Introduction
Several scholarly works have examined global secularization processes to explain why individuals and groups secularize. Common explanations include socialization, the failure of intergenerational transmission, and the “disbelief syndrome” (Zuckerman et al., Reference Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale2016). Modernization, economic development, industrialization (Kasselstrand et al., Reference Kasselstrand, Zuckerman and Cragun2023: 48), and competition between religious offers (Finke and Stark, Reference Finke and Stark2000; Warner, Reference Warner1993) are also credited with secularization. Apostasy (Mauss, Reference Mauss and Bromley1998), existential security (Norris and Inglehart, Reference Norris and Inglehart2011), and rationalization (Martin, Reference Martin1978; Berger, Reference Berger1967; Wilson, Reference Wilson1969) are among the many reasons given for secularization (Quack, Reference Quack, Zuckerman and Shook2017). However, none of these works analyzes the causal relationship that exists between political crisis and secularization in the African environment. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the ability of political crises to secularize African societies. Studying the conditions and factors that sustain secularization in Africa is more topical than ever (Engelke, Reference Engelke2015; Igboin, Reference Igboin2022).
In this article, I argue that in West Africa, and more specifically in Côte d’Ivoire, crises are the breeding ground for political secularization. Fluid social circumstances seem to have an unparalleled power to separate the religions (Christianity and Islam) from the political space. Côte d’Ivoire is an illustrative example on which the paper highlights a process of political secularization underway and enormously accelerated by the crisis that occurred more intensely between 1990 and 2020. The Ivorian case demonstrates that crises create contexts that lead state secularists to question the traditions and norms that had previously governed collective interactions. Reevaluating or reshaping these foundations can lead to a more assertive project of political secularization. Côte d’Ivoire serves as a compelling and theoretically significant case for examining political secularization in Africa, as the country’s prolonged crisis creates a unique context for observing the development of secular political dynamics amid collective instability, insecurity, armed violence, and institutional collapse.
The ongoing political secularization in Côte d’Ivoire differs from societal secularization (Fox, Reference Fox, Zuckerman and Shook2017; Arzheimer, Reference Arzheimer2024: 371; Long, Reference Long2024; Copson, Reference Copson2019). The former primarily advocates for the separation of state and religion, whereas the latter strives to guarantee that religion is a personal matter and does not influence the organization of collective life. It would be a mistake to confuse these two forms of secularization or to assume that one necessarily implies the other. Moreover, political secularization does not generally aim to render religion a superfluous reality (Casanova, Reference Casanova2009; Weir, Reference Weir2015: 19).
This paper draws on eighty-five semi-structured interviews, each lasting between thirty minutes and two hours, conducted over four years (2017–2020) with religious leaders (Evangelical, Catholic, and Sunni), political figures, and civil society actors in Côte d’Ivoire. The interviews primarily encouraged participants to share their perspectives on the appropriate relationship between institutional religions and the political sphere, as well as the rules and regulations that should govern this relationship. Most interviewees were directly involved in the quarrels, supported one of the opposing groups, engaged in public debates, or played a role in resolving the conflicts that intensified the Ivorian Crisis. The religious leaders interviewed—including Catholic Bishops Paul Syméon Ahouanan and Jean-Salomon Lezoutié, prominent Imams Cissé Djiguiba Abdallah and Mamadou Dosso, and well-known Evangelical preachers such as Robert Dion and Benjamin Boni—challenged and confronted political leaders throughout the crisis. The political figures interviewed include former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan, ex-minister of communication and lawyer for the rebellion Affoussiata Bamba-Lamine, and influential ruling party cadre Lemassou Fofana, all of whom were at the forefront of pivotal moments during the crisis.
Several interviewees were victims of violence directed at clergy and places of worship, or they have witnessed such acts. Therefore, understanding the motivations of the perpetrators through the testimonies of the victims is essential. This top-down analytical approach incorporates firsthand accounts and information from those who made key decisions and took initiatives that shaped the course of the crisis. This perspective centers on political and religious leaders, rather than grassroots actors, although the latter support the implementation of political secularization measures. Highlighting the roles of elites demonstrates that processes of political secularization are frequently driven by political leaders in opposition to religious authorities. In highly religious societies like Côte d’Ivoire, when crises undermine the legitimacy of politicians, they create space for clerics to emerge as credible and trusted alternatives. As a result, confrontation between politicians and clerics becomes inevitable, fueling political secularization. Politicians may challenge institutional clerics without opposing religion itself, secularizing the state without necessarily fostering societal or cultural secularization.
The resources examined also derive from the written archives of religious institutions (such as the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Côte d’Ivoire and the Supreme Council of Imams, Mosques, and Islamic Affairs of Côte d’Ivoire—COSIM), political parties, and newspapers. I also attended more than 100 religious services and meetings in mosques, churches, and political party gatherings. These diverse gatherings were invaluable for observing and assessing the political secularization process, not only from the perspective of political figures but also from that of religious leaders, thereby confirming its existence.
The article has three parts. The first one sets the framework for the analyses carried out and explains in detail the meaning and subtlety of secularization in the Ivorian context. The second part analyzes the speeches made by political figures in support of their secularization project. The third section describes the actions taken against religious buildings and leaders. Like the speeches, these acts of violence weakened religious leaders and increased the distance between the political and religious spheres.
Crisis and political secularization: a causal relationship
As studied by scholars,Footnote 1 the cultural, economic, social, intellectual, and ideological causes of secularization have been instrumental in advancing the understanding of secularism within the social sciences. However, there is still much to discover regarding the capacity of crises to precipitate processes of political secularization in the African context. When they occur in Africa, crises appear to engender social dynamics that gradually give rise to political secularization. In this regard, Côte d’Ivoire’s case is a compelling illustration. It demonstrates the necessity to consider alternative explanations for the emergence of political secularization processes in sub-Saharan Africa.
The “Ivorian crisis” is understood here as a series of political, military, and warlike events that disrupted social equilibrium in Côte d’Ivoire over several decades, the most significant of which spanned from 1990 to 2020. The crisis is, therefore, an ongoing situation of fluidity rather than a moment of instability. Consequently, Côte d’Ivoire has experienced only one chronic crisis since the proclamation of its independence in 1960, although some scholars disagree (Dozon, Reference Dozon2011; Miran-Guyon, Reference Miran-Guyon2015; Akindès, Reference Akindès2011; Babo, Reference Babo2013; Hofnung, Reference Hofnung2011; Ahoussou-Kouadio Reference Ahoussou-Kouadio2019; Ahouanan Djro, Reference Ahouanan Djro, Bakayoko, Cissé and Grégoire2019). The hypothesis is that a single protracted crisis of postcolonial governance in Côte d’Ivoire has created the conditions for establishing political secularization over three decades.
In sub-Saharan Africa, political secularization has not yet extended to a broader societal secularization, inducing a decline in religious belief or affiliation (Van den Bosch, Reference Van den Bosch, Van den Toren, Bangura and Seed2023). Côte d’Ivoire is not an exception to this African trend. Ivorians’ worldview is still strongly influenced by religious ideas, the importance of which varies according to the cultural and intellectual background of individuals. The crisis has done little to change this. Despite their goal of state-church separation, even political secularists are no less believers and practitioners of religion. Instead, they seek to disenfranchise religion from politics. Ivorian political secularists prove right Berlinerblau’s description of “political secularism” as “an idea born of religious thinkers who contemplate religious problems and use religious vocabulary to solve them” (Berlinerblau Reference Berlinerblau2022).
In this regard, the artisans of political secularization in Côte d’Ivoire are the sons and daughters of an Africa “widely regarded as the most religious continent on the planet” (Zuckerman et al., Reference Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale2016). In Africa, the “immanent” has the opposite meaning to that given to it by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age. Religion is so embedded in everyday life in Africa that the supernatural, ancestors, masks, and spirits seem to belong to the immanent, not the transcendent (Engelke, Reference Engelke2015: 90). The political secularization spreading in Côte d’Ivoire is not an attempt to undermine religion as a cultural phenomenon. As Jonathan Fox (Reference Fox, Zuckerman and Shook2017: 106) demonstrated, political and institutional separatists have no problem with the moral traditions invented by religions and reflected in social debates and public policy-making. However, they would object to the state embracing a particular religion or allowing clerics to influence politics.
As used in this paper and concerning the Ivorian context, the word “secular” is not synonymous with “atheist,” “non-religious,” or “irreligious” since the restriction of religion to the private sphere is hardly on the agenda. Côte d’Ivoire is undergoing a strictly political secularization that has not led to “the evacuation of religion” or “the absence of religion” in everyday public interactions.
To date, the separation of political and religious spheres in Côte d’Ivoire has not resulted in any restrictions on religion or religious activities (Pew Research Center 2024).Footnote 2 According to the 2021 census, 42.5% of Ivorians are Muslim, 39.8% are Christian, and 2.2% practice traditional religions. These percentages have increased since the last census in 1998 (RGPH 2021 Footnote 3 : 41). While these figures do not provide a complete picture of the religious context in Côte d’Ivoire, they do reflect trends in the growth of religious observance in the country. The number of people identifying with a religion in Côte d’Ivoire has undoubtedly risen in recent decades. Researchers Marie Miran-Guyon (Reference Miran-Guyon2015) and Jean-Pierre Dozon (Reference Dozon2008) have offered detailed accounts of this increase in religious adherence among Ivorians. Although the ingredients for political secularization are present, the influence of collective religiosity makes them nearly imperceptible. References to religion are omnipresent in the Ivorian public space, as in most African countries, since the vast majority of sub-Saharan “say that religion is very important in their lives” (Evans Reference Evans2024).
The secularization of Ivorian society is primarily political and nuanced, having minimal effect on the way most Ivorians relate to their religious beliefs. The ongoing political crisis in the Ivory Coast has led to a deliberate and systematic effort by political actors to hinder the ability of religious leaders to mobilize opposition against the government. The overall objective of this campaign has been to create a clear distinction between the political sphere (the issues that political actors seek to exclude from the purview of religious leaders) and the domain of religion (comprising religious institutions and places of worship).
Prominent national politicians, including former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan, influential and respected ruling party member Lemassou Fofana, lawyer Affoussiata Bamba-Lamine, and Member of Parliament Karamoko Yayoro, emphasized the importance of maintaining a clear separation between religious leaders and the political sphere. They asserted that it was urgent to prohibit religious leaders from publicly commenting on political matters and assuming any form of political commitment. Political actors demanded that religious leaders stick to their responsibilities in places of worship. However, the redefinition of the conditions of access to the country’s public and political realm had nothing to do with the traditional areas of preference of the clergy: health, education, and charity (hospitals, schools, universities, orphanages, or homes for aging people). Political secularist actors aim to ban the words and actions of clerics who have a clear political agenda. Examples of such activities include providing voting instructions, openly criticizing the ruling party, sharing information about the country’s political situation, publishing open letters to the government, involving clergy in street demonstrations, contesting elections, and organizing civil disobedience events, among others.
The propensity of political actors to demarcate boundaries between political and religious realms arose from the increasing politicization of religious elites during Côte d’Ivoire’s protracted crisis. Many religious leaders engaged in defending partisan positions, getting involved in clan wars, and asserting opinions in controversial nationalist debates. The most noticeable examples of engagement in the country’s political landscape came from several Evangelical preachers who either defended former President Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters or tried to define what it means to be Ivorian. Among these was Reverend Kassi d’Azito, the founder of the Mission Évangélique pour la Délivrance des Âmes (MEDA). In a 2018 interview, he stated that believers represent the true nation of Côte d’Ivoire and that God had chosen Laurent Gbagbo to guide its destiny. Reverend Kassi d’Azito believed that the Ivorian nation was predominantly Christian or, at the very least, comprised individuals with Christian values.Footnote 4 One might question whether he understood that the majority of Ivorians were Muslims and indigenous people. The belief that God had chosen President Gbagbo to govern Côte d’Ivoire contributed to the intensification of the longstanding political conflict in the country.
Several prominent Evangelical leaders in Côte d’Ivoire, including preachers Moïse Loussouko Koré, Soumah Yadi,Footnote 5 Sévérin Kessi,Footnote 6 and notably Malachie Koné, advocated the belief that Côte d’Ivoire is God’s chosen nation. They urged native Christian believers to defend themselves against what they described as “foreign” and “impious” rebels. In 2020, some of these preachers even engaged in negotiations with foreign countries to secure the acquisition of weapons for the Ivorian army (Miran-Guyon, Reference Miran-Guyon2015). In addition, Evangelical leaders provided spiritual interpretations for the origins of the rebellion. Many asserted that the insurrection arose because the sons and daughters of the nation—referring specifically to Christians and Evangelicals—had not remained faithful to the Word of God. They argued that this failure to uphold their responsibilities as a chosen people led to God’s anger toward Côte d’Ivoire.
Reverend Ouattara Koffi Téhua, who served as the deputy president of the oldest Evangelical Association in Côte d’Ivoire (the Fédération Évangélique de Côte d’Ivoire), advocated for a spiritual understanding of the civil war between rebel fighters and Ivoirian troops. He believed that only an anointed leader, specifically a Christian, could effectively guide Côte d’Ivoire toward stability and prosperity, as he asserted that power comes from God and is granted to those who abide by His laws. Reverend Koffi Téhua became frustrated when questioned about the significance of voting, as the inquiry implied that Ivorians could elect their leaders without divine assistance. In response, he argued that God influences the hearts of voters to choose specific rulers. This means that, although Ivorians may perceive themselves as voting independently, they are ultimately instruments of God’s will.Footnote 7
Reverend Robert Dion, widely regarded as the most respected Evangelical leader in Côte d’Ivoire, also assured that the roots of the country’s civil war lay in sin. He claimed that since Ivorians refused to repent and follow the righteous path, they deviated and resorted to resolving their conflicts through armed violence.Footnote 8 Given his influence among Evangelical leaders, if Robert Dion believed the civil war had a spiritual origin, it was likely that most preachers shared this view.
Evangelical preachers were not the only religious leaders who took sides during the Ivorian crisis. Many Catholic bishops, such as Bernard Agré, Jean-Pierre Kutwa, Antoine Koné, and Jean-Salomon Lezoutié, as well as prominent imams like Cissé Djiguiba Abdallah, Cheikh Boikary Fofana, and Idriss Koudouss Koné, publicly supported one of the two opposing groups: the rebels or Laurent Gbagbo’s administration. As the crisis intensified from the early 1990s, both Muslim and Christian clerics became increasingly involved in politics. This situation contributed to a rapid political secularization, as religious leaders began to disagree about the root causes of the political conflicts in Côte d’Ivoire and the solutions to those conflicts. The clergy’s consistent engagement in the political sphere and the consequences of their actions convinced politicians of the need to separate religion from politics.
In addition to the current separation of politics and religion, there is no evidence that Côte d’Ivoire is progressing toward José Casanova’s (Reference Casanova1994) other stages or forms of secularization, such as the decline of religion and its privatization. According to Casanova, his secular theory’s second and third stages were most evident in Europe. In other parts of the world, modernization did not always go hand in hand with the decline and confinement of religion to the private sphere (Van Den Bosch, Reference Van den Bosch, Van den Toren, Bangura and Seed2023: 82).
Political secularization has already been observed in many countries in the southern hemisphere (Abbink, Reference Abbink2014). Furthermore, Côte d’Ivoire is not the only country in sub-Saharan Africa experiencing this trend of secularization (Van den Toren and Bangura, Reference Van den Toren, Bangura, Van den Toren, Bangura and Seed2023). Existing research has also explored secularizing dynamics in countries such as Cameroon (Messi-Metogo, Reference Messi-Metogo1997), Nigeria (Chikezie Agu, Reference Chikezie Agu1989), Chad (Ngarsoulede, Reference Ngarsoulede2016), and Kenya (Shorter and Onyancha, Reference Shorter and Onyancha1997). Nevertheless, Côte d’Ivoire remains an interesting case from a research point of view because it illustrates how crises can generate a wave of demands and actions in favor of political secularization.
Ohihon Igboin (Reference Igboin2022) would likely disagree with the notion that Côte d’Ivoire and many other African nations have been experiencing political secularization for decades. Following the perspectives of scholars such as Birgit Meyer (Reference Meyer2020), Robert B. Fisher (Reference Fisher R1998), Matthew Engelke (Reference Engelke2015), Hermen Kroesbergen (Reference Kroesbergen2019), Paul Landau (Reference Landau, Burchardt, Wohlrab-Sahr and Middell2015), and (Asante and Mazama Reference Asante and Mazama2009), Igboin argues that most leading academic works do not recognize African belief systems as religions. This is primarily because they lack revealed texts, known founders, and established dogmas. In addition, the term “religion” does not exist in many African languages. For these reasons, Igboin contends that it would be inappropriate to speak of secularization in Africa at all (Igboin, Reference Igboin2022: 6).
This article does not dispute the validity of Igboin’s arguments; rather, it examines secularization from a political perspective. It focuses on the separation processes between certain African states and the institutions that organize the worship of a deity. Regardless of whether these institutions are labeled as “religions,” their nature and purpose remain consistent. Ultimately, what sets them apart from other social institutions is not their name, but their underlying purpose.
Discourses revealing the political secularization project
In Côte d’Ivoire, the desire of those in power to keep religious leaders out of political affairs has manifested itself above all in their discourse. On numerous occasions, public officials told religious leaders that they should no longer overstep their religious duties. It was a major epistemological break, as local cultures tend to make little or no distinction between the political and religious spheres. These cultures remain primarily rooted in a residual religious background (Mbiti, Reference Mbiti1975), where the functions of the king or chief are often similar to those of priests.
Prior to 1990, the year in which the Ivoirian crisis intensified due to the inaugural postcolonial electoral conflicts in the country, politicians typically demonstrated deference toward religious leaders, conferring upon them privileges and exemptions. Most religious elites refrained from involvement in political affairs, eschewing public criticism of the ruling party. Instead, their primary focus remained on fulfilling their commitments to institutions such as schools, hospitals, and orphanages. Instances of discord between the clergy and the state were exceptional but not unknown. For example, state-church conflict arose over conspiracy episodes of 1963-1964, the death of the famous “opponent” Ernest Boka in 1964, the Guébié conflict in western Côte d’Ivoire in 1970, the economic recession of the late 1970s, and the disagreements of 1986–1989 over the project to build the Notre-Dame de la Paix (Our Lady of Peace) basilica in Yamoussoukro. Politicians avoided sharp or intimidating words directed toward institutional Muslim or Christian religious elites.
After 1990, the intensification of the postcolonial crisis in Côte d’Ivoire led to an unprecedented politicization of religious leaders, increasing the likelihood of confrontations with politicians. During this period, state secular actors pursued a more stringent separation of the political and religious spheres. Numerous examples demonstrate the shifting attitudes of politicians toward clerics, as part of a campaign aimed at discouraging religious elites from engaging in politics and promoting the political secularization of the Ivorian state. A significant moment in this process occurred in the early 1990s. Specifically, in 1992, Balla Kéïta, the Minister of Higher Education, published a scathing article against Cardinal Bernard Yago, accusing him of irresponsibility (Gnagoran Reference Gnagoran2009).
Subsequently, the head of state himself, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, criticized the Catholic clergy for the support given by Cardinal Yago and Father Jean-Pierre Kutwa to students mobilized against the government (Gnagoran Reference Gnagoran2009). Côte d’Ivoire’s Catholic clergy were astonished and expressed their surprise in a paper published in the daily newspaper Fraternité-Matin on April 22, 1992. The president’s outburst against Catholic religious leaders was memorable because he had never before denounced priests and bishops. It was the first time he had publicly criticized and ridiculed them. Previously, the first president of Côte d’Ivoire had ignored the verbal attacks he regularly received from the fiery Cardinal Yago. It is crucial to remember that Félix Houphouët-Boigny’s outburst was unprecedented and gave the green light to public criticism of the Catholic presbyterate. The entire Ivorian political class took its cue from the president, who demystified the social and symbolic status of the clergy by opening the floodgates to criticism. From that moment on, there was an inflation of injunctions from politicians to the clergy to stay out of politics.
The Ivorian press of the early 1990s is replete with examples of harsh criticism and, at times, slander of religious leaders by politicians. Politicians constantly warned clerics not to get involved in politics. That is what appears from the reading and study of Ivorian dailies published during the most tense moments of the Ivorian crisis, which are election periods, armed rebellion, the Ivoirité quarrel, and coups. The constant invective of politicians against religious leaders was a clear sign that the process of political secularization was well underway.
In 1995, a wave of accusations and criticisms brought Christian religious leaders in general, and Catholics in particular, into disrepute. The idea of preventing them from political involvement developed a step further. Opposition newspapers, especially La Voie, harshly criticized Father Bernard Agré (the Catholic archbishop of Abidjan), accusing him of collaboration with the former single party (PDCI-RDA). On October 24, 1995, the daily La Voie explained in its columns how the bishop of Abidjan had compromised himself in apparent complicity with the ruling party. The opposition, united in a coalition called the “Republican Front,” was outraged that Catholic priests and bishops had deliberately chosen to be ambiguous and support the policies of the PDCI-RDA. These accusations had the effect of discrediting the religious leaders they targeted and destroying their reputation in public opinion.
In the interviews conducted with several Ivorian politicians between 2017 and 2020, they unanimously defended the point of view that it was imperative to dissuade religious leaders, both Muslim and Christian, from engaging in political activities. Pascal Affi N’Guessan, former Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, vehemently asserted this during the interview at his home in Abidjan in October 2020, a few weeks before the presidential elections. He was a candidate, the opposition coalition leader, and his party’s president, the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI). “We need a national debate on the nature of the state and its relationships with religions,” he said. According to Affi N’Guessan, the “great national debate” should clearly show religious leaders the boundaries they should not cross and the public matters they should leave to the discretion of the political actors. For Affi N’Guessan, the stability of the Ivorian state was contingent upon its capacity to delineate a clear boundary between the political and religious realms, thereby preventing misinterpretations and confusion.
The former Prime Minister was not the only politician to express his desire to help the Ivorian state establish a clear separation between religion and politics (Affi N’Guessan, Reference Affi N’Guessan2020). Lemassou Fofana, a respected executive of the Rassemblement Des Houphouétistes pour la Démocratie et la Paix (RHDP) and a professor of history at the University of Abidjan-Cocody, agreed with Affi N’Guessan. He expressed this in November 2018 during an interview in his office in Abidjan’s administrative and business district. According to him, evangelical preachers had taken advantage of the disorder caused by the crisis to extend their influence over Ivorians. They dared to take charge of political issues far beyond their competence.
A senior member of the Parti démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), Colette Koné, had a similar view of Catholic priests and bishops. The wife of the president of the Constitutional Council of Côte d’Ivoire, at the time of the interview, in late 2018, was also the executive director of the Ivorian Agency for the Regulation of Social Mutual Insurance (AIRMS). Her analysis of the need to separate political and religious spaces was scathing. Colette Koné said it was necessary not to reproduce the amalgams that took place in the past, during the troubled years, when “religion interfered with politics and politics also interfered with religion.”
Affoussiata Bamba-Lamine, another senior Ivorian politician, who had recently stepped down from her position as Minister of Communications and Government Spokesperson when we interviewed her on November 6, 2019, expressed even harsher criticism of religious leaders. She claimed that their greed and lack of impartiality were contributing factors to the worsening Ivorian crisis.
Affi N’Guessan, Lemassou Fofana, Colette Koné, and Affoussiata Bamaba were not the only public leaders advocating for a strict separation between the state and religion. From 2017 to 2020, during fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire, many politicians and senior administrators made similar statements. For instance, several high-ranking officials at the Department of Religious Affairs (DGC) emphasized the importance of separating religion from the state. In an interview on September 27, 2017, one of them repeatedly asserted the necessity of establishing boundaries that religions should not cross: “By the way,” he added, “I would like to propose to my hierarchy the organization here of a subregional colloquium on the regulation of the world of religions.” In his opinion, however, this goal could only be achieved with a certain degree of equal treatment of all religions by the state.
Ivorian imams shared similar views with officials from the DGC. Notably, Imams Mamadou Dosso (interviewed in Adjamé on November 1, 2018), Cissé Djiguiba Abdallah (interviewed in Riviera Golf on November 5, 2018), Idriss Koudouss Koné (Pohor, Reference Pohor, Holder and Sow2013: 332), and Cheikh Boikary Fofana (Miran-Guyon, Reference Holder and Sow2013) supported the idea of political secularization, particularly emphasizing “the absence of a state religion.” In Côte d’Ivoire, the term laïcité is more commonly used than the words “secularism” or “secularization.”
In France, laïcité generally involves (1) a strict separation of state and religion, along with (2) the relegation of religious practices to the private sphere. In contrast, Côte d’Ivoire views it as a principle of equality among religions. This means that the state must treat all religions equally. Not only does it ensure that there is no designated state religion, but it also asserts that no religion should receive more privileges than others regarding access to public funds, use of public spaces, freedom of speech, gifts from state officials, and official recognition. As a result, religious leaders, particularly Muslims, have consistently been at the forefront of advocating for the respect of laïcité in Côte d’Ivoire. Henri Konan Bédié, the second President of Côte d’Ivoire, expressed that the Catholic Church should be treated equally to other religions (Konan Bédié Reference Konan Bédié1995: 10).Footnote 9
The positions taken by political protagonists and the media on the place of religious leaders in society and their relationship with politics have not yet led to legislation or official measures to ban religious elites from politics. The legal framework governing the relationship between politics and religion in Côte d’Ivoire remains unchanged. As such, the political secularization induced by the crisis has left the relationship between politicians and religious elites ambiguous. If we follow Burchardt and Wohlrab-Sahr’s (Reference Burchardt2013) distinction between “implicit” and “explicit” secularization, we would say that the process of political secularization in Côte d’Ivoire belongs to the implicit order. It is also part of a strategic ambivalence maintained by Ivorian political actors, which consists of attacking religious leaders who criticize them and promoting, or at least not challenging, those who support them. Despite being latent, this secularization remains valid. The supporters of political secularism generally advocate for “new concepts of ‘religion,’ ‘ethics,’ and ‘politics,’ along with the new imperatives that accompany them.” (Asad, Reference Asad2003).
The hardening of political attitudes towards religious leaders occurred concurrently with a coercion campaign against them. The immediate effect of demystifying political discourses signaled the de facto authorization of violence against clerics. The emergence of punitive acts against the leaders of religious communities and their places of worship resulted from the demystification brought about by political discourse. However, religious leaders were not the only victims of the violence provoked by the crisis. Students, demonstrators, and civil servants also bore the brunt of the unrest.
Political secularization in actions
Political secularization through violence against religious leaders
An analysis of the acts of violence and the accusations voiced by the perpetrators reveals that the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire has created an environment conducive to political secularization. As the crisis intensified from the early 1990s onwards, there was a notable rise in the number of incidents designed to deter religious elites from engaging in political activities. Violence against religious elites certainly meant that they had fallen out of favor with political actors. In other words, they were no longer untouchable because of their supposed closeness to the divine. These attacks on the physical integrity of clerics reflected a desire to emphasize that the religious sphere was not superior to other social domains, as it had been in the past.
Violence in itself does not prove secularization or separate the religious and political spheres. Consequently, the meaning of violence lies in the context of the many discourses that aim to explain and justify it. The perpetrators of violence against religious leaders generally commented on the meaning of their undertakings. There was no doubt that political protagonists attacked religious elites because of their involvement in political affairs. Moreover, the violence was evidence that the prestige of religious leaders had diminished. Before 1990, it was rare for an imam, evangelical preacher, priest, or bishop to be harassed, arrested, detained, tortured, or even killed. Pre-1990, Côte d’Ivoire did not justify violence against clerics in the rare isolated cases where it occurred.
The implementation of political secularization was the work of politicians and police officers, regular army soldiers, and rebel fighters. The campaign against religious leaders became coercive in February 1990 when Ivorian police assaulted Father Jean-Pierre Kutwa, the pastor of the Catholic cathedral in Abidjan. The police reminded the clergyman that his zone of influence was limited to the parish under his care. The police gave the political secularist explanation for the beating of the priest: “We hit the priest and told him that this is security and not the church” (Lebry, Reference Lebry1997:127). Father Jean-Pierre Kutwa endured police violence because he and his colleagues were involved in politics. They sided with the students who were challenging the authority of the state. The students held their union meetings inside the cathedral and under the protection of the pastor and the bishop. This attitude of the Catholic clergy was unacceptable to the leaders of the former single party (Grah Mel Reference Grah Mel1998: 16).
Other Catholic dioceses in Côte d’Ivoire recorded cases of violence against priests. In the country’s west, the Diocese of Man was one of them. Several of its priests fell prey to torturers. On January 13, 2019, Father Noël Co Biaka, the cathedral pastor, vividly recalled the events and provided a detailed account of the incident. According to his testimony, during the rebellion that began in 2002, rebel fighters entered the courtyard of the Cathedral of Man on Christmas Day, seized one of the priests, and tortured him. He later died, although medically evacuated to France. His executioners suspected that he had a cache of weapons under the cathedral. The suspicion was political in nature. The rebels tortured the priest because they were angry about his crossing of the red line between the religious and political spheres.
In the Diocese of Katiola, Catholic priests have also witnessed scenes of violence perpetrated against them or their fellow priests. On January 5, 2019, in Katiola (central Côte d’Ivoire region), another cleric narrated a violent episode he had lived during the armed rebellion. Fighters arrived at the parish where he was, seized a priest, and handcuffed him. Although he tried to prove otherwise, his imposing physique convinced the rebels that the detained priest was an army soldier. Given the rebels’ habit of executing so-called “loyalist” soldiers, we can imagine that the priest would not have survived his arrest had it not been for the intervention of the rebels’ doctor, who knew him.
The rebels also abducted priests and seminarians. In 2011, the abduction of Father Richard Kissy, a priest from the Abidjan Catholic diocese, along with seminarians from the Anyama seminary, caused a significant sensation. The Invisible Commando, led by Ibrahim Coulibaly, a chief rebel, was responsible for this kidnapping. On October 12, 2020, in Treichville, Father Kissy shared details about his kidnapping, including the conditions of his detention and the negotiations that ultimately led to his release. The abduction of these clergy members by the Invisible Commando created a national stir, prompting several national and international political figures to negotiate with the kidnappers to secure their release.
In 2018, fieldwork conducted in the city of Bouaké, located in central Côte d’Ivoire, revealed that rebel commanders harbored intense fears and a notable hostility toward evangelical preachers. The rebels believed that the prayers of these preachers were a significant barrier to their ultimate victory in the war. Consequently, they treated evangelical ministers with great severity. The rebel fighters executed the evangelical preachers they arrested. Some of these preachers specialized in praying against the rebellion, and the best known was certainly Reverend Malachie Koné. However, not all evangelical leaders systematically waged spiritual warfare against the rebellion. The rebels’ behavior toward pastors further showed that they targeted the clergy for their political activism. Rebel fighters attacked evangelical preachers because they wanted to enforce the separation of religion and politics. They found it scandalous that pastors had to pray against the rebellion while supporting the government’s actions. The fear that evangelical pastors inspired in the rebels was also a perfect example of the complexity of the political secularization process in Côte d’Ivoire. It consisted of weakening religious leaders without undermining the religious belief system. Consequently, the rebels were not afraid of executing evangelical preachers, but they were afraid of the supernatural power that society attributed to them.
The year 1990 also marked the beginning of attacks on the integrity of imams, who were determined to resolve the political crisis in Côte d’Ivoire. While there is a paucity of statistics on this matter, it is incontestable that many imams were subjected to arbitrary arrests, torture, and even execution. Year after year, imams saw their social prestige erode. The attempted kidnapping of Imam Idriss Koudouss Koné was the first in a long series of kidnappings that would last at least thirty years. As president of the National Council of Islam (CNI), the Imam was deeply involved in public and political life in Côte d’Ivoire. In January 1995, unidentified armed men arrived at his home, threatened his five-year-old son, and seized his driver. The daily newspaper Le Jour reported this incident on January 16, 1995. It caused considerable outcry and consternation in the Muslim community. La Voie, the opposition daily, published a detailed account of the event on February 6, 1995.
In 2001, the CNI published a report entitled “Before and after the events of October and December 2000: testimonies from the Muslim community of Côte d’Ivoire.” The document lists the abuses committed against imams. The following are three examples of the hundreds of cases reported. (1) In Gagnoa, western Côte d’Ivoire, the Imam of the Odiennékourani mosque, whose name remains a secret, was humiliated and beaten by armed fighters at the end of a prayer he led in the mosque. According to witnesses at the scene, the assailants forbade the worshipers from leaving the mosque. They assaulted anyone who did not comply. They stripped the Imam of his clothes and burned them. (2) In Abidjan, El Hadj Moustapha Diaby and his deputies (Gaoussou Bamba and Almamy Coulibaly) were kidnapped from the Avocatier-Marché mosque in the Abobo district. The assailants arrested not fewer than ten other people on the same occasion. (3) Imam Ladji Traoré (of the Dépôt 9 mosque) and the Imam of Cité Sogéfiha in Abidjan also experienced difficult times after their arrest. Tortured by the Agban police on suspicion of protecting rebels, the Imam of Cité Sogéfiha later recounted what he endured: “They started beating me all over with rafters, iron bars, belts, they beat me until I lost consciousness. From time to time, they trampled me to see if I was alive or not […]” (CNI, 2001: 28).
According to El Hadj Cissé Djiguiba (director of the Islamic radio and television station Al Bayane and rector of the majestic Plateau Mosque in Abidjan), the Ivoirian crisis claimed the lives of at least twenty-five imams executed in their homes. He provided this figure on November 5, 2018, during an interview conducted at Al Bayane. On several other occasions, he recalled the heavy toll the community of imams paid during the Ivorian crisis. Journalist Seydou Koné (Reference Koné2020) also recounts the assassination of imams, including Imam Mahmoud Samassi. “On January 6, 2003, the Imam of M’Pouto, Mahmoud Samassi, a mathematics teacher at the Lycée Moderne de Treichville, was assassinated in front of his apartment at the Lycée Technique de Cocody by four armed men” (Koné, Reference Koné2020: 73).
Political secularization through threats to places of worship
Since the 19th century, attacks on places of worship and the expropriation of churches by the state or public leaders are part and parcel of the political secularization process (Quack, Reference Quack, Zuckerman and Shook2017: 27). Almost nowhere in the world has there been a strict and rigorous separation of Church and state without the dispossession of the Church of its property. The destruction or alienation of the Church’s wealth followed the intellectual and conceptual struggles related to political secularization in the West (Quack, Reference Quack, Zuckerman and Shook2017). The weakening of religious institutions allows systematic and organized attacks on places of worship. In Côte d’Ivoire, the aim was to weaken religious institutions and compel their representatives to refrain from political activities. The attacks on places of worship were undeniable signs of their demystification and disenchantment. If these places had not lost the prestige and mystique surrounding them before the crisis, they would never have been the focus of military action.
As the Ivorian crisis developed and deepened from the early 1990s, the increasing number of threats against places of worship was also a clear sign that a process of differentiation of secular spheres was underway. The decline in respect for temples, mosques, and churches marked the end of the era when they could not be attacked by armed men or subjected to any form of violence. Until the late 1990s, taking refuge in a religious building offered the maximum protection, as these places were considered inviolable. With the onset of the crisis, it was no longer certain that religious buildings would offer protection to those who sought refuge there. Neither clerics nor their places of worship were safe shields against violence. There are no official statistics on the number of mosques, churches, and temples that were looted, burned, destroyed, or witnessed unprecedented acts of violence. Nevertheless, based on data accumulated from multiple research trips to Côte d’Ivoire between 2017 and 2020, there has been a notable increase in the frequency with which places of worship are targets of attacks throughout the country. In towns and villages in southern, central, northern, and western Côte d’Ivoire, religious leaders of all persuasions told stories of attacks on their places of worship.
The whole of Côte d’Ivoire still remembers with emotion September 19, 2002, the day the armed rebellion broke out. On that day, gunmen violently dragged General Robert Guéï, the former Chief of Staff of the Ivorian Armed Forces and ex-Head of State, from the basement of the Catholic Cathedral in Abidjan. The high-ranking military officer had naively imagined that the most famous Catholic building in the economic capital would offer him infallible protection. According to several priests in Abidjan, the assailants were determined to execute the captured general immediately. The rector of the cathedral resisted with all his might. The assailants executed General Guéï a stone’s throw from the cathedral. This episode demonstrates that Robert Guéï’s execution inside or outside the cathedral made no difference to his assailants. In their opinion, the Catholic Cathedral was not a sacred place.
Western Côte d’Ivoire is the region with the highest number of attacks and looting of Catholic churches. During their visits to parishes, the rebels did not hesitate to rob priests and churches of their belongings, taking cars, electronic equipment, furniture, electrical installations, paintings, and anything else they hoped to resell without too much difficulty. The Father mentioned above, Noël Co Biaka, described the extent of the damage the rebels caused when they attacked a church or a priest’s house. While priests in the west of the country had become relatively accustomed to the frequent visits of rebel fighters, they had never entirely accepted that the rebels had taken control of Catholic radio and were broadcasting programs of their choosing. Nevertheless, the rebels took no notice and continued to accuse the Catholic clergy of complicity with the regular army (Badouel, Reference Badouel2004). They took to the streets of Man in vehicles stolen from priests and sold items looted from Catholic churches in the market.
The serenity of the insurgents after their attacks on Catholic church buildings proved that they did not regard them as sacred places. It was evident that the looters and attackers were sometimes local and well-known. In several cases, they were Catholics. For these Catholics, looting church property was not sacrilege. Stealing or hiding the property of priests was even less so. Gunmen also attacked and burned Catholic buildings in other parts of Côte d’Ivoire besides the city of Man. Notable examples include the Blockhaus church in Abidjan, the Saint-Augustin cathedral in Odienné, the Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation church in Kani, the Sainte-Thérèse church in Daloa, and the Saint-Joseph-Mukasa church in Bouaké (CNI, 2001: 25).
Reverend Kambou Dabilla (an evangelical preacher from the Missionary Baptist Church) in Bouaké, was sad as he showed the temple where he ministered, which had been looted by rebel fighters a few years ago. It was on January 3, 2018, in the Air France 3 neighborhood. He stopped at all the areas of the religious building where fighters did not hesitate to unscrew switches and sockets under his surprised and frightened gaze. In Bouaké, several of Reverend Kambou Dabilla’s fellow evangelical preachers watched helplessly as the rebels ransacked their temple. What these attacks had in common was that the assailants claimed to be punishing the evangelical pastors for their loyalty to the Abidjan government and the regular army. In other words, the ransacking of the temples was intended to force the evangelicals to stay out of the political fray.
Armed men also targeted mosques. In the 2001 document of the CNI cited in the previous section, there is a list of destroyed mosques: the “List of looted and attacked mosques.” The authors of the document point out that the main perpetrators of the attacks on mosques were the police and young people belonging to various associations. They were not random but organized and planned.
As in the case of the Catholic churches, most of the mosques attacked were in the west of the country, the region most affected by the horrors of the Ivorian crisis. In Daloa, for example, armed men visited the mosques of Tazibouo, Lobia II, Ahoussabougou, and Segoukabougou. Dozens of fighters partially destroyed the mosque of Tazibouo and then set it on fire. They followed the tradition of looting religious buildings before burning them. Part of the Islamic complex, the conference hall, and the school suffered the same fate. The imam in charge of the school saved his life by scaling the wall adjacent to the neighboring concession (CNI, 2001: 4–11). According to the reports from the National Islamic Council (CNI), the Divo police brutally attacked the imams in 2000 (CNI, 2001: 17). In many other Ivorian towns and villages, mosques were looted and destroyed. Imam Idriss Sidibé confirmed this information in January 2019 during an interview in Bouaké. He made a comment that accurately described the situation of specific imams and mosques during specific periods of the crisis: “The infrastructure and even the freedom to practice one’s faith were no longer guaranteed. There were times during Ramadan when people did not pray in the mosque but at home.” Mosques were no longer safe places.
Conclusion
This article proposes the hypothesis that political crises can trigger a process of political secularization in the societies they affect. Using the Ivorian crisis as a case study, the paper illustrates how the dynamics of collective imbalance resulted in a transformation of the relationship between political and religious elites. The secularization resulting from the Ivorian crisis is primarily political. It stems from the desire of various political actors—including politicians, senior civil servants, rebel fighters, and influential figures in civil society—to remove religious leaders, mainly Christians and Muslims, from the political sphere of the country. The campaign of clear differentiation and strict separation between the religious and political spheres reflected the prohibition of religious elites from expressing opinions on political matters or performing acts of a political nature. The instructions given to imams, evangelical preachers, priests, and bishops intended to persuade them to adhere to their customary responsibilities within their nonprofit institutions (e.g., places of worship, hospitals, schools, universities, and orphanages). It meant that clergy should refrain from commenting on issues related to elections, immigration, national identity, corruption, security, or other overtly political topics.
The central assertion of this article is that crises are indeed among the factors and circumstances that can lead to the political secularization of societies and individuals in sub-Saharan Africa. Existing works (Zuckerman et al., Reference Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale2016; Kasselstrand et al., Reference Kasselstrand, Zuckerman and Cragun2023: 48; Finke and Stark, Reference Finke and Stark2000; Warner, Reference Warner1993; A. Mauss, Reference Mauss and Bromley1998; Norris and Inglehart, Reference Norris and Inglehart2011; Martin, Reference Martin1978; Berger, Reference Berger1967; Wilson, Reference Wilson1969; Quack, Reference Quack, Zuckerman and Shook2017, and many others) that focus on the study of the causes of secularization do not seem to have sufficiently considered the secularizing power of political crises. Nonetheless, as the Ivorian case proves, political crises create a situation of social fluidity that allows politicians to reshuffle the cards of the relationship between religions and the state, or at least between religious leaders and the state.
The analyses in this article show that crises are vectors of political secularization because of their incomparable power to demystify institutional religions. For the time being, the first steps of political secularization in Côte d’Ivoire seem to affect only Christianity and Islam. Indigenous religions, most of them noninstitutional and weakly hierarchical, have been spared. One might wonder whether this is because they have refrained from public and explicit participation in the disputes aggravated by the crisis. Similarly, the local churches (Déima, Christianisme Céleste, and Mouvement de Toukouzou, for example) have been little affected by the ongoing political secularization.
Given that the crisis is a significant factor in the process of political secularization in Côte d’Ivoire, one may ask: What conditions and parameters are likely to secularize the worldview of Ivorians and cause the relegation of religion to the private sphere? It remains to be discovered whether the country’s industrialization and economic development could carry secularism’s logic beyond the political space’s boundaries.
Competing Interests
The author declares none.
Jacques M. Ngimbous is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His current research focuses on the history and development of political parties in West Africa, particularly from the perspective of party switchers. He also investigates the roles of both foreign and local secret societies in the political landscape of francophone Africa.
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