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Cartoon Of Muslim Leader Wearing 'Dress' Sparks Uproar In Senegal

The only known remaining photograph of Ahmadu Bamba
The only known remaining photograph of Ahmadu Bamba

DAKAR — A cartoon of an early 20th-century Senegalese Muslim leader has sparked a nationwide uproar, with the vignette criticized by civilians and political leaders alike. The Paris-based African news magazine Jeune Afrique published a cartoon of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, last week in which a passing Westerner asks why the traditionally robed leader is "wearing a dress." The magazine formally apologized for the caricature over the weekend and removed it from the website, although it is still visible on the cartoonist's Twitter profile.

The caricature poked fun at ongoing controversy in Senegal over men carrying handbags, a new fashion trend pioneered by the young singer Wally Seck. Religious leaders — including representatives of the Sufi Muslim Mouride Brotherhood, whose adherents make up around 40% of Senegal's population — harshly criticized his fashion choice and called it "effeminate," with newspapers publishing homophobic insults. Homosexuality is outlawed in Senegal and many other African countries.

Parisian newspaper Le Parisien reports that Seck pointed to American artists such as Kanye West wearing similar male handbags as proof that he was not "promoting" homosexuality. The Jeune Afrique cartoon, seeking to show how a traditional Senegalese robe could be caricatured as effeminate by a Westerner, drew fierce criticism from the Mourides and from the Senegalese government itself.

The intense backlash that forced Jeune Afrique to pull the cartoon of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, considered a "national symbol" by the current government, also led Seck to apologize to his fans and promise not to wear handbags again. The debacle caught the attention of the international press, with the Turin-based newspaper La Stampa commenting in an analysis piece that the Senegal case presents the expansion of a wave of religiously influenced crackdowns on freedom of expression in Africa and the Middle East.


Unlike Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that incensed the Muslim world, the uproar in Senegal was sparked by a drawing of a revered — yet mortal — religious leader. The freedom of satire grows ever more constrained, even in free and democratic Senegal.

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Green

The Problem With Always Blaming Climate Change For Natural Disasters

Climate change is real, but a closer look at the science shows there are many factors that contribute to weather-related disasters. It is important to raise awareness about the long-term impact of global warming, but there's a risk in overstating its role in the latest floods or fires.

People on foot, on bikes, motorcycles, scooters and cars navigate through a flooded street during the day time.

Karachi - People wade through flood water after heavy rain in a southern Pakistani city

Xinhua / ZUMA
Axel Bojanowski

-Analysis-

BERLIN — In September, thousands of people lost their lives when dams collapsed during flooding in Libya. Engineers had warned that the dams were structurally unsound.

Two years ago, dozens died in floods in western Germany, a region that had experienced a number of similar floods in earlier centuries, where thousands of houses had been built on the natural floodplain.

Last year saw more than 1,000 people lose their lives during monsoon floods in Pakistan. Studies showed that the impact of flooding in the region was exacerbated by the proximity of human settlements, the outdated river management system, high poverty rates and political instability in Pakistan.

There are many factors that contribute to weather-related disasters, but one dominates the headlines: climate change. That is because of so-called attribution studies, which are published very quickly after these disasters to highlight how human-caused climate change contributes to extreme weather events. After the flooding in Libya, German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described climate change as a “serial offender," while the Tageszeitung wrote that “the climate crisis has exacerbated the extreme rainfall."

The World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA) has once again achieved its aim of using “real-time analysis” to draw attention to the issue: on its website, the institute says its goal is to “analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events." Frederike Otto, who works on attribution studies for the WWA, says these reports help to underscore the urgent need for climate action. They transform climate change from an “abstract threat into a concrete one."

In the immediate aftermath of a weather-related disaster, teams of researchers rush to put together attribution studies – “so that they are ready within the same news cycle," as the New York Times reported. However, these attribution studies do not meet normal scientific standards, as they are published without going through the peer-review process that would be undertaken before publication in a specialist scientific journal. And that creates problems.

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