Peace in the Land of Upright People: Religion and Violence in Burkina Faso

In West Africa, religious violence has disrupted public harmony and political functioning intermittently over the last thirty years. This violence has varied in scale from localized terrorist attacks to coup d'etats and forced implementation of harsh religious law on unwilling populations. Despite creating the perception of a region wrought with political instability and religious conflict, religious violence has not reached all countries in West Africa. This article will focus on Burkina Faso, a country that has avoided religious violence and maintained social harmony despite its desperate poverty, lack of stable democratic leadership, diverse religious population and close geographic proximity to countries with various levels of religiousbased violence. Though Burkina Faso is placed near the bottom of many development indicators (including the Human Development Index, where Burkina Faso is ranked 183 out of 187 countries), its people have maintained a social harmony marked by religious tolerance. This article will explore why Burkina Faso remains comparatively peaceful and tolerant for its region, with a noticeable absence of religious-based violence and discrimination1. Many possible theories could explain Burkina Faso's atypical condition, and indeed many different factors come together to contribute to its peaceful state. These various factors will be closely examined, and an argument will be made that the communal-based living structures, the lack of any ethno-religious alliances, and the geographic dispersion of groups combine to create the present state of peace in the Land of Upright People.Conflict vs. ViolenceFor this article's purposes, 'violence' will be defined separately from 'conflict'. The significance of this difference is outlined by Rogers Brubaker and David D. in their article 'Ethnic and Nationalist Violence':It is important, that is, to ask specific questions about, and seek specific explanations for, the occurrence-and non-occurrence ... of violence in conflictual situations. These questions and explanations should be distinguished from questions and explanations of the existence, and even the intensity, of conflict. We lack strong evidence showing that higher levels of conflict (measured independently of violence) lead to higher levels of violence (Brubaker & David 1998: 426).The concept of conflict must therefore be separated from violence. Ethnicbased conflict is present today in many West-African countries, including Burkina Faso, but the escalation to violence between distinct groups rarely occurs in Burkina Faso. For the scope of this paper, violence will be defined as nation-wide political and social disorder, dissolution of effective lawenforcement, and 'direct use of force to cause bodily harm' on a widespread scale, either enacted by citizens or through military action (Brubaker & David 1998: 427). Conflict will be defined as long-standing tension or competition between locally-defined groups, potentially resulting in small-scale violent acts (usually as a result of a specific disturbance) as opposed to wide-spread acts of hate or discrimination perennially directed against a group. The level of collective identity development can also serve as a point of differentiation between conflict and violence. In his work on collective identity construction and violent collective action, Stanley Tambiah coins the terms 'focalization' and 'transvaluation' to describe the process of an action spreading from its localized origins into a wide-spread or national dispute (Tambiah 1996). In this process, a conflict or series of conflicts serve to unite distinct, local groups, forming them into a coalition tied together through mutual interest or shared animosity toward another group, thereby expanding the conflict from the local level into a wider-ranging quarrel. These terms will be applied here to describe the process of conflict transforming into violence in the West African context. …