Mormon Mentality - Thoughts and Asides by Peculiar People

By ESO

Apr. 12th, 2011 at 4:04 am

I am pretty sure Mitt announced his exploratory committee to ride the coattails of Yeah Samake, LDS candidate for the presidency of Mali. While I do not intend to support Romney in his contest, I will root for Samake. Not only does Yeah make for a better name than Mitt, but I would LOVE to see another African country pull itself out of that post-colonial rut of bigmanism. I will be interested to see how Samake’s religion will affect his campaign, if at all. In my little neck of Africa, Mormonism is even more suspect than it is here in the US. I expect it will be the major obstacle to overcome for the Romney campaign, let’s see if Samake has a similar experience. Good luck, Samake, but more importantly: good luck Mali.

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1. Amira

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 5:00am

That was a really interesting article. Thanks for pointing it out, ESO. My husband and I liked his “Elders’ Quorum,” especially after spending so much time research elders’ councils in Central Asia. This will be a fascinating campaign to watch.

2. annegb

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 9:48am

I am going to have to look at my maps to see where Mali is.

3. mfranti

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 10:54am

Mali
http://appropriateprojects.com/images/biel/map_africa_mali.jpg

4. mfranti

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 10:57am

I’m too lazy to find a better map that names the surrounding countries.

Nevermind. I’m not. I like this one better.

http://ttownsocialstudies.wikispaces.com/file/view/africa_map.gif/201900530/africa_map.gif

5. Devyn S.

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 11:41am

This was an interesting article and good news for the country hopefully. I was surprised Mali was 90% Muslim – that could make for an interesting election dynamic for him.

6. MAC

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 12:57pm

I was surprised Mali was 90% Muslim – that could make for an interesting election dynamic for him

Having lived/traveled in this part of Africa, I had three thoughts. First, tribalism trumps religion, bigtime. One could make the reasonable argument that tribalism and Islam are linked. But at the end of the day it comes down to implied patronage due to tribal affinity.

Second, the Islam of this part of Africa is not very strident. I can’t think of another region where Islam is more culture and casual. They have their own breweries in Bamako.

Third, compared to what the French think, support from Utah is inconsequential. France continues to exert self-serving control over most of African members of the Francophonie. For most French speaking Africans, France remains a Leopold-esque parasite on the continent.

7. Devyn S.

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 3:00pm

mfranti – good to see you around – I have missed you!

8. mfranti

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 4:44pm

Devyn,

I have to make sure I don’t fall off the Top Commenters list.

*waves*

9. Devyn S

Tue, Apr 12, 2011 @ 9:40pm

Glad to have you back – been a bit lonely here holding up the environmental flag amidst the conservative chaos :)

10. DKL

Sun, Apr 17, 2011 @ 8:39pm

Thanks for posting this. Perhaps I’m an idiot, but before I read this article, I didn’t even know that Mali existed.

11. ESO

Sun, Apr 17, 2011 @ 9:18pm

I don’t believe that for a minute, DKL. If that is true, I’ll cross my fingers that Angelina Jolie will choose Mali for the birth of their next baby, just to put it on the map!

12. DKL

Mon, Apr 18, 2011 @ 6:10am

Seriously, if you’d have asked me whether there was a country named “Mali” I might have responded “yeah, probably” but my guess would have been that it was in the Far East. And I certainly haven’t heard of Burkina Faso (AKA Upper Volta), which borders it on the southeast according to Wikipedia.

Reading the wikipedia article on Mali leads me to the sad fact that, “According to the World Health Organization in 2001 an estimated 91.6% of Mali’s girls and women have had some form of female genital cutting performed on them.” What is Yeah Samake’s view on this heinous practice?

13. ESO

Mon, Apr 18, 2011 @ 2:04pm

Must admit that I know nothing of his platform. As a Mormon, he may vacillate between objecting to body modification and feeling like the government should stay out of personal lives and religious practice. FGM is a VERY difficult practice to root out, IMO.