"Islam in Africa: Between Sufism, Salafism, and Indigenous Religious Authority" with Youssouf Sangare - Timbuktu Talk

Youssouf Sangaré will discuss his research on contemporary Islam in Mali, West Africa.

This talk is in hybrid format. The in-person lecture takes place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. View the details here.

Please register to receive the Zoom link for the online talk. 

"Timbuktu Talks" is an annual lecture series featuring new books and research on Islam in Africa co-organized by ISITA at Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Talk description: This lecture examines the case of Chérif Ousmane Madani Haïdara and the Ançar Dine movement in Mali as a window into the dynamics of contemporary African Islam. The main argument is that figures like Haïdara articulate a theology of resistance, one that pushes back simultaneously against radical Islamism and against "imported" forms of Islam, whether Wahhabi or Arab-centric in orientation. This lecture will engage broader questions of religious authority, the decolonization of Islamic knowledge, and the plurality of Muslim identities in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Youssouf Sangaré is a scholar of Islamic studies specializing in modern and contemporary Muslim thought. He is currently Associate Professor (Maître de conférences) in Islamic Studies at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales - INALCO (Paris), where he also serves as Director of the Master's program in Arabic Studies and Co-Director of the Diploma in Islamic Studies. His work sits at the intersection of Islamic theology, hermeneutics, and the intellectual history of the Muslim world, with a particular focus on reformist thinkers and on the reinterpretation of Islamic sources by both classical and contemporary scholars.

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