La Ahmadiyya au Bénin

Denise Brégand, « La Ahmadiyya au Bénin », Archives de sciences sociales des religions [En ligne], 135 | juillet - septembre 2006, mis en ligne le 16 octobre 2009, consulté le 30 mai 2011. URL : http://assr.revues.org/3737

Brégand, Denise. 2006. La Ahmadiyya au Bénin. 73-90.

Denise Brégand

Centre d'Études d'Afrique Noire – IEP de Bordeaux

The article compares the strategies used by Ahmadiyya to establish itself in Benin, both in contexts in which Islam is in the minority and in the majority. The first part presents Ahmadiyya, a movement which was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in British-dominated India. In a religious environment marked by the spread of protestant missions and by the Hindu reformist movement Arya Samaj, he proclaimed himself a mujaddid (reformer), a muhaddath (a person to whom god speaks) and mahdi (leader). According to a recent study, his doctrine is based on the idea of continuous prophecy and draws it's inspiration from medieval sufi literature, and especially of Ibn Arabi's works. The second part explains the ups and downs of Ahmadiyya in relation to the political evolution of the country: during the last decade, freedom of workship and association allowed Ahmadiyya, as many other religious movements, to set up missions and to proselytise by methods which can be compared with the evangelical ones. The third part analyses Ahmadiyya's strategies: it understood the national political tendencies and was able to adjust to particular contexts in the South were Islam is in the minority and in the North where it is in the majority.

Keywords

Islam, transnationalism, proselytism, fundamentalism, Mahdi, Benin, Democratic Renewal

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