Understanding a 'Broken World': Islam, Ritual, and Climate Change in Mali, West Africa

In the early twenty-first century, an increasing number of Muslims in the West African state of Mali turned to religious rituals in an effort to stop the desertification of the Sahel and return to the temperate climate of the past. In order better to understand the relationship between Islam and climate change, this paper uses ethnographic research to account for the perspectives and religious interpretations that civilians in southwestern Mali had for West Africa's drying climate. It shows that Muslims in Mali commonly accounted for climate change in terms of social and political conflicts. The ritual practices that Muslims used in their everyday lives to manage peacefully the negative consequences of their increasingly arid environment are particularly striking as an example of how nature serves as an obvious symbol of the quest for an end to forms of suffering related to desertification in Mali.