Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘religious field’, this paper examines the roles available to Mauritanian clerics at different points in the country’s postcolonial history. The paper retraces the interaction between an imam, his students, and the postcolonial state. Buddāh Wuld al-Būṣayrī (1920–2009), the longtime official imam of Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott, had state backing for much of his career and was an interlocutor for heads of state. Yet he periodically wielded his symbolic capital to criticize state policies, and (...) he acted as a mentor to Salafīs, Islamists, and other activists, all without facing repression. His students and successors, however, faced an environment that was increasingly hostile to clerical dissent from the 1990s onward. Fiercer electoral competition, fragmentation within the religious field, and the advent of the Mauritanian iteration of the ‘Global War on Terror’ all undercut possibilities for clerical independence, as the state became more concerned about the constituencies for which individual clerics were perceived to speak. This case study sheds light on global dynamics in the Muslim world in an era where clerical independence is often constrained by expanding state power—including forms of ‘official Islam’ that seek to co-opt certain clerics while branding others as dissidents and troublemakers. (shrink)

Femmes de grandes tribus commerçantes, filles de bonnes familles ou de groupes statutairement méprisés, héritières rebelles ou épouses prospères, ou encore amoureuses vagabondes, les quatre businesswomen présentées dans ce travail sont, sans doute, les pionnières de la classe d’affaires féminine mauritanienne. De la fin de la période coloniale aux premiers pas de la Mauritanie indépendante, l’analyse des trajectoires professionnelles et des itinéraires personnels de ces Dames – constitués d’une multitude d’opportunismes et de pieds de nez à l’ordre social établi – (...) donne à comprendre leurs capacités à s’établir comme des notables fortunées et incontournables dans la sphère commerçante transnationale balisée par les hommes. Elles incarnent tout simplement, aux yeux du chercheur, une mise en réseau du monde bien antérieure aux théories postmodernes d’un capitalisme désorganisé. Elles incarnent en Mauritanie les protagonistes principales de success stories au féminin. (shrink)

África Occidental representa a día de hoy un lugar clave para la geopolítica del islam contemporáneo. Esta situación no es una nueva, al contrario, ya que es un territorio que históricamente ha estado ligado a la religión musulmana. Actualmente, esta región supone un lugar estratégico prioritario para los intereses de los países occidentales, de países musulmanes aliados de estos y de insurgentes y rebeldes ligados a ideologías neo-fundamentalistas. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar desde una perspectiva transdisciplinar el juego (...) geopolítico del islam en África Occidental, como influyen las diversas escuelas de pensamiento islámico contemporáneo en las identidades locales y que estrategias siguen las potencias actuales para intentar influir identitariamente en la zona. Para este propósito, abordaremos algunos hechos históricos acaecidos, especialmente, en Senegal, Mali, Nigeria y Mauritania. (shrink)

In 2011 there are 76 countries of the world still criminalising same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults. In seven of those countries homosexual acts are punishable with death penalty (i.e., Mauritania, Sudan, the northern states of Nigeria, the southern parts of Somalia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen). Homophobic (transphobic) attitudes are also frequent in many societies. However, the LGBT asylum seekers are frequently left outside the refugee definition due to many refugee qualification problems in LGBT cases. Therefore, in this article (...) the author aims to describe the main refugee qualification problems in LGBT asylum cases (i.e., criminalisation; state protection against non-state persecution; concealment of sexual or gender identity; internal protection) and propose their solutions. Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 has several important provisions including LGBT asylum seekers into otherwise gender-neutral refugee definition. Today these provisions need to be correctly interpreted and transposed into practice of the Member States. (shrink)

In 2012 there are 76 countries of the world still criminalising same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults. In seven of those countries homosexual acts are punishable with death penalty (i. e., Mauritania, Sudan, the northern states of Nigeria, the southern parts of Somalia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen). Homophobic (transphobic) attitudes are also frequent in many societies. However, the LGBT asylum seekers are frequently left outside the refugee definition due to many refugee qualification and procedural problems in LGBT cases. (...) Criminalisation, state protection against non-state persecution, concealment of sexual or gender identity, internal protection were discussed in the previous article ‘The Refugee Qualification Problems in LGBT Asylum Cases’ by Laurynas Biekša2. In this article the authors aim to describe the main procedural problems in LGBT asylum cases (i. e., credibility assessment, late disclosure, country of origin information and reception) and propose their solutions. Guiding European and international standards are laid down in the Reception Directive3, Qualification Directive4, Procedures Directive5 and UNHCR Guidance Note6. Today these standards should serve as a starting point for identifying the problems LGBT asylum seekers may have during their asylum procedures and for finding possible solutions. (shrink)

Ercole è il mito universale della salvezza, presente in tutte le culture, dall’Etiopia all’Arabia, dall’Egitto alla Mauritania, da Cartagine alla britannica Oggia (una gigantesca incisione dell'età del ferro lo disegna sull'intero ...

Although NGOs around the globe are hard at work on a number of issues, not much has been written about hierodulic slavery. Recent evidence on slavery, in general, indicates that Mauritania, for example, still has a number of individuals serving as slaves in situations where, according to local custom, a hereditary basis for the practice is instantiated. But hierodulic slavery—or slavery based on religious tradition and frequently tied to temple worship—is comparatively uncommon, and probably most prevalent in certain South (...) Asian societies. Although this type of servitude can have an enormously detrimental effect on young individuals, serious work on this issue is only now beginning. Some... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to criticize the process of securitization and militarization that has impacted European migratory policies in the last decades. To do that, first of all, I retell the case of the migratory humanitarian crisis in Canary Islands when thousands of sub-Saharan undocumented migrants crossed, in a very dangerous journey, the sea from Mauritania and Senegal. Secondly, I consider the normative level related to the moral and political meaning of tracing and retracing borders that “limit” (...) national communities discussing Will Kymlicka´s thought. His position is inspiring by the premises of egalitarian liberalism. My conclusion is that we have to deal with the creation of a new model of transnational citizenship, beyond the European construction, that could guarantee the respect for Human Righsts of undocumented migrants in the era of globalization. (shrink)

L’article montre tout d’abord, à travers l’étude de deux corpus de contes et de la gestion de faits récents de transsexualisme, en quoi la musique est constitutive de l’identité féminine dans l’ethnie maure de Mauritanie. La problématique est élargie au champ du religieux de l’aire arabo-musulmane, qui voit dans ce lien une menace pour l’ordre social et symbolique qu’il défend, avant d’être explicitée par le recours à des concepts issus de la psychanalyse. Puis il est question, à travers la description (...) d’un orchestre de musique confrérique uniquement composé de femmes, de l’ébranlement de ce schéma dans le Maroc contemporain, sous l’effet des idées féministes et de la généralisation de pratiques d’égalité entre les sexes. (shrink)