Mariama Ba’s So long a letter and the educational empowerment of Muslim women

Abstract

A discussion of So long a letter by the West African woman writer, Mariama Ba, is used as a basis for highlighting the empowering and disempowering effects of particular types of education for women in the traditional African-Muslim context of Senegal. An examination of this issue in the novella would seem to indicate that the marginalization of Muslim women in this and other countries could be alleviated by a religious education which would investigate the differences between Islamic principles and cultural practices as one of its key focus areas. Combined with a secular education taking cognisance of present-day hybrid identities in postcolonial and other states, this approach has the potential to empower Muslim women to become socially and politically active and thereby to reconstruct their status in societies in which the forces of traditionalism often overpower both basic Islamic principles and state legislation designed to promote women’s rights.