Islamic associations under the Compaoré regime

In the early 1990s, following the adoption of structural adjustment programmes promoted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the Compaoré government launched a comprehensive plan for the privatization of public enterprises. This plan offered major enrichment prospects for local economic actors. However, access to these opportunities was dependent on proximity to the ruling party, the Organisation pour la Démocratie Populaire – Mouvement du Travail – renamed Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès in February 1996 – which had rapidly spread its tentacles across the key sectors of the Burkinabe economy (Harsch Reference Harsch2017: 140–58).

In this context, many Muslim entrepreneurs and businesspeople who held prominent positions in several sectors of the Burkinabe economy endeavoured to support the regime in place, more or less openly, to ensure the prosperity of their businesses. Many of these actors engaged in various patronage activities and thus gained a strong influence over their fellow Muslims (Cissé Reference Cissé2015: 16–17). Some of them were able to use their financial capital to establish themselves in the country's major Islamic associations, even though they did not have a formal religious education. For example, in the main Salafi association in the country, the Sunni Movement, while francophone Muslims had played a central role in the creation of the organization in 1973 and had been leading the movement for over twenty years (Cissé Reference Cissé2009; Kobo Reference Kobo2012), activists started turning to wealthy, poorly educated businessmen to preside over the association from 2001.Footnote ⁵

Entrepreneur Oumarou Kanazoé, a great ‘patron of the Muslim community’ (Cissé Reference Cissé2010), embodied more than anyone else the tacit agreement between the political and economic classes, and the influence of several economic actors in Islamic circles. Having amassed a colossal fortune under previous regimes, Kanazoé became president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Burkina Faso in November 1995 and of the National Council of Employers of Burkina Faso in 1997. In addition to these two positions, which he held until his death in October 2011, he was also a major fundraiser and donor for Blaise Compaoré's party. In 2007, Kanazoé was made honorary president of the Associative Federation for Peace and Progress with Blaise Compaoré (Fédération Associative pour la Paix et le Progrès avec Blaise Compaoré or FEDAP-BC), a ‘civil society organization’ that aimed ‘to unite the forces of all the admirers of the Burkinabe head of state’.Footnote ⁶

Beside his economic and political roles, Kanazoé was also very influential among his co-religionists. Throughout the serious internal crisis that shook the Sunni Movement between 1995 and 2006 – and led to the association being suspended and to the Great Mosque of Zangouettin in Ouagadougou being closed down twice (Cissé Reference Cissé2009: 18–28) – Kanazoé acted as a mediator between the Ministry of Territorial Administration and the movement's protagonists. He was particularly influential among members of the Muslim Community of Burkina Faso (Communauté Musulmane du Burkina Faso or CMBF), which, since its creation in 1962,Footnote ⁷ was considered to be one of the three main interlocutors of Muslims with the state, alongside the Sunni Movement and the Tijâniyya Islamic Community of Burkina Faso (Communauté Islamique de la Tijâniyya du Burkina Faso or CITBF).Footnote ⁸ The journalists assigned to cover the CMBF congress in 1997 pointed out that Aboubacar Sana, the association's new president, had been able to rely on Kanazoé's support. This support was significant since the latter had paid the expenses of all 500 delegates.Footnote ⁹ In 2004, Kanazoé was promoted to become leader of the CMBF, a post he had already held between 1977 and 1982. As for the Sunni Movement, the choice of this illiterate businessman marked the decline of francophone Muslims from the state administration in the CMBF leadership, where they had occupied a central place since the 1960s.Footnote ¹⁰

In December 2005, Kanazoé also became leader of the new FAIB, the constituent congress of which he had personally paid for. The federation brought together over a hundred Islamic associations, including all the major ones in the country.Footnote ¹¹ If the idea of such an organization went back as far as the 1980s,Footnote ¹² the creation process was set in motion only in the early 2000s after the country witnessed an almost anarchic proliferation of self-styled Islamic groups.Footnote ¹³ One of FAIB's objectives is to ‘represent the member associations at the national level and provide the community of Muslims in Burkina Faso with a unique spokesperson’.Footnote ¹⁴

Although the AEEMB and the CERFI were among the six founding associations, they were excluded from the FAIB's ‘presidium’, which consisted of the presidents of CMBF, the Sunni Movement, CITBF and Ittihad Islami, all of whom had veto power. Although some individuals in the AEEMB and the CERFI had actively called for the unity of the Burkinabe umma in the 1990s and had taken concrete steps to achieve this goal after 2001,Footnote ¹⁵ representatives of these two organizations eventually had to content themselves with the positions of sixth and seventh vice presidents of the FAIB and a few other deputy roles.Footnote ¹⁶ Despite the fact that, according to a book published by this association (Sawadogo et al. Reference Sawadogo, Gansonré and Ouibga2016: 23–4), CERFI members ‘felt that the structure had been taken away from them to go in a direction which was not the original direction’, its leaders preferred not to endanger the federation and, with it, the unity of the community.

According to Aboubacar Doukouré, a member of the FAIB leadership, the presidency was entrusted to Kanazoé:

These words illustrate not only the importance of financial capital, but also the highly gerontocratic nature of Muslim community leadership in Burkina Faso. This was well summed up by a young interviewee: ‘The leaders [of the main Islamic associations] are the old and the rich. If you are young, you do not have a place.’Footnote ¹⁸ For the president of the CERFI between 2009 and 2015, the involvement of his association's young ‘intellectuals’ within the FAIB was ‘difficult’: ‘We try to be present because we think we can bring many things … You cannot change things with a magic wand. We must go at everyone's pace.’Footnote ¹⁹

Others also saw the workings of state power behind Kanazoé's appointment, which aimed to better domesticate Islam and its main representatives. However, the close – and barely hidden – ties of patronage uniting Kanazoé to the regime explained why the leaders of the major Islamic organizations remained subservient to the state throughout Compaoré's reign. Indeed, behind their apolitical facade, they contributed above all to the legitimization of power by being complacent with regard to its excesses and by seeking, on their own initiative or in response to a request from the state, to prevent any potential mobilization by Muslim activists. A good illustration of this was the case of the death of journalist Norbert Zongo in December 1998. Many Burkinabes saw it as a murder orchestrated by the regime, because Zongo had begun an investigation into the role of the ‘little president’ François Compaoré – the president's younger brother and adviser – in his driver's death. While President Compaoré faced his worst socio-political crisis since coming to power, representatives of the main Islamic organizations wrote an open letter to urge the population to maintain order and peace.Footnote ²⁰ Another example is the participation of Muslim leaders in the National Day of Forgiveness (Journée Nationale du Pardon or JNP)Footnote ²¹ in March 2001 (Vanvyve Reference Vanvyve2015: 496–500).

Even though these leaders often held positions that were out of step with the growing resentment among the population – especially some Muslim youth – towards the Compaoré regime, for the most part young people were almost completely silent about the conduct of their elders. Many of the young Muslims with whom I spoke attach great importance to the traditional respect of the status associated with seniority – the ‘parents’ (elders) – and so many of them were reluctant to criticize their elders openly, despite their disagreements. Indeed, traditional Moaga culture, which is predominant in Ouagadougou, is extremely hierarchical and gerontocratic. Respect for the authority of elders has a great impact on younger people's ability to speak out (Gruénais Reference Gruénais, Abélès and Collard1985; Laurent Reference Laurent2009 [2003]: 263–9). More broadly, Burkinabe society under Compaoré's presidency was marked by a generational divide that was expressed through the political, social and economic domination of the elders over the young despite the latter's demographic weight (Hilgers and Loada Reference Hilgers and Loada2013: 203–5). The remarks made by Issaka Sam, CERFI president between 1991 and 1997, are particularly evocative of the respect shown to ‘elders’:

Intergenerational tensions within the community therefore remained largely unchanged throughout the 1990s and 2000s. For instance, no leader of the CERFI or the AEEMB publicly stated his true position on the national situation following the death of Norbert Zongo. They also remained silent about the participation of many of their elders in the JNP two years later. However, the generational divide deepened in 2013 when the establishment of a Senate was first mooted. The opposition believed that President Compaoré intended to use the new institution to revise Article 37 of the Constitution, which prevented him from standing again in the 2015 election.Footnote ²³ The public intervention of FAIB's secretary general in September to endorse the project of establishing an upper house in the name of the ‘Muslim community’ had contributed to growing dissatisfaction with the leaders of the federation at a time when the Compaoré regime was becoming more and more unpopular.Footnote ²⁴ Moreover, the hundred or so comments on Burkina24Footnote ²⁵ and LeFaso.netFootnote ²⁶ prompted by the news of FAIB's support for the Senate testified to the organization's legitimacy crisis among part of the population and among Muslims themselves. Indeed, internet users, including many who called themselves Muslims, vilified the FAIB leaders and especially its spokesman, who was ‘a shame for Islam’ and ‘spoiled the name of Muslims’. Some portrayed the federation's leaders as illiterate businessmen guided by their bellies.

The AEEMB and the CERFI even distanced themselves very clearly from the FAIB's stance in a letter signed by their presidents and published in Burkinabe newspapers a few days later (Madore Reference Madore2016b: 17–21). Nevertheless, the exacerbation of intergenerational tensions had not yet led to open protest. As Vanvyve (Reference Vanvyve2016: 38) has pointed out, in spite of this episode, ‘respect for the elders seems difficult to circumvent’ for many young Muslims from the University of Ouagadougou involved in the AEEMB who ‘have internalized this model of gerontocratic domination’. Far from being a situation unique to Burkina Faso, intergenerational – often conflictual – relations are at the heart of the dynamics structuring the Islamic field elsewhere in West Africa and are closely linked to issues of power and religious authority (Gomez-Perez et al. Reference Gomez-Perez, LeBlanc and Savadogo2009; Janson Reference Janson, Herrera and Bayat2010). The post-Compaoré era, however, has led to a significant challenge to the legitimacy of community representatives and to many public calls for profound changes within the FAIB.

‘Nothing will ever be the same again’ within the FAIB?

Although a broad coalition of actors of different ages, genders and socio-economic backgrounds were behind the popular uprising that led to the fall of the Compaoré regime in October 2014, the mobilization of a large number of young Burkinabe, through movements such as Balai Citoyen (Citizens’ Broom), Collectif Anti-référendum (Anti-Referendum Collective) and Ça Suffit! (That's Enough!) or through social media, played a decisive role in the insurgency. Hagberg has spoken of a ‘generational shift’ (Reference Hagberg2015: 115–16) to describe the repercussions of this revolution. Many young people had become aware of their strength and ability to change things, and consequently nothing could be done without taking them into consideration.

This shift in mentality, encapsulated in the slogan ‘Plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant’ (‘Nothing will ever be the same again’), had a significant impact on the Muslim community. Indeed, a growing number of Muslims, especially young people, started to publicly question the legitimacy of the elders who represented them at the FAIB and demanded that they answer for their lack of integrity in their support of the fallen regime. Calls for in-depth reforms within the federation multiplied and the long-awaited new departure was to take place after the holding of a congress at the FAIB. The mandate of FAIB leaders had expired in 2010, and the provisional system of rotating presidency, which had been put in place after Kanazoé's death in 2011, was dragging on.

The open letter to the FAIB leaders written by Sidgomdé Yusuf Ouédraogo, who claimed to be the ‘spokesman of Muslim youth’, saying ‘aloud what many think very quietly’, went along those lines. Although Ouédraogo is a Muslim unknown to the Islamic associational world, his text published in November 2014 summed up very well the frustrations shared by many young people I interviewed:

Although most of the calls were more restrained, no young Muslims had ever criticized the leadership of their elders so openly. Other voices also condemned the silence and inaction of FAIB leaders, who ‘turned a blind eye and feared to call out misbehaviour as people of other faiths have done, and brilliantly’.Footnote ²⁸ The preacher Ismaël Derra, close to the Salafi movements and a very popular figure among the youth of Ouagadougou, stated in January 2015 that it was necessary to review the ‘governance of Muslim matters in Burkina Faso’ in order to ‘allow for a renewal which takes into account the spiritual aspirations of Muslims and their positioning in political, economic and social affairs’.Footnote ²⁹

The FAIB's fracture lines that were brought to light were not only generational but also regional. The Muslim elites in the west of the country, especially those in Bobo-Dioulasso, felt totally excluded from the federation's establishment process.Footnote ³⁰ It was therefore not surprising that the leaders of the Coordination of Western Islamic Associations (Coordination des Associations Islamiques de l'Ouest), a group of about forty Muslim organizations mostly active in Bobo-Dioulasso, strongly criticized the leadership of the Ouagadougou elites. In a letter published in May 2015, its leaders criticized the FAIB not only for the continual postponements of a new congress, but also for the concentration of powers in the capital due to the absence of regional representations. They also called for the ‘outright resignation’ of its leaders:

After several postponements, the FAIB finally held its long-awaited congress in June 2015. At first glance, the decisions taken at the congress seemed to be going in the direction of a ‘change in continuity’ rather than in-depth reforms. Indeed, the rotating presidency between the four members of the presidium was maintained. However, their role was transformed into that of a kind of board of directors, as full executive powers were now entrusted to the executive secretariat.Footnote ³² In this sense, the appointment of Cheikh Sidi Mohamed Koné as National Executive Secretary marked an important development. Koné, the holder of a master's degree in economics and management from the University of Ouagadougou, was a financial inspector and adviser to the Court of Auditors at the time of his appointment. A highly respected figure, he had been active in the Muslim community since the late 1980s, when he was a member of the AEEMB; he was also president of the CERFI from 2006 to 2009.Footnote ³³

The choice of this ‘Muslim intellectual’ as the main spokesperson for the federation in its interactions with the media and in meetings with government officials demonstrated the willingness of long-time leaders of the FAIB to give greater responsibilities to Muslims with this type of profile who had previously struggled to make their voices heard. Maintaining the status quo would have been untenable, as the secretary general of the Coordination of Western Islamic Associations and co-signatory of the inflammatory letter sent by his organization to the leaders of the FAIB pointed out at the end of the congress: ‘There were no taboo issues … Really, we've been truthful to each other, and face to face, because we say that, as a matter of fact, the scene of this country in turmoil has awakened all consciences, all truths.’Footnote ³⁴

In addition to Cheikh Sidi Mohamed Koné, other appointments made it possible for the FAIB to take some steps towards rejuvenation. For example, Mikaïlou Kéré, a former activist of the AEEMB and the CERFI who had been editor of the former Islamic monthly La Preuve (2007–11), was put in charge of communication at the FAIB. The federation, often criticized in this regard, has been quite active on Facebook since it created an account in 2016.Footnote ³⁵ Long blamed for its lack of presence outside the capital, the FAIB started setting up regional representations. The unprecedented positions it took in the November 2015 elections and with regard to the Religious Freedoms Bill in January 2017 later confirmed that these changes were not just cosmetic. Meanwhile, some AEEMB and CERFI leaders took advantage of the federation's lethargy until the holding of its congress in June 2015 to engage actively in the transition process on behalf of the Muslim community.

Francophone ‘Muslim intellectuals’ and the promotion of a civil Islam

For many young francophone ‘intellectuals’ from the CERFI and the AEEMB, the events that led to the fall of President Compaoré were a good illustration of the lack of involvement of Muslim community leaders in major issues of national interest. This editorial of the AEEMB's An-Nasr Trimestriel newsletter, published in January 2015, was quite explicit in this regard:

As early as the 1990s, and especially in the 2000s, some individuals gravitating around the two associations tried to promote Islam as a moral framework for the practice of citizenship. However, their ability to effectively influence the behaviour of their co-religionists remained limited because of their cautiousness in directly denouncing the drifts of the Compaoré regime and their silence on the actions of their elders at the centre of the clientelist mechanisms of power (Madore Reference Madore2016a: 152–61). Taking advantage of the silence observed by FAIB leaders over the course of the transition and the sympathy they had gained for their stance during the Senate crisis, CERFI leaders, and to a lesser extent the AEEMB, strove to better position their organization in the Islamic landscape. To do this, they put forward their generational differences by presenting themselves as being more able than the older generation to defend the concerns of their religious community in public debates. As pointed out by Masquelier and Soares (Reference Masquelier, Soares, Masquelier and Soares2016), positioning oneself as a ‘young’ Muslim can be a way of challenging established hierarchies by claiming leadership and a moral and intellectual superiority over the ‘old’ generation.

It was in those terms that Imam Ismaël Tiendrébéogo spoke in a televised interview in 2017. He explained that the people belonging to the ‘old generation’, who were for the most part illiterate or educated in Arabic, ‘can be easily manipulated by political interests’, whereas young francophone ‘Muslim intellectuals’ have a ‘certain understanding of the [political] context’ and ‘a knowledge of power relations’ that ‘may help to enlighten the old generation’.Footnote ³⁷ This echoed the comments of a former AEEMB activist, who deplored the fact that ‘politicians are taking advantage of the Muslim community by treating them as electoral cattle’.Footnote ³⁸ In the same vein, for Imam Tiégo Tiemtoré, the ‘elders’ in other large Islamic associations are ‘more malleable’ and more likely to be tempted by ‘conscience buying’:

The case of Moussa Nombo, the president of the CERFI between 2009 and 2015, was a particularly good illustration of the aspirations of these francophone Muslims, who often lacked formal training in the Islamic sciences, to act as ‘opinion leaders’ within their community (Triaud Reference Triaud2010). An administrator of financial services at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Nombo's academic education between 1992 and 1997 concluded with a master's degree in legal sciences from the University of Ouagadougou. He initially considered himself to be more active as a ‘union leader’ before he opted for ‘religious life’ and became an AEEMB activist. Moussa Nombo held various positions of responsibility in the association, then joined the CERFI in 2004. He explained to me that his arrival at the head of the CERFI in December 2009 marked a ‘generational change’ within the association, because, besides him, other young people, among whom were former leaders of the AEEMB, had been assigned to the national office in decision-making roles. One of the three major strategic objectives of his second term (2013–15) was to ‘make the CERFI an organization that could contribute to the awakening of civic awareness in Burkina Faso by promoting Islamic and republican values’.Footnote ⁴⁰

Far from advocating the hegemony of a religious framework over society, their objective was to promote forms of civic engagement through religion – a ‘civil Islam’ (Hefner Reference Hefner2011 [2000]) – or, to borrow the words of Salvatore (Reference Salvatore2016), an ‘Islamic civility’ that can foster democratic change. As the transitional government had just been installed, Moussa Nombo and the leader of the AEEMB made a statement in which they called on the members of the National Transitional Council (Conseil National de Transition) – responsible for organizing the presidential and legislative elections of 2015 – to tackle social problems, to demonstrate ‘exemplary ethics in managing public affairs’, and to avoid ‘regionalist, religious, corporatist favouritism’.Footnote ⁴¹ In July 2015, the CERFI president challenged the state on the importance of ‘fair treatment of the various religious groups in the representativeness of decision-making bodies and public governance’.Footnote ⁴² In September, he also expressed to the prime minister his ‘bitterness’ with regard to the ‘selective management of religious concerns’ by the government, which had ignored the Friday prayer in the introduction of the non-stop working day in public services.Footnote ⁴³

Throughout 2015, Moussa Nombo's focus on civic engagement resulted in several initiatives that received significant media coverage. In June, the CERFI organized an event on the theme ‘Muslim intellectuals: being with God to build a better city’, which included a round table entitled ‘Different perspectives on the nation's situation’. The event, which I attended as an observer, turned out to be very successful both in terms of the number of participants – about 200 people – and the nature of the often-animated debate with the audience. The Muslims present appeared to be determined that their religious community would take advantage of the new context and finally have a voice in socio-political debates in a way that was commensurate with its demographic strength.

In his opening address, Moussa Nombo explained that this event was an opportunity for ‘Muslim elites and leaders’ to discuss the national situation in order to better fulfil their role as ‘enlighteners’ in the Muslim community. By making a veiled reference to the criticism that the FAIB had faced, he said that Muslims now expected their elites to act in a way that went beyond the cultural sphere, something he said the CERFI was keen to contribute to by engaging more in socio-political issues. This meeting was part of a major national campaign of ‘civic awareness’ among Muslims on the theme ‘spirituality and citizenship in the light of Islamic teachings’. In July 2015, citizenship issues were the main subject of Imam Tiégo Tiemtoré's sermon at the Eid al-Fitr.Footnote ⁴⁴ For the first time in its history, the CERFI was also involved in overseeing the November elections by providing 121 volunteers who had been trained by the Independent National Electoral Commission (Commission Électorale Nationale Indépendante).Footnote ⁴⁵

While it is difficult to measure the real impact of these initiatives on the mobilization of Muslims, francophone ‘Muslim intellectuals’ have undoubtedly become rising figures in the country's Islamic landscape since the October 2014 uprising. The leaders of the AEEMB and the CERFI benefit from the fact that the Catholic hierarchy and the Pastoral Service for the Training and Support of Leaders (Service Pastoral pour la Formation et l'Accompagnement des Responsables) seem to be willing to promote these two associations as the official voices of Burkinabe Islam.Footnote ⁴⁶ Indeed, the Catholic Student Youth (Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique) maintains close relations with the AEEMB in schools and universities. Representatives of the Catholic Church regularly collaborate with CERFI and AEEMB members on events related to interreligious coexistence and dialogue.

Furthermore, francophone Muslim leaders became increasingly solicited to act as intermediaries between their community and the state, at the expense of other Islamic associations and their leaders who used to hold a much more dominant position under the Compaoré regime. The numerous political appointments by the Kaboré regime of people affiliated with the AEEMB or the CERFI are very evocative in this respect. In April 2016, Imam Ismaël Tiendrébéogo was made president of the National Observatory of Religious Facts (Observatoire National des Faits Religieux). Moussa Nombo was one of two representatives of the Muslim community at the Constitutional Commission, an institution responsible for the drafting of a constitution. In 2017, Souleymane Koné, the new president of the CERFI (2016–17), was appointed ambassador to Kuwait, while Imam Tiégo Tiemtoré was made Knight of the National Order. Finally, in October 2018, the CERFI mosque was preferred to the great mosque of the CMBF, the Sunni Movement's Zangouettin Mosque or that of Aboubacar Doukouré in HamdallayeFootnote ⁴⁷ for holding the ‘religious service of the Muslim community’ as part of the commemoration of the popular uprising and the resistance to the September 2015 coup.

While these various political appointments and symbolic recognitions by the state helped to further legitimize francophone Muslim leaders, they could undermine the latter's aspirations to embody a civil Islam that could play a role in the consolidation of democracy. Indeed, the Kaboré regime seems to want to pursue the clientelism used by its predecessor, but targeting other Islamic associations and leaders. Nevertheless, in addition to the CERFI and the AEEMB, several Burkinabe Muslim organizations, including FAIB, became more directly involved in the country's national debates in order to defend the common good.

The FAIB: from ‘Moon Commission’ to new major player on the Burkinabe political scene?

Since its creation, the FAIB's inaction on the socio-political front has meant that many Muslims compare it with a ‘Moon Commission’, the sole purpose of which is to observe lunar phases and announce the official dates of Islamic holidays.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, things seem to have changed since the 2015 congress, as evidenced by the publication of a letter from the federation in the press and on its Facebook page shortly before the presidential and legislative elections of November 2015. The FAIB then called on all Burkinabe to participate massively in both polls, because ‘[t]his act will be the key to change as wanted and expressed by the people in October 2014’ and these ‘votes are important for achieving change in Burkina Faso, in the light of both the Muslim faith and the values upheld and defended by Islam’.Footnote ⁴⁹ Among the four criteria defining the choice of a good candidate were the need to have ‘a clear and realistic project for society’ and to advocate ‘social cohesion and equity among men, irrespective of their religious affiliation’. This last point was particularly interesting in the context of the outcry caused by Ablassé Ouédraogo's interview in Jeune Afrique magazine a few months earlier.Footnote ⁵⁰

This public statement by the FAIB, adding to that by the Coordination of Western Islamic Associations in September 2015, which drew a broad list of ‘concerns of Muslims in Burkina Faso’ for the attention of the political class, which was warned that they would be ‘very scrupulous in the way they would vote’,Footnote ⁵¹ was completely new in its form of expression. Indeed, historically, the main Muslim leaders of the country limited themselves to simple blessings for holding peaceful elections without seeking to formally express the grievances of the community or to mobilize their fellow Muslims to take part in the polls.Footnote ⁵²

The Religious Freedoms Bill was another reminder of the change that had been taking place within the FAIB. At the cabinet meeting on 30 November 2016, the government announced the first details of the law, which was intended to fill the legal gap surrounding the definition and effective application by the state of the principle of laïcité (secularism), particularly regulations governing the construction of places of worship and the creation of religious associations.Footnote ⁵³ The bill was to be examined by the National Assembly in a special session in January 2017. On 7 January, the FAIB issued a long press release to express its ‘deep concern over certain provisions of the text’, which could ‘undermine freedom of conscience and worship’ and ‘most likely have damaging consequences on our living together’.Footnote ⁵⁴ The ten articles that were considered problematic and were widely commented on in the document raised several concerns about the possible prohibition of street prayers; the need for formal or non-formal spaces of prayer in public services; the right for women to wear the veil in public administration; the right to pray and wear religious clothing at work for Muslim teachers; and the right for Muslim pupils’ and students’ associations in public institutions to organize activities and events. The FAIB concluded its statement by calling for the withdrawal of the bill.

Many Muslims warmly welcomed the FAIB press release, arguing that it defended the interests of the community. On the federation's Facebook page, the press release was shared nearly 1,000 times and received comments from nearly 700 people,Footnote ⁵⁵ which was a very unusually high number of reactions for a post. Faced with this controversy, the Minister of State and Minister of Territorial Administration, Decentralization and Internal Security discussed the matter with a delegation of the FAIB two days later and informed them that the government had decided to withdraw the bill. On 11 January, representatives of the largest opposition party, the Union pour le Progrès et le Changement, met with FAIB officials to show their support. Finally, shortly afterwards, it was President Kaboré's turn to speak to the federation's leaders about the bill. During this exchange, Cheikh Sidi Mohamed Koné said he wanted ‘a laïcité that can guarantee peace between the different religious communities of this country’ and alerted the head of state to the difficulties Islamic educational institutions confront and the desire of Muslims to be heard in the process of drafting the new constitution.Footnote ⁵⁶

In the past, the Burkina Faso state had already had to back down on a few occasions in the face of Muslims’ discontent, especially regarding the state's involvement in the organization of the hajj. However, the speed with which the government retreated on the Religious Freedoms Bill and the way in which several politicians, both in government and in opposition, sought to spare the sensibilities of FAIB leaders attested to a potential shift of paradigm, which started after the fall of Blaise Compaoré. Until then, Muslim elites had almost always offered unconditional support to those in power.