Thousands of people in Mali’s capital, Bamako, over the weekend flocked to a village to see what they believed was a religious sign on a wall .
Many believe the white image on the outside wall of a toilet shows a man praying, interpreting it as a message from God.
Riot police have been deployed to keep an eye on the crowd as people queue day and night to see the mark.
Even political leaders have not been left behind in coming to witness the sign.
Most southern Malians are Tijani Muslims, a moderate sect of Sufi Islam.
Mail is predominantly a Muslim country and most Muslims in Southern Mali belong to the moderate Sufi Tijani sect that ‘respects miracle signs’.
The sign has been generating many claims and ideas among Malians.
The villagers claims that the religious sign has been changing shape and at one point leaves the wall, moves around the compound and then goes back to its original place, in obvious defiance of the laws of gravity.
A BBC reporter says the religious sign is a ‘drying patch of cement in the shape of a standing woman’.
Some years ago, people flocked to a local restaurant in Kebbi in Northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner of the restaurant said had inscriptions of Allah and prophet Muhammad.
While a muslim housewife in the UK chopped a tomato in half, and found that “bismillah, or Allah, was written in Arabic in the veins. The other half of the vegetable said la illaha illala, or There is no God but Allah”
