In the previous chapter, I discussed the presence and influence of reformists and their discourses in Nioro and its hinterland, and their relationship to the understanding of Islam centred around the Sufi orders, their leaders and practices. In this chapter, I want to extend the discussion of the changes in Nioro as a social and religious landscape. Over the past few decades, there have been a number of inter-related factors helping to shape what it means to be Muslim, changing the way Islam is practised at least for some people in the town. These factors include the proliferation of Western-style education, the promulgation of notions of secularism or laïcité by the state and its agents, the more g eneral spread of ideas critical of Sufi orders, leaders and their practices, and the availability of information and ideas about Islam and other areas of knowledge from beyond the local area. Most of these relate directly or indirectly to the conditions of living in a laïc or secular postcolonial state. They also relate to the expansion of the public sphere in which Islam has been very important. The objectives of this chapter are to consider the impact of such changes on Nioro as a social and religious space. First, I discuss the nature of the postcolonial state, the complexity of relations with Muslim religious leaders, and changes in religiosity in Nioro. Second, I trace the development and contours of the public sphere in colonial and postcolonial Mali. As I will argue, the public sphere helps to encourage particular conceptions of what it means to be Muslim that are sometimes at odds with some of the local and regional conceptions discussed earlier. Such a discussion of the postcolonial state, Islam and the public sphere allows us to see some of the limits of the understanding and discourse of civil society that became so fashionable in the 1990s. Moreover, in contrast to the pervasive analytical frames of Islamic fundamentalism and political Islam, it provides greater insight into the different ways of being Muslim in postcolonial Mali and arguably much further afield.

THE POSTCOLONIAL STATE

As discussed in Chapter 2, in 1905 French law formally separated religion and state, which meant that the state should not intervene in religious matters.