Islamic Associations in Cameroon: Between the Umma and the State

Abstract

Islam, insofar as it is a totalizing religion which does not distinctly separate the political from the private sphere, makes it possible for us to gauge the modalities of its relationship with state power and to envisage a future beyond national frontiers. Seen in this light, the gradual movement of Muslim agents, literati, and intellectuals into the political sphere, using associational structures qualified sometimes as religious and sometimes as cultural, demonstrates that these actors are no longer content to restrict themselves to the traditional roles of teacher and preacher. They are seeking to participate more actively in the political arena, hoping, if not to change the state, at least to establish a process of negotiation short of instituting a system of administration inspired by Islamic texts. Thus, denunciations of the betrayal of Islamic values and the political and professional marginalization suffered by Muslim intellectuals are at the center of their political discourse.¹