions and responses to such University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 10 activities as eating, working and even playing are related in some way to our culture and society. In order to understand ourselves and our world, we must first acknowledge the interrelatedness of all our actions within society. If, for example, we want to know who we are and how we should live, we must stop trying to find answers by looking solely to religion and philosophy and begin by examining all aspects of our daily activities within our own culture (ibid). Since religion itself is part of culture it could be argued, based on the foregoing, that the postures of Kourouma and Ali are consonant with this Marxist materialist position in the way they downplay the religious and spiritual in their works. They make mockery of the characters that represent Islam and other religions as the latter confront their own culture and society. A question for these authors is the value of Islamic belief and worldview if it cannot shield its adherents from the economic and political realities of the material world. This matter brings to mind Marxist thoughts, as Marx (1848) makes a proposition that ultimate reality is social and economic and not spiritual or philosophical. Charles E. Bressler explains, „To Marx, then, our ideas and concepts about ourselves are fashioned in everyday interactions, in the language of real life, and not derived from some Platonic essence or any other spiritual reality‟ (Bressler, 2003:163). The above proposition will guide the discussion on the tension in Kourouma‟s and Ali‟s works, between Islam and socio-economic and political forces. Marx argues that what we know beyond any reasonable doubt is that our social and economic conditions have an influence on what we believe and value. This should explain why Kourouma and Ali present their characters in such a way that they sacrifice their faith to meet their socio-economic survival interests. The characters are more materialistic than they are spiritual, and where they get seemingly very spiritual it is largely because they want to meet their socio-economic needs. When this occurs, the conflicts and contradictions between Islam and the non-religious, non-spiritual socio-economic University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 11 phenomena begin to show. Marxist understanding of this sort of contradiction will be relied on to explain Kourouma‟s and Ali‟s views as reflected in the characters, settings, satire, situation, irony and the paradox that arise as religion confronts social and economic forces. My falling back on Marxist theory is therefore to help me explain why when the religious and spiritual phenomenon –in this case Islam –confronts the realities of the socio-economic and political, it capitulates to them. And when Islamic characters in the works under review contradict Islamic doctrine they show that the material realities of life are what really matters. The theory also supports Cham‟s left wing categorization, a key basis of my arguments. Cham himself notes that the left wing that elevates the socio-economic and political stems from Marxism which emphasizes the material realities of life and not the spiritual. However, given the number of problems that every theory including Marxist theory confronts, I do not intend to say that my choice of it has a “„law-like‟ status”, a principle which Stuart Hall (1996) associates with this theory. And in order that I be not „haunted by Marx‟s ghost still rattling around in the theoretical machine‟ (Hall 1996: 32) absolute insistence on the materialist, political, and historical will be supported by the use of other post Marxist theories. It is for this reason that a key post Marxist theory, Cultural Poetics, has also been added to explore and expand the scope of the arguments so as not to insinuate that the basic tenets of Marxism already stated are the only ones that should be relied on in this discussion. And that is also not to argue that Cultural Poetics itself offers a full interpretation; rather, in the discussion I undertake, it serves as a complement to Marxism. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 12 ii. Cultural Poetics I see Cultural Poetics as helpful in the discussion and analysis of the works by Kourouma and Ali. It challenges Old Historicism which assumes that historians can articulate an internally consistent worldview of any group of people with an accurate and objective picture. Cultural Poetics says that all productions of history are subjective. People‟s biases often tend to affect their interpretation of the past, so that for the Cultural Poetics critic, history is unable to give us an entirely accurate understanding of past events or a people‟s worldview. Cultural Poetics: posits that history itself is one of many discourses or ways of thinking about and understanding the world… It therefore gives its followers the facility to analyse literary texts by highlighting the interrelatedness of all human activities, admits its own prejudices, and gives a more complete understanding of a text (Bressler 2003: 181). Overall, Cultural Poetics postulates the interconnectedness of all human activities. For the Cultural Poetics critic everything we do is connected to and is a product of our cultures – so that no act in our cultures can be insignificant. Cultural Poetics critics hold that we all have our biases and can never be fully objective. They insist that history and literature must be analysed together and not as separate activities. Cultural Poetics critics like Catherine Gallagher, Jonathan Dolimore, and Jerome McGann view a text as “culture in action” (ibid). Cultural Poetics critics think that: Only by examining the complex lattice-work of … interlocking forces or discourses that empower and shape our culture, and by realizing that no single discourse reveals the pathway to absolute truth about ourselves and our world, can we begin to interpret either our world or a text (Bressler, 2003:188). The implication for Islam is that it cannot be the only and the best means of understanding the world and offering the best solutions to existential problems. For the Cultural Poetics critic the concern „is that there is not one voice but many voices to be heard interpreting texts and our culture: our own, the voices of the others, the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 13 voices of the past, the voices of the present, and the voices that will be in the future‟ (Bressler2003: 190). This is what they think should be used in the interpretation of a text in what they call “thick description”, a term coined by the anthropologist, Clifford Geertz (1973). Louis Althusser (2008) also argues that „there is no ideology except by the subject and for the subject‟ (170). He means that there is no ideology except for concrete subjects, so that the destination for ideology becomes possible by the subject, meaning by the category of subject and its meaning. He supports the argument that man is by nature an ideological being. Althusser further adds that: ideology further „acts‟ or „functions‟ in such a way that it „recruits‟ subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all) or transforms the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by the very precise method which I [Althusser] have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: „Hey, you there!‟ (Althusser, 2008: 174). He adds that „when a police man or somebody else shouts or hails a particular subject it is that person that responds and he becomes the subject of that hailing‟ (ibid). To him: Ideology hails or interpellates the individuals or subjects. As ideology is eternal, I [Althusser] must now suppress the temporal form which I [Althusser] have presented the functioning of ideology and say: ideology has always-already interpellated individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals are always- already interpellated by ideology as subjects which necessarily leads to the proposition: individuals are always-already subjects.(Althusser, 2008:175) To explain the foregoing, Althusser uses an example to illustrate this ideology: the religious ideology. He chooses the Christian religious ideology „with the proviso that the same demonstration can be produced for ethical, legal, political, aesthetic ideology etc.‟ (Althusser, 2008:177). To illustrate the point, he uses God‟s call of Peter as an example. He notes that God is seen as the Subject with a capital S who calls another University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 14 subject with a small s, the two needing each other. Yet another example is God‟s call of Moses who he calls by name to signify an individual subject. Althusser notes that: God thus defines himself as the Subject par excellence: he who is through himself and for himself ( I am that I am) and he who interpellates his subject, the individual subjected to him by his very interpellation i.e. the individual named Moses, interpellated –called by his name, having recognized that it was „really‟ he who was called by God , recognizes that he is subject, a subject of God, a subject subjected to God, a subject through the Subject and subjected to the Subject: the proof: he obeys him and makes his people obey God‟s Commandments (Althusser 2008: 179). I find here that he does not limit „the proviso‟ to the Christian religion and so the same can be extended to the Islamic religion and other religions and institutions. In this discussion the proviso extends to the Islamic religion. And following from the foregoing, I will find out how the Muslim characters are „interpellated –called by their names‟ and the roles they play in the Muslim and secular communities of the texts. For instance, when Kourouma‟s Yacouba is „interpellated‟ by the Malinke Muslim family that entrust the young protagonist Birahima into his care, does he respond as positively and „satisfactorily‟ as Peter and Moses do? And also when Ali‟s narrator and young character is „called‟ by both Kumi and the latter‟s inherited Islamic religion, does he abandon his Islamic religion to accept Kumi‟s „strange‟ new religion, the Afromadiyya? Or does he keep to the inherited Allah-sanctioned Islamic calling? Also, what picture is portrayed in the works about Allah as Subject par- excellence since he is described as not being obliged to be fair about the things he does here on earth? These questions are relevant to this work in the sense that they investigate the characters‟ faithfulness to Allah and the implications for Islam. For it is argued that he Allah is the cause of all things in both Allah Is Not Obliged and The Prophet of Zongo Street. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 15 1.6 Justification for the choice of Theories In sum, Marxist theory will be used to account for why the characters sacrifice their Islamic faith to favour their social and economic needs. The tension between Islamic demands and the demands of the secular, non-spiritual society will be exposed as the theory is applied. What Cultural Poetics also suggests is that the critic should go further by looking at everything including sociology, political science, economics and so on within the social situation. This is to say that I am not attempting to make Marxist theory have a „law-like‟ status in my discussion, though it will play a very important role given the manner in which many of the religious characters subvert their religion to meet their materialistic, social, and political ends. Based on this, theories of human nature and various relevant theories of religion will be used in this discussion to expose the tension that occurs as Islam confronts social realities. 1.7 Methodology Ira Shor (1974), a Marxist critic, suggests some elements of Marxist criticism which I see as helpful in the analysis of my chosen texts: 1. Does the text raise fundamental criticism about the emptiness of life in … society? 2. How well is the fate of the individual linked organically to the nature of societal forces? What are the work‟s conflicting forces? 3. Does the protagonist defend or defect from the dominant values of society? Are those values on the ascendancy or decay? University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 16 These are but a few of many of Ira Shor‟s methodological steps which I see as relevant to this discussion. The principles above will be used to explore how and to what extent the two works under discussion reveal, as in Marxist terms, that the characters are relatively more materialistic than spiritual as they confront the realities of social life. Stephen Greenblatt, (1973) a Cultural Poetics critic, also suggests that the following points be considered when we are analysing a text from a Cultural Poetics point of view: 1. What kinds of behaviour and models of practice does the work seem to reinforce? 2. Why might readers at a particular time and place find the work compelling? 3. Are there differences between my values and the values implicit in the work I am reading? 4. Upon what social understanding does the work depend? 5. What freedom of thought or movement might be constrained implicitly or explicitly by this work? 6. What are the larger social structures with which this particular act of praise or blame might be connected? (Bressler 2003:190). By applying the above to the chosen texts in so far as Islam, itself a part of culture of discourse, is concerned, I hope that I will be able to expose the tension between Islam and other religions, and the non-religious social world and lay bare the conflicts and contradictions that emerge as a result. 1.8 Challenges The choice of the two works by Kourouma and Ali for this discussion is not without problems. One of the problems is the geographical and socio-political spaces in which University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 17 the two works are set. Whereas Ali‟s is set largely in Ghana in the fourth republic, in a period of relative peace in a democratic dispensation, Kourouma‟s is set in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the period of their civil wars, strife and anarchy. These reveal different sets of authorial attitudes to Islam. However, it is itself being used to strengthen one side of the argument: that given a more politically and economically stable society the tendency to be more religious and ethical is higher than that in a less politically and economically stable society, or vice versa, as the two texts will reveal in their characters and settings and language. The next problem is that though a lot of critical works can be found on general religious issues, critics do not often discuss the Islamic dimension in literary works. Since the focus on Islam is scanty, it has been difficult for me to have access to a wide range of secondary materials that discuss Islam, especially as it confronts socio- economic, political and other religious forces. 1.9 Scope and Limitations I am aware of the limitations in the choice of the two texts in making arguments and arriving at conclusions on a topic as dense, intricate, thorny and emotive as religion and particularly the Islamic religion which is central to this discussion. When it comes to a matter as sensitive as religious faith, the tension between „the spiritual‟ and „the real‟ rises even further. It is also clear that the two texts used for the arguments on Islam may not be able to adequately represent the religion, and that is a limitation of the work. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 18 1.10 Organization of the Study This research will be organized in five chapters. Chapter one will present the introduction which will comprise the background to the study, the statement of the problem, the objectives of the study, the significance, methodology, challenges, choice of theory, the justification for the choice of theories, scope and limitations. Chapter two will be on the review of literature. Chapter three will focus on an in-depth analysis of Islam as it comes face to face with conflicting non-Islamic forces. The chapter also discusses African writers‟ attitude to Islam along with the view of Islam and Allah in Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged. The concern here is how the author expresses the tensions between Islamic doctrine and the demands and pressures of non- Islamic social needs. It also looks at the role of the „good‟ and „bad‟ man, woman and child to see how it affects the image of Islam in the texts. Chapter four will focus on an in-depth analysis of The Prophet of Zongo Street as Islam confronts conflicting non-Islamic forces. It also looks at the view of Islam on the „good‟ and „bad‟ man, woman and child along with other social problems as they help to expose the conflicts and contradictions that are created in the text as Islam confronts social realities. Finally, chapter five will summarize the findings from the two works, conclude, state my personal response, and make recommendations for future studies. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 19 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews Islam in West African literature and critical essays on Kourouma‟s and Ali‟s works. The literature so far reviewed on Kourouma‟s and Ali‟s works does not consider Islam as a central theme. It also does not look at the manner in which Islam relates with secular society and the way the authors represent it. This review also compares Kourouma with Ali. Ali can be said to be relatively „new‟ in the literary world. Akin Adesokan (2012) writes that „Kourouma, the Ivorian novelist and playwright who died in 2003 cannot be described as “a new African writer. He was a leading figure of modern African literature” (11). Adesokan categorizes Kourouma in a group that includes great writers like Chinua Achebe, Sembene Ousmane, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ngugi wa Thiong‟o. It is for this reason that there are more critical essays on him than on Ali. Islam has been in Africa for more than a thousand years and its impact and significance cannot be overlooked. It is for this reason that some contemporary fiction writers feature Islam in their works, and Kourouma and Ali are no exceptions. Several authors, as my introduction shows, address the influence of Islam on Africa in their writing. While some portray a positive influence, others portray a negative one. Mazrui (2002) for example, writing on the influence of Islam on Africans, notes in his review of Lamin Bangoura (2000) that: The one novel that would be particularly vulnerable to Orientalist interpretation is Ibrahim Twahir‟s quasi-fundamentalist the Last Imam. Interestingly enough, we are told, this is a novel that has so far received no critical attention; Bangoura takes the opportunity to fill this gap. In the process he compares Twahir‟s fiction with the works of both Cheikh Hamidou Kane and Ahmadou Kourouma to unveil the varied nature of the relationship between Islam and indigenous Africa. The review leads University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 20 once again to the problematic question of what it means “to be black or African in an Africa where religious loyalties turn out to be more important than ethnic, racial or national loyalties” (191). Mazrui points out the influence of Islam on Africans. He shows that Africans are torn between the realities of life and „religious loyalties‟. He indicates though that Africans are more religious than „ethnic, racial or national‟, or material. This is to say that when the Muslim characters are confronted with material realities in Twahir‟s The Last Imam they privilege the religious. I however point out that though Africans seem to show „religious loyalties‟, when they are confronted with material realities they tend to be more concerned with them than the religious and spiritual. The religious and spiritual themselves are used to meet their socio-economic and political needs. This attitude is noticed in Kourouma‟s and Ali‟s works in this discussion. Allah Is not Obliged has earned critical acclaim in France, winning the Prix Renaudot, le Prix Goncourt de Lyceens (2000), and appearing on the short list for the Goncourt. Adele King (2001) opines that the novel repeats the theme in the Suns of Independence in which a young girl barely escapes death after a botched excision. The equivalent of this in Allah Is Not Obliged is Birahima‟s escape from Togoballa in search of a proper Islamic education in war torn Liberia and Sierra Leone but finally finds himself following his material interest, not the religious. In King‟s description of the Muslim character, El Hajj Yacouba, who actually wins the chance to lead Birahima to Liberia and Sierra Leone, the latter does not mention his Muslim identity but rather his being a fetish priest, magician, and money multiplier. This adds to the protagonist‟s, and his antagonist‟s, pursuit of their material interest rather than the dictates of Islam. Contrary to Islamic demand for purity of thought and language, Birahima‟s language is fraught with curses, which raises questions as to why he puts up this kind of University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 21 behaviour. One would have thought that as a Muslim child going through life in the hands of Muslim parents he should not be so badly presented. My questions then are: who or what has raised Birahima this way? Has Birahima strayed from the norms of the Malinke Muslim community because of the community‟s own straying away from its norms or is it an aberrant behaviour he is putting up? Might it be that he is so insufferable that the community finds him difficult to handle? And to what extent has his Muslim guardian and other Muslim characters either helped or worsened his situation? What impact does his behaviour have on Islam which he is expected to positively represent? The review also looks at the connection between Islam and socio-political problems in the novels of Kourouma. In the conclusion to her review King observes that: several commentators have mentioned how critical the novel is not only of the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but of much of West African culture –prevalence of bribery, tribal tensions, belief in fetish magic. … There is hardly an admirable character in the book. While he [Kourouma] attacks the Nigerian forces of ECOMOG, Sani Abacha, and Houphouet Boigny, Kourouma describes Western powers as naïve rather than criminal (King 2001:120). King‟s view that „there is hardly an admirable character in the book‟, and that the novel is critical of the corrupt practices that have become characteristic of West African societies support my discussion of the way Islam is portrayed in the work. I argue that the Muslim characters that Kourouma presents to us are not „admirable‟ and thus presents a bad impression of themselves and the religion Kourouma has chosen them to represent. Since King observes that hardly do we find any admirable character in Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged, it confirms my view that the religious characters themselves are part of the group and that is why we will find in the selected texts distasteful behaviours put up by all the Muslim characters and indeed all the other religious and political characters. I find, however, that King does not look at the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 22 religious underpinnings of the behaviour of the Muslim characters and their effect on Islam; my work looks at them. King mentions bribery, tribal conflicts and fetish magic as components of what he calls „West African culture‟ in Allah Is Not Obliged. But, this conflicts with the positive portrayal of African Muslims in Twahir‟s The Last Imam. For his part, Jean Ouédraogo (2007) observes that Kourouma‟s novels usually have politics as a central theme. The politics mainly centre on attacking his foe, Felix Houphouet Boigny, who had Kourouma and other critics of his government sent to jail as a result of a suspected coup attempt in 1963. However, according to Ouédraogo, it would be a mistake for readers to consider Kourouma‟s works „as history manuals despite their obvious penchant for testimonial or denunciation‟ (77). To Ouédraogo, Kourouma has been lauded as truth teller extraordinaire by readers prompt to see in the chunky details of his writing, nuggets of African political life from the colonial era through decolonization, the cold war, and finally the pervasive civil wars of the last decades, Kourouma reminds us that his work remains first and foremost fiction feigning the autobiographical. Through the complicity of the readers … the fictional is transformed into the national…At the same time, the derision and parody of specific cultural aspects often end up being perceived and received as authentic discourse or real occurrences by less informed readers. In skillfully blending facts and fiction, Kourouma brought his African and Western readership to a mesmerizing point (ibid). The „chunky details‟ of Kourouma's works which include social, cultural, political and religious matters are brought up in this thesis. I find that Ouedraogo dwells so much on the political that he fails to see the religious. The result is that it gives a myopic view of the problems depicted in the novel. Ouedraogo himself observes that Kourouma makes a „parody of specific cultural aspects‟ and I add that the parody does not exclude the characters that represent the religions. My discussion looks at University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 23 how Kourouma makes a parody of Muslim characters in his work, and the implications this has for the religion. Ouédraogo continues that within a space of forty years of not many books, „Kourouma, the transplant of the Malinke oral tradition and accidental writer, was able to largely impact African letters over the last forty years, revolutionizing Francophone literature in the same stride. That he attained such heights speaks of his mastery rather than the quantity of his words.‟(79). That is to say that though Kourouma does not have many books to his credit, the few he has are rich in representing Francophone literature especially the manner in which he uses the indigenized French in his works. The manner is in adulterating the French language with local expressions. What I call „adulteration‟ is also seen in Kourouma adulterating not only the sanctity of Islam but all other religions in his work. Ouédraogo adds that Research in African Literatures continues to contribute to the review of Kourouma‟s literary productions. In many readings and interpretations of his oeuvre Kourouma is acknowledged for his originality of vision and quality of his aesthetic form. A very important point he notes from Justin Bisanswa (2007) is that in Kourouma‟s novels: what remains is a recognizable world of mock griots, vacuous war feats, lies, and tormented characters who, created to live in epic conditions[…] find themselves confronted with a world of their ambitions‟ (ibid). Ouédraogo concludes his view of Kourouma by making reference to Carol Coates (2001) who argues that Kourouma was simply engrossed in the affairs of Houphouet Boigny, noting that, „Kourouma‟s novels all provide this recognizable geographic anchor and constant reference to its „wise‟ leader, thus making peripheral all other central themes and characters‟(80). This study argues that the apparent peripheralness University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 24 of the subject of religion lacks substance in a lot of African literature. For instance, Coates and Ouédraogo themselves acknowledge that such issues are central to Kourouma‟s works and this thesis explores the central role that Islam plays in his work. Ouédraogo himself talks about „the chunky details‟ of Kourouma‟s writing. For this reason my thesis takes up one of them –Islam –and discusses its representation in the works I have chosen for my discussion. Muslim characters are described as liars; confused in the turbulence of the war setting, and as they are „confronted with a world of their ambitions‟ they contradict themselves in their religious calling. In another vein, Richard K. Priebe (2005), commenting on Kourouma‟s novel, notes that: The title Allah Is Not Obliged comes from the Qur‟an and the words are used by the naïve central character as a mantra-like response to all his horrific experience. The model seems to be Voltaire, namely Candide and his “best of all possible worlds”. Kourouma is brilliant in taking on those who would find refuge in organized religion (Christianity no less than Islam) and those who would idealize African traditions (56). Priebe‟s view of Kourouma‟s attitude to religion enables us to see the way religious characters confront the world of suffering and confusion. Non-religious issues like putting food on the table and making ends meet in society seem forever in conflict with religious precepts. Again, following from Priebe‟s view we can see a mockery of Islamic characters. To what extent can we consider this a mockery? To say that „Kourouma is brilliant in taking on those who will take refuge in organized religion…‟ is to imply that the happenings in the fictional world of Kourouma are so horrendous that not even Islam –or any other religion –is capable of protecting those who put their trust in it. It should be noted here though that Priebe, just as the novel itself reveals, does not mention only one religion but all. In comparing the hardships that Birahima has to go through to those of Voltaire‟s Candide, Priebe exposes the enormity of the situation which a Muslim child has to University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 25 experience, respond to and adapt to. This questions what Islam can do for its followers in the face of other hostile religious and non-religious forces. Kourouma‟s use of the child who suffers the hardships along with the older people is indicative of the intensity of such suffering in the society in which his novel is set. If an inexperienced and innocent Muslim child should undergo suffering, then we should ask to what extent his Muslim elders help to overcome them. The central concern of Priebe is violence in Allah Is Not Obliged. What he does is investigate how violence features in literature and the community especially after what has become known as the 9/11 disaster. Priebe further comments on the introduction of Birahima to the reality of violence. Birahima thinks that he is leaving Togoballa for a better life through a „deus ex machina‟ intervention, which is, the invitation of the supernatural, and the religious into the realities of social life, but worse things rather happen. The supernatural does not support him in his struggles; the Marxist material demands instead dictate his choices. Even though Priebe thinks that Birahima confronts the problem of violence, I find that Birahima‟s problem is similar to that in Togoballa, except that in Liberia and Sierra Leone he wields guns and kills people, a worse scenario than the Togoballa evils. Therefore it is even ironic, because the message „in a safe country under the protection of a relative‟ is but the opposite of his actual predicament. For indeed what he goes through in Liberia and Sierra Leone, with no formal education is a „miseducation‟ (John Walsh: 2008), for example, in the wielding of guns and the resultant violence. Birahima does not seem in any way to believe in how Islam can save him from the harsh, rotten and hopeless conditions in which he finds himself. Moreover, many religions in the world cannot be absolved of the problem and blame of violence. Interestingly, the different religions accuse each other of being violent. In Kourouma‟s novel the three major University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 26 religions are caught up in violence which contributes to worsening it. Yet their followers deceive themselves that they are „good‟ religious people. Questions arise on the role Islamic guardians play in the life of the helpless children and other characters including women amidst the horrors of homelessness. For example, Celia McMichael (2002) reports that: Islam and faith in Allah became an important source of strength. Women recall the war in terms of anger, fear, violence, chaos, loss of trust and social breakdown. The immediacy and horror of the war was evoked through descriptions of people dying of starvation, dead bodies outside people‟s homes, witnessing murders, family separation, soldiers raping women, children going missing only to be found with their throats slit (183). In comparing this scene of people experiencing conflict in Somalia with the scenes in Liberia and Sierra Leone in Kourouma‟s fiction we find that the horrors they endure are similar but the hope that Allah and Islam give the former is absent in the latter. In Allah Is Not Obliged Allah is very distant, for which reason the characters engage in all forms of vice to survive. And this is one reason why the narrator asks if Allah is obliged to be fair about the things he does here on earth. In a related development, though contrary to McMichael‟s, Christiane Ndiaye (2002) notes that: children as well as women, in this novel adopt an „evil‟ and „virile‟ behaviour, brandishing their AK-47s and engaging in killings that are all the more shocking because they seem inconsistent with a child‟s nature (Ndiaye 2002: 104). This shows the behaviour of women and children in the face of the difficulties of war. Their religious affiliations are sacrificed in the circumstance of the war. They are out there not to follow Islam –or any other religion –but to survive as they resort to violent behaviour thereby contradicting the faith they hold. Kourouma is vociferous about this in Allah Is Not Obliged. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 27 Commenting on the „violent‟ Muslim child narrator, Vivan Steemers (2012) notes that child soldiers have become very important „expendable combat troops‟. This shows that war-wrecked African societies have rejected children. Instead of offering them education, they see them as „expendable combat troops‟. Children are forced to commit the worst atrocities so that the interest of the avaricious political power seekers and material minded religious men and women will be met. The realities of the conflict between the interest of the child narrator and that of the greedy adult guardian are made more palpable in Kourouma‟s use of language, to reflect the complexity of the tension. Steemers, referring to Djian (1995) on the complexities of the realities, takes up Kourouma‟s own words: „it is the search for words that make me suffer the most; there are too many African realities that are indescribable in French.‟(41) And that is why Kourouma uses the indigenized French in his narrative so that he will be able to tell the complex realities of the African in a less difficult way. In my view one of „the complex realities‟ is how Muslims and other religious people react to non-religious issues. A part of the complex realities that the indigenized French has to confront is the tension between Islam and the material –a tension which the English translation has also not been able to solve. In addition to the argument in favour of the material essence Akin Adesokan, (2012) commenting on the socio-political situation, a part of the material in the novel, opines that: the child-soldier novel is surely a creature of the continent‟s complicated wars, which are in turn produced by perennial struggles with natural resources, the international arms trade and a modern history of unequal ethnic and social relations. But it is also a creature of the market: “a preteen child” given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope, and a tiny wage” (thus goes the blurb description of Birahima, the novel‟s protagonist.) It is easily recognizable within the matrix of the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 28 commodity form in which certain kinds of post-colonial reality find their niche. Allah Is Not Obliged differs from the other works in the genre in the way it straddles the two fields, reflexively combining certain accents of Francophone writing with the humanist politics of Kourouma the post-colonial writer (12). The complicated wars are triggered by the socio-economic and political struggles facing the characters. The protagonist child narrator has to confront the struggles ironically not with the power and promise that Islam should offer but the symbol of violence –the A-K 47 Kalashnikov. Because Adesokan‟s concern in his essay is the question of audience, to whom Kourouma presents the complexity of the African reality of which Islam is part, he asks, to whom is Birahima explaining stuff? The answer is obviously the reader. Who is the reader? The answer to this question is not so obvious. With ambiguous reverence for French and the gory details of a series of complicated wars, this rhetorical choice makes it all the easier to think of the novel as a deliberate attempt to reproduce cultural prejudices for the titillation of foreign readers all too familiar with negative images of life at the heart of “African darkness.” The intellectual limitations of the narrator, like the emotional innocence of Kambili, becomes the pretext for presenting the complexity of socio-political realities of West Africa as immanent, a word that, he explains, means “that which is inherent, which comes from the very nature of the thing itself (14). Though Adesokan‟s concern is the question of audience he does not leave out the socio-political and economic situation in which the novel is set. However, he fails to see the effect of the religious on the situation. The child soldier and narrator thus becomes a creation of the social conditions of the African situation. Adesokan notes that the child as part of the society seems not to have any bright future. I ask what the authorized Muslim elders contribute to giving him a „good‟ Islamic upbringing. We find that since „there is hardly an admirable character in the book‟, the religious people themselves are not „good‟ and cannot impart any goodness to the child. In that case what is the value of the religion they profess allegiance? What image of Islam is University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 29 portrayed in this case? Or is it that the turbulent war setting itself makes everything in it including Islam appear turbulent too? These issues present contradiction with Islam‟s goal of creating „good‟ followers. In addition to the discussion of the problems Kourouma presents in the novel Augustine H. Asaah (2009) notes that, „as a result of unprecedented migration in our contemporary world, identity related themes, border issues and hybridization have often occupied centre stage in academic and socio-political debates. Not insulated from these socio-cultural currents, African literature has often been a valorized site of displacement-related discourse‟ (639). These problems, I find, have not been solved by Islam as presented in Kourouma‟s novel. He adds that his paper contributes to the above dialogue by looking at the issue on three main points, namely the way Kourouma thematizes Pan-Africanism, deteritorialization and identity. For Asaah, Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged situates for the first time, the malaise of cross-border life in named countries: Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The context of genocidal warfare, tribal politics, anarchy, and political manipulation provides the author with the chance to chronicle and deplore the failures of the African nation state, the bad faith of West African peace keepers, and the ill-disposition of African leaders to Pan-Africanism (647). According to Asaah „a fundamental criticism that can be levelled against Kourouma is that whereas his novels can be read as a negative evaluation of the African post colony, inter-African migration, and the Pan-Africanist project, he does not offer unambiguous messianic messages of hope to challenge and transcend the ambient nexus of distress and anomy that frames his works.‟(650). However, on Kourouma‟s language he observes that the Ivorian author‟s „narratives generally convince us of their positive contribution to the dialogue of cultures and the building of bridges across differences thus giving more meaning to the location of life and culture in the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 30 realm of the beyond‟(ibid). The problem I find though, is that Islam a part „of [the] life and culture in the realm of the beyond‟ of the protagonist narrator and all the other characters offers no „meaning‟ and capitulates to the Marxist material realities. In connection with Kourouma‟s technique, Susan Gasster-Carrierre (2002) takes a look at Kourouma‟s choice of setting for the novel. She notes that the war-wrecked setting finds in it a child soldier who „tells a picaresque, journalistic horror story in which he goes from one encounter to another with warlord, rival warlord diamond smuggler, grigriman(sorcerer), manic priest‟(826). This presents an irony of situation. One would have thought that the Muslim guardian by reason of his religion would not be described in this negative fashion. Gasster-Carrierre gives a picture of Birahima in army uniform too big for him and describes the painful life that awaits him at the war front. Gasster-Carrierre also looks at the language Kourouma uses. She says that „the language is at first heavily deformed as “le francais de Moussa,” the street language of Cote d‟Ivoire, while also noting that the child narrator, even though he has had almost no formal education has been given four dictionaries which he regularly consults as he uses strange words in the narration of the story. Gasster-Carrierre also observes that Kourouma‟s concern in the novel is not on the question of language, as Steemers for example observes. She adds that it mainly concerns the civil wars. She notes that the Muslim child narrator, Birahima, tells the story on two levels: First, “Birahima is a child who is in the middle of the atrocities around him, adds experience to experience, anecdote to anecdote because he does not have the adult‟s paradigms for a moral understanding of what he is living through” (827). Second, “Birahima tells us that tribal war means strong men gathering as many resources for themselves as possible while the international community does nothing” (ibid). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 31 However, the object of the protagonist‟s „epic‟ journey to Sierra Leone is to keep to his Islamic belief, but the combined forces of the civil wars and his antagonist Muslim guardian would not allow him to pursue his dreams. The material presence found in the realities of the wars rather prevails. Moreover, Gasster-Carrierre observes that „the point of view is never one of Africa as victim of the West but rather, insofar as the turmoil of destruction and cruelty can be interpreted, the expectation that an African who comes to power will as much as any other cynic, take advantage of the possibilities in order to amass unlimited wealth‟(ibid). This is not dissimilar to Kourouma‟s EL Hajj‟s invested power which he corrupts by using his own Muslim nephew as an instrument for making wealth a thing which this discussion shows is of paramount concern to the Muslim characters. This further supports the Marxist Materialist argument, the central basis of this discussion. Gasster-Carrierre also talks about the structure of Allah Is Not Obliged describing it as „circular‟. She explains this to mean that at the end of the story, Birahima begins the story all over again when he is asked a question about his life. She also observes that „the situation is not parallel but spiral, moving Birahima and Africa with him farther from the hope of real childhood, safety, and justice for which he was searching when he set out from home‟(827). I find that she dilates on Kourouma‟s use of language, politics, and structure of the work but only makes passing references to issues of Islam, a religion that is central to Kourouma‟s work. I find also that Gasster-Carrierre mentions Birahima‟s quest for hope, but the desire for hope eludes him even though he has been placed in the „safe hands‟ of his Muslim uncle and guardian, Yacouba. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 32 Regarding Islam and its relation with West African culture John Walsh (2008) notes, for example, the blend of the Malinke culture with Islam. He finds that there is a marriage between Islam and African tradition. He compares two Malinke Muslim characters –Camara Laye‟s Laye and Ahmadou Kourouma‟s Birahima, revealing both differences and similarities between them. The similarity is that they are both little children who are Muslim with African traditional background while the difference is that whereas Laye enjoys a proper Malinke-Islamic family upbringing and formal education, Birahima gets none of it finds himself in the streets with bad language, violence and drug addiction contrary to his Islamic and African traditional upbringing. Walsh notes that Birahima praises the Malinke culture to which he belongs, painting a good picture of his people in their praying five times a day, as the Qur‟an recommends and not in their eating pork or drinking alcohol. However, beautiful though these pictures of Islamic adherence seem, and for all the good impression that the Malinke people and their culture seem to portray, what is not beautiful is the child‟s depraved heart and his proclivity for evil even though he knows and believes in the principles of Islam. I ask then whether it is the Islamic dogma that matters or the moral practices in overcoming the forces that seek to conquer the Islamic faith. Furthermore, Walsh points out that Birahima depicts a post-colonial child who embarks on a journey of „miseducation‟. But the young Birahima has to struggle with the difficulties and engage in the depraved order of the day of which every character, religious or non-religious, becomes victim. The „miseducation‟ is Walsh‟s way of drawing the attention of the African society to the need to ensure „re-education and regeneration‟ (Achebe, 1965: 59). It is also Kourouma‟s way of revealing the chaotic situation in the world of the novel. Children should not become child soldiers but proper and disciplined school children with knowledge of their inherited African University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 33 culture. But Birahima lacks both a proper Islamic education and a good understanding of his own Malinke (African) culture. Walsh adds that Birahima‟s „travelling companion is Yacouba, a marabout who turns out to be a con man. Together, they are a pair of survivors, individuals who eke out an existence in the margins of corruption and abusive power‟ (Walsh 2008:192). My view is that they eke out an existence at the expense of Islam‟s ideals, engaging in all forms of evil. Walsh also notes that “… as a collective their identities splinter into several aliases that allow them to move fluidly between groups. While Birahima is a street child without fear and beyond reproach, „the small soldier‟, Yacouba is also valued as a „powerful grigriman against hissing bullets” (105). Allah Is Not Obliged‟s built-in dictionary defines a grigriman as a juju man. He adds that by endowing Yacouba with multiple roles, Kourouma brings to light the power that the marabout has in contemporary West African Muslim societies. The protection he offers also gives him a certain amount of security in the face of superstitious warlords but this foster care keeps Birahima on the path to self-destruction –Yacouba as a “miseducator” (Walsh 2008:192). However, Yacouba is a Muslim, a powerful El Hajj, Kourouma tells us, except that Yacouba contradicts his Islamic religion by behaving more like a juju man than a Muslim. He is rather a powerful „grigriman‟ against hissing bullets and not a powerful El Hajj. This further shows how he contradicts his Islamic belief. Walsh continues with the view that: Birahima is a young West African picaro or trickster, a depraved child whose quest for stability and redemption is always deferred: he will never be united with his aunt. Unlike the traditional bildungsroman quest, which takes the young hero through a secure bourgeois society, the itinerary of Allah N’est Pas Obligé takes its tragicomic characters through societies that have been torn apart. In the place of a hero to build a University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 34 meaningful life, we read Birahima‟s vulgar disdain for everything around him as the hopelessness of a child abandoned to ethnic warfare‟ (ibid). Here we find that Birahima‟s Muslim guardian has abandoned him causing him to cast doubt on Islam. Walsh says that „the novel itself focuses on death at the expense of the protagonist‟s formation. In Allah N’est Pas Obligé, Kourouma explores the interaction between homelessness and refuge; ways of marginalized living that are the tragic consequences of war‟ (ibid). I argue in addition to Walsh‟s that the „interaction‟ does not exclude Islam whose influence on the war setting is made palpable in the representative Muslim characters. In a related development, Nelly Lecomte, Dana Rufolo and Marie-France Bauvir (2005) observe that Allah Is Not Obliged „…is set within the context of conflict with Islam. Magic which derives from animistic thought is being used unscrupulously by men who are willing to exploit the ancient beliefs of their people.‟(198). Kourouma creates a tension amidst the chaos of the war setting, and Islam –Peace. Lecomte, Rufolo and Bauvir look at the political and sociological advantage of the use of fetish power by characters in the war setting. They note that the people‟s belief in it is very strong because they think that it can get them the security they need in the turbulent war front. They describe the makers of the fetish symbols as „false magicians [who] possess an active imagination that allows them to convince scientifically ignorant people that they can control and manipulate natural forces‟ (198). They add that magical thought „is always present in traditional black African society. Therefore magic plays an important role in this [Kourouma‟s] work. Its influence is felt everywhere.‟ (ibid). They describe magic as “ „a kind of last resort to situations where a large part has been left to fate, or where man feels insecure, where he is exposed to danger, war University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 35 illness, or to severe climatic conditions‟… magic is also necessary for the healing of illnesses”(200) and „we have to keep beliefs –and fears –going . It is the mission of the sorcerer. But does he only realize his trickery? Isn‟t the use of magic just a way to make money? The sorcerer, Yacouba decorates himself with fetishes, like greenish fangs, so as to enter completely into magical thought and to impress people around him. In the same way, Balla covers himself with amulets to appear more credible‟ (203). In all, the central concern of Lecomte, Rufolo and Bauvir has been on the way magic is used to manipulate people to extort money from them. I find in the observations made by Lecomte, Rufolo and Bauvir that Islam at one point excludes the animist and at another actually accepts it. This situation creates confusion about the position of Islam on magic and animism. I look at the way some characters parade as Muslims and yet yoke themselves with Christianity and animism to corrupt themselves by placing their material interests first. There is also the view that Muslim characters practise syncretism with the animist and Christian characters to contradict its doctrine. Lecomte, Rufolo and Bauvir add that: It seems that magic and religion are mutually exclusive. Animists make use of ritual practices; it is not the case for Muslims. The two communities do not want to mix… the Muslim community even despises the animist one. Before colonization, animists were still naked. They are the true autochthones; they do not know Allah and are nasty. Muslims consider them as savage and primitive people… they are worshippers, nonbelievers, fetishists savages and sorcerers. But actually religions mix with each other and result in syncretism (203). This observation made in the foregoing forms part of the discussion I seek to undertake in this work. The case in which Islam accepts other religions at some points and excludes them in others is brought up and discussed in the war environment that University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 36 Kourouma places his avaricious Islamic characters. This creates a paradox and gives a bad reflection of Islam. On Ali it has been observed that he is still a relatively new writer and there are not many relevant critical works on The Prophet Of Zongo Street. Therefore, I hope that my discussion of Islam in the text as Islam confronts the social, economic and political forces will contribute to criticism on it. However, the feature of Ali's "Mallam Sile" story in the New York Times (2005) magazine marked Ali‟s breakthrough in the literary world. Ali also belongs to the West African oral and short story tradition, and relevant criticism on Islam in some literature throws light on Ali‟s literary style and its implications for Islam. Carine Bourget (2010) reviews Donald R. Wehrs (2008) on some African works written between the 1950s and the 1990s. In this study Wehrs “directly and robustly engages Islamic ethical critique of egoism and idolatry” (184). Commenting on Wehrs‟ work Bourget notes some inadequacies especially with its lack of Islamic sources to support the arguments. Bourget finds for example that „prayer‟ is used instead of the Arab Islamic vocabulary of the “shahada”, a pillar of Islam. Although Bourget finds some things wrong with Wehrs‟ work she considers the entire work as one “that sheds a new light on… literature”(185) in her discussion of Laye‟s African Child, Kane‟s Ambiguous Adventure, Kourouma‟s The Suns of Independence Ouologuem‟s Bound to Violence among others. Bourget‟s view ends on the observation that “Wehrs‟ work is a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship analyzing Islam as more than a sociological feature in African literature” (Bourget:185). There is the need however to add more to this University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 37 scholarship on Islam and my discussion on Ali is an important contribution to the endeavour. Mahir Saul (2006), on Islam‟s relation with African culture, refers to a „chasm‟ between what he considers as „traditional or authentically African and Islam‟ (3). Saul notes that this „chasm‟ causes anthropologists and other scholars to ignore the important contribution of Islam to the life of West Africans. Saul advises that scholars “break the „we‟ „they‟ dichotomy between Islam and African traditions by creating a new cosmopolitanism” (ibid). But we find in Ali‟s Afromadiyyan character a rejection of any „cosmopolitanism‟ because he emphasizes his African tradition and religion while rejecting Islam and other „foreign‟ religions. In The Prophet of Zongo Street Ali‟s characterization of Kumi as a „separatist‟ and „exclusivist‟ of other religions – Islam and Christianity –supports the divide. Kumi is characterized as an African traditionalist who does not compromise his „new‟ faith as a neo-traditionalist. He is characterized as a non-conformist, unwilling to compromise his stance in acceptance of any „cosmopolitanism‟ with Islam or Christianity. Kumi‟s behaviour is the direct opposite of Saul‟s suggestion that scholars who discuss Islam should “situate West Africa in [their] imagination, by putting Islam near the center of [their] training and thinking –as a major ingredient of West Africa‟s historical heritage, and not as a „foreign‟ incursion”(4). He adds “that Islam served as a „template and vehicle of exchange of many traits between West Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe and the Middle East‟ (ibid). This according to him, created a lot of „meaning‟ not only for Muslims but for people of other religions. This observation made by Saul is raised in Ali‟s The Prophet Of Zongo Street in which Ali tackles the issue both with a rejection and acceptance. He rejects it in Kumi, his Afromadiyyan character; Suf-yan, the renegade Muslim University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 38 narrator, who is now an atheist. However, there seems to be some acceptance in his ridiculous but pious Muslim character, Mallam Sile. The level of rejection however overshadows the acceptance in the pungent arguments Kumi makes in support of African Traditional Religion and a vehement rejection of Islam and other foreign religions. On the issue of acceptance or rejection of Islam, Novian Whitsitt (2002) writing on Balaraba Yakubu‟s (1987, 1990 i, 1990 ii) literary oeuvres, speaks of the acceptance of literature in predominantly Muslim communities in Nigeria. The concern of the soyaya, (sagas of love and marital relationships literature) Whitsitt observes, is love which creates a controversy among members of the Muslim community. This controversy is highlighted in Ali‟s work in the sense in which his Muslim community approaches issues of love and marriage with public rage and contempt. The farcical public sex scene which is expected to authenticate the veracity of Ali‟s Muslim character, Rafique‟s potency, attests to the mockery of the Muslim characters on their attitude to issues of sex and marriage. In a related sense, Whitsitt looks at the impact of Yakubu‟s writing in ensuring a good moral upbringing among the young readers. Whitsitt notes that: „in order to clarify the ethical agendas, numerous writers include prefaces that unequivocally explicate the thematic direction and instructive nature on various levels. Writers without exception, feel a sense of social responsibility in advising a youth confused by the volatile social climate. Readers confirm that the literature has had the desired effect, claiming that the books are beneficial on several levels (120). Whitsitt‟s observation of the impact of the books on the Kano Muslim community is similar to what Ali does in his work though most of the Muslim characters are presented in very ludicrous fashion. The University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 39 „social climate‟ of the Zongo community is also tangled with the issues of the demands of their religion and their personal material interest. Another issue that Ali raises is the problems women face in male dominated Muslim societies. This issue is also addressed in Yakubu‟s works, and Whitsitt notes that: the single most important consideration in the construction of Hausa feminism is the significance of Islam given that the religious faith colors virtually every aspect of social relations. Writers have attempted to negotiate the tensions between cultural/religious tradition and the elements of modernization by identifying themselves as Muslim writers who do not see these forces as incompatible entities. Regardless of the religious veracity of their claims, writers have been condemned as espousing un-Islamic teachings when condemning forced marriage, discouraging polygamy or encouraging women to further their education at the expense of the tradition of seclusion (ibid). Ali, as with Yakubu, raises these issues in his work. In Ali‟s work the women characters are in a revolt against the men. Their role in the Muslim society does not suggest subservience but power and control. The Muslim women characters in Ali‟s book relegate the Islamic religion to favour their material interest, and they are not puppets of their male counterparts. The laws of Islam to which they remain obedient are overturned so as to liberate themselves from the long established male dominance and Islam‟s support thereof. Whitsitt adds that “more than any writer, Balaraba Ramat Yakubu positions herself within this contingent of Islamic feminism” (ibid). Ali, a male writer, also invests his Muslim women characters with a lot of power in his work and by his style, adopts a male feminist attitude to the plight of women even when it means compromising their religion. Whitsitt ends her discussion with the observation that “the literature‟s defining syncretic nature operates on an artistic level as Hausa oral tradition and contemporary romance formulas amalgamate in a neoteric fashion, but the syncretic essence is better personified by the ideological admixture of seemingly opposed principles”(14). University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 40 In Ali‟s The Prophet Of Zongo Street the oral story telling fashion that he uses carries a multiple of issues much like the observation Whitsitt makes from Yakubu‟s works. Ali‟s religious imagery and language also reveal an essential literary element which allows us to comprehend his central themes. His religious imagery portrays a concern with the impact of religion on his characters‟ socio-economic and political life and how they each respond to them based on their own Marxist material interest. Finally, I find that the various critics discuss violence, children, politics and language but though Islam plays a central role in the works, they do not address its ramifications when it confronts the secular world. Therefore, my work seeks to fill the gap and add to the other discussions. It recognizes the Islamic religion as a major subject and captures how the authors use literary devices to reveal the conflict and contradiction that occur as Islam finds itself in the material world, the socio-political and economic settings, of their works. University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 41 CHAPTER THREE ISLAM IN ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED 3.0 Introduction Toward the end of the 20 th century and at the very early stage of the 21 st century, the political upheaval that hit Africa, especially the West African sub region demanded that someone write about it. Remy Ourdan (2001) writes that child victims of the Somalian civil war entreated Kourouma to write about children. Kourouma responded positively to the Somali children‟s entreaty and came out with Allah Is Not Obliged. But Kourouma did not write solely about children because it was the political atmosphere of the time that moved the children to make that request. His work therefore is heavily political: It exposes Africa‟s political tyrants of the times – Houphouet Boigny (Kourouma‟s greatest political foe), Muamar Al Quathafi, Blaise Compaore, Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor, Prince Johnson, El Hajj Koroma, Foday Sankoh and others, all of whom he presents as characters in his novel. He exposes these power drunk leaders by using heavy satire. The truth in the political mayhem is that Africa‟s leaders of that time had become so drunk with power that everything else had to be subordinated to their inordinate quest for political power. The conflict that sets the plot of the novel rolling is that a group of political leaders desires to hold on to power while another group yearns to snatch same from the hands of those who hold on to it. Given this situation, it is not surprising that the plot is packed with turbulent action from start to finish. The setting Kourouma chooses is the Liberia-Sierra Leone stormy civil war zone and era. The war actually started in Monrovia on 24 th December, 1989. From Liberia the war, having led to a lot of political complications, had spilled into Sierra Leone, University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 42 thanks to the greedy warlord, Charles Taylor. Heavily political though the novel is, Kourouma‟s ability to handle other sub themes along with the political cannot be ignored. Among them are issues related to wealth, children, the elderly, violence, women, language, and religion (Islam, Christianity, African Traditional Religion, magic, and animism). My discussion focuses on one of the sub themes –Islam –with the view to investigating how Kourouma represents it. It finds out whether the manner in which he does the representation paints a positive or negative picture of the religion. To expose conflicts and contradictions, Islam has been pitted against, socio- economic and political realities to find out how the religion responds to them. Islam is also read in its relation and responses to other religions –Christianity, and African Traditional Religion, and whether Islam excludes or agrees with them in the war setting of Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged. It can also be argued that Kourouma plants the various religions in the war zone as a „litmus test‟ to see how each of them would respond to it and vice versa. I find that largely because of the extreme trials that characterize war settings none of the religions passes the test. My aim in this chapter therefore, is to show that Kourouma‟s attitude to Islam, as with all other religions in his novel, is negative. We will find that unlike Kane, Sow Fall, and Laye who are „reverents‟ of Islam, Kourouma, like Ousmane in his atheistic days, and Armah, falls into the group of the „irreverents‟. My discussion focuses on the negative portrayal of Islam in Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged. This chapter also looks at the connection between Islam and violence, the role of the elderly in Islam, the way the elderly in Islam treat children in contemporary society, the role of women in Islam, and Islam and politics. The discussion is being done taking cognizance of the way Kourouma represents Islam in his work; that his Islamic characters are not presented „with an aura of deep reverence,‟ (Cham, 1985: 458) and University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 43 ‟„reverent apologia‟ (462), but „irreverence,‟ „caustic savaging‟ and „apostasy‟ (ibid). The chapter therefore posits that Kourouma represents Islam „radically negatively‟ and the way he does that is what I attempt to show. 3.1 Islam, Wealth and Marxist Aesthetics A central issue that Kourouma raises in Allah Is Not Obliged is the inordinate desire most of his characters including the Muslim ones have for money and how this inordinate desire affects their religious faith and their place in society. The extent to which many of the Islamic characters are involved in the desperate search for money either to survive or to make themselves extremely rich for vainglorious reasons is addressed in the war setting in which Kourouma places them. This craving for money is mocked by Kourouma as he presents his Muslim characters in such a way that they engage in all kinds of vice among which are wanton killing, stealing, abandoning or subduing their religious convictions, deceit and corruption, all these contradicting the moral values of the Islamic religion. Kourouma paints a gloomy picture of Islam when he situates his Muslim characters in the war-torn zone probably as a testing ground to see how Islam, represented by the Muslim characters, responds to it. Supposedly holy Muslim characters who should paint a good image of Islam are often found either using Islam itself as a vehicle to amass wealth or contravening the rules of the religion to do likewise. Islam is often blended with, or subordinated to juju power. The Oxford Advanced Learner‟s „Dictionary (2006) defines juju as : (i) an object used in West African magic, (ii) a type of magic in West Africa. The same dictionary also defines magic as „a secret power of appearing to make impossible things happen by saying words or doing special things. It is closely related to black magic which is believed to use the University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 44 power of the devil in order to do evil‟. A key Malinke Muslim character, Yacouba, gets his money from the desperate masses that follow him, and often he succeeds in swindling them. Kourouma reveals that Muslim characters‟ love for money is greater than their love for Allah. This is evident, for example, in the corrupt way in which Yacouba comes into wealth. But, he suddenly gets bankrupt and does everything including subverting his own El-Hajj status by taking up the position of a juju man. Kourouma presents El Hajj Yacouba in such a way that he is more of a juju man than a Muslim, thereby causing Yacouba to contradict himself and misrepresent Islam. In so doing Kourouma satirizes the Muslim characters and negatively represents the Islamic religion. Although the Muslim characters‟ bad behaviour could be due to human nature their own kin argue that Muslims are perfect. However, Kourouma‟s mockery of these characters exposes the lie in their claim. All through the novel Yacouba describes himself as „a powerful grigriman‟. From Kourouma‟s built-in dictionary “ a „grigri‟ is a protective amulet, often a piece of paper inscribed with magical incantations kept in a small leather purse which is tied above the elbow or around the neck” (8). Only on a few occasions when he wants his Islamic identity to show, depending on the circumstances, does he refer to himself as a powerful Muslim grigriman. Kourouma‟s use of Birahima, Yacouba‟s ward, exposes Kourouma‟s doubts about the future of the innocent child as he gets „mentored‟ (here used ironically and sarcastically) by a character as rotten as Yacouba. Birahima therefore becomes a victim of the evil machinations of Yacouba even though Yacouba is chosen by the Malinke Muslim family to the rejection of the animist, Balla. By their standards Balla University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 45 does not qualify for the guardianship role because they fear that he might be a bad influence on the young Muslim, Birahima. The irony of this is that it is Yacouba who persuades Saydou to try making a living in Liberia because in Yacouba‟s words: In those countries people were dying like flies, and when people are dying like flies, a marabout that can pull a chicken out of his sleeves can make piles of money, and heaps of dollars (42). That is the voice of the „holy‟ El Hajj providing us with a very interesting materialist premise from which he argues and justifies his desire to go to the war front. Straightway and contrary to the Malinke Muslim family‟s expectation that he remain a faithful Muslim guardian, Yacouba shows a magic-infested Islamic identity, in identifying himself as a marabout and juju man. This confirms Harrow‟s (1991) input on the blend of Islam with myths and African traditions. Kourouma‟s mockery of Yacouba is a way Kourouma negatively represents Islam. The setting Kourouma has chosen is a war front in which lots of people lose their lives and property. But, he places his Muslim character, Yacouba, in this same situation to serve as an opportunity for him to amass wealth by foul means. This shows a criticism of El Hajj who is scarcely referred to as a good Muslim, but rather often as a „powerful grigriman‟ who only takes interest in seeing people go through difficulties to provide him the chance to satisfy his money making interest. Here, Kourouma‟s way of portraying his Islamic characters‟ approach to money can be seen in the choices the characters make – Allah worship or money worship. Yacouba‟s behaviour makes us question his position as the „best‟ Muslim capable of taking care of Birahima and confronting political, social and economic problems. This further makes it evident that Islam capitulates to the forces of reality, and gives credence to the Marxist arguments of this thesis. Yacouba bends Islamic doctrine to University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 46 meet the demands of the socio-economic and political world. The picture Kourouma paints of Yacouba in connection with the latter‟s search for wealth is a very ugly one. Yacouba is a character whose mind is more captured by wealth than by Islam – the religion that makes him qualified to become Birahima‟s guardian so that he will impart Islamic principles to Birahima. But, Yacouba‟s wealth-enslaved mind prevents him from raising Birahima in any positively significant way except when the training is itself significantly immoral, corrupt and evil. Yacouba‟s attitude causes Birahima to think that the best way to make money is the Kalashnikov AK-47, a major symbol representing violence. And this is confirmed by other child soldiers engaged in the same act of violence. Two different ways of making wealth are seen in the two Muslim characters –the El Hajj (Yacouba) largely through magic, the young Muslim boy (Birahima) largely through violence seen in the firearm he carries. Kourouma therefore invites judgement on the influence of the elderly on the young in how to acquire wealth. Walsh‟s term „miseducation‟ comes to mind in the manner in which Yacouba corrupts the young brain – Birahima. For, he causes Birahima‟s mind to defect from the culture of peace, of a good Malinke Islamic upbringing, and of acquiring a good Islamic education as the Malinke family in Togoballa wishes for him. Yacouba‟s avariciousness causes him to renege on his acceptance to take good care of Birahima. It is a shirking of responsibility and a breach of trust. It is also a sign of failure and of acting in such a way that it is the material and not the spiritual need that is important. The religious and spiritual are themselves used to meet the demands of the socio-economic and political. That is why the spiritual needs of the religious characters are subordinated to the physical. Yacouba‟s failure to fulfil his guardianship role reminds us of Althusser‟s interpellation, only that in this University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh 47 interpellation, the positive response, unlike Peter whom Althusser refers to, is replaced with a negative behaviour that only emphasizes wealth, after