2025/03/01 by Suzanne Francis · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African history and culture analysis #Ancient history #Archaeology #Gender studies #Geography #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #History #Islam #Political Conflict and Governance #Political science #Sociology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/asr.2024.252
openalex publication_date 2025/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/10
Abstract Muslims in the Central African Republic have experienced extreme violence for more than a decade. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this article shows how the foundations for contemporary violence were created through colonial and postcolonial state-making. The civilizing mission of republican colonialism set Muslims apart. Lifestyle and mobility were never fully colonized; escape depicted difference. Nationalist liberation mythologies render Muslim citizenship as foreign, precarious, and subject to ongoing contestation. Pentecostalism, a lateral liberation philosophy presented as patriotism, provides power to anti-Muslim discourse. Violence against Muslims is situated in an accumulated “pastness” of state-making and struggle in Central African historiography.