ONLINE FIRST
published on November 22, 2024
Gabriel Jessop-Smith
https://doi.org/10.5840/asrr20241121120
The Ideology of Amadou Koufa
Local Complexities and Global Jihad in Contemporary West Africa
This article argues that, in meshing past and present and local and global contexts, Amadou Koufa¡¯s Fulani-targeting Salafi jihadist ideology is unique. It cannot be reduced to a return to the nineteenth century jihads of Usman Dan Fodio and Seku Amadu, nor to the assertion of a Salafist program imposed on the contemporary Fulani community. Koufa attempts to blend the two, in what might be called ¡®glocal¡¯ or ¡®hybrid¡¯ ideology. He has been termed a ¡®jihadist-entrepreneur¡¯, negotiating between Fulani concerns and Ansar Dine, the al-Qaeda branch active in Mali. Terming Koufa¡¯s ideology ¡®glocal¡¯ (global and local) is useful as the global ideological discourse of Salafism and the local political and social dynamics interact in a dialectical process of mutual influence. Scholars have pointed to material and economic circumstances as drivers of violence, yet Koufa relies on religion to justify violence. By drawing economic and social realities into larger paradigms (the historical and the religious) Koufa justifies and sanctifies violence in two ways: a) by invoking the Masina Empire and Seku Amadu, he construes violent reaction with historical emancipation; b) by invoking the Qur¡¯an and jihad, violence becomes a religious duty, a cleansing of the ummah from external and internal pollutants.