A beautiful agreement between Christians and Muslims
We can't really speak of a majority religion in Côte d'Ivoire, but rather of a harmonious syncretism typical of Ivorian religious practice, always nourished by a background of animism and popular beliefs linked to village and family tradition. There is a geographical disparity, with the north predominantly Muslim and the south Christian. These different faiths and practices coexist harmoniously, and are in no way a source of division or conflict. Some sorcerers' apprentices did try to exploit these differences of obedience during the post-electoral crisis, but the sauce didn't take, and religious stigmatization has never been a factor in any of the country's troubles. Like villages, which often have their own church, Harriste temple and mosque, most of the country's towns and cities are "sectorized" into different religious districts. Even today, the major religious feasts that punctuate the annual calendar are everyone's feasts, and it's not uncommon for the same family to include both Christians and Muslims. In Côte d'Ivoire, religion transcends the divide between the different gods honored.
Muslims with a Maliki majority
Most Muslims in Côte d'Ivoire are Sunni of the Malikite rite, as is the case throughout the Maghreb and the Muslim sub-Saharan Sahel. Malikism or Malekism is one of the four madhahib, classical Sunni schools. It is based on the teachings of Imam Malik ibn Anas (711 - 795), a faqih (Islamic jurist) and theologian born in Medina. This is the same Islam that existed in Sicily and Andalusia under Muslim rule.
Four Sufi brotherhoods also exist in Côte d'Ivoire, of which the Qadiriyya and Tidjaniyya are the most popular. Until the early 20th century, the Dioulas constituted the country's main Muslim community, since the building of the Kingdom of Kong very early in history. Indeed, it was the Dioulas, Islamized by the Berber Arab traders from the Sahara with whom they traded, who introduced the religion to the country. As such, they had a special religious status, such as a monopoly on making amulets. The emergence of the dawa, a form of proselytizing aimed at converting non-Muslims, counterbalances the extensive evangelization carried out by evangelical churches. The country's Muslim population rose from 7% in 1920 to 14% and then 20% in 1960, reaching 30% of Ivorians in the 1990s, with most of the new believers in Abidjan.
Places of worship include the Kong mosque, which existed in the early days of the eponymous empire in the 11th century and attracted Islamic scholars from the four corners of the Sahel. Its architecture resembles that of Timbuktu. By 1741, Kong already boasted several mosques, including the Grande Mosquée (Missiriba), destroyed by Samory Touré around 1897. The present one was built in the early 20th century. The Grand Mosque of the Plateau in Abidjan is particularly beautiful, with its midnight-blue dome, as is the equally monumental Grand Mosque of Yamoussoukro.
Christians concentrated in the south of the country
On the Christian side, Catholics account for 17% of the population, against 11% for evangelical Protestants. Christian missionaries were present from the arrival of the first settlers in the 17th century, seeking to convert new followers and accommodate local beliefs. The Prince of Assinie, taken to the Sun King in 1688, spent 10 years at the Versailles court of Louis XIV, his godfather. He discovered his Christian faith while visiting Notre-Dame in Paris. On the lagoon coast, where the French colony was founded between Assinie and Grand-Bassam, public schools were often run by missionaries. However, they were driven out of the classrooms in 1900, following the Republican law decreeing the separation of Church and State, pushing missionaries into evangelization missions in territory with little inclination to Catholicism. The reopening of authorized private Catholic schools and the 1915 conversion to Catholicism of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who would later become the father of the nation, then influenced the Christianization of the country. It wasn't until the 1960s that evangelical Pentecostal churches began to flourish, and their practices, based on animist traditions, continue to appeal to many Ivorians in recent years. Emblematic places of worship include the charismatic Saint-Paul Cathedral on the Plateau, with its daring modernist style and triangular shape, its roof curved like a canvas stretched by the weight of the giant cross sloping towards the lagoon. There's also the famous Yamoussoukro Basilica, copied from St. Peter's in the Vatican, which Félix Houphouët-Boigny wanted for his city, but 20 meters higher than the original!
The new Pentecostal churches
Although not new, the most striking phenomenon of recent years has been the incredible proliferation of local sects and churches based on syncretic and sometimes picturesque religions with abracadabrique doctrines, most of which are more or less proven variants of Protestant Christianity, often reinterpreted: in addition to Methodists, Pentecostals and the Harrist Church (an independent, prophetic church that believes in Jesus Christ, especially in Côte d'Ivoire; founded in the early 20th century by the Liberian William Wade Harris Wury, it has belonged to the World Council of Churches since 1998), there are the Assemblies of God Church, the Papa Nouveau Church, Déima, Jésus le Rocher and the Legion of Mary, to name but a few. This proliferation of liturgies has given rise to a variety of excesses, some of which are particularly deplorable: with the prevailing malaise often providing the breeding ground for unexpected conversions, for several years now we've been witnessing the flowering of self-proclaimed "prophets", "visionaries", "apostles", "pastors", "guides", "miracle workers" and other "Prophetikos" (non-exhaustive list), a sort of new "grazers" who practice their catechism dressed as DJs, screaming their sermons into poorly tuned microphones, not hesitating to exploit the material and moral distress of their emulators. Like Guy-Vincent Kodja, a former member of the group RAS, some of these charismatic "crowd electrifiers" and charlatans come from the world of showbizz and build their preachings by applying the codes of the star system to the "religious" world. Claiming to have been suddenly enlightened, these "pastor-faroteurs" declare that they have received the supreme anointing to evangelize the masses of "lost sheep", and while the latter, incited by their "savior", devote themselves to prayers that are supposed to grant all their wishes, it is not uncommon to find the saviors in question on the front page of fashionable local celebrity magazines, or racing down the city's boulevards in the latest Porsche model imported directly from the USA.If crowds of believers are so comfortable with Protestant doctrine (and its derivatives) because of its proximity to the religious modes of expression of traditional cultures (dance, song, mystical trances, etc.), then the rogue preachers are more likely to be in awe of them.), the devout preachers find in the historical concomitance between Protestantism and economic prosperity the ideal pretext for not having to justify the source of their fortune, all the more indecent as it "grows and multiplies" on the backs of the destitute, the sheep of Panurge and docile cash cows: in addition to the tithes and offerings that the latter "voluntarily" pay to the embassies of religious madness, followers are required to pay various fees intended to finance "deliverance sessions" and "internal church activities" (goodies, 4 by 3 billboards around town, not to mention the sale of religious symbols, brochures and books published by the "prophet" and imposed on customers of these "faith supermarkets". "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"... A veritable American-style charity-business has thus developed in recent years, with large gatherings, exorcisms and live miracles to boot.
God is everywhere
While religious sentiment is extremely present in the country - a phenomenon that the years of crisis have considerably amplified - and reflected in every gesture and word of daily life, it is becoming increasingly commonplace. In every town and village in Côte d'Ivoire, you'll come across a "mountain and fire ministry" or similar, while invocation of God's protection figures prominently on billboards, maquis signs, stores and street vendors (seen and read in Abidjan, on the sign of a telephone unit retailer: "Jesus, 100 FCFA a call"), and sometimes even at the end of e-mails, memos and other official communiqués (in some local offices, days sometimes begin with collective prayer sessions). God's good graces are also invoked to close every meeting and every conversation ("May God keep you", "Thank God" and "Thanks be to God" have almost become punctuation marks), while in the back of the countless cabs, gbakas, trucks and other vehicles criss-crossing the city and the country, "It's God who's strong", "God's pencil has no eraser" and other "God bless Allah" (si si) flourish.
Religion does not mean deprivation
However, the chosen ones touched by the grace of Jesus, Mary, Allah and even Claude Vorilhon (Raël) are just as likely as "miscreants" to give in to the call of the party and the farotage. While religious impulses often succumb to the latest avatars of coupé-décalé, fashionable in this vast capital of enjaillements that is Abidjan, religion quickly takes over at the slightest opportunity, and whenever the time comes to pray and perform one's "spiritual cleansing" by going to church or temple. But the ambivalence is well lived, all the more so as Ivoirians ignore Western Cartesianism, which would have it that a fervent churchgoer, obeying an implacable behavioral logic, neither drinks nor gaily flaunts himself in festive places under the favor of the night. In Côte d'Ivoire, and all the more so in the context of uncertainty and precariousness, the moral survival of citizens translates almost schizophrenically into an equal propensity to pray and party.
Animist healers
If a believer fails an exam for the umpteenth time or misses a job interview, it's because he or she is the victim of a "mystical block" or "totem". If a believer can't get pregnant because she's sterile, it's because some cousin in the village or her jealous husband's second office has cast a spell on her. When no satisfactory explanation can be put forward, people hastily attribute their misfortune to the moods of a God or a fetish, and go off to consult their "healer". All means are used to get rid of the "evil eye" and gain access to the wonders promised by unscrupulous bishops: adorn yourself with a talisman that you keep in your pocket or wear around your kidneys or fingers, in the form of a ring; sacrifice an animal and bury its bones at the foot of the tree in the communal courtyard; recover the hair or personal effects of so-and-so; spit on the ground at the sight of a black cat... And so it is that, in the shadows of the backyards, marabouts and fetishists continue to meet with the approval of the masses, and that sacrifices and trafficking of all kinds are regularly practiced, in the hope of improving a daily life that we would like to be rosier.
The legend of Queen Pokou
Queen Abla Pokou really existed in the 18th century, guiding her people, a branch of the Akan from the Ashanti kingdom, to the lands of Côte d'Ivoire, ahead of the first Baule queen. Nevertheless, the story of this heroine is nourished by a legend, that of the sacrifice of her only son to enable her people to cross the Comoé River. She is part of the collective unconscious. The word "Baoulé" comes from "Ba-ouli", meaning "the child is dead".
In the 17th century, the powerful Ashanti kingdom at its height covered two-thirds of present-day Ghana. The matrilineal societal model of this ethnic group appointed the son of the king's sister as crown prince, rather than the son of his brother. The queen, niece of King Oseï Tutu, found herself at the heart of a fratricidal succession struggle when the king died, and then when her nephew (her sister's son) died. Itsa, an old uncle from the ruling family, and Dakon, Abla Pokou's second brother, vie for the throne. Dakon is killed in Kumasi, the kingdom's capital. As in a Greek tragedy, Queen Pokou realizes that Itsa will do the same to her and her son to achieve his ends. So she decides to flee with her family, her servants, her loyal soldiers and all the people who recognize themselves in her and Dakon. Blocked in their flight by the winter flooding of the Comoé River, a natural barrier to the lands of their ancestors, and hot on the heels of their pursuers, legend has it that Queen Pokou raised her arms to the sky, turned to her soothsayer and asked, "Tell us what the genie of this river wants to let us pass! The old man is said to have replied: "Queen, the river is angry, and it will not be appeased until we have given it our most prized possession as an offering." Immediately, the women would have given their ornaments of gold and ivory; the men their bulls and rams. But the soothsayer would have specified: "What we hold most dear are our sons! No one would offer their own as a sacrifice. The queen would have raised the child above her, contemplating him one last time before hurling him into the river's boiling spasms. The waters then abruptly subsided and receded up to their knees, allowing the tribe to cross to the lands of central Côte d'Ivoire, where the Baoulé now live. The queen sobbed "ba-ouli" and the child died, giving her name to her people. She died shortly after the tribe settled in their new lands.
