"At the dawn of French colonialism, Muslims were a minority among colonial subjects in what is present-day Mali, and Muslim missionaries flourished in the wake of the colonial peace, successfully Islamizing many colonial subjects. Entering this dynamic scene of mass Islamization, the Roman Catholic missionary order, the Missionaires d’Afrique or White Fathers, attempted with little success to bring Catholicism to Muslims and non-Muslims. Drawing on written and archival sources as well as ethnography, the paper focuses on the White Fathers’ mission activities and contentious Muslim-Christian encounters, which have echoes in oral history and the contemporary social imaginary."

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