New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity

New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal

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New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, a nd Fem i ni ni t y

Edited by Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL

Copyright © Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60648-7 ISBN-10: 0-230-60648-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New perspectives on Islam in Senegal : conversion, migration, wealth, power, and femininity / editors, Mamadou Diouf and Mara Leichtman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-230-60648-2 1. Islam—Senegal. 2. Islam and state—Senegal. 3. Islam and politics— Senegal. 4. Senegal—Politics and government. 5. Senegal—History—20th century. I. Diouf, Mamadou. II. Leichtman, Mara. BP64.S4N49 2008 297.09663—dc22

2008021602

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: January 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Contributors

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Glossary

xiii

Acronyms of Muslim Movements and Political Parties

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Introduction: New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity Mamadou Diouf (Columbia University in the City of New York) and Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)

1

Part 1: Histories, Ethnographies, and Pedagogies of Islam 1

The Longue Durée of Quran Schooling, Society, and State in Senegambia Rudolph T. Ware, III (University of Michigan)

21

2

The Shifting Space of Senegalese Mosques Cleo Cantone (School of Oriental and African Studies)

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3

Murid Modernity: Historical Perceptions of Islamic Reform, Sufism, and Colonization John Glover (University of Redlands)

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Part 2: Conversion and Spiritual Translations 4

The Greater Jihad and Conversion: Sereer Interpretations of Sufi Islam in Senegal James Searing (University of Illinois at Chicago)

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5

The Authentication of a Discursive Islam: Shi’a Alternatives to Sufi Orders 111 Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)

6

Searching for God: Young Gambians’ Conversion to the Tabligh Jama‘at Marloes Janson (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

139

vi

Con t ents

Part 3: Gender, Marriage, and Sexuality 7

8

9

Migration, Marriage, and Ethnicity: The Early Development of Islam in Precolonial Middle Casamance Aly Dramé (Dominican University)

169

Beyond Brotherhood: Gender, Religious Authority, and the Global Circuits of Senegalese Muridiyya Beth A. Buggenhagen (Indiana University, Bloomington)

189

Jambaar or Jumbax-out? How Sunnite Women Negotiate Power and Belief in Orthodox Islamic Femininity Erin Augis (Ramapo College of New Jersey)

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Part 4: Modernity, Politics, and Dialectics 10 Dialectics of Religion and Politics in Senegal Roman Loimeier (Center for African Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville)

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11 Islam, Protest, and Citizen Mobilization: New Sufi Movements Fabienne Samson (L’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Centre d’études Africaines, Paris)

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Index

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Illustr ations

Maps 1.

Senegal

viii

2.

Precolonial Senegambia

74

P h oto s 2.1 The Mosque of Guede, Futa Toro

52

2.2 Lamp Fall, Great Mosque of Touba

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2.3 Great Mosque of Dakar

56

2.4 The Ihsan Mosque, Saint Louis

59

2.5 The Mosque of Soprim

63

3.1 Mechanized Well of Darou Mousty

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3.2 Grand Mosque of Darou Mousty

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5.1 Library of Aly Yacine

114

5.2 Aly Yacine Calendar

122

5.3 Ashura Conference

124

5.4 Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Mosque

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5.5 Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Dome

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Map 1.

Senegal

Contr ibu tors

Erin Augis is an associate professor of sociology at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where she teaches courses on gender, race relations, social movements, and the developing world. A recipient of Fulbright IIE, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and Center for American Overseas Research Centers funding, Augis has been conducting research on the Sunnite movement in Senegal since 1997. In addition to her book manuscript, Dakar’s Sunnite Women: Femininity, Politics, and Transnationalism in Islamic Reform, Augis has authored three articles on Senegalese reformist women. She also conducts a secondary research project on the economic migrations of Saharan Tuaregs to sub-Saharan tourist cities. Augis is currently a board member of the West African Research Association. Beth A. Buggenhagen is an assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research interests include circulation and value, diaspora and transnationalism, neoliberal global capital, gender, and Islam and visuality. Buggenhagen is currently working on a book manuscript, Prophets and Profits: Gender and Islam in Global Senegal, on the global circuits of Senegalese Muslims and the politics of social production. Cleo Cantone was born in Sicily to an Anglo-American mother and a Sicilian father. She pursued higher education in England. After receiving her first degree in Russian, she taught English as a foreign language before starting a Master’s in Islamic Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She majored in Islamic architecture and went on to write her PhD thesis on mosques in West Africa— particularly Senegal—and women’s spaces in Islamic places of worship. She taught a term’s course at Birkbeck College on Islamic architecture in the Mediterranean and is currently writing a book based on her thesis. Cantone lives in London with her two children. Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner family professor of African studies in the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures and history departments, and director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University in New York. His primary research has focused on the colonial, postcolonial, urban, and cultural history of Senegal and Francophone West Africa. He is the author of many articles, book chapters, and books including, Le Kajoor au 19ème siècle. Pouvoir Ceddo et Conquête Coloniale (Paris: Karthala, 1990), Histoire du Sénégal: Le Modèle Islamo-Wolof et ses Périphéries (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2001) and a collaboration, La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal (Paris: Karthala, 2002).

x

Con tr i butors

Aly Dramé received his PhD in African history from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His current research focuses on processes of ethnic identity transformation in Southern Senegambia before colonial rule, through interfaith marriage, Islamic education, and military jihad. He is currently an assistant professor at Dominican University, Illinois, where he teaches African history, Islam, world history, and immigration. John Glover received his PhD in African history from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is an associate professor of history at the University of Redlands in southern California where he teaches courses on African, world, and Islamic history. His latest publication is Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007). His research concerns the production, meaning, and use of historical narratives by the Sufi orders of Senegal as they relate to notions of modernity. His current research project concerns the Lebu fisherfolk and the Layenne Sufi order of the Cap Vert peninsula. Marloes Janson holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Leiden University, the Netherlands. She has conducted research on griottes, oral traditions, local Islamic expressions, and religious reform in The Gambia and Senegal. Currently, she is a researcher at Zentrum Moderner Orient/Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO) in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on youth participation, that of female youth in particular, in the Tabligh Jama’at in The Gambia. Janson has published various articles and book chapters and is working on a book manuscript entitled, Young, Modern and Muslim: The Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia. Mara A. Leichtman is assistant professor of anthropology and Muslim studies at Michigan State University. During the 2007–2008 academic year she was a visiting fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient/Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO) in Berlin, Germany, and the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands. She has been conducting research and teaching in Senegal since 2000. Her research is multisited, including fieldwork in Lebanon, France, and England, examining ties between Senegal and Lebanon and linkages with transnational Shi’a institutions headquartered in Europe. She has published various articles and book chapters and is working on a book manuscript entitled, Becoming Shi’a in Africa: Lebanese Migrants and Senegalese Converts. Roman Loimeier presently teaches at the University of Florida, Gainesville (Center for African Studies). He has done extensive work in Senegal, Northern Nigeria, and Zanzibar (since 1981) and has numerous publications on the history of African Muslim societies, Sufi brotherhoods, and movements of reform, including Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997). Fabienne Samson holds a PhD from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Centre d’études Africaines, Paris (France). She is an anthropologist and researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). Her current work is on new Christian and Muslim movements among urban youth in West Africa. Her publications include articles on Islam in Senegal and Les Marabouts de l’islam Politique. Le Dahiratoul Moustarchidina Wal Moustarchidaty, un movement néo-confrérique senegalais (Paris: Karthala, 2005).

Con tr i butors

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James Searing is the chair of the history department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he teaches African history. His research focuses on the history of Senegal, combining an ethnographic approach to peoples and cultures with Senegal’s historical encounters with Islam, the Atlantic world, and French colonial rule. His publications include West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and “God Alone is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1859–1914; The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001). His current research examines ethnicity and conversion through a fieldwork based study of the Sereer Safen, an ethnic minority in the Thiès region who converted to Islam in the colonial period. Rudolph (Butch) Ware holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan. He researches knowledge transmission in Islamic West Africa. His first book manuscript, “A Walking Qur’an: Embodied Knowledge, Qur’an Schooling, and History in Senegambia,” interrogates the role of traditional Islamic education in shaping Muslim identity and society. Ware also conducts research on private libraries in Senegal and Mauritania, new media and Islamic thought, and slavery in Islamic Africa. His publications include (with Robert Launay) “Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran: Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au Sénégal et en Côte d’Ivoire” in Gilles Holder (ed.) l’Islam en Afrique: vers un espace public religieux (forthcoming, 2008); “Slavery in Islamic Africa, 1400–1800,” in Stanley Engerman and David Eltis (eds.), Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume III (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2008); and “Njàngaan: The Daily Regime of Qur’anic Students in 20th Century Senegal,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, no. 3 (2004): 515–38.

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Glos sary

adat: Tradition, customs. addiya: Religious offerings. adhan: Call to prayer. alal: Wealth. amal (pl. a’amal): Work, religious tasks. arabisant(s): Those educated in the Arabic language. ashura: The tenth day of the month of Muharram on which Shi’a commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad from his daughter Fatima and his cousin and son-in-law Ali. bab al-nisa: Women’s entrance to a mosque. baraka: Blessing or gift of grace. batin: The esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam. bid’a (pl. bida): Innovation in religion. Caliphate: A series of Sunni Caliphs who were the selected or elected successor of the prophet in political and military leadership, but not religious authority. cosaan: Tradition. daara: Quran school, also rural work group. dahira: Prayer circle. dar al-islam: Land ruled by Islam. dar al-imara: Governor’s palace. dar al-kufr: Land of the infidels, also dar al-harb. dhikr: Litany of prayers. din: Religion. fatwa: Ruling on Islamic law. fawz: Success and accomplishment in this world and in the hereafter. fiqh: Islamic jurisprudence. fitna: Division within Islam.

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Gloss ary

griot: Poet, praise singer, bard; an expert on oral tradition. gris-gris: Amulets. hadith (pl. ahadith): Collections of oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the prophet Mohammad. hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the 5 pillars of Islam. hawza: Seminary of Shi’i Islamic training. hijab (pl. hijabat): Veil, headscarf. hijra: Migration of the prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. ijtima’ (pl. ijtima’at): Conference (religious). imam: Head of a mosque, to be differentiated from Shi’a Imams as described in Imamate. imam ratib: Principal Imam. Imamate: A series of (some believe twelve) Shi’a leaders, called Imams, who were both political leaders and religious guides, and the final authoritative interpreters of God’s will as formulated in Islamic law. jahiliyya: Ignorance, the time before Islam. jakka jigeen: Women’s mosque. jellaba: Traditional Muslim robes. jihad: To strive or to struggle, this can be in the context of religious war or a personal struggle within oneself or against poverty. jum’a: Friday prayer. ka’ba: Sacred granite cuboid enclosure at Mecca, considered the holiest place in Islam. kabila: Patrilineal descent group, tribe. kafir: Infidel or pagan. Khalife General (Arabic: khalifa): Head of a Sufi order in Senegal. khums: Shi’a Islamic tax of one-fifth of all income. khutba: Friday prayer sermon. madhhab: Islamic school of thought. There are four main madhahib (pl.) in Sunni Islam: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali schools, while the Shi’a follow the Ja’afari school. Most Senegalese Sufis follow the Maliki school. madrasa (pl. madaris): Islamic school. magal: Pilgrimage. The largest magal in Senegal is to Touba. maghrib: The fourth daily prayer in Islam, offered at sunset. marabout: Muslim religious specialist (in the French colonial lexicon). masjid: Mosque, place of prostration.

G los s ary

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mawlud: The celebration of the birthday of the prophet Mohammad. medina: Old city. mihrab: Niche in a wall of a mosque indicating qibla. muezzin: The chosen person at a mosque who leads the call to prayer. muqaddam: Representative of an important Sufi leader. ndawtal: Gifts given during life cycle rituals. ndiggel: Maraboutic order. ñeeño: Caste. njebbel: Initiation rite into a Sufi order. pénc: Public Square qibla: The direction of Mecca toward which a Muslim should pray. qutb al-alam: Pole of the world. qutb al-zaman: Pole of the age. sahabah: The companions of the prophet. salat: Prayer. shahada: The profession of faith, “there is no God but God and Mohammad is the Messenger of God,” the first pillar of Islam. shari’a: Islamic law. sherif: One who claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad. Shi’a: From shi’at Ali, the partisans of Ali. Shi’a Muslims believe that Ali, the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, should have been his first successor, followed by other family members of the prophet. silsila: Genealogies. sokhna: Female spiritual leaders, often the daughters or wives of marabouts. sunnah: The body of Islamic law based on the words and deeds of Mohammad and his successors. tabaski (eid al-adha): The holiday commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael, which also commemorates the sacrifice offered during the pilgrimage to Mecca by slaughtering sheep. tabligh: Missionary work to teach about Islam. tafsir: Quranic commentary. tahara: Ritual purity. talibe: Disciple. tariqa (pl. turuq): Sufi order. tasbih: Prayer beads.

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Gloss ary

tawhid: Oneness of God, monotheism. terranga: Hospitality. timiss: Maghrib, or sunset, prayer. turba: The small clay tablet representing the earth of Karbala to which Shi’a Muslims touch their foreheads in prayer. tuyaaba: Religious merit. ummah: Muslim community at large. ustaz: Teacher. Wahhabi: Reformist Islamic movement named after the Saudi Arabian founder Mohammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703–1792). This name is rarely used by members of the group today, and was first designated by their opponents. The movement accepts the Quran and hadith as fundamental texts and advocates a puritanical and legalistic theology in matters of faith and religious practice. wakil: Authorized representative of a marja, a Shi’a leader who is a reference for emulation. wali: Holy man, friend of God. wazifa: Sufi repetition of sacred phrases. wird: Prayer formula. zawiya: Headquarters of a Sufi order. ziyara: Visit to a Muslim holy place or spiritual leader.

Acronyms of Muslim Movements and Political Part ies

AEEMS

Association des Elèves et Etudiants Musulmans du Sénégal

AEMUD

Association des Etudiants Musulmans de l’Université de Dakar

AMEA

Association Musulmane des Etudiants Africains

BFM

Brigade de la Fraternité Musulmane

CIRCOFS

Comité Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Sénégal

DEM

Dahira des Etudiants Mourides de Dakar

DMM

Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat

FAIS

Fédération des Associations Islamiques du Sénégal.

FAL

Front pour l’Alternance

HF

Harakat al-Falah (lil-thaqafat al-Islamiyya)

HT

Hizb al-Tarqiyya

IID

Institut Islamique de Dakar

JIR

Jama‘at Ibadu Rahman

MF

Matlab al-Fawzayni

MMUD

Mouvement Mondial pour l´Unicité de Dieu (Arabic: Diwan Silk al-Jawahir fi-Akhbar Sagharir)

PUR

Parti de l´Unité et du Rassemblement

PVD

Parti de la Vérité pour le Développement

TJ

Tabligh Jama‘at

UCM

Union Culturelle Musulmane (Arabic: ITI, Ittihad al-Thaqafi al-Islami)

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Introduction

4 New Perspectives on Isl am in Senegal Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femi ni ni t y

Mamadou Diouf (Columbia University in the City of New York) and Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)

T

he literature on Islam in Africa has been dominated by two main tracks: the making of Muslim societies and the “Africanization of Islam.”1 It has tended to reproduce a reductive binary in which the processes of “Africanization” provide content, selecting the local factors that constitute the key drivers in determining the character of Islam in Africa, while the “Islamization of African societies” lays out the structures from which the faith deploys itself. The issues with which scholars engaged were constructed around additional binaries such as universal and local manifestations and appropriations of Islam, literate (doctrinal modes) and magical (imagistic modes) discourses and practices,2 individual religious responsibility and submission to religious leaders, and spirituality and economic and political functions of the brotherhoods.3 Islam has been a dominant theme in studies of Senegal since the colonial period. Following the studies of Paul Marty in 1917,4 the French colonial administration and community of scholars distinguished between Arab Islam and Islam noir. This concept captures the colonial perception of Islam south of the Sahara defined as the product of spiritual and ritualistic transactions between Islam and African traditional religions. African Islam was seen as less pure, less literate, more magical, and flexible enough to be incorporated into “French Muslim policy.” Such a perspective has been dominant in historical, anthropological, sociological, and political studies. Marty remained the main reference for the study of Islam in Senegal until the end of the twentieth century. His typology of Muslim groups and discussion of the brotherhoods and their founders provided the foundations for later studies. Marty’s Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal developed the underlying repertoire of concepts and arguments by which Western-trained (African and non-African) scholars as well as indigenous historians

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and intellectuals have thought about the trajectories of Islam and the brotherhoods. Discussions continue to focus around the conformity of African Muslim practices with orthodoxy, which mainly referred to North Africa and the Middle East. Most of the Marty-inspired literature lacked articulations of the interactions and interplays of the three modes of inscribing Islam in the social and political landscape of the Senegambia: the intellectual and doctrinal, the imagistic, and the institutional. Sufi brotherhoods centrally located in the rural areas—in particular in the Wolof regions of groundnut production—were structured along authoritarian lines commanded by a Muslim cleric. The focus on these brotherhoods overlooked the contrast and competition with an urban, literate, and deliberately Arab and orthodox Islam of colonial and postcolonial bureaucrats, centered especially in Saint Louis, until the last three decades of the twentieth century. It also obscured the cultural and historical formations fabricated in the daily engagement with the Senegambian traditional polities (before the establishment of colonial rule), colonial ethnography and native policies, postcolonial governance, and the leftovers of traditional ideologies to accommodate or retreat to Islam’s political and religious challenges. The established political science accounts of Islam in Senegal are a particularly telling illustration of the problems posed by such an approach.5 They privilege the structure of economic forces, the state, and the power of marabouts (religious leaders) over the religiosity of the masses of talibe (disciples). The centrality of the political economy approach privileged the Murid brotherhood as the epitome of Senegalese Islam both in Africa and abroad, emphasizing the constant reconfiguring of their religious identity to adapt to different economic circumstances, from the colonial peanut economy of the mid-nineteenth century to the global economy of the late twentieth century. Murid adjustments to colonial rule and postcolonial politics (first by dominating the rural landscape and later the central marketplace in Dakar, as well as migrating to Paris, New York, and Turin) led them to engage with Western modernity and global Islam in a distinctly Senegalese way with particular Wolof idioms. In this volume Beth Buggenhagen offers a convincing critique of the dominant approach for understanding the Murid way only as an economic force while privileging an analysis of the state over the religiosity of the talibe, focusing more on structure than on meaning. She suggests that if Murid disciples have practiced total devotion to religious authority, as Cruise O’Brien has insisted, they have done so to mask what they keep back from the pressure to give; and Sufi guides were not the only persons in whom they were investing value. In addition, Buggenhagen interrogates the literature’s recognition of men and brotherhood and dislodges this mistaken emphasis by focusing on relations of hierarchy and difference among members of the tariqa (Sufi order), the role of women in particular. Other scholars complicate the conventional picture of Murid historical trajectories. Cheikh Anta Babou has written the first biography of Amadou Bamba based on internal documents to revisit the relationship between the Murid work ethic and its relationship to spirituality.6 John Glover’s chapter provides a revisionist history of a branch of the Murid order founded by Sheikh Ibrahima Faty Mbacke (Mame Thierno) at Darou Mousty. Contesting the French conquest as the starting point for understanding the Murids, Glover recasts this debate using discursive analyses on modernity and envisioning their establishment as the outgrowth of at least a century of precolonial African historical developments. He depicts the emergence of the Murid order as the culmination of a long history of Islamic reform movements and Bamba’s interpretation of Sufi beliefs and practices in relation to the historical context of Islam in Senegambia. In Darou Mousty Bamba’s ideology resulted in developments that

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3

were distinct but not entirely divorced from the larger Senegambian milieu. Despite the onset of French colonial rule, Murids of Darou Mousty preserved some of their autonomy through accommodating the new sociopolitical and economic environments. Events such as taxation or military or labor recruitment were translated to fit a Murid historical understanding of these changes, transforming the original settlers of Darou Mousty into cultural and religious heroes. For example, Murids from Darou Mousty who fought in World War I were perceived as not actually engaged in this effort on behalf of the French but in labor to Mame Thierno and Amadou Bamba in fulfillment of the ndiggel (maraboutic order). Scholars have widened the scope of the earlier emphasis on the Murid brotherhood by moving the focus of Islamic scholarship from rural to urban areas. Historians have also addressed the domination of Murid and Wolof historical trajectories by examining other religious groups in Senegal and interethnic and gendered relations. Ousmane Kane, David Robinson, and Jean-Louis Triaud7 have shed new light on the Tijan order as well as its political dealings, intellectual heritage, and fragmented identities. Aly Dramé agrees with Glover that historical narratives on Islam in Senegambia focus too much on the period after the mid-nineteenth century. He argues further that they have consistently overlooked the role of marriage in the Islamization of Senegal. In fact, he contends that the first stage of the development of Islam in the Middle Casamance was exogamous marriage, marriage bonds between early Muslim migrants and non-Muslim local women who took their husbands’ religion. Widening the dar al-Islam by bringing in new converts is seen as a high accomplishment for a Muslim, in this case for the Mandinke and Bainunk, and Islamic law permits Muslim men to take non-Muslim wives if their offspring follow the father’s religion. James Searing has explored the relationship with Wolof traditions and colonial prescriptions using the concept of accommodation.8 In this volume he revisits, on one hand, the interplay between the Islamization of Africa and the Africanization of Islam and, on the other hand, the dominant paradigm of conversion (Quarantine, Mixing, and Reform) in the context of modern conversions to Islam. He points the way to rethinking these binary oppositions in the case of the Sereer Safen. The Safen quickly took steps to abandon matrilineal inheritance, traditional funerals, and initiation ceremonies for men and women. In doing so they adapted Muslim intellectual traditions to deal with their situation, discussing the boundaries between customs (adat) and religion (din). According to Searing, in the transition Islam did not play the role of a monolithic with readymade answers, but it provided a vocabulary and a historic model of change (based on the Quran) that was appropriated by converts. Safen interpretations of Islam also addressed anxieties about Wolofization and loss of ethnic identity, allowing the Safen to adopt some Wolof customs while still retaining an extremely critical stance in relation to the Wolof social order and monarchy. New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal describes the new processes, revisits the old ones, and extends the scholarly dialogue on Islam in Senegal. It represents a break from the established literature. It also deals with an ever-changing Senegalese society by examining the spaces of religion and modes of religiosity;9 structures of religious communities10 and their social, economic, and intellectual processes of production and reproduction both locally and through mobility (transnationalism, real or symbolic); and the rapidly shifting and often unpredictable identities of youth. This book examines multiple emergent formations of religious identities, expressions, and manifestations located within national and transnational dynamics of neoliberal reforms, changing gender roles, and religious globalization. It seeks to chart a path of accounting for the complexity of the ways these “modes of religiosity” forge new spaces

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of affiliation, movements, civic cultures, and communities.11 We focus our attention on actual practices around fashion, institutions of education and marriage, and the emergence of new religious movements and their effect on democratic practices and the public sphere. We highlight the discourses and practices in the context of broadly defined sites: conversion, education, politics and economics, sexuality, popular culture, and their impact on Muslim identities. Such an emphasis for this book is both appropriate and timely. Although most arenas of the academy have wholly understood (if not embraced) the new realities faced by Muslim groups, others remain locked in stereotypical images of Islam’s colonial past or the West’s present obsession with terrorism. Equally important to our exploration are the multiple and changing articulations of Muslim identities in Senegal and their social, economic, cultural, political, and intellectual expressions within local and global dynamics and their intersections. It charts the new paths to identify and analyze the complexity in how Islamic groups and thoughts forge new spaces of affiliation, movement, ideas, behavior, and so forth, while contesting, redefining, or disdaining older sites and intellectual territories. How do we understand and analyze these shifts, reconfigurations of old identities and markers, and creation of new ones as well as the spaces where they are deployed? How are local attachments and idioms played out in global contexts facing global challenges and, vice versa, in engaging nation, race, class, ethnicity, and gender? The studies have been grouped to explore many aspects of Islam. As an interdisciplinary project, drawing from anthropology, sociology, history, political science, and religious studies philosophies, the different chapters provide a complex picture of Islam in Senegal and The Gambia. The chapters interrogate the new structures and conditions of Islam as religious beliefs and practices translate into multiple codes defining behavior; dreaming, loving, and living together; intervening in public and private domains; and interacting socially and culturally within and outside the dar alIslam, both locally and globally. In addition the volume charts the multifarious ways that Senegalese and Gambian Muslims resisted being passive recipients of a religion controlled from outside their territory, race, and cultural environment. In a limited and somehow revised way, they appropriated the Arabic language and scripture and adapted it to suit their own needs and anxieties about religion, society, and history. For example, some converts in Senegal envision Shi’a Islam as an intellectual movement and pride themselves on their fluency in Arabic, conversing among themselves in the Arabic language, and acquiring libraries of Arabic texts on Shi’a theology. In contrast, and unlike other reformist associations, the Tijan Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Murid Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu do not see Arabic teaching as a struggle against French, where Islamization does not require Arabization. Youth in The Gambia are attracted to the Tabligh Jama’at from tape recorded sermons in English rather than books in Arabic, which they cannot read, or even English translations, which they cannot afford. The issues we set out to examine require a meticulous review of the literature on Islam and society in Senegal and The Gambia to identify the questions that have not been dealt with, in particular the relationship between the marabout and the disciple as the foundation of a new community after the defeat of the traditional aristocracy and the establishment of colonial rule. Senegambian societies faced the critical challenge of building a new ethical architecture and moral economy for communities in search of stability, peace, and identities. The new generation of clerics proposed fresh approaches and articulated innovative agendas. First they refilled with new meanings the social, ethical, and cultural territories deserted by the traditional leadership since

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at least the Atlantic slave trade with successful attempts at state building in Futa Jallon, Futa Toro, and Bundu as well as active military resistance jihad activities from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The limited successes of the armed social movements were followed by the foundation of more spiritually oriented Sufi orders all over Senegambia. In a context of violence and political instability dominated by the search for certainty and security, the Sufi orders initiated a process that had a paradoxical effect: ensure the autonomy of Muslim communities from the encroachments of political powers and establish a firm centralization of power and hierarchies along the lines of the colonial administration. Therefore, Sufi Islam in Senegambia could be best understood as a distinctive reaction to the imposition of colonial rule and the decomposition of the moral, cultural, and economic narrative and practices of traditional communities. The procedures entailed the production of basic values and the reconfiguring of an Islamic library to circulate new spiritual references. The Sufi orders became solid spaces irrigated by the knowledge and power derived from their structures and grammars. The function of the close reading of the history of the appropriation of Sufism in Senegambia in our endeavor is to avoid two traps in the scholarly literature: first, reaffirming the narratives of the Sufi orders that eulogizes and overemphasizes their role in the propagation of Islamic knowledge and behavior, and their resistance to colonial rule and the “French civilizing mission,” to document the complex process of accommodation and transactions; and second, the conventional institutional approach to privilege a sociointellectual and sociological framework woven with a dense ethnography to account for the everyday reconfiguration of Islam and the practices associated with it. Each chapter seeks to give due value to practices and discourses as well as the context of their production, appropriation, rejection, and revision. Together they nicely trace the contours of this study that connect practices and discourses to the larger structures of the mental and material worlds of the Muslim communities of Senegambia and their engagement with global forces. During the same period in the colony of Senegal (Saint Louis) and later in the Four Communes of Saint Louis, Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar, along with and in contrast to the Sufi orders, a social group made up of Muslim traders was emerging as a moral community with a civic culture that drew on Islamic religious resources as well as the political, economic, and social rights conferred on them by their citizen status as originaires.12 By constantly making claims based on their citizenship rights, they initiated a twofold process, inserting themselves in the colonial narrative and fabricating a world of their own through a daily engagement with colonial policy and knowledge as well as with traditional moral and social prescriptions. Their economic and philanthropic activities provide precise indications of their cultural, economic, and political idioms, logic and the social networks they put in place. The symbols, myths, rituals, infrastructures, and spaces and places with which they were associated have produced an urban civility with various manifestations. This civility borrowed proudly from three sources: the Senegambian traditions, especially Wolof and Halpulaar; the religious, aesthetic, and erotic library of Islam, which ensured a connection with the North African, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern Arabic and Muslim literary world; and finally the administrative, political, and institutional resources of the Senegalese colony. By collaborating with the colonial administration, and adeptly using French legislation and their civil rights,13 these traders had managed to create an autonomous civic space for themselves. Educated in the arts and sciences as well as the Islamic court system, they also had perfect knowledge of the arcane colonial administrative system and a mastery of the professional rules that governed commercial activities.14 Their respectable level

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of education predisposed them to an active participation in the moral, theological, and political debates that outlined the civic15 and political culture of both the Senegalese colony and Saint-Louis civil society.16 Their literary imagination,17 supported by a scriptural and literary Islamic modernity, submitted the hegemonic pretensions of the colony’s civilizing mission to regular criticism. It introduced a civility made from a multiplicity of heritages, whose core remains, without contest, an Arab and Muslim textuality.18 In some way they had the dexterity to outline a native and Wolof conception of assimilation through a series of operations creating hybrid and vernacular versions of Islamic, colonial, and Senegambian libraries. It takes a unique approach to assemble the most recent statements on the varied aspects of Islam in Senegal and The Gambia. Today’s age of globalization provides a different context for Islam than the colonial hierarchies of privilege and responses of accommodation and assimilation that existed at the moment of the emergence of the Sufi orders. Furthermore, the new scholarship also brings fresh perspectives, alternative methodologies, and provocative theories on different topics. These include the interconnection between transnationalism and Islam, a new look at religious conversion, revisionist histories, and an investigation of patterns of conspicuous consumption in relation to gender and Islam. Uniting contributions from the work of these emerging scholars, this collection highlights new religious movements, textualities, public and private discourses, behavior—the art of proselytizing and dating—and the like. The emerging scholarship continues to move away from the Murid dominance in the previous literature, focusing in particular on the new religious paths and discourses that have engaged with both the Sufi modes of spirituality and its various operations in the public space. Mara Leichtman, Erin Augis, Marloes Janson, and Fabienne Samson offer a rare, vivid, and thoughtful examination of new reformist movements: Shi’a Islam, Sunnite women’s organizations, the success of Tabligh Jama’at among Gambian youth, and attempts to modernize the Sufi orders with the creation of vibrant and militant youth branches. Leichtman insists on a sharp contrast between the political awakening resulting from the Iranian Revolution, which is perceived to dominate Shi’a Islam as a global force, and the self-portrayals of Senegalese Shi’a converts as leaders of an intellectual movement aimed at using Islamic knowledge originating from both Sunni and Shi’a sources to educate the population. Converts were exposed to new ideas about Islam through their travels abroad, Lebanese and Iranian missionary work in Senegal, and the spread of media technologies. Leichtman describes the discovery of Shi’a Islam as a search for an authentic Islam, which depends on textual study and historical inquiry as well as a particular notion of rationality. Yet conversion did not lead to cultural authenticity because converts were not true to their community and faith but went beyond their Sufi origins to incorporate the Shi’a faith and demonstrate that Shi’a Islam can be authentically Senegalese. By closely examining how Senegalese converts create their own past—unveiling discourses of Shi’a Islam’s historical roots in Senegal19—she questions Eva Rosander’s division of “African Islam” and (reformist) “Islam in Africa,”20 arguing that Shi’a Islam is not purely an outside Islamist force, but has become localized and vernacularized along its journey. In contrast to Leichtman’s interpretation of the development of a Senegalese Shi’a network as an alternative to joining the Sufi orders, and not as a means to shake up or dismiss them, Augis insists on the subversive or revolutionary role of Dakar’s Sunnite groups that has proliferated in the last two decades, investigating the role of women in reformist religious movements. The movement conceived as a turn toward a more orthodox Islam is a symbol of solidarity with the ummah and has been attracting

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mostly young people. It provides a path toward personal spirituality and identitarian aesthetics of global, pan-Islamic affiliation. In addition, it is a radical critique of the cultural practices of peers and elders, especially leading to conflict with parents and teachers, in a rebellion against Senegal’s colonial past and Sufi religious traditions, which are embodied in elders’ worldviews and actions. Janson and Samson point to the same direction of contestation and subversion led by the youth to restore true religion and reimagine power relations and community cohesion. According to Janson, The Gambia appears to be a flourishing center of Tabligh activities in West Africa. Adherents from other African countries, such as Senegal, regularly assemble in The Gambia to exchange ideas of the proper Tabligh method, that is, missionary work aimed at the moral transformation of Muslims. The Tabligh Jama‘at represents a new expression of religiosity of young Muslims, which could be seen as a form of rebellion against the authority of the elders and of traditions. Examining the expansion of the movement from South Asia and its spread to The Gambia, Janson explores the emotional, often tearful, process through which Tablighi youth cultivate a virtuous self that has submitted completely to God and his prophet. She argues that this new mode of religiosity can also be seen as a form of resistance against Sufi Islam. This resistance is generational and assumes the form of conversion to a reformist Islam that asserts a new set of Islamic values, which cultivate simplicity, austerity, integrity, piety, a renewed moral order, and greater social and economic equality between the age sets and men and women. Samson’s contribution to the volume, while in dialogue with the interventions of Leichtman, Augis, and Janson, looks at the rebellious operations taking place within Sufi orders. She compares two new Sufi movements, the Tijan Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Murid Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu, that are attempting to be innovative with respect to the teachings of the founders of their leading families, turning into Sufi movements influenced by ideas of reform. Located at the intersection of modernity and globalization, and strongly urbanized, they address themselves exclusively to a young audience, aiming to gradually transform society. In the same move, they propose to Islamize modernity and reject the Western world and its conception of modernity and reproach Senegal for letting itself fall under the influence of the former colonizer, France. Adherents are reborn in these communities, take pride in their new identities as good Muslims, and find in them a true family. More than their elders, they place their movements of Sufi origin within the orbit of a more reformist political Islam, opening themselves up to religious trends from the Arab Muslim world to transform the local system of Sufi orders. In the cases of the new reformist movements, such as the groups studied by Augis, young people refer to themselves as Sunnites to indicate that they are the only Senegalese who correctly practice the sunnah. Reformists in Senegal are not marginalized and powerless, as they are often depicted in the literature.21 Leichtman critiques such arguments, suggesting alternatively that Shi’a influences in Senegal should not be judged by their success in political awakening and calls for revolution, which is not their ultimate goal. Instead, converts portray themselves as an intellectual movement and use their knowledge of Islam as a weapon to educate—and develop—the Senegalese population. Women and youth in particular describe their decisions to become Sunnite, Shi’a, Tablighi, or even better Sufis as a conversion and an experience of spiritual rebirth that requires them to completely reorient their world views to eschew their former cultural practices. All four previously discussed chapters engage with the notion of conversion as the (in)appropriate concept to describe movement within Islam, from one path or one

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school to another. Such debates, in the context of the proliferation of new Muslim religious movements, reveal the continuities and discontinuities in the literature on religion in Africa, in particular if we compare these chapters with the contributions of Dramé and Searing. The six chapters are compelling in both the stories of conversion they tell and the issues they raise when they ask about the spiritual, physical, cultural, linguistic, and fashion consequences of conversion. For example, Janson, Searing, and Dramé debate theories of conversion in vastly different contexts (in particular the Horton/Fisher controversy22), in addition to the manipulation and redefinition of marriage, gender norms, and clothing to exhibit spiritual and physical rupture with the old order and belief systems in the strive for moral perfection. But more to the point, juxtaposing multiple narratives of conversion, from indigenous traditional religions to Islam (as in the cases examined by Searing and Dramé) or within Islam from one path to another (as in the cases studied by Janson, Leichtman, Augis, and Samson), points to the various resources mobilized from stories of redemption as well as revision or rupture with every aspect of daily life. Converts can escape the negative political baggage associated with jihad and militant Islam; they can form marriage alliances that enable economic prosperity; or they can find a replacement for the failed state by joining movements that provide basic services such as education, health care, and training in manual trades, which reward followers with spiritual and economic benefits. Searing describes the meaning of conversion by evoking funerals and baptisms as a shorthand for the most dramatic changes that occurred. By converting to Islam, Safen, who came of age after World War I, overturned a system of matrilineal inheritance and descent that had defined the social order. Searing rethinks the binary oppositions in Fisher’s paradigm of Quarantine, Mixing and Reform. Sufi Islam had advantages for the Sereer: Conversion was a rebellion led by young men against their elders, who resisted Islam as long as they identified it with the Wolof social order. Sereer interpretations of conversion allow accommodation with Sereer history and reduce the difference between new and old converts (Sereer and Wolof) by insisting that true Islam arrived with the failure of jihad and the emergence of new Sufi orders at the beginning of the twentieth century. Horton and Fisher depict conversion as a long-term process, whereas Searing focuses on the moment of conversion in the recent past, thereby opening up possibilities of analysis missing from their models. Searing emphasizes the agency of converts, who decide which aspects of “tradition” must be discarded or may be preserved and need reformation. Reform was central to the conversion process because the Safen abandoned matrilineal inheritance, traditional funerals, and initiation ceremonies and gave up alcohol and tobacco. Searing finds Peel’s recent study of Yoruba conversion more helpful through the concept of the “inculturation” of Christianity.23 Inculturation facilitated the identification of secret, mystical powers attributed to elders, diviners, and shrines with the new forms of secret knowledge brought by Sufi Islam. The ethical teachings and peaceful methods of Sufi orders after the abandonment of jihad were perceived as being in harmony with Sereer values. Dramé sheds light on the critical issue of conversion by examining the interwoven relationships between migration, Islam, ethnicity and identity change in the Middle Casamance before the colonial era. Like Searing, he challenges Fisher’s three-step process for conversion to Islam in West Africa, showing that rather than quarantine, consistent patterns of marriage alliances between Mandinka Muslim migrants and the non-Muslim local communities (Bainunk landowners) among whom they settled changed the spiritual geography of the region, fostering the early development of Islam. Analyzing how Muslims prospered through trade, cotton manufacturing,

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and the teaching of Islam, he proposes his own three phases of exogamous marriage (between Muslims and non-Muslims), endogamous marriage (between Muslims), and subsequent consolidation of Islam through religious toleration and peaceful relations. Early Muslim migrants were restricted in their ability to find Muslim spouses, and local marriages also resulted in entitlements such as land grants for the settlement of strangers. Bainunk elite favored marriage ties between local women and Muslim migrants because of the prestigious status of Muslim scholars in the Middle Casamance in the period before colonial rule. The volume also explores the specific circumstances involving Islam, the colonial encounter, and the social and material postcolonial consequences. Our purpose is to help fully comprehend how these new multilayered and unstable globalized religious identities are and will affect multiple sites, including schools, mosques, economic sectors and practices, and sexualities. We therefore focus attention on the actual practices of Muslim groups and individuals in Senegal, the new spaces in which they find themselves, the travels between multiple local and cosmopolitan identities in relation to different sites of identification: nation, race, class, ethnicity, gender, and so forth. As a whole, we seek to address the openings and closures of Muslim group structuring, intellectual and religious formation in local circumstances, the configuration of civic public and religious spaces (urban and rural landscapes), and the intersections of the local and the transnational in a country caught between “Islam and the West”24 (clothing, music, education, norms of sexuality, modes of spirituality, etc.). For example, carefully tracking objects and subjects of worship and veneration, narratives of remembering and (re)fashioning the saints and their miracles and teachings, the institutions of sociability, and transmission of power and discipline, Cleo Cantone, Butch Ware, and Glover offer a rich ethnography of the material culture of some of the Muslim communities of Senegambia. The mosque has acted as focal point for and an important marker of Muslim communities’ identities. Its polyvalent role as a place that combined dwelling, prayer, tribunal, garrison, and commercial activity in the Medinan period is often extolled by so-called reformist movements. According to such a discourse, the mosque does not discriminate against race, ethnicity, or gender, instead placing the emphasis on belief in the puritanical tenets of Islam in contrast to Sufi groups whose mosques are often tariqa-specific. But in architectural terms, the message of this particular discourse is not always as clearly advertised from the point of view of the buildings of Islam. Cantone explores these debates as well as their effect on the physical act of rebuilding mosques in durable materials (mud mosques replaced by cement and modern Middle East–inspired designs) and changes in their spatial organization to accommodate women. She examines architecturally various mosques in Senegal (and Mali) that facilitate women’s participation by integrating them within the mosque, locating them in the courtyard of men’s mosques, or housing them in former men’s mosques that were too small for the growing congregation. Other styles of women’s inclusion include a loudspeaker or a dark cloth preventing women from seeing or being seen. In addition the Quranic school (daara) served as the most important institution for the production of Muslim sensibilities and identities. Ware argues in this volume that Sufi revolutions of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries are illegible without a close examination of Quranic schooling. His chapter is an exploration of the religious and cultural meanings produced through the daara as well as an analysis of how changing educational dynamics have informed social and political developments in historical time. The clerical (marabout) lineages dispensing Islamic education were able to build sizeable social constituencies based on their knowledge of the Quran.

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By the sixteenth century clerical communities had established a modus vivendi with secular authorities, but they also came to constitute a threat to extant political authority. From the seventeenth century on, because of the sizeable followings they were able to attract, they became a major factor in the political developments of Senegambia. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sufi movements successfully produced new forms of social and political order and established Muslim states, dramatically altering the political landscape of Senegambia. Ware argues that these processes have obscured the ongoing roles Quran schools have played in shaping Muslim societies in West Africa. Since the last century, Quranic schooling has faced a series of new challenges. Colonial conquest most directly shaped the clerisy and fate of Quran schools, where the fight against Islamic influence, which the French feared as a site for the production of anti-French sentiment and jihadist political doctrine, took the shape of an educational, rather than military, war. Ware insists on a social Sufi educational revolution (1880–1920). The efforts of the Muridiyya and Tijaniyya and their new visions for Islamic education were critical in changing Sufism from the spiritual quests of introspective elites into a moving force for social change. Their control of the rural masses was vigorously questioned in the 1940s and 1950s by reform-minded Muslims who began their own critiques of the daara. Arabic schools deconstructed existing religious hierarchies while also constructing a social constituency for the reformists. In the postcolonial period, the Republic of Senegal saw the potential of a controlled and co-opted reformist movement that could sap the strength of the Sufi orders, giving the state direct access to the populations. In spite of competition the daara has remained a valued educational option because of its complex religious, cultural, and social meanings. Glover’s exploration of a branch of the Murid order founded by Sheikh Ibrahima Faty Mbacke (Mame Thierno) at Darou Mousty—a noted Murid center for its agricultural and educational activities—echoes nicely Ware’s discussion of Quranic schooling. He provides an exhaustive analysis of the rich, varied, nuanced, and complex Murid identity. At the heart of his chapter is the examination of the production of Murid historical narratives and the establishment of an “economy of knowledge”25 that has been shaping a fluid and symbiotic identity. Glover argues that the historical events or trends addressed and interpreted by these sources confound the usual bifurcation of global and local historical forces and influences. He notes that the construction and interpretation of historical narratives among both elite and common Murids act to preserve as well as redefine the past to produce an identity capable of dealing with and incorporating further change. Glover examines the construction of Murid historical narratives as a form of architecture that reflects and contributes to collective and individual Murid identities. Through oral and written sources he addresses Murid interpretations of modernity through their creation of a historical text that positions the order within a complex narrative of Islamic reform, Sufism, European colonization, and postcolonial nation-state building and globalization. By describing two different modern events—the inauguration of a new French-built mechanized well and pumping station (recorded by the colonial administration as an example of the material benefits of colonization and a validation of the civilizing mission) and the Murid construction of a grand mosque in the town—Glover unveils how they take on a complementary hybrid meaning rather than one of opposition, because the well came to be as much a Murid symbol of modernity as the mosque. He focuses on how the production and employment of historical narratives shed light on the composition and meanings of alternative modernities and adapts Foucault’s interpretation of modernity to the

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experiences of Murid disciples in Senegal in the early twentieth century. In contrast to the relegation of Sufi orders to a historical anachronism incapable of change and inherently an antimodern other, Glover has shown how Murid modernity looks to both the past and the future in its perception of how global and local historical forces have combined to help share a contemporary understanding of the order in history among its notables and disciples. Focusing on women, Buggenhagen and Augis likewise precisely examine the combining of local and global forces in shaping the presence and actions of Murid and Sunni movements. Globalization is increasingly being defined by new structures and changing conditions of modernity, the processes of accelerating economic interactions, the intensification of commodification and consumer culture,26 the shifting nature of the public sphere, the changing role of nation and national identity, the growth and affect of immigration, and the new relations and dynamics made possible by technology. In accordance with these global trends within Islam elsewhere in the world, Islam in Senegal has also been affected by multiple factors related to the conditions of modernity.27 The Murids have been taking advantage of literacy and technology (computers) in the context of migration to shape a Murid library, claiming autonomy from the Arab world and global Islam while pursuing a project of a vernacular cosmopolitanism and modernity.28 The changing parameters of the imagined communities have been reshaping the conditions of Islam in Senegal, leading to the emergence of Orthodox Sunni Islam29 and even Shi’a Islam,30 imposing a new dialogue and conflict with Sufi orders around issues of fashion and the appropriate ways of dressing (in particular for women), praying, greetings, interacting, and acting politically. Buggenhagen examines Murid insertion into the global economy in the context of neoliberal economic reform in Senegal in the 1990s through two interlocking circuits of exchange. First is the circuit of blessings into which disciples enter through offerings to Murid hierarchy, blessings that are at once spiritual and material, what she refers to as concrete wealth and the cementing of social relationships. These include offerings of labor, cash, crops, or livestock to the spiritual hierarchy during pilgrimages and contributing to the building of Touba’s mosque and infrastructure, including building homes in Touba. The second is the circuit of honor into which men and women enter through gifts of cloth, cash, and merchant goods during family ceremonies, which she refers to as corporal wealth. Building on recent work on the new African and Muslim migration to the United States and Europe,31 she discusses the conditions through which Senegalese Murids seek their livelihoods abroad and the implications for the lives they seek to construct at home in Senegal. She illuminates how men and women construct and adorn domestic interiors and exteriors, bodies, and fashions to defy the potential for loss inherent in the desire to circulate valued objects and invest value in others (children, affines, etc.) to project themselves and their vision for their community into the future, reenvisioning the state and social services. While men invested in cement bricks and land, women invested in cloth and dressing well, which symbolized their productive and reproductive potential. Unlike offerings made to religious clergy, gifts of cloth to female kin ensured an eventual replacement to themselves or their offspring that would form the basis of future wealth and lineage continuity. Hard objects (gifts to religious leaders) signified submission, whereas soft objects (textiles) indicated the desire to keep something back from the pressure to give. Hence the debate about cloth among Murid adepts was not merely about conspicuous consumption among the faithful but about women’s authority in the ritual sphere and thereby the creation of new centers of authority and the production of sociocultural difference.

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By carefully tracking and documenting the role and importance of women in the disciple–sheikh relationship,32 Buggenhagen draws attention to the forms of wealth and value they control to find evidence of a more complex landscape of spiritual authority. She argues that women contribute considerably to the order through tuyaaba (the search for religious merit), offerings of cooked food on ritual occasions, and gifts given during life cycle rituals (marriage, naming ceremonies, and funerals). The meticulous restoration of the role of women in the success of the Muridiyya, from analyzing their ability to mobilize and organize followers to engaging with the debates and controversies (in the communities of disciples and scholars) about women’s ritual practices, contribution to gift giving and receiving as well as demands for valued objects for family ceremonies, enable Buggenhagen to move away from the political economy tradition and critically engage with approaches more sensitive to gender.33 Like Ware, Glover, and Dramé, she faults the emphasis of the literature on religious leaders and not on the mass of disciples for ignoring the importance of marriage, birth, and funerary rituals on Islam in West Africa. Following the same lines as Buggenhagen, Augis draws our attention to the juxtaposition of historical, local, and global Islamic codes for behavior. She argues that Dakar women’s participation in Sunni orthodoxy is a simultaneous engagement with personal spiritual cultivation, local activism, and a feeling of solidarity with orthodox Muslims worldwide. She focuses on the dialectic of the spiritual and the political for female adherents at three interwoven levels of Sunnite Islam—the self, local activism, and the transnational imaginary—examining the tensions and conflicts generated by the articulation by young Senegalese women of alternative codes regarding religious rituals and social interactions to challenge mainstream rules about feminism, seduction, and proper attitudes. Augis describes the public discourse comparing veiled and unveiled women (those who wear miniskirts and expose their navels, or jumbax-out), precisely tracking the move toward recasting dating, love, and marriage in light of the desires of Sunnite women to improve their spirituality according to the movement’s standards for religious ceremonies and male–female relationships as well as in intentional defiance of their parents’ expectations and Sufi customs. In addition to negotiating global orthodox discourses and challenging Senegalese social norms, female adherents adapt Sunnite leaders’ teachings on polygamy, the family code, and marital gender roles in ways that uphold orthodox values while fitting their desires for economic independence and romantic love. Augis documents how Sunnite women are caught in between universal canons of their faith and political affiliation with a global movement, and their local plans for marriage in the name of private spirituality, national programs, and awareness of Senegal’s international position as a Muslim country. They exhibited conflicting discourses on polygamy, birth control, and work outside the home, which highlight their private efforts to adhere to orthodox values and accommodate their personal desires for love, sexuality, and often also economic independence. They view themselves as moral militants in solidarity with a global Muslim diaspora under siege by western world hegemonies. In this context African women’s local discourses and actions about veiling and marriage illuminate the dialectics of political and spiritual agency in private, local, and global spheres of Islamist religiosity. The two last chapters by Roman Loimeier and Samson bring the volume to close with their exploration of the political realm and the presence of religious groups in the context of the proliferation of political organizations. The end of the ndiggel 34 in the last elections seems to indicate that more room is opened to younger disciples seeking new social and political imaginaries. Thus in the new Sufi practices in Senegal,

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Islam always narrowly overlaps in the country’s social and political affairs. The two chapters are properly located in moments of crisis and confrontation to investigate the structure of political power, authority, and the form, level, and grammar of political participation, demarcating the boundaries of community (tariqa) and permissible political behavior. How the lines of authority, styles, and languages of leadership as well as boundaries of community have been expressed and challenged are central to the interrogations put forth in the last two chapters.35 Loimeier examines the recent dramatic changes in Senegal. These changes have led to a remarkable proliferation of political groups. In the presidential elections of 2000, for instance, more than forty-five parties took part in the campaign, and the Sopi coalition of Abdoulaye Wade alone rallied forty-one political groups. At the same time, the number of Islamic associations has expanded considerably and even marabouts have tried to position themselves in the sphere of politics. Despite a strong reformist religious discourse in the late 1980s, religion has not become a major topic of Senegal’s political agenda. Loimeier closely studies the dialectics of religion and politics in Senegal’s recent history and tries to explain why religion has not become a pervading or even hegemonic element of the Senegalese public sphere, despite the fact that politicians have sought religious legitimization for their policies. The Senegalese state has always seen religious leaders as important translators of state politics into local realities, despite the fact that religious actors have tried to position themselves prominently in the political arena. Samson nicely complements Loimeier’s chapter in proposing a case study on the Tijan Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Murid Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu as Sufi movements influenced by ideas of reform and products of modernity and globalization. The Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu have settled in urban spaces and address themselves exclusively to a young audience, aiming to gradually transform society. Both movements are built on the same pyramidal model organizing disciples successively from neighborhood to town to region, under their two leaders, Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke. Both young leaders bring together political and religious discourses so that they reinforce one another. By strongly connecting religious visions and political perspectives forged exclusively through the language of their respective religious orders, Sy and Mbacke have been successful in establishing an uncontestable authority among their disciples. Through Islamic education spanning proper behavior, speech, and dress, to classes in family planning, cooking, and handcrafts, these movements become microsocieties in which the faithful experience a community life governed by Islam and the principles of their order. The politicization of the two leaders derives directly from their religious legitimacy. Because Islam encompasses all facets of Muslims’ lives, disciples see no conflict between their spiritual leaders’ religious, social, and political responsibilities. Moustapha Sy entered the political field in 1993. His originality was in supporting President Abdou Diouf’s opposition, which led to his imprisonment. Modou Kara Mbacke’s first political act in 2000, to the disapproval of his followers, supported Abdou Diouf and the party in power, and not the Murid-led opposition. In 1999 Moustapha Sy rallied his movement to the Parti de l’Unité et du Rassemblement, of which he became president. In 2004 Mbacke created his own party, the Parti de la Vérité pour le Développement. During the last presidential elections of 2007, both leaders refused to contribute to their own parties: Mbacke supported the government in position, while Sy supported the opposition.

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Examination of the chapters in this collection suggests the fabrication of new structures and conditions of Islam in Senegal through the multiple and changing formations of Muslim identities and their social, economic, cultural, political and intellectual expressions, within local and global dynamics and their intersections, has been underway for decades. The chapters illustrate the complex and constantly revised processes, languages, fashion, and buildings through which Islamic groups and thoughts forge new spaces of affiliation, movement, ideas, and so on; meanwhile they contest, redefine, or disdain older sites and intellectual territories to negotiate diversity, ambiguities, and uncertainties of everyday life in Senegal. Islam in Senegal has been affected by multiple factors related to the conditions of modernity, the increasing globalization of the economy, the intensification of commoditization and consumerism, the growth of immigration, and the powerful effect of the new technology of information and communication, which have radically transformed the geography of Islam in Senegal. The shifting nature of the public sphere and its re-Islamization,36 forming a public Islam37 and a constant reconfiguration of the domestic space, brought the double challenge of globalizing a local Islam while indigenizing its global counterparts. This volume brings to light these new religious movements, textualities, public and private discourses, sexuality, fashion, and behavior, as well as the new historical and territorial horizons that have been shaping the meaning and configuration of religious identifications in contemporary Senegal. It creatively contributes to the growing body of studies that have attempted to shift the focus away from functional explanations based on rigid political economy approaches and toward cultural and phenomenological questions. Revisionist histories of the brotherhoods and explorations of today’s growth of reformist groups and their transformations, and especially their attraction for youth and women, have blurred the distinction between Sufis and reformists, leaving Islam noir and the other binaries of the past defunct analytical categories.

Not es Many of the chapters in this volume were presented in a double panel at the November 2006 African Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco. We would like to thank Robert Launay (Northwestern University) and Eva Evers-Rosander (Uppsala University) for serving as excellent discussants and for their valuable feedback on this project. Mara Leichtman is much obliged to the Intramural Research Grants Program, the Muslim Studies Program and the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University for enabling her to be on leave during the 2007–2008 academic year, when the editing of this book took place. She benefited greatly from visiting fellowships at both the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin, Germany, and the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands, during this time. She is also extremely grateful to Peter Mandaville and the Center for Global Studies at George Mason University for providing her with a laptop computer and office space during an unexpected lengthy stay in the Washington DC area which was crucial for completing the writing of this introduction on a tight deadline. Mamadou Diouf to the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for supporting his participation in this project; Mara Leichtman and Aly Dramé for organizing the two panels at the November 2006 African Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco; and the Columbia University Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures and the Institute of African Studies for assisting in the production of the book. We would like to thank our editor, Luba Ostashevsky, and her team, Colleen Lawrie, Rachel Tekula, and Daniel Constantino, for assisting us throughout the tedious process of producing a collective book with grace, patience, and competence.

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1. Robinson suggests that the two processes (Islamization and Africanization) “were at work: first the extension of something that Africans and outsiders would recognize as Islam, and second, the ‘rooting’ of that faith in Africa” (Muslim Societies in African History, 27). 2. Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons. 3. The early literature labeled the Sufi orders brotherhoods. Later critiques have noted the gender discrimination inherent in this term, especially as certain scholars studied the role of women in Sufi Islam (see Buggenhagen, chapter 8 in this volume). We use the term brotherhood when discussing this early literature, but later refer more generally to the Sufi orders. 4. Marty, Etudes sur L’Islam au Sénégal. 5. See Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal and Saints and Politicians; Beck, “Reining in the Marabouts?”; Gellar, Senegal: An African Nation; Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal. 6. Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad. 7. Robinson and Triaud, eds, Le Temps des Marabouts. 8. Searing, “God Alone is King.” 9. Whitehouse, Arguments and Icons. 10. Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History. 11. Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa; Willis, “Foot Soldiers of Modernity.” 12. The originaires are also called the inhabitants. Although they received citizenship rights very early, including the right to vote, they constantly refused to submit themselves to the French Civil Code for religious reasons. They thereby were able to conserve their “particular status” by permanently reinforcing this religious identity. On this question, see Diouf, “The French Colonial Policy.” 13. On this distinct culture, see Le Châtelier, L’Islam dans l’Afrique Occidentale, in particular chapter 4, and Boilat, Esquisses Sénégalaises. 14. Concerning the history of trade and the diasporas of trade, see the following works: Cohen, “Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas”; Curtin, “Economic Change in Precolonial Africa”; Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola; and Lovejoy, Salt of the Desert Sun. 15. This notion goes back to the historical approach to the definition of civic culture, “a set of orientations towards a specific set of social objects and processes” (Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, 12), and the particular characteristics of a civic community, “active participation in public affairs; equal rights and obligations for all; respect and trust between members, and, finally, the embodiment of these qualities in voluntary associations” (Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 86–91) tested by Ruth Watson (Civil Disorder is the Disease, 3–4), questioning the origin and the development in time of norms and values covered by the two notions. 16. See Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, in particular Chapters 5 and 6. 17. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, notably chapter 1. 18. The best illustrations are the transcription of the Wolof language with Arabic characters and the genealogical reconstructions that tie the notable Northern Senegambian Islamic families to those of first Arab communities that joined prophet Mohammad. 19. Leichtman, A Tale of Two Shi’isms. 20. Rosander, “Introduction: The Islamization.” 21. Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power, “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation,” and “The Moustarchidine of Senegal”; Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam; Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World. 22. Horton, “African Conversion,” “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part I,” and “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part II”; Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered.” 23. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. 24. Gellar, Senegal: An African Nation. 25. Cohen and Odhiambo, The Risk of Knowledge. 26. Buggenhagen, At Home in the Black Atlantic.

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27. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Knauft, Critically Modern: Alternatives; Deeb, An Enchanted Modern. 28. Diouf, “The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora.” 29. Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women. 30. Leichtman, A Tale of Two Shi’isms. 31. Metcalf, Making Muslim Space; Diouf, “The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora”; Reynolds and Youngstedt, “Globalization and African Ethnoscapes”; Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy; Stoller, Money Has No Smell. 32. A role and importance neglected in the literature. 33. She disagrees with Rosander in that the disciple-sheikh relationship does not “cut through family ties.” 34. Sufi leaders enjoining their disciples to vote for specific candidates during elections. 35. Variable visions, imaginaries and references (scriptural or oral) mean that ideas about where to locate authority and legitimacy are available. 36. Esposito and Burgat, Modernizing Islam. 37. Salvatore and Eickelman, Public Islam and the Common Good.

Bibl io g r aphy Almond, Gabriel, and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. London: Sage Publications, 1989. Augis, Erin Joanna. “Dakar’s Sunnite Women: The Politics of Person.” PhD thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 2002. Babou, Cheikh Anta. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Beck, Linda. “Reining in the Marabouts? Democratization and Local Governance in Senegal.” African Affairs 100 (2001): 601–21. Boilat, Abbé David. Esquisses Sénégalaises. Paris: Karthala, 1984 [1853]. Buggenhagen, Beth Anne. “At Home in the Black Atlantic: Circulation, Domesticity and Value in the Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora.” PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2003. Cohen, Abner. “Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas.” In The Development of African Trade and Markets in West Africa, edited by C. Meillassoux. London: Oxford, 1972. ———. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. Cohen, David William, and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo. The Risk of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990. Athens: Ohio University Press / Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 2004. Cruise O’Brien, Donal B. The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. ———. Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant Society. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Curtin, Philip D. Economic Change in Precolonial Africa, Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade. 2 vols. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. Deeb, Lara. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Diouf, Mamadou. “The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project,” edited by Birgit Meyer and Peter Geschiere, special issue, Development and Change 29, no. 4 (1998): 671–96. ———.“The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” Public Culture 12, no. 3 (2000): 679–702.

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Esposito, John L., and François Burgat, eds. Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2003. Fisher, Humphrey J. “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conversion in Black Africa.” Africa 43, no. 1 (1973): 27–40. Gellar, Sheldon. Senegal: An African Nation between Islam and the West. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Horton, Robin. “African Conversion.” Africa 41, no. 2 (1971): 85–108. ———. “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part I.” Africa 45, no. 3 (1975): 219–35. ———. “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part II.” Africa 45, no. 4 (1975): 373–99. Keddie, Nikki R. Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1995. Kepel, Gilles. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. London: I. B. Tauris, 2002. Knauft, Bruce M., ed., Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Le Châtelier, Alfred. L’Islam dans l’Afrique Occidentale. Paris: G. Steinheil, 1899. Leichtman, Mara A. “A Tale of Two Shi’isms: Lebanese Migrants and Senegalese Converts in Dakar.” PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, Brown University, 2006. Lovejoy, Paul. Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade 1700–1900. Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University Press and Oxford University Press, 1980. ———. Salt of the Desert Sun. A History of Salt Production and Trade in the Central Sudan. Oxford: Cambridge, 1986. Marty, Paul. Etudes sur L’Islam au Sénégal. 2 vols. Paris: Editions E. Leroux, 1917. Metcalf, Barbara Daly, ed. Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Peel, John D. Y. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Putnam, Robert D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 1993. Reynolds, Rachel R., and Scott M. Youngstedt. “Globalization and African Ethnoscapes: Contrasting Nigerien Hausa and Igbo Migratory Orders in the U.S.” City and Society 16, no. 1 (2006): 5–13. Robinson, David. Muslim Societies in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ———. Paths of Accommodation. Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania 1880–1920. Athens: Ohio University Press / Oxford: James Currey, 2000. Robinson, David, and Jean-Louis Triaud, eds. Le Temps des Marabouts. Itinéraires et Stratégies Islamiques en Afrique occidentale. Paris: Karthala, 1997. Rosander, Eva Evers. “Introduction: The Islamization of ‘Tradition’ and ‘Modernity.’” In African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, David Westerlund and Eva Evers Rosander, eds. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997. Salvatore, Armando, and Dale F. Eickelman, eds. Public Islam and the Common Good. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Searing, James F. “God Alone Is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal; The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. Soares, Benjamin. Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Stoller, Paul. Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Villalón, Leonardo A. “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation, and the Evolving Dynamics of Religion and Politics in Senegal,” Africa Today 46, no. 3/4 (1999): 129–47. ———. Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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———. “The Moustarchidine of Senegal: The Family Politics of a Contemporary Tijan Movement.” In La Tijâniyya: Une Confrérie Musulmane à la Conquête de l’Afrique, edited by JeanLouis Triaud and David Robinson. Paris: Karthala, 2000. Watson, Ruth. Civil Disorder is the Disease of Ibadan: Chieftaincy and Civic Culture in a Yoruba City. Athens: Ohio University Press / Oxford: James Currey / Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 2003. Whitehouse, Harvey. Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Willis, Paul. “Foot Soldiers of Modernity: The Dialectics of Cultural Consumption and the 21st Century Schools,” Harvard Educational Review 73, no. 3 (2003): 390–415.

Pa rt 1

4 Hi stor i es, Ethnographies, and Pedagogies of Isl am

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Chapter 1

4 The L ongue Durée of Q uran S chooling, Society, and State in Senegambia Rudolph T. Ware, III (University of Michigan)

It should be known that instructing children in the Quran is a symbol of Islam. Muslims have, and practice, such instruction in all their cities, because it imbues hearts with a firm belief (in Islam) and its articles of faith, which are (derived) from verses of the Quran and certain Prophetic traditions. The Quran has become the basis of instruction, the foundation for all habits that may be acquired later on . . . The character of the foundation determines the condition of the building. —Ibn Khaldun1

T

his chapter is a narrative of the history of the Quran school (daara/dudal) in Senegambia and, later, in Senegal. It is based on primary documentation and a wide reading of secondary works on the social, political, religious, and cultural history of Senegambia.2 In these pages I explore the social location of Quran schooling from the precolonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Islam has been an important part of Senegambia since the eleventh century, but it is only one factor that has given a certain analytical integrity to the region. The major ethnic groups in contemporary Senegambia share intertwined social and political histories stretching back to at least the thirteenth century. Speakers of Pular, Wolof, Sereer, Manding, and Soninke all mingled in Senegambia, and they had many similar (but not identical) social and political institutions. With the exception of many Sereer speakers, all belong to a broader distribution of societies containing lineages of royal, free, slave, and casted origins.3 Although all the major polities formed in Senegambia in the past millennium seem to have had an ethnic core, they were multiethnic states with enough aspects of shared social organization that mobility between ethnic groups was often more fluid than between social categories.

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Teachers of Islam had to make themselves and their faith relevant to transmit Islamic knowledge. This was no easy task. But they were, in the long view, extremely successful; institutions of Islamic education multiplied throughout the region, providing networks of regional integration and, ultimately, a framework for collective identity. The success of the clerical educational enterprise is reflected in the predominantly Muslim religious identities of Senegambian peoples. Of the groups mentioned earlier, only the Sereer—and some Mande speakers on the eastern fringes of Senegambia—have continued to practice a clearly discernible, coherent form of “traditional African religion” since the seventeenth century CE.4 The twentieth century brought changes to the human landscape of Senegambia. The region was finally pacified by the French at the end of the nineteenth century, and it became a part of the colony of Senegal. Senegalese Muslims had to use schooling in new ways in an ongoing struggle to define and debate the meanings of Islam in an ever-changing world. This process was not new. Quran schools were key sites in the production of Muslim identities long before French conquest, and as such they were grounds for important social and political struggles. Quran schooling has been the subject of much recent controversy in Senegal and beyond, but these recent developments can only begin to take their full meaning within a longer narrative beginning deep in the precolonial past.

Th e S c h o o l in P rec oloni al S e ne ga mbi a: 1 000 to 18 50 Islam arrived in Senegambia at least a thousand years ago and, we might imagine, so did the Quran school. No conquering army forced Islam on War Jabi, king of Takrur; his death in 1040 CE preceded the supposed Almoravid invasion of Ghana a few years later. His conversion is the first in the written history of West Africa, and the earliest mention of Islam in Senegambia.5 In turn War Jabi reportedly converted the people of his kingdom on the banks of the Senegal River, but we are left to wonder by what means he accomplished this. The larger question of how Islam was spread throughout Western Africa has long been debated. Colonial observers often preferred dramatic and racially charged images of turbaned Arab warriors stirring the blacks from their prehistoric slumber, bringing them into Islam—and history—by the sword.6 In the past four decades less dramatic, more reasoned, academic interpretations of the growth of Islam in West Africa have stressed the function of merchants in expanding and establishing the faith. There is good evidence for the commercial argument, but there is an important body of research that suggests we ought to pay more attention to the proselytizing role of Muslim clerics—teachers, preachers, and healers—in the development of Islam in West Africa.7 By the twelfth or thirteenth century, some West Africans were making a calling of Quran instruction and developing into a distinct clerisy.8 The development of a local West African scholarly tradition in the imperial centers of Ghana and Mali was well under way by the twelfth century and may already have been the predominant force in proselytizing. The Tarikh al-Sudan, al-Sadi’s famous historical chronicle penned in Timbuktu in the first half of the seventeenth century, mentions that from the founding of the city around 1100 CE until 1470 CE the imams in the great mosque and the leading scholars were Sudani. Similarly, in Ibn Battuta’s travel account he mentions the depth of the Sudani scholarly tradition focused around two towns of old Ghana, which were part of the empire of Mali as he wrote. Jagha and Kabara, he

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noted, were centers of scholarship centuries old in Islam. It is this same Jagha that gave birth to the Jaghanke, or Jakhanke clerical tradition. Similarly, Kabara produced several leading scholars and imams, including one Muhammad al-Kabari eulogized in the Sudanese Tarikhs as the tutor of hundreds of leading scholars including many that came to study with him from a number of Arab countries. Seemingly emerging from the Saraxolle and Manding worlds, the imprint of this earliest wave of scholarship is yet to be fully documented, but tantalizing hints suggest that this early wave of Sudani scholarship was foundational in Senegambia proper. Certainly, Takruri intellectuals had a part to play in these earliest developments, and the notable presence of Saraxolle and Manding place names throughout the eastern regions of Senegambia may be another sign of early eastern Sudani interconnections. In recent research in Futa Toro in northern Senegal and southern Mauritania, some clerical families claimed a tradition of continuous instruction reaching back to the fifteenth century and before. In the village of Pate Gallo, for example, oral tradition records that the descendants of Njuga Bah taught Quran around the same hearth from the early fifteenth century until the end of the twentieth, when a landslide on the river’s edge forced them to move the school a few yards away.9 Documentary sources of all kinds confirm that by the fifteenth century, Islamic education was firmly established in Senegambia, and making further gains. The Venetian Alvise de Ca Da Mosto visited the court of the Dammel of Kajoor between 1455 and 1457 and found Sanhaja clerics instructing the king and his court in Islamic law.10 Ca Da Mosto described neither Quran schools, nor a black clerisy, but we should not presume their absence. Several oral historical sources claim both for this period, as do documentary sources from Sereer and Manding settlements in Joal, Siin, and the area of the Gambia River.11 Portuguese Jesuit Beltesar Barreira left a description of schooling in the latter region in 1608: “In these settlements they have mosques, and the bexerins [Portuguese. Muslim cleric, Wolof. serign]12 form schools in which they teach reading and writing in the Arabic script, which is what they use in their amulets . . . When one of the bexerins visits either this kingdom or any other which accepts their religion, as happens annually, he is received and respected as if he came from heaven. Among those accompanying him are some youths who are under instruction and these daily write their lessons and read them out aloud.”13 The foundation of a major school at Pir in the Sañoxoor province of Kajoor probably dates back to this early period (1603) and another important center for Islamic learning was founded in Kokki a century later.14 In the Wolof heartlands of Senegambia, the educational activities of the local clerisy were central to the spread of Islamic thought and practice. In other words, the Quran school in West Africa was a stimulus for—and result of—the expansion of Islamic religious culture.

Clerical Lineages Islamic schools did not, of course, inscribe themselves into empty social spaces. Muslim teachers had to find a professional niche for their calling within a social order that had been taking shape over many centuries. In Senegambia, as in many parts of the Western Sudan, this meant negotiating a place within a social order consisting of royalty (garmi), the freeborn (géer), slaves (jaam), and endogamous occupational groups usually referred to as castes (ñeeño). In this broader social framework, specialization in the arts and sciences of religion was reproduced within specific forms that Louis Brenner has characterized as Muslim lineages:

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Ru dol ph T. Ware, III [Muslim lineages] seem to have emerged as forms of Islamic socio-political organization in contexts that were deeply informed by lineage ideologies and where the regional political economy was organized as a collection of various hereditary occupation groups (Tamari 1991, 1997). In this context, ‘Islam’ functioned almost as a kind of hereditary craft, the expert practitioners of which provided various religious services such as prayer, divination, healing, teaching, etc., to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. And like other hereditary occupation groups, the Muslim lineages constituted semi-autonomous polities with their own social structures, systems of production and reproduction, while occupying a specific niche in the wider political economy.15

Not unlike casted ñeeño families, these clerical lineages,16 constructed their distinctiveness through their professional activities. Seeing clerical lineages as an extension of the logic of occupational casting in Western Africa draws attention to the functional elements of their professional activities. The ñeeño provided essential services outside of their groups to maintain a clientele and earn a living. They transmitted technical and ritual expertise that was conceived of as dangerous within endogamous lineages, thereby reproducing themselves as a social category. Clerical lineages performed similar functions. They acted on the invisible world with techniques and technologies derived from the Quran, and taught esoteric sciences (xam-xami batin) within their own social category as a means of in-group reproduction. They healed individuals and communities, manufactured amulets, and used their literacy in the service of individuals and temporal authorities. All these activities were crucial to the development and maintenance of a clientele. But nothing assured it in the same way as teaching the Quran. Teaching the Quran to out-groups cultivated belief in Islam and promoted its practice. It led to the production of Muslim sensibilities, which supported faith in the efficacy and usefulness of Quranic manipulation of the visible and invisible worlds. Teaching the Quran was the basis for all the other professional activities of the clerisy. Further, the book itself was the foundation of all secret knowledge. As among the ñeeño, secrecy had its value for clerical lineages, and higher instruction in the advanced exoteric and esoteric sciences often seemed to be transmitted mainly within the clerisy, functioning as a gatekeeping mechanism.17 Teaching was not only a means for transmitting and controlling knowledge. Teacher-disciple relationships combined with marriage ties to form the very foundation of the clerisy. In clerical families spiritual and biological genealogies were interwoven, tying men of religion throughout Senegambia to one another and to their analogs throughout the Sudan and the Sahara.18 The relationship suggested here between clerical and ñeeño lineages is one of analogy, not identity. Clerical lineages seem to have discriminated against ñeeño as much as the broader society, and had little use for griots because they were simply a different sort of discursive intellectuals.19 The clerisy was dominated by “freeborn” géer lineages, but was composed of various elements of Senegambian society including ñeeño and jaam, as well as royal elements.20 This social amalgamation placed the clerisy both within and outside the logic of ascribed status. They operated within the logic of birth insofar as the educational ministry of the clerics was aimed primarily at the freeborn, to the near exclusion of jaam and ñeeño; but individuals from these groups could come to prominence through unusual educational achievement.21 They operated outside this logic in that the clerisy encompassed families of free and noble lineage while also constituting a category apart.

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The presence of some high noble families within the clerisy, and the prominent (and well-documented) role of clerics in royal courts did not mean the clerisy had access to political authority. Until the seventeenth century, clerical lineages were in positions of clientage to secular rulers who identified themselves as Muslims but were distinguished by a hedonistic, aristocratic, lifestyle, and social identity.22 Clerics provided Islamic education and other services to rulers in exchange for gifts, the acceptance of which likely had specific connotations of weakness and subjection in the context of patronage and dependency. They could also seek alms—as could ñeeño and jaam—an act interpreted by royals as a sign of weakness and a social blight. Still, the prominence of freeborn, and even noble, lineages within the clerisy gave them a political legitimacy that was not enjoyed by ñeeño or jaam.23

Communities of the Quran Many clerics lived in peasant communities where they taught the Quran and provided services based on its powers to Muslims and non-Muslims. Some clerics lived in proximity to rulers and worked for them. But the social segregation of clerical lineages was often residential as well.24 Many clerics lived in settlements centered around Quran school farms. These settlements were spatially separated from one another but tied together by links of schooling, blood, and trade. Jean Schmitz has called these communities “Maraboutic heterotopias”: “The ‘nodes’ of this network are formed from . . . villages, which draw from the tradition of the free city distant from power as well as that of the daara where the precepts of the Quran organize the smallest details of daily life. The predominance of relations proceeding from the Quranic school lead us to speak of a heterotopia to distinguish this type of social organization from ordinary villages.”25 Although noble lineages probably conceived of residential segregation as a means of social and political quarantine—the extension of the segregation of casted lineages—it resulted in a certain amount of autonomy for religious communities. Segregation always has the potential of becoming congregation. In this case, rather than producing isolation, it led to a dispersed network of interconnected clerical communities. In relatively autonomous settlements centered on agricultural production (using student—and, to a lesser extent, slave—labor), Quranic instruction, and trade, some clerical lineages found the possibility of developing an extensive and morally committed clientele.26 In a world where patron–client ties structured all political relationships, the ability to attract and maintain a following made the clerisy a potential rival to secular, hereditary powers. In the Wolof states, the royalty attempted to control this fact by systematically excluding the serigns from any political office and by enforcing endogamy within their ranks.27 In Senegambia (and southern Sahara) clerical communities had established, by the sixteenth century, a modus vivendi with secular authorities; they enjoyed relative autonomy within kingdoms led by secular, military aristocracies in exchange for political marginalization. But there were multiple social and political logics operating. Alms seeking could be interpreted by garmi (royalty) as a mark of dependency and social blight, but the clerisy could read it within Islamic traditions of ascetism, piety, and poverty, thereby inscribing it with different meanings. The clerisy could interpret distance as autonomy, pious distance from power, or even dissidence. Within Islamic legal texts (studied and taught in their schools), they found arguments rejecting their political subjugation to secular rulers of dubious Islamic pedigree. The Quran school was the ideological, social, and economic engine

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of political independence. In the words of one scholar, “The development of these daara was to have considerable consequences. It led to the emergence and consolidation of a religious aristocracy of marabouts which, from the XVIIth century, got involved in turn in domestic political and social problems, [and] asserted itself as a center of countervailing power.”28 Throughout Senegambia, these communities of the Quran came to constitute a threat to extant political authority. The rivalry was to come to its logical end repeatedly over the next three centuries. The first major conflagration began in the 1670s when Nasir Al-Din launched his reform movement in the southern Sahara, and it spread into Futa Toro and the Wolof states to the south.29 According to European observers contemporary to the movement, it had a broad popular base. This is a testament to the extent of clerical success in teaching the Quran and cultivating Muslim identities among the people. It is also evidence of widespread disenchantment with increasingly authoritarian, slave-raiding regimes, marked by the royalty’s pillaging slave warriors (ceddo).30 Subsequent conflicts, conventionally termed “jihads,” first in Bundu in 1690 then in various West African contexts throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be understood as expressions of the political contradiction between secular and religious authorities in West Africa. At the heart of the clerical enterprise was the Quran school, which shaped political conflicts at another level as well: “In Mauritania and Senegambia, there was a network of rural schools, at which the Koran and certain important works of technology and law were studied. The more learned marabouts studied at different schools. Some of these schools seem to have played an important revolutionary role. Thus, according to Futa Toro traditions, all of the major leaders of the 1776 torodbe revolt studied at Pir Saniokhor in Cayor [Kajoor].”31 Senegambian Muslims made, remade, and even revolutionized their societies through schooling. The nineteenth-century jihads can be seen as an expression of the fundamental social and political conflict between the Quranic clerisy and political elites.32 Because of the prominence of Qadr and Tijan identities as organizing principles in the movements of Usman dan Fodio and Umar Tal, respectively, it was once thought that a reformist strain of Sufism played a central role in the jihads. More recent analyses question this presumption.33 Any reformist tendencies inhered in Sufi discourses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were grafted onto this older political conflict between kings and clerics. Sufism became an element that helped shape the conflict between the clerics and the court. In the eighteenth century, the Kunta clan began to shape the Sufi order from an association of mystics into a hierarchical religious organization held together by the baraka of the Sufi sheikh himself.34 The Kunta Sufi movement in the Southern Sahara can in part be read as a response to political marginalization of the zwaya clerical lineages that had been disarmed by the hasan warrior lineages after Nasir Al-Din. The social and political dynamic in the Southern Sahara mirrored the divide between secular and religious authorities throughout West Africa. This fact must have helped demonstrate the relevance of the tariqa model in the Sudan.35 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sufi movements had famous success producing new forms of social and political order in Senegambia and beyond. Similarly, jihad states profoundly altered the political landscape. Both processes have obscured the age-old, elemental, and ongoing roles Quran schools have played in shaping Muslim societies in Senegambia and West Africa.

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Jamano Tub aab Europeans played a role in shaping the conflict between kings and clerics beginning with their earliest voyages off the Saharan and Senegambian coast in the middle of the fifteenth century. The Atlantic trade fundamentally altered older economic and political patterns. As the coastal trade came to be dominated by slave trading, these transformations accelerated. In Senegambia, the Jolof empire—which had previously encompassed all the Wolof polities and, at times, neighboring states as well—disintegrated into several smaller states with increasingly centralized and predatory political and economic systems. The clerisy had developed within this context of slave-raiding and slave-trading states. The tuubanaan revolution was in large part a response to the depredations of the slave trade. This is clear in Chambonneau’s contemporary account of the movement, which contains the following summary of the content of Nasir Al-Din’s justification for jihad: “God in no way permits Kings to pillage, kill, nor make captives of their people, but to the contrary, [he enjoins kings] to maintain them and protect them from their Enemies, the people not being made for the Kings, but the Kings for the people.”36 Of course in Islamic law, Muslim leaders too were able to find justification for slavery and slaving.37 Indeed, in Senegambia during the era of the Atlantic trade, it would have been quite impossible for them to develop a viable political or economic basis without it. But all understandings of Islam forbade the enslavement of free Muslim peasants, which was happening on a significant scale in both Wolof- and Pular-speaking zones. Clerical communities drew followers in large part because of their capacity to serve as safe havens in an era dominated by slaving aristocracies. But the act of European agency that most directly shaped the political and social possibilities of the clerisy as well as the fate of Quran schools was colonial conquest. In the 1850s Louis Faidherbe began to conquer the mainland with diplomacy and war; his successors had completed the process by the beginning of the twentieth century. Colonial domination destroyed the basis of garmi authority. The royals’ claims to power had always been based, in principle, on hereditary political expertise, and in practice, on force. The French had picked the royalty apart with diplomacy, belying the myth of their competence; and more importantly, they crushed their ceddo slave warriors militarily.38 The segments of the clerisy that opted for jihads and formed states suffered a similar fate. The garmi never recovered, but the clerisy as a social category was not mortally wounded by French conquest because the foundation of the clerical influence was much broader and deeper than its incarnation in any specific polities. Centuries of teaching, healing, and proselytizing had firmly rooted Islamic religious culture in Senegambia. The Quranic community rooted in pedagogical and patron-client relationships was still a viable model even under colonial rule. In Wolof country, where jihad had never really flourished, many clerical lineages had an economic and social base that was less affected by European encroachment.39 The classic colonialist argument is that the imposition of colonial peace and ease of communication may even have helped to accelerate the proselytizing activities of the clerics.40 The colonial state did not sit idly and cede influence to these teachers and preachers. After conquest, the fight against Islamic influence took the shape of an educational, rather than military, war. As early as the Faidherbe era, the colonial power began to promote French education in direct opposition to Quran schools. Faidherbe personally authored the first decree to that end in 1857. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, French officials sought to restrict the free practice

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of Islamic education through legal measures. Their efforts were aimed first at the colonial outposts in Saint-Louis, Goree, Dakar, and Rufisque, and later the whole mainland colony. The early decrees41 were proffered in the name of public good, and the social welfare of children. In reality, they were primarily efforts to circumscribe the Arabic language and Islamic culture to the benefit of French language and the social norms of Occidental modernity. Muslim populations resisted these early laws, which, they accurately surmised, were only thinly veiled attacks on Islam. Because of Muslim resistance, like those that came before and after it, the 1896 decree was hardly enforced by the regime and ineffectual. Frustrated by the nineteenth-century failure of administrative efforts to regulate the schools, the regime made one dramatic push in the first decade of the twentieth century. A 1903 decree sought to control and constrain Islamic education yet again, but with more rigorous enforcement and vigorous intelligence gathering. It was apparent within less than a decade, however, that this effort had failed as well. In response the French founded (in 1908) the médersa of Saint-Louis, which was intended to form a fifth column of loyalist marabouts to counteract the influence of the marabout teachers. More importantly, they commissioned a series of studies on the nature of Islamic education as part of an overall reconnaissance mission on Senegalese Muslim society. Islamic education was feared throughout the nineteenth century as a site for the production of anti-French sentiment and jihadist political doctrine. Behind every serign-daara French authorities saw an Ottoman conspiracy or a Sufi plot. The Sufi orders were closely associated with the jihad movements, which posed the most credible military threats to the establishment of the colonial order.42 But with a few exceptions, the process of armed resistance to colonial rule justified in Islamic terms was over.43 Whatever the nature of French misconceptions on the role of Sufi orders in Muslim society in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, they were right in assuming activity. They were even correct in presuming that there was revolutionary activity afoot. But in Senegambia, particularly the Wolof heartlands, the revolution plotted by Sufi leaders was social. And it was based in part on transforming educational structures.

A S u f i E du c atio nal Revoluti on: 18 80 to 1920 In the decades surrounding the turn of the century, the clerisy was responding to the changing political circumstances by seeking new ways to spread the reach of Islam and secure their own influence. This was a complicated endeavor that was pursued on many fronts. The future role of the marabout lineage in a newly emerging social and political order was unclear. Sufi turuq (sing. tariqa) ultimately became fundamental institutions in articulating the will of Muslim populations within the colonial state, but this was not preordained. In Sufi legacies there were no automatic prescriptions for the development of an Islamic social order. As Louis Brenner has argued, “the emergence of turuq in West Africa . . . was not an accident but the result of conscious decisions by Sufi leaders who saw in them a potential not only for religious change, but also for social and political transformation.”44 Sufi leaders articulated their vision of a new social order against the backdrop of history, but in a period of extensive change. They were not free to innovate without end, they had to find ways of interfacing with structures already on the ground to build new ones. To extend their respective orders and fulfill their families’ age-old

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missions as clerics, Sufi leaders needed to respond to changing needs and concerns of Muslim populations and proselytize non-Muslims, as well as those who had been denied much access to education in the old order. The legal end of slavery may have weakened some clerical families by depriving them of a labor force, but more importantly it created new potential clienteles among people who sought to stake a claim to moral and social dignity through Islam.45 Operating in such a sphere was a complex task. One of the key institutions in the articulation of new social meanings rooted in Islam was the school. The primary function of the clerisy as teachers of the Quran guaranteed them a certain social import and a base from which to broaden their influence. The older marabout-talibe pedagogical relationship became the foundation of, and model for, the Sufi sheikh-murid relationship. In the late nineteenth century, Al-Hajj Malick Sy established an influential zawiya, or Sufi lodge, in the colonial town of Tivaouane. From this small town along the rail line, Al-Hajj Malick sent teachers forth into every corner of the young colony.46 His zawiya quickly became a spiritual center for the Tijaniyya in the Wolof zones. He used the daara and the infrastructure provided by the French to promote Islam and the Tijaniyya. At the same time, Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacke, a Wolof-speaking teacher from the old kingdom of Bawol who had been given the Qadr wird by the Kunta family, founded his own tariqa. He called it the Muridiyya, from the Arabic word for a spiritual aspirant. It was probably the first independent tariqa founded by a black West African. Central to Bamba’s mission after the 1883 death of his father Momar Anta Sali was a new role for education in the shaping of Senegambian Muslim society.47 The Muridiyya and the Tijaniyya articulated new visions for Islamic education. Their efforts were critical in changing Sufism from the spiritual quests of introspective elites into a moving force for social change.48 Sufi orders infused Quranic education with new social meanings, and socially marginalized groups profited from the collapse of the old order to assert their dignity by staking their claim to Islamic knowledge. In a manner of speaking, the daara was helping change introspective tasawwuf into popular tariqa; and the success of the tariqa model was changing the social position of the daara.

C ontro l l ing and N ar r ati ng Is l ami c Ed ucati on: 1 900 to 1920 The French missed the educational changes that were taking place around the turn of the twentieth century. Their collective imagination of Islam was preoccupied with shadowy Ottoman conspiracies and Sufi plots.49 But this was not a period of intellectual or political complacency. A massive, freshly pacified colony required the elaboration of an administrative structure to govern the newly minted Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF). Part of the process of ordering colonial rule was an aggressive process of intelligence gathering on the part of the colonial regime. Colonial authorities were attempting to size up the social strength and political potential of Islam within their territories as the basis for policy with regards to Islam.50 The study of Quran schools was undertaken to provide straightforward guidelines for their regulation. The legacy of nineteenth-century educational repression in the Four Communes was reassessed through a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of Muslim schools. The first two decades of the twentieth century were critical in more broadly framing the historical and historiographical development of Senegalese Quran schools and of Senegalese Muslim society.

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In historical terms, this administrative and intellectual effort formed the basis for French policies toward the schools for the whole of the colonial period. The political legacy is still evident in postcolonial policies. In historiographical terms, the scholaradministrators of the early twentieth century were building the foundation for a way to understand Senegalese Muslim societies that has only been seriously challenged in the last decade. It is important that we not forget that the historical and historiographical processes were one and the same, as were, in fact, their authors. Born as a body of colonial knowledge, it is not surprising that early narration of Muslim history in West Africa depended heavily on the logic of race. Many administrators downplayed the age and importance of Islam in black colonies.51 Dark-skinned African Muslims were thought of as neophytes, recently emerged from primitive tribalism. The French saw the profound success of Sufi proselytizers as conversion from paganism rather than a kind of democratization of religious knowledge. They thought of Africans as traditional creatures moving slowly through history before colonial conquest. Some thought that blacks were biologically and culturally incapable of absorbing the Arabic language and Islamic doctrine, and that this new conversion to Islam was a political reaction to French conquest. The emerging racialized picture of African Muslims—Islam Noir—infantilized Senegalese Muslims, seeing them as ignorant, credulous, and blindly obedient to marabouts who were transformed by French rhetoric into a kind of god-king, at once replacing both the cult of fetishes and the native chief.52 The scholar-administrators focused most of their attention on marabouts because they lacked the resources and language skills to carry out detailed monographic research, but also because they needed to find politically and economically expedient agencies through which to effect their policies. The view of the powerful marabout commanding blind obedience can only be understood in this context. Scholar-administrators developed a kind of marabout-myopia, which was often unwittingly assumed by later scholars, who ignored the mass of followers to pay attention to ostensibly more important leaders. For the colonialists, race played an important role in shaping this understanding. They perceived African political systems, such as they were, as essentially despotic in character. The blacks followed because they were followers. When William Ponty became governor-general in 1909, he instituted a policy of divide and rule along ethnic lines. In 1912 he brought Paul Marty, an Algerian-born Frenchman with a license and training as an Arabic interpreter, to Dakar to direct the newly formed Service des Affaires Musulmanes. Ponty commissioned Marty to study various aspects of Islam, including Quran schools in Senegal. Relying heavily (if not exclusively) on Mauritanian Berber informants, Marty began to paint a racialized picture of Senegalese Islam in four studies completed within a year of his arrival.53 In his study of Quran schools, completed shortly after his arrival in Dakar, Marty recommended that the state cease trying to impose impossible regulations on schools because they were useless, not dangerous. He argued that the problems the French perceived in the daara, such as rote instruction, poor level of scholarship, and more excessive time spent in work and begging, did not threaten colonial rule. He made his case, which bucked received wisdom, by appealing to widely held stereotypes about blacks.

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“I ns tru c tio n whic h opens all door s” : Th e C h a l l enge o f the Éc ole Fra nç ai se ( 1 900 to 1945) Marty’s efforts to change policy toward the schools did not begin to take effect until after World War I. Before that time, the state still sought to circumscribe Islamic education and promote French schools. But the battlefield for this educational war in the early twentieth century was much larger than it was in the middle of the nineteenth. The stage for struggle was now the whole of West Africa rather than isolated colonial islands. At the same time that Sufi orders were giving educational expression to a changed social reality, French colonial imposition was further texturing the meanings of Quranic education. French repression of Quran schools was intended to force children out of the daara and into the école française. But whatever French intentions, the growth of the école française did not relegate the daara to the trash-heap of history. Contrary to the revisionist history of administrators, Islamic religious culture in Senegambia had been taking shape for a thousand years. Contrary to essentialist stereotypes, Muslim identities were deeply rooted and closely tied to Islamic education. The daara would not be so quickly abandoned.54 French education was deeply distrusted by many Senegalese Muslims. This fact registered even in the lives of young children. A Quranic school student in the 1930s, Sega Gueye illustrated the depth of this distrust in a paper written around World War II in the prestigious colonial secondary school named after Ponty. “The little talibés,” he writes, “take the écoliers for young atheists. They hate them, despise them and distance themselves from their presence.”55 This visceral hatred of the French school and its agents contributed to an emergent moral dilemma over whether or not Senegalese Muslims should send their children to the French schools. As much as the French school was despised and distrusted, it was just as clearly perceived as a route of access to wealth and power in the colonial order. The tension over how to properly educate Muslim children in the changed circumstances played itself out countless times. In his Cahier Ponty on the subject of Islamic education, Amadou Wane gives us a glimpse of the texture of the conflict as it played out in his own family in the 1930s: A family conflict arises on this subject. My mother, who is very pious, wants me to continue and become a grand marabout. She is supported by her sisters and the marabouts of the family. My father’s party wants me to go the école; it is comprised of: my uncles and my brothers, most of whom are educated in French. The principal actors in this drama are: on one side my brother Oumar, then elève maître at Goree, on the other side [my] first marabout, Thierno Hamadi . . . The friend of the Whites [Oumar], understanding the cupidity of his adversary, lays out the material advantages of the functionary I will become, if such is the will of Allah. He speaks also of this instruction which, they say, opens all doors. The other has only one banal, but respectable, response: “All that is for this world and is not worth the effort. One must work for the other, which is limitless (sans bornes).”56

This moral tension is beautifully explored in the first third of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel L’Aventure Ambigüe.57 In Kane’s novel, the protagonist, Samba Diallo, is unable to assimilate French education without succumbing to apostasy. He becomes a talibe-turned-atheist, and is martyred: a tragic hero of the ideological war for the hearts and minds of colonized Africans. Kane’s novel is emotionally, philosophically,

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and psychologically true; but its truths are more philosophical than historical. Senegalese Muslims lived with both the daara and the école without fatally compromising their Muslim identities. Many (but certainly not all) made room in their lives for both sorts of schools. As early as the 1920s, optimistic official estimates concluded that the French schools had equaled the number of pupils educated by the daara.58 The pragmatic acceptance of the French schools was coupled with a widely respected compromise that children should study the Quran before enrolling in the French school.59 The visible success of French schools in enrolling Senegalese Muslim students helped justify the administration’s retreat from aggressive repression of the daara to “malign neglect” in the early 1920s.60 It is likely also that French retreat from the schools was conditioned by a changing relationship with Senegalese marabouts. After an initial phase of mutual distrust, both parties found that Sufi organization and colonial rule could coexist to the economic and political benefit of both parties. The détente between marabouts and the state constrained the latter’s desire to attack the schools.61 But the political compromise did not affect how French administrators imagined Islamic education. Several observers have pointed out that one of the most consistent aspects of French discourse on Islam in Senegal was its contempt for Quran schools.62

É c o l es Ar ab es The alleged complicity of powerful marabouts in the colonial enterprise was to become a central criticism of reform-minded Muslims in the forties and fifties, who began developing their own critiques of the daara. The professed reformists began articulating a new discourse on Islamic legitimacy that openly questioned the clerisy’s claims to authority, as well as its complicity in rule by an alien (and Christian) minority.63 The Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM), founded in 1953, was the most prominent reform organization, accompanied by the student-led Association Musulmane des Étudiants Africains (AMEA).64 It is not surprising that education was a central concern of the reformists; as a group, they were defined largely by their educational achievements. A few of the originators of the movement were part of a pioneering group of Senegalese students that went abroad to study in Algiers in the early 1950s. Later, other students went abroad to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, as well as other institutions in the Maghreb or the Hijaz. Some reformers stayed home and developed views on pedagogical reform of Arabic and Islamic education through their experiences in French schools.65 All were exposed to a modern pedagogical system that was quite different from the techniques employed in West African Quran schools, which were based on reciting, embodying, and internalizing sacred text. The reformers were convinced of the superior efficacy of new techniques in the teaching of formal Arabic, which they felt was the key to a more educated Muslim community. The reformists were also exposed to Wahhabism as well as self-consciously modernist interpretations of reformist Islam.66 Many arguments they expounded were anti-Sufi. In the hands of this new Muslim intelligentsia, educational reform would, they hoped, be an important tool in breaking the hold of Sufi miracle-workers over an ignorant populace, ultimately allowing more enlightened, reform-oriented elite to emerge. But Arabic schools were useful for deconstructing existing religious hierarchies as well as constructing a social constituency for the reformists. Although they probably did not see it in these terms, schools could be a place where the reformists built a following, as they had for the clerisy for nearly a millennium. An alternative

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model of modernized Arabic language education was central in an emergent debate on Islamic legitimacy and identity. The reformists frightened the French. Their radical critique was aimed as much at the colonial state as at the Islamic social order. The French perceived them as a dangerous religious element capable of disturbing the state-marabout relations that they had so carefully cultivated over the past half century.67 From a French perspective, new fanatics were disrupting their quietist, marabout-centered Islam Noir. The pan-Islamist suspicion that once pervaded thoughts on Sufi orders and their Quran schools now applied to these “new Muslims” and their écoles Arabes.68

Th e Po stc o lo ni al Per i od Senegal achieved independence from France as part of the Federation of Mali in 1959. It became an independent republic after the federation’s collapse in 1960. The major educational concern of the postcolonial state was to extend the supply of francophone state schools to meet a demand that was unsatisfied since the 1920s.69 The story of the state’s interaction with the Quran schools is, in part, a continuation of a colonial narrative; it denies the significance of “flag independence.”70 Malign neglect would be a useful way to characterize the postcolonial state’s policies toward the school in the 1960s. They too were little interested in Quran schools. On the whole, they continued to portray them as obsolete, backwards institutions in much the same language employed by the French. With regard to the écoles Arabes, however, the Senegalese state broke precedent with its colonial forefather and began to pursue an extended flirtation with the reformist educational movement.71 There was an inherent contradiction in the bureaucracy’s courtship of the reformists: The Republic of Senegal was no less dependent on marabouts than the colonial state. But flag independence did matter. Whatever similarities nationalist leaders shared with the French, they were not black colonialists. Their honest effort to extend access to francophone education indicated a more serious commitment to development than demonstrated by their predecessors. More importantly, most postcolonial elites were also Muslims. They did not inherit the culture of fear that permeated colonial Islamic policy. In the reformist movement they saw a potential stimulus to modernist development and an affirmation of religious identity. They also hoped to use the movement to erode the state’s dependence on marabouts as intercessors with the populace. They saw the potential of a controlled and co-opted reformist movement to sap the strength of the Sufi orders, giving the state direct access to populations. In 1960 the state redoubled its efforts to include a modest amount of Arabic instruction in some of its public school curricula. Arabic instruction in state schools was not entirely novel. In spite of French misgivings, it had a minor presence in one educational venue or another throughout the colonial period.72 What changed after independence was the political significance of Arabic instruction. The postcolonial state was creating a state-sponsored outlet for the skills of the first generations of reformist reformers. The state also extended study abroad opportunities in Egypt, the Maghreb, and Saudi Arabia to Senegalese students in significant numbers, bolstering the ranks of the reformist category. By the end of the 1960s, this policy started to create significant numbers of returnees with degrees from Arabic language institutions. Without French language skills, this group had little access to the formal economic or political spheres, thus the Arabic language intellectuals pursued pedagogical careers either within the limited state structures

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of Arabic language education or in the broader entrepreneurial field of the private écoles arabes. The social results of this process were mixed, in large part because the patron–client ties binding the state to the now quite powerful clerical families could not be kept out of the equation. Religious family heads used their influence to send members of their families abroad, and the promise of advanced Arabic and/or Islamic education became another commodity in the political economy of the state and the Sufi orders.73 This had important consequences for Islamic education because, over time, many Quran school instructors from clerical families came to be men who—in addition to their formation in Quran schools—also received some elements of modern pedagogical formation either in French or Arabic schools, if not both. Many teachers developed an acute sense of some pedagogical advantages that these schools had to offer but remained committed to teaching the Quran.74 This tension has allowed them to inscribe new pedagogies into the daara without compromising their religious mission. Under one-party rule in the 1970s, the Senegalese state ultimately succeeded in co-opting the major elements of the Islamic reform movement. Leading reformer Cheikh Touré worked as an administrator, and his Muslim Cultural Union’s most visible achievement was a semaine culturelle celebrating the legacy of Sufi sheikh Amadou Bamba. This was a far cry from the firebrand assaults on maraboutage, which characterized the early movement.75 In absence of detailed information on educational activities during this period, it is difficult to gauge the extent of the educational movement in the first two decades. However, it is clear that disillusionment with the direction of the movement through its first two decades led to increased organizational activity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Jama’at Ibadu Rahman (JIR, Association of the Servants of the Beneficent) and the Harakat al-Falah lil-thaqafat al-Islamiyya (HF, Movement for Success for Islamic Culture) were both founded in this period. Both JIR and HF “were to develop into organizations with a considerable following as a result of their activities in the spheres of social welfare and education.”76 The écoles arabes began to challenge the daara directly by reaching broad urban constituencies by the 1970s, but it is difficult to ascertain the scope of their efforts. They were extensive, however; by the end of the 1980s, JIR alone had opened as many as three hundred schools in Dakar’s disadvantaged suburbs.77 Natural phenomena contributed to changing perceptions and realities of Quran schooling beginning in the late 1960s. Persistent droughts lasted into the mid-1970s and began to alter the nature of economic practices in Quran schools, which for many centuries were primarily rooted in agricultural production. It is probable that the daara came to depend on alms more than it had in the past. As early as 1969, government officials began posing the alms-seeking of Quran school students as a problem of state.78 Urban begging was increasingly perceived as a major social problem throughout the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in stringent laws against vagabondage in 1977. Significantly, the state stopped short of including talibe among those affected by the new legislation. Instead, they created a working group to study the problem, while permitting solicitation of “daily alms, in the places and within the conditions consecrated by religious traditions.”79 The nod to an alms-seeking tradition did not resolve the controversy over Quran schools, which were becoming a public concern. In 1975 M. J. Traoré released a film entitled Njangaan, which has been described as an “extremely irreverent presentation of the serign-marabout as a child abuser and heartless exploiter of the religious faith and credulity of staunch believers.”80 It is difficult to speak definitively about how the

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Senegalese public reacted to the film (or even how many saw it), but one observer left an account of the debate that followed a showing of the film in a Dakar statutory association. Roland Colin noted, “in the debate established around Njangaan, a good portion of the auditorium brought forth arguments in the dossier of the defense: the virtues of early mental training, the child’s integration in the social and spiritual community, [and] learning to deal with hardship.”81 Indeed, much of the public discourse on the controversies of Quran schooling utterly ignore the tight connection between suffering and pursuit of knowledge implied in the Wolof concept of yar, which means both moral education and the lash. Whatever the public reaction to the film Njangaan, the daara was becoming a political cause célèbre because it preoccupied the reformists as much as the state. In the 1970s many of the concerns about Quran schools expressed by the French at the turn of the century became matters of public debate. Muslim reformers were concerned with reforming pedagogical methods, state agents were likely more concerned with labor and children begging. Both sets of concerns overlapped; they were two faces of modernism. Both groups would have probably liked to see the influence of marabouts lessened, thus an attack on the schools had political as well as ideological components. The shared dissatisfaction of reform-minded Muslims and state functionaries led to a jointly organized Séminaire sur l’enseignement du Coran au Sénégal, in May 1978, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and held at the Islamic Institute of Dakar (IID). Speeches by the Minister of National Education and a representative of the Ministry of Culture shared central concerns with those delivered by Ravane Mbaye and Mamadou Ndiaye representing the IID. Both stressed the need for rationalization, standardization, and modernization of Senegal’s Quran schools. Representatives from some of Senegal’s historic Quran schools, including Kokki, participated in the conference. While acknowledging that some marabouts were unqualified and unethical, the schools politely defended their own pedagogical methods and labor practices. One went further, expressing veiled frustration with the increasing perception of the daara as a problem to be solved. He said, “In spite of the numerous criticisms of which it is the object, the Quranic school still remains alone in teaching Islam to all the Muslims of the country, and [it has done] this for centuries.”82 On the whole the schools called for more support of Quranic education rather than its reformulation.83 The 1980s augured a period of important change in the process and narration of Islamic education in Senegal. Two important themes should be highlighted. First, the reformist movement received a breath of new life through the policies of liberalization undertaken by the Diouf government in 1981. These led to the creation of groups that promoted effective alternatives to Quranic education on a larger scale.84 The JIR and HF were followed by many smaller groups that promoted modernized Arabic language education.85 Not all of these groups had broader reform agendas; many were merely organizations that sought to meet an emerging educational demand. A supply of teachers for these schools was now readily available. The first generation of reformers had been providing Arabic education for more than a generation and their graduates, who had few career opportunities outside of the educational arena, now followed in the footsteps of their teachers. It is currently quite impossible to count the number of Arabic schools operated by these ustaz (professors), but there are likely more than one thousand. Most are concentrated in towns and cities. The second major theme emerging in the 1980s and 1990s was the growing perception of the daara as a social problem. In 1989 the United Nations held its Convention on the Rights of the Child, which resulted in a joint project of reforming

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Senegal’s Quran schools undertaken by the Senegalese government and UNESCO beginning in 1992. A few years later, the Senegalese government created a journée de solidarité avec les talibés intended to sensitize people to the problems of the talibe. International Human Rights discourses have added another voice to the chorus against the daara.86

C o nc lus i on What is the proper way to educate Muslim children? This question framed the debate in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s celebrated novel Ambiguous Adventure. Across the centuries nonfictional Senegambian Muslims have grappled with this question as well. But as in Kane’s novel there have been few unambiguous answers, particularly during the past century or so. Clear answers have been hard to come by because of rapidly changing historical circumstances—a fact Kane so sensitively captured—but they have also been difficult to obtain for a more fundamental reason: Any debate on the right way to school Muslim children is also a debate on the proper nature and contents of Islamic identity. Educational choices have long been central in the discursive and practical contestation of what it means to be Muslim. As recently as the 1880s, there was really only one option for the education of Muslim children in Senegambia: the daara. For five hundred years or more, the daara was the sole avenue to literary and religious instruction. The clerisy built a complex social identity around the teaching of the Quran. Schooling became such a crucial component of Muslim identity that over the centuries teachers were able to extend the scale and scope of their influence, translating their command of knowledge and faith into temporal power. The teacher became the center of a whole religious and social ethos. Senegambian Muslims came to define their identities—and their faith— in reference to the men who possessed knowledge of the Word of God. At the same time, however, access to Quranic schooling reflected and reproduced inequities of power. People of low status—especially women, slaves, and the casted—were unable to fully claim Muslim identities; their social inferiority was religious as well. Colonial rule brought new circumstances and new choices; old social and political orders were dramatically transformed by French conquest. The structures of power and authority that held some Senegambians at a distance from Islam and Islamic education were irrevocably transformed. Lower-status persons were able to redefine themselves and claim full participation in the dominant faith of the region. Ironically, colonial rule made clerical authority more attractive than it had ever been before. The clerics were able to insert themselves into the void of temporal power left by the collapse of the old kingdoms; the French unwittingly and unwillingly helped spur a social and educational revolution. This result was almost wholly against the wishes of the colonizers, at least initially. By the first decade of the twentieth century, however, the French were intentionally encouraging and developing the social authority of certain marabouts. But the colonialists also introduced a new school and with it new sensibilities. In Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel Ambiguous Adventure, the family of protagonist Samba Diallo wrestled with a difficult decision. Should they send their child to the daara or to the French school? Kane framed their decision between the Quranic school and the école française as a choice between tradition and modernity, between material and spiritual success. The discussion between the Chief and the Teacher captured Kane’s understanding of the dichotomy and the dilemma posed by modern schooling:

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[At the new school] They would learn all the ways of joining wood to wood which we do not know. But learning, they would also forget. Would what they learn be worth as much as what they forget? I should like to ask you: can one learn this without forgetting that, and is what one learns worth what one forgets? At the Glowing Hearth, what we teach children is God. What they forget is themselves, their bodies, and the futile dream which hardens with age and stifles the spirit. So what they learn is worth infinitely more than what they forget.87

Ultimately, Senegalese Muslims demonstrated that one can learn this without forgetting that—belying the experience of Samba Diallo whose faith was washed away by occidental modernity. They responded to the dilemma by creating space for both sorts of school. They sent their children to the daara at younger ages, before the French school would admit them, and had them study the Quran during the summer vacation from the école française. Such compromises to accommodate the new school were not without costs. The new social and political order generated a bifurcated understanding of education. For many Senegalese Muslims, the French school taught its students to prepare for the life of this world, jàng àdduna; the daara taught children to prepare for life in the next, jàng àllaaxira. In a literal sense, Senegalese Muslims began conceding the world to the French school. The meaning of the daara had changed dramatically from the precolonial period; it became a place to affirm Muslim identity in a colonial world that inherently challenged it. By the 1940s some Senegalese began introducing a new element into the discussion on the right way to educate the children of Muslims. They developed new schools, the écoles arabes, which brought European and Islamic pedagogical traditions together in new ways. In so doing, they sought both to modernize Islam and Islamize modernity. This movement for educational and Islamic reform has been particularly strong in the postcolonial period, and it has provided new models for Muslim identity. Some reformers have sought to diminish the power and influence of the traditional clerisy to develop new conceptions of what it means to be Muslim. They imagined that new modern forms of Islamic education would lead to forms of Muslim identity and organization that were less dependent on marabouts. The école française and the école arabe have challenged Quranic schooling intently. But neither occidental nor Islamic incarnations of modernity have been able to defeat the daara. There has never been precise data concerning the number of students in all of Senegal’s Quranic schools. Colonial estimates held that the French schools were as well attended as the daara by the 1920s. In 1961 the postcolonial government estimated that the élèves in francophone schools (110,000) greatly outnumbered talibe in the daara (66,000). However, independent research suggests that contrary to state estimates, the daara continue to educate many more children than either French or Arabic schools. In 1991 Saint-Louis had more talibe (24,304) in its daara (222) than it had élèves (21,462) in its écoles françaises (37).88 In rural areas, where there are far fewer state schools and écoles arabes, the numbers are likely much more heavily weighted in favor of the daara. The daara have been decried by government officials, vilified in the francophone press, and demonized by international human rights organizations. Critics of all sorts agree that the daara’s pedagogical methods are backward by twentieth-century (not to mention twenty-first-century) standards. They criticize the nearly universal—and often severe—corporal punishment in the Quranic schools. They lament the facts that live-in students are required to work and beg at nearly any hour of the day or night,

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and access to modern health care for most students is seriously limited if not entirely inexistent. Why, they ask, do people keep sending their children to these schools? There is a saying in Wolof, leketu neen, ñowul béy, which means (in rough translation) “a goat doesn’t come to an empty trough.”89 Like any good agrarian proverb it is subject to innumerable potential uses, but I cite it here only to say that if the daara had nothing to offer, people would not keep coming to it for spiritual sustenance. In spite of the charges leveled against it, and in the face of heavy criticism, people continue to choose the daara for the education of their children. To understand why Quranic schooling has continued to thrive even during a century of unprecedented assaults, we cannot gather information solely from those who have sought to undermine it. We must listen to the talibe to understand the nature and meaning of their educational experiences. But perhaps most importantly we must hear and comprehend why parents have continued to choose the daara for the education of their children. The first set of reasons is of a moral and religious nature: The daara is a social landmark of faith, and sending a child to study the Quran is a pious act. For the descendants of slaves and other low-status persons, it has long been a claim to dignity. For people of all backgrounds, the ability to successfully memorize the Quran is an attractive religious incentive. In my interviews with former students who had fully memorized the Quran, they often talked about the mastery of the book as a possession (yor).90 Knowledge of the word is, in their view, an inalienable spiritual good. A student who learns the book internalizes it and comes to possess it and even to embody it. One becomes, as the prophet is portrayed in a famous hadith, “A Walking Quran.” The daara also has other powerful moral allures. Corporal punishment and other hardships in the daara that draw the ire of critics are, in fact, an important part of their appeal for many Senegalese Muslims. Senegambian conventions associate moral education with physical hardship. This is most clearly expressed in the dual meaning of yar as education and the lash. Discursive learning in the absence of yar is undesirable to many Senegalese Muslims. Beyond the level of cultural and religious values, there are more purely social reasons why Senegal’s daara continue to attract so many students. Giving a child to a serign for education has long been a means of establishing relationships of mutual interdependence. In a world where wealth is defined in terms that are as much social as they are financial, this has been an important motivation for many. The material, political, and social success of the Sufi orders in the colonial and postcolonial periods reinforced the attractiveness of clerics as temporal—as well as spiritual—patrons. The relative strength of Quranic schooling in Senegal, as opposed to neighboring Mali where reformed Arabic schools are gaining ground more rapidly, is directly related to the relative social import of the Sufi orders in the two distinct milieux. And finally, there are political reasons as well. Put simply, the state has not been able to meet its citizens’ demand for schooling. Critics will retort that the rote religious instruction dispensed in the daara hardly qualifies as education. But the supposed ineffectiveness of the daara as a site for purely discursive and literary instruction has been vastly overstated. Recent research in the region of Diourbel (Bawol) has shown that most Quranic school students develop good reading skills after two to four years of study, and more than 60 percent acquire writing ability. In rural areas, the rate of literacy among men over forty years of age was still higher in Arabic than in French well into the 1990s.91 Quranic schooling continues to be an effective option for the formal education of Senegalese Muslims. Even in the cities where state schools are most accessible and attractive, the French school is unable to keep its promise of

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giving the world to Senegalese Muslims. Degrees from French schools do not guarantee material success. The cities teem with overeducated and underemployed former écoliers. In those same cities the écoles arabes are gaining ground more quickly than the French schools, and perhaps the reformers’ prediction that ultimately these modern Arabic schools will become the primary avenues for religious and academic instruction will yet be realized. But this is not a certainty. If it does become a reality, it will be because the écoles arabes will tighten their associations with the Sufi orders and lean further in the direction of moral and religious education to respond to the cultural values and religious identities of Senegambian Muslims. The Arabic schools will continue to gain ground only by appealing to local understandings of what it means to be Muslim.92 In the end, however, I doubt that the centuries of history that have shaped the Senegalese esteem for Quran schooling will be so easily washed away by new approaches to education. Moreover, there are legions of Quran school teachers working to avoid such a result. The most apparent fact that has emerged from my ongoing research into Quran schooling is that its practitioners are constantly experimenting with elements of pedagogy and moral education drawn from diverse sources in order to accomplish the task of inscribing the Quran on the hearts of children in an ever-changing world.93 In short, the image of the daara as a timeless institution is true insofar as it remains clearly focused on facilitating the memorization, recitation, internalization, and embodiment of the Quran. However, the stereotype of the Quran school as a changeless institution is a myth promoted by colonialists and modernist Muslims alike. In spite of the growing criticisms, as well as political and social attacks from many angles, Quran schools continue to educate several hundred thousand talibe each year and play a major role in shaping Islamic religious culture in Senegal. Indeed, the classical Quran school remains—as it was in the time of Ibn Khaldun—one of the most powerful symbols of Muslim identity. It remains so in Senegal even as it seems to lose ground or even disappear from many Muslim countries because of a complex history played out over the past thousand years across shifting social and political landscapes. Pape Lamin Ndiaye, a former Quran school student whom I interviewed in 2001, closes this discussion with a statement about the timeless importance of Quran schooling, because it echoes closely Ibn Khaldun’s opening epigraph, penned roughly seven hundred years before: What does the daara do for a person? First of all, the daara makes you into a person, a true human being. What is a true human being? Wherever you may find yourself you can handle it, and carry yourself properly. You won’t say things you shouldn’t say; you won’t do things you shouldn’t do. It awakens you to the world. It lets you know who your Lord is . . . Something other than the daara might make you believe in something other than God. What the daara does for the character of a human being is something only the daara can do.94

Not es 1. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimmah, 300–301. 2. The present article is based on research from my doctoral dissertation. See Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” 3. For recent, relevant essays on caste, see Conrad and Frank Status and Identity in West Africa. For a comparative, comprehensive, and reasonably convincing argument for the

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4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Ru dol ph T. Ware, III origins of West African caste systems in the empire of Mali in the thirteenth century (and possibly an independent origin among the Soninke and Wolof as well), see Tamari, “The Development of Caste Systems.” The arguments and evidence therein are an abridged (and English language) version of those presented in Tamari, Les castes de l’Afrique occidentale. Roderick McIntosh sees the Malian developments analyzed by Tamari as an expression of a much older social dynamic towards occupational specialization within a framework of West African urbanism in his article “The Pulse Model.” This has become the widely accepted position after an earlier generation of scholars followed French administrators’ shallow dating of Islamization in Senegambia. An early, important statement about how to understand syncretism in Senegambia is Colvin’s “Islam and the State of Kajoor.” But it is likely that Jabi’s conversion was preceded by others. There are tantalizing hints of an earlier appearance of Islam in Al-Naqar, “Takr?r the History of a Name.” He notes that Ibn Yasin, the founder of the al-murabitun (Almoravid) movement in 1042 (or 1048 after al-Bakri) “when dismayed by Sanhajan resistance to his puritanical reforms, contemplated withdrawing among the Sudan ‘among whom Islam had already appeared’” (367, my emphasis). Even more interesting is his suggestion that there may have been Takruri Muslims in Cairo as early as the tenth century: “A quarter of Bulaq, the suburb of Cairo, became known as Bulaq al-Takr?ri, according to al-Maqrizi, because there lived al-Shaikh Abu Mu?ammad Yusuf ibn ‘Abdallah al-Takr?ri: ‘Many miracles, karamat were reported of him . . . and he is said to have lived during the reign of al-‘Aziz ibn al-Mu‘iz’(975–996) [CE]” (370). For a more extended discussion of the various uses of the name takrur see the introduction to El Hamel’s, La vie intellectuelle. See, for example, Delafosse, “L’État actuel de l’Islam.” Lamin Sanneh’s “The Origins of Clericalism” laid the foundations for a reassessment of proselytization in early West Africa, but it has not yet been widely followed. Triaud’s “Les agents religieux” asks us to turn our attention to the “obscure militants who dispense Islam in its everyday form.” See also Skinner, “Islam and Education.” Skinner argues. “The spread of Islam throughout Sierra Leone was the result of the activities of thousands of teachers who migrated along the extensive caravan routes from Guinea and beyond during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Often these teachers were also traders or kinsmen of traders and warriors. They were trained as religious scholars and were imbued with the spirit of Muslim missionary activity” (501). See also Levtzion, “Merchants vs. Scholars.” The essay also appears as chapter IV in Letvzion, Islam in West Africa. Levtzion’s views on the complementarity of the roles of trader and cleric are not followed in this work, nor do I follow his view that slavery provided the basis for clerical communities. See Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics, Chapter 1. Thierno Seydou Nourou Bah, Pate Gallo, and Ndioum, interview with the author, December, 2005. Ndiaye, L’enseignement arabo-islamique, 13–14. Mbaye, “L’Islam au Sénégal.” In the prologue to d’Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea, Jean Boulègue noted that Portuguese voyagers between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries invariably referred to West African Muslim clerics as bexerins (sing. Bexerim). Boulègue cites Theodore Monod who, in Description de la côte d’Afrique, suggested that the Portuguese term was a derivation of the Arabic term mubashirin. In The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics, Sanneh arrived at the same conclusion, equating (159) Mungo Park’s use of bushreen with the Arabic term bashirun, professional clerics. But bushara is the usual plural for bashir. The primary meaning of the root ??? (bashara) is to rejoice or to announce good news; by extension it means to preach, or to spread or propagate a religion. Indeed Bashir is one of the praise names of the prophet. See Cowan and Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Arabic-English), 73–74. Its nominal forms closely approach the word gospel because it is understood in English. In the form mubashirin or bashirin its most literal meaning would be something like preachers or evangelists, but cleric is perhaps a more neutral term.

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13. Barreira, “Letter of Padre Baltesar Barreira,” 6. 14. Mbacké, “Impact de l’Islam.” Although more recently Thierno Ka has questioned this early dating of the foundation of Pir suggesting the middle of the seventeenth century (see “L’Enseignement Arabe”). 15. Brenner, “Histories of Religion in Africa.” Lucie G. Colvin, formulated this argument 30 years ago: “Social discrimination against, and segregation of the clerics fit into the general pattern of endogamous hereditary occupational grouping. Social isolation of hereditary craft groups such as blacksmiths, leatherworkers, and woodcarvers, took such extreme form among the Wolof and Tukuloor that scholars usually describe it as a caste system” (“Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 589). Willis, in “The Torodbe Clerisy,” made arguments on the origins of torodo Muslim clerics, which can be brought to bear here as well. He wrote, “it must be emphasized that those Muslims we have been calling ‘Fulbe’ deserved this designation in language and culture only, that they were drawn from diverse strains of S?d?n? society and that Turudiyya suggests a métier and not an ethnic category” (202). 16. Muslim lineage could be applied to any lineages whose members profess Islam as a religion, not only as a professional calling. Marabout, the gallicized version of the Arabic term mrabit, seems more appropriate. 17. For comparative material from Sierra Leone, see Bledsoe and Robey “Arabic Literacy and Secrecy.” See also Mommersteeg, “L’éducation coranique au Mali.” 18. See Schmitz, “Le souffle de la parenté.” For earlier reflections on this topic see his piece, “Un politologue chez les marabouts.” 19. Willis notes that “the ranks of the Turudiyya remained closed to artisans who continued to pursue their traditional crafts” (“The Tordobe Clerisy,” 212). See also Colvin, “The Shaykh’s Men.” 20. See Chapter 9 in Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics. 21. Sanneh suggests that prior to emancipation the Jakhanke gave only “token instruction” to their slaves. In Slavery and Colonial Rule, Klein argues much in this same vein seeing little distinction between “aristocratic” and “Islamic” slavery with religion used as a form of social control in both instances. I return to the question of slavery and Islamic education in Chapter 3 of “Birth, Wealth, and Gender” In Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” (134–65). 22. The royalty among the Wolof was often portrayed in scholarship as pagan in spite of a number of sources, including European travelers’ descriptions which refer to them as Muslim since time immemorial. Colvin (“Islam and the State of Kajoor”) formulated a powerful argument that there were only vestiges of “traditional African religion” in Wolof country by the sixteenth century. This interpretation was followed by Charles in “Shaikh Amadu Ba and Jihad in Jolof” but was ignored by most analysts of Wolof history until recently. Robinson follows this view and extends it to Pular, Hassaniyya, and Berber speakers in the subregion as well (see Paths of Accommodation, 16–25). The most thorough analysis on the question in Wolof in Senegal is “Patterns of Islamization,” Chapter 3 of Babou, “Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya.” As for traditional religion among the larger peasant, casted, and slave populations there were, and are, several practices to manipulate the seen and unseen worlds (liggeey, ndëp, etc.), which are seen (sometimes erroneously) as being derived from pre-Islamic sources but would be hard to characterize as a religion. These might be more fruitfully explored as forms of practical reason. 23. The Jóob and Faal families of Kokki and Pir, respectively, were of garmi origin and capable of using their status to political effect. See Colvin, “Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 592 (note 11). See also Diop, “Lat Dior et le problème musulman.” 24. This was an old pattern in West Africa. Rooted in the patterns of urbanization observed by McIntosh in “The Pulse Model,” they took on religious significance as early as ancient Ghana in the structuring of the famous dual capital described by Al-Bakri. Curtin notes that the trend continued in later Soninke/Saraxolle societies as a division within the Muslim community. He gives the example of the city of Kajaaga “on the upper Senegal [which] had clerical towns enjoying political autonomy within the state as early as the period of Malian domination, and the distinction between clerical-mercantile and secular-politico-military towns lasted to the beginning of the colonial period” (Curtin, “Jihad in West Africa, 13).

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25. Schmitz, “Un politologue chez les marabouts,” 346. 26. See Bledsoe and Robey “Arabic Literacy and Secrecy,” 215–17, for a discussion of the Quran school as a form of “wealth in people.” 27. Colvin brings this important point to our attention in “Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 589–90. 28. Fall, “Crises socio-politiques et alternatives,” 71, as cited in Diagne, “The Future of Tradition,” 287 (note 6). 29. In Mauritania, Nasir Al-Din’s movement is remembered as Shar Bubba or Shurbubba. In Wolof, it was called tuubanaan. See Barry, “La Guerre des marabouts,” which interprets the movement in light of the Atlantic slave trade. His main documentary source is de Chambonneau’s contemporary account of events, “De l’origine des Nègres du Sénégal coste d’Afrique, de leur Pays, religion, coutume et mœurs et l’Histoire du Toubenan, ou changement de souverains et réforme de relligion desdits nègres, depuis 1673 son origine, jusques en la présente année 1677.” Chambonneau’s texts, edited by Carson I. A. Ritchie, are available under the title “Deux texts sur le Sénégal (1673–1677).” See also Hamet, Chroniques de la Mauritanie Sénégalaise. 30. See Barry, “La Guerre des marabouts.” 31. Klein, “Social and Economic Factors,”428. For more on this see Robinson, “The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro,” 190–92, and The Holy War of Umar Tal, 71. This is discussed in detail by Kamara, Florilège au jardin. 32. Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal. See also Hanson, “Islam, Migration and the Political Economy. 33. This is the neo-Sufi thesis by which reformed Sufi orders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries represent a Sufi response to Wahhabi critiques. Martin’s Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa makes this argument most directly in an African context. The inadequacy of neo-Sufism as a paradigm for understanding either Sufism or reform is laid out most clearly in an article by Radtke and O’Fahey, “Neo-Sufism Reconsidered.” See also Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis, and Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge. 34. Brenner, “Concepts of Tariqa in West Africa.” 35. This reading is suggested by Curtin, “Jihad in West Africa.” 36. Cited in Barry, “La guerre des marabouts,” 568, as Ritchie, “Deux textes,” 339. 37. Scholars tend to agree with Robinson that in Futa Toro after the jihad, raiding, and enslavement of Muslims was not practiced; see “The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro.” Kane argues, with reason, that the Torodo revolution was a reaction to the arbitrary slaving of the deñaanke royalty continuing in the tradition of Shur Bubba (“Les Causes de la Révolution”). Again, Kamara (Florilège au jardin) comments on this extensively and transmits a number of oral traditions on the topic. 38. See Colvin, “Islam and the State of Kajoor,” 590–91. 39. The jihad launched by Maba Jaaxu Ba and Sheikh Amadou Ba (Amadou Cheikhou) had the greatest direct effect on, and led to the participation of, Wolof Muslims. Al-Hajj Umar and Mamadou Lamin operated essentially on the margins of Wolof dominated polities. 40. However, this argument should not be overstated, because it was primarily invoked in French sources to deny substantial attachment to Islam amongst Negroes in the precolonial period. 41. See chapter V of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” See also Ndiaye, L’enseignement Arabo-Islamique, Chapter 3. Also see Bouche, “L’école française et les musulmans au Sénégal.” 42. For the use of Tijan as a label for radicalism in AOF see Robinson’s “French Islamic Policy and Practice.” For the broadest view of French suspicion of Islam in nineteenth-century West Africa, see Harrison’s France and Islam in West Africa. For a detailed view of the similar—and related—process of demonization of the Sanusiyya (North Africa, Chad, and Niger) see Triaud, La legende noire de la Sanusiyya. For a view of the order and its founder that is untainted by the black myth see Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge.

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43. David Robinson, in Paths of Accommodation, notes that in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Muslim scholars in Mauritania and Senegal, who were in some cases associated with the French, articulated arguments against military jihad because of the demonstrated inequity in relations of strength. 44. Brenner, “Concepts of Tariqa in West Africa,” 35. 45. See Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule, which opens an important avenue for discussion— which I pursue in Chapter III of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power”—about Islam as honor and identity for former slaves. Searing makes the argument that the Muridiyya was an avenue to land and dignity for many former slaves, ‘God Alone Is King’. 46. Mamadou Ndiaye, interview with the author, Dakar, June 2002. See also Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, particularly Chapter 10, “Malik Sy: Teacher in the New Colonial Order.” 47. See Chapter 5 in Babou’s “Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya” for the full significance of this. Some relevant arguments also appear in Babou’s article “Autour de la genèse du mouridisme.” 48. The community of Abdoulaye Niasse, whose activities were based in Salum, took shape in this same period and education had similar functions within it. For an overview based on secondary materials, see Gray, “The Rise of the Niassene.” 49. See again, Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa, on the nineteenth-century Algerian School of thought regarding the Sufi orders. 50. The development of an overall French Islamic policy has been documented and debated elsewhere, for an introduction to the discussion see David Robinson “French Islamic Policy and Practice.” Harrison, a student of O’Brien, wrote the most authoritative synthetic overview of Policy, France and Islam in West Africa. Robinson’s Paths of Accommodation covers less historical ground but in bolder relief. His approach brings West African Muslims into a dialogue with French colonials, reminding us that the objects of policy were often instrumental in shaping it. 51. For only one example among many, see Delafosse, “L’État actuel de l’Islam.” 52. The works of Paul Marty best represented, or even exaggerated these views. On the authority of Murid marabouts he wrote: “One can see in it [the Muridiyya] all the native tendencies towards anthropomorphism and its practical consequence: anthopolatry. These blacks, tinted with Mohammedanism, return to their antiquated beliefs, to the worship of a man, man-as-fetish, to the cult of Saints. The religious wave of Islam has passed, and behind it, once more one sees all the individuals of the same race gathering around a local religious hearth; all their moral, social and juridical forces moving instinctively in the direction of the ancestral beliefs and practices; all their economic faculties concentrating around personages who, by mysterious divination or remarkable practical sense, have been able to pose as the representatives of these confused aspirations.” (Études sur l’Islam au Sénégal, 280–81) 53. The reports were on Quran Schools, the Muridiyya, Mauritanian conquest, and Muslim amulets in Senegal. The confluence of bidan (white Mauritanian) and French racism during the colonial period is an underexamined factor in the development of Islam Noir as well as in the history of race relations between Mauritania and Senegal. 54. At least one French analyst of the Quranic schools, Destaing, cautioned against expectations for an early demise of the daara. After noting that the families of Kajoor demonstrated a greater demand for Quran schooling than did Maghrebi families, he concluded that if the former “clamor for French schools, they will not easily forget the Quranic school.” Rapport Destaing, Archives Nationales du Sénégal dossier J86, document 111. 55. Gueye, “L’école coranique,” 52. 56. Wane, “Trois ans d’école coranique,” also appearing in Colin, Systèmes d’éducation, 789. 57. Kane, L’aventure ambigüe. 58. See Bouche “L’école française et les musulmans au Sénégal,” 231: “In 1920, there was no longer any attendance problem for Muslims in the cities. For several years, the schools had already been refusing people. Since neither the administration nor the municipalities were disposed to pay for the opening of new classrooms, the Qur’a-n schools had ceased to be considered as rivals for the French school.”

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59. This point is discussed further in Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” Chapter I: Becoming a Taalibe. 60. This was accomplished by a 1922 decree on confessional neutrality in educational institutions. See Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, 61, and Ndiaye, L’Enseignement AraboIslamique, 133. 61. The political economy of Sufi sheikhs and state authorities is the subject of a voluminous literature. The most nuanced views can be found in Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal. A succinct and representative argument can be found in Boone, Merchant Capital and the Roots. 62. Klein, Islam and Imperialism, 230; and Behrman, Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal, 55–56. 63. For a bibliography on the Islamic reform movement, see Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” note 49 in the Introduction. 64. Many of the original articles from AMEA’s monthly publication have been brought together in a collection, Ly, Où va l’Afrique. 65. See Loimeier, “Cheikh Touré.” 66. Kaba’s The Wahabiyya opened a debate as to whether the reform groups active in AOF in the 1940s and 1950s were tied to the Saudi Arabian Wahhabiyya by affiliation or mere affinity. 67. Triaud gives a close reading of 1950s documentation on Muslim Affairs in the the Archives Nationales de France Section d’Outer-Mer (ANFOM) in an important essay, “Le crépuscule des affaires,” 493–519. For a view of the battle from the perspective of the leading administrator of Muslim affairs in Bamako see Cardaire, L’Islam et le terroir Africain. 68. Brenner describes the suspicion and repression of the movement in Mali with characteristic skill in Controlling Knowledge. Kaba narrated the same process from a somewhat different perspective in The Wahabiyya. The full story is yet to be told for Senegal. I address the educational challenge that reformers posed to Quran schools and the (now predominantly Sufi) clerisy in Chapter 7 of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” 69. For the early history of French education in West Africa, see Bouche, L’Enseignement dans les territoires français. For a view of the period between World War II and independence written by a well-placed colonial official see Cappelle, L’éducation en Afrique Noire. 70. The term is Walter Rodney’s. 71. The political economy of reform is best handled by Loimeier in “L’Islam ne se vend plus,” but it is also ably documented by Piga in Dakar et les ordres Soufis, 444–56. 72. This often overlooked history is explored in a sophisticated and well-documented Master’s thesis by Mbengue, “L’enseignement de l’Arabe.” 73. This summary of the movement is informed by interviews with Dr. Mamadou Ndiaye (Institut Islamique de Dakar) in May and June of 2002, as well as in informal discussions (and one formal taped interview March 17, 2002) with Khadim Mbacké of IFAN. Also contributing to the views here are interviews with Sharif Suleiman Aidara, Touba, April 2002; Abdou Salam Lo, Ngabu April 2002; and Masamba Buso, Mbacke, May 30, 2002. 74. Sheikhuna Lo, interview with the author, Ngabu, March 8, 2002, May 28, 2002; and Khalil Lo, interview with the author, Ngabu, May 28, 2002. 75. See Loimeier, “L’Islam ne se vend plus,” and “Cheikh Touré.” 76. Loimeier, “L’Islam ne se vend plus,” 178. 77. Piga, Dakar et les ordres, 449. 78. Comité National pour l’Action Sociale, “Rapport de synthèse du groupe.” 79. Collignon, “La lutte des pouvoirs publics,” 577–78. 80. Cham, “Islam in Senegalese Literature and Film,” 177. For a more favorable view of the film (in a journal number dedicated in part to Traoré’s work), see Diop, “Njangaan de Mahara Johnson Traoré.” 81. Colin, Systèmes d’éducation, 130. The recollections of the debate are those of Colin himself, not an interlocutor. Colin was the minister of education in the early 1960s and a close associate and friend of deposed Prime Minister Mamadou Dia. He finished the thesis in 1977. 82. Touré, “Sur l’exemple de l’école,” 2.

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83. The summary here is my reading of the official extracts from the seminar. These are available at the Library of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal and the Institut Islamique de Dakar. 84. See Loimeier, “L’Islam ne se vend plus.” 85. The general explosion of Islamic associations in this period is captured by Piga, Dakar et les ordres, 444–56, and Gomez-Perez, “Associations islamiques à Dakar.” Both authors highlight the importance of educational reform in the associational movement. A more intensive analysis of the écoles arabes and their effect on Quran schooling is the subject of a chapter of Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” 86. For historical perspective on the controversies, see my article, Ware, “Njàngaan: The Daily Regime,” as well as the final chapter of “Knowledge, Faith, and Power.” For one anthropological perspective see Perry, “Muslim Child Disciples.” 87. Kane, L’Aventure Ambigüe, 34. 88. Loimeier, “Je veux étudier sans mendier,” 124. The data is originally drawn from Wiegelmann, “Die Koranschule—Eine Alternative.” 89. Literally, “calabash of nothing, goat comes not.” 90. Sharif Suleiman Aidara, interview with the author, Touba, April 2002. Mansur Caam, interview with the author, Tivaouane, August 2001. 91. Loimeier, “Je veux étudier sans mendier,” 127. Loimeier’s data here is drawn primarily from a German language PhD thesis by Wiegelmann, “Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung.” 92. During recent fieldwork in Futa Toro in July 2008, the author encountered one such school in the village of Bokidiawé operated by a partisan of the Harakat al-Falah Salafiinspired reform movement. In the school of Oustaz Amadou Sow, the fusion of educational styles is apparent. The focus is on memorizing the Quran and reshaping the character, not the mere acquisition of the Arabic language. Sow also teaches Maliki fiqh texts to advanced students in spite of the fact that like most Salafis he does not follow the teachings of a single madhhab. 93. For further discussion of the hybridization of educational styles see Ware, “Knowledge, Faith, and Power,” 279–316. For two specific examples see pp. 309–14. For more recent discussion on this theme, with comparative dimensions, see Rudolph Ware and Robert Launay, “Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran: Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au Sénégal et en Côte d’Ivoire,” in Gilles Holder (ed.), L’Islam en Afrique: vers un espace public religieux?: Editions aux lieux d’être, 2008 94. Pape Lamin Ndiaye, interview with the author, Tivaouane, August 2001.

Bibl io gr aphy Al-Naqar, ‘Umar. “Takrur the History of a Name.” Journal of African History 10 (1969): 365–74. Babou, Cheikh Anta Mbacké. “Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya: The History of a Muslim Brotherhood in Senegal (1853–1913).” Doctoral dissertation., Department of History, Michigan State University, 2002. ———. “Autour de la gènèse du mouridisme.” Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara 11 (1997): 5–38. ———. “Educating the Murid: Theory and Practices of Education in Amadu Bamba’s Thought.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 3 (2003): 310–27. Barreira, Baltesar. “Letter of Padre Baltesar Barreira to the Padre Provincial, Serra Leoa 15 April 1608.” In Jesuit Documents on the Guinea of Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands, 1585–1617: In English translation. Liverpool, England: University of Liverpool, 1989. Barry, Boubacar. “La Guerre des Marabouts dans la région du Fleuve Sénégal de 1673 à 1677.” BIFAN 32, ser. B (1971). Behrman, Lucy. Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Bledsoe, Caroline H., and Kenneth M. Robey. “Arabic Literacy and Secrecy among the Mende of Sierra Leone,” Man 21, no. 2 (1986): 202–26.

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Boone, Catherine. Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal: 1930–1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Bouche, Denise. “L’école française et les musulmans au Sénégal,” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, Tome LXI, No 223 (2ème Trimestre 1974): 218–35. ———. L’Enseignement dans les territoires français de l’Afrique occidentale de 1817 à 1920: Mission civilisatrice ou formation d’une élite. Lille: Atelier Reproduction des Thèses, 1975. Boulègue, Jean, ed. Contributions à l’histoire du Sénégal. Paris: Afera, 1987. ———. “La Participation Possible des Centres de Pir et de Ndogal à la Révolution Islamique Sénégambienne de 1673.” In Contributions à l’histoire du Sénégal, edited by Jean Boulègue. Paris: Afera, 1987. Brenner, Louis. “Concepts of Tariqa in West Africa: The Case of the Qadiriyya.” In Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam, edited by Donal Cruise O’Brien and Christian Coulon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. ———. Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. ———. “Histories of Religion in Africa.” Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 2 (2000): 143–67. Cappelle, Jean. L’Éducation en Afrique Noire: à la veille des Indépendances 1946–1958. Paris: Karthala, 1990. Cardaire, Marcel. L’Islam et le terroir Africain. Koulouba: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1954. Cham, Mbye. “Islam in Senegalese Literature and Film.” In Faces of Islam in African Literature, edited by Kenneth Harrow, 163–86. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991. Charles, Eunice A. “Shaikh Amadu Ba and Jihad in Jolof.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 8, no. 3 (1975): 367–82. Colin, Roland. Systèmes d’éducation et mutations sociales: Continuité et discontinuité dans les dynamiques socio-éducatives; Le cas du Sénégal. Lille: Atelier Reproduction des thèses, 1980. Collignon, René. “La lutte des pouvoirs publics contre les ‘encombrements humains’ à Dakar.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 18 (1984): 573–82. Colvin, Lucie G. “Islam and the State of Kajoor: A Case of Successful Resistance to Jihad.” Journal of African History 15 (1974): 587–606. ———. “The Shaykh’s Men: Religion and Power in Senegambian Islam.” In Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa, edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey Fisher. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1987. Conrad, David, and Barbara Frank, eds. Status and Identity in West Africa: The Nyamakalaw of Mande. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Copans, Jean. Les marabouts de l’arachide: La confrérie mouride et les paysans du Sénégal. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989. Comité National pour l’Action Sociale. “Rapport de synthèse du groupe de travail pour la participation des associations religieuses à l’action sociale: l’école coranique.” Dakar, 11 Juin 1969. (text available at the library of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal ) Cowan, J. M., and Hans Wehr. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Arabic-English). 4th ed. Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, 1994. Cruise O’Brien, Donal, and Christian Coulon, eds. Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Curtin, Phillip. “Jihad in West Africa: Early Phases and Inter-Relations in Mauritania and Senegal.” Journal of African History 12 (1971): 11–24. d’Almada, André Alvares. Brief Treatise on the Rivers of Guinea: Being an English Translation of a Variorum Text of Tratado Breve Dos Rios De Guiné (c. 1594) Organised by the Late Avelino Teixeira Da Mota, Together with Incomplete Annotation; Translation, a Brief Introduction and Notes on Chapters 13–19 by P. E. H. Hair, and Notes On Chapters 1–6 by Jean Boulègue. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 1984. de Chambonneau, Louis Mareau. “Deux texts sur le Sénégal (1673–1677).” BIFAN 30, ser. B (1968): 289–353.

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Delafosse, Maurice. “L’État actuel de l’Islam dans l’Afrique Occidentale Française.” RMM 11 (1910): 32–53. Department of History, University of Liverpool. “Jesuit documents on the Guinea of Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands, 1585–1617: in English translation.” Liverpool, England: Department of History, University of Liverpool, 1989. Destaing, E. “Rapport Destaing sur les écoles coraniques,” Archives Nationales du Sénégal dossier J86, document 111” Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. “The Future of Tradition.” In Senegal: Essays in Statecraft, edited by Moumar Coumba Diop. Dakar: Codesria, 1993. Diop, Amadou-Bamba. “Lat Dior et le problème musulman.” BIFAN 28, Sér. B, no. 1–2, (1966). Diop, M’Bissine. “Njangaan de Mahara Johnson Traoré.” Africultures 47 (2002). El-Hamel, Chouki. La vie intellectuelle Islamique dans le Sahel ouest-africain: Une étude sociale de l’enseignement Islamique en Mauritanie et au nord du Mali (XVI-XIX siècles) et traduction annotée de Fath as-Shakur d’al-Bartili al-Walati. Paris: l’Harmattan, 2002. Fall, Mar. “Les arabisants au Sénégal: Contre-élite ou courtiers?” In Le radicalisme Islamique au sud du Sahara, 197–212. Paris: Karthala, 1993. Gomez-Perez, Muriel, “Associations islamiques à Dakar,” Ousmane Kane and Jean-Louis Triaud (ed.), Islam et islamismes au sud du Sahara, 1998, Paris, Karthala, pp. 137–53 ———. “Un mouvement culturel vers l’indépendance: Le réformisme musulman au Sénégal (1956–1960).” In Les temps des marabouts: Itinéraires et stratégies Islamiques en Afrique occidentale Française, edited by David Robinson, Jean-Louis Triaud. Paris: Karthala, 1997. Gray, Christopher. “The Rise of the Niassene Tijaniiya, 1875 to the Present.” In Islam et islamismes au sud du Sahara, edited by Ousmane Kane et Jean-Louis Triaud. Paris: Karthala, 1998. Gueye, Sega. “L’ecole coranique.” Unpublished paper, Cahier de vacance, Ecole William Ponty VII-Se-9, conserved at Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, Dakar, [undated, 1941– 1944?] (54 p.). Hamet, Ismaël, ed. and trans. Chroniques de la Mauritanie Sénégalaise. Paris: Nacer Eddine, 1911. Hanson, John. “Islam, Migration and the Political Economy of Meaning: Fergo Nioro from the Senegal River Valley.” JAH 35, no. 1 (1994): 37–60. Harrison, Christopher. France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Heath, Deborah. “The Politics of Appropriateness and Appropriation: Recontextualizing Women’s Dance in Urban Senegal.” American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 (1994): 88–103. Ka, Thierno. “L’Enseignement Arabe au Sénégal: l’école de Pir-Saniokhor son histoire et son rôle dans la culture arabo-islamique au Sénégal du XVIIe au XXe siècle.” Thèse de Doctorat de Troisìeme Cycle, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), 1982. Kaba, Lansiné. The Wahabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974. Kamara, Muusa. Florilège au jardin de l’histoire des noirs: Zuhu-r Al-Basa-tı-n, documents, études et repertoires. Edited by Jean Schmitz, and Charles Becker. Translated by Saïd Bousbina. France: CNRS, 1998. Kane, Cheikh Hamidou. L’Aventure Ambigüe; récit. Paris: R. Julliard, 1961. Kane, Oumar. “Les Causes de la Révolution Musulmane de 1776 dans le Fuuta-Tooro.” In Contributions à l’histoire du Sénégal, edited by Jean Boulègue. Paris: Afera, 1987. Kane, Ousmane, and Jean-Louis Triaud, eds. Islam et islamismes au sud du Sahara. Paris: Karthala, 1998. Khaldun, Ibn. The Muqaddimah: an introduction to history translated from the Arabic by Franz Rosenthal; abridged and edited by N. J. Dawood, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 Klein, Martin. Islam and Imperialism: Sine Saloum, 1847–1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968.

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———. Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ———. “Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia,” JAH 13, (1972): 419–41. Levtzion, Nehemia. Islam in West Africa: Religion, Society and Politics to 1800. Norfolk, VA: Variorum, 1994. ———. “Merchants vs. Scholars and Clerics in West Africa: Differential and Complementary Roles.” In Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa, edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey J. Fisher. Boulder: L. Rienner, 1987. Levtzion, Nehemia, and Humphrey J. Fisher, eds. Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa. Boulder: L. Rienner, 1987. Loimeier, Roman. “Cheikh Touré: Du réformisme a l’islamisme un musulman Sénégalais dans le siècle.” In Islam et Islamismes au Sud du Sahara, edited by Ousmane Kane and Jean-Louis Triaud, 55–66. Paris: Karthala et Iremam, 1998. ———. “Je veux étudier sans mendier: The Campaign Against the Qur’a-nic Schools in Senegal.” In Social Welfare in Muslim Societies in Africa, edited by Holger Weiss, 118–37. Stockholm: Elanders Gotab, 2002. ———. “L’Islam ne se vend plus: The Islamic Reform Movement and the State in Senegal.” Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 2 (2000): 168–90. Ly, Ciré. Où va l’Afrique. Dakar: n.p. and n.d. Martin, Bradford G. Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Marty, Paul. Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Paris: Leroux, 1917. Mbacké, Khadim. “Impact de l’Islam sur la société Sénégalaise.” Africa 53, no. 4 (1998): 530–56. ———. “Le rôle du mouvement réformiste dans le développement du Sénégal au XXème siècle.” Africa 57 (2002): 87–101. Mbaye, Ravane. “L’Islam au Sénégal.” Thèse de Doctorat de Troisième Cycle, Département d’Arabe, Université de Dakar, 1975–1976. Mbengue, Babacar. “L’enseignement de l’Arabe dans le système scolaire colonial du Sénégal.” Mémoire de Maîtrise, Département d’Arabe, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, 1992–1993. McIntosh, Roderick. “The Pulse Model: Genesis and Accommodation of Specialization in the Middle Niger, JAH 34 (1993): 181–220. Meunier, Olivier. Dynamique de l’enseignement Islamique au Niger: Le cas de la ville de Maradi. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997. Mommersteeg, Geert. “L’éducation coranique au Mali: Le pouvoir des mots sacrés.” In L’Enseignement Islamique au Mali, edited by Bintou Sanankoua and Louis Brenner. Bamako: Jamana, 1991. Monod, Theodore. Description de la côte d’Afrique de Ceuta au Sénégal. Paris: Larosse, 1938. Ndiaye, Mamadou. L’enseignement Arabo-Islamique au Sénégal. Istanbul: Centre de recherches sur l’histoire, l’art et la culture islamiques, 1985. ———. “Communication de l’Institut Islamique de Dakar.” Unpublished paper, Séminaire sur l’enseignement du Coran au Sénégal, Institut Islamique de Dakar, Département de l’Enseignement, 17–18 Mai, 1978. Perry, Donna L. “Muslim Child Disciples, Global Civil Society, and Children’s Rights in Senegal: The Discourses of Strategic Structuralism.” Anthropological Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2004): 47–86. Piga, Adriana. Dakar et les ordres Soufis: Processus socioculturels et développement urbain au Sénégal contemporain. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002. Radtke, Bernd, and R. S. O’Fahey. “Neo-Sufism Reconsidered.” Der Islam 70 (1993): 52–87. Robinson, David. “French Islamic Policy and Practice in Late 19th century Senegal.” JAH 29 (1988): 415–35. ———. “The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro.” IJAHS 8 (1975): 185–221.

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———. The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. ———. “The Murids: Surveillance and Collaboration.” JAH 40 (1999): 192–213. ———. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Sanankou, Bintou, and Louis Brenner, eds. L’Enseignement Islamique au Mali. Bamako: Éditions Jamana, 1991. Sanneh, Lamin. The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989. ———. “The Origins of Clericalism in West African Islam.” JAH 17 (1976): 49–72. Santerre, Renaud. Pédagogie musulmane d’Afrique noire: L’école coranique peule du Cameroun. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1973. Schmitz, Jean. “Le souffle de la parenté: Mariage et transmission de la baraka chez des clerc musulman de la Vallée du Sénégal.” L’Homme 154 (2000): 241–78. ———. “Un politologue chez les marabouts.” Cahiers d’etudes Africaines 91, no. 22–23 (1983): 329–51. Searing, James F. ‘God Alone Is King’: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal: The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859:1914. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. Sirriyeh, Elizabeth. Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World. Richmond. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999. Skinner, David E. “Islam and Education in the Colony and Hinterland of Sierra Leone (1750– 1914).” CJAS 10, no. 3 (1976): 499–520. Tamari, Tal. “The Development of Caste Systems in West Africa.” JAH 32 (1991): 221–50. ———. “Les agents réligieux Islamiques en Afrique tropicale: Reflexions autour d’un theme.” CJAS 19 (1985): 271–82. ———. Les castes de l’Afrique occidentale: Artisans et musicians endogames. Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie, 1997. Touré, Abd al-Aziz Muhammad al-Hadi. Unpublished paper, “Sur l’exèmple de l’école Coranique de Fas Touré.” Seminaire sur l’enseignement du Coran au Sénégal, Institut Islamique de Dakar, Departement de l’Enseignement, 17–18 Mai, 1978. Triaud, Jean-Louis. “Les agents religieux Islamiques en Afrique tropicale: réflexions autour d’un thème.” CJAS 19 (1985): 271–82. ———. La légende noire de la Sanusiyya: une confrérie musulmane saharienne sous le regard français,1840–1930. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1995. ———. “Le crépuscule des affaires musulmanes en AOF, 1950–1956.” In Le temps des marabouts: itinéraires et stratégies Islamiques en Afrique occidentale française, edited by David Robinson and Jean-Louis Triaud. Paris: Karthala, 1997. Triaud, Jean-Louis, and David Robinson, eds. La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique. Paris: Karthala, 2000. ———. Le temps des marabouts: Itinéraires et stratégies Islamiques en Afrique occidentale française. Paris: Karthala, 1997. Vikør, Knut. Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge: Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Sanusi and His Brotherhood. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995. Villalón, Leonardo. Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Wane, Amadou. “Trois ans d’école coranique.” Unpublished Paper, Cahier de vacance, Ecole William Ponty VII-Se-2, conserved at IFAN, Dakar, academic year 1943–1944 (99 p.). Ware, Rudolph T. “Knowledge, Faith, and Power: A History of Qur’a-nic Schooling in Twentieth Century Senegal.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2004. ———. “Njàngaan: The Daily Regime Qur’a-nic Students in Twentieth Century Senegal.” IJAHS 37, no. 3 (2004): 515–38. ———. and Robert Launay, “Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran: Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au Sénégal et en Côte d’Ivoire,” in Gilles Holder (ed.), L’Islam en Afrique: vers un espace public religieux?: Editions aux lieux d’être, forthcoming, 2008.

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Wiegelmann, Ulrike. “Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung in Senegal. Ein empirischer Vergleich zwishen modernen und traditionellen Bildungsgängen und Schulen,” PhD thesis, Münster, 1998. ———. “Die Koranschule—Eine Alternative zur öffentlichen Grundschule in einem laizistischen Staat?” Zeitschrift für Padagogik 40, no. 5 (1994): 803–20. Willis, John Ralph. “The Torodbe Clerisy: A Social View.” JAH 19 (1978): 195–212.

Chapter 2

4 The Shifting Space of S enegalese M osqu es Cleo Cantone (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Since its humble beginnings in Medina, the mosque has acted as a focal point for

the Muslim community. Its polyvalent role as a place that combined dwelling, prayer, tribunal, garrison, and commercial activity in the Medinan period is often evoked by so-called revivalist movements. According to such a discourse, the mosque does not discriminate against race, ethnicity, or gender rather placing the emphasis on belief in the puritanical tenets of Islam, in contrast to Sufi groups whose mosques are often tariqa specific. But in architectural terms, the message of this particular discourse is not always as clearly advertised from the point of view of the building. This may well be symptomatic of what Villalón has observed regarding the distinctions between Sufi, Reformist, and Islamist groups: “Sufism remains the dominant form of devotion, but its dynamic forms and manifestations are adapting in ways that have blurred, if not completely erased, the distinctions between ‘traditional’ Sufi and Islamist groups.”1 In Senegal, differences between mosques that belong to the turuq (singular tariqa, Sufi order) and those that belong to Ibadus (as members of the turuq refer to those who reject a number of Sufi practices) are sometimes marred by shared aesthetic ideas of mosque architecture. Decorative (but rarely functional) elements such as the dome and minaret are therefore subjects of discussion and debate between the Imam and his congregation. This chapter explores these dialogues as well as their effect on the buildings themselves. It attempts to identify an Ibadu trademark that accounts for the increasing presence of female worshippers and how the return to the original Medinan concept of mosque has introduced a new conception and use of sacred space, forging what has shaped the specific identity of jakka ibadou or Ibadu mosques. The literature on Senegalese mosques is sparse. Nevertheless, it is worthy of note that the section on West African mosque architecture in the Encyclopaedia of Islam is written by the Senegalese author Amar Samb, hence the predominant reference to mosques in Senegal. Samb differentiates between the substantial and modern mosques of towns and cities and the simple enclosures made of bamboo palisade or zinc found

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in villages, and he adds that the former possess minarets. Bear in mind that this entry dates to the late 1980s, and since then most said enclosures have been rebuilt in cement and sport as many decorative devices as the community can afford. Yet on the issue of different denominations of mosques, the author simply acknowledges the various religious brotherhoods, disregarding the rise of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman2 and their corresponding erection of distinctive places to pray. Apart from two primary locations in Senegal, namely the capital and the northeastern region of Futa Toro, I have included some mosques in Mali to illustrate the links between what remains of the mud mosques (known as mosquées en banco) in Senegal (Photo 2.1) and their progenitors in Mali. Although the mosques of Dakar are analyzed in their globalized and modernized context, the mosques of rural Senegal—many of which are still built in mud—belong to a different historical context, which in turn gives rise to a different set of spatial configurations. In spite of the well-known prophetic tradition according to which the whole world was created as a masjid (Arabic for “place of prostration”), Muslims the world over attach particular importance to the construction of mosques (itself deemed a meritorious act); therefore, the mosque becomes an important identity marker of a given Muslim community. The notion of shifting space alluded to in the title refers to the physical act of rebuilding mosques in durable materials as well as to the changes that take place in the spatial organization of the mosque to accommodate women. Rather than approach the mosque case studies from the perspective of their religious affiliation, I attempt a thematic approach based on my observations during fieldwork in Senegal and Mali between 1999 and 2005, focusing on the following interconnected themes: the topographical context of mosques, the effect of discourse on gender and identity, and what I have called ideology by design.

Photo 2.1 The Mosque of Guede, Futa Toro.

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To po gr aphy Although the notion of the Islamic city has been disputed by some scholars,3 the importance of the mosque in Muslim settlements goes back to the establishment of Medina by prophet Mohammad in 622 AD. Known as Yathrib in pre-Islamic times, it consisted of a “collection of scattered settlements”4 (including a large number of forts or strongholds). In essence, therefore, the construction of the prophet’s mosque in Medina embodied the centralization of settlement and activity—economical, political, and spiritual—in proximity to the new prophet. Nevertheless, during the early years of Islam’s expansion, Islamic cities and places of worship were rarely founded ex novo and were more commonly adaptations of preexisting settlements. Initially the mosque was located at the center of the camp with the leader’s residence—the so-called dar al-imara—adjacent to it. Thus its subsequent location in the heart of the medina (old city) gradually overshadowed the seat of temporal power—often in the form of the leader’s palace—and became more closely linked to the market.5 The palace and the mosque do not make easy bedfellows, because the spiritual leader was at once the political leader whose remit was to emulate the humility of the prophet. It appears that as the leader became increasingly separate from his congregation (i.e., no longer living in or immediately adjacent to the mosque), more emphasis was placed on the embellishment of his residence, thereby architecturally separating between his spiritual and temporal authority. In West Africa, however, this was not always the case. With the arrival of Islam, when both the king and the population converted to the new religion, the monarch no longer had a religious function, and he gradually assumed a secular role as governor. Rather, it was the religious chiefs who incorporated temporal power into their spiritual regime.6 As Eric Ross illustrates with specific reference to Touba—the spiritual capital of the Murid tariqa—such an alliance between spiritual and temporal power is evident in the topography of the city centered around what its founder Cheikh Amadou Bamba intended to be the biggest mosque in Africa.7 Alongside the mosque (and tomb of Bamba) is the pénc, the public square where elders “gather and palaver,” reflecting the political and temporal aspects of the heart of the city. Thus the mosque and the pénc are the architectural embodiments of the Imam and/or leader of the tariqa and the chef du village.8 Not only was the city of Touba founded on the spot where Amadou Bamba used to sit under the mbéb tree during his spiritual retreats, but he planned the city’s streets to radiate from the site of the great mosque. Just as the mosque is the center of the city, Touba “is the center of the Murid universe, and, according to Murid historiography, its centrality has universal significance for humanity.”9 And as Ross points out, it is the main minaret, the socalled Lamp Fall (Photo 2.2), that “personifies Touba’s axis mundi, a qutb al-alam (pole of the world) or vertical axis to complete the qibla axis of Islam.”10 In contrast to most mosques in Senegal, Touba mosque is exceptional in its demarcation of sacred space beyond the perimeters of the building itself. In other words the mosque represents the material and spiritual center of a holy city in earthly terms and the gate to paradise in otherworldly terms. Indeed, the city of Touba is an extension of the mosque in that certain religious prohibitions that apply within the sacred precinct also apply outside it: the consumption of alcohol and tobacco as well as all forms of “secular entertainment.” Similar demarcations of space are found in the quartier Mame Ndiegen in Thiès. But unlike Touba, this small district is not a legal communauté rurale autonome; rather, its holiness is defined by the Ndiegen family whose founding father, Mame Baro Ndiegen, first settled in the area

Photo 2.2

Lamp Fall, Great Mosque of Touba.

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and around 1880 constructed a mosque on the site where a newer mosque now stands.11 With rapid urban expansion, few cities can boast a similar spiritual foundation with accompanying symbolic typography. Indeed, the capital of Senegal, Dakar, acquires an altogether different meaning when we consider that the French moved their capital there from Saint Louis and thereby transformed a quiet Lebu fishing village into a burgeoning commercial center. Yet the capital is not without its religious significance; each denomination of Senegalese Islam is represented by an important building. Thus although each tariqa is presided by a great mosque in its rural seat (Tivaouane for the Tijaniyya, Touba for the Murids, Yoff for the Layen, etc.), there is normally a corresponding monumental building to represent the tariqa in the political capital of the country. The Great Mosque of Dakar is particularly significant in this respect, because it houses an adjoining library and Islamic Center in addition to teaching facilities and offices. Official state visitors from Muslim countries are invited to say their prayers in this mosque. Even after long delays and deliberations between the then–colonial administration and Senegalese religious dignitaries, the Great Mosque’s origins testify to its official status. Its inauguration, on March 27, 1964 (and not in the mid-1970s as stated by Holod and Khan12), in fact was held in the presence of King Hassan II of Morocco and President Leopold Senghor.13 The appointed Grand Imam was Abdoul Aziz Sy, the grand marabout of the Tivaouane Tijans who led the prayer on this occasion, thus making a clear statement of the official Tijan orientation of the mosque. This monumental structure (Photo 2.3) that presides over the Medina of Dakar reflects at once the official representation of Tijan Islam, while its overtly Almohadinspired architecture creates a tangible link with King Hassan’s patronage of mosques in his preferred style and the correlated movement to revive Morocco’s traditional crafts.14 Indeed, the choice of the so-called Hassanian style aims to “represent the rebirth of the soul of the country and to be a spectacular affirmation of national identity”15 and has consequentially been exported to other West African capitals, as Paccard explains: “The sovereign is also extremely anxious that Moroccan arts express this new vitality throughout the world. Mauritania, Senegal and the Ivory Coast all boast of refined and beautiful monuments which are the recent works of craftsmen from Fes, Rabat, Marrakesh and Casablanca.”16 In this context it is not surprising that the Murids have now received funding and craftsmanship from the Kingdom of Morocco to build their own grand mosque in the capital. The significance of this mosque is that its magnificence cannot rival that of the Great Mosque of Touba, nor can its style be too easily confused with its de facto rival, the Great Mosque of Dakar. Therefore, the move appears to be more political, because a Murid Moroccan mosque is making an important statement about its own relationship with the seat of Maliki authority—a relationship that was traditionally maintained between Morocco and the Tijan tariqa, whose founder is buried in Fez. Following on from Ross’s notion of spiritual topography, I would like to further analyze two mosques in Dakar in their topographic context: the University of Dakar Mosque and the Mosque of Soprim. The Great Mosque features on most maps of the capital, but it is difficult to find a topographic reference to the city’s burgeoning population of prayer places. Built in the midst of the university campus in 1986, the university mosque serves most Muslim students. The community mosque in Soprim mainly caters to the youth from the local area in a residential suburb of the capital; and as far as I am aware, it does not feature on any map.

Photo 2.3 Grande Mosquée de Dakar.

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The location of each mosque is a determining factor in how it is used and by whom it is frequented. For example, situated on the border between the Plateau and the Medina on the avenue Al-Hajj Malick Sy, the location of the Great Mosque requires visitors to take some form of transport. Because its main raison d’être is to cater for official state visits or the main festivals, the rest of the time this monumental complex remains fairly deserted. Its majestic square minaret harbors seven floors of classrooms, and from one of the gates it is possible to see the equally imposing sight of the unfinished mosque of the Omarian Tijans with twin minarets capped by gargantuan bulbous domes towering majestically over the Corniche. Acting like the two custodians of the capital, these are the largest mosques in central Dakar in spite of their considerable distance from the main political and economic hub of the Plateau. Thus, the Great Mosque of Dakar’s location is marginal in relation to the city’s central Sandaga market and the financial quarters around the Place de l’Indépendance, whereas in a sense the Ibadu mosques of Soprim and La Mosquée de l’Université de Dakar (MUD) needed to be accommodated in their topographical surroundings: At MUD the qibla (the direction of Mecca) is not aligned to the street, so the courtyard preceding the mosque is decidedly askew to compensate. Similarly, Soprim is designed to fit the incongruous plot of allocated land. In Dakar’s suburbs a parcel of land is usually reserved for a public building such as a medical dispensary, school, or mosque; hence the plot of land is not always ideally disposed with correct orientation toward qibla. In this respect, the Great Mosque of Touba is exceptional. As Ross argues in his recent book on Touba, the foundation of the Great Mosque on the site where Cheikh Amadou Bamba had his mystic revelation constitutes a unique spatial arrangement, “Touba is a Sufi city for two reasons. First, it was founded by a Sufi sheikh and has been entirely built up and managed by a Sufi order. Second, the design of the city is the product of the application of Sufi principles and concepts.”17

D is c o ur se, G end er, and Ide nt it y Up until the formation of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman in 1979, the prayer hall in most Senegalese mosques was out of bounds to women. Only women past menopause were allowed to frequent the mosque, and even then they were obliged to perform their prayer in a separate building. Paul Marty’s colorful description in the early twentieth century remains accurate: As for women, the reason given is that they are unclean adding that “They should pray at home if they want”. Men generally believe that women do not need to pray not because their piety exonerates them but because they are inferior beings and such humble beings are not required to pray. Nevertheless one sees a few old ladies in certain mosques attend Friday prayers. Elsewhere, when there is a substantial and persevering group of devotees, a small wooden or grass hut is built in a corner of the courtyard and there, alone amongst themselves, they can follow the service of the mosque.18

Most mosques that are not affiliated with a tariqa have a mosque committee where matters such as fundraising and any other practical matters are discussed. Membership to such committees is also open to women; and in exceptional cases, such as the Mosquée Ngalèle in Saint Louis, women can be quite influential. Imam Boubacar Diakhaté informed me that one local woman paid for the architect of the mosque herself; and the Association des Femmes de la Cité de Ngalèle collected 200,000 CFA

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(roughly the equivalent of $400) toward the construction of the mosque, and they also contributed toward helping fill the foundations with sand.19 The new mosque of Ngalèle is in the midst of a recent district of Saint Louis called, appropriately, Cité Universitaire, because it is within easy reach of Gaston Berger University and many of its residents are employees at the university. On the other side of the main road, an older part of Ngalèle has its own Friday mosque. Here the old Imam delivers the khutba in Arabic while Imam Diakhaté makes a sermon in Wolof. Talking about his sermons, Diakhaté explained that his aim was to deliver them de manière scientifique and deal with contemporary affairs to complement the traditional sermons of his colleague. I also encountered this practice of the double Imam in Jenne in neighboring Mali. Imam Elfadi Nalia gives sermons in the Great Mosque of Jenne in Bambara while an older Imam preaches in Arabic. In Senegal and Mali, sermons in local languages are a relatively new phenomenon as Imam Diallo in Bamako explained. According to him, this is because Imam Malik banned sermons from being translated from Arabic; so it follows that the traditionalists (the turuq generally follow the Maliki madhhab) have stuck to this principle. Contrarily to his father before him, Imam Diallo believes that the khutba should be understood by the congregation; and if it is not translated into a local language, “the message does not get through.”20 The question of the language used in sermons reflects the wider debate about access to knowledge via the gate of the mosque. Indeed, by preaching sermons in languages that are widely understood, mosques and their Imams attract greater audiences, not least from a traditionally underrepresented group: women. Interestingly, it was Imam Elfadi who stressed that he encouraged women to frequent the mosque in his sermons for the past twenty years, but this had little effect on local women. Mostly, it is still the older women who frequent the mosque, especially for Friday prayers. He added that perhaps it would be more effective if this message came from a foreigner’s mouth. This prompted him to invite me to give a talk to the female worshippers after the Friday prayer, which he translated into Bambara.21 The main point I made was that apart from the baraka (blessing) of praying in congregation, jum’a prayers were a precious opportunity to gain knowledge and strengthen sisterhood. When the talk was over, each woman shook my hand and we exchanged blessings. The Imam made a point that men should be prevented from entering from the bab al-nisa, or women’s entrance, to safeguard their privacy. In Jenne the problem was to attract more women to frequent the mosque, whereas the Wahhabiyya22 mosque in San had a canopied zulla at the back of the courtyard designated for women. Here, rather than the colorful boubou-clad elder women there were younger women covered in black abayas from the Gulf or Saudi Arabia. These women were accompanied by their children, which is discouraged in traditional tariqa mosques on the grounds that they may potentially soil the mosque. Denying women access to sacred space equates them to the status of children, because both have the capacity to “pollute” the premises and distract men from prayer.23 At Ihsan Mosque (Photo 2.4, the name means beneficence, charity, performance of good deeds) the emphasis is on the design as well as on the maintenance of the mosque. Imam Cissé insists on keeping the mosque immaculately clean; and to this effect, he invoked the hadith of the prophet Mohammad: “Purity is half the faith.” Cissé believes that by maintaining the mosque accordingly, more people will want to frequent it. Similarly, by creating a dignified place for women in the mosque, they too will want to attend more regularly. Judging by the large numbers of women coming to pray in this mosque on a regular basis, it appears that the Imam’s philosophy works.

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Mosquée Ihsan, Saint Louis.

The dynamic Imam who is also a professor at the University of Gaston Berger, Abdoullah Cissé has revolutionized not only the spatial configuration of the traditional tariqa mosque by incorporating the women’s section within the mosque; but in so doing, he has managed to subvert entrenched ideas about women’s impurity and their inaccessibility to places of prayer. Cissé, a committed Tijan, conceded that women’s space in the mosque has been neglected because it is considered secondary and therefore not important; and although it is not obligatory for women to attend prayers in a mosque, “it is not forbidden.”24 Imam Cissé is of the opinion that women must feel welcome in a place of worship and above all that their dignity should remain intact. In accordance with this perception, the women’s prayer place in Ihsan mosque is situated in a gallery overlooking the men in the prayer hall below. Indeed, according to Cissé, the fact that women are above the men in the mosque confers a sense of pride; and, in turn, this foments their desire to frequent the mosque. In contrast to the disparaging view

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of women cited by Marty, the Imam of Ihsan mosque maintains that older women are considered the same as men and they “do not pose a problem.”25 Thus, the inclusion of women in Ihsan mosque proves an ingenious spatial solution that is at once Islamic (i.e., avoiding promiscuity) and acceptable to women. In other words, the function of the building (as a place of prayer for men and women) is as important as its aesthetic value.

Design and Style Ihsan’s clean, modernist, and Middle Eastern-inspired architecture makes a considerable statement among the surrounding colonial architecture. Similarly, the contrast between the traditionalist great mosque of Jenne and the Wahhabi mosque in San is their architecture. Unlike Jenne’s imposing mud monument dating back more than a century when it replaced a much earlier structure, the Wahhabi mosque in San was recently built, and its soulless design paid greater tribute to the convenience of cement than to the millenary tradition in mosque-building that survives to this day in many parts of contemporary Mali. Without trying to embark on an antimodern crusade about the disadvantages of using an alien material in West African architecture, the question about the transformation of mosque architecture in the region must be addressed, because it touches at once on broader issues about patronage and religious identity. To illustrate this, I need to dwell on a region that lies at the crossroads between the Niger valley and the valley of the River Senegal. Futa Toro is a transitional zone bordering Mali in northeastern Senegal. Dotted along the banks of the river are a series of villages founded by various jihadists in the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In the spirit of purifying the faith through political jihad, successive leaders built mosques, basing their design on the Sudanese mosques they encountered in the Niger bend and using the widely available clay or banco. Several of these small, cuboid mosques still survive today in spite of heavy restorations carried out in cement. Were it not for their historical significance, they would probably have been abandoned and replaced by new mosques built entirely in cement, thus radically altering the distinctive curvaceous lines of their mud predecessors. The material used for mosque construction in many ways embodies the relationship that people have with the land and this in turn “confers identity.”26 Formerly, the process of building a mosque involved the whole community—women generally prepared the meals and carried the water used to mix the mud and men did the building work—whereas cement constructions take a fraction of time and labor. In addition, the space surrounding the mosque was as important as that contained within its walls. Rather like the pénc or public square used by elders to palaver, the hangar or shaded area outside small mud mosques is used by the Imam along with his family and community. Modern mosques with their Middle East–inspired designs tend to exclude the exterior space by creating a multifunctional space inside the mosque. In other words libraries, the Imam’s room, a separate women’s section, and teaching rooms combine to form a religious complex catering to all the community’s spiritual needs, hence the redundancy of the hangar. Formerly, the exterior space surrounding the mosque—sometimes shaded by a zinc or reed roof—was used for teaching the Quran to children or as a place to sit in the shade.

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In a district of Podor such a project is underway, and a small mosque in a bad state of repair is to be knocked down and rebuilt following the design of a professional architect. The signature of the new structure will be its minaret, which is discussed later in the chapter. However, the most notable transformation is the inclusion of the Imam’s room, library, and women’s section into the main building with teaching rooms adjacent to the mosque. Interestingly, this same design is found in Ibadu mosques including MUD, Soprim, Al-Falah (Colobane, Dakar), Abou Ubaydata (Unité 26, Parcelles Assainies), Bilal (Thiès), and so forth. With the exception of Soprim, however, most Ibadu mosques receive funding from Saudi Arabia or the Gulf, and they make clear their anti-maraboutic or anti-tariqa stance to discourage tariqa members to frequent their mosques.

I deo lo gy by D es i g n? Ironically, one of the greatest exponents of material wellbeing in West Africa is cement. Whether place of abode or prayer, once wealth has made its appearance, buildings are knocked down or abandoned and new ones erected in this relatively costly material. Yet somehow the initial enthusiasm for the new construction in this semieternal material quickly withers when what was planned to look like a great mosque or a fabulous villa remains a grey skeleton whose only esthetic credential is to scar the horizon. Unfinished mosques in Senegal abound like case abusive (houses with no planning permission) in Sicily and the cause for this is often the same: not enough money to complete building work. Local communities may have painstakingly contributed to building or rebuilding a mosque in durable materials; but when funds run out, financial aid is often sought from abroad. In some cases the money was enough to cover the cost of the architect’s fee, let alone purchasing the necessary materials to build the new mosque. According to Boubacar Sow from the Service d’Urbanisme in Thiès, there has been an increase in mosque-building in the last five years, most projects funded by Saudi Arabia.27 Records at the Service d’Urbanisme showed that various Muslim communities put in requests for permission to build a mosque, which Sow maintains are pro forma to obtain funding and send proof to their sponsors that their mosque has been approved rather than to obtain building permission. A rather different story emerged from the Muslim World League (MWL) headquarters in Dakar. The MWL in Dakar mediates the acceptance of applications from Senegalese communities wishing to build a mosque and sends these to the MWL headquarters in Saudi Arabia. If the application is accepted, the funds are given in three stages; and on completion of each stage, proof of work progress must be sent. This is done in the form of an engineer’s report and a set of photographs as well as copies of all expenses incurred in the project. The keys are handed over to the community once they have received the final amount. Upon completion of the mosque, the community is asked to compile a report stating whether they are satisfied with the work. A Friday is chosen to perform the jum’a prayers in the presence of a member of the MWL, who makes a speech stating that the mosque no longer belongs to them and hands over the key to the community.28 Funding from Saudi Arabia or the Gulf used to be administered by individuals or Islamic associations. However, in more recent years Arab funders no longer follow this procedure and require a given community to form an organization and provide evidence that they are building the mosque for their community and that there is a

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genuine need for a place of worship in a given area. In other words, following a number of frauds, funding bodies have laid down a series of criteria to be met before they approve of the project and issue the required funds. The mosque of Soprim (Photo 2.5) is located in one of Dakar’s recent suburbs called Patte d’Oie Nord on the Route des Niayes and borders on Unité 14 of Parcelles Assainies. Soprim was created from 1987 to 1988 and the foundation of its mosque dates to 1994. Although self-funded, like most revivalist-inspired mosques, Soprim was conceived as a complexe d’éducation islamique where the place for worship is part of a complex comprising teaching rooms, morgue, library, Quranic school, health center, and guest house.29 Aside from the formal disposition of the site, Soprim’s complex sets out to fulfill its religious and social functions toward the community by offering crèche facilities, a youth program, as well as a committee for women. Under the auspices of the COPEMS (Comité Permanent pour l’Edification du Complexe Islamique de la grande Mosquée de Soprim et environs), a report was compiled on October 24, 1999, outlining the objectives of the committee and delineating the work accomplished on the building work. As well as involving the youth and volunteers to do the paintwork, an environmental cachet included a plan to plant trees, which was initiated by the local council but failed because of lack of upkeep (entretien). Two questions were emphasized as needing greater attention: first, the inclusion of women in the work of the bureau and in all activities; second, regarding the turuq the committee urged those members not to use the microphone to perform the wazifa (repetition of sacred phrases) as a result of a vote. As reflected in the committee’s membership, roles are differentiated along the lines of organizational, social, financial, and religious affairs. The main Imam is at once president of this section and replaced by a rotation of Imams. Thus Imam Ndiaye’s main assistant Imam is Imam Kanté, who is the Imam ratib (principal) at the University Mosque of Dakar, discussed in the following text. This means the congregation is exposed to different styles of delivery as well as divergent discourses within a spectrum of predefined topics.30 Sermons in Soprim are delivered in Wolof—catering to most of its worshippers. With its youthful population, the mosque of Soprim caters to the needs of its community, taking into account both the Ibadu persuasion of some and the adherence to the turuq of others. Thus although the ideology, style of discourse, and social organization conform to the Ibadu ilk of a proportion of contemporary Senegalese mosques, Soprim functions mainly as what I call a community mosque, emphasizing the religious aspect while promoting community cohesion. Furthermore, the building is integrated into the urban and primarily residential zone, making no bold structural statement (unlike Dakar’s Grande Mosquée par excellence). In a neighboring suburb, adjacent to Soprim, the so-called mosque Impôts et Domaines (after the name of its location) remains in its undecorated cement shell but has recently been provided with a second story.31 The original mosque consisted of a square plan flanked by a veranda on the southern façade terminating with an imposing square minaret tower that overshadows a small spherical dome encased by leaf-shaped crenellations. Presumably, the upper story was added to the rear of the mosque. This is an unusual accretion in a non-Friday prayer mosque; but according to Imam Kanté, it may soon become a jum’a mosque. It will be interesting to see whether this does come about and what effect it will have on the congregation of Soprim. Although the architecture of the mosque clearly advertises its tariqa orientation—notably in the use of the tall square minaret, dome, and crenellations—local Ibadus pray there. In 2001 when I had the occasion to be there for timiss (the Wolof term for maghrib or sunset prayer), as soon as the Ibadus completed their salat, the lights were switched off and

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Soprim.

the white sheet laid out under the dome to perform the wazifa. Because the Tijan litany is particular to this tariqa, and because only men can perform it, I tried to leave the mosque as discreetly as possible. Senegal’s religious history is replete with such foundation myths, and it would be a phenomenal task for an oral historian to collect them and put them in writing. The strange thing is that in cases where there is no foundation myth, information on the background to the mosque’s construction is obtained with difficulty, and informants are often reticent to provide pertinent documents. The University Mosque of Dakar is a case in point. But it is precisely the mosque’s location in a strictly secular zone that provides the clue to the avoidance of any reference to a mystical experience tied to its founders. In its architectural austerity and unpretentiousness, this mosque defies the secular ethos of the campus by its very presence, and the crowds that flock to worship within its confines attest to the relentless drive to religion of the population. Furthermore, the founders of the mosque pride themselves at having obtained first

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the permission to build the mosque and second to advertise both architecturally and theologically the detachment from any tariqa. As I uncovered in the mosque’s archives, the original plan for the mosque resembled the present building in all but a few details. The two towering square minarets that would have flanked the main entrance were replaced by a single octagonal stub of a tower whose uppermost tier barely rises above the height of the roof, which incidentally was supposed to include an upper story. Even more symbolically, the large spherical dome that would have preceded the mihrab was omitted altogether—allegedly to accommodate the upper story, but in keeping with anti-Sufi practices, its presence is often associated with the practice of wazifa described earlier. I endorse this thesis because cost is sometimes the cause behind architectural modesty rather than ideology, as discussed in the following text. But in the case of MUD, its principal Imam and founding member assured me that funds for carrying out any remedial work on the mosque as well as the envisaged extensions were not an obstacle. He said that it was principally out of diplomacy that the building had to keep a fairly low profile: to avoid upsetting the secular state on one hand and the members of other religious groups—notably the turuq—on the other. At the Cité Universitaire mosque of Ngalèle, modernity and tradition are subtly blended. The plan of the mosque conforms to the traditional veranda-enclosed prayer hall with protruding semicircular mihrab in keeping with many mosques in the Saint Louis area. The exterior walls, however, have been covered with a rendering whose hue and texture are distinctly mudlike contrasting with the bright white interior. The flat roof is designed (once again) to accommodate a second story, and a minaret is planned to be built adjacent to the northeastern corner of the mosque. In all its aspects (decorative and ideological) Ngalèle has much in common with MUD. Yet the overall design of the former eloquently expresses the dialogue that exists between the old and the new (also the traditional versus the modern, etc.), thus soliciting greater acceptance in the community. In contrast, built twenty years earlier, the Mosquée de l’Université de Dakar reflects the tensions that surrounded its construction by incorporating some design elements alien to West African Islam such as in the use of triangular-shaped arches and the hexagonal minaret. The issues surrounding the inclusion or omission of certain architectural elements are the objects of discussion and indeed of dialogue between Imams and their congregations in several mosques I researched in my fieldwork. My initial impression was that although tariqa mosques adopted their style from Maghrebi mosques, Ibadu mosques purposely distinguished themselves by omitting overtly decorative elements to signify greater adherence to the Sunna. However, upon subsequent visits I found that those apparent omissions were included at a later date—in particular the minaret. Soprim and two other distinctly Ibadu mosques had no minaret up until my stay from 2000 to 2001. But by 2005 both Ibadu mosques in Parcelles Assainies in Dakar boasted two impressively high towers; and as for Soprim, one has recently been added.32 The reason, quite blatantly, was that more funds became available to build a minaret, which, after all, has come to be the most ostensible and visible symbol of Islamic religious architecture in spite of its roots springing from a Christian tradition.33 In the case of Soprim, the intention to build a minaret was clearly set out in the 1999 minutes but when I last spoke to the principal Imam in 2005, he conceded that this was an unnecessary provision because the prophet’s mosque did not possess one. Owing to public pressure it was decided a minaret was needed to clearly earmark the building, while allegedly making the adhan (call to prayer) audible from further afield.

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Beyond the issue of whether it is appropriate to have a minaret to make the call to prayer, the question of style needs addressing. Much to my surprise, these recent Ibadu minarets owe much to local stylistic traditions—a tall square tower for the mosque in Unité 26 and a stepped square minaret in Unité 21—and furthermore, their sheer height makes no bones about ostentatious display. I have not yet seen the minaret at Soprim, but it is located in the northwestern corner of the roof where a staircase has been ready to lead to the tower for eight years. This begs the question: How much do Imams know about Islamic architecture? Or what does Islamic architecture conjure up in their imagination? Both Ibadus and Arabisants34 conceived of the tower to perform the adhan as an innovation (bid’a), nevertheless they had to give in either to public pressure or the functional justification whereby the higher the microphone (from where the adhan is actually produced) the further the sound would be heard. In the end what is most enduring is the symbolic attachment of the minaret and its semiotic power in attracting worshippers to its fold. The dome simply cannot compete with the minaret on this score: Its primary function is to encapsulate the heavenly vault and accentuate the mihrab: the visual focus of the worshipper guiding his prayer toward the qibla. Furthermore, the introduction of the dome in Senegal is of a much later date most probably not preceding the appearance of cement. Although I have no evidence proving that the omission of the dome is a deliberate choice based on a Salafi-Wahhabi strand of Islam, Ibadu mosques are for the most part domeless. Both the Imams at MUD and Ngalèle justify that a second story was envisaged so both mosques have flat roofs. Noted that Soprim’s mosque possesses two stories as well as a dome; and as I pointed out earlier, Impôts et Domaines has been able to include another floor regardless of an existing dome. Herein lies the contradiction: According to the Salafist perspective, both minaret and dome are bid’a; nevertheless, their architectural and symbolic value outweighs their lack of precedent in the time of the prophet. There is another possible explanation for the choice of suppressing the dome and minaret, which can be found in local, precolonial mosques. As Marty ventures, mosques built in durable materials, and therefore during the time of French occupation, either did or did not possess a minaret. In mosques built of banco, for example, the muezzin would climb up onto the roof to make the adhan by means of narrow and proverbially precarious stairwells at the rear of the mosque. Examples of these can be found in the surviving Futa Toro mosques35; but since the advent of the loudspeaker, the stairwells have fallen into disuse. The design of Ihsan is anything but conventional in the lexicon of Senegalese mosque architecture. The two towering minarets, for example, are cylindrical; and the main entrance is preceded by a false gate, adding a modern touch to the building while the veranda on the northern façade slopes asymmetrically to one side. The exterior of the mosque is painted in white with dark green details like the bulbous domes surmounting the minarets. A large dome decorated with Quranic inscriptions dominates the male prayer hall. However, when the time for the wazifa arrives, just after the maghrib prayer, women do not have to hurtle out in the dark but can remain in their gallery listening to the proceedings or continuing with other acts of devotion. As evidenced from this architectural innovation, the effect on gender relations is considerable, because the women’s gallery facilitates active or at any rate visual participation to an unprecedented degree. I am only aware of one other example of this organization of space: The Center Bilal mosque in Thiès was founded in around 1979 and currently serves as the headquarters of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman. The use of galleries or mezzanines by women in mosques is prevalent in the Middle East but can be found in early Ottoman

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mosques as far West as Tunisia. Since the Ottoman presence did not penetrate as far as Morocco, inspiration in Senegal has Middle Eastern origins. Cissé in fact suggested that it was during one of his father’s trips to the Gulf that the idea of the gallery first occurred to him. The widespread phenomenon in West Africa and in particular in Senegal of the jakka jigeen or women’s mosque consists of a small, separate building where women (or more specifically older women) pray. These so-called women’s mosques are extremely common in small Tijani mosques and are often located within the courtyard. That said, in some instances, the women’s mosque is a former men’s mosque that became too small for the growing congregation, which subsequently prays in a new adjacent building. This is the case at the old mosque in Ngalèle previously mentioned and was the case with the contemporary mosque of Soprim. But this is where theological orientation makes its mark on the building: In the former example, the women’s building is left in its primitive state with no embellishments or refurbishments, whereas in the second example the women’s mosque takes on a status of its own. The architect of Soprim’s newly built women’s mosque is a woman, Ndey Khady Diop. Although female architects are not unknown in Senegal,36 Diop’s design departs from the conventional jakka jigeen in one main respect: She chose to go against the conventional mode of suppressing fenestration or using claustrawork to enclose the women in a fairly dark space from where they may see out but not be seen. Indeed, Diop’s original design for Soprim’s women’s prayer space was to open three large windows onto the courtyard, giving visual access to the main prayer hall. In the words of Diop, “for visibility and in order to follow the Imam correctly.”37 The new building encompasses both the closed prayer room and the porch and is now a wider open-plan space that can be used in a variety of ways: The whole room can be used for prayer or one-half, which is separated by pillars, can be used for teaching, while the other half can still be used for prayer. During the week a simple white curtain separates the men from the women, and only on Fridays and for the main religious festivals do women move to their own quarters to leave men more space. Talking about women’s spaces in mosques, Soprim architect Diop commented, “Women’s space in the mosque is not even taken into consideration—it is small and badly built . . . but we have our place in the mosque.”38 Diop’s comment is all the more poignant in view of the male-dominated fields of architecture and religion. Indeed, the mosque of Soprim and especially the vision of the principal Imam constitute an exception regarding the issue of the participation of women in the mosque’s physical space as well as its organization. Like numerous other jakka jigeen, there were no windows, and the only way for them to follow the service was by means of a crackling loudspeaker. Going back to the quote from Marty (“from there, alone amongst themselves, they can follow the service in the mosque”), it is unclear by what means they could follow, particularly in the absence of loudspeakers. This is all changing now because of more women attending public prayers as well as the diffusion of information regarding how their attendance should be organized. In a fascinating paper by Saudi student Tarim, the question of visibility is addressed and evidence to back up the necessity of women’s visual participation in the prayer is quoted directly from hadith literature. Tarim points out that in the shari’a and in particular in Hanbali fiqh, nothing should prevent the Imam from being seen by the congregation; and a further condition is that the congregation stands in tightly knit rows.39 Therefore, it is not surprising that in Ibadu mosques women are accommodated behind the men; and if the space proves to be too small, it is common to find women

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praying on mats outside facing an open door (usually the one diametrically opposite the mihrab) from which they can visually follow the service (or class). Yet in the university mosque of Dakar, this aspect of worship has received scant attention, if any. Women pray in the left-hand corner of the mosque in a section that is partitioned by an opaque dark cloth preventing women from seeing (or being seen by) the rest of the congregation. Moreover, on Fridays this partition is removed and women are relegated to the library from which they can hear the sermon and follow the prayer by means of loudspeakers. Between 2000 and 2001, I conducted fieldwork including questionnaires regarding women’s space in the mosque; and although many women responded that they wished for more space to pray, none explicitly mentioned the lack of visibility as a problem. Speaking to Alioune Seck, the secretary of the university mosque, it transpired that a transparent curtain was supposed to replace the opaque one.40 This issue was raised by the men in the Commission pour l’organisation de la mosquée and was approved by the women’s commission, but a solution also had to be found for screening off women who use the space to rest. To my surprise when I returned in 2004, the partition curtain was pierced by a round hole covered with netting and screened by a lap of the dark material. In other words, women were now able to peep onto the male prayer hall and establish whether the prayer had begun or at what stage it was. In actual fact, however, the hole does not do much for active visual participation. Nevertheless, the issue of visibility had obviously undergone some consideration. I also noticed the increased presence of grand voiles or full-length hijab among the female worshippers, indicating a further shift in ideology toward what is locally known as Salafi or Wahhabi-inspired Islam.

Co nc lusi on It is difficult to keep pace with the rapid evolution of mosques in Senegal. What is clear, however, is that the growth of mosques (both in terms of their numbers as well as extensions and additions) reflects Islam’s metamorphosis and expansion. Conversions from Christian minorities and local religions are one factor; urbanization also plays an important part in attracting people to the fold; and in this context Ibadu mosques provide not only the prayer facilities but the educational programs, which may prove to be viable competitors to the traditional daara for learning the Quran as well as to the secular system. It is in this sense that space is shifting in mosques: Their function is no longer restricted to the spiritual aspect (adoration), it is also expanded to the religious education of the community of the faithful (ummah). The inclusion and greater integration of women in these new spaces is fundamental in the transformation of the tariqa-orientation of Senegalese mosques. As the example of the mosque of Ihsan demonstrates, women’s place in the mosque is tantamount to granting female worshippers a greater sense of dignity. Conversely, in the heart of the secular university campus in Dakar, women’s segregation reflects the rigid interpretation of religious texts propounded by Saudi Arabia, which is ironically closer to the tariqa code than to the textual references to which they claim to adhere. The other issue I raised was the mosque from the point of view of built form and its affect on the natural and social environment—in other words the sustainability of the mosque. As the case study of Podor demonstrates, the transition from mud to cement takes little account of the environmental or social effect of the planned mosque; rather, the Imam emphasized the greater comfort of a larger and air-conditioned

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space. Granted, the new building will accommodate women (although how this space is configured was the subject of discussion between me—a tubab (foreigner)—and the Imam). Yet until funding for the new mosque project is found, it remains an enchanting vision on paper. By contrast, the builders of Mali’s mud mosques remain in constant demand for their craft because the buildings require regular maintenance. But why are young women keeping away from these architectural delights, preferring the accommodation in more modern mosques? Perhaps the small and badly constructed prayer places mentioned by Diop hold the answer, and more female architects should be encouraged and commissioned to redesign the spaces allocated for women in mosques. If both Ibadu and tariqa mosques embark on the same route of incorporating and redesigning women’s spaces as well as increasingly adopting extralocal architectural styles, there may well be a further shift toward an international style mosque made of reinforced concrete with no longer identifiable markers of specific cultural and religious identity.

Not es 1. Villalón, “Islamism in West Africa,” 62. 2. Founded in 1979, its followers became known as Ibadus. Throughout the 1990s, they grew in popularity, particularly on university campuses. They became one of the most prominent Islamist groups, and female members became noted for their donning of the hijab. 3. See Abu-Lughod, “The Islamic City.” 4. Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition, “al-Madina.” 5. The market is usually situated in close proximity to the mosque and the palace. See map of old Ryadh in Palgrave, Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey. 6. Diop, L’Afrique Noire Pré-Coloniale, 69. 7. Ross, “Touba, A Spiritual Metropolis,” 231. 8. The French term is misleading in the sense that the village may in fact be a much larger urban complex, such as Jenne. 9. Ross, “Touba: A Spiritual Metropolis,” 227. 10. Ibid. 11. Imam Barro, interview with the author, March 3, 2005. 12. Holod and Khan, The Mosque and the Modern World, 51. 13. Gouilly, “Les mosquées du Sénégal,” 534. 14. Ibid. 15. Paccard, Traditional Islamic Craft, 21. See also page 328 depicting a Moroccan craftsman chipping zilij on the site of the Great Mosque of Dakar. 16. Ibid., 21. 17. Ross, Sufi City: Urban Design, 2. 18. Marty, Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal, 38. 19. Imam Diakhaté, personal communication with author, Saint Louis, March 18, 2005. 20. Imam Diallo, personal communication with author, Bamako, March 30, 2001. 21. This took place on April 6, 2001. 22. Despite its name, the Wahhabiyya movement in Mali is not directly related to the original movement in Saudi Arabia. In terms of practice, however, external manifestations such as veiling and praying in separate mosques are comparable to the Ibadu movement in Senegal. See Kaba The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform. 23. See Cantone “Mosques: West Africa,” 19–21. 24. Abdoullah Cissé, interview with author, Saint Louis, January 26, 2001. 25. Women past menopause are no longer considered to be able to attract (or distract) men. 26. Greer, “Worlds Apart: White Australia’s Crusade.”

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27. Boubacar Sow, interview with author, Thiès, March 25, 2005. 28. Momodou Diallo, Ligue Islamique Mondiale, Dakar, interview with author, Thiès, March 30, 2005. 29. Projet de Construction d’un Complexe d’éducation islamique. 30. These topics are based on a list compiled by the committee including the signs of the end of times, tawhid, Islam and secular systems, the youth, women in Islam, Muslim unity, and so forth. 31. Imam Kanté, personal communication with author, July 13, 2007. 32. Ibid. 33. The square minaret derives from the church towers adopted by the Umayyads who transferred their capital from Medina to Damascus and thence to Andalusia in Spain. 34. Term used to describe those who undertook their studies in Arabic but not necessarily in Arab-speaking countries; it is not uncommon to come across locally trained Arabisants. 35. See Bourdier “The Rural Mosques of Futa Toro,” and Boulège, “Mosquées de Style Soudanais.” 36. A more monumental mosque built by a woman is the one in the wealthy Dakar suburb called Point E. 37. Interview in Soprim, January 1, 2005. 38. N. K. Diop, interview with author in her home, Dakar, September 1, 2004. 39. Tarim, “Women’s Prayer Areas,” 180. The closer the worshippers stand, the less likely it is for shaytan (the devil) to come between them. 40. Alioune Seck, interview with author, Kissane, March 6, 2001.

Bibl io gr aphy Abu-Lughod, Janet. “The Islamic City: Historic Myth, Islamic Essence.” Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 19 (1987): 155–76. Boulège, Jean. “Mosquées de Style Soudanais au Fouta Tooro.” Notes Africaines 136 (1972): 117–19. Bourdier, Jean-Paul. “The Rural Mosques of Futa Toro.” African Arts 26 (1993): 32–45. Cantone, Cleo. Making and Re-Making Mosques in Senegal, Leiden: Brill, forthcoming. ———. “Mosques: West Africa.” In Encyclopaedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, edited by Suad Joseph, Vol. 4, 19–21. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Diop, Cheikh. Anta. L’Afrique Noire Pré-Coloniale. Dakar: Présence Africaine, 1987. Gouilly, Alphonse. “Les mosquées du Sénégal.” Revue Juridique et Politique 1 (1965): 531–36. Greer, Germaine. “Worlds Apart: White Australia’s Crusade Against the Aborigines.” The Guardian, July 3, 2007, 9. Holod, Renata., and Hassan Uddin. Khan. The Mosque and the Modern World: Architects, Patrons and Designs Since the 1950s. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997. Kaba, Lansiné. The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa. 1974. Marty, Paul. Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Vol. 2, Les Doctrines et les Institutions, 1917. Paccard, André. Traditional Islamic Craft in Moroccan Architecture. English translation, 1980. Palgrave, William Gifford. Personal Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–3). London: Macmillan, 1883, 226–27. Projet de Construction d’un Complexe d’éducation islamique, Initiateur du projet: les Habitants de la Cité Soprim et environs, Dakar, 1993. Ross, Eric. Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba. Rochester University Press, 2006. ———. “Touba, A Spiritual Metropolis in the Modern World.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 29 (1995) 2: 222–59. Tarim, Jahed “Women’s Prayer Areas in Mosques.” Proceedings of the Symposium on Mosque Architecture, Rhyadh, 1999. Villalón, Leonardo. “Islamism in West Africa: Senegal.” African Studies Review 47 (2004) 2: 61–71.

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Chapter 3

4 Mur id M oder nity His to r ic a l P erc eptio ns of Isl a mi c Re for m, S u f ism, and Coloni z at ion

John Glover (University of Redlands)

T

S umm ary

he Murid Sufi order emerged in Senegal in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Although recent historiography has succeeded in producing a more comprehensive historical context for the development of the order at large, the present study represents a more detailed and focused approach to Murid history that revolves around Murid perceptions of history and identity. This approach was made possible by examining how an important branch of the Murid order, founded by Sheikh Ibrahima Faty Mbacke (Mame Thierno) and based in the town of Darou Mousty, has created a distinct Murid historical identity that reflects the interactions between local and global historical forces of the preceding centuries from the era of the Atlantic slave trade to French colonization. Through oral and written sources, Murid notables and commoners have produced a historical text that positions the order within a complex narrative of Islamic reform, Sufism, and European colonization that constitutes a viable Murid version of modernity as an understanding of historical change and meaning.

Symbols and Histor ical Perspective On January 1, 1950, High Commissioner of French West Africa Paul Béchard arrived in Darou Mousty accompanied by a number of other colonial officials and administrators to inaugurate a new mechanized well and pumping station for the Murid town. The inauguration was presided over by the sons of Mame Thierno, led by Serign

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Modou Awa Balla, who became Khalife, the spiritual head of the community, after the death of his father in 1943. The second Khalife General of the Murid order, Serign Falilou Mbacke, and his brother, Serign Bassirou Mbacke, also traveled from Touba to attend the celebration. The inauguration was immortalized in a photograph that shows a smiling Béchard standing next to the Murid notables and waving as the first stream of water flowed down a sluice.1 Almost simultaneous with the mechanized well construction, the Murids were building a grand mosque in the town. A photograph taken in 1948 during the construction is of poor quality, but one of the workers can be seen sitting on the roof with both arms upraised.2 The completed structure is impressive with pale green domes; the minarets of the mosque dominate the skyline of the town and can be seen from a great distance, marking out the location of Darou Mousty. The grand mosque is located in the center of the town and is surrounded by a park complete with benches under the trees. Such architecture can be considered a form of communication, and monuments such as the mechanized well and the grand mosque convey a sense of meaning on behalf of both the authors and the audience.3 For example, the inauguration of the mechanized well was hailed by the French administration as an example of the material benefits of colonization and a validation of the civilizing mission that been used to legitimize the expansion of French control in Africa. The structure itself was a potent symbol of the French version of modernity, emphasizing positive advancement through the use of technology under the aegis of Western control and patronage. Although the colonial historical record dwelled at length on the construction of the well, there is no mention of the building of the mosque. Yet, in the Murid historical record, the grand mosque takes its place alongside Mame Thierno’s tomb as two material representations of the Murid mission and its successes. In local Murid perceptions, the grand mosque symbolizes the religious orientation of the settlement in which Islamic reform and Sufi mysticism were combined with education and work as promoted by Amadou Bamba and his younger brother and adjunct, Mame Thierno. This chapter seeks to delve into the subject of historical perspectives, particularly Murid historical perspectives. Rather than focusing on the construction of material monuments, the chapter considers the construction of Murid historical narratives as a more fluid but equally expressive form of architecture that also reflects and contributes to collective and individual Murid identities. This examination is not meant to place monuments and historical narratives in front of the reader only to point out their opposing natures and meanings. It would be possible, for example, to say that the mechanized well of Darou Mousty stands as a monument to the collective will behind European colonization in Senegal. It would also be possible to see the grand mosque in an oppositional sense as an expression of an African, or more precisely, a Murid, collective will. However, through an examination of the written and oral historical narratives of Darou Mousty, these monuments take on a hybrid meaning that emphasizes complementarity and adoption rather than opposition. The mechanized well, for example, came to be as much a Murid symbol of modernity as a French, or colonial, symbol of modernity. This notion of a more comprehensive collective will is illustrated in this chapter through an examination of the collective memory of Darou Mousty, or more precisely the production, transmission, and interpretation of Murid sources concerning the past. The result is the creation of a Murid modernity that is at once local and global, West African and French, and Islamic and secular.

Photo 3.1 The original mechanized well of Darou Mousty inaugurated January 1, 1950.

Photo 3.2 The grand mosque of Darou Mousty.

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Map 2. Precolonial Senegambia

Wes ter n H isto r io gr aphy of th e M ur id s For decades Western historiography attributed the establishment and growth of the Murid Sufi order of Senegal to the imposition of French colonial rule, which created a political vacuum in which the new order developed and promoted a cash crop economy based on peanut production used by the order as an economic means to expand.4 The year 1886 was of particular importance to this interpretation. The last two claimants to the throne of the precolonial state of Kajoor (Map 1: The precolonial kingdoms and the future sites of Darou Mousty and Touba are indicated) were killed by colonial forces and the kingdom was transformed into the French protectorate of Cayor in that year. Kajoor’s neighbor to the south, the kingdom of Bawol, fell under French control four years later. Both regions would compose the heartland of the Murid order that by 1912 numbered almost seventy thousand followers.5 Fortunately, the emphasis on the French conquest as the starting point for an understanding of the Murids has come into question recently in works that seek to blur the boundary

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between the precolonial and the colonial, or modern, periods in Senegambian history. Authors such as David Robinson, James Searing, and Cheikh Babou posit the colonial conquest and the beginning of French rule as an important and contested stage in the region’s historical continuity.6 From this perspective, the precolonial historical forces within Senegambia exerted a tremendous amount of influence on the development and functioning of the French colonial state. The result of these recent works for the study of the Murids has been to reconsider the establishment and growth of the order from being a phenomenon of colonization to being the outgrowth of at least a century, if not more, of precolonial African historical developments. Central to these developments was the long-running conflict between Islamic reformists who based their authority on a revivalist interpretation of Islam and secular, but at least nominally Muslim, aristocrats who were supported by their clients and slave soldiers and relied on their ancestries and military forces for their authority.

Mur id S uf i M oder ni t y The present chapter seeks to build on the recent scholarship surrounding the Murids by recasting the debate using a form of discursive analysis that has been adapted from arguments over the issue of modernity primarily in disciplines other than history. The most intriguing of these arguments reject the idea of modernity existing in the singular and instead adopt the possibility of alternative modernities coexisting simultaneously.7 The prospect of alternative modernities challenges the narrow Eurocentric attitude that modernity only comes about because of contact with the societies of Europe that possessed the so-called hallmarks of the modern such as a liberal form of government and an industrial and capitalist economy, among other attributes.8 In the African historical context, European colonization was commonly assumed to be the continent’s first contact with this parochial form of modernity. In more recent terminology, the best of these newer arguments consider the interaction between global forces of modernity and local influences on the production of modernity in which international political and economic conditions are affected by local cultures and history and vice versa. For example, Charles Piot has successfully analyzed how a small village in northern Togo has been continuously developing its own “vernacular modernity” that reflects the interaction between the global and the local.9 Piot’s study presents an African society characterized by fluidity and an ability to appropriate the material cultures of others and imbue these appropriations with their own meanings in an overall expression of agency, rather than resignation. Piot’s conclusions about Kabre modernity in Togo can largely be supported in the present examination of Murid modernity in Senegal with an important addition. Although most studies of modernity rightly focus on material goods and exchanges, this chapter also considers how the production and employment of historical narratives also shed light on the composition and meanings of alternative modernities. In a consideration of Murid perceptions of history and the production of an alternative Murid modernity, Michel Foucault’s questioning of the applicability of modernity is most useful. Foucault once surmised that modernity, rather than being defined as an historical era, could better be understood as an attitude or awareness voluntarily assumed by people to relate to contemporary events and historical changes. This definition of modernity was marked by a consciousness on the part of individuals of the discontinuity of time, or a break with the past. Referring to Baudelaire, Foucault held that being modern did not mean that one has simply recognized and accepted the

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perpetual movement of time. Instead, being modern also meant adopting a certain nostalgic attitude toward recapturing that which is eternal, or continuous, within the perpetual movement of history. An important corollary to this understanding of modernity was the desire of those involved or affected to grasp the heroic aspect of the contemporary moment of change and to therefore heroize the actors and actions that made up that moment.10 This chapter proposes a liberal application of Foucault’s interpretation of modernity and being modern to the experiences of a group of Murid Sufi disciples in Senegal in the early twentieth century and explores Murid historical perception at the individual and collective level. The particular branch of the Murid order in question was founded by Sheikh Ibra Faty Mbacke, more popularly known as Mame Thierno, a younger brother and chief adjunct of the founding saint of the Murids, Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacke. Mame Thierno’s followers are centered in the town of Darou Mousty whose founding in 1912 constitutes a major event in local Murid historiography. Darou Mousty would become a regional religious and economic center for the Murid order and a pilgrimage site after Mame Thierno’s tomb was constructed. Individuals interviewed for this study represent a cross-section of the Murids of Darou Mousty including members of Mame Thierno’s family, local historians and archivists, and the descendents of the original settlers who made up the majority within the pool of informants. Murid written sources in the form of biographies and poems were also consulted, yet there was no clear divide in this Murid community between the oral and written sources, because each has informed the other in their common development as a public discourse. These historical sources form an underlying narrative on which Murid identity is built and legitimized in addition to projecting Murid perceptions of history.11 The research methodology of this study trends away from a general treatment of the Murid order and its central, or elite, leadership in the religious capital of Touba in favor of a more localized and individualized examination of how members of one branch of the Murids have perceived their history and presented themselves and their order within the larger context of the Muridiyya and Islam. They have, in essence, created their own comprehensive conception of modernity.

Mo der niz atio n and the M ur id O rd er If modernity is an awareness of historical change, modernization for the purposes of this argument is defined as the identifiable social, cultural, economic, and political components of that change. For the Murid order at large, the historical discontinuity, or change, that formed the basis for an alternative Murid modernity was twofold. The first and foremost change was the emergence of the Murid order as the culmination of a long history of Islamic reform movements. An important aspect of this change was Amadou Bamba’s distinctive interpretation of Islamic reform and Sufi beliefs and practices in relation to the historical context of Islam and Sufism in Senegambia as well as the practical application of his ideals in new settlements such as Darou Mousty. The promotion of Amadou Bamba’s ideology in the Murid communities resulted in cultural, social, economic, and political developments within those settlements that, although not entirely divorced from the larger Senegambian milieu, were yet distinct. The second change was the onset of French colonial rule, the full effect of which took some time to develop in the case of Darou Mousty. Within the context of colonization, the Murids of Darou Mousty accommodated the new sociopolitical and socioeconomic environments to preserve as much autonomy as possible for themselves.

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Understandably, when the Murids had to adapt to the colonial environment—be it through taxation, cash crop production, military or labor recruitment, or immigration—these events were recast or translated to fit a Murid historical understanding of these changes. Within the Murid narratives, the transformation of the original settlers of Darou Mousty into cultural and religious heroes signifies the great importance that the Murids of the region attached to that era (late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries) in which a new brand of Islamic reform and Sufism took root and grew and then faced the challenges that accompanied French colonization.

Th e Fir s t Thread o f Moder ni z at ion : M ur i d P erc e p tio ns o f the Order i n S ene ga mbi an Isl a m Previously, before the coming of Serign Touba [Amadou Bamba], there was only anarchy because each village had its little king, and they did what they wanted and only force counted, but it was at the appearance of the Sheikh that a lot of things changed. This is because the Sheikh put the people on the right path that leads to Allah by establishing the jihad, that is to say, to master this earthly world and to think of the other because the other world is eternal. Thus, one can say that the change came from the jihad that the marabout imposed on the people. The jihad that he had established was the jihad of the soul; to conform oneself to the recommendations of Allah and to leave all that is forbidden.12

This statement was made by an archivist in Darou Mousty in response to a question about the role that Amadou Bamba and the advent of the Murid order played in Senegambian history. The sentiments conveyed in this Murid analysis display a definite sense of historical change and the Murid role within that change. Yet, there is also a hint at the continuity that exists between the Murid order and the larger history of Islam in the region. Senegambian Islam has frequently been referred to as maraboutic Islam in reference to the prominent religious, social, economic, and sometimes political roles that the marabouts, or Islamic clerics, have played in the region. In contravention of Humphrey Fisher’s theory about the progression of Islam in West Africa, the Quarantine Stage in the advance of Islam was for the most part absent in Senegambia. This stage, according to Fisher, was marked by mutual toleration and accommodation between the Muslims, who were a minority, and non-Muslims, who were in the majority, and the existence of separate communities for each.13 The early and devout adherence to Islam in the Senegambian states of Takrur and Silla indicate a more intense process of Islamization. According to Arabic sources of the eleventh century CE, the rulers of both states applied the Islamic holy law, or shari’a, and waged armed jihad against non-Muslims in addition to supporting the Almoravid reform movement that swept across the Sahara and into Spain.14 The result for peoples of the Senegal River valley and the Wolof to the south would be an earlier exposure to Islam, relative to other areas of West Africa, and in the long run a more complete conversion that conveyed a sense of closure with the pre-Islamic past in the creation of a new Islamic identity. Another result of the greater prominence of Islam in Senegambia was the early appearance of Islamic reform as a force for social and political change and the consequent revolutions, legitimized by the participants as acts of jihad. The Islamic revolutions beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing into the late nineteenth century were primarily directed at the aristocratic

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warrior regimes of the region actively engaged in the violence connected to the Atlantic slave trade and its aftermath.15 The belief that the Murid mission was one of reform and jihad ideologically linked the order to this long-running history of Islamic reform movements, in Senegambia as well as across much of West Africa. Yet, as the archivist previously indicated, Amadou Bamba’s interpretation of jihad represented a departure from the norm of the preceding two centuries and inaugurated a new era of Islamic reform that rejected the validity of armed jihad and the authority of secular powers, be they Wolof or French.16 Amadou Bamba’s renunciation of armed jihad as a tactic of reform was simultaneously a powerful criticism of prior reform movements and a renewal of what he believed was the proper form of jihad. In addition to Amadou Bamba’s reinterpretation of reform and jihad, a new variation of Sufism in the form of the Muridiyya would also help to distinguish the movement historically from earlier Sufi orders in the region. In effect, Murid ideology, steeped in reform and the mystical path of Islam and cognizant of its place in history, provided its disciples with a new moral order that served as a foundation for what Charles Taylor has termed a “social imaginary” or the ways by which people imagine their social existence marked by commonality and a sense of legitimacy.17 Of course, there is no single year or event that can be identified as the definitive beginning of Amadou Bamba’s distinctive mission of reform and Sufism. Rather, we are presented with a gradual development that, according to many Murid sources, begins with the birth of the founding saint in 1852. The Murid disciples who broke ground for the settlement of Darou Mousty in 1912 were by and large admitted into the relatively new order by Mame Thierno. Most were already Muslim when they made the decision to follow the Murid path, so joining the Murid order was not so much an act of conversion as it was a declaration of allegiance to the Murids or a change in Sufi affiliation from either of the preexisting Sufi orders, Qadriyya, or Tijaniyya.18 The main force involved in this shift of allegiance was the person of Amadou Bamba with, in the words of David Robinson, his accumulated “symbolic capital.”19 Murid sources consulted for this study commented on the symbolic capital and encompassed Amadou Bamba’s claim of seeing the prophet Mohammad in a vision during which he was informed of his status as the qutb al-zaman in Arabic, or “the pole of the age.” Most of my informants referred to this title in Wolof as boroom jamano, or “the master of the age,” and several cited an episode in Sheikh Musa Ka’s biographical poem about Mame Thierno that legitimizes Amadou Bamba’s possession of the title. In this episode, following the funeral of their father in 1881, Amadou Bamba and Mame Thierno journeyed to Saint-Louis to visit the renowned scholar, As Kamara, who informed Amadou Bamba that he would become the “savior of the creatures of his era.”20 Because this prediction was made by a respected Islamic scholar outside of the Murid community, the prophetic episode involving As Kamara lends an important air of objective confirmation of Amadou Bamba as the boroom jamano, thus amplifying Bamba’s symbolic capital in the eyes of his followers and prospective disciples. The accounts of his numerous miracles, many of which have been immortalized in reverse-glass paintings, and his share in the baraka, or spiritual blessing, of his religious and scholarly predecessors were also important components of Amadou Bamba’s mystical resume. Yet, it was most likely Amadou Bamba’s local Senegambian pedigree that, when combined with his status as the “master of the age” and his reputation for miracles, set him apart from the other notable Sufi sheikhs of his time. A prominent Murid informant articulated a popular perspective on the Senegambian heritage of the Murid order by stating at one point, “Amadou Bamba created a place for the blacks

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within Islam.”21 The poet Ibrahima Joob Massar expressed a similar sentiment with the lines, “I no longer need either Baghdad or Fez, On seeing Jolof, I submitted entirely.”22 In this short poem, Baghdad represents the Qadriyya, the first Sufi order to arrive in West Africa in approximately 1500 CE; but it did not emerge as a largescale organized order in the region until the late eighteenth century. Fez represents the Tijaniyya order that originated in Morocco in the eighteenth century and rose to prominence in Senegal in the nineteenth century in the wake of notable jihads led by Tijani Sufis such as Umar Tal. In some instances, the Tijanis criticized the Qadriyya for its close connections to aristocratic regimes and toleration of mixed Islam. The Tijaniyya remains the largest Sufi order in Senegal today. In the Murid sense, the two cities symbolize the foreign or Arab origins of the Qadriyya and the Tijaniyya versus the indigenous Muridiyya signified by Jolof, a precolonial state of Senegambia. Although these statements may be an expression of a sort of religious nationalism, the importance of such attitudes cannot be ignored. On the one hand, this sentiment in favor of an indigenous Sufi order could be a reaction against what was popularly and officially (in a French colonial sense) perceived as the elevated and purer status of the bidan or white Islam of the Arabs.23 On the other hand, the shift in allegiance to the Murid order can also be understood as a critique of the older orders in terms of their perceived historical associations with precolonial secular authorities or their involvement in the politics of armed jihad.24 Of course, the manner in which Murid beliefs and practices reflected to an extent the local social milieu and provided a new legitimacy to some Wolof cultural practices also accounted for the emphasis on a local identity for the order among Murids.

Th e Mu r id Order i n Wolof Soc ie ty The new Murid identity had to contend with two seemingly opposing views: the egalitarian aspects of Amadou Bamba’s ideology and the preexisting divisions within a hierarchical society. The Wolof distinguished between the free (gor), those defined by their occupations (ñeeño), and slaves (jaam). In particular, the question of the status of the ñeeño, or occupationally specialized groups, sometimes referred to as castes was an important challenge to the egalitarian notions of Islam as preached by Amadou Bamba and Mame Thierno. In Wolof society, the ñeeño are endogamous, occupy separate living quarters, and are regarded with a mixture of fear and respect by those outside the castes. A descendent of one of the original settlers responded to a question regarding the social status of the ñeeño during the early years of Darou Mousty by stating, “At the time of Mame Thierno, one could not distinguish the griots, the blacksmiths, or the slaves from the others because each worked for Allah, and on the path which goes toward Allah there are no differences of ethnicity or origins, only the recommendations of Allah counted.”25 Another informant also stressed the role that Islam played in the early years of the community in suppressing the hierarchical aspects of Wolof society by stating, “Mame Thierno did not see a lot of importance in the backgrounds of the talibe [students/disciples]. For him, what counted was the love of Allah, his master, on the right road conforming to the recommendations of the shari’a. On the contrary, he did not associate himself with people who did not practice the shari’a.”26 However, there is contrary evidence that the Islamic ideal expressed by these sources still had to contend with the realities of life in a Murid town populated primarily by the Wolof. One Murid intellectual responded to this issue by stating, “In the time of Mame Thierno, there were some problems with

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discrimination in the hearts of some talibe, but each group of disciples, in accordance with their backgrounds [or occupational specialization] had its proper job. For example, the blacksmiths occupied themselves with iron working and the farmers with farming, etc.”27 Another descendent of an original settler noted that, “Mame Thierno had talibe with different strengths in different trades or crafts. There were woodworkers and carvers, blacksmiths, and shoemakers.”28 These last two oral sources represent Murid recontextualization of the identity and role of the ñeeño in society. Considering the Murid emphasis on labor as a form of devotion integral to the Murid mission, the work that Murid ñeeño performed on behalf of Mame Thierno (and by extension Amadou Bamba) now found a new legitimacy based on Islam and the Murid brand of Sufism that accommodated Wolof social divisions, while maintaining an egalitarian sentiment by which Murid blacksmiths and farmers (and former slaves) were working in unity toward the same goal as members of a new collectivity bound together by their oaths to their Murid sheikh and their adherence to the shari’a.

Th e Mur id Missi on i n Act ion The major activities and works undertaken by the Murids of Darou Mousty in the earlier half of the twentieth century have been interpreted as a historical watershed and promoted to almost legendary status by the survivors of that generation and their descendents. The standard literature concerning the Murids usually examines Murid expansion in economic terms that focus on the opening up of the terres neuves, or new lands, to peanut production and settlement. French colonial sources saw the earliest patterns of expansion in political terms as efforts to avoid contact with the French administration by undertaking a conscious act of hijra, or immigration, in emulation of the prophet Mohammad and many Islamic reformists in West Africa in the nineteenth century. The Murid point of view presents the establishment of the early settlements such as Darou Mousty as inherently being a religious undertaking based on the concept of the ndiggel, or religious obligation. The letter that Amadou Bamba sent to Mame Thierno in 1911 requesting the establishment of a new settlement has been preserved in an archive in the town. The letter is quite short; and aside from the customary greetings, it only contains the ndiggel to break ground and dig wells for a village to be named Dar al-Mouhty (Abode of the Giver).29 The lack of a suitable water supply at the site was one of the most pressing problems encountered by the Murid pioneers, and the accounts of thirst, hauling water over great distances, and digging the wells persist in the historical memory of the participants and their descendents who have elevated these accounts to a legendary status. One of the surviving original settlers vividly described how he and his fellow talibe survived on half a liter of water a day and hauled water a distance of thirty kilometers from Mbacke-Cayor to the new village. His description of this process was corroborated by several descendents of the original settlers who recounted their fathers’ experiences.30 After an unsuccessful initial attempt at a well, the second effort hit the water table at a depth of eighty-four meters. Water was not the only challenge faced by the fledgling settlement. Although several popularized accounts of the process by which the site for the town had been determined stress that the area had been uninhabited, in fact local Fulbe cattle herders claimed the region as pasture and conflict soon broke out. A series of range battles began after the Murids began to cut down trees and clear the land around the site. My informants claimed that both sides suffered casualties, and in one of the most

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interesting portraits of Mame Thierno, the Murids of Darou Mousty described the sheikh as carrying a pistol in each pocket when out in the fields. Within this historical narrative, the pervasive sense of a religious mission serves to legitimize all the hard work and suffering that was entailed in the creation of a new Murid settlement. This sense pervaded the accounts of my informants and provides a glimpse into what the Murids perceived to be the eternal aspect of their movement. According to a notable of Darou Mousty, a mosque was the first structure built at the site reflecting what he claimed was Mame Thierno’s preoccupation with religious and educational obligations.31 The religious mission is constantly reinforced within the oral tradition of the town through the maintenance and transmission of scenes in which Mame Thierno addressed his talibe about this mission. One recurring story focused on frequent statements made by Mame Thierno to his disciples that their work was of a divine nature because they were fulfilling a ndiggel of Amadou Bamba. Another scene places Mame Thierno sitting on a rug surrounded by his disciples informing them that to love Allah and work were the two most important qualities of a good talibe.32 In spite of the overall religious sense of purpose to these early labors that is conveyed via the oral traditions, there is also a definite impression that the original settlers and their descendents came to consider that the actions surrounding the founding and early years of Darou Mousty contributed to the personal growth and social stature of those involved as individuals. On this level, the establishment of the town was the first and most important step in the elevation of the original talibe to an exalted position. Their histories have been passed down to preserve their memory and serve as models for their descendents and other Murids to follow in the present. In the case of the two surviving original settlers, they were revered and respected because of their role in the history of Darou Mousty and the order at large. Furthermore, when interviewed they were perfectly aware of their status as heroes and as participants in the great events surrounding the founding of the community. One man finished the resume of his life by stating, “All that I have told you, I lived it” with the emphasis on himself as the subject.33 There is also evidence that the original settlers created a distinct Murid bond among themselves based upon their experiences together, as demonstrated in a remark by one man: “We [the original talibe of Darou Mousty] were once very numerous but now there remains only two.”34 The other survivor, in the course of his interview, constantly referred to his departed peers as his “brother talibe” and expressed his belief that after his own death he would be reunited with Mame Thierno and his brother talibe.35 Many informants who were speaking as descendents of the original settlers stressed the harsh conditions during Darou Mousty’s early years and frequently referred to their fathers as being “brave,” “courageous,” and “exemplary” Murid talibe. One boasted that his father was among the bravest of the original talibe, because he endured the lack of shelter, food, and water.36 In spite of the difficulties of those early years, Darou Mousty soon became a thriving agricultural settlement, and this success in the fields was also attributed to the courage of the early Murid farmers of the town. The descendents’ sense of appreciation for the original settlers was apparent when one informant began his interview by thanking Allah and the prophet Mohammad and then his own father to whom he gave credit for obtaining for him “the hope of the two worlds, heaven and earth.”37 The preservation and transmission of both the oral and written historical records concerning the founding of Darou Mousty has served different functions within the community. On one level the memory of Mame Thierno’s leadership in a pioneer

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settlement further defines his career in the eyes of his followers. The two most popular achievements of Mame Thierno, as presented by Murid sources, were his guardianship of the order during Amadou Bamba’s exiles and the founding of Darou Mousty. The personal hardships that he underwent during the settlement process are viewed as further testimony to his loyalty to Amadou Bamba and the Murid mission and a validation of the work of the original settlers. Although his leadership in the establishment of Darou Mousty magnified his image within the order, all my informants emphatically stressed that all of Mame Thierno’s labors were on behalf of Amadou Bamba. One even went so far as to remark, “Mame Thierno did nothing without the order and permission of his brother, Serign Touba.”38 Popular expressions such as this one of the devotion and obedience displayed on the part of Mame Thierno toward Amadou Bamba reflect the desire on the part of Murids to valorize their former sheikh and his times as well as legitimize the maintenance of the bonds that link talibe and sheikh today.

Th e S ec o nd Thread of M oder ni z at ion : Mu r id P erc eptio ns of C oloni z at ion In discussing Murid attitudes toward the imposition of French colonial rule, it is necessary to distinguish between Amadou Bamba’s early ambivalence to the Europeans—on an ideological level—and the actions taken by his lieutenants, including Mame Thierno, to accommodate the new political reality. From an early point, Mame Thierno had taken on the role of a diplomat or envoy to the French on his brother’s behalf. The Murids of Darou Mousty explained Mame Thierno’s different approach to the French by comparing Amadou Bamba to Musa (Moses) and Mame Thierno to Harun (Aaron). In this allegory, as the recipient of a divine mission, Amadou Bamba confined himself to esoteric matters, but he assigned to Mame Thierno a necessary exoteric function as a representative to the secular and temporal powers. Thus, Mame Thierno’s branch of the order was already predisposed to accommodating French rule even before Darou Mousty was established in 1912 and incorporated its developing relationship with the colonial power into the Murid mission. World War I was a crucial turning point in the relations between the Murid order at large and the colonial administration. It is notable that among the litany of accomplishments and works within the oral record of Darou Mousty for this period of time, military service figures prominently. The recruitment of Murid soldiers from Darou Mousty into the French colonial army represented two important developments: the practical incorporation of Darou Mousty into the colonial administrative apparatus and the active participation of Murids from the town in a global event with all of its incumbent effects.39 At least one veteran, for example, returned with the ability to read and write in French, and all who returned brought back with them a new outlook on the French and the world at large.40 Most applicable within the context of this study was the notion among my informants that Murids from Darou Mousty who fought in the war were not actually engaged in this effort on behalf of the French, rather their service was conceptualized as yet another labor on behalf of Mame Thierno and Amadou Bamba in fulfillment of a ndiggel. One informant related that Mame Thierno had informed the departing recruits that, “Those who are going to leave for the war as talibe of Boroom Touba [Amadou Bamba] will find success in the two worlds: here and in the eternal.”41 Thus, this global event was transformed within the historical imagination of the Murids to fit the local context of labor as devotion within Murid ideology. For those veterans that returned, the greatest honor bestowed on them was

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not a French medal but the thanks that they received from Mame Thierno and, in some cases, Amadou Bamba himself.42 In other instances of contact with the French administration, the Murids of Darou Mousty followed a similar practice of assimilating these events into their own perceptions of history and Murid identity. My informants described the relations between the town’s inhabitants and the local colonial provincial chief, Macadou Sall, as cordial and marked by respect on the part of the chief for Mame Thierno, who was characterized as the fatherly figure in the relationship. The analysis of the colonial chief as a subordinate in the relationship may be because of the Murid belief in the supremacy of religious over secular authority, or it may have been a diplomatic ploy of the chief. Either way, because of the prolonged famine in the region during the war, Darou Mousty’s full granaries transformed the village into a major town when numerous immigrants were attracted to the Murids’ agricultural success. The phenomenal harvests of millet were attributed to the hard work of the Murid farmers. However, they were also presented by the Murids of Darou Mousty as evidence of divine favor along with the cash that flowed into the town via the production of peanuts for the colonial export market. Initially, the movement of large numbers of people to Darou Mousty attracted the ire of the French, who saw the development of the town as a threat to their own authority and unsuccessfully attempted to prevent immigrants from reaching Darou Mousty. However, by the end of the war, the combination of Murid support for French recruitment efforts and a tour of Darou Mousty conducted by a French official changed the French administration’s attitude toward the Murid order and Darou Mousty. After the war Darou Mousty was considered an important asset to the region because of the significant influence of Mame Thierno over most of the population and the ability of the Murids to provide food for the people in times of famine, which the French administration largely could not do. In recognition of this ability, the administration dubbed the town “The Breadbasket of Cayor.”43 Although it may appear that the accommodation within the relationship between the colonial administration and the Murids was largely on the part of the French, Darou Mousty was obviously affected by the more intense and sustained contact that followed the war. Yet, whether it was social, economic, or political, this effect was constantly negotiated to preserve as much autonomy as possible on the part of the Murids of Darou Mousty and to translate the effect into Murid terms. For example, according to my informants, Mame Thierno paid the taxes his disciples owed the administration. The tax payment was made from the customary shares of the harvest that disciples rendered to their sheikh and gifts from talibe. Both practices were modeled after Mame Thierno’s own behavior toward his sheikh, Amadou Bamba, to whom he sent an annual share of the harvest along with gifts in recognition of his brother’s spiritual authority. Requisitions for labor by the colonial authorities also passed through Mame Thierno and his subordinate sheikh who issued a ndiggel to their disciples and thus transformed a secular colonial obligation into a religious duty with its incumbent gravity and sense of reward. The issue of cultural influence was perhaps the most contested aspect of the integration of Darou Mousty into the administration. Although Darou Mousty eventually requested that colonial medical personnel be stationed in the town, Mame Thierno resisted the establishment of a French language school in Darou Mousty. Even after repeated visits and entreaties by French colonial officers, Mame Thierno would not budge on this issue.44 It was not until 1952, nine years after the death of Mame Thierno, that his successor agreed to the construction of a French school in the town. Most likely, Mame Thierno’s opposition was an effort to preserve the

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monopoly and status that Islamic education enjoyed in the community. It is crucial to note, however, that the resistance to the school was not caused by any general Murid rejection of French or outside influences. In addition to the medical personnel, Darou Mousty welcomed and even celebrated the construction of roads and mechanized wells, and many of my informants stated that such civil improvements as electricity and telephone service in Murid towns were manifestations of divine approval of the continuing Murid mission.45 These material improvements trumpeted by the French as justifying the colonial enterprise were absorbed into the Murid historical narrative through a distinctly Murid discourse that served to strengthen the order and enabled the Murids to adapt to these changes. The inauguration of the mechanized well in 1950 thus fit into a preexisting pattern in which seemingly disparate subjects such as jihad, the harvesting of millet and peanuts, World War I, and colonial building projects were incorporated and redefined by the inhabitants of Darou Mosuty into a developing Murid sense of history that included their individual and collective places within that history.

C o nc lus i on In the midst of the changes that contributed to the creation of a Murid modernity, one must address what was considered the eternal in Baudelaire’s sense of the word. What was the continuity that formed a base for the Murid sense of their historical place? The fact that the Murids were an Islamic reform movement as well as a Sufi order provides clues as to what was eternal about Murid modernity. From the perspective of reform, the Murid order was an integral part of the long history of Islamic reform in the region and shared the basic ideology of reform with the previous movements. However, Murid reform strategically and tactically differed from those movements. The rejection of armed jihad and its corollary, the establishment of a formal Islamic state, conveniently distinguished the Murids from the earlier movements and their associated Sufi orders in the eyes of their followers; this also contributed to their adaptability to the new colonial environment and their expansion in that environment, which the French could not prevent. Although an Islamic state such as Umarian Segu could be conquered with force of arms, the shadow state established by Amadou Bamba and his lieutenants proved much more difficult to engage with on the part of the French. Thus, the internal jihad proclaimed by Amadou Bamba could continue unabated in Murid communities; and rather than falling victim to the colonizing modernity of the French in the form of the colonial administration and the cash crop economy, the Murids exploited and absorbed this alternate Western modernity into their own understanding of Murid modernity as a process of historical change. The Murid interpretation of Sufism also provided its disciples with a sense of continuity and an awareness of the eternal. It is important to distinguish that Murid conceptions of the eternal cannot be solely understood as historically conservative or reactionary. At first glance, the twin notions of scholarly genealogies, or silsila in the singular in Arabic, and the attendant transmission of baraka from previous generations of clerics to contemporary Murids are obvious connections to a historical past that stretches back to southwestern Asia to the prophet Mohammad and the seventh century CE; yet both concepts also look to the future for their continued importance and relevance. The historical fluidity of a Sufi order such as the Murids is further exemplified by the concept of the regular appearance at the turn of the Islamic centuries of a pole of the age. The routine appearance of such figures in locales across the

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Islamic world has allowed Sufis the opportunities to adapt to and affect changing historical circumstances. In an organizational sense, the segmentary nature of Sufi orders also provides for a virtually unlimited amount of adaptability through the creation of different branches and suborders, such as Mame Thierno’s branch of the Murids or the notable Baye Fall branch, reflecting different aspects of the ideology of the order at large. Yet, the branches of the Murids have preserved their links to the founder of the order, and the past, through the maintenance of the silsila and the popular pilgrimage sites for the order. Thus, as demonstrated by Mame Thierno’s branch of the order at Darou Mousty, the Murids of this community have constructed a sense of historical identity on the collective and individual levels and in turn produced a distinct Murid modernity. This is not said lightly in view of previous and long-standing notions—among both Orientalists (and their counterparts in Africa) and Islamic fundamentalists and modernists—that Sufism, especially in the form of the popular orders, represented much of the decline within Islamic mysticism and Islamic civilization in general.46 Rather than being considered part of the modern world, the Sufi order has usually been relegated to the position of a historical anachronism incapable of change and inherently an antimodern other. In contrast, Murid modernity inherently looks to both the past and the future in its perceptions of how global and local historical forces have combined to help shape the contemporary understanding of the order in history among its notables and common disciples. Understandably, many forces or events have been recast by Murid participants and their descendents to compliment the overall sense of mission found within their conception of modernity. Most often, the Murids consulted for this study referred to this mission as it existed simultaneously in its exoteric and esoteric sense as the hope in this world and the next.

Not es 1. Unfortunately, the poor quality of this photograph could not be reproduced in print by the publishers. Please contact the author to view an electronic version. 2. Unfortunately, the poor quality of this photograph could not be reproduced in print by the publishers. Please contact the author to view an electronic version. 3. See Harvey (The Condition of Postmodernity, 66–98) for an excellent overview of architecture as it relates to notions of modernity and postmodernity. 4. The pioneering study in English that encapsulates this interpretation is Cruise O’Brien, The Mouride Order of Senegal. His book reflected the work of French colonial authors, most notably Paul Marty, and influenced many succeeding examinations of the Murids. For the classic interpretations of Murid involvement in peanut production, see Copans, Les Marabouts de l’Arachide, and Pélissier, Les Paysans du Senegal. 5. Marty, Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba, 144–60. 6. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation; Searing, “God Alone is King”; Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad. 7. See Knauft, Critically Modern, for an overview of the debates within anthropology over the meanings and uses of modernity. 8. Marshall Hodgson questioned the relative uses of the term “modern” by historians (The Venture of Islam, Vol. III, 201). For similar criticism of the employment of the term, see Comaroff and Comaroff, Modernity and Its Malcontents, x–xii. 9. Piot, Remotely Global: Village Modernity. 10. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, 39–42, and Baudelaire, The Mirror of Art, 126–30. 11. In his latest work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, discusses the processes behind the formation of individual and collective identities and rightly stresses the role that narratives, both on

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12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

John Glover the personal and collective levels, play in the formation of identities (The Ethics of Identity, 17–21, 65–68). Serign M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 27, 1997. See Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered.” Fisher’s model is probably best demonstrated by the accommodation of Muslims within the royal court of Ghana, as described by Al-Bakri in the eleventh century CE, and the existence of a Muslim quarter of the capital. For an English translation of Al-Bakri’s account, see Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 79–80. Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 77, 144. See Colvin (“Islam and the State of Kajoor”) for an influential reinterpretation of the Islamic sources concerning the jihad and Boulègue (“La Participation Possible des Centres”) for a study of the early involvement of scholarly communities in the Wolof kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol in the first attempt at Islamic revolution in Senegambia. Barry emphasizes the links between the Atlantic slave trade and the violent clashes between the aristocrats and Islamic reformers (Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 46–125). For an earlier approach that also emphasizes the effects of violence on the social and political struggles between the two camps, see Klein, “Social and Economic Factors.” Klein focuses on the reactions of the peasantry and their support for Islamic reform and revolution. Amadou Bamba’s attitude in this respect is comparable to that of the marabouts known as sëriñ fakk taal who, as opposed to the sëriñu lamb (marabouts of the drum), refused or were unable to be co-opted into the state by accepting titles, positions, or land from the ruler (see Diop, La société Wolof, 236–45). It is also comparable to the normally pacific Jakhanke scholars (see Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics.) Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 3–23. In this section Taylor defines moral order in a Western sense and explains the basic principle behind social imaginaries. See Glover, Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal, 107, 166–68. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, 5–6. Interview with Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, January 26, 1997, who often referred to the text of the biographical poem about Mame Thierno composed by the celebrated Murid poet Sheikh Musa Kâ. The title of the poem translated into English is “An Account of the Testimony of Mame Thierno Birahim.” In his study of the Murids, Sy also mentioned the meeting between Amadou Bamba and As Kamara but he maintained that Amadou Bamba was only seeking the Qadri wird from the scholar (La confrérie sénégalaise de Mourides, 107). Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, January 27, 1997. As cited in Khadim M’backe, Etudes Islamiques Vol.4, pp. 57. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, 5. Searing, “God Alone is King,” 46–48. In this passage, Searing recounts a discussion on Amadou Bamba’s attitudes toward the jihad of Maba Jaxu, a Tijani Sufi, with a Murid historian and son of Mame Thierno. Baay Cerno Joob, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 22, 1997. Sëriñ Modou M’Backé Barry, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 23, 1997. Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, January 28, 1997. Baay Abdu Mawade Wade, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 24, 1997. A copy of this letter and many others from Amadou Bamba to Mame Thierno have been preserved in the archives in Darou Mousty. Baay Mor, interview with the author, February 24, 1997; Baay Abdu Mawade Wade, interview with the author, February 24, 1997; and Baay Cerno Gaye, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 17, 1997. Shaykh Astou Faye M’Backé, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, January 20, 1997. These episodes occurred throughout most of the interviews, and a photograph of Mame Thierno addressing a gathering of his disciples has been preserved in the town’s archives. Malik Cisse, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 20, 1997.

M u r i d Moder nit y 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

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Baay Mor, interview with the author, February 24, 1997. Malik Cisse, interview with the author, February 20, 1997. Baay Abdu Joob Samba, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 19, 1997. Sëriñ Mactar Balla Fall of Kosso, interview with the author, February 25, 1997. Baay Abdu Joob Samba, interview with the author, February 19, 1997. See Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom, and Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs. Sëriñ Barra Joob, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 16, 1997. Baay Kabou Gaye, interview with the author, Darou Mousty, February 24, 1997. Baay Abdu Mawade Wade, interview with the author, February 24, 1997. Archives Nationales du Sénégal. Ibid. Sëriñ M’Baye Gueye Sylla, interview with the author, January 28, 1997. See Said’s groundbreaking work, Orientalism, and the major studies of Sufism such as Arberry, Sufism, and Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam. For a concise appraisal of the historiography of Sufism, see Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 1–31, 120–46. The work of Marty (Études sur l’Islam au Sénégal) is emblematic of the scholarship undertaken by French colonial officials to categorize and thus hope to control Muslim and Sufi subjects of the administration, thus supporting Said’s conception of Orientalism, but in this case its variant in Africa, Islam noir.

Bibl io gr aphy Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Arberry, A. J. Sufism. London: Allen and Unwin, 1968. Archives nationales du Sénégal (A.N.S.). 11D1/0955 Corresspondance relatif à l’affaire Brahim Khalil et au rattachement de Darou-Mousty au Baol, Dakar, 1930–1933. Babou, Cheikh Anta M’Backé. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007. Barry, Boubacar. Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Translated by Ayi Kwei Armah. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Baudelaire, Charles. The Mirror of Art. New York: Doubleday, 1956. Boulègue, Jean. “La Participation Possible des Centres de Pir et de Ndogal à la Révolution Islamique Sénégambienne de 1673.” In Contributions a l’Histoire du Sénégal. Cahiers du C.R.A. No. 5, 119–25. Paris: Karthala, 1987. Colvin, Lucie G. “Islam and the State of Kajoor: A Case of Successful Resistance to Jihad.” Journal of African History 15, no. 4 (1974): 587–606. Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. Modernity and Its Malcontents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Copans, Jean. Les Marabouts de l’Arachide: La Confrérie Mouride et les Paysans du Sénégal. Paris: Le Sycomore, 1980. Cruise O’Brien, Donal. The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Diop, Abdoulaye-Bara. La société Wolof: Tradition et changement; les systèmes d’inégalité et de domination. Paris: Karthala, 1981. Echenberg, Myron. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857– 1960. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991. Ernst, Carl. The Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala, 1997. Fisher, Humphrey J. “Conversion Reconsidered.” Africa 43 (1973): 27–40. Glover, John. Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam, vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

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Kâ, Shaykh Moussa. An Account of the Testimony of Maam Cerno Birahim. Unpublished (Copies can be found in the archives of Darou Mousty). Klein, Martin. “Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution of Senegambia.” Journal of African History 13, no. 3 (1972): 419–41. Knauft, Bruce, ed. Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Levtzion, Nehemia, and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2000. Lunn, Joe Harris. Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999. Marty, Paul. Études sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Paris: n.p., 1917. ———. Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba. Paris: n.p., 1913. M’backe, Khadim. Etudes Islamiques Vol.4: Soufisme et les Confréries Religieuse au Sénégal. Dakar: I.F.A.N., 1995. Pélissier, Paul. Les paysans du Sénégal: Les civilisations agraires du Cayor à la Casamance. St. Yrieix: Imprimerie Fabrègue, 1966. Piot, Charles. Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999. Rabinow, Paul, ed. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon, 1984. Robinson, David. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1929. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Sanneh, Lamin. The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989. Searing, James. “God Alone is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1860–1928. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. Sy, Cheikh Tidiane. La confrérie Sénégalaise des mourides. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1969. Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Trimingham, J. S. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Pa rt 2

4 Conversion and Spir itual Transl ations

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Chapter 4

4 The Greater Jihad and Conversion S ereer I nter pretati ons of S uf i I sl am i n S enega l

James Searing (University of Illinois at Chicago)

M

odernist interpretations of Islam often depict West Africa’s Sufi orders as remnants of a bygone era, with Senegal seen as a stronghold of this quaint and nonthreatening maraboutic Islam. Although nineteenth-century jihad leaders are seen as bearers of orthodox Islam (despite the fact that they led Sufi orders), most Sufis emerge tainted with the brush of heterodoxy and saint worship or are praised for their pragmatic accommodation with colonial rule and their economic dynamism rather than their orthodoxy. Whatever the merits of modernism for understanding contemporary developments in parts of West Africa, it fails as a historical approach to conversion as it introduces anachronistic debates and misleading conclusions about jihad. Sereer converts to Islam present a different perspective on jihad and the mystical path (Sufism). Sereer from Siin criticize Maba and other jihad leaders of the nineteenth century for acting like kings and waging war on Sereer pagans, acts that differed little from the pillage of aristocratic slave raiders in the region’s history. By contrast, Sufi leaders like Amadou Bamba and Al-Hajj Malick Sy are men of God. Sereer Safen, who preserved their independence into the 1890s, stress the voluntary and peaceful nature of their conversion. They resisted Islam as long as they identified it with the Wolof social order. They did not know true Islam until they learned of the Tijan order of Al-Hajj Malick Sy around 1914, well after Malick Sy distanced his order from jihad and accommodated to the realities and opportunities of colonial rule. Sereer interpretations of conversion allow accommodation with Sereer history and reduce the difference between new and old converts (Sereer and Wolof) by insisting that true Islam only arrived with the failure of jihad and the emergence of new Sufi orders at the beginning of the twentieth century. Studies of Islam in Africa still invoke the interplay between the Islamization of Africa and the Africanizaton of Islam, which echoes colonial era discussions of black

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Islam (Islam noir). An influential paradigm of conversion, Quarantine, Mixing, and Reform, predicts the slow but ineluctable triumph of an Islamic juggernaut that sweeps everything before it. In either case Islam appears monolithic, even if local variations persist for long periods of time. A study of modern conversions to Islam points the way to rethinking these binary oppositions. Sufi Islam had two distinct advantages from the point of view of the Sereer. First, it did not have the negative political baggage associated with jihad and militant Islam. The Sereer were scornful about kings, even in Siin, where the expression, the “king has come, everything is ruined” echoes the Safen notion that a king ruins the rainy season. Conversely, “God rained” is the common way to end a description of successful rainmaking ceremonies. Expressed in judgments that praised the French for getting rid of pillaging kings and bringing peace, the hostility of Amadou Bamba and Al-Hajj Malick Sy to the Wolof old regime played well in Sereer regions. Second, Sufi Islam provided a mystical path and forms of knowledge that were perceived as similar to the mystical powers of Sereer diviners, shrine keepers, healers, and other ritual specialists. The esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam (batin) paralleled these powers and eased the inculturation of Islam in Sereer society.

S ereer S afen The Safen as a group converted between 1914 and the 1950s, with different villages converting at different times.1 Prior to conversion the Safen rejected monarchy, Islam, caste, and slavery, all features of the surrounding Wolof culture.2 They lived in village communities governed by the elders of maternal clans and ritual specialists who controlled spirit shrines. Conversion followed Wolof conquest, military recruitment during World War I, outbreaks of bubonic plague, and cash crop production for the world market; but it is difficult to link to any one of these events. Socially, conversion was a rebellion led by young men from 1914 onward against their elders. The young men triumphed, overturning the system of matrilineal inheritance in one generation. Most of my informants came from this group of first converts and those immediately following them. They grew up under cosaan (tradition) and converted to Islam. The Safen can be described in different ways: as a subgroup of Sereer with a distinct language (Saafi-Saafi) and territory (which they call Safen); a stateless, acephalous, or decentralized society that resisted incorporation into the surrounding Wolof kingdoms until they were conquered by Wolof chiefs working for the French in 1895; or non-Muslims following a pattern of matrilineal descent until they began converting to Islam between the 1920s and 1950s. Thus the French in the colonial period characterized of them as paleo-nigritic primitives with a penchant for drunkenness and anarchy. They seemed in every way inferior to their neighbors; however, the French admired their skill as farmers. They were often conceived of by the French as remnant populations, reflecting a more archaic and primitive social organization that existed before the coming of monarchy and Islam. Apart from the veneer of evolutionary theory, French attitudes closely mirrored those of the Wolof, who regarded the Safen as savages without religion or law or government, but also as embodiments of tradition or cosaan, a system of values and beliefs left behind by the Wolof after conversion to Islam. With due allowance for being inexact, the relation of the Safen and other independent Sereer groups to the Wolof and Sereer kingdoms that dominated the region resembled relations in other frontier zones: the Welsh to the English, the highland

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Scots to the lowland Scots, the Basques to the kingdom of Spain, or independent Indians under Spanish rule in the Americas.3 What I mean to suggest by this rough comparison is that statelessness was not the norm but the exception and could only be maintained by retreat from and resistance to the dominant social order in the region. The boundary between Sereer and Wolof was cultural or ethnic in Barth’s sense of an ethnic boundary.4 This boundary foreclosed the possibility of conversion until well into the colonial period. The Safen defined their difference from their more powerful Wolof neighbors in terms that placed nearly insurmountable barriers between themselves and Islam. As long as the Wolof were identified with Islam, conversion was extremely unlikely. The Safen also self-identified as Sereer, even though they distinguish four other Sereer groups, who speak different languages that are partly or completely different from Saafi-Saafi, the language of the Safen. Some of the most revealing statements about how they define themselves and distinguish between groups were in response to questions about what the Sereer had in common, if their languages differed. Al-Hajj Abdou Faye replied, “They [the Sereer] were all what the Arabs call jahil. The Safen were jahil. They didn’t know Islam. They didn’t refuse [Islam], they didn’t know it. In the Quran they call it jahil, which is different from kafir or yeefeer. They didn’t refuse . . . There were no jihads here.”5 Among other points, he insists that all the Sereer were non-Muslims. When other Safen elders were also asked why the Safen were Sereer, despite the differences, they responded with a different but equally revealing reply. What the Sereer had in common was their matrilineal clans. These were originally all the same. This response then led to a discussion of how some Sereer changed, particularly the Siin-Siin, by far the largest group. Originally, the Siin-Siin were like the Safen, but they changed when they adopted monarchy. The Gelwaar aristocracy colonized them and brought change. With aristocratic rule came caste and slavery, the cult of the warrior, and many other changes. This response, which moves from a common matrilineal descent to how the Siin-Siin changed, underscores a key theme in how the Safen view their history. They see themselves as the true or original Sereer in the sense that they remained loyal to Sereer cosaan longer than most other groups. They were nonMuslims; they were ruled over by the heads of the ten matriclans; and they rejected monarchy (centralized government of any kind) and the social distinctions that went along with it, specifically caste and slavery. Together, these things defined the ethnic boundary (in Barth’s terminology) that separated them from the Wolof and the Sereer Siin-Siin. Finally, they maintained their independence by migrating into a defendable refuge zone at least five hundred years ago. Although the Safen describe themselves as the original Sereer, they candidly state that they are also migrants, or better yet, refugees, who maintained their independence by fleeing the advance of monarchy and Islam. This appears clearly in traditions about the founding of villages and the etymology of village names. Ibrahima Cisse argued that Bandia, originally know as Bandialuff, was founded by refugees from the Jolof empire, whose ancestors were on the losing side of a power struggle in their homeland. He offered an etymology that defined the meaning of the village name as “those who refused Jolof.”6 Two other informants stated the basic law of Bandia as, “If we don’t agree, you can’t come here.”7 Mbaye Dali Cisse, from the village of Kirene, said that the village’s name came from a phrase that meant “Don’t come here.”8 The Safen were extremely suspicious of strangers, closed off their district to outsiders, and rejected intermarriage with outsiders.

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Other sources amply confirm these attitudes. Abbe Boilat, a métis Catholic, noted that the Safen reserved the right to assassinate strangers entering their territory without warning, based on their assumption that such persons were probably slave raiders. The Wolof described the Safen as a Godless people without religion or laws and treated them as bandits and enemies. The French largely adopted Wolof attitudes after their encounters with the independent Sereer in the Thiès region (Palor and Noon or Jangin), whom they described as inveterate thieves, based on the repeated attacks on trading caravans on the road from Pout to Thiès. Self-sufficiency and independence of this kind had its drawbacks. At least two informants began their discussion of cosaan by describing how the Safen survived famines and hard times in the past.9 Hunting and gathering famine foods from the bush is an integral part of memories of cosaan. In this case it is not Muslims who quarantine themselves off from the non-Muslims, as Fisher predicts, but the non-Muslims who quarantine themselves to preserve their independence. As a result of this attitude, there was little religious mixing in the period before conversion. For example, the Safen did not borrow Muslim charms and divination.10 The Safen maintained their independence from the Wolof (and French colonial rule) until 1895. The success of a small group (current census figures suggest eighty thousand Safen proper out of one hundred thousand Saafi speakers) in maintaining its independence for so long requires some brief analysis before looking at Safen reflections on the same set of issues. However, there is one key, crucial factor: geography. For defense the Safen relied on their location at the center of a cluster of similar Sereer groups. They were neighbors of the Njegem, to the south, who resisted incorporation into the monarchies of Bawol and Siin and served as a buffer group. The same role was played to the north and east by the Joobas, Noon (Jangin), and Palor. The Safen were far removed from any important centers of Wolof or Sereer state power. All these groups were clustered around a series of escarpments that made them frontier zones and peripheries to neighboring states. The Safen are in the inner pocket of this group. The Safen inhabit a fertile, well-watered region on the downward slope and valleys of an escarpment with underground streams feeding into the Somone River. Fertility permits relatively intense farming combined with herding cattle and goats, a combination crucial to Safen identity and social institutions. Fertility is accompanied by disease, which also thrives in this moist region. The French reported a high incidence of sleeping sickness in the nineteenth century, and bubonic plague broke out more than once between 1919 and 1924.11 The oral traditions of Kirene note that the population was “destroyed” and evacuated twice, once through a combination of “mystical powers” and disease and once by an epidemic.12 These were events in the fairly distant past. Dobour, a village between Bandia and Kirene, was reduced to a population of two during the bubonic plague, when everyone fled except for a mother and her son.13 In Bandia a new quarter of the village called Bandia-Bambara, which developed around the Wolof chiefs (with their Bambara slaves and retainers), was abandoned when the Bambara fled the bubonic plague epidemics. The Safen say they convinced the Bambara that the plague was a judgment from Bandia’s shrine against which they were powerless to defend themselves. The Safen occupied the village quarter after they fled.14 The same landscape permits the Safen to intensively herd and farm a limited territory. The male life cycle is particularly tied to the combination of farming and herding, bey ak samm. Boys herd from approximately eight or ten years old until the age of initiation, which occurs between fifteen and twenty years of age. After being called by

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the father (in consultation with the maternal uncle) to circumcision, the boys enter an age class of initiates made up of forty to sixty young men. After a celebration the boys are circumcised in a special enclosure where they spend three months studying cosaan by learning songs and their meaning. By the end of the period, sustained by meat feasts supplied by fathers and uncles, the initiates emerge as an age class of waxambaane (bachelors) with their own secret song. The waxambaane receive the weapons and tools of men as gifts from the father, but from this point on they farm for themselves and their uncles. The age class is bound together for the rest of their lives, helping each other to farm, fight, raid, and marry. Married men continue farming but leave the bachelor class. The age classes gathered together males from all clans, and they were the main potential counterweight to the power of the clan leaders. While the waxambaane formed a military class, Safen informants placed greater stress on the protecting power of village shrines.15 The Koffki in Bandia was one of many shrines in the Safen district. Although the characteristics of each shrine are different, there is a general discourse about the protecting power of the shrines and the spirits that inhabit them echoing the main themes of the ethnic boundary described earlier. Each Safen village had at least one shrine; and the shrines, each of which had a name and specific characteristics, defined a public sphere of religious ritual that was common to the village.16 Bandia had the Koffki, Guinabour had Graam and a sacred well, Tchiki had Carit and Enge (an ancestral shrine), Kirene had Jayña, Dias had Sahee, Dobour a spring with healing waters. Each shrine was controlled or administered by a particular matrilineal clan, and one clan, the Leemu, controlled most of the shrines. All the shrines served as focal points for the divination ceremonies held before the beginning of the rainy season. Most were sites of periodic sacrifice to the indwelling spirits, but the shrines had their own unique characteristics. In addition to possessing the one judging shrine that could kill, Bandia played a key role in the prayers to the supreme God (Kiim Koox), associated with the heavens and rain, that occurred only in serious times of drought that threatened the entire district.17 One such ceremony occurred in the period in question, almost certainly during the drought of 1913 to 1914. Protecting spirits and their dislike of monarchy and government appeared in interviews with informants from several villages. An informant in Dias simply said that Sahee, the shrine, “did not like monarchy [Wolof, nguur, monarchy, or government].”18 The shrines at Guinabour (Graam) and Dias (Sahee) could be described as wind spirits. They protected the villages by raising a wind that made them invisible to their enemies, particularly the Wolof.19 In more general terms, informants described past migrations into the region and the founding of village shrines as essential features of Safen identity and the system of defense that protected the independence of the region.20

Models of Conversion Past studies of conversion have taken radically different positions on how conversion to Islam should be understood. It is useful to begin with the debate between Robin Horton and Humphrey Fisher to explore these dichotomies at the outset.21 Horton understands conversion as a transformation of a preexisting African cosmology from within, because identifications are made between the teachings of Islam and existing beliefs. Horton therefore predicts that converting Africans will identify their prior conception of a high or supreme deity with the God of Islam; and conversion

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will reorient their cosmology toward God alone, leading to a gradual demotion or even demonization of lesser spirits. At the same time the preexisting cosmology will inflect Islam in the direction of explanation, prediction, and control of this-worldly issues and problems, the central concerns of ritual practice before conversion. Finally, Horton argues that for this process to begin, some prior crisis must exist, disturbing the equilibrium that existed before conversion. Horton’s model offers a theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of syncretism or mixing, which is inevitable if “conversion” (placed in quotation marks by Horton) is an adjustment within an existing cosmology. Fisher objected to this because it downplayed the agency of religion as a force for change and the missionaries who spread belief in Islam or Christianity. Fisher portrayed Islam as a juggernaut that eventually would sweep all other beliefs aside, even if in practice this might take centuries. He proposed a series of stages in the process of conversion: quarantine, mixing, and reform. In this model Islam is first observed, usually with the arrival of a foreign minority community of Muslims, who quarantine themselves off from unbelievers to preserve the purity of their religion. Gradually, the observers begin borrowing specific practices, turning to Islamic medicine or divination, purchasing talismans from their Muslim neighbors, with this process leading to the emergence of a mixed form of Islam.22 The final stage is reform or jihad, when the growing strength and self-confidence of educated Muslims, who have fully internalized the message of Islam through education, launch a movement or reform or jihad to purge their society of the corruption of mixed Islam. Both Horton and Fisher focus on conversion as a long-term process, as exemplified in the history of a people like the Hausa over many centuries. My case study focuses on the moment of conversion in the recent past, opening up possibilities of analysis missing from their models. Nevertheless, both authors have proved useful in thinking about conversion. Horton, for example, correctly predicts the identification between Kiim Koox (Safen term for God of the heavens and especially rain) and the God of Islam. When speaking in Wolof, which they were forced to do because of my linguistic incompetence in Safen, informants simply used the term Yalla to refer to their notion of God before conversion. Conversely, Horton occults the agency of converts by his tendency to reify the basic cosmology and give it agency in his discussions of conversion. I don’t believe that the Safen cosmology existed outside of the heads of individual Safen, so my focus is on the agency of converts, who decide which aspects of tradition must be discarded or may be preserved and which need to be reformed. Fisher’s model of conversion is useful for the way he poses the issue of reform, even if his formulation is unsatisfactory. My case study suggests that in this modern example reform was central to the conversion process. The Safen quickly took steps to abandon matrilineal inheritance, traditional funerals, and initiation ceremonies for men and women. Converts gave up alcohol and tobacco. However, they did not do so in response to an Islamic juggernaut presented by learned outsiders or educated Muslims. Fisher tends to attribute all agency to Islam and the bearers of Islam, reifying Islam in much the same way that Horton reifies the basic cosmology. His model does not predict some of my findings. In the generation of first converts, experts on tradition or cosaan are often also committed Muslims, marked by unusual achievements in both domains. One of my informants had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and had memorized more than one hundred Safen songs. He did not condemn “tradition” as a whole or emphasize the false nature of past belief.23 In fact, only one informant baldly stated that cosaan was “bad.”24 The reasons for these attitudes are complex,

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but they don’t support Fisher’s model. Looked at from a different angle, it is striking that Safen Muslims set out much more directly to reform the social order than they did to impose uniform beliefs or eradicate all ritual practices that might seem to be in conflict with Islam. J. D. Y. Peel’s recent study of conversion by the Yoruba suggests ways of overcoming the dichotomies in the Horton–Fisher debate. Peel argues that conversion must be studied as a dialectical process that leads to both the Christianization of the Yoruba and the inculturation of Christianity. Key to this ongoing process is the emergence of identifications or translations that mark this process. For the Yoruba the key was the identification of prayer with sacrifice. For Yoruba Christians prayer was a means for accessing spiritual power in a way that made prayer analogous to sacrifice as practiced in Yoruba religion. Although this identification was made most explicit in the Aladura churches that emerged after 1920, Peel argues that it was already implicit in earlier Christian practices.25 Sufi Islam was important to the process of the inculturation of Islam into Sereer society, not because of an inherent tendency for Sufi Islam to encourage syncretism, mixing, or the personalization of Islam in a charismatic saint; but because it facilitated the identification between secret, mystical powers attributed to elders, diviners, and shrines with the new forms of secret knowledge (batin) brought by Sufi Islam. At the same time the ethical teachings and peaceful methods propagated by Sufi orders after the abandonment of jihad were perceived as being in harmony with Sereer values, whereas memories of militant Islam (the jihad of Maba) invoked hostile reactions as episodes of violent attempted conquest by foreign Muslims. Before examining the importance of the Sufi path to Sereer conversion, it is important to consider why Sufism has been neglected in discussions of Muslim conversion. The hostility of modernist interpretations of Islam to Sufism goes a long way toward explaining why Sufi Islam is often considered a stalking horse for Islam noir or mixing rather than the historical form of Islam encountered by the Sereer in the colonial period.

Mo der nist Orthodox i es Humphrey Fisher’s model of conversion, which has been adopted by many other scholars, posits a teleological model of conversion that progresses from Quarantine to Mixing to Reform, which Fisher identifies with jihad. The genealogy of this model is clearly modernist in its construction of Islamic orthodoxy. Modernist readings of Islam exist in different forms, but they agree in defining Islam by looking back to the founding period of the prophet and his immediate successors.26 Such interpretations are ahistorical in their focus on the beginnings of Islam, which has a glorious past but an unusable recent history. This modernist focus is shared by Orientalist and Islamist alike, who also share a vision of Islam as a civilization that atrophied and stagnated after its glorious beginnings.27 Modernist interpretations also agree on the importance of the Caliphate and the unity of religion and politics in Islam. It is this last issue that is most important for this paper. Modernist interpretations of Islam are generally hostile to Sufism, which is seen as a symptom of Islam’s decline. Radical Muslim reformers of all kinds saw a return to the golden age of Islam (the era of the prophet and the four rightly guided Caliphs, ending in 661) as a way of jettisoning traditions of interpretation that they blamed for the stagnation of the Islamic world, especially the consensus in the four Sunni

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schools of law that crystallized in the thirteenth century. In an effort to preserve the integrity of the law, jurists at that time allegedly declared that the gates of independent interpretation were closed.28 This was an effort to preserve established traditions of interpretation at a time when the Muslim world was threatened by conquest and political decline. When the Caliphate disappeared from the world of history, it could be enshrined in the canons of law. The theory of the Caliphate was enshrined in legal texts even as Muslim jurists adapted to a plurality of new situations where there was nothing resembling a Caliphate. The period of polycentric political organization that followed was also a period when Sufi Islam became an important force of cohesion in the Muslim world. Muslim reformers later made Sufis and jurists prime targets in their explanations of decline.29 They argued that any educated layperson could interpret Islam, casting aside the authority of Muslim scholars. The widespread adoption of modernist assumptions in the contemporary Muslim world has inhibited historical analysis of discourse and argument in historical Muslim texts and discourses. Ironically, modernist interpretations have also given credibility to the tradition of scholarship that is most often labeled Orientalist. In this chapter the term Orientalist refers to a tradition of scholarship that focuses on establishing a normative or orthodox Islam based on texts and doctrines. Influenced by modernists like Mohammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, Orientalist scholars adopted the notion that Islam had stagnated after a glorious beginning and appropriated a canon of orthodoxy that defined Islam through its earliest and most authoritative texts. Knowing Islam through its oldest founding texts has been a central focus of Orientalist reconstructions of Islam and other once great non-Western civilizations, such as the Hindu in India.30 The alterative is to see Islam as a discursive tradition (following Talal Asad) that relates to the founding texts of the Quran and the hadith (traditions about the prophet Mohammad) but where orthodoxy can only refer to correct practice as understood by Muslims.31 This allows recognition that there may be many orthodoxies within Islam, over time and space. This model fits in with the existence of four orthodox schools of law within Sunni Islam. It also challenges the distinctions between orthodox and heterodox Islam, scriptural and popular Islam, or the great and little traditions that appear in scholarship affected by the modernist and Orientalist searches for orthodoxy.32 Recent studies of jihad show the enduring influence of this modernist view of orthodoxy, with the paradoxical result that non-Muslim scholars adopt a neofundamentalist position and continue the modernist attack on Sufi Islam. A good example is David Cook’s study of jihad, which is scholarly and well argued within the Orientalist tradition. However, Cook is so committed to constructing Islam from orthodox texts that his chapter, “The ‘Greater Jihad’ and the ‘Lesser Jihad,’” turns into a polemic against scholars who lack the “courage” to go where the evidence leads, culminating in attacks on “Muslim apologists” and non-Muslim scholars who try to present Islam “in the most innocuous terms possible.”33 The cause for his furor: the traditions on which the greater, internal jihad are based are “late” and do not appear in the most canonical collections of hadith or traditions about the prophet. Cook is not the only scholar who has attacked Muslim traditions about the greater, mystical jihad as spurious or suspect (even while conceding they are often quoted) for this reason.34 Cook attributes the influence of this interpretation to the “great theologian and Sufi alGhazali (d. 1111),” but al-Ghazali and other Sufis (mystics) are said to be attempting “to radically reinterpret the originally aggressive intent of the Qur’an and the hadith literature in order to focus on the waging of spiritual warfare.”35 Like Islamists, Cook casts doubts on the legitimacy of Sufi interpretations of Islam by citing an orthodox

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canon of texts that is divorced from the historical reality of Islam as a discursive tradition in which many Muslims accepted al-Ghazali and the Sufi tradition as orthodox. Modernist interpretations of Islam cast Sufism as a primary suspect in their narrative of stagnation and decline, because Sufis are portrayed as allowing the infiltration of heresies such as saint worship and neopagan survivals into Islam. At the same time modernist interpretations normalize jihad by focusing on the beginnings of Islam and ignoring the debates about jihad among Muslim jurists. Colonial interpretations of Islam, written by scholars like Paul Marty, are also strongly influenced by modernist interpretations of Islam. The most obvious reflection of this was the hysteria of the French (and the British for that matter) during World War I about the potential influence of the Ottoman caliphate on the loyalty of their Muslim subjects.36 Their fears had no real substance, but they made sense if Muslims were viewed through the lens of fundamentalist and Orientalist readings of shari’a law. Marty, who was born in “French” Algeria in 1882 and served in North Africa until 1911, brought fear and admiration for reformist Islam with him to West Africa.37 Marty’s racism should not blind us to his admiration for modernist Islam, his lesser respect for North African “Arab” Sufism (which he viewed as “real”), and his contempt for what he took to be the worship of African living saints.38 His hierarchy was shaped by his understanding of orthodoxy.

S eneg a l es e S uf ism and the Gre at er Jiha d Historians have interpreted the turning away from jihad in the colonial period as a pragmatic adjustment to European power that allowed Muslims to accommodate to colonial rule. The implication of this kind of analysis is that if Muslims had been stronger, they would have supported jihad against Europeans. Similarly, interpretations of Islam that rule out jihad, such as the Suwarian tradition, are seen as accommodations to the minority status of Muslims in certain regions of West Africa. Again the subtext is that jihad (identified with orthodoxy) would have triumphed if Muslims had been in the majority.39 Although there is evidence to support these interpretations in some cases, they downplay arguments against jihad that go beyond pragmatic accommodation and assume that the creation of a Muslim state was central to understandings of Islam in West Africa. In Senegal the Murid Sufi order founded by Amadou Bamba provides good evidence against this political understanding of Islam, which is presented as orthodoxy. Amadou Bamba drew on two distinct traditions to criticize proponents of jihad. One is a tradition of legal argument that distinguished between the time of the prophet and the founding of Islam and the contemporary period, when Islam was established as a religion, even if Muslims were in a weakened position in the world. The remedy was the Sufi path. The shorthand for this view was Amadou Bamba’s dictum that “the time of jihad was over and only the greater jihad remained.”40 Muslims who advocated jihad adopted a revolutionary stance that equated the historic present with the time of the prophet. The revolutionary invoked the prophet and the founding of Islam, implying that the very existence of Islam was at stake, to justify jihad and condemn the opponents of jihad as nonbelievers, who could then be killed or enslaved in the name of religion. The Sufi acting as a jurist invokes a different history and the role of Muslim scholars as advisors and checks on state power (the Sultan) in a world where Islam is established. Islamic governments (meaning monarchies where the ruler is Muslim)

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are imperfect, but they deserve obedience as long as they don’t threaten the practice of Islam; and imperfect government is preferable to sectarian strife. In practice this meant that Muslim scholars become the protectors of the Muslim community and wield substantial influence over something very much like civil society through their role as interpreters of Islamic law as long as they don’t directly challenge the dynasties in power. The goal is the autonomy of Islam and Muslim communities under the guidance of religious scholars, not political power. This, in different variations, was a key paradigm governing the relations of rulers and Muslim scholars in West Africa. The separation of temporal power and religious authority is taken for granted. Amadou Bamba’s father became a judge at the court of the kingdom of Kajoor, taking on the role of the jurist or advisor to power. One of his father’s most controversial legal opinions was a judgment (fatwa) ruling that a recent war in 1875 was a simple conflict among Muslims and that therefore none of the combatants could be enslaved. His ruling was ignored in favor of another opinion by the scholar Majaxate Kala (also playing the role of the jurist) that legitimated the enslavement of prisoners and pleased the king. Kala’s ruling was not based on the legitimacy of jihad. As a moderate he opposed jihad in the 1860s by questioning the motives of those who undertook holy war in the name of Islam. His legal opinion declared that those who declared jihad against the king were following a false prophet and thus apostates against Islam who could be enslaved.41 Without directly challenging the king, Amadou Bamba used his authority as a spiritual guide to subvert this legal ruling. When one of the king’s close relatives became Amadou Bamba’s spiritual disciple, he was ordered to free the slaves taken in 1875 and he obeyed. This, in effect, transformed his father’s legal opinion into a binding judgment for disciples of Amadou Bamba.42 This incident received a lot of attention because it displeased the king and his most prominent Muslim advisors. According to Amadou Bamba’s son, many Muslim scholars recognized the justice of Bamba’s opinion, but they feared to speak out against the king and the court. But Amadou Bamba was comforted by the idea that his action saved some from slavery and others from hellfire.43 Amadou Bamba’s attitude toward political power was based on his understanding of the Sufi tradition, which he saw as advocating withdrawal from worldly, temporal power and a critical stance toward established Muslim or non-Muslim governments. The model for this was al-Ghazali (1058–1111), a scholar who reached the highest position as a scholar under the Abbasid Caliphate by the age of thirty-three and then left all these honors behind four years later to adopt the life of an itinerant mystic or Sufi in pursuit of religious enlightenment and salvation. He was inspired by the hadith of the prophet that said, “The true flight or hijrah is the flight from evil, and the real Holy War or Jihad is the warfare against one’s passions.”44 In Murid texts and traditions, such as the biography of Amadou Bamba written by his son Bachir, citations of al-Ghazali and other Sufi scholars create a discourse in which the actions of Amadou Bamba and his disciples are compared to past precedents from Islamic history that compare Bamba to Malik ibn Anas at the court of Harun al-Rashid or al-Ghazali at the Abbasid court. These narratives draw parallels between Bamba’s actions in dealing with Wolof kings and narratives of Sufis and jurists from Islamic history. They do not, however, invoke the precedent of the prophet and the age of jihad. Amadou Bamba compared Wolof kings to the pharaoh, but never declared them to be apostates.45 He denounced French colonizers as slaves of Satan and their passions but argued that military resistance against them was futile.46 As a mystic, he was consistently disdainful of “temporal” authority, but dedicated to the

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creation of a Muslim community at the grassroots. The rejection of jihad included, but went well beyond, a pragmatic recognition of European power. French colonialism could be interpreted as a positive force for Islam insofar as it removed corrupt kings from power and allowed Muslims to practice their religion. For the Sereer the scathing attitude of Murids to Wolof kings and the Murid rejection of military jihad were both positive, in that they seemed to echo Sereer hostility to monarchy and the Wolof social order. For the Tijan order, the adjustment to colonialism was more difficult, because they had to lay to rest the association between their order and the Umarian jihad. For the Sereer the jihad that mattered was the one led by a discipline of Umar Tal, Maba. Dennis Galvan’s recent study of Sereer attitudes toward the state and land reform, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, eloquently captures that attitude of the SereerSiin. Popular memory celebrates the victory of Siin over Maba as a defining moment of Sereer history. Popular histories depict Maba as a Wolof or Tukulor outsider who wanted to destroy the shrines of the Sereer and forbid the consumption of alcohol. However, the spirits who dwelled in Sereer shrines (the pangool) and Sereer diviners were too strong. A Sereer diviner helped the King of Siin call down a fog that disoriented his Muslim enemies and allowed a devastating surprise attack on the forces of the jihad.47 In a key passage Galvan describes how the Sereer reconcile this attitude with their subsequent conversion to Islam and their veneration of Amadou Bamba, whose father advised Maba, Informants generally agree that this is in no way a contradiction because Ma Ba [sic] was “like a ceddo,” whereas Amadou Bamba was o kiin Roog, a person of God. Assigning Ma Ba to the reviled warrior-slave caste makes sense because he wanted to conquer Siin and impose Islam by force, whereas Bamba was a person understood to follow the ways of God because he sought to convert the Serer more peacefully, slowly, and without violence. Of course, the term used here is Roog, the Serer designation for the creator and overarching deity, not Allah. It is not simply that Islamization became acceptable when it abandoned the sword. Islam became acceptable in the Siin when it was propagated by o kiin Roog, a person who conducted himself in accordance with the ways of the Serer God.48

Al-Hajj Malick Sy had to overcome the legacy of jihad by affiliating his branch of the Tijan order with centers in Mauritania and Morocco that rejected the path of jihad. From that point he could reaffirm the Tijan path as a Sufi order that drew its strength from a visionary founder and powerful ritual prayers (dhikr) that contained the secret names of God. By rejecting the old Wolof order and endorsing the peace created by French rule, as he did publicly in 1910, Malick Sy became a man of God preaching a path of reform that could be accepted by the Sereer. For the Safen Sufi Islam provided a means for distinguishing between Islam and the Wolof social order. Babacar Ndione, the Imam of Bandia and a Tijan, tried to express what changed in 1938 when the village of Bandia sought out its first missionary, Amadou Gning, a Tijan Wolof from Waalo. Two other villages already had teachers and Bandia recruited its teacher through them, by visiting Kirene, whose Imam traveled to Dias: “We saw a pure Islam for the first time then. We began to study, to understand the difference between Islam and the Wolof.”49 This recognition of true Islam affiliated the region with the Sufi order in Tivaouane. Two years later Babacar Ndione walked to a Tijan lodge in Yoff and began the studies that would take him to Tivaouane, where he became a disciple of Babacar Sy.

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S ec ret K nowl edge a nd M ysti c al Power The harmony between Sufi views of the old regime and Sereer attitudes was important for conversion, but so too was the realization that Sufi Islam offered access to secret knowledge that paralleled the powers attributed to Sereer diviners and shrines. The secrets of tradition played an important role in defining the roles of Sereer elders, matrilineal clans, and ethnic identity. The mystical powers of shrines and elders came up frequently in discussions of the past and played an important role right up until the time of conversion. Informants talked about the power of elders in driving back Wolof incursions in the 1890s, in successful rainmaking ceremonies in 1913 and 1914, in summoning hyenas to Bandia to scare off a Wolof chief who intended to spend the night in the village, or in the use of the shrines to communicate with Safen soldiers in France during World War I. These extraordinary events were coupled with routine ritual events, such as the divination of the rainy season by village elders and the activities of healer-diviners who cured possession by spirits and other afflictions. Compared with the secrets of Sereer tradition, Islamic knowledge had two opposed characteristics. A revelation passed on through literacy made the knowledge of Islam more open to everyone who studied, as opposed to the secret knowledge possessed by matriclans and families. This was recognized by converts, as was the certainty of the book as a means of transmitting the word, themes noted in studies of literacy by Louis Brenner and Jack Goody among others.50 Conversely, Islam concentrated mystic power in the hands of a few as well. The prime example was Babacar Ndione in Bandia: He was the Imam of the village mosque, the first Safen in Bandia to memorize and bring down the Quran, and the leading Tijan in the region. He was a disciple of Babacar Sy, the first successor of Al-Hajj Malick Sy in Tivaouane, and received visits from Tijans from many Safen villages on religious holidays. No single elder in the past had accumulated such influence. The esoteric knowledge of the Sufi path was important for conversion, because it encouraged the perception that the powers wielded by elders in the past that had protected the region were now superseded by Islam’s holy book and the esoteric teachings of the Tijan order. Sereer mystical knowledge began with the matriclans, which had specific characteristics, including aptitudes for mystical power. In interviews, when talking about the differences between the xeet or matriclans, informants sometimes tapped their foreheads deliberately or started gesturing by rolling their eyes while spinning their fingers beside their heads to indicate mystical power. In one example Mbaye Cisse in Kirene paused in his discussion of military recruitment during World War I. He began by discussing efforts to flee recruitment by hiding in the bush. Then he said, “Some soldiers came back to the village in the heat of battle, wearing their uniforms. They had secrets. God [Yalla] made it so that human beings are not the same. You know, not all people are the same in here [tapping his forehead], in here. During the war some of the soldiers in France were seen here, just like that, face to face.” I then asked him if they were in France. “They were in France. You saw them just like that. They came back . . . without an airplane. They left the battle and came here . . . Secrets. That happened in 1914–1918.”51 Two matriclans, the Leemu and the Yookam, were said to be particularly gifted in this way. The Leemu clan officiated at most of the village shrines because Leemu elders founded them or refounded them in the past by establishing contact with the spiritual powers at the shrine through divination and sacrifice. But there were historical examples of shrines controlled in the past by the Saafi (Kirene), Daya (Dias), and

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Yookam (Kirene) clans; and there was a Yookam ancestral shrine in Tchiki and a Daya shrine in Dobour. In addition to shrine leaders there were occupational categories, such as diviners who healed, called nax in Safen and nak in Siin-Siin. The first association of the nax was as a counterforce to witchcraft, run in Safen (ndëm in Wolof). But in fact a healer-diviner was first charged with determining the cause of an affliction or illness, and this began with divination to determine whether it was witchcraft or possession by one of several kinds of spirits. One informant, Al-Hajj Abdou Faye, described three categories of spirits (jindi, rap, and a bush spirit), plus sorcery (involving human action against someone else, described as ligeey or work), and witchcraft. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca and enjoyed quoting the Quran and making learned comparisons between what he learned about Arabs before Islam and the Safen. He was also an expert on tradition, who knew one hundred Safen songs. He described with apparent respect the healing techniques used by Safen diviners to address spirit possession.52 These included sacrificing a goat and preparing a sacrificial meal, hanging the heart of the goat in a tree, and singing and chanting over the patient, who had been washed in the blood of the goat, until dawn. He described the use of sand divination for diagnosis. When he came to sorcery, which he defined as “work” (when a diviner accepted payment in exchange for working to control someone for a client), he suddenly shifted from exposition to condemnation. At that point he expressed reprobation as a Muslim, quoted the Quran and stated that the money that exchanged hands here was “Satan’s silver.” In addition to diviners, there were healers who worked primarily with roots of trees, bark, and herbs; and practiced massage; gave healing baths; and acted as chiropractors. Women played this role more frequently than men, but a few women worked as diviners as well. It is unclear how distinct these practices were. No one clan owned these occupations, which seemed to be passed down in multiple ways. The Saafi clan was mentioned once specifically as having had many diviners, a comment intended specifically to place Babacar Ndione, a Saafi, in a “traditional” context that was connected with his role as Imam and Sufi. He came from a family of well-known diviners.53 In public rituals all clan leaders and elders participated in rituals of divination and sacrifice. The most common example of this was the public divinations of the rainy season, which were organized by each village and differed from one village to the next. For the most part these sacrifices involved libations of millet paste and milk or millet beer, in keeping with the character of the white spirits that protected villages and assured fertility. In these ceremonies all elders participated, but this did not preclude some clan leaders officiating and playing a leading role. Typically, these were the same clan leaders who officiated at village shrines. For the most part village shrines were associated with protection and healing for a single village. Two shrines, Jayña in Kirene and the Koffki in Bandia, were described as having a broader, regional significance. They were also described as having different characters. In Kirene, the sacrifices and divination of the rainy season were preceded by a ritual hunt that drew participants from surrounding villages. Up to one hundred hunters might participate. During the hunt the first hunter to see a specific kind of guinea fowl was blessed with bountiful harvests that year. The hunt was then followed by a collective divination of the rainy season. The divination occurred under a tree sacred to Jayña, the spirit associated with Kirene’s shrine. Jayña was a spirit that was said to be different from the Koffki, the shrine in Bandia, which accepted blood sacrifice and was associated with a divination ordeal that settled important disputes. The shrine at

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Bandia was famed in the region for the divination with stones that was used to settle important disputes over inheritance rights. The party that lost a dispute by offering false testimony before the spirit of the shrine faced dire consequences, including the death of cattle and children in the offending segment of the matriclan. Muslim converts who spoke about the powers of shrines and diviners rarely condemned past beliefs, even when the spirits were demoted to the status of demons. In some cases the pre-Islamic spiritual landscape was invoked as a prefiguration of the Islamic present. Kirene and Bandia, which possessed the most powerful shrines, claim a preeminent role in contemporary Islam, based on a pioneering role in conversion (Kirene) or contemporary prominence (Bandia). The most striking example was how the Imam of Bandia described the powers of the shrine (compared to a supreme court for the Safen) and the prominent role of Bandia elders in rainmaking ceremonies as gifts from God that made his contemporary role as the preeminent Muslim scholar in the region seem to be an extension of Sereer history: In the time of cosaan, Bandia was a leader of the villages. According to custom [adat] at that time, Bandia led. If there was a meeting of the villages, the people of each village would have their say, but then Bandia would have its say and its say would be final. . . . That was in cosaan, before Islam [din]. People then valued knowledge [xam-xam], memory/ intelligence [xel], and courage [ñeme]; that was what they worked with. So if people gathered together, the people of Kirene would speak, the people of Dias, then Tchiki, Sindia, Guinabour, then Bandia. They [Bandia elders] would say, ah, we hear what you said; then they would speak. You see in those days God gave Bandia this role [of leadership].54

When asked to explain this preeminence he invoked first Bandia’s elders, then its shrine, then its role in rainmaking. Throughout he invoked truth and God, with the past prefiguring the present: “There were many elders in Bandia at that time, many elders. That is what they say about that time. They say, ‘No one educated Bandia. Bandia is a village of truth [or an upright village] [jubb]. Bandia is a village of character [faida].’”55

D iv iner s, Rain M ak er s, an d G od Peel discusses a number of different ways in which Yoruba Christians came to understand the historical relationship between Yoruba paganism and Christianity. These include degeneration, evolution, anticipation, and prophecy.56 For the Sereer these approaches work best when applied to the identification between Allah and Koox, typically expressed in interviews by translating both as Yalla. These identifications are expressed in the framework of anticipation, where Safen religion prefigures Islam, or as evolution, in which Islam is portrayed as a perfection of what already existed, albeit in a lesser form. The rare rainmaking ceremonies that occurred during times of serious drought and potential famine, after previous divinations and sacrifices failed, were the single instance when Safen religion focused on Koox, the God of heavens and especially rain. In the rainmaking ceremonies addressed to God, Safen informants found anticipation of Islam. Babacar Ndione, the Tijan Imam of Bandia, argues for anticipation when he links the powerful speech of Sereer divination with God. In this passage he expresses a kind of local patriotism as well, with Bandia being the village most powerful in speech: “God gave them the word/speech [bat]; what they said counted. God helped them and that is why. You know there were secrets. Each village had its secrets. But the

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most important secrets were here.”57 This knowledge was independent of any outside influence. In relating what he learned from the elders who had spoken about the history of the village, he reiterated, “They say no one educated Bandia. Bandia is a village of truth/upright [jubb] village; Bandia is a village of character [faida].”58 The most striking example of anticipation is Babacar Ndione’s account of a rainmaking divination that occurred most probably in the drought of 1913 and 1914. It is dated through the mention of Moussa Cisse, whose original name was Ndick Cisse. He was one of the few elders to convert after his sons converted and was mentioned in lists of the first converts. What follows is an account of a collective gathering during a period of serious drought, the last one to occur before conversion. Babacar Ndione makes this Safen prayer to Koox for rain an anticipation of Islam: In that case the people, waKirene [people of Kirene], waDias, waTchiki, waGuinabour, waSindia, waCampement, they headed from Jooben, they arrived from Joobas. All the vegetation would be dead. Then they met in the bush in a place called Baasan. When they arrived the people of Bandia would sit here [gesturing], the people of Tchiki over there. They would all sit down by village. When they were all there, when they had all arrived, then they would start to speak; first the people of Kirene and they would make their prediction, so they would say after divining that it will rain in two days, and then they would shoot their guns. Then Dias, they would speak and do the same thing, and say it will rain in three days, and they would shoot their guns. Then Tchiki, they would say it will rain in five days and shoot their guns. They would do this until all the villages had spoken and only Bandia was left. Then the Bandia elders would consult and speak. Now at that time there was Moussa Cisse, you know he was his uncle [gesturing to someone in the room]. Then they would say, well you know all of you spoke the truth, but it is not that way, it will rain today. God will rain today [Yalla dey taw tey]. You will see. Then the people of Bandia would shoot their guns. Bandia would give the signal. They would say, you will see it now. God will rain. And God helped them at that time. They hadn’t converted yet. But God helped them. What Bandia said happened. If they said it would rain today, it rained.59

Babacar Ndione’s account of rainmaking differs strikingly from another description of the same basic ritual, but both identify Koox (the divinity of the heavens and rain) with Allah. The other account is set in the distant past, during the lifetime of Yagup Ciaw, the most famous rainmaker and diviner in the region. The portrait of Yagup Ciaw, a diviner and rainmaker of the Leemu clan, makes him appear to be a kind of prophet figure. His life is set in the earliest period of Safen history, when migrations that were also a flight from monarchy brought the Safen to the region they currently inhabit, five hundred to six hundred years ago. Two informants spoke at considerable length about Yagup Ciaw, but he was mentioned as a founder in numerous interviews. One informant stressed his role as the founder of the first house in Bandia and his teachings about funerals and sacred sites in the region. When rains failed after the death of Diiw, Yagup taught the Safen that an elder who was not properly buried could hold back the rains. A second funeral had to be organized to end the drought. He also taught the people of Bandia and Guinabour not to disturb the “beautiful stones” at the shrine of Maam Cupaam, near Popenguine. Stealing the stones would bring disaster on the region.60 Ibrahima Cisse gave the most detailed portrait of Yagup. In reply to a question about how the Koofki was founded, Ibrahima Cisse replied with a remarkable narrative about Yagup, the most important founder remembered in Bandia’s oral traditions. He was a member of the Leemu clan, now known for their mystical powers.

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The story began with the premise that the founding elders were looking, seeking through divination. They met and sat in a circle with their loincloths tied together: Yagup was there. They created it [the shrine] for protection. The Europeans were coming with the Wolof. They came here [to the shrine]. You know, the shrine could kill, could overcome, could protect. They drew in the sand. They divined. Yagup saw bees. He called out and said to get a male red goat. They sacrificed it right away. Yagup said they should make a cous-cous right now and they did. They filled a huge pot up to the brim and set it aside. They divined. A huge cloud of dust rose up and was transformed into a whirlwind. The whirlwind was transformed into a cloud of bees. The cloud descended into the pot and devoured everything, just like that. They knew it was good.61

After this narration, Ibrahima Cisse made sure that I understood who the maternal clans were. Then he added, “Yagup was Leemu.” Only the Leemu can lead the Koofki. This last statement gives the shrine a clan identity, as did interviews in other villages. Mbaye Daali Cisse explained that the shrine in Kirene was Saafi, as was its founder. Later in the same interview, in response to a question about what the Safen did when the rains failed and famine threatened, another story about Yagup illustrated his role as a great rainmaker. Ibrahima Cisse asked me if I remembered what he said about the clothes worn for divination and tying the loincloths together. Then he explained that there was a place up on the escarpment, in the bush, where they went on those occasions. The elders divined and then they began striking on stones, sending clouds of dust up into the air: “You know Yagup. He removed himself from the group and went to one side. He struck the stones and said, ‘I am going to God to get the rain.’ He struck the earth and disappeared into the sky. No one spoke, no one looked up. Each one looked down at what he was doing. They waited and waited. Then they heard a hissing sound and Yagup reappeared. His clothes were soaking wet. A heavy rain broke out all over the district.”62 Yagup was the founder of the shrine, but in this story he is also linked to Kiim Koox, to the God of rain and the heavens. Ibrahima Cisse said nothing about the God beyond the identification between Kiim Koox and Allah assumed in his translation.

Th e I nc ultur ati on of S ufi Isl a m This chapter emphasizes the process Peel called inculturation. This by no means implies the absence of reform or the process making the Safen Muslim. Elsewhere I discuss Safen decisions to ban traditional funerals, abandon the public divinations that marked the beginning of the rainy season, and fight against witchcraft accusations. The process of reform went hand in hand with the process of inculturation. For the Safen and other Sereer groups, Sufi Islam had two distinct appeals. The political stance of Senegal’s Sufi orders, particularly their criticisms of the monarchies and old regimes of Senegal, resonated with the attitudes of Sereer. For the Tijan order, this was true only after Al-Hajj Malick Sy and other Tijans distanced themselves from the legacy of jihad. The jihads of the nineteenth century invoke bitter memories in Siin. The second appeal was to the mystical path or esoteric knowledge of Sufi Islam, sometimes referred to in shorthand as the greater jihad. Sereer converts saw knowledge of this kind, batin, as comparable to the secret knowledge of Sereer diviners and shrines. The identification of Allah with Koox or Roog and batin with Sereer secrets eased the process of translation and transformation set in motion by conversion. When Sereer Imams recited the Quran from memory, Islam’s holy book descended

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into the Sereer world, offering knowledge and protection previously provided by nax (diviners) and shrines.

Not es 1. This chapter draws from a larger project about the history of the Safen. The material from interviews draws on fieldwork carried out in 2002. The fieldwork was made possible by a Fulbright Lecture/Research Grant to Senegal in 2002. I would like to thank Babacar Faye, who helped arrange interviews and worked as my assistant, and my wife, Patricia HicklingSearing, who accompanied me on many of the interviews and contributed questions and queries that enriched the discussions. 2. For a more detailed discussion, see Searing, “‘No kings, no lords, no slaves.’” 3. For examples of historical frontier regions, see Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe, Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain. 4. I have taken the concept of ethnic boundaries from Barth, “Introduction.” 5. El Hadji Abdou Faye (born c. 1916–1919), interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 2002. 6. Ibrahima Cisse (born 1921), interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, July 10, 2002. 7. Saliou Seck, interview with the author, Bandia, July 16, 2002; and Ngër Loem (born c. 1919), interview with the author, Bandia, July 9, 2002. 8. Mbaye “Dali” Cisse (born 1924), interview with the author, Kirene, July 30, 2002. 9. Toutane Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia, June 27, 2002; and Ousmane N’Dione, interview with the author, Bandia, May 29, 2002. 10. This applies to the recent rather than the distant past. The Safen were never isolated from contact with other groups, but after the ethnic boundary was established in its historical form (during the era of the slave trade), contacts diminished and were regulated. This does not mean Sereer sand divination was not influenced by Islamic practice, but that borrowings of this kind happened early. 11. See Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine. 12. Mbaye “Dali” Cisse (born 1924), interview with the author, Kirene, July 30, 2002. 13. Dong Dione (born 1906), Doudou Faye, Pape Faye, and Ibrahima Dione, interview with the author, Dobour, July 29, 2002. 14. Ibrahima Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, August 18, 2002. 15. For a more detailed discussion of Safen shrines, see Searing, “The Time of Conversion.” 16. The shrine names appear to be proper names, naming the spirit or its avatar. No etymologies were given for these names (unlike village names). My informants’ responses suggested the question was misguided because the shrines obviously revealed their own names. 17. Rainmaking ceremonies are discussed in detail in the following text. 18. Dong Cisse (born 1918), interview with the author, Diass, July 31, 2002. 19. Assan Seck N’Gueye (born 1920), El Hadji Youssou Mage Seck (born 1921), El Hadj Thiour Seck (born 1924), Assan Seck (village chief, born 1940), and Mamadou Lamine Seck (born 1942), interview with the author, Guiniabour, July 22, 2002. For similar protecting powers from a different region, see Rosalind Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade. 20. Ibrahima Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, August 18, 2002; Mbaye “Dali” Cisse (born 1924), interview with the author, Kirene, July 30, 2002. 21. The first publication was Horton, “African Conversion,” which provoked a response. See Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects.” Horton’s two-part article was a rejoinder (“On the Rationality of Conversion, Part I,” and “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part II”). Fisher restated his own position in “The Juggernaut’s Apologia.” 22. Fisher’s model has influenced other scholars, such as Nehemia Levtzion, who uses the term “Islamization.” For a general presentation of the Islamization model, see Levtzion, “Toward a Comparative Study of Islamization,” and “Patterns of Islamization in West Africa.”

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23. El Hadji Abdou Faye (born c. 1916–1919), interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 2002 and July 15, 2002. 24. Dong Cisse (born 1918), interview with the author, Diass, July 31, 2002. Dong Cisse was a prisoner of war during World War II, which may be a factor in his alienation from “tradition.” 25. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, 265. 26. This section is based on the more detailed discussion in Searing, “Islam, Slavery and Jihad.” 27. On this convergence see Gesink, “‘Chaos on the Earth.’” 28. See the discussion in Gesink, “Chaos on the Earth,” 713–22. 29. Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, analyzes why so-called fundamentalists, whether conservative Muslim Wahhabis or the followers of Pat Robertson in the United States, must be considered modernists. 30. See Said’s classic work, Orientalism. For a good study of how this worked itself out historically in British India see Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj. 31. Asad, Genealogies of Religion. 32. For a good critique of Orientalist scholarship and of the need to recognize diverse traditions within Islam, see Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy. 33. Cook, Understanding Jihad, 40. 34. See also Peters (Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, 116) who quotes the tradition about the greater jihad and comments: “Although this Tradition is quite famous and frequently quoted, it is not included in one of the authoritative compilations.” 35. Cook, Understanding Jihad, 35. 36. The best discussion of this, from the French perspective, is in Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa. 37. Reformist Islam emerged as a concern in French North Africa, in eastern Algeria and Tunisia, as early as 1894. On these concerns see Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, 223. 38. The model for Islam noir in North Africa was French stereotypes about Berber or Kabyle Islam. Although Arabs were regarded as natural Muslims, inclined to fanaticism, the Berbers were said to be only superficially Muslim, with marabouts playing a key social role that had little to do with orthodox Islam. On these myths in Algeria see Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping. 39. Good examples of this interpretation are Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History, and Paths of Accommodation. 40. For references see Searing,“God Alone is King,” 46, 99. 41. For these debates see Searing, ‘God Alone is King’, 52–55, 98. 42. On this distinction see Gesink, “Chaos on the Earth,” 714. 43. Mbacké, Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel 55–56, 344. 44. Watt, The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, 131. 45. This is based on the biography written by one of his sons: Mbacké, Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel, 275. 46. Mbacké, Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel, 204. 47. Galvan, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, 65. 48. Galvan, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, 69. 49. Babacar Ndione, interview with the author, May 31, 2002. 50. Brenner, West African Sufi, and Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. 51. Mbaye Daali Cisse, interview with the author, July 30, 2002. 52. El Hadji Abdou Faye (born c. 1916–1919), interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 2002. 53. Ibrahima Cisse, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, August 18, 2002. 54. Babacar Ndione, interview with the author, May 31, 2002. 55. Ibid. 56. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, 295–304. 57. Babacar Ndione, interview with the author, May 31, 2002.

The Greater Jihad and Conversion 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

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Ibid. Ibid. Saliou Seck, interview with the author, Bandia, July 16, 2002. Ibrahima Cisse, born 1921, interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, July 10, 2002. Ibid.

I nterv iews, S ereer S afen , 2 0 0 2 Cisse, Diar (born 1910), Cisse, Ablaye (born 1917), Dione, Mamadou (born 1924), and Diouf, Sabou. Interview with the author, Diass, August 1, 2002. Cisse, Dong (born 1918). Interview with the author, Diass, July 31, 2002. Cisse, Ibrahima (born 1921). Interview with the author, Bandia-Bambara, July 10, 2002; August 18, 2002. Cisse, Mbaye Dali (born 1924). Interview with the author, Kirène, July 30, 2002; August 17, 2002. Cisse, Toutane. Interview with the author, Bandia, June 27, 2002. Dione, Dong (born 1906), Faye, Doudou, Faye, Pape and Dione, Ibrahima. Interview with the author, Dobour, July 29, 2002. Faye, El Hadji Abdou (born c. 1916–1919). Interview with the author, Tchiki, July 12, 2002; July 15, 2002. Faye, Latir Dong (born 1903). Interview with the author, Bandia, June 1, 2002; August 2, 2002. Faye, Yakha. Interview with the author, Bandia, June 26, 2002. Loem, Ngër (born c. 1919). Interview with the author, Bandia, July 9, 2002. N’Dione, Babacar (born c. 1920–21). Interview with the author, Bandia, May 31, 2002. N’Dione, Ousmane. Interview with the author, Bandia, May 29, 2002. Ndour, Modou. Interview with the author, Bandia, July 11, 2002. N’Doye, Guillaume (born 1914). Interview with the author, Popenguine, July 24, 2002. Seck, Assan N’Gueye (born 1920), Seck, El Hadji Youssou Mage (born 1921), Seck, El Hadj Thiour (born 1924), Seck, Assan (village chief, born 1940), and Seck, Mamadou Lamine (born 1942). Interview with the author, Guiniabour, July 22, 2002. Seck, Biran (born 1927) and Seck, Assan (village chief, born 1940). Interview with the author, Guiniabour, July 25, 2002. Seck, Saliou. Interview with the author, Bandia, July 16, 2002. Sène, Awa, Diouf, Mariata Faye, Rokhaya. Interview with the author, Tchiki, July 18, 2002. Sène, Lemou, Faye, Amy and Diouf, Salimata Diouf. Interview with the author, Bandia, June 28, 2002.

Bibl io gr aphy Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press 1993. Barth, Frederik. “Introduction.” In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference, edited by F. Barth, 9–38. London: Allen & Unwin, 1969. Brenner, Louis. West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Quest of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,1983). Clancy-Smith, Julia A. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Popular Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Echenberg, Myron. Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–1945. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann 2002. Galvan, Dennis G. The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.

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Gesink, I. F. “‘Chaos on the Earth’: Subjective Truths versus Communal Unity in Islamic Law and the Rise of Militant Islam.” American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (June 2003): 710–33. Goody, Jack. The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Fisher, Humphrey J. “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conversion in Black Africa.” Africa 43, no. 1 (1973), 27–40. ———. “The Juggernaut’s Apologia: Conversion to Islam in Black Africa.” Africa 55, no. 2 (1985): 153–73. Harrison, Christopher. France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Hechter, Michael. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press: 1975. Horton, Robin. “African Conversion.” Africa 41, no. 2 (1971): 85–108. ———. “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part I.” Africa 45, no. 3 (1975): 219–35. ———. “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part II.” Africa 45, no. 4 (1975): 373–99. Levtzion, Nehemia. “Patterns of Islamization in West Africa.” In Conversion to Islam, edited by N. Levtzion, 207–16. New York: Holmes & Meier 1979. ———. “Toward a Comparative Study of Islamization.” In Conversion to Islam, edited by N. Levtzion, 1–23. New York: 1979. Lorcin, Patricia M. E. Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria. London: I. B. Tauris 1999. Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. Mbacké, Serigne Bachir. Les Bienfaits de l’Eternel our la Biographie de Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Mbacké. Dakar: Senegal, IFAN 1995. Metcalf, Thomas. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Peel, J. D. Y. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press 2000. Peters, R. Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996. Robinson, David. Muslim Societies in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ———. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880 to 1920. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000). Sahlins, Peter. Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1991. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Press, 1979. Shaw, Rosalind. Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2002. Searing, James F. ‘God Alone is King’: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal; The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. ———. “Islam, Slavery and Jihad in West Africa.” History Compass 4, no. 5 (2006): 761–79. ———. “‘No kings, no lords, no slaves’: Ethnicity and Religion among the Sereer-Safèn of Western Bawol, 1700–1914.” Journal of African History 43 (2002): 407–30. ———. “The Time of Conversion: Christian and Muslims among the Sereer-Safèn of Senegal, 1914–1950s.” In Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa, edited by Benjamin F. Soares, 115–41. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Soares, B. F. Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005 Watt, W. M. The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1953. Weber, David J. Bárbaros: Spaniards and their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2005.

Chapter 5

4 The Authentication of a Discursive Isl am Shi’a Alter natives to Sufi Orders

Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)

Since the 1980s some Senegalese Sunni Muslims have been “converting” to Shi’a 1

Islam. This small but growing community is not well–known. In fact most scholars of Senegal and Senegalese Sunni religious leaders and their followers are surprised to hear that Shi’a Islam is spreading among West Africans. The discovery of this branch of Islam is one of the responses of the Senegalese search for an authentic Islam. Throughout the Muslim world there is a tendency to return to earlier practices of Islam perceived as a solution to the failures attributed to Western influence and the innovations (bida) in recent Islamic practice. It is this desire for “true” knowledge about Islam in a return to the scriptural sources that drove some Senegalese Muslims to read various religious and legal books, visit Islamic scholars and clerics seeking the truth about their religion, and learn about other ways of being Muslim.2 This chapter explores how a collectivity of converts works to establish Shi’a Islam as not only authentic Islam but also as authentically Senegalese.3 Adapting Shi’a Islamic practice to the culture of Senegalese Sufi orders is one way of distancing religious ritual from the perception that Shi’a Islam is Iranian or revolutionary. Reformist movements, either Sunni or Shi’i, were more likely to spread among Muslims who were literate in Arabic.4 Authentication is “dependent on textual study and historical inquiry, as well as on a particular notion of rationality.”5 Authentication is closely linked to objectification, where “explicit, widely shared, and ‘objective’ questions are modern queries that increasingly shape the discourse and practice of Muslims in all social classes.”6 These frameworks can be applied to an African context, where literacy in Arabic and knowledge of scriptural sources is understood as one way to become a modern Muslim. Eickelman and Piscatori date the beginning of this process of authentication in the Middle East to events taking place in the 1980s.7 Other

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scholars argue that such movements began even earlier in Africa—in the 1930s and 40s in Mali, and as early as 1848 in Senegal.8 Asad labels Islam a “discursive tradition,”9 linking religious discourses to established histories of interpretation, debate, and authorization, which highlight traditions of the past. He suggests, “If one wants to write an anthropology of Islam one should begin, as Muslims do, from the concept of a discursive tradition that includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the Qur’an and the Hadith.”10 Tradition, for Asad, establishes orthodoxy and orthopraxy in a given historical and material context: “A tradition consists essentially of discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a history.”11 Asad’s overly textual notion of a discursive tradition is not universal, and whereas Muslims may be returning to the sources and to their interpretation of earlier practices of Islam, they are also adapting these discourses and religious practices to their local cultures in the present.12 Senegalese converts to Shi’a Islam have turned to the scriptural texts as a result of their appreciation of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian Revolution was the recent historical event that encouraged them to go back further in history to the schism between Sunnis and Shi’a and to refer to the textual sources from the century following the prophet’s death. Yet Asad does not consider the Iranian Revolution as “making history” but “merely [an] attempt (hopelessly) ‘to resist the future’ or ‘to turn back the clock of history.’”13 Instead Asad declares, starting with the Christian model of Enlightenment, that “to make history, the agent must create the future, remake herself, and help others to do so, where the criteria of successful remaking are seen to be universal . . . To that extent, history can be made only on the back of a universal teleology.”14 A universal teleology is not always useful in understanding, as certain Muslims do, what historical events were most important to their religious lives. I therefore build on Asad’s notion of Islam as a discursive tradition by understanding “discursive” to refer to texts and tradition as well as how Muslims speak of these in the present. In situating this debate in Africa, I explore how these discursive traditions, which are from the past and also of the past (i.e. no longer in existence), as well as from geographical regions far from where they are currently debated,15 are made applicable to Muslims in Africa. I open up Asad’s definition of “tradition” to include discursive traditions that are not (yet) established historically, along the lines of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s invention of tradition.16 I am not suggesting that Shi’a Islam is invented, but that its recent adoption in Africa involves a creative (re)working of local cultures and religious practices, especially when religious tradition is enmeshed in intellectual as well as socioeconomic motives, where the latter is unaddressed in Asad’s theory. This broadening of the scope of Islam as a discursive tradition allows for the inclusion of converts, those not born into a particular tradition, who also engage discursively with certain Islamic ideas. Senegalese converts insist on historical roots of Shi’a Islam in Senegal with the spread of Islam in the tenth century, perhaps an imagined past that contradicts the (equally imagined) Sunni version of African Islamic history accepted by historians.17 This (re)narrated past can be used to convince others of Shi’a Islam’s authenticity in West Africa.18 Senegalese converts further envision a religious conscience in the Senegalese people favorable to Shi’a Islam, which shares many attributes of Sufi Islam. Unlike the process of authentication elsewhere in the Muslim world, Senegalese conversion to Shi’a Islam did not result in “cultural authenticity,” defined as “being true to one’s community and faith.”19 Reaching beyond Sufi origins to foreign interpretations of Islam can lead to hostility for Senegalese converts within their own

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communities. They work hard to demonstrate that Shi’a Islam can be authentically Senegalese by adapting Shi’i theology and ritual to distinctly Senegalese cultural practices. Discursive traditions from the Middle East bring with them new power structures and economic opportunities, but they are not welcome by all in sub-Saharan Africa, especially not by those loyal to the existing religious and/or political authorities. For example, while some religious authorities and Muslim communities were in favor of the Islamic literature distributed by the Iranian embassy, president Abdou Diouf closed the embassy in 1984 for spreading religious propaganda. The government is at times obligated to please the marabouts controlling Senegal’s religious status quo, fearful of new religious challenges to the official secular public space. Protest also comes from illiterate talibe (disciples), whose knowledge of Islam is linked to the knowledge of their marabouts (Muslim clerics), and a conviction—no different from other Muslims—that their Islam is the true Islam. Ideas of Shi’a Islam’s historicity in Senegal were also actively promoted through Iranian efforts strategically aimed at combating Saudi Arabian objectives of spreading throughout Africa a Wahhabi-influenced Islam.20 Converts deem that the spread of Shi’a Islam is impeded by criticism from the so-called Wahhabis, who are far more numerous in Senegal, and who envision their role as restorers of Islam from what they perceive to be innovations, superstitions, deviances, heresies and idolatries, especially inherent in Sufi and Shi’a Islam. Hostility comes as well from other foreign discursive traditions, such as the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman and other Sunni reformist movements, working their way into territories in which they were not historically embedded.21 These struggles for religious power are well addressed in Asad’s definition of orthodoxy: “Wherever Muslims have the power to regulate, uphold, require, or adjust correct practices, and to condemn, exclude, undermine, or replace incorrect ones, there is the domain of orthodoxy . . . Argument and conflict over the form and significance of practices are therefore a natural part of any Islamic tradition.”22 Opponents cannot stop the spread of these Islamic traditions through modern means of communication to reach new publics.23 Literacy is increasing in Senegal, in French as well as Arabic. At the same time, reformist Islamic publicity is disseminating to more remote areas of Africa, some specifically targeting the African communities. New (or not so new) religious ideas are spread through books as well as media technologies. Press coverage of the Iranian Revolution echoed the revolution’s effect to areas it could never have dreamed of reaching. With the newspapers and television introducing Ayatollah Khomeini to those who would not otherwise have come in contact with him, these inquisitive individuals sought more information about the man and his cause and were won over by his powerful messages; in turn, they spread his ideas to their own people. Cybercafes mushroomed in Senegal over the past decade. With increased Internet access came a proliferation of Internet resources about Islam, photos of religious leaders, recordings of their speeches, and chat rooms where one could seek answers to questions about Islam. The global spread of religious ideas took off at a pace of its own. Eickelman and Piscatori24 point out that objectification of religion is a modern phenomenon precisely because it depends on this emergence of mass education, literacy, publishing, and communication technologies. The search for modern forms of authentic knowledge cannot lead to social change on its own. Inherent in Islamic education is the authority bestowed on those who are knowledgeable, and with the spread of religious knowledge through books, media and the Internet comes a broadening of the scope of religious authority and the resulting conflict with the old political communities.25 Religious scholars who were once revered for their guidance are losing their monopoly over religion with a growing

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number of educated Muslims turning directly to the texts, which they interpret themselves. Senegalese converts to Shi’a Islam use their literacy in the Arabic language and their individually acquired libraries of Islamic legal books (Photo 5.1) to bypass the authority of Sufi marabouts. Yet they do not necessarily envisage their new religious identity as cutting all ties with their Sufi roots. As this chapter demonstrates, Shi’a Islam thus becomes an alliance within the larger Sufi orders where an elite group of educated Muslims in both Sunni and Shi’a Islam belong. Rosander26 juxtaposes African Islam with Islam in Africa, defining “African Islam” as the “contextualized” or “localized” forms of Islam found in Sufi contexts, which is seen as culturally as well as religiously flexible and accommodating. “Islam in Africa” designates Islamist tendencies that aim to “purify” Islam from indigenous African ideas and Western influences.27 I question such a division, arguing that Shi’a Islam is not “purely” an outside Islamic force, but it has become “vernacularized”28 along its journey, adapting to the local social, economic, and political climates. In this context, vernacularization is the intellectual process by which Shi’a Islam is adjusted and interpreted against Sufi ideology and Senegalese culture. These scholarly operations and the scriptural dimension of Shi’a Islam subtract the cultural and political Arab or Iranian elements from Islam, enabling it to become, as my informants have articulated, distinctly Senegalese. Furthermore, Villalón29 contends that Islamic reformists have remained limited to a small group of urban Muslims with little resonance among most Senegalese. Although his later research has focused on Murid and Tijan reformist groups with growing adherents,30 he maintains that new forms of Islam cannot transform Senegal’s existing

Photo 5.1 Library of Aly Yacine (PSLF) Centre Islamique de Recherche et d’Information in Guediawaye (and its founder). (Photo taken by the author).

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religious system. Although Senegalese reformists have not yet mobilized the masses, I question whether they are as marginalized and powerless as Villalón and others31 portray them to be. In addition to a small network of Shi’a Muslims developing in Dakar, Senegalese in the countryside are also beginning to convert. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, many political scientists and other analysts have begun to evaluate Shi’i influence by its success in political awakening and calls for revolution, which is not the goal of Senegalese Shi’a. Instead converts portray themselves as leaders of an intellectual movement, and use their Islamic knowledge of both Sunni and Shi’i libraries to educate the Senegalese population. The search for an authentic Islam through Shi’a Islam is not due entirely to the exposure of Senegalese to religious ideologies from abroad; converts must also be ready to leave their native religion. Many Shi’a in Senegal are from the Pular ethnic group, which refers to converts as perðo mbotu. This is translated as “migrating from the cloth that ties the baby to its mother’s back,” that is, straying from one’s parents’ tradition. Opportunity or circumstance led some Senegalese to encounter Shi’a Islam through Islamic literature, media representations, or encounters with Lebanese or Iranian Shi’a, whereas the sociopolitical context of Senegal and distaste for the dominant maraboutic tradition is what encouraged them to convert. This chapter describes the development of a Senegalese Shi’a Islamic communitas32 through an examination of how transnational Islam is incorporated into a particular Senegalese religious context of the Sufi orders. Through choosing to associate with global Islamic ideologies, meanings and functions of local Islam are rethought. Converts break (incompletely) with their religious and political past, inspired by ideas imported from abroad in the hope of inventing a new Senegalese future. I begin by briefly illustrating the discursive traditions of the Sufi orders, the source of maraboutic authority challenged by converts to Shi’a Islam. I mention the predominantly Shi’a Lebanese community of Senegal, and then turn to the influence of the Iranian Revolution on Senegalese reformist Muslims. Finally I examine the development of a vernacular Shi’a Islam.

A n Overv iew o f S ene galese S u fi Orde rs a nd the Ar r ival of S hi’a Isl a m Senegal today is more than 90 percent Sunni Muslim, dominated by a tradition of Sufi orders founded by sheikhs, religious clerics who have become saints. The descendents of these sheikhs, who inherit the spiritual power or baraka of the founder,33 continue to lead each order. The oldest Sufi order in Senegal is the Qadriyya, with origins in Baghdad.34 The largest is the Tijaniyya, an order that began in Fez, Morocco.35 The most well-known order is the Muridiyya, whose founder, Amadou Bamba, was Senegalese.36 Bamba’s Black African origin is important for many followers.37 Referred to as marabouts in Senegal, sheikhs teach and guide the talibe, their disciples, who study in Islamic schools called daara where they learn the Quran by rote memorization.38 The marabouts are perceived as all-knowing intermediaries between the talibe and God, and often have the role of “purifying” or “simplifying” the basic teachings of Islam to make them more accessible to non-literate Muslims. Scholars, such as Cruise O’Brien, have suggested that the Senegalese case is an exception in Africa in that the intermediary auspices of the Sufi orders are institutionalized in the “assertion of an authentic (‘empirical’) statehood over most of the national territory, involving rural masses as well as elites.”39 Others have argued that Sufism as practiced

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in Senegal has developed unique variations to Islam as practiced elsewhere in the Muslim world, and Senegal’s most significant innovation is that social organization takes preeminence over ideology or theology in Islam.40 For example, the Sufi orders exhibit a version of the Protestant ethic, where work, along with prayer and religious instruction, are the fundamental Islamic tenets. Senegalese Sufis are exemplified by the ritual of the njebbel, the vow of obedience pronounced by the talibe to their marabouts: “I place my soul and my life in your hands. Whatever you order I will do; Whatever you forbid I will refrain from.”41 While I acknowledge the strong influence of religion on Senegalese politics and society, in emphasizing the linkages between Muslims in Senegal and the Middle East I do not focus on the exception or uniqueness of Senegal’s Sufi orders which prevails in these established political science accounts of Islam in Senegal.42 The ultimate social, political, and economic power perceived to be controlled by these marabouts and their occasional abuses of this power leads some Muslim reformists, both Sunni and Shi’i, to contest the dominance of the Sufi orders in Senegal. Disciples displeased with their marabout can leave and pledge their vows to another. Arabic schools are not always directly affiliated to an order. Members of different religious groups often pray together in mosque during Friday prayer. The Sufi orders, both in their self-representation as well as their portrayal in the established Western scholarship—as described in the introduction to this volume—are not the only discursive traditions of Islam in Senegal. Choosing a branch of Islam from outside Senegal enables Senegalese to remain good Muslims while escaping the local Senegalese adaptation of Islam. Most Senegalese Muslims are Sunni and believe that when the prophet Mohammad died in 632 CE, he did not designate a successor or establish a system for his replacement. This question caused a schism between Sunnis and Shi’a, who argue that Mohammad designated his cousin and son-in-law Ali to follow him. Muslims who supported Ali were known as shi’at Ali, the partisans of Ali. Most Muslims did not endorse the view that their leader should be a descendant of the prophet, however, and call themselves orthodox adherents of the sunnah, the body of Islamic law based on the words and deeds of Mohammad and his successors. The question of succession is the main political difference between Sunnis and Shi’a, but other minor differentiating practices exist in the required ablutions before prayer; the position of the arms while bowing in prayer; and the turba, the small clay tablet representing the earth of the holy Iraqi city of Karbala to which Shi’a Muslims touch their foreheads when prostrating instead of to synthetic prayer rugs. They also commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the son of Ali, who was murdered in the battle of Karbala on the tenth day of the Muslim month of Muharram in 680 CE. This is the major mourning ritual that distinguishes Shi’a from Sunnis. Shi’a Islam was brought to Senegal through the migration of people and ideas and both Lebanese and Iranian influences. Lebanese migrants first arrived in West Africa as the result of a colonial fluke. As early as the 1880s, and especially during the 1920s, emigrants left Lebanon because of economic hardship for Marseilles. They planned to continue on to the United States or South America, where there had been previous Lebanese immigration, but their ship docked at Dakar. The French colonial power convinced them to stay in West Africa to work as intermediaries in the peanut trade between the French in the cities and Senegalese peasants in the rural areas. Religion, in particular Shi’a Islam, had not been featured in the Lebanese process of settling and forming a new identity in Senegal until the arrival in 1969 of Abdul Monem El-Zein, a sheikh from Lebanon who trained in Najaf, Iraq.43 There was no formal

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Shi’a religious representation in Senegal until the founding of the Lebanese Islamic Institute in 1978. Sheikh El-Zein came to Dakar shortly before two defining events in the making of a transnational Shi’a movement: the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990) and the Iranian Revolution (1979). The Iranian embassy has also played a subtle role in encouraging Shi’a Islam in Dakar. Iran has a history of economic cooperation with Senegal from the time of Reza Shah, but the embassy was closed in 1984 for spreading Islamic propaganda. The Iranian embassy reopened in the early 1990s and has been careful to stress only its economic activities in Senegal.44 However, certain embassy events continue to promote Shi’a Islam. Iranians hold an annual reception for prominent Lebanese and Senegalese Muslims for the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, and they finance Senegalese intellectuals to attend Islamic conferences in Tehran. The presence of Iranian Presidents Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad at the Organization of the Islamic Conference meetings in Dakar in 1991 and 2008 respectively was highly publicized, as was Senegalese President Wade’s 2003 and 2006 visits to Iran. In addition, an Iranian sheikh built the Hawza Al-Rasul Al-Akram45 in 2001, which is located not far from the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. Nevertheless, more important than the official diplomatic and proselytizing missions of Lebanon and Iran were the perceptions by members of the Senegalese public of the authority commanded by Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iranian Revolution and the authenticity he afforded Shi’a Islam.

Th e I s l a mic Revo lution S preads to Sen ega l Many of the now classical studies of Senegalese Islam were carried out before the Islamic revival resulting from the Iranian Revolution, and research must be revisited in light of this development. Like Muslims in other parts of the world, Africans were impressed by the collapse of a secular state in Iran. Keddie46 conducted a survey in the Muslim world with regard to revolutionary tendencies, including two African countries: Nigeria and Senegal. She concluded that for an Islamist movement to succeed, a country must have oil revenues or profits (such as remittances), rapid modernization, migration from the countryside to cities, growing income gaps, upper class conspicuous consumption, and a secular or Westernizing government with widespread popular disillusionment. She found that Nigeria fit this model, but Senegal did not and does not have a major Islamist movement, pointing to the divisiveness of the Sufi orders in Senegal as preventing the population from rallying around a single religious leader. Kepel also examines “radical” Islamist movements in Senegal, which aim to use the Iranian Revolution as a case to “shake up the traditional Islam of the brotherhoods.”47 He argues that the Iranian model enables Muslims to distance themselves from the modern European example, which is often associated with colonialism and imperialism. Muslim reformists are often not understood in terms of an alternative modernity, but rather as “terrorists”48 with a cause “to arouse emotional sympathy and enthusiasm and to galvanize with an example of victory won by violence.”49 Despite the odds outlined by Keddie and Kepel, and by Villalón as described in the introduction to this chapter, I argue that Senegalese have dabbled in Islamist endeavors and some, but not all, have succeeded. Diop and Diouf50 have linked the transition from presidents Senghor to Diouf, and the “crisis of the regime,” to the increased interest in Islam in Senegal following the Iranian Revolution. Other authors have drawn similarities between the marabouts in Senegal and the Ayatollahs in Iran. Niasse goes so far as to use both titles interchangeably: “the Iranian marabout, or

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rather, the Ayatollah as they say in Tehran . . . .”51 Moreau asks, “Is it possible to imagine the Senegalese or Malian marabouts playing a role similar to that of the Iranian mullahs and ayatollahs against the regime of the Shah?”52 Such a comparison is also evident in Magassouba’s53 provocative title Islam in Senegal: Tomorrow the Mullahs? He remarks that the Iranian Revolution certainly had repercussions in Senegal and sparked much interest and commentary by the Senegalese Muslim community. He describes in detail the beginning of the political career of Al-Hajj Ahmed Khalifa Niasse, nicknamed the Ayatollah of Kaolack, who created an Islamic party called Hizboulahi (the party of God) in August 1979.54 According to Magassouba this was the first attempt to create an Islamic political party in Senegal, and perhaps in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Niasse disseminated cassettes throughout Senegal and The Gambia with his call to the people to overthrow Senghor, Senegal’s first (and only Catholic) president, who established a secular state. He also set fire to the French flag and brought banners reading, “Yesterday Iran, Today Senegal,” to a press conference covering François Mitterand’s visit to Senegal in May 1982. Niasse was not the only Senegalese Muslim to be inspired by Iran. Al-Hajj Cheikh Mohammad Touré, the leader of Senegal’s Islamic reform movement, modeled his version of an Islamic state for Senegal after Khomeini’s Iran. Touré was born in 192555 to a prominent religious family, and studied in a traditional Quranic school. He rejected the Senegalese maraboutic system at an early age, and later studied in Mauritania. He also participated in a pilot program of Senegalese students in Algeria, until Leopold Sedar Senghor, then an influential politician and representative at the French National Assembly, under pressure from the French administration in Algeria, decided that teaching the Arabic language was useless and revoked their scholarships in 1952. Touré returned to Senegal and founded the Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM) in 1953, and began to write prolifically about Islamic reform. After two visits to Saudi Arabia, he left the UCM in 1979, disapproving of its collaboration with the Senegalese government, and founded the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman and Harakat AlFalah movements, two reformist Muslim organizations.56 Cheikh Touré was also inspired by Iran, and wrote two articles about his travels there.57 Invited by the Iranian authorities as part of more than three hundred writers, journalists, and leaders of Islamic movements from forty-eight countries, Touré participated in the third anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1–12, 1982) and also saw for himself the realities of the revolution in Iran. He attended various popular demonstrations at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, the Sports Complex, and Martyrs’ Square. Touré was moved by these demonstrations, which for him were a symbol of the leadership of Mullahs and Ayatollahs as well as the Iranian people’s will to defend the Islamic Republic, most notably women and children.58 He witnessed how all Western imitations were banned from the lives of the Iranians, how Islamic values were honored everywhere and oriented everyone, and how spiritual and temporal dualities converged in symbiosis toward one goal: The Creator. Iran’s international invitees met the president, the prime minister, the minister of Islamic orientation, members of the Supreme Court, the great Ayatollahs of Qom, and the guide of the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini. Touré was touched by their simplicity and humility. He noted that most of all, “It is not only a matter of liberating, restoring justice, and saving Iran and Iranians, but also of helping all oppressed people of all countries to liberate themselves across geographic, national or religious differences. Islam prescribes all Muslims to engage in this direction.”59 The brother of the Ayatollah of Kaolack, another Senegalese public figure, also has ties to Iran. Sidy Lamine Niasse is the son of a prominent marabout, is fluent in Arabic

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and studied Islamic law at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University from 1975 to 1979. Niasse disapproves of the direction Senegal is heading, namely toward the West. Niasse visited Iran for the first time at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, with the goal of applying the revolution to Senegal. He later concluded that the West would never let an Islamic revolution occur in Senegal. The best he could do was introduce Islam through the media, a more limited goal. He was imprisoned from November 2, 1979, to November 2, 1980.60 In prison he met a journalist and they discussed the need for a Muslim newspaper to compete with Afrique Nouvelle, a Senegalese newspaper initiated by the Catholic church in 1945. In his autobiographical account of the establishment of his media empire, Wal Fadjri,61 Niasse reflects, “My goals . . . are to restore, using Wal Fadjri, the place and importance the Muslim religion should have maintained in a society that has been Islamicized for centuries, but Islam’s heritage has been neglected and its cultural references lost.”62 In December 1983 Niasse obtained 100,000 FF (5 million CFA) from an Iranian in Paris who worked for the Ministry of Islamic Orientation. He used this money to start Wal Fadjri, whose first biweekly edition appeared on January 13, 1984.63 Wal Fadjri succeeded, at first as a biweekly radical Islamic magazine, and since 1994 as a respectable liberal newspaper, although it has since become more mainstream. It was acclaimed by readers for providing the point of view of the opposition to the Senegalese governmental newspaper Le Soleil. The early editions of Wal Fadjri magazine were openly pro-Shi’i.64 For example, the first edition of Wal Fadjri included an article by Sayyid Mohammad Baqr Al-Sadr, an Iraqi scholar who was later allegedly murdered by Saddam Hussein. Wal Fadjri published long extracts from Khomeini’s writings, a defense of Iran’s position against Iraq in the war, and bitterly attacked Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The magazine also concentrated on the Lebanese civil war, drawing in Senegalese readers with enticing titles such as “Beirut: What the Press Does Not Say.”65 Another article, “The Efforts of the Shi’a Scholars,”66 provided a general description of Shi’a Islam, including, “The efforts of the Shi’a scholars did not aim to impose their beliefs or the conversion of Sunnis because that would go against Islamic freedom of thought.”67 It provided brief biographies and described the intellectual accomplishments of reformers such as Iranian Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani, Lebanon’s Shi’i authority Sharaf Al-Din, and Iraqi scholar Kashif Al-Ghita. It also explained the tensions between Sunnis and Shi’a, and concluded with a discussion of the work of these Shi’a reformers toward a rapprochement between the two Muslim denominations. Senegalese were first publicly exposed to Shi’a Islam through Wal Fadjri’s articles in what can be considered a secular objectification of Islam.

The Development of Senegalese S hi’a C O M M U N I TA S The Senegalese public figures previously described were influenced by Iran without leaving Sunni Islam. They tried, not always successfully, to incorporate the message of the Iranian Revolution into Senegalese discursive tradition and, like Wal Fadjri, created new discourses about Islam. Other Senegalese have converted to Shi’a Islam, forming what I will refer to as communitas. Turner68 has adapted the term communitas to describe a common experience shared by a community, usually through the liminality involved in a rite of passage that brings all participants onto an equal level. In communitas, people are joined together through intense feelings of social belonging,

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and stand together outside society. Senegalese Shi’a congregate for religious holidays and rituals, and engage in communal discourse about their religious experiences in discovering Shi’a Islam as well as their occasional marginalization by other Muslims in Senegal. Senegal’s Shi’a converts are an elite community of highly educated intellectuals who frequently speak standard Arabic among themselves and share a minority religion that others do not understand and often do not even know exists in Senegal. They are from all ethnic groups in Senegal and initially from various Sufi orders (with a rare Christian). Although most movement leaders were Tijan before becoming Shi’a, others were Murid or Qadr. Some of them made a Salafi detour before becoming Shi’a; others converted directly from Sufi Islam. Converts are from all over Senegal, ranging from the urban areas of Dakar and its suburbs and Saint-Louis, to regional hubs such as Kaolack, to the villages of the Futa and the Casamance. Some converts are well-off and had the means to study in Canada or in the Arab world; others lack such financial means but, through dedication to their studies and the right networks, received scholarships to send them abroad or to educate them in Senegal’s Lebanese-run Islamic schools. Most converts are fluent in the Arabic language; few are French educated and do not have a firm command of Arabic. They discovered Shi’a Islam both in Senegal and in their travels to other countries. Although Lebanese Shi’a first arrived in Senegal more than a century ago, today’s movement of Senegalese Shi’a is much more recent, brought about by two processes. First, since the 1970s, books in Arabic, French, and English translation began to circulate in Senegal from Iran. Second, the Lebanese Sheikh El-Zein began to teach Shi’a Islam to Senegalese. The Islamic Institute in Dakar caters primarily to Lebanese, whereas the sheikh claims to have founded five mosques and approximately 130 madaris, religious schools, located outside Dakar and led by his trained Senegalese religious teachers and clerics.69 Senegalese converts partially depend on the Lebanese sheikh and prominent Lebanese merchants to help finance their institutions and activities. In addition to their own income-generating activities, they also hope for more tangible rewards for their faith from Iran than merely the propagation of the Islamic Revolution. As I mentioned previously, some Senegalese were introduced to Shi’a Islam through interactions with the Lebanese community; others were inspired by the Iranian Revolution, either directly through Imam Khomeini’s charisma, or indirectly through the negative depiction of the revolution by the Western press. Still others were attracted to the religion by reading philosophical and theological books or religious propaganda. Occasionally, the politics of the Iranian Revolution color the life histories of these converts, but most often intellectual reasoning convinced them that Shi’a Islam is the true Islam.70 Senegalese converts have not been attracted to Shi’a Islam because of Islamist ambitions, as Keddie, Kepel, and scholars of Senegal71 have assumed and of which they failed to find evidence. Instead, converts’ accounts of Shi’a Islam as an intellectual reform movement are full of hope that this branch of Islam will bring economic development to Senegal and peace to the southern separatist region, the Casamance, which Christianity and Sufi Islam have failed to achieve.72 There are many ways to discursively authenticate a tradition, and Senegalese Shi’a do not share the same vision of how to make Islam understood to other Senegalese. Despite being a small minority, there are numerous Shi’i institutes, a testimony to Senegalese insistence on doing things their own way. Some prefer teaching, whereas others work toward establishing a formal Shi’i movement. Some encourage political involvement, whereas others spread knowledge through radio or television programs. Because they arrived at Shi’a Islam from various perspectives, usually from a Sufi,

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Salafist, or French education, they envision their orientation, cultural, political and religious perspectives, and work in different ways.

Building and Rebuilding Islamic Institutions A primary means to authenticate Shi’a Islam in Senegal is to spread literacy in the Arabic language through education. Many Senegalese Shi’i schools and institutes were built in the 1990s, hidden in Dakar’s suburbs of Guediawaye, Parcelles Assainies, and Yeumbeul, or in the Casamance region of southern Senegal, such as Kolda and Ziguinchor. Hard to find, and therefore difficult to be targeted by opponents of Shi’a Islam, these institutions exclusively cater to those who are open to learning from them, Shi’a and Sunni Muslim alike. Lebanese Shi’a finance some of these institutes through the khums tax, the Shi’a Islamic tax of one-fifth of all income, and Senegalese migrants contribute through remittances. Yet Senegalese are critical of both Lebanese and Iranians for not being more generous or more involved in their activities. One convert told me there are myriad institutions despite the few Shi’a, because the founder of each new institute hopes for funding by the Iranians (unfortunately, mostly to no avail). Dakar’s suburb of Guediawaye was chosen as the site for the Aly Yacine (PSLF)73 Centre Islamique de Recherche et d’Information because, its founder told me, the neighborhood was full of dance and music, not religion and scholarship. The small institute was first located in a rented building in the popular residential quarter with goats roped outside and laundry drying in the wind. Initially, it consisted of a small mosque, a table and chairs for classes, and a library with two old computers. A phone booth was built in the institute to help finance its activities, and a large television was installed to attract passersby to the institute, both to use the telephone and discover Islam. The Islamic center in particular and Shi’a Islam in general were publicized by the distribution of a calendar (see Photo 5.2) containing colorful photos of Iranian Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei.74 These methods were successful, and in February 2007 Aly Yacine moved to a new, larger building purchased by the Islamic center, which consists of a salon furnished with sofas, and a computer room with newer facilities—two computers, several printers, scanners, a photocopier, and a large stereo with fancy speakers, all donated by the wives of several ambassadors to Senegal. A library/prayer room is full of Shi’i books from Iran and Lebanon, and some that Sheikh El-Zein has published in Senegal. Most books are in Arabic, dealing with philosophy and Islam in general, with a few in French, especially contributions written by Ayatollah Musavi Lari of Qom.75 Outside in the courtyard, a tutoring session was taking place for a dozen high school students struggling with their math lesson. The center is a Franco-Islamic school, and lessons are both religious and secular in nature. Activities include Arabic classes for adults and children, and the sheikh who founded the center teaches a tafsir (Quranic commentary) class on Thursday nights and philosophy and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) on Saturdays. The institute hosts celebrations for Ramadan and mawlud, the prophet’s birthday, in addition to celebrating ashura, the tenth day of the month of Muharram, which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. If the center continues to grow, there are plans to build an additional level onto the house. Religious pictures of Mecca and Ayatollah Khomeini and Khamenei decorate the walls, in addition to photographs of the center’s founder with Sheikh El-Zein and various Iranian religious and political dignitaries.

Photo 5.2 Calendar publicizing Aly Yacine with images of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. (Author’s collection).

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Aly Yacine had also expanded to become Association Pour le Développement Humain Durable, with plans to apply for non-governmental organization (NGO) status for its work with the environment, drugs, malaria, AIDS, and famine. This includes an Association Fatima Zahra, a women’s development organization that functions as a tontine, a Senegalese rotating credit association; it encourages the women to work, for example, in selling powdered soap or vegetables in small quantities. The association also provides free medical consultations for those in the neighborhood and envisions itself as working to eradicate poverty. Aly Yacine’s founder told me that being merely an Islamic organization no longer suffices without also providing services to the people. Madrasat Imam Al-Baqr in Yeumbeul is an Arabic-French school for 139 students (in 2003). The sheikh who directs the school does not renounce Tijan Islam, but builds on the notion of njebbel, the vow of obedience to a marabout, in serving both as a muqaddam (Sunni representative) for Tijan Khalife Mansour Sy as well as a wakil (Shi’i representative) for Ayatollah Khamenei. His Islamic knowledge enables him to go beyond the requirement within the Tijan order that talibe do not follow any other doctrine. Books come from a variety of places: the Quran from Saudi Arabia, Arabic grammar books from Lebanon, an Arabic math book from Nigeria, Maliki fiqh books from Tunisia, history books written by Sheikh El-Zein, and books with French lessons from Senegal. Although it is common for Islamic schools to acquire books from many places, in Senegal many Islamic schools do not have any books at all. The fact that the Shi’i schools make books available to their students attests to the importance the educators place on literacy and a return to the texts. The school is financed through student fees and donations from the Lebanese community; Senegalese remittances from Gabon, America, and France; and Shi’a in India, Lebanon, and Iran, among other sources. Although the student body is composed of students from all of Senegal’s religious orders, some of the oldest students have formed a Shi’a Islamic youth association called Jama’at Ahl Al-Beit, with thirty-five active male and female members. The association helps the school with fundraisers and event planning. They distribute letters and invitations, set up tents and chairs for invitees, and buy sheep to slaughter for celebrations. The director of Madrasat Imam Al-Baqr explained to me that he faced many problems establishing Shi’a Islam in Senegal. Sufis do not accept new things, even if they are not overly hostile against them. When he started the school in 1992 he was just younger than forty years old, much younger than the other teachers, who could not recognize a man of his age in an authoritative position, despite his impressive knowledge of Islam. In his office he showed me photos of the mosque of Medina and the Ka’ba in Mecca. He commented that because Senegalese believe that Shi’a do not have minarets in their mosques and are not Muslim, he purchased these photos to demonstrate that the Shi’a do indeed accept minarets and perform the Hajj. He remarked that Senegalese generally do not study, but form opinions based on images, therefore showing them other images enables them to accept differences. New forms of religious authority in Senegal, then, are about acquiring Islamic knowledge as well as learning how to apply this knowledge in culturally appropriate ways in order to command respect from others. Initially, Senegalese converts also formed various Shi’i associations. Ansar Mohammad, the largest of these with approximately ten active members, was created in 1999. The temporary headquarters of this association were located outside the residence of

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one of its members, on the cement platform at the top of the staircase. Because the association did not have the means to buy chairs or electricity, their Friday evening meetings were lit by moonlight. The association’s objectives were to bring a cultural revolution to Senegal and to make Islam better known to the Senegalese. Their motto was courtesy and brotherhood, and they were active in organizing debates on Islam in various locations throughout Senegal as well as sponsoring dinners and celebrations of the major Islamic holidays. The former president of Ansar Mohammad stressed that it is not a political movement, and that it makes no sense to proclaim that Senegal must be an Islamic state: “Our community has profound roots in Senegal, and does not engage in political activism . . . because we know that these issues would only, in the end, divide the Senegalese, and would lead to a useless debate, so we work to enlighten people on the crucial issues, the ones that help them develop their spirit and their mentality, their conscience, and then will help to develop their country.”76 Other smaller associations met regularly for prayer and study meetings in various locations in and around Dakar. One group met every Sunday night in a lovely little mosque on the corniche (now demolished to make room for a new hotel for the 2008 Islamic Summit, held in Dakar). Members studied together and lectured to one another on Shi’i theology and philosophy with the sound of the waves crashing in the background. In other regions of Senegal, such as the Futa, individuals work to implant the movement but do not yet have formal institutions. I was surprised to find that many fledgling associations had disbanded by the time I returned to Senegal in 2007. Some, but not all, of those involved in the earlier movements had joined a larger institute, well financed (some say by Iran), that suddenly emerged on the Senegalese Shi’a scene. However, press releases claim the idea

Photo 5.3 author.)

Example of a conference educating Senegalese about Ashura. (Photo taken by the

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for the institute was first initiated in 2000. Founded by a Senegalese sherif (who claims descent from the prophet Mohammad and published a book on his succession) from Kolda of Mauritanian origin, Mozdahir International is located near the Dakar airport and consists of offices, a large salon and library, a prayer room, and classrooms. The goals of the institute are in education as well as health and agropastoral development. It runs agricultural projects in Kolda, with a goal of teaching workers how to farm banana plantations and share the profits, in the hope of keeping young farmers rooted in Senegal and helping to prevent illegal immigration, a growing problem in Africa. Like Aly Yacine, Mozdahir International uses Shi’a Islam and the teaching of the prophet Mohammad, “work in this world as if you will live forever, and for the next world as if you will die tomorrow,” to carry out development activities in the name of religion.77 Shi’i organizations, more than their Sunni counterparts, are dependent on NGO status in order to obtain legitimacy and to convince their growing network of followers of the wider benefits of adhering to a minority branch of Islam. The application of religious knowledge and scriptural sources to the modern discourse of development is no less authentic an aspect of Islam-as-a-discursive-tradition. Mozdahir International also sponsored a large colloquium on January 27, 2007, on “Ashura: A Day of Celebration or Day or Mourning?” and published conference papers in a French volume, with an Arabic translation forthcoming, in addition to producing a DVD of the event. The Ashura conference (Photo 5.3)78 was turned into an “annual” event with a second conference held on January 12, 2008, on “The Role of the Ahl Al-Beit Imams (PSLF) in the Preservation of Islam and the Unity of Muslims.”79 Schools in the Casamance region of Senegal are smaller and poorer than those in Dakar. The school in Kolda is situated in the outskirts of the village, and few people know of its existence. The school has two classrooms, a small cement mosque with a tin roof, doors and window shutters, a farm with sheep, goats and chickens, a well, and a satellite dish. A sheikh and his family reside in the school. The sheikh’s office consists of two desks with benches and a small bookshelf in the corner containing fifteen books on Islam in Arabic and a few Qurans in French. In Ziguinchor, Ecole Al-Rasul Al-Islamiyyatu As-Sahihatu is located five kilometers outside of town and well hidden in agricultural fields. The sheikh of the school was unavailable, but one of his students was willing to talk to me. This young informant was twenty-three years old at the time and plans to convert to Shi’a Islam one day. He was in his fourth year of study out of seven. The student’s goal is to complete his studies in the small Shi’i school in Ziguinchor, then go to Dakar to search for a scholarship to study in Iran. Training students to competitively earn scholarships to study in the Middle East is the main objective of the school. I found this young man’s impressions to be an informative illustration of the discourse of Senegalese Shi’a, as the information he conveyed to me revolved around the differences that stood out most in his mind between his own religion and that of his teacher. The inaccuracies of his statements, explained in the endnotes, were telling of the newness of Shi’a Islam to the region and ignorance of its practices. Such discourse demonstrates that the general Senegalese public has not yet developed an understanding of Shi’a Islam that extends beyond the surface of the religion; knowledge is based instead on contrasting superficial stereotypes. Although this student is Tijan, he studies at the Shi’i school, which is open to all Muslims. Shi’a, he said, are known for telling the truth and not lying. They apply shari’a law where others in Senegal do not.80 When Shi’a pray they place a stone on the ground, which represents the blood spilled on the ground when Hussein was “cut

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up into pieces and martyred.”81 Shi’a can pray in any mosque as long as they bring their stones.82 Shi’a are also known for engaging in extensive study of their religion, as they are guardians of the gate that protects the prophet from his enemies.83 This makes Shi’a unique in that they study the Quran more than other Muslims. They meet every Friday morning in Ziguinchor to study the Quran. They do not ask for charity, unlike Sufi talibe who are infamous for begging barefoot with tomato cans to collect donations for their marabouts. When Shi’a die, they are buried on their backs;84 Tijans are buried on their sides. Shi’a wash their feet first; then their hands, mouth, face, and nose three times; and finally arms, head, and ears three times.85 Other Muslims wash differently. According to this young student, “the only thing Shi’a know in life is Ali,”86 whom he called by his Wolofized name Aliou. Aliou was the first Shi’i, but the other companions of the prophet were Tijans, he tells me.87 The commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Ali’s son Hussein during the Shi’i mourning period in the month of Muharram is celebrated by slaughtering a sheep, studying the Quran, and reciting what God said to the prophet. They tell stories of Aliou, distribute candies and people cry. The Lebanese88 and other Shi’i sheikhs in the region will come to this sheikh’s establishment. The student explained to me that some Senegalese discriminate against the Shi’a; thus they keep their secrets from other Muslims, who criticize the Shi’a for not praying in their mosques and preferring Aliou to the prophet. Another secret I was not supposed to know is that in this Shi’i school, following Senegalese Sufi tradition, the sheikh’s students also learned how to work the land, and they cultivated the sheikh’s agricultural fields rich with corn, millet, mangos, potatoes, carrots, squash, papaya, and bananas without pay. The students built a small mosque next to the school, but the construction was not yet complete (in 2003). My informant felt that his Shi’i teacher was more honest than other Tijan or Murid marabouts, because instead of watching television, he reads the Quran and other Shi’i books about Aliou. His sheikh is strong in his knowledge, says this student in awe, because he has memorized the entire Quran. He informed me that it is easy to become a Shi’i by going before the sheikh. However, according to this Tijan student, Shi’a like to keep their conversion a secret because if others find out that these converts were Tijan before becoming Shi’a they will not believe that they are good or real Shi’a. These sketches of various Islamic schools, centers, and institutes are examples of the authentication of Shi’a Islam in Senegal as well as the creation of new religious leaders whose authority lies outside the network of Sufi marabouts. These examples also illustrate that Senegalese Shi’a perceive of their calling to be that of missionaries—to spread the truth regarding Shi’a Islam and to encourage the growth of their small network. They preach this discursive tradition in Wolof or other local languages, first to their friends and families, and eventually to a larger population through teaching, conferences, holiday celebrations, and media publicity. Iranian or Lebanese training does not matter to Senegalese Shi’a leaders: They know one another and speak highly of the other’s efforts but work independently in their native neighborhoods or in areas they deem ripe for change. Leaders specialize in different aspects of Shi’a Islam. Some are trained sheikhs whose expertise ranges from Islamic jurisprudence to Sunni and Shi’i philosophy; others are laymen who are artists, government employees, bankers, teachers, and students. Some schools and institutes are well hidden and cater to an exclusive community of locals in the know; others reach out to a more inclusive population of Shi’a converts and Sunni Muslims. Coming together occasionally for certain meetings and holidays, Senegalese Shi’a leaders believe in a theory of divide

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and conquer, despite their small and generally unknown presence, to reach out to as many people as possible.

Media Publicity Islamic institutions connect with a small number of people in select locations. To expand their population base, Shi’a converts take advantage of the popularity of the radio in Senegal to spread knowledge about Shi’a Islam on the air. My young informant in Ziguinchor told me that the local Shi’a sheikhs speak regularly on the radio in the Casamance, but a larger organized effort takes place in Dakar. Radio Dunya was the first station to sponsor a program on Shi’a Islam, which started in 1994 and lasted a year and a half. Leaders of the Shi’i movement spoke Wednesday nights from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., and took questions from their audience. The show was later moved to Friday evenings. The goal of the radio shows was to counter Wahhabi propaganda against Shi’a Islam. Debates concerned differences between Sunni and Shi’a Islam and discussed monotheism, the Quran, the prophecy, and Islamic history. Radio served as publicity for Senegal’s Shi’a, helping Senegalese discover that Shi’a Islam is Islam, despite its Wahhabi portrayal to the contrary. The program soon came to an end, however, as Radio Dunya’s Wahhabi funders disagreed with the station’s use of its airtime. In particular they were opposed to the Shi’i narration of Islamic history, which highlighted how the Umayyids killed Ahl Al-Beit and that Mu’awiya murdered the sons of Ali. I spoke with the director of these programs, and he accused the Shi’a of spreading such “lies” on his airtime.89 Wal Fadjri Radio began where Radio Dunya left off, creating an Islamic radio show Friday afternoons from 3:30 to 5 p.m., which repeated later in the week. This show chose popular topics and invited speakers representing different Islamic schools to voice their opinions. One program paired Youssou Ndour, Senegal’s most famous musician, with a Shi’i painter to discuss what Islam says about art. The difference in these two artists’ discourses about Islam and the various Islamic laws that they applied to their understanding of art enlightened listeners about variances in Sunni and Shi’a Islam. Recently, to the dismay of several Senegalese Shi’a, such radio shows are becoming less frequent. Converts are starting to use other forms of media to transmit their religious views through publishing articles on Islamic history in Senegalese newspapers90 and speaking on Islamic television programs.

Al - H a jj I br ahim Derw i c he M osque Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche, a prominent Lebanese industrialist, built a large Shi’i mosque (Photo 5.4) next to Sheikh El-Zein’s Al-Zahra school and Dakar’s main intercity bus station. The mosque is headed by a Senegalese sheikh, dressed in full Shi’i robes and turban, and is the only Senegalese Shi’i institution in a central location. The mosque is impressive with high ceilings and a decorated plaster dome (Photo 5.5), and attracts crowds of Muslims during Friday prayer. Friday sermons are orated in Wolof to a mixed group of Murid, Tijan, and Qadr Muslims, with few Shi’a. The sheikh also teaches classes in the mosque, which was recently moved to a three-room school, also built by Al-Hajj Derwiche. Senegalese Shi’a pray in this mosque, as well as in the Lebanese mosque run by Sheikh El-Zein. The sheikh of the mosque explained to me that the adhan (call to prayer) is the Shi’i adhan, which includes references to Ali along with the prophet Mohammad.

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View from inside Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche mosque. (Photo taken by the author.)

Although Shi’i doctrines are applied in the mosque, the sheikh lectures on global issues. He explained, “If you address Shi’a only, Sunnis will find a Sunni mosque, you know. That is why over 2,000 Sunnis pray here on Fridays, along with some 150 Shi’a. They all pray together. Each of them finds what he is after.91 The sermon is not just for Shi’a or Sunnis, it is for all Muslims. During Ramadan, for example, sermons focus on the issues related to fasting. During Hajj season, they center on Hajj issues and so on. You pick a topic related to all and apply it to both Sunnis and Shi’a. They are all Muslims.”92 The sheikh’s choice of Islamic discourse is non-confrontational, and, according to him, the Sunnis in his congregation do not have a problem with their Imam being a Shi’i. During Muharram both Sunnis and Shi’a spend a day at the mosque and listen to a special sermon about the events of the battle of Karbala. The sheikh informed me that the Sunnis are also deeply touched by the events. The Derwiche mosque association meets on the first Wednesday of each month. Both Sunni and Shi’a members have joined the association, whose function is to represent the mosque at religious occasions of other mosques, working to link all Muslims in Senegal. Religious lessons take place on Fridays and Sundays, but there are also daily lessons. The sheikh teaches his pupils to memorize the Quran, and explains to them its interpretation, the Islamic sciences, and Hadith. He also teaches both Shi’i and Sunni fiqh, where Shi’a study Ja’afari fiqh on one side of the mosque, and Sunnis study Maliki fiqh in the opposite corner. Such discursive strategies demonstrate how Shi’a Islam in Senegal is not intended to be a complete break with Sufi Islam; its authenticity is envisioned in the ability to integrate Sufi Muslims into its institutions without requiring any formal transformation of their religious belief or practice, merely the exposure, at times unknowingly, to other Islamic traditions.

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The decorative dome of Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche mosque. (Photo taken by the

Co nc lusi on These ethnographic sketches have shown that despite the claims made by various scholars, some Islamic movements have continued their initial enthusiasm in Senegal. Senegalese are drawn to Shi’a Islam as an alternative to joining the Sufi orders (and not necessarily to shake up or dismiss them); thereby remaining good Muslims while not following the marabouts. Shi’i influences should not always be judged by their

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success in political awakening and calls for revolution. Senegalese converts portray themselves, through various discourses about Islam, as leaders of an intellectual movement that seeks to educate the Senegalese population. Efforts to expand reformist Islam are not aiming to create an Islamic state in Senegal but they endeavor to bring religious awareness, literacy in Arabic, and the ability to read Islamic texts so talibe can come up with their own understanding of Islam. These efforts aspire to decrease the influence of Sufi marabouts on certain students, while attracting their allegiance to other figures of authority. Senegalese Shi’a approach the dissemination of reformist Islam differently than the forcefulness and violence depicted by some scholars of other Islamic movements. Although converts believe that their way is the true way, they do not compel others to accept their views. Moreover, they do not forbid Sufis from practicing or even learning about their own traditions in Shi’i spaces. In fact, many Senegalese converts keep their feet in both Sunni and Shi’i traditions. Shi’a Islam is made more Senegalese through the ways in which the various discursive Islamic traditions converge. There are many examples of integrating Senegalese traditions into Shi’i discourse and practice. The best illustration is shown by Shi’i religious establishments, which cater to all Senegalese Muslims, Qadr, Tijan, Murid and Shi’a alike. Senegalese of all religious backgrounds pray together in both Sunni and Shi’i mosques. Indeed, converts believe that only by spreading religious tolerance and coexistence can Shi’a Islam bring peace to Senegal. The search for an authentic Islam, or a vernacular orthodoxy, is also about power. Power, in the form of coercion, discipline, institutions, and knowledge, gives meaning to religious symbols through social and political means.93 Hastings94 expands on Anderson’s Imagined Communities by arguing that the social effect of written literature can be greater where most people cannot read. This is the case in Africa, where the authority of the written word is mediated across privileged forms of orality. Sufi marabouts and the Lebanese Shi’i sheikh have power precisely because they are literate and educated in matters of Islam. So, too, do Senegalese converts to Shi’a Islam. Literacy in Arabic (and sometimes in French) enabled them to adapt their religion for intellectual reasons, and their religious knowledge brought them followers seeking a better education. Thus in a discursive tradition, an oral literature, as well as a written literature, can be the medium for a people’s self-imagining and the means by which Islamic authority is bestowed. A discursive Islam is built on the convergences of the converts’ new religion with the old as well as the ways in which Shi’a Islam diverges from the Sufi orders. Senegalese were made aware of Shi’a Islam through two independent transnational Shi’i networks, one Lebanese (Arab) and the other Iranian. Through personal relations to Islamic leaders and religious communities both inside and outside Senegal, converts were introduced to the spread of religious books and propaganda, which was the key in locating Shi’a Islam in Senegal. Senegalese Shi’a could imagine themselves part of a global community of Shi’a. The publications they received from Iran and Lebanon helped them feel closer to those who shared their newfound religion, despite cultural differences and geographic distance. Islam, and the Arabic language, enabled Senegalese to interact with other Shi’a and be part of a transnational religious tradition. Shi’a orthodoxy and orthopraxy are then translated into a Senegalese application. Coherent Islamic discourses are generated through spreading literacy in Arabic through education; building schools, mosques, and religious associations; and disseminating publicity about Shi’a Islam through the radio, television, newspapers and Islamic conferences. Historically, the Sufi orders gained their largest following when

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Senegal was engaged in a bitter colonial struggle with France. The spread of Shi’a Islamic communitas and other Islamic reformist movements is indicative of a new struggle, that of Islam versus the West. In appealing to those outside of Senegal holding Islamic power and resources, Senegalese converts can arm themselves with books, knowledge, and the financial means to empower themselves in local Islamic debates. Senegalese are converting not to a Western modernity of Christianity95 but to an Eastern modernity of Islam. The reworking of history and tradition enables them to negotiate new economic linkages, not with France, Saudi Arabia, or other Sunni Arab countries, but with Iran and Lebanon. Converts engage in global intellectual debates and access global Shi’i resources, thus granting them local Islamic authenticity and also providing them with anticipation of bringing about change. Islamic authenticity in Senegal is not envisioned as a return to the past alone. Reaching out to new social, economic, and political networks in a global quest for a true—transnational—Islam is one way to protest a dominant religious order, but, above all, is a means for empowerment. Empowerment is not won only through staging a coup d’état against the religious and political status quo and bringing a bloody Islamic revolution to Senegal. Empowerment is achieved through inclusion and coexistence, through building “Shi’i” institutions that also cater to Sunni Muslims, and through sharpening one’s juridical expertise to excel in the comparison between Maliki (Sunni) and Ja’afari (Shi’i) law. Converts are won over through stressing the complementarities of Sunni and Shi’i Islam before revealing the perceived superiority of Shi’i jurisprudence, by not forcing Shi’i views on others but letting them be convinced on their own and at their own pace. In this way conversion to a Shi’i alternative can peacefully bring change and maybe even economic development in pushing to reform the Sufi orders. The culture of Islam in Senegal is the coexistence of multiple Islamic traditions (Qadr, Tijan, Murid, Sunni reformist movements, Shi’a, etc.). Globalization and the pursuit of authenticity have led to exposure to new religious ideas, which have created multiple discursive traditions of both past and present about being Muslim in Senegal.

Not es Fieldwork in Senegal (approximately twenty-two months from 2000 to 2008) was funded by the J. William Fulbright Program, Population Council, the National Science Foundation, Brown University, and Michigan State University. I would like to thank Mamadou Diouf, David Kertzer, Calvin Goldscheider, Bill Beeman, and Phil Leis for their comments on an earlier draft of this material. Irfan Ahmad and Samuli Schielke offered valuable feedback on the introduction to this chapter. Doaa Darwish provided Arabic to English translations. Cassettes of interviews in French were transcribed by Birama Diagne, Mohamad Cama, and Patricia Pereiro. Noémi Tousignant translated quotations from French into English. Mamadou Diouf helped me check the exactness of this work. I am much obliged to the Senegalese Shi’a for welcoming me into their community, sharing their religious experiences with me, and, above all, having faith in my research. 1. I acknowledge that many Muslims may not consider the change in affiliation from one branch of Islam to another a conversion. For example, Niezen writes “For most reformers ‘conversion’ is too strong a word to describe their change in religious orientation . . . The reformers themselves perceive change as being from laxity and ignorance to rigour and enlightenment. They usually see themselves as having always been Muslims, albeit earlier in life misguided ones,” (“The ‘Community of Helpers of the Sunna,’” 420). Yet Nakash, “The Conversion of Iraq’s Tribes,” notes that Iraqi tribesmen who converted from Sunni to Shi’a Islam perceived the change in religious status to be a conversion, and used the term

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2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

M a ra A. L eich t man rawafid, meaning “rejection” of and “defection” from Sunni dogma. The Senegalese in this study would not oppose using the term conversion to describe their adoption of Shi’a Islam. The intellectual aspects of conversion are dominant in Senegalese discourses about Shi’a Islam; they are not the only reasons for conversion, which will become clear later in this chapter. Financial incentives from Iran and Lebanon and a search for one’s place within Senegalese hierarchies of power also encouraged conversion to Shi’a Islam. Senegalese converts themselves refer to their practice and application of Shi’a Islam as being “Senegalese.” I do not use this term to reproduce the Orientalist discourse of Islam noir or “African” Islam, or to enter into the debate about the existence of a universal Islam versus many local “Islams.” Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, points out that the rise in Arabic literacy resulting from madrasa education spurred the growth of Sunnite sentiment in urban Mali throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Niezen, “The ‘Community of Helpers,’” also finds that the most important criterion for leadership in the rural reform movement among the Songhay of Gao is literacy in Arabic. However, some reformist movements, in Africa and other parts of the world, do not require Arabic literacy. See Samson (Chapter 11 in this volume) and Janson (Chapter 6 in this volume). Deeb, An Enchanted Modern, 20. Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, 38. Ibid. Schultz, “(Re)Turning to Proper Muslim Practice”; Loimeier, “Patterns and Peculiarities.” Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Ibid., 14. Ibid.; See also Anjum, “Islam as a Discursive Tradition,” for an excellent discussion of Asad’s theory. Asad does not deny this latter point, insisting that “it will be the practitioners’ conceptions of what is apt performance, and of how the past is related to present practices, that will be crucial for tradition, not the apparent repetition of an old form” (“The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” 15). Nevertheless, he does not develop in his theory the relationship between the past and its present articulations. Asad, Geneologies of Religion, 19. Ibid. Whereas Asad states that “We shall then write not about an essential Islamic social structure, but about historical formations in the Middle East whose elements are never fully integrated, and never bounded by the geographical limits of ‘the Middle East’” (“The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” 11, italics in original), geographical origin is relevant for Senegalese Muslims. Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition. West African oral traditions connect the history of the Wolof to the Almoravids through the founding King of Jolof, who is said to have been a descendant of Abu Bakr b. Umar (Levtzion, “Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan,” 78). Historians, however, depict the Almoravids, who did come in contact with the Fatimids, as having “finally secured the victory of SunniMaliki Islam in the eleventh century” (Levtzion and Pouwels, The History of Islam in Africa, 2). Brett documents: “In North Africa it was Berber nomads from the western Sahara who took up the anti-Fatimid call of the jurists of Qayrawa-n, to create the militantly Malikite empire of the Almoravids in Morocco and Muslim Spain” (The Rise of the Fatimids, 430). Elsewhere he writes “Ibn Yasin [founder of the Almoravid dynasty] followed the Malikite scholars of Qayrawan in their opposition to the Fatimid Mahdi as a usurper of their authority for the law” (Brett, Ibn Khaldun, 2). Senegalese Shi’a depict the Almoravids as sympathetic to Shi’a Islam from their interaction with the Fatimids, but scholars of the period clearly state that the Almoravids were anti-Fatimid and strongly pro-Malikite. Michael Bonner helped me clarify the history of this period and pointed me to some of these sources. Leichtman, “A Tale of Two Shi’isms,” chapter 9.

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19. Deeb, An Enchanted Modern, 20. 20. The term Wahhabi refers to an Islamic movement that purports to be orthodox, named after the Saudi Arabian founder Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792). This name is rarely used by members of the group today and was first designated by their opponents. Also known as Salafism, the movement accepts the Quran and Hadith as fundamental texts and advocates a puritanical and legalistic theology in matters of faith and religious practice. See Kaba, The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform, for a debate on how closely the West African reformist groups were tied to Saudi Wahhabiyya. 21. See Augis, “Dakar’s Sunnite Women,” for a discussion of the spread of Orthodox Sunni Islam to Dakar’s female students who joined the Ibadu Rahman movement; Janson, “Roaming about for God’s Sake,” on the Gambian following of the Tabligh Jama’at; and Schultz, “(Re)turning to Proper Muslim Practice,” on Islamic moral renewal among Sunni women in Mali. 22. Asad, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” 15–16. 23. Eickelman and Anderson, New Media in the Muslim World. 24. Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics. 25. Ibid. See also Roy, Globalized Islam, and Mandaville, “Globalization and the Politics of Religious Knowledge.” 26. Rosander, “Introduction: The Islamization.” 27. Ibid., 1. 28. Robinson writes that “the companion process to the Islamization of Africa was the Africanization of Islam. By this I mean the various ways that, at different times over the past 1,400 years, Islam has been appropriated or articulated in particular societies; to put it another way, how African groups have created ‘Muslim’ space or made Islam their own” (Muslim Societies in African History, 42). Levtzion and Pouwels also look at Islam in these terms: “Islam energized, enlivened, and animated life in African communities, and at the same time Islam has been molded by its African settings. As a result of the interaction between Muslim and African civilizations, the advance of Islam has profoundly influenced religious beliefs and practices of African societies, while local traditions have ‘Africanized’ Islam” (The History of Islam in Africa, ix). I prefer not to use the term Africanization of Islam, which is too general and tainted a concept, but refer to this process as the vernacularization of Islamic traditions. 29. Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power. 30. Villalón, “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation,” “The Moustarchidine of Senegal,” and “Senegal”; Kane and Villalón, “Entre Confrérisme, Réformisme et Islamisme.” 31. Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam; Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World. 32. Turner, The Ritual Process, discussed in a later section. 33. Cruise O’Brien and Coulon, Charisma and Brotherhood. 34. Batran, “The Kunta, Sı-dı- al-Mukhta-r”; Behrman, Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal; Brenner, “Concepts of T.arı-qa in West Africa.” 35. Brenner, West African Sufi; Kane and Triaud, Islam et Islamismes au Sud du Sahara; Robinson and Triaud, Le temps des marabouts; Triaud and Robinson, La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane. 36. Copans, Les Marabouts de L’Arachide; Coulon, Le marabout et le prince; Creevey, “Ahmad Bamba 1850–1927”; Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal; Diouf, “The Senegalese Murid Trade”; Guèye, Touba: La capitale des mourides; Searing, “God Alone is King.” 37. Another Senegalese Sufi order is the Layen, which syncretically incorporates pre-Islamic beliefs associated with the sea. Its founder Limamou Laye proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi expected at the end of time, and his son Insa Laye as a reincarnation of Jesus. 38. The French first used the term marabout in West Africa to refer to members of Muslim lineages who were also clerics, ranging from the obscure to the well-known and including urban and rural imams or prayer leaders, teachers, scholars, preachers, saints and Sufis, amulet confectioners and diviners. See Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy. On the daara, see Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, and Ware (Chapter 1 in this volume). 39. Cruise O’Brien, “The Senegalese Exception,” 458.

134 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72.

M a ra A. L eich t man Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power. Ibid., 119; see also Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal. See Buggenhagen (Chapter 8 in this volume) for a critique of this literature. For more information on Sheikh El-Zein see Leichtman, “The Intricacies of Being Senegal’s Lebanese Shi’ite Sheikh.” For more details on the Lebanese community of Senegal see Leichtman, “The Legacy of Transnational Lives.” Religious ties between the two countries have been more recently emphasized with increased relations between Iranian president Ahmadinejad and Senegalese president Wade. A hawza is a seminary of Shi’i Islamic training. Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World. Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, 130. In particular those who carried out the attacks on September 11, 2001, but his book takes a historical look at Islamist movements (Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam). Ibid., 2. Diop and Diouf, Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf. Niasse, Un arabisant entre presse et pouvoir, 48. Moreau, Africains Musulmans, 290. Magassouba, L’islam au Sénégal: Demain les mollahs? Niasse currently heads a party called Frap, associated with the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS). He died on September 28, 2005. See his obituary in Wal Fadjri (Niasse, “Cheikh Touré n’est plus”). For more details see Loimeier, “Cheikh Touré. Un musulman sénégalais.” Touré, “J’ai été en Iran” and “Retour à l’Iran.” Fatemeh Sadeghi has informed me that there were many demonstrations in Tehran during the early 1980s, but these were both in support of and in protest against the revolution. Therefore this depiction of a united defense of the Republic of Iran by the Iranian people is Touré’s interpretation, probably based on the official discourse presented during his visit. Touré, “J’ai été en Iran,” 9. According to Niasse he innocently served time for the threat his brother posed to Senegal’s political stability. Wal Fadjri is the Arabic word for dawn. Niasse explains his choice of title to indicate the arrival of a new dawn in the newspaper’s first edition: “the proclamation of a radiant sunrise after the long night that has beset the world since the death of the Prophet Muhammad . . . in the last four years, the situation has changed radically! Glory to Allah! The face of the world is transformed, and mankind’s very foundations have been shaken since the project of an Islamic society has emerged as a practical and viable alternative to all others” (cited in Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, footnote 39). Niasse, Un arabisant entre presse et pouvoir, 47. Later funding was obtained from Algeria and various Senegalese Tijan sources. Journalists, however, wrote anonymously at first. “Beyrouth: Ce que la presse n’a pas dit,” no. 1, 28. “Les efforts des savants chiites,” no. 61, 19–22. Ibid., 20 Turner, The Ritual Process. Because of the necessarily political connotations of the term movement as described in social movement theory, I prefer Turner’s development of the notion of communitas to describe the community of Senegalese converts, especially given my argument that they are not choosing Shi’a Islam to stage a political Islamic revolution. I am grateful to Irfan Ahmad for suggesting the applicability of this concept. Aïdara, “Trente-quatre années au service.” See Leichtman, “A Tale of Two Shi’isms,” for life histories of converts. Magassouba, L’islam au Sénégal; Moreau, Africains Musulmans. For a more in-depth discussion of these points see Leichtman, “Revolution, Modernity and (Trans)National Shi’i Islam.”

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73. This stands for Paix et Salut sur Lui et sur sa sainte Famille (peace and blessings upon him and his holy family). Ali Yacine refers to Aale Yasin, the family of Yasin, a term which is equivalent in Shi’i traditions to the family of the prophet Mohammad, and also refers to the sacred Hadith, Surat al-Yasin. 74. Distributing calendars to clients at the start of each new year publicizing one’s business or institute is a common practice in Senegal. Often calendars portray glossy photos of the Sufi marabouts. Replacing such photos with Shi’a leaders is one adaptation of Shi’a Islam to a Senegalese custom. 75. Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari established the Office for the Diffusion of Islamic Culture Abroad in Qom in 1980. This organization dispatches free copies of his translated works throughout the world and has printed Qurans for free distribution among Muslim individuals, institutions and religious schools in Africa. For more information see www.irib. ir/worldservice/Etrat/English/Nabi/Besat/seal1.htm (accessed July 31, 2008). 76. Interview with author, Dakar, July 25, 2003. 77. See Tall, “Organisations Islamiques au Service.” 78. This photo is from an Ashura conference that took place on January 17, 2008, and was not a Mozdahir event. Note the Shi’i robes and turbans worn by certain Senegalese sheikhs. 79. The Ahl Al-Beit, the family of the prophet Mohammad, are the Shi’a. 80. Senegalese Shi’a do not call for the application of shari’a law, as do Muslim reformists in Nigeria or the Sudan. 81. Interview with author, Ziguinchor, October 24, 2003. 82. The turba, the clay tablet that rests between the forehead and the ground during prostrations, sometimes comes from Karbala, where it represents the battle that led to the death of Imam Hussein and his family. However, Shi’a may pray on any natural substance, such as a leaf or a stone. 83. A Shi’i Hadith. 84. The head of the corpse must face Mecca. 85. Shi’a perform ablutions in a different order than Sunnis. 86. Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammad, who was seen by Sunni Muslims as the fourth Caliph, but Shi’a Muslims consider him to be the first rightful Caliph and the first Imam. 87. At the time of the prophet there were no divisions in Islam, which came after his death. The Tijaniyya developed much later. 88. He described how the Lebanese came in cars to the institute, which is located outside of town. Cars are a sign of wealth, and starkly contrast the poverty and simplicity of this Shi’i institute. 89. Interview with author, Dakar, January 8, 2004. 90. See, for example, Le Soleil, “Oui, les Chiites sont des musulmans!,” which is the response by a Senegalese Shi’i to a previous article, Le Soleil, “Les chiites sont-ils des musulmans?” 91. A dozen or so women are also in attendance. 92. Interview with author, Dakar, December 10, 2003. 93. Asad, Geneologies of Religion. 94. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood. 95. Van der Veer, Conversion to Modernities.

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———. “Retour à l’Iran.” Etudes Islamique 15 (1982). Triaud, Jean-Louis, and David Robinson, David, eds. La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique. Paris: Karthala, 2000. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Adeline, 1969. Van der Veer, Peter, ed. Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity. New York: Routledge, 1996. Villalón, Leonardo A. “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation, and the Evolving Dynamics of Religion and Politics in Senegal.” Africa Today 46, no. 3/4 (1999): 129–47. ———. Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “The Moustarchidine of Senegal: The Family Politics of a Contemporary Tijan Movement.” In La Tijâniyya. Une Confrérie Musulmane à la Conquête de l’Afrique, edited by Jean-Louis Triaud, and David Robinson, 469–97. Paris: Karthala, 2000. ———. “Senegal.” African Studies Review 47, no. 2 (2004): 61–72.

Chapter 6

4 S earching f or Go d Young Gambians’ Conversion to the Tabligh Jama‘at

Marloes Janson (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

I ntro d uc ti on

Every morning my host Bachir, a Gambian Muslim in his late twenties, solemnly 1

removed the lace doily protecting his cassette recorder against dust. In his small livingroom, decorated with Islamic wall hangings, posters of Mecca, and plastic flowers, we listened to tape-recorded sermons. That morning he selected an audiocassette of Ahmed Khatani, a South African preacher who visited The Gambia several times to deliver sermons in the mosque where Bachir and his comrades pray. On the tape Khatani preached in English with a strong Indian accent, alternated with words and Quranic verses in Arabic, about the purpose of human beings on earth, that is, worshipping God. When he raised his voice, Bachir’s one-year-old daughter, believing that the preacher was singing, started to dance. Bachir exclaimed, “Astaghfirullah (I seek forgiveness from Allah), this must be my mother’s influence.”2 Khatani’s voice, filled with despair, resounded through the loudspeakers: Why don’t you recognize who is your Allah? The seed grows in the ground, Allah splits it, the sprout comes forth, then it becomes a trunk, then a branch, then leaves, and on the end of that leaf that beautiful mango . . . Where does it come from? . . . Recognize your Allah. Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth. In everything around us you can see the light of Allah . . . Everything around us is inviting us to recognize Allah . . . Where are you running to? Why have you turned your back on your Allah? Why have you forgotten your Allah? . . . Oh humanity! What has put you into deception about your Allah? . . . Allah says: “Oh my slave, search for me!”3

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Upon hearing these words, like many men in the congregation addressed by Khatani on the tape, Bachir burst out crying.4 Bachir’s wife sighed, “My husband likes crying too much; one day he might become blind because of all his tears.”5 Bachir is a Tablighi, an adherent of the Tabligh Jama‘at, a transnational Islamic missionary movement that originated in South Asia and encourages greater religious devotion and observance. Its founder, Mawlana Mohammad Ilyas, believed that Muslims had abandoned the right path of Islam. Hence, he stressed that they should go back to their faith by more closely following the rules laid down in the sunnah—the prophetic traditions—which alone would move God to grant them success in this world and the hereafter. To make Muslims true believers, Ilyas insisted that it was the duty of not just a few learned scholars but of all believers to carry out tabligh, that is, missionary work aimed at the moral transformation of Muslims. Over the years the Tabligh Jama‘at has expanded into what is probably the largest Islamic movement of contemporary times. It has established a presence in approximately 150 countries throughout the world, and its annual conferences (ijtima‘at) in Pakistan and Bangladesh have grown into the second largest religious congregation of the Muslim world after the pilgrimage to Mecca.6 Despite its worldwide influence on the lives of millions of Muslims, scholars have paid little attention to its spread in sub-Saharan Africa.7 An explanation for this indifference is that this region is frequently seen as the periphery of the Muslim world. Moreover, the recurrent idea of an “African Islam,”8 reflecting the Sufi bias typical of scholarship on Islam in West Africa in general and Senegal in particular, hampers a better understanding of the upsurge of Islamic reformist movements, of which the Tabligh Jama‘at is but one example. Attempting to redress this balance, I focus on The Gambia, a country where, in contrast to neighboring Senegal, our knowledge of Islamization is largely lacking.9 Despite its small size, The Gambia has become a booming center of Tablighi activities in West Africa during the last decade.10 Adherents from other West African countries, such as Mali and Senegal, regularly assemble in the Gambian city of Serrekunda to exchange ideas on the proper Tablighi method.11 Although The Gambia is enclosed by Senegal, the two countries have experienced colonial policies and Islamic histories so different as to be hardly comparable. For a long time, The Gambia has had the highest percentage of Muslim inhabitants in West Africa.12 This situation can be partly explained by the fact that the River Gambia is one of Africa’s most navigable waterways and has always provided traders with easy access to the country’s interior. Trade was vital in introducing Islam and attracting people to it. Propelled by the proliferation of jihad (holy war) in the nineteenth century, Islamic beliefs spread rapidly in The Gambia. British colonial policy further enhanced its spread and consolidation, resulting in a wave of Muslim emancipation from the 1950s. Nowadays, more than 90 percent of the Gambian population is Muslim. During my field research into the Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia,13 I met with countless crying men. At first, I felt uncomfortable when the Tablighis wept in my presence and hugged one another to find moral relief, but Bachir explained to me that these tears are necessary to put them on a higher spiritual level in their search for God. It shows that they have embodied the model of Islamic moral personhood.14 Behavioral forms like weeping are not only the outward proof that one has embodied a moral disposition; they also play a role in shaping moral characters.15 Mahmood16 therefore concludes that emotions are constituted as motivational devices as well as integral aspects of pious action itself. However, in the perception of the established Muslim elders, who are trained in the Sufi tradition,17 weeping has nothing to do with devotion to God and an internalization of moral virtues; but it reveals that Tablighis are just crybabies who

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find themselves in a state of being lost—like babies cry for their mother. Furthermore, they consider weeping a way of attracting attention. The Tablighis reacted to these assaults by accusing the Muslim elders of “ignorance of Islam.”18 “The Sufi elders don’t understand Islam; they mix religion (din) with tradition (adat),” was an oftenheard expression during my fieldwork. This chapter explores how Gambian Tablighi youth strive to fill the gap of religious ignorance by cultivating a virtuous self that is totally submitted to God and His prophet.19 This reconstitution of the self is of an emotional nature, as we have seen in the preceding case.20 In this chapter I argue that Tablighi Islam represents a new expression of religiosity as a means of realizing a pious self in Gambian Muslims,21 which can be seen as a form of resistance against the more mainstream Sufi Muslims. This resistance is expressed in terms of age and generation and assumes the character of a conversion from the culturally accepted Sufi forms of Islam toward a reformist Islam. It involves a conscious assertion of a new set of Islamic values, which cultivate simplicity, austerity, integrity, piety, a renewed moral order, and a greater equality between the age groups, as expressed in the redefinition of established religious and social norms. I follow one Tablighi in particular in his search for God: Ahmed, a thirty-year-old man, who is friends with Bachir. By means of his conversion story I explore the shifting formations of Muslim identity, and I demonstrate that the proliferation of Tablighi Islam imposes a negotiation of religious authority with Sufi Islam in The Gambia. By examining how Ahmed appropriates Tablighi ideology in his daily life, and adapts it to the local context in which he operates, I map the complex intersections between global and local expressions of Islam. Before recording Ahmed’s narrative, I begin with a history of the Tabligh Jama‘at, its establishment in The Gambia and the central features that distinguish it from its South Asian roots.

Hi sto r ic a l Overv iew o f the Tabli gh Ja ma ‘at The emergence of the Tabligh Jama‘at as a movement for the revival of Islam can be seen as a continuation of a broader trend of Islamic resurgence in northern India in the wake of the collapse of Muslim power and consolidation of British rule in the mid-nineteenth century. One manifestation of this trend was the rapid growth of madaris (Islamic schools). The Jama‘at evolved out of the teachings and practices of the founders of the Darul ‘Ulum madrasa in Deoband, a town near the capital Delhi. The scholars affiliated with this school saw themselves as crusaders against popular expressions of Islam, as well as Hindu and Christian conversion movements,22 and they aspired to bring to life again the days of the prophet Mohammad’s companions.23 Mawlana Ilyas was a disciple of the leading Deobandi scholars, who, after his graduation, taught the Meo peasants—a marginalized group regarded as nominal Muslims—from Mewat in north India about correct Islamic beliefs and practices at mosque-based schools. However, he soon became disillusioned with this approach, realizing that the madaris were producing “religious functionaries” but not zealous preachers willing to go from door to door to remind people of the key values and practices of Islam. He then decided to quit his teaching position to begin his missionary work through itinerant preaching.24 To make Muslims true believers, that is self-conscious Muslims strictly abiding by the dictates of the faith, Ilyas insisted that it was the religious duty of not just a few learned scholars but all Muslims to carry out missionary work. Missionary tours by lay preachers became the hallmark of the Tabligh Jama‘at, established officially by Ilyas in 1927 in the Indian capital of Delhi.

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When Ilyas died in 1944, he was succeeded by his son Mawlana Mohammad Yusuf, who continued his father’s work and spread the Tabligh Jama‘at’s activities to other countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the United States.25 Yusuf is reported to have said, “If this struggle is internationalized, God will bring revolution within the hearts of the people all over the world.”26 After his death in 1965, the movement’s international operations expanded even more under the leadership of Mawlana In’amul Hasan. South Asian missionaries, Pakistanis in particular, reached West Africa in the early 1960s,27 but their ideas did not find a fertile breeding ground in The Gambia until the 1990s. During the country’s colonial rule, English became the national language, a factor that has undoubtedly facilitated the spread of the Tablighi ideology by English-speaking South Asian preachers. The appearance of the South Asian preachers coincided with the political Islamic resurgence in The Gambia. Captain Yahya Jammeh assumed power in 1994 and invoked reformist Islam to enhance his legitimacy and to establish closer relations with the Islamic powers in the Gulf states.28 This provided a fresh scope for the creation of a public discourse on Islamic doctrine in The Gambia,29 a result of which is a growing number of Gambians seemingly receptive to a new interpretation of their faith, a factor seized upon by the Tablighi preachers. Strikingly, in Senegal the Tabligh Jama‘at is much less popular than in The Gambia and, according to my informants, at some stage the movement’s mosque in Dakar was even closed because of conflicts between the Senegalese government and the missionaries.30 The lack of Jama‘at popularity in Senegal probably has to do with French being the national language as well as with the fact that Sufi orders are more prominent in Senegal than in The Gambia. Several Gambian Tablighis with whom I worked argued, “Senegalese don’t like the Jama‘at; they are only interested in turuq (Sufi brotherhoods) and instead of Allah and His prophet, they worship the marabouts leading the turuq.” Besides, in Senegal there has always been an emphasis on formal Quranic education and knowledge of the Arabic script.31 Most Gambian Tablighis, on the contrary, attended a modern, Western-oriented style of education and are not literate in Arabic. As such, Indians and Pakistanis—and other preachers like the South African Khatani— who preached in English were able to attract a large following in The Gambia.32 The genesis of the Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia can be traced to Karammoko Dukureh, the son of an Islamic scholar from Gambisara, a Serahuli village in eastern Gambia.33 Karammoko’s name reveals that his father, who had given him this name, wanted him to become an Islamic scholar (karammoo means Quranic teacher or marabout). He indeed became a scholar, but a different type than his father had hoped. When Karammoko Dukureh was in his thirties, he went on pilgrimage to Mecca and afterwards studied Islamic theology in Saudi Arabia. In the early 1980s when Dukureh returned to Gambisara, he set out to make the villagers more aware of their religion by denouncing their traditional ways of worship and popular forms of piety. One of his former students remembered how Dukureh preached against the sinful activities taking place during the life cycle rituals associated with Islam, where men and women mingle, sing, make music, dance, spend a lot of money, and neglect prayer. In addition to proper ritual orthopraxy, Dukureh strove for the correct performance of prayer. He insisted on praying with his arms folded across his chest rather than the Maliki style of praying with the arms beside the body, which is most common in West Africa. In his opinion those who prayed with straight arms were not following the sunnah, and as such were not real Muslims. Dukureh’s sermons especially condemned marabouts. He argued that instead of paying these Sufi clerics to make

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a charm, one should pray to God directly. In his opinion marabouts were charlatans exploiting their clients. Aside from a few sympathizers, the villagers—including many marabouts—feared that Dukureh wanted to introduce a new religion in Gambisara, and they did not agree with the reformist ideas of this alleged lunatic. Dukureh’s sermons became increasingly antagonistic toward the traditions of the village elders, and he was eventually exiled. Until his death in 2000, he continued spreading his ideology in the Gambian city of Serrekunda, in the mosque that came to be known as Markaz (center), where he was appointed imam.34 Over the last decade, Markaz has grown into the pivot of the Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia.35

Th e Ta bl igh Jama‘at i n The G am bia 36

Gaborieau claims that before reaching the local population, the Tablighi missionaries aimed at a more accessible target: migrant Indian populations. Consequently, Tablighis are sometimes known as “Indian Muslims.”37 This pattern is particularly visible in South Africa, a country with a huge community of Indian origin, were the Tabligh Jama‘at particulary attracted businessmen of Indian descent.38 However, a striking feature of the Jama‘at in The Gambia is its popularity among the local African population, youth in particular. After training by South Asian preachers, the Tablighi effort has been adopted largely by Serahulis, the original propagators of Islam in West Africa, and by Mandinkas, who form the majority in The Gambia. However, the Tablighis with whom I worked did not consider ethnicity or other social hereditary distinctions relevant factors in explaining conversion to Tablighi Islam, because all Muslims are believed to be equal toward God. Irrespective of their ethnic background, Tablighis are often regarded as outsiders by non-Tablighis on account of their ideas, practices, and dress code. Another striking feature of the Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia is its popularity among young Muslims. A survey conducted in South Africa, on the contrary, indicates that middle-aged persons are the age group to whom the Jama‘at holds most appeal.39 An explanation for the greater appeal among the elderly is that they have more time, and probably also more money, than young people to invest in missionary work. In The Gambia, however, the Jama‘at holds special attraction for youth from a middle-class background between the ages of roughly fifteen and thirty-five years. A young Tablighi explained the Jama‘at appeal among Gambian youth: “Young people especially are involved in the movement, because the prophet summoned youth to spread Islam. They are in the position to sacrifice their life for the sake of Allah. In order to disseminate Islam all over the world, the prophet called upon young people. Most of the Sahabah (the prophet’s companions) were young. Young people are more energetic and therefore it is easier for them to set out on missionary tours. Allah loves the youth who are willing to spend their life in His path more than the elders.”40 All the Tablighis interviewed agreed that young people are more willing to sacrifice for their religion than the older generation for whom the Jama‘at is “beyond their understanding.” In my informants’ opinions, being young had to do with an awareness of what they considered the real principles of Islam and a willingness to live accordingly, and they equated being old with being ignorant of Islam, rigid and holding onto sinful customary practices. Although Ahmad41 claims that in South Asia the Tabligh Jama‘at has minimal influence on college and university campuses,42 in The Gambia the movement is especially

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appealing to young men and women who had a modern, secular education. Because of this type of education they are referred to as “English students” in local idiom.43 The designation of Gambian Tablighi youth as English students shows that they have not received a formal religious education and are as such not literate in Arabic. The fact that in the Gambian Jama‘at English is used as medium for transmission has, as appears later in the chapter, major social and political consequences.44 A factor explaining the attraction of the youth to the Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia may be the current socioeconomic crisis.45 The Gambian economy finds itself in a downward spiral since the late 1990s. The rate of unemployment increased and because of rampant inflation living costs rose sharply.46 It appears that youth in particular are hit hard by the current crisis.47 The frustration among students became highly visible in the demonstrations organized by the Gambian Students Union (GAMSU) in 2000.48 Although the demonstrations were organized to protest the death of a student, reportedly after being tortured by Fire Service personnel, and the alleged rape of a schoolgirl by a police officer, they were obviously also an expression of discontent with the rulers who are held responsible for socioeconomic hardship. Explaining the link between the socioeconomic crisis and the expansion of the Tabligh Jama‘at among youth in The Gambia,49 my research assistant, who at one time wanted to join the movement, said, Many Gambian young people do not have an easy life. They want to work but there are no jobs, or they want to travel to Babylon (the West) but they don’t have papers. It is not easy for them to get what they want. Some start smoking marijuana and go mad, while others start praying more regularly. The preachers tell them that they will be rewarded for their prayers. These youth fall in love with the new religion; all they do is follow Allah’s commandments and say “ma sha Allah” (what God wishes). My old friend is a good example. He worked as a manager for a bank, but lost his job. He got a loan, but, because he couldn’t pay the money back, he was arrested. In order to overcome his problems he became a hard-liner.50

This narrative suggests that Gambian youth have found in the Jama‘at a framework that allows them to cope with social wrongs.51 The movement’s ban on conspicuous consumption and its emphasis on an austere lifestyle fit with the economic realities of its members.52 Gambian youth have not only found in the Tabligh Jama‘at a framework that allows them to cope with socioeconomic wrongs but also with political instabilities. As mentioned earlier, youth’s discontent with Gambian political leaders resulted in the student demonstrations of 2000. When President Jammeh was reelected for a third term in 2006, despite fierce criticism of his administration arresting opposition activists, discord among the youth increased. They took to the streets again in 2007 after a schoolboy was allegedly killed by a policeman who accused him of smoking marijuana.53 This incident and the arrest of twelve youth involved in the demonstrations made Halifa Sallah, The Gambia’s opposition leader, send a letter to the Foroyaa newspaper addressing President Jammeh: “You should remember that the authority that you and your national assembly members now exercise is derived from the people. It is therefore necessary to utilize progressive and community oriented measures to promote positive values among the youth instead of stigmatizing and alienating them as common criminals . . . Community programmes instead of militarism is the avenue to combat youth problems which are mainly by-products of failed or nonexisting socioeconomic policies.”54 The fact that the Tabligh Jama‘at is an apolitical

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movement, discouraging its adherents from involvement in politics, could be a factor explaining youth’s attraction to it. The Jama‘at distracts them from the abuses in this world and incites them to strive for a better life in the hereafter. Unlike in India, where the movement started in Mewat—a rural area in the north— the Tabligh Jama‘at is largely an urban phenomenon in The Gambia. Levtzion55 argues that modern Islamic reform efforts are usually urban based and that they criticize and seek to eradicate Sufi-oriented Islam, which is generally associated with rural societies. This reasoning holds in the context of The Gambia as young man’s conversion to the Tablighi ideology often leads to migration to the city of Serrekunda where Markaz is located (see also in the following text). This migration usually involves alienation from the family, which stays behind and often holds more to Sufi conceptions of Islam. Islam becomes more meaningful to these young men, who—deprived of their traditional social networks and confronted with the heterogeneity of urban life—find in Islam a form of identification and a medium of self-expression.56 Biaya claims that African youth belong to “the sacrificed generation who have no promise of a future.”57 Nonetheless, as Biaya further argues, the African city offers young people a space in which to escape the disastrous socioeconomic and political conditions and affirm their identity. One identity path is what he calls the “syntonic identity,” whereby the youth’s behavior is determined by a religious framework. The religious ideology of forgiveness and submission serves to temper the revolt of youth against their inhuman conditions, and it offers them opportunities for rehabilitation.58 For similar reasons a growing number of Gambian youth invest in tabligh. Although this holds no material benefits, they believe that they are assured of a spiritual reward. Although Tablighis are proliferating in The Gambia, especially among the youth, they still form a relatively small group. The president of the Islamic Student’s Association estimated that they constitute approximately 45 percent of the student population at the University of The Gambia. Nevertheless, one of the leading figures in the Jama‘at estimated they constitute only 1 percent of the entire Gambian population of about 1.5 million, but the absence of membership records makes it difficult to calculate exactly. To give an indication of the size of the Jama‘at, my informants estimated the average number of believers attending the weekly programs in Markaz in Serrekunda at 1,000; and I was told that during the annual congregation last year 5,000 people participated, among whom were Tablighis from Mauritania, Pakistan, and even France. 59According to the Tablighis, however, it is not quantity but quality that matters. Despite its small size, the Jama‘at has successfully brought about a religious transformation in Gambian society, as becomes clear in the following conversion story.

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Sikand and Reetz61 rightly remark that the relatively scant literature on the Tabligh Jama‘at, primarily focuses on explicating the movement’s worldview and its fundamental tenets, neglecting questions regarding how this ideology plays out in the lives of individual Muslims and how the Jama‘at operates on a daily basis.62 Similarly, Seesemann63 pleads for taking into account the hitherto neglected quotidian dimension of Islamic reformism to arrive at a deeper understanding of how reformist movements operate. Considering this quotidian dimension may beget a shift in emphasis from the narrow political, macro-level oriented analysis to a perspective that focuses on how

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the ideas, doctrines and practices related to Islamic reformism undergo a process of contextualization in specific localities.64 To explore how doctrine is put into practice and what it means in Gambian daily life to be a Tablighi, I recorded conversion stories during my field research.65 Although such stories may add to a better understanding of the puzzling relation between ideology and praxis, they are—contrary to studies on Christianity—nearly absent in Islamic studies.66 The narratives I recorded provide insight into how Tablighis position themselves within the moral discourse of the Jama‘at. Here I focus on one conversion story in particular, that of Ahmed. To study his narrative in its wider sociocultural context, I draw in the analysis from biographical interviews with other Gambian Tablighis. Further information was obtained from interviews with non-Tablighis, such as Quranic scholars trained in the Sufi tradition, scholars who had graduated from universities in the Arab world, and Muslim elders who condemned the Tabligh Jama‘at on account of the fact that Tablighi youth told them how they should profess their religion. In addition I draw on interviews of individuals who took some interest in the Jama‘at but were not converts, and observations made during missionary tours and Tablighi learning sessions. I first elaborate on the complex concept of conversion.

Conceptualizing Conversion Because the Tablighis interviewed were already Muslims before joining the Tabligh Jama‘at, the term conversion story is somewhat problematic when taking as a point of departure the classical definition of conversion summarized by Lofland and Stark as “when a person gives up one . . . perspective or ordered view of the world for another.” 67 In this definition, like in Horton68 and Fisher’s69 well-known conversion theories, the transformation from one religion to another is central. During my field research I came across only three cases that fit with this standard definition of conversion. The first was of a young Fula man70 who was raised by a British pastor and active in the church. Through contacts with Tablighi preachers and peers, he later decided to become a Tablighi. The second case was of a Manjago who decided,71 against the will of his family, to become a Muslim and marry a Muslim wife. When it turned out that she was a Muslim only in name and could not even pray correctly, he divorced her. Because he could not return to his family, who believed in “another truth,” he moved to Markaz, where he devoted his life to “worshipping Allah 24 hours a day.” 72The third case was of a Manjago girl who firmly believed that Islam is a “purer” religion than Christianity since “Muslims perform ablution before prayer,” and this belief made her decide to become a Muslim. Afterward, she met with Tablighis and explained to them the hardships she underwent because her family did not accept her choice and maltreated her. Thereupon a zealous Tablighi provided her with accommodations, and he and his wife instructed her in the “correct Islam.”73 Although it was strongly condemned by their families, the three converts felt urged to convert because Tablighi Islam was considered by them to be a more true and pure religion than Christianity. Unlike these three converts, the other Tablighis I met in The Gambia were Muslims by birth and participated in Muslim rituals before joining the Jama‘at. However, they converted from culturally accepted Sufi forms of Islam to a reformist form of Islam, referred to as Sunni Islam.74 This conversion coincided with a process of becoming aware of their faith and putting into practice Islamic principles. They no longer regarded their Muslim identity as given, but as something they had to prove

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by observing the sunnah. A Tablighi who joined the Jama‘at a couple of years ago expressed it as follows: “Before, I prayed and fasted, but I did not know much about Islam. I conceived Islam as my right and not as a favor from Allah.”75 These cases fit with what Fisher76 calls the “second conversion,” in which indifference and dilution are exchanged for fervency within the same faith.77 Hervieu-Léger78 speaks of “internal conversion” in this context: The internal convert has been associated with his or her religion but has lived it only in a formal and conformist way. Second conversion and internal conversion refer to the same phenomenon, a phenomenon that is circumscribed in the more recent literature as “born-again Islam.”79 Gambian Tablighis resemble Roy’s description80 of a born-again believer: “In contemporary Islam, as in Christianity, there is a common type of born-again believer who suddenly crosses the boundary between a cultural or nominal religion to the status of ‘true believers’ or, more precisely, ‘absolute’ believer. A born-again believer is not simply a mosque-going Muslim or a churchgoing Christian. It is somebody whose faith suddenly becomes the central principle of their entire life.” Although Muslims by birth, the converts interviewed felt they had to become “better Muslims” by “returning” to the origins of their faith. Their ardent wish was to follow in the prophet’s footsteps. By copying the prophet in all their actions, they made Islam indeed the central principle of their entire life. By converting from Sufi to Tablighi Islam, the converts not only became better Muslims; in their opinion they also became “pure Muslims” because conversion puts an end to the assimilation of Islam into local practices. Contemporary reformist movements like the Tabligh Jama‘at are therefore strongly rooted in the ideology of “renaissance,” both as a return to the purported origins of Islam and as purification.81 From the aforementioned theories it can be concluded that in the literature on conversion a distinction is drawn between rupture, that is conversion as a reorientation to a new form of faith, and continuity, whereby the convert deliberately turns from an earlier form of piety to another.82 In the case of the Gambian Tablighis this analytical model is somewhat confusing. Although we may speak here of a continuation in the sense that most Tablighis have been Muslim before, they perceive their conversion to Tablighi ideology as a rupture with their former way of life, defined by them as “jahiliyya life.” Jahiliyya refers to pre-Islamic beliefs and practices, but here it can be translated as “ignorance of Islam.” When I asked the Tablighis to show me pictures of their jahiliyya life, they all responded that they had torn up these pictures. One Tablighi went so far in his attempt to efface the signs of his former lifestyle as to offer money to his friends in return for his pictures, which he then burned. This illustrates that conversion to Tablighi ideology is not only a continuity in that the convert switches to a new form of piety within the same faith, but also a break with his life as an improper Muslim. Although the concept of conversion might seem misleading at first sight, I use it in this chapter because several Tablighis with whom I worked used an equivalent terminology themselves. For example, a Tablighi said, “Conversion means becoming a better Muslim by going back to the roots of Islam.”83 Others defined conversion as a process of purification through which they became “pure Muslims.” Like in the case of a new convert, several Tablighis shaved their hair or cut off their dreadlocks, the outward sign of their “sinful life,” upon entering the Jama‘at.84 Some Tablighis, however, did not describe their spiritual experience as conversion, but as reversion:85 They were born as Muslims, but under the influence of their parents and education they “went astray.” In their later search for God, they realized that there is “but one single true Islam” and they decided to “revert.”

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Most Tablighi converts in The Gambia are thus born-again Muslims. They were already Muslim prior to their conversion to Tablighi Islam, but they were misguided Muslims “living upside down.” By converting they became, in their own opinion, “true Muslims.” Ahmed presented his conversion experience not only as a search for “the truth” but also as a salvation story. By joining the Jama‘at he was redeemed from “a life of sin” and became “enlightened.”86

Ahmed’s Conversion Story When conducting research in the national archives in the Gambian capital Banjul, I met with Ahmed, a Fula of thirty years working as a computer specialist for the archives. He was introduced to me by his colleague as a Mashala, the local designation for Tablighis because they frequently exclaim “ma sha Allah” (what God wishes). The dark spot on his forehead revealed that Ahmed had been a Tablighi for quite some time: It was the sign of his frequent praying.87 However, the other sign of being a Tablighi, that is, having a long beard, does not apply to Ahmed. Allah blessed him, to Ahmed’s regret, only with some downy hair on the chin although he did not shave after his joining the Jama‘at approximately ten years ago. During the long discussions I had with Ahmed, he did not tell me much about his life before he became a Tablighi. His past is a closed chapter for him; the activities in which he is involved are all focused on obtaining spiritual reward in the hereafter. Islam in general, and Judgment Day in particular were topics that were central in our conversations; all other topics Ahmed considered to be of minor relevance. “Tomorrow we are all going to die” and “This life is nothing more than the wing of a mosquito” were common expressions in his vocabulary. All Ahmed was willing to tell me about his life before he converted was that he was born in a rural community in the North Bank Division. His parents belonged to the Tijan Sufi order and they often attended gamu (Sufi festivals commemorating the prophet’s birth, called mawlid in Arabic) in Senegal.88 After finishing his education, Ahmed moved to Banjul where he found a job as a computer specialist. To be closer to Markaz, he moved approximately five years ago to the city of Serrekunda. When his parents passed away, as oldest son he became responsible for the upbringing of his school-going brothers and sisters. During the week he lives in Serrekunda and the weekends he spends in his native village, where his wife and children have returned. Ahmed’s uncle,89 who was somewhat older and also a zealous Tablighi, visited him at his workplace, and because he was not alone Ahmed felt he could invite me in his office: “Din (religion) is sensitive; there are certain restrictions. When a man and woman sit in the same room, Satan is present.”90 I took notes while Ahmed recounted his conversion narrative in English. Because of his skepticism toward me and my research, I thought it was wise not to ask him if I could tape-record his narrative. At the end of his working day, Ahmed’s biographical narrative was not yet finished, and he invited me to come to Markaz the following day. As a woman, I was not allowed to enter Markaz, a fact for which Ahmed apologized, but he arranged a chair for me in the backyard of a shop close to Markaz where Islamic paraphernalia were sold. While he continued his narrative, his Tablighi friends passed by and shared their experiences with me. I later learned that they disregarded the insults from a leading figure in Markaz, who accused them of being like “bumsters,” beach boys who often enter into sexual relationships with tourists, when they spoke with me—a Western woman.

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Despite the Tablighi restriction on men and women intermingling, Ahmed and I met quite often, but always in the presence of other Tablighis. He told me that he saw it as his duty as a “brother” and a “colleague” to instruct me in Islam. Ahmed proceeded, “Even if you have false intentions, I am not afraid of telling you my story because I know that Islam is the truth. I am on earth only to live according to my Allah’s commandments. What I am doing, I am only doing for Allah’s sake. I am not saying this to be quoted in the media.”91 After this rather offensive opening, I was surprised by Ahmed’s later frankness.92 After having prayed in the nearby mosque belonging to the ministry in which the national archives are located,93 Ahmed continued, “Alhamdulillah (praise be to God), I give thanks to my Allah and His beloved Prophet. They blessed me with this great work, the work of the prophets. I thank Allah for creating me. He could have made me a tree, leaf, stone, grain of sand, etcetera, but he created me a human being. Ma sha Allah, it was Him who decided me entering into tabligh, that is, inviting people to Allah’s path.”94 When I asked Ahmed how he came across the Tabligh Jama‘at, he explained, I will tell you what I know; what I don’t know I can’t tell you since I don’t want to tell lies. I began this effort in grade 11 [the last grade in high school].95 I don’t remember how old I was then, but I guess I was younger than twenty. The preachers came to my native village. They invited me to pray with them in the local mosque. At first I hid myself; I told my sister to tell them that I was out or taking a bath. But they continued following me. At that time I didn’t know the blessings involved in tabligh, and I was another person. I was a sportsman, interested in only dunya (secular) things such as football, nightclubs and games, and I didn’t pray five times a day. Finally, I decided to talk with the preachers in the mosque and I was so impressed by them that I decided to sacrifice my time and wealth for tabligh.96

After a short consultation with his uncle in Fula, Ahmed continued: I traveled with the preachers to other places [to do missionary work], but my parents were not pleased with that. They didn’t understand the effort. Their level of understanding of Islam was not that high. Tabligh was something new for them. Villagers told my mother that the Arabs would enslave me now that I had joined the effort. I prayed to Allah to enlighten her. Actually, my parents benefited from my change of behavior. At first I didn’t listen to them when they sent me on errands. I was only interested in playing football. I stayed in bed till late. But later I woke up before them and collected firewood before they asked me to do so . . . Little by little I learned about the prophet’s conduct. I changed my behavior and started practicing Islam. I learned more about Islam during khuruj (missionary tours). During my first khuruj I only cried.97 I cried because of the big loss in my life, caused by the fact that I had not joined the movement earlier on. I cried so that Allah would make me steadfast in my faith. I tried to become a real Muslim, because I don’t want to die as a loser. I cultivated Islam in my heart. With the help of Allah, I became part of the Jama‘at.98

The biggest change induced by his conversion was, according to Ahmed, that he became aware of his purpose on earth: Tomorrow we are all going to die. Compared to the Almighty Allah, we are absolutely nothing. We are created from just a simple sperm cell. If you lose that on your trousers, it is gone. You can’t see it anymore. We are here on earth just to worship Allah. We don’t

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need cars, multi-storey buildings, and the like. If we have them, we shouldn’t act differently . . . We should know our purpose on earth. Islam means submitting oneself to Allah. If one knows one’s purpose on earth, one will not visit marabouts, drink, engage oneself in adultery and fornication, or gamble. We wake up at night to pray for other people, so that they will also become aware of their purpose on earth and understand what we are doing. We teach them the little knowledge of Islam we have.99

Some people did not understand Ahmed’s change of behavior upon his conversion and he lost friends. His uncle told me, “Some people didn’t want to drink ataaya (a very sweet tea) with me any longer, thinking that I would warn them to pray on time and the like. I lost friends, but I also made new friends in Markaz. Markaz is like a petrol station, where I meet my boys and am fuelled with new ideas and energy.”100 Ahmed repeated over and over that to become a “true Muslim” one has to follow in the prophet’s footsteps: Some people want to be like Bob Marley, others imitate Martin Luther King, Peter Tosh or David Beckham. They dress like these people, they want to be like them. They love their idols so much that they submit themselves to them. Instead, they must live according to the prophet’s ways. The prophet gave us advice on everything. What the prophet did was simple. For example, when he got a baby boy, he celebrated the naming ceremony by sacrificing two rams. When he got a baby girl, one ram was sacrificed. But here we don’t do that. In the prophet’s time the naming ceremony took place the seventh day after the delivery, but here the eighth day. If Allah rewards you with a baby, you should sacrifice for Him. But here the people are playing music and dancing. We [the Tablighis] perform our ceremonies after the early morning prayer, and after shaving the baby’s head, naming him and sacrificing on behalf of Allah, we disperse in order to go to our working places. But here people celebrate their ceremonies the whole day. They are overdoing things. Moreover, men and women intermingle, which is against shari‘a (Islamic law).101

Ahmed is married with three children, but is not living with his family: “I decided to rent a room in Serrekunda in order to be close to Markaz. It is just a simple room. I don’t need much, just one room and a mattress on the floor. I lived there with my nuclear family, but when my parents died my wife and children went back to my home village in order to look after my school-going brothers and sisters. During the weekends I go to my family in order to do a‘amal (religious tasks) with them.”102 In addition to instructing his wife and children in the Islamic principles, spending a lot of time in Markaz to perform prayers, immersing himself in constant remembrance of God, listening to sermons, and talking about the faith with his friends, Ahmed spends time on missionary tours, both in his local region and outside of The Gambia. He set out on a tour to Mali, and took care of a group of missionaries from the United Kingdom. Because of his involvement in missionary work, he made friends all over the world, with whom he keeps in touch via Internet. Through his work as a computer specialist he easily has access to Internet. Ahmed summarized his life as a Tablighi as follows: “I go to work at 7 in the morning, pray at 2, close at 4 and go home. Sometimes I get a lift from the Tablighi brothers who work in Banjul. At home I cook a simple meal for myself, and after eating I spend my time worshipping. Like you, I am conducting research into Islam. Being a Muslim is something wonderful.”103 Ahmed concluded his biographical narrative by saying: “Allah will justify what I have told you. But remember that your research can only be successful if you don’t only write about the Jama‘at, but also believe in it.”104

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Ah med’s S pir itual Jour ney Although Ahmed’s narrative is just a single case, reformist conversion stories show a standardized pattern in that they have a structure from error to truth; from sin to forgiveness; from misery to bliss; from a world wicked, damned, or meaningless to a world redeemed.105 Because of this general organizational structure, it is possible to draw some general conclusions from Ahmed’s narrative. However, note the distinction between the conversion stories narrated by male and female Tablighis. Although all the male Tablighis told me that they led a sinful life before their conversion to Tablighi ideology, characterized by loitering, drinking ataaya and smoking in so-called ghettos, going to nightclubs, playing football, dating girls and even tourists, and abandoning this life upon their “enlightenment,” the women with whom I worked already led pious lives before joining the Tabligh Jama‘at.106 Most started wearing a veil long before they became Tablighis. Keddie’s argument107 that “fundamentalist” women usually come from religious backgrounds and build on their prior beliefs seems to apply here. Thus for male Tablighis conversion is a turning point in their lives, whereas for Tablighi women it is more a gradual process. The Tablighi conversion stories show similarities in content as well as form. Like Ahmed, the other male and female Tablighis whose narratives I recorded used easily understandable language, replete with vivid imagery.108 Ahmed, for example, said that instead of worshipping popular musicians and sportsmen, Muslims should follow in the prophet’s footsteps. Ahmed’s uncle explained the Tablighi discourse by claiming that “the prophet had a metaphorical way of speaking.”109 Because of their eloquence, several non-Tablighis accused the Tablighis of having “long tongues, uttering nothing but empty speech.” Having discussed some similarities in content and form of the conversion stories, we can now analyze Ahmed’s case. From the conversion narrative it seems there was no immediate cause for his conversion.110 Through contact with Tablighi preachers, he simply felt he had to convert to be redeemed and gain access to God’s grace. Also during the interviews I conducted with other Tablighis, it appeared that the meetings with Tablighi preachers—whether local or preachers from other African countries or South Asia—were the decisive factor in changing their lifestyles. Through these meetings they realized that, in the words of some converts, “drinking ataaya would not change our situation,” and that tabligh could bring them self-respect. What turned out to be especially important in winning over the youth was the preachers’ low-key attitude. A Tablighi told me that itinerant preachers even visited him in the ghetto where he spent most of his time. Unlike his parents, they did not tell him to turn down the volume of his ghetto blaster: “Although the music did like boom boom boom, they kept calm and they were so kind to me that in the end I felt embarrassed to decline their invitations to pray with them in the local mosque. I finally went to the mosque and became enlightened.”111 Ahmed’s narrative illustrates how, upon his conversion to the Tablighi ideology, he organized his daily conduct in accord with the Islamic principles and created a pious self. Importantly, the transformation of self was not identified by Ahmed as a product of the self; it was achieved by God. He argued, “With the help of Allah, I became part of the Jama‘at,” and claimed it was Allah “who decided me entering into the Jama‘at.” Like many other conversion stories I recorded during my field research, Ahmed’s narrative is a redemption story. It shows that conversion is a “spiritual journey” in which the convert seeks to enter into a personal relationship with God,112 which can only be established by following more closely the prophet and his companions. This spiritual

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journey was equated by several Tablighis with a jihad, in which jihad is not considered a physical war but a struggle within oneself whereby the convert is trying to come to terms with his responsibility of upholding the shari‘a in his personal life.113 The Tablighis compared themselves to “soldiers of Allah making ready to tabligh.” Their alleged enemies are Satan, who is constantly attacking them to lead them astray, and their relatives, friends, and acquaintances who do not understand their new lifestyle. Ahmed’s jihad, which resulted in his putting into practice Islam, released heavy emotions: He continued weeping for three days because he regretted not having cut off his secular life earlier. Conversion as a spiritual journey often involves an actual movement—somewhat comparable to the hijra,114 both in the sense of migration and withdrawal115—as illustrated by Ahmed’s migration to Serrekunda, where he rented a room close to Markaz. The idea is that reform of the self becomes feasible when one travels out of one’s familiar setting.116 Tablighi conversion involves a break with the past; and to cut themselves off from their jahiliyya life and their Sufi families, new converts often migrate to Bundung, a densely populated area in the city of Serrekunda where Markaz is located. According to Booth,117 “fundamentalist” conversion narratives are accounts of emigration journeys that have become permanent: The protagonist has traveled from “Badland” and has found a true home, that is, “Homeland.” In Ahmed’s case badland refers to the Sufi environment in which he grew up, whereas homeland refers to Markaz, where he is engaged in religious activities that bring him closer to paradise. Ahmed’s migration coincided with his withdrawing from the secular world; he no longer played football and no longer went out with his former friends; instead he spent all the time he was not working worshipping in Markaz.118 Booth’s conclusion119 that the living experience of the spiritual journey is a better clue to religious “truthfulness” than are doctrinal texts is interesting in the context of the Tabligh Jama‘at in that Gambian Tablighis are often not well versed in the Tablighi literature. Ahmed never attended formal Quranic school and was instructed in the Islamic principles by traveling with Tablighi preachers. Like Ahmed, most other Tablighis interviewed received only a secular education. Consequently, they are unable to read the Tablighi literature in Arabic or, with the exception of a few who studied in Pakistan, in Urdu.120 Even the English translations of this literature are unpopular among them. Most informants indicated that these books were too expensive for them to purchase. Moreover, they told me “we don’t like reading.”121 Unlike the Tablighi literature, tape-recorded sermons in English or occasionally in the local languages are influential among the Tablighis, as discussed in the introduction to this chapter. Ahmed’s narrative illustrates that migration usually involves alienation from the family who stays behind and holds more to Sufi conceptions of Islam. When Ahmed joined the Tabligh Jama‘at, his family did not support his change of behavior. Other Tablighis also noted that their conversion to Tablighi ideology resulted in conflicts with their family, and I heard several stories of youth who broke away from their families. A zealous Tablighi explained that initially most parents welcome their children’s decision to convert, because it involves a “more serious lifestyle.”122 Ahmed indicated that his parents indeed benefited from his transformation, because he offered them unsolicited help. Yet, according to this Tablighi informant, when the parents find out that their children’s conversion is a permanent condition with far-reaching social consequences, they try to discourage them. I spoke with several parents who were concerned about their children’s performance at school or at the workplace now that they spend all their time on missionary work. More importantly, they felt more or

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less insulted by their children who tell them how they should profess their religion. Despite the problems with the family, the Tablighis strongly felt the need to convert to become true Muslims. In their opinion they had no other choice, whereby choice is understood not to be an expression of one’s will but something one exercises in following the prescribed path to becoming a better Muslim.123 To legitimize their practices, the Tablighis invoked higher moral authority than their parents. According to Ahmed, the religious “laxity” of the elders is especially expressed in the way they perform life-cycle rituals. Tablighis strive for a ritual transformation of Gambian society by celebrating naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals according to the sunnah.124 Ahmed explained that, in the case of the naming ceremony, this implies that the celebration is reduced to its essence. With the exception of shaving the baby’s hair, naming the child, and sacrificing one or two rams (depending on the child’s sex) he considers all other activities that take place at the naming ceremony to be bid‘a, that is, deviations from the prophet’s path. In line with Jama‘at stress on simplicity and austerity, the weddings of its adherents are arranged at little cost.125 Two Tablighi newlyweds explained to me that overspending for a wedding is forbidden in Islam because “modesty is a virtue.”126 Because the value of the bride-price is of minor importance compared to the marriage as an act that fulfils God’s commandments, Tablighi men are able to marry young without saving money first. The general age of marriage of Mandinka men is approximately thirty years old, whereas Ahmed and most of his friends married in their early twenties. Marrying young is important for the Tablighis, who consider marriage a major turning point in their strife for moral perfection. Besides marrying young, they insist on selecting their partner themselves, whereas their families preferred them to follow custom in Gambian society and marry their cousins. As such, marriage appears to be a tool employed by Gambian Tablighis to seek autonomy from their parents. By arguing that “true Islam” does not allow flamboyant displays and extravagance, Ahmed and his friends discarded the way the older generation performs its rituals as “cultural Islam.” Simplicity has become part of the Tablighi lifestyle. Instead of aiming for a car or a nice house, Ahmed said that Muslims should know their purpose on earth: worshipping God. Ahmed lived in a simple apartment where he slept on a mattress on the floor and ate only one sober meal a day, cooked by himself. Normally, the wife cooks for the household, but as described earlier, Ahmed lived alone. During my field research I noticed that other Tablighi men who lived with their families also often cooked and performed other household tasks. Although the Tabligh Jama‘at aims to reinscribe a patriarchal gender ideology, at the same time it provides new roles for men and women that depart from established gender norms with men more engaged in domestic work and women setting out for missionary tours.127 Tablighis not only condemn the way their parents’ generation performs its rituals, they also rebel against Sufi religious traditions such as maraboutage, which are embodied in their elders’ world views and actions.128 Ahmed argued that Muslims who visit marabouts, considered to be the custodians of “traditional faith,” do not know their purpose on earth. He put visiting marabouts in the same category as drinking, adultery, fornication, and gambling, which are all examples of bid‘a. As mentioned earlier the Tabligh Jama‘at denounces maraboutage as an illegitimate attempt to introduce intermediaries between individual believers and God. Despite the Tablighis’ withdrawal from traditional family life, the strict rules— derived from the Quran and hadith (accounts of what the prophet said or did)— imposed by the Tabligh Jama‘at for every conceivable action—from worshipping to dressing (see the following text) and, according to a Tablighi, even such a trivial act

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as “removing a fly from one’s food”129—reinforce the movement’s cohesiveness to such an extent that it is somewhat comparable to a surrogate family.130 A Tablighi who joined the Jama‘at a few years ago noted, “Tabligh brings real love. The brothers in Markaz love each other, care for each other and help each other. We treat each other as relatives, while our blood relatives sometimes even refuse to participate in our ceremonies.”131 This view was endorsed by Ahmed’s uncle, who compared Markaz to a “petrol station” where he meets his “boys” and is “fuelled with new ideas and energy.”132 The movement’s cohesiveness is an important explanation for its successful appeal in The Gambia, a country characterized by socioeconomic and, increasingly, political instability. From Ahmed’s narrative it appears that the indicators of Tablighi conversion are that the adepts adopt a new discourse steeped in Islamic metaphor; they espouse a purist lifestyle with its attendant paraphernalia, such as a dress code.133 In addition to migration as a geographic marker, conversion thus also has a visual marker in that it involves a change of dress. Dressing is seen by Tablighis as inseparable from one’s commitment to and practice of Islam.134 Ahmed wore the typical Tablighi uniform: a plain, short caftan; three-quarter length trousers; a turban135; and a beard. It is generally believed by Tablighis that when a man wears trousers below the ankles, his outfit becomes dirty; thus his prayers will not be answered, and his feet will burn in hell.136 This uniform distinguishes Tablighis from Sufis, who usually wear long gowns, or boubous, and a prayer cap. A Sufi joke I came across said that just as the Tablighi trousers are incomplete, they themselves are not full preachers. Conversely, the Tablighis spoke full of disgust about Sufi dress: “Their trousers are sweeping the ground where all kinds of dirt is laying.” Besides dress, another way that Tablighis use the body as a site of identification and set themselves apart from Sufi Muslims, is by refusing to shake hands with people of the opposite sex. Male Sufis normally shook hands with me, whereas Tablighi men folded their hands together to greet me. A young Tablighi explained, “It is better to put your hands in hellfire than to shake hands with a woman who is not your wife.”137 Furthermore, Tablighis use their bodies in another way than Sufis during prayer. As mentioned earlier, Sufis, following the Maliki style of praying, hold their arms beside the body, whereas Tablighis pray with their arms folded across the chest.138 A Tablighi woman explained, “By praying with the arms folded on the chest we show that we are humble toward Allah. Praying with the arms beside the body is an ‘I don’t care’ posture.”139 A young man told me that in the mosque where he normally prays Muslims are not allowed to prostrate before putting their hands on the floor in prayer, because the Imam perceived this as a Tablighi way of praying. Finally, Tablighis often use their fingers instead of the tasbih (prayer beads) when doing dhikr (remembrance of God), whereas for Sufis the length of the tasbih indicates the brotherhood to which one belongs.140 The story of Ahmed’s search for God provides insight into several issues connected with spirituality and the body.141 It appeared that the turning points in his “spiritual journey” were accompanied by physical reactions such as weeping and bodily changes, which he believed to signal the veracity of his spiritual experience of closeness to God.142 Not only do Tablighi converts change their attire, they also undergo bodily transformations. For example, the dark spot on Ahmed’s forehead—the sign of his frequent praying—demonstrated his increased piety. Bachir, introduced in the chapter’s introduction, told me that since he engaged in tabligh his skin color lightened because of the nur (light) with which he has been blessed. This indicates that the new religiosity of Tablighi converts has taken a spiritual, emotional form. After their

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conversion they become, in Ahmed’s terms, “another person” with a different appearance, state of mind, and identity that affirm the image of being born again.143

Co nc lusi on Many studies of Islamic reformist movements have focused primarily or exclusively on the hard and deteriorating economic and political conditions giving rise to their upsurge. Thus they have largely been interpreted as movements of discontent.144 Although socioeconomic and political factors contributed to the expansion of the Tabligh Jama‘at in The Gambia, they cannot fully explain the movement’s reformist appeal. In addition to economic decline and political frustration, psychosocial and cultural aspects should be considered.145 Westerlund146 concludes that the concentration on negative factors of discontent in studies of Islamic reformism must be supplemented by a consideration of positive or constructive factors—factors of content. With Ahmed’s conversion story, I have tried to shed light on the sociocultural relief and spiritual satisfaction that the Jama‘at offers young people in The Gambia. Mahmood147 argues that there is a general tendency to analyze Islamic traditions in terms of the practical and conceptual resources they offer to its adherents, but in the case of the Tabligh Jama‘at the emphasis is less about pragmatic gain than a spiritual experience of closeness to God.148 By converting to the Tablighi ideology, Gambian youth such as Ahmed and Bachir endeavor to reach a higher level of piety that draws them closer to God. It appeared that conversion represents a new expression of religiosity for them, in which the emphasis is on personal piety and moral reform. Ahmed’s narrative suggests that this new expression of religiosity results in an individualization of the relationship between the convert and God, which is at the expense of relationships with the more mainstream Sufi Muslims. This reorientation to a new form of piety as a means of realizing a virtuous life can be considered a form of resistance against the traditional sources of religious authority, located in the parents’ generation and the marabouts. It seems that the infrastructure of the Tabligh Jama‘at, with Markaz as its pivot, provides Tablighis with new modes of sociality and support outside traditional family structures and village life. Gambian Tablighi youth actively question the moral legitimacy of parental authority through their insistence that a child’s primary allegiance is to the global community of Muslims (ummah) rather than to his or her relatives.149 By converting to the Tablighi ideology, Gambian youth imagine themselves as belonging to the ummah, which finds expression in their observance of the sunnah, their discourse, the religious texts they read and listen to on audiocassettes, and the way they dress. Through Internet Ahmed links up with Tablighis from all over the world. At the same time, the Tablighis with whom I worked felt committed to a local Islamic movement. This applied particularly to the new converts, most of whom were unaware that the Jama‘at originated in India and assumed it was a Gambian movement. By appropriating Tablighi ideology, derived from a South Asian setting, to the local—often urban—context in which it operates, Gambian youth are—consciously or unconsciously—entangled in a dialectical process in which the local is part and parcel of the global and vice versa. In addition to the changing parameters of the relationship between age, generation, and religious authority, as well as the articulation between global and local dimensions of Islam, Ahmed’s biographical narrative also provided insight into the reconfiguration of space and belonging. For Gambian Tablighis like Ahmed, Islam has become the resource of urban citizenship and an instrument of modernity. It

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emerged that in the heterogeneity of urban life, youth have found in Islam a form of identification and a medium of self-expression. Although the Tabligh Jama‘at aims at restoring the past glory and supremacy of Islam through following in the footsteps of the prophet and his companions, its agenda can be described as primarily modern. This comes to the fore in, for example, its support of the nuclear family, the reformulation of gender roles, and the use of English and modern communication technology in spreading its ideology. Like Ahmed, most Tablighi men with whom I worked cut loose ties with their extended family and performed domestic chores. Most male and female Tablighis were fluent in English. In addition to a beard or veil, a cellphone to make appointments for missionary tours with their friends was an inextricable element of their attire.150 I was told that Tablighi women used their cellphones so intensively during the learning sessions in Markaz that the council in charge of the mosque sent them away, stating that Markaz was not a “public telecenter.”151 As such, the new religiosity of Tablighis is more a way of coming to terms with the modern world than a rejection of that world, the latter being a stereotypical image widely upheld in the Western media after the events of September 11, 2001. Like other contemporary Islamic reformist movements,152 the Tabligh Jama‘at struggles to live according to its faith in a world characterized by rapid modernization. What is interesting is that Senegalese reformist movements, such as the Jama‘at Ibadu Rahman described by Erin Augis153 and the Shi‘a movement described by Mara Leichtman in this volume, take an intellectual approach to religious change, whereas the Gambian Tabligh Jama‘at presents itself as a lay movement. Whereas the Shi‘a converts whose narratives are recorded by Leichtman (Chapter 5) portray themselves as leaders of an intellectual movement and use their Islamic knowledge as a weapon to educate and modernize the Senegalese population, Ahmed claimed to have just little knowledge of Islam, which indicates that for Gambian Tablighis Islam is less an intellectual affair than a practical activity.154 As a result of their lack of formal instruction in Arabic, the Gambian Tablighis can only resort to South Asian missionaries and the tape-recorded sermons delivered by English-speaking preachers such as Khatani. That the choice of language used to transmit religious knowledge results in different religious trajectories, summarized by Whitehouse155 as a “doctrinal” versus an “imagistic” mode of religiosity, is clearly demonstrated by Sanneh’s study156 of the mission’s translation enterprise.157 The Gambian Tablighi rejection of Arabic as language by which to disseminate their reformist ideology may be interpreted as a protest against the Arab domination of Islam. Furthermore, by learning about Islam through tape-recorded sermons by English-speaking preachers, instead of studying Arabic literature, Tablighi youth bypass traditional Gambian sources of religious authority located in the marabouts and the older generation. The links between the Tabligh Jama‘at and other West African reformist movements require further research because these movements impose a new dialogue and conflict with the Sufi orders. Such a comparative perspective may yield more insight into the Jama‘at as a global movement that simultaneously covers a multiplicity of regional and local expressions. Furthermore, it may provide a much-needed alternative to ingrained essentialist conceptions of Islam, such as the notion of an accommodating, syncretic African Islam, or a fundamentalist Islam as a monolithic, militant force.

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Not es 1. I use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the people with whom I worked. Names of prominent religious leaders, however, have not been changed because they are public figures. 2. Interview with Bachir, April 11, 2006. 3. I would like to thank Liese Hoffmann, my student assistant at Zentrum Moderner Orient/ Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO), for transcribing this cassette. 4. Because this was a male gathering, women were not allowed to attend. I was told that several men in the congregation fainted when listening to Khatani’s touching words, and an elderly Senegalese passed away because of a heart attack. Hirschkind (“The Ethics of Listening,” 624, 638) argues that in Egypt, where like in The Gambia sermon audition has popularized with the emergence of the Islamic revival, Muslims “hear with the heart.” He concludes that weeping has an important place within Islamic devotional practices, as a kind of emotional response appropriate for both men and women when turning to God (630). In his opinion weeping constitutes a condition for the sermon’s ethical reception (638; see also Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 129–31). 5. Interview with Mariama, April 11, 2006. 6. Ahmad, “Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 165; Sikand, The Origins and Development, xi, 177; Reetz, “Keeping Busy on the Path of Allah,” 298. 7. Diop (“Structuration d’un réseau,” 153) claims that the Jama‘at is active from Senegal to Zambia; but apart from a few studies focusing on South Africa (Moosa, “Worlds ‘Apart’: Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at”; Vahed, “Contesting ‘Orthodoxy’: The Tablighi-Sunni Conflict”; McDonald, “Constructing a Conservative Identity”) and Uganda (Kayunga, Islamic Fundamentalism in Uganda; Chande, “Radicalism and Reform in East Africa,” 355–58), almost nothing is known about the movement elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. 8. This notion captures the colonial perception of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa defined as the product of ritualistic transactions between Islam and African traditional religions. African Islam has been perceived as less pure and more flexible than the so-called Arab Islam (e.g., Launay and Soares, “The Formation of an ‘Islamic Sphere’,” 503–04; Triaud, “Islam in Africa,” 175–75, 177). For a recent example of the idea of an African Islam, see Westerlund and Evers Rosander, African Islam and Islam in Africa. 9. This negligence is remarkable given the country’s long-standing history of Islam (see Gray, A History of the Gambia; Quinn, Mandingo Kingdoms of the Senegambia; Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics; Frederiks, We Have Toiled all Night, 113–58). 10. Janson, “Roaming About for God’s Sake.” 11. During the late 1990s, Malian Tablighis who intended to go on a 40-day missionary tour were first sent to The Gambia for training (LeCocq and Schrijver, “The War on Terror,” 149). 12. Trimingham, Islam in West Africa, 233. 13. This chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between November 2003 and April 2004, April and June 2005, and March and June 2006 in The Gambia. The research between 2003 and 2005 was funded by a grant from ISIM (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World) in Leiden, the Netherlands. The research in 2006 was funded by a grant from DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), and conducted under the research project Urban Youth Cultures in West Africa: Processes of Translocal Appropriation of the ZMO (Zentrum Moderner Orient/Centre for Modern Oriental Studies) in Berlin, Germany. I would like to thank the Tablighis with whom I worked for their hospitality, the participants of the panel New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal at the ASA Annual Meeting in San Francisco in 2006 at which a shorter version of this chapter was presented, and Mara Leichtman and Mamadou Diouf for their valuable comments and suggestions. 14. See Hirschkind, “The Ethics of Listening.” 15. Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 134–48. 16. Politics of Piety, 140, 145.

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17. Although not all the elders I interviewed formally affiliated themselves with any Sufi order, I took them to be part of a Sufi tradition because they involve themselves in mystical practices and employ special litanies of prayer and techniques of invoking God’s names as ways of approaching God (see Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy, 37). Most were trained in traditional Quranic schools run by marabouts (daara) in which the emphasis is on the recitation of Quranic verses by heart. Knowledge is structured in this system in a hierarchical way and its dissemination is restricted to a few specialists. The reformist tradition, represented by the Tabligh Jama‘at, calls much of the Sufi tradition into question and seeks to change the way Islam is practiced locally. In the reformist tradition knowledge is theoretically available to everyone, and the individual’s intellectual development is no longer associated with divine intervention (Brenner, Controlling Knowledge. Religion, Power, 7–8; Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy, 9–10). 18. Interview with Bubacar, November 27, 2004. 19. See also Mahmood, Politics of Piety. 20. According to Khan, an Indian propagator of the Tabligh Jama‘at, this explains the appeal of the movement: “The greatest secret of success of the Tabligh mission lies in their exploiting the inherent emotional basis rather than attempting to catch the rational phoenix” (Tabligh Movement, 66). 21. Religiosity may be defined here as a concern to conform with God’s commandments, live according to the dictates of the Quran and sunnah, typically by following in the footsteps of the prophet Mohammad and his companions. Following Whitehouse (Arguments and Icons), a distinction can be drawn between an imagistic and a doctrinal mode of religiosity, which constitute tendencies towards particular patterns of codification, transmission, cognitive processing and political association. In the case of the Tabligh Jama‘at, the imagistic mode includes icons and material signs derived from the prophet’s lifestyle, such as a dress code (see the following text), beard, mishwak (a twig used to clean the teeth before prayer), and in the case of Tablighi women a face veil. The doctrinal mode is transmitted through Islamic texts, such as the Quran, hadith (accounts of what the prophet said or did), and Faza’il-e-a‘mal (“The Merits of Practice”)—the standard corpus of Tablighi texts, which offers guidance for everyday life—but also tape-recorded sermons. 22. The Jama‘at did not, however, engage in polemics with Hindus nor did it try to convert them to Islam. It went only so far as to reclaim Muslims who had converted to Hinduism. Similarly, tabligh is not addressed to Christians (Masud, “Ideology and Legitimacy,” 104–05). 23. Ahmad, “Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 165; Masud, “Introduction,” xlvii, and “The Growth and Development,” 3–5; Metcalf, ‘Traditionalist’ Islamic Activism, 4–5, 8–9; and Sikand, The Origins and Development, 16–17, 66. 24. Ahmad, “Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 166. 25. Gaborieau, The Transformation of Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at, 129–31. 26. Khan, Tabligh Movement, 37. 27. Gaborieau, “The Transformation of Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 129–31. 28. Darboe, “ASR Focus: Islamism in West Africa—Gambia.” With the support of a reformist discourse, President Jammeh managed to provide himself with Islamic legitimacy, whereas his Senegalese colleague, President Wade, is being criticized for misusing his Sufi affiliation for official purposes. Nyang (“Islamic Revivalism in West Africa,” 244, 252, 267) argues that the colonial pattern of cooperation between rulers and marabouts has been inherited by contemporary Senegalese leaders, while the colonial alienation of Gambian Muslims indeed created the conditions that led to the development of Islamic reformism. 29. See Janson, “‘We are all the same.’” 30. During my field research, the Gambian Jama‘at prepared a number of missionary tours to Senegal to make the movement more popular. They were especially successful in Ziguinchor, a town in the Casamance. 31. Compare Loimeier, “Patterns and Peculiarities,” 245; Ware, Knowledge, Faith, and Power. 32. Other preachers popular among Gambian Tablighis are Sheikh el-Faisal, a British Jamaican who was sentenced in 2003 to nine years in prison for his call to violence, and Hamza Yusuf, a converted American and lecturer at the Karaouine University in Morocco.

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33. The Serahuli were propagators of Islam, spreading the religion during their trade missions in West Africa. 34. Nowadays, a group of rotating imams is responsible for the Thursday night and Friday sermons in Markaz. 35. For a more detailed historical outline of the Jama‘at in The Gambia, see Janson, “The Battle of the Ages.” 36. “The Transformation of Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 133. 37. Reetz, “Living Like the Pious Ancestors,” 6. 38. Moosa, “Worlds ‘Apart’: Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 209; Vahed, “Contesting ‘Orthodoxy’: The Tablighi-Sunni Conflict,” 46; McDonald, “Constructing a Conservative Identity,” 203–05. 39. Moosa, “Worlds ‘Apart’: Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 212. 40. Interview with Mohammad, March 26, 2006. 41. “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia,” 169. 42. However, a change has set in during recent years (personal communication with Dietrich Reetz and Farish Noor, November 2005). 43. In this way they are distinguished from the “Arabic students”: the pupils from madrasa and daara. 44. See also Sanneh, Translating the Message. 45. Similarly, Augis (Dakar’s Sunnite Women, 15, 78–85) argues that socioeconomic and political changes in Senegal have spurred youth to create a range of subcultures to address these changes, of which reformist Islam is one. 46. Darboe, “ASR Focus: Islamism in West Africa—Gambia,” 81. 47. The National Youth Policy Document 1999–2008 shows that the level of youth unemployment is increasing at an alarming rate and estimates that more than 35,000 youth (out of a total population of approximately 1.5 million) are now searching for jobs to improve their declining standard of living (The Independent, January 10, 2005). 48. The demonstrations went ahead despite a refusal by the authorities to grant GAMSU a permit and became violent when the security forces used excessive force to break it up. At least 14 youth were killed (Amnesty International Report, 2001). 49. A Gambian qadi (judge) who was somewhat skeptical of the Tabligh Jama‘at because of its negligence of formal Quranic education, even went as far as claiming that “Markaz can only progress in an environment where poverty governs. When their economic position changes, the youth’s mind will also change” (interview with Hamed, March 29, 2006). 50. Interview with Seni, April 16, 2005. 51. See also Khedimellah, “Aesthetics and Poetics.” 52. See also Masquelier, “Debating Muslims, Disputed Practices,” 231. 53. Foroyaa, May 11–13, 2007. 54. May 16–17, 2007. 55. “Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa,” 16–18. 56. See also Masquelier, “Identity, Alterity and Ambiguity,” and “Debating Muslims, Disputed Practices”; LeBlanc, “From Sya to Islam.” 57. “Youth & Street Culture in Urban Africa,” 222. 58. Ibid. 59. Interviews with Ibrahim, March 30, 2006, and Bachir, July 28, 2006. 60. The Origins and Development, 10–12. 61. “Keeping Busy on the Path of Allah,” 295. 62. An example is Masud’s edited volume (Travellers in Faith), the most extensive study that has ever been published on the Tabligh Jama‘at; but that focuses primarily on the movement’s ideology, its central leadership, and its corpus of religious texts. 63. “The Quotidian Dimension,” 2005. 64. Seesemann, “The Quotidian Dimension,” 327. 65. See Janson, “Roaming About for God’s Sake.” 66. Peacock, “Religion and Life History,” 94; Peacock and Pettyjohn, “Fundamentalisms Narrated,” 120.

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67. “Becoming a World-Saver,” 862. 68. “African Conversion,” “On the Rationality of Conversion: Part I,” and “On the Rationality of Conversion: Part II.” 69. “Conversion Reconsidered,” “The Juggernaut’s Apologia.” 70. The Fula form the second largest ethnic group in The Gambia. 71. Manjago are an ethnic group that originated in Guinea Bissau and settled in The Gambia from the 1960s onward, and they are generally associated with traditional religion, in which ancestor veneration plays an important role, but also with Christianity. 72. Interview with Ibraima, June 12, 2006. 73. Interview with Fatu, April 17, 2006. 74. Although Sufi and Sunni belong to the same Islamic denomination, the Tablighis presented them as two different branches, in which Sufi refers to the traditional Islam of the older generation and Sunni to a pure form of Islam as practiced by the younger generation. 75. Interview with Bubacar, May 20, 2005. 76. “Conversion Reconsidered,” 36; “The Juggernaut’s Apologia,” 166. 77. See also Levtzion, “Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa,” 216. 78. Le pèlerin et le converti, 124–26. 79. For example, Roy, Globalised Islam; D’Alisera, An Imagined Geography. 80. Globalised Islam, 186. 81. See Diouf, “Engaging Postcolonial Cultures,” 7. 82. See also Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New, 7. 83. Interview with Ansumana, April 27, 2006. 84. This suggests that their participation in the movement is not simply a commitment to an ideology or organization, but it is indeed perceived as a religious conversion (see also Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women, 258). 85. This characterization is a joining together of reaffiliation and conversion (see also Sanni, “Power and Agency”). 86. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. 87. The dark spot indexes regular prayer beyond the obligatory five daily prayers and appears on the forehead from touching the ground during prayer (see also Soares, “Islam and Public Piety in Mali,” 206). Here it should be mentioned that this mark is not only typical of Tablighis; according to Soares (“Islam and Public Piety in Mali,” 220–22) it is also a public sign of Sufi piety. 88. This brotherhood was established in Fez, Morocco, in the last decade of the eighteenth century. It was founded by the Algerian Ahmad al-Tijani. In the mid-nineteenth century, Al-Hajj Umar Tal disseminated its doctrine in Senegal, and from here it spread to other West African countries. 89. I do not know whether this was Ahmed’s real uncle or a classificatory one. The latter option seems likely because Tablighis often address each other with kinship terms. 90. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. 91. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. The Tabligh Jama‘at sees publicity as threatening and discourages people from writing about it. This ties in with the movement’s great stress on modesty and self-effacement (Sikand, The Origins and Development, 8). Moreover, the Jama‘at believes that action and practice, rather than writing about it, are the best methods to make Muslims into better believers. 92. The reason why in the end, despite his continuing scepticism with me and my research, Ahmed gave in with my request to record his biographical narrative was that he considered it his religious duty to convey his knowledge of Islam. Furthermore, he firmly believed that when Allah did not agree with my research, it would not get done (see also Brasher, Godly Women, 7). 93. Until 1994 Islam was not very important in national affairs, but when Yahya Jammeh became president he built mosques in state institutions. 94. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. 95. By “effort,” tabligh, that is, missionary work or proselytization, is meant. 96. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006.

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97. A new convert sets out on a three-day missionary tour. Later, he will set out for 15 days and ideally 40 days once a year, and at least once in his lifetime for four months. 98. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. 99. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. 100. Interview with Mohammad, March 29, 2006. 101. Interview with Ahmed, March 29, 2006. 102. Interview with Ahmed, March 30, 2006. 103. Interview with Ahmed, March 30, 2006. 104. Interview with Ahmed, March 30, 2006. 105. Booth, “The Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Conversion Narratives,” 372. Metcalf (“Living Hadı-th in the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 606n.21) argues that stories of fallen, now transformed, sinners are common in the Tabligh Jama‘at. Nevertheless, such stories have not been recorded so far. 106. For the conversion story of a female Tablighi, see Janson, “Roaming About for God’s Sake,” 467–75. 107. “The New Religious Politics,” 15. 108. See also Sikand, The Origins and Development, 255. 109. Interview with Mohammad, March 30, 2006. 110. Although the stories of American women’s conversion to fundamentalist Christianity recorded by Brasher (Godly Women) show similarities to the narratives I encountered during my field research, her psychological explanation of conversion, induced by a personal life crisis, is Western-centric and inapplicable to the Gambian context. As Ahmed’s narrative illustrates, Gambian Tablighis may feel attracted to a purer way of life through contact with Tablighi preachers or friends, without passing through a personal life crisis such as a death or divorce first. 111. Interview with Keeba, April 21, 2005. 112. Ahmed and his friends often spoke of “my Allah,” underlining the personal nature of the relationship with God. 113. See also Masud, “Ideology and Legitimacy,” 105. 114. Hijra refers to the emigration of the prophet and his companions from Mecca to Medina. 115. See Masud, “Introduction,” xvi. 116. Masud, “Introduction,” xvi. 117. “The Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Conversion Narratives,” 369. 118. The Tablighis confided in me that abandoning watching football matches on television was especially difficult for them. A zealous Tablighi decided to go on missionary tour when the World Cup started so that he would not be tempted to watch television. 119. “The Rhetoric of Fundamentalist Conversion Narratives,” 370. 120. For the Tablighi literature, that is, books written about the Jama‘at by people associated with it, see Masud, “Ideology and Legitimacy,” 80–85. 121. The disdain for book knowledge seems to be a universal feature of the Tabligh Jama‘at, being an anti-intellectual movement (Ahmad, “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia,” 516). 122. Interview with Lamin, May 15, 2006. 123. See also Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 85. 124. Although most reformist Muslims advocate the purification of Islam by modernizing religious education, Gambian Tablighis argue for purging Muslim society through Islamic practice. The Tablighis’ emphasis on ritual orthopraxy is not unique to the Tabligh Jama‘at. In his study of the Gayo highlands in Sumatra, Bowen (Muslims Through Discourse, 3, 12) claims that the events that all Muslims see as part of a shared religious repertoire, such as the performance of public ritual, are always matters of intense debate. 125. Compare Sikand, The Origins and Development, 254; Reetz, “Keeping Busy on the Path of Allah,” 300. 126. Interview with Yankuba and Fatima, April 1, 2006. 127. Janson, “Guidelines on Becoming an Ideal Muslim Woman” and “Renegotiating Gender: Changing Moral Practice”; see also Metcalf, “Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at and Women,” 49–51.

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128. See also Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women, 172. 129. Interview with Bachir, June 23, 2006. 130. See also Sikand, The Origins and Development, 255. 131. Interview with Mamadu, May 7, 2006. 132. Interview with Mohammad, March 29, 2006. 133. Compare Moosa, “Worlds ‘Apart’: Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at,” 214. 134. Sikand, The Origins and Development, 77. 135. It is believed that in imitation of the prophet, wearing the turban yields spiritual reward. A female Tablighi laughed, “Moreover, the turban beautifies our men” (interview with Kadi, June 8, 2006). The older generation disagreed with Tablighis wearing turbans, arguing that “turbans are of old worn by elderly people who are well versed in Quran, while they [the Tablighis] wear the turban although they are kids.” 136. A well-known hadith reports that the prophet was displeased with men wearing long garments (Sahih Bukhari, vol. 4, book 56, no. 692, http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/ reference/searchhadith.html). 137. Interview with Yankuba, April 1, 2006. 138. The qabd-sadl dispute, the dispute about the position of the arms, is rather old and has developed in the 1930s, when Ibrahim Niass, who was based in Senegal, popularized the practice of qabd (arms crossed) elsewhere in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria (Loimeier, Islamic Reform and Political, 35, 79–80). A long series of theological debates in West Africa shows that both qabd and sadl (arms outstretched) are legitimate positions. Nevertheless, the qabd-sadl dispute is still current in The Gambia. 139. Interview with Fatima, May 8, 2006. 140. It is believed that Tijans have longer tasbih than Qadrs. 141. Here Mahmood’s notion of “embodied behavior” comes in, in that bodily practices are indispensable aspects of the pious self (Politics of Piety, 133). For the women in the Egyptian mosque movement studied by Mahmood, outward behavioral forms are not only expressions of their interiorized religiosity but also a necessary means of acquiring it. She concludes, “Bodily behavior was therefore not so much a sign of interiority as it was a means of acquiring its potentiality” (147). 142. See also Mahmood, Politics of Piety; Van Nieuwkerk, “Piety, Penitence and Gender,” 56. 143. See also Van Nieuwkerk, “Piety, Penitence and Gender,” 57. 144. Westerlund, “Reaction and Action,” 313. 145. Compare Westerlund, “Reaction and Action,” 317. 146. Compare Westerlund, “Reaction and Action,” 317. 147. Politics of Piety, 6. 148. See also Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women, Chapter 5. 149. See also Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics, 82. 150. Many Tablighis had changed the ring tone of their cellphone, which was generally regarded as un-Islamic. A popular ring tone among Tablighis is Quranic recitation. 151. Interview with Bachir, April 20, 2006. 152. For example, Kane, Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria. 153. See also Gomez-Perez, “Associations Islamiques à Dakar”; Loimeier “Patterns and Peculiarities,” 242–45. 154. This distinction resembles Whitehouse’s dichotomy (Arguments and Icons) between a doctrinal and an imagistic mode of religiosity. 155. Arguments and Icons. 156. Translating the Message. 157. Sanneh (Translating the Message) concludes that for Christians mission has come preeminently to mean translation of their scriptures, whereas for Muslims it has stood for the non-translatability of the Arabic Quran.

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———. “Ideology and Legitimacy.” In Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal, edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, 79–118. Leiden: Brill, 2000. ———. “Introduction.” In Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal, edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, xiii–lx. Leiden: Brill, 2000. ———. Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal. Leiden: Brill, 2000. McDonald, Zahraa. “Constructing a Conservative Identity: The Tabligh Jama-‘a in Johannesburg.” In Globalisation & New Identities: A View from the Middle, edited by Peter Alexander, Marcelle Dawson, and Meera Ichharam, 191–210. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2006. Metcalf, Barbara D. “Living Hadı-th in the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at.” Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 3 (1993): 584–608. ———. “Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at and Women.” In Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal, edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, 44–58. Leiden: Brill, 2000. ———. ‘Traditionalist’ Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis, and Talibs. ISIM papers. Leiden: ISIM, 2002. Moosa, Ebrahim. “Worlds ‘Apart’: Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at in South Africa under Apartheid, 1963– 1993.” In Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal, edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, 206–21. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Nock, Arthur D. Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander The Great to Augustine of Hippo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. Nyang, Sulayman S. “Islamic Revivalism in West Africa: Historical Perspectives and Recent Developments.” In Religious Plurality in Africa: Essays in Honour of John S. Mbiti, edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Sulayman S. Nyang, 231–72. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1993. Peacock, James L. “Religion and Life History: An Exploration in Cultural Psychology.” In Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society, edited by Edward M. Bruner, 94–116. Washington DC: American Ethnological Society, 1984. Peacock, James L., and Tim Pettyjohn. “Fundamentalisms Narrated: Muslim, Christian, and Mystical.” In Fundamentalisms Comprehended, edited by Martin M. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, 115–34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Quinn, Charlotte A. Mandingo Kingdoms of the Senegambia: Traditionalism, Islam, and European Expansion. London: Longman, 1972. Reetz, Dietrich. “Keeping Busy on the Path of Allah: The Self-organization (Intiza-m) of the Tablı-ghı- Jama-‘at.” Oriente Moderno 84, no. 1 (2004): 295–305. ———. “Living Like the Pious Ancestors: The Social Ideal of the Missionary Movement of the Tablighi Jama‘at.” Paper presented at the DAVO conference, Hamburg, November 20–22, 2003. Roy, Olivier. Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. London: Hurst, 2004. Sanneh, Lamin. The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989. ———. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990. Sanni, Amidu. “Power and Agency in Conversion and Reversion: Muslim Prayer Groups in Nigeria.” Paper presented at the conference Conversion, Modernity and the Individual with Particular Reference to Islam in Africa and Asia, ZMO, Berlin, November, 25–26, 2005. Seesemann, Rüdiger. “The Quotidian Dimension of Islamic Reformism in Wadai (Chad).” In L’islam politique au sud du Sahara: Identités, discours et enjeux, edited by Muriel GomezPerez, 327–46. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Sikand, Yoginder. The Origins and Development of the Tablighi-Jama’at (1920–2000): A CrossCountry Comparative Study. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002. Soares, Benjamin F. “Islam and Public Piety in Mali.” In Public Islam and the Common Good, edited by Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman, 205–26. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

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———. Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 2005. The Independent newspaper, National Youth Policy Document 1999–2008, January 10, 2005. Triaud, Jean-Louis. “Islam in Africa under the French Colonial Rule.” In The History of Islam in Africa, edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels Athens, 169–87. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000. Trimingham, J. Spencer. Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. Vahed, Goolam. “Contesting ‘Orthodoxy’: The Tablighi-Sunni Conflict among South African Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 23, no. 2 (2003): 313–34. Van Nieuwkerk, Karin. “Piety, Penitence and Gender: The case of Repentant Artists in Egypt,” in “Reconfiguring Gender Relations in Muslim Africa,” edited by Marloes Janson and Dorothea Schulz, Journal for Islamic Studies 28 (2008): 37–65. Ware, Rudolph T. Knowledge, Faith, and Power: A History of Qur’anic Schooling in 20th Century Senegal. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2004. Westerlund, David. “Reaction and Action: Accounting for the Rise of Islamism.” In African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, edited by David Westerlund and Eva Evers Rosander, 308–33. London: Hurst, 1997. Westerlund, David and Eva Evers Rosander, eds. African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists. London: Hurst, 1997. Whitehouse, Harvey. Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Pa rt 3

4 Gender, Marr iage, and S exualit y

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Chapter 7

4 Mi grati on, Ma rr iage, and Et hnicit y The Early Development of Isl am in P rec o lo nial Mid dle C asa ma nc e

Aly Dramé (Dominican University)

I ntro d uc ti on

Historical narratives have consistently overlooked the role of marriage in the pro-

cess leading to the Islamization of the Casamance, the southwestern part of Senegal.1 This negligence is a clear reflection of the minor role played by this region in the historiography of Senegambia as a whole. Instead of exploring the early development of Islam throughout the Casamance, this chapter focuses on the interwoven relationships between migration, marriage, and ethnic identity transformation in the Middle Casamance. Its chronological focus is the period between the first half of the seventeenth century, when the original Muslim settlements began to emerge, and the mid-nineteenth century, when the balance of religious power was dramatically shifting in favor of Muslims. Since the 1970s and 1980s the conflicting lines of arguments respectively formulated by Robin Horton and Humphrey Fisher have strongly influenced the scholarship on conversion to Islam in West Africa. In his pioneering model (the Intellectualist Theory) Horton describes the African cosmology as a realm dominated by a higher God and lesser spirits, corresponding to what he terms as the social macrocosm and microcosm. For Horton, the transformation of the basic African cosmology was driven by a set of external and internal crises, culminating in the breakdown of the social microcosm. By suggesting that the African religious universe underwent a change from within, Horton offers a new version of “syncretism” or the so-called mixing between Islam and pre-Islamic African beliefs.2

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In his “devout opposition” to Horton, Fisher portrays conversion in Africa as a three-step process. The first step, quarantine, took shape when Muslims who resettled in a region inhabited by non-Muslims distanced themselves from “unbelievers” to avoid the alienation of their faith. The second step, mixing, occurred when non-Muslim host communities solicited the expertise of Muslim clerics in religious practices such as dream interpretation, fortune telling, and the making of protective charms, through interpretation and manipulation of the Holy Quran. The third step, reform, began when Muslim clerics took the opportunity of mixing to introduce non-Muslims to Islam. In Fisher’s scenario, the new worldview, Islam, completely smashed and swept away the old worldview, African religion.3 In contrast to Fisher’s approach, this chapter argues that instead of quarantine, marriage alliances between the Bainunk landowners and Muslim migrants (mostly Mandingo-speaking people from the Niger River region) fostered the early development of Islam in the Middle Casamance. The westward redeployment of the Mandinka goes back to the Mali Empire of the thirteenth century, when the wars of Emperor Sundiata’s reconquista generated important currents of migration, more particularly after the fall of Mali in the sixteenth century.4 The Mandinka introduced to the Middle Casamance a hierarchical model of social organization, ideas of highly centralized government, and Islam. In the precolonial era, however, the Mandinka were divided into two distinct groups: the Nyancho aristocracy, who embodied monarchy, matrilineal descent, and traditional religion, and Mandinka Muslims, who prospered through trade, cotton manufacture, and teaching Islam. This chapter concentrates on this last category of Mandinka. The central character in this process was Fodey Heraba Dramey, a distinguished Muslim scholar and educator who originated from Daramane, Mali.5 Patterns of marriage described in this chapter operated at three major phases: exogamous marriage (between Muslims and non-Muslims), endogamous marriage (between Muslims), and the subsequent consolidation of Islam. The cumulative effect of these processes was a slow but progressive change of the spiritual geography of the Middle Casamance from African religion to Islam.

Ba inu nk I ndigenous C ommun it ie s Reconstructing the ethnogenesis of the Bainunk is a challenging task because of the antiquity of their presence in the Casamance. But oral sources are unanimous in describing the Bainunk as the landowners in this region where they predated all other ethnic groups. Driven by land scarcity and, subsequently, the search for better living conditions, the original Bainunk migrated from Guinea-Bissau to the Casamance; they founded their capital at Brikama located on the south bank of the Casamance, near the mouth of the Sungrugru River. Most Bainunk kingdoms such as Buguendo, Bichgangor, Jase, Jagra, Fogny, Kassa, and Pakao were strategically located along the trading networks linking diverse population groups in Southern Senegambia.6 Unlike the Jola and Balant, the Bainunk were not acephalous societies, nor did they have a highly centralized system of government comparable to the Mandinka social system. Nineteenth-century French sources depict the Bainunk political system as a monarchy in which community elders could oversee decision-making processes and temper power abuses by holding in check royal authority.7 All seven districts forming what is now the Mandinka country in the Middle Casamance belonged to the Bainunk: Suna, Balmadu, Birassu, Buje, Yacin, Sonkudu, and Pakao. Until the

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eruption of the Pakao jihad in the early 1840s, political power in this region rotated mainly between Bakum and Patiabor, the two alternating regional centers in the Buje, whereas in the Pakao Mandwari exercised this role. In what is now the land of the Balant or Balantakunda, a narrow territory stretching along the south bank of the Casamance, from Adeane in the west to Mangakunda in the east, the rotation occurred among six ruling Bainunk families living in Binako, Adeane, Niamey, Congolon, Brikama, and Bombota.8 From a Bainunk standpoint, all individual or collective human behaviors were either good or bad, whatever their motivations and historical circumstances. This worldview led to the division of Bainunk cosmology into two separate realms, each led by a divinity carrying out the orders of the supreme God (dinoh).9 The first one was the incarnation of anything good, protecting and blessing people whose behaviors were consistent with the will of dinoh. The second one ruled over the domain of transgressions, harming and punishing without piety those responsible for wrongdoings.10 However, for many oral informants, dinoh was actually the same God, whose demeanor could positively or negatively change, depending on individual or group behaviors.11 When defending themselves from enemies’ attacks, launching military operations, or seeking self-happiness, Bainunk community elders always held ritual ceremonies dedicated to their shrines (china). Religious performances involved the sacrifice of many items (palm wine, palm oil, millet, rice, and animal blood). The local communities of the Pakao region still show several old historical holy sites, where the Bainunk used to perform some of their most important ritual ceremonies.12 According to the existing literature, religious encounters between Muslims and non-Muslims in West Africa were characterized in part by a distinction between rejection and tolerance of Islam. For example, Lamin Sanneh, Jack Goody, and Nehemia Levtzion have documented how the double role of Muslims as agents of economic prosperity and experts in the resolution of social problems triggered the acceptance of Islam in some parts of West Africa.13 But more recent research calls attention to the existence of new patterns of historical behaviors exhibited by decentralized and smallscale societies such as the Sereer Safen in Western Bawol and the Balant on the Upper Guinea Coast. For James Searing and Walter Hawthorne, these groups resisted foreign institutions such as slavery, colonialism, or Islam to preserve their independence from centralized groups such as the Wolof and Mandinka. To this end the Sereer and Balant relocated from their original homelands and created new refuge zones that were more difficult to access like mangrove swamps and mountain hills.14 In the lower Casamance, water systems such as the Casamance River and its affluent, the Sungrugru, which separates the Lower and Middle Casamance, provided natural ecological shields for decentralized societies such as the Jola, who wanted to eradicate or restrict the risks of invasion posed by aggressive neighbors such as the Mandinka. In the Middle Casamance the Balant, who suspected that the Mandinka were hatching plots to convert them to Islam or sell them into slavery, made consistent efforts to deny them access to their territory until the nineteenth century. According to some sources, the term Balant derives from balanto, which means in Mandingo those who have refused cultural assimilation by relations such as marriage ties. One Balant community elder said, “The Mandinka married our women who converted to Islam. This was detrimental to our survival because of the risks of losing our language, religion, and ancestral heritage. We fought Mandinka Muslims to preserve our cultural and social values.”15 The Bainunk were part of the African indigenous groups who had a positive view of Islam when they first came into contact with Muslims. They exhibited much more

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flexibility and inclusiveness in their dealings with Muslim migrants to the Casamance than the Jola and Balant.16 The Bainunk owned many lands where they grew products such as rice, cotton, millet, and fruits in the individual and collective fields that surrounded their homestead. These assets allowed the Bainunk to be dynamic players in large-scale weekly markets, where diverse populations sold and bought from one another (luma). On these occasions the Bainunk welcomed strangers who respected their laws and made substantial profits from trade with other groups like the Mandinka.17 Alvise Damosto, Valentin Fernandes, and André Alvares, who visited Senegambia between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, depicted the Casa Mansa (king of the Casa in Mandingo) as a powerful leader who had many wives, plenty of gold, and a tight control over the economy revolving around the Casamance River, which he named after himself.18 During the precolonial era, Muslim scholars and traders, who entered the Bainunk homeland in the Middle Casamance, were highly appreciated for their Islamic knowledge, their mastery of the art of divination, and more specifically their expertise in making talismans. Muslims were viewed as strangers (luntang) who brought with them a spiritual and economic capital favorable to the social advancement and economic development of their host communities.19 Because of the flexibility of their social institutions, the Bainunk increasingly lost their identity and cohesion to other ethnic groups such as the Jola in the lower Casamance, and the Balant and Mandinka in the Middle Casamance. Through processes of land alienation and/or cultural assimilation that took several centuries, the Bainunk experienced a name change from Nûn to Bainunko (those who have been pushed away in Mandingo). Marriage ties between Muslims and non-Muslims were a critical milestone in the spread of Islam in the Middle Casamance. This goes back to the time of Fodey Heraba Dramey, the leader of the first generation of clerics who founded the original Muslim settlements in this region.

Fo dey H er ab a D r amey : A B r ief B io gr aphy of a M usli m Pi one er Since the early 1970s scholars have paid closer attention to increasing currents of migration from the Niger River basin to other regions of Africa. For Philip Curtin and others, Mandingo-speaking people were the main architects of these patterns of behavior, which accelerated after the fall of Mali in the sixteenth century.20 Their primary motivations and repercussions on the political, social, and economic changes in many areas of Africa have often been linked to long-distance trade.21 But other researchers have mainly associated these trends with the propagation of Islam. For example, Ivor Wilks observes that besides trade some Muslim groups like the Jula migrants to the forest ecological zone devoted themselves to activities such as Islamic learning.22 According to Charles Thomas Hunter and Lamin Sanneh, missionary work rather than long-distance trade triggered the dispersal of Jakhanké clerics throughout West Africa.23 Nehemia Levtzion also noted that Muslim merchants were “the carriers of Islam” rather than the “agents of Islamization,” even though their dispersal was instrumental in linking isolated African societies with broader commercial networks.24 Fodey Heraba was among the Muslim clerics portrayed as “devout Muslims,” who planted the seeds of Islam in the midst of non-Muslims through means of action that were markedly different from military jihad.25 Fodey Heraba’s life and time are

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examined through the lens of oral narratives and some written traditions such as the holy book of Pakao (pakao al-korano or Pakao al-kitabo). This is a nineteenth-century Arabic document written by scholars such as Fodey Sitokoto, the leader of Karantaba in the 1840s.26 In these sources Fodey Heraba is consistently depicted as a “household name” or as the “early face” of Islam in the Middle Casamance, because when reworking their oral traditions to help explain key historical outcomes informants go beyond the period before Fodey Heraba only to suggest that during this time the Middle Casamance was not part of the dar al-Islam. In popular memory Fodey Heraba is remembered as a holy man (wali) whose vocation was proselytization rather than long-distance trade.27 His father, Abd al-Rahman, was a merchant-scholar from Fass, a Mandinka corruption of the town of Fez located in the northwestern part of Morocco. He then migrated to Timbuktu like many merchant-scholars of his time.28 Fodey Heraba’s family had long been affiliated with the Qadr Sufi order founded in Baghdad in the twelfth century by Abd al-Qadr al-Jilani (1077–1166). In his early career Fodey Heraba was strongly influenced by many core aspects of Qadr teachings, such as the strict adherence to the prophetic tradition (sunnah), religious sanctity and the participation in the improvement of public life.29 His father instructed him in the Holy Quran and introduced him to the Qadr Sufi order, long before his arrival in the Casamance with his Qadr wird. But nothing indicates that Fodey Heraba had a spiritual master in oral testimonies where his Islamic scholarship is viewed as the byproduct of divine blessing (baraka).30 According to Fodey Heraba’s hagiographers, his mission began when he experienced a frequent divine revelation ordering him to relocate from east (tilibo) to west (tiliji). This holy mission was to create a new settlement destined to be a stepping-stone for the spread of Islam between the Casamance and the Gambia, the two rivers flowing through the heart of the Mandinka country.31 Fodey Heraba left his homeland of Daramane founded by Dramey clerics from Timbuktu on the south bank of the Senegal River, to the north of Kayes, Mali.32 André Brue, the director of the Compagnie du Sénégal, visited the region of Kayes at the end of the seventeenth century. He described Daramane as “a very populous village whose majority were Muslim clerics,” and counted Dramey and Yatabaré lineages of Daramane among the most educated Muslim families in this region.33 Fodey Heraba was probably in the middle of his life when he began his spiritual journey by foot, accompanied by his wife (Yassa Tunkara) and by his slave (Mansayama), stopping in several villages along the way. Oral testimonies suggest that finding a right place to settle was a painstaking experience for Fodey Heraba, because he frequently lost sight of the “divine light” that guided his nightly meditations whenever dawn arrived.34 Nevertheless, this moment of confusion did not crash his spirit because he understood the challenging mission awaiting him from the beginning. The difficulties surrounding the “forced relocation” of Fodey Heraba are often examined and understood in the light of the predicaments leading to the hijra of prophet Mohammad. Thus, the challenges Fodey Heraba experienced during his spiritual journey are viewed as expected occurrences in oral narratives.35 In the Middle Casamance Fodey Heraba was hosted in Bambajon, one of the oldest Bainunk settlements located on the south bank of the Casamance. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the populations of Bambajon were still strongly devoted to their ancestral traditions, including harvesting, sacrificing to ancestral spirits, and drinking palm wine. Bahumba Daffey, the chief of Bambajon, first welcomed Fodey Heraba with hospitality and admiration, exhibiting excitement when listening to his

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guest read from the Holy Quran, or watching him write “sophisticated” words on his wooden tablets. However, as the reputation of the holy man reverberated throughout the region, the chief’s attitude shifted to “fear and suspicion.”36 Despite mixed feelings, Bahumba granted Fodey Heraba a concession to settle freely on empty land, located less than four miles to the northeast of Bambajon. This large forest became the site of Karantaba, whose name derives from knowledge (karan), and taba, a species of tree under whose shade Fodey Heraba and his disciples used to study the Holy Quran while building the village.37 Dealing with the periodization and chronology of events represents one of the toughest challenges in fieldwork research, because these are a breeding ground for anachronism, unless they are handled with a great deal of care. Oral narratives are unclear about the exact date of the establishment of Karantaba. This shortcoming is often linked with the antiquity of Karantaba over other Islamic settlements in the Middle Casamance such as Njama, Darsilam, and Janaba.38 Most informants preferred to situate the emergence of Karantaba in relation to key historical transitions such as the fall of Mali, the capture of Timbuktu after the Moroccan invasion in 1591, and the subsequent dispersal of Muslim scholars.39 For the sake of clarity, I examined the family tree of the Dramey ruling family of Karantaba by concentrating on the period between Fodey Heraba and Fodey Almamy Dramey (1859–1990) who held the record for longevity as Imam. By comparing and contrasting the data provided by community elders, I found the existence of six generations between these two men, with an average period of forty years from one generation to another.40 In light of these investigations and findings, Karantaba was probably founded in the first half of the seventeenth century, but this date is more suggestive than conclusive. A general overview of Fodey Heraba’s worldview helps shed light on his patterns of behavior in the Middle Casamance. His model of Islamic development rejected outright the use of violence, because in his view people could not become good Muslims without the profession of faith and the first pillar of Islam (shahada). Fodey was convinced that a peaceful coexistence between the Muslim minority and the non-Muslim majority represented a decisive step toward the achievement of social change.41 Genealogies of Muslim scholars do not describe “the jihad of Fodey Heraba” as a short episode when people fought to preserve their faith or impose their will on others; rather, it was an experience of a lifetime when educated Muslims spread Islamic learning among individuals living in a world of ignorance (jahiliyya).42 In his public preaching, Fodey Heraba consistently urged his disciples to behave as role models by sharing their knowledge with non-Muslims and to humble themselves by treating all human beings as equals.43 This set of beliefs was the guiding principles of Fodey Heraba in his dealings with Muslims and non-Muslims in the Casamance.

E xo gamo us M ar r i ag e : Mu sl ims and N on-M usli ms Exogamous marriage was the first phase in the early development of Islam in the Middle Casamance. This refers to consistent patterns of marriage bonds between early Muslim migrants and non-Muslim local women, who ultimately switched allegiance to Islam under the influence of their husbands. Apart from the prestige associated with Muslims’ double role as specialists in long distance trade and experts in the art of divination, three other factors provided incentives for these unions. First, Islamic law (shari’a) allows Muslim men to take wives outside of their religion, but offspring

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resulting from these relationships must follow the religion of their fathers. In fact, widening the dar al-Islam by bringing in new converts is believed to be one of the highest accomplishments in a Muslim’s lifetime.44 Second, Muslims who resettled in areas inhabited by non-Muslims, such as the Middle Casamance, dramatically restricted their ability to find Muslim spouses in these areas. This led local communities to become the primary “wife-giving groups” to Muslims. Third, the sanctity of marriage historically was one of the core cultural values among the Bainunk. As such, marriage resulted often in important entitlements, including land grants authorizing the settlement of strangers.45 According to one prolific oral historian, Fina Fenda Faty, these interfaith unions were mostly arranged marriages between Muslim men and much younger Bainunk women, who were showered with many gifts (cloth, cattle, harvest, and jewelry). In some cases the two parties could agree to tie the marriage knot when the wives-to-be reached maturity. Although the Middle Casamance was a lucrative niche for Muslim scholars and merchants, local people portrayed Islamic scholarship and trade as a “door open to wealth accumulation.” Given the age difference between men and women involved in these negotiations, women could expect to inherit the wealth left behind by their husbands.46 Research has shown that other Bainunk communities in Senegambia followed a pattern similar to the one described by Faty. For example, George Brooks describes a case in which the Bainunk authorized traders such as the Lançados (Afro-Portuguese traders) to marry their local women, who could consequently widen their commercial activities after the deaths of their husbands.47 A consensus opinion between men and women who participated in my group interviews is to retrace their maternal ancestry back to the Bainunk indigenous communities, who hosted their founding ancestors in the Middle Casamance since the time of Fodey Heraba.48 Traditions recall that Fodey Heraba had no children with his first wife (Yassa Tunkara) when they arrived in the Middle Casamance; he then chose most of his spouses from the Bainunk women, including one of chief Bahumba’s daughters (Nemuna Jakumba), who converted to Islam before the founding of Karantaba.49 One oral informant explains the vital role of marriage (futuwo) in the following terms: ‘Clerics such as Fodey took advantage of their prestigious status to convert the local populations through futuwo. This strategy was one of the fastest ways to open up their hearts and minds to Islam. Fodey himself left Bambajon after marrying Chief Bahumba’s daughter who converted to Islam. Many other Muslim migrants followed in his footsteps.”50After Fodey Heraba performed many successful prayers for Chief Bahumba, the latter and his daughter converted to Islam, setting the tone for the rest of their community. The chief granted his son-in-law the concession of land, permitting Fodey Heraba to build the first Islamic village harboring the first mosque in the Middle Casamance. This deal did not require the payment of a tax, but Fodey Heraba had to respect the political sovereignty of Bahumba Daffey through his non-involvement in the political matters of Bambajon.51 This widespread tradition echoes arguments about the role of kings as “the early recipients of Islam,” to borrow from Levtzion. He postulates that the dispersion of Muslims was the first step in the conversion to Islam in Africa, whereas the second step was the moment when Muslim scholars began to communicate with African host kings.52 The case of King Malal (Musulmani) exemplifies this kind of spiritual change. He embraced Islam and ordered the destruction of non-Muslim shrines after the prayers of a Muslim scholar terminated a long drought and famine in his country. Some oral narratives indicate that Sundiata also converted to Islam out of gratitude to some Muslim clerics, who prayed for his political success over the Sosso king, Sumanguru Kantey.53

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The story of Fodey Heraba follows a similar pattern, but in this particular case marriage occurred right after his arrival in Bambajon. This union inaugurated a new chapter shaped by continuous marriage ties between the local populations of Bambajon and Karantaba. Despite their different religious identities, these two communities never quarantined themselves from one another. Many oral informants in Karantaba or Bambajon designated the other community as the ancestral homeland of their mothers.54 Fodey Heraba instructed his early followers to treat all their neighbors with the uttermost respect, but insisted that preferential treatment be given to the people of Bambajon for their hospitality and generosity. Even today gift exchanges between Karantaba and Bambajon recall this relationship, because every year a portion of the food items pilgrims brought to Karantaba during the most popular Muslim festival in the Casamance is given to the people of Bambajon.55 Oral sources and some written traditions stress many cases about famous scholars who followed the same pattern as Fodey Heraba Dramey after establishing clear evidence of their divine blessing (baraka). For example, Badokore, the Bainunk chief of Jududu hosted Harunaba Dramey, one of Fodey Heraba Dramey’s brothers. After giving him a wife who converted to Islam, the chief authorized Harunaba to settle on the south bank of the Casamance. Although Harunaba did not found his own village, he devoted most of his life to preaching and converting many people in the Bainunk community of Koling where he is buried.56 Fodey Musa Soly, the progenitor of the Soly clerics of Karantaba, who was a bachelor when he migrated to Karantaba from his native Macina, took most of his spouses from the Bainunk local women and converted them to Islam.57 When Burama Seydi and his nephew migrated from Futa Aerelawo to the Middle Casamance, they became the hosts of the populations of Fanting. Impressed with Seydi’s strong Islamic background, local Bainunk chiefs such as Mankawali and Bambara Fanney hired him for a “series of weekly prayers.” In appreciation for Seydi’s valuable services, Chief Fanney gave him a wife who converted to Islam. This union led to the creation of Njama, the first Muslim settlement in the district of Yacin, located to the north of Sedhiou. The role of Njama as the “entrance door” of Islam to Yacin and the importance of futuwo in this process are leitmotivs in oral narratives collected in this region.58 Oral narratives provide many case studies showing that the redeployment and settlement of Muslim scholars in the Middle Casamance through exogamous marriage existed until the nineteenth century. For example, Karamo Kamara, the founding ancestor of Kamara clerics of Sedhiou, was born to a noble and highly educated Muslim family. He wanted nothing but power when he migrated from his native Mali to the Middle Casamance with a group of followers. The local people of Bakum, who hosted Kamara, frequently crossed the Casamance River to meet those of Sandinieri. These two groups used to celebrate their common Bainunk identity by drinking palm wine under the shade of a large baobab tree (adansonia digitata). From the crowd Kamara chose a young woman (Yeri Danfa), who became his wife and embraced Islam.59 As a result of this union, Bainunk leaders of Bakum and Patiabor authorized Kamara’s settlement between the two villages, in what is now Morikunda (Muslim quarter) in Sedhiou (a deformation of si dié meaning sit right there in Mandingo). In 1849 French officials appointed a member of the Kamara family (Ndura Kamara) as the political and religious chief of Buje.60 From his native Jareng, a community claiming ancestry back to Karantaba, Sanaba Dramey migrated to the district of Buje. He was scholar and schoolteacher whose goal was to help promote Islamic education in this region. After his marriage to a local

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woman from the Mansaly and Biaye ruling families who hosted him in Bakum, Sanaba settled in Diatuma shortly after the creation of the French fort at Sedhiou in the late 1830s.61 During my group interview in Diatuma, one village elder made the following remark endorsed by others: “Since the time of Fodey Heraba futuwo has always been a very effective tool in widening the dar al-Islam. No one in this region, including people sitting under this palaver tree right now, would deny our Bainunk maternal ancestry or the Bainunk blood flowing in the veins of all Mandinka Muslims.”62 Oral sources are sometimes unclear or confusing about the names of many local non-Muslim women whose marriages to Muslim migrants led to their conversion to Islam. Blame is often placed on the similarity of women’s names between many generations. But there is a clear consensus between oral narratives and written traditions regarding how marriage decisively paved the way for the spread of Islam in the Middle Casamance. The willingness of the Bainunk elite to favor marriage ties between local women and Muslim migrants underlines the prestigious status of Muslim scholars who migrated to the Middle Casamance during the precolonial era.

End o g a mo u s Mar r iage: The Pr ac t ic e of San awo Endogamous marriage was the second phase in the early development of Islam in the Middle Casamance. When Muslim migrants resettled in the heartland of the land of the infidels (dar al-kufr), they quickly realized the need to rally around the banner of Islam for the expansion of the Islamic community (ummah). This network of Muslim solidarity strongly relied on the practice of sanawo, a long tradition of cross-cousin marriages and joking relations among the Mandinka in the Casamance. In such a highly centralized society, one primary function of sanawo is to stimulate peace and tolerance by allowing members of the same community to transcend existing social barriers for the good of the community as whole.63 According to the available evidence, the roots of sanawo stretch back to two major sources. The first source is a key historical event that radically changed the relationships between two local groups. For example, oral traditions recall that the two female ancestors of the Bayo and Kuyatey clan names gave birth to two babies the same night. The delivery occurred when a thunderstorm plunged the whole community into disarray, forcing the nurses to place the babies away from any possible danger.64 When the two mothers were asked to nurse their newborn babies, they could not identify them in the darkness and agreed to breastfeed them without distinction. In Mandinka social hierarchy the Bayo are part of the high class (horon), whereas the Kuyatey belong to the professional occupational groups (nyamakala). Nevertheless, the remarkable solidarity initiated by these two women resulted in sanawo relations between the Bayo and Kuyatey clan names. Since this historic event the customs required that all people belonging to these two groups live in peace and harmony by sharing all kinds of jokes.65 The second source of sanawo is linked to old patterns of intermarriage between people with different clan names, going back to the time of their founding ancestors. In the long run, members of the two groups solidify their relationships until they view themselves as one extended family.66 Karantaba offers a compelling framework for understanding how this form of sanawo played a decisive role in the Islamization of the Middle Casamance. Taking advantage of his status as a popular Muslim educator and scholar, Fodey Heraba promoted the early development of Karantaba through a pedagogy of hospitality. He opted for an open door policy that permitted him to be

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the magnet for people from diverse backgrounds. In this process two groups of new settlers stand for their critical importance. The first group forming the majority included people who originated from Bainunk communities in the Middle Casamance (such as Judubu, Bakum, Bagnere, Bambajon, and Koling) and from neighboring countries (such as The Gambia and GuineaBissau). Most of them came to Karantaba to start a new life or to seek knowledge (karanta), with the perception of Islamic learning as the fastest avenue toward eradicating illiteracy.67 One informant, Al-Hajj Manding Dramey, illustrated the pacific nature of Fodey Heraba’s worldview with the following observation: “Since the birth of Karantaba we never forced people into Islam. The best strategies we used were negotiation, persuasion and prayers. I was blamed for eating and drinking water with non-Muslims, but when I gained their confidence I was able to convert many of them to Islam. We learned from Fodey Heraba that military jihad must be used only for self-defense.”68 The central importance of religious tolerance in Fodey Heraba’s worldview is often remembered by recalling the story of Koli Jemme, a non-Muslim barred from succeeding his father or brother to the throne in Badibu, The Gambia. When Jemme took the path of self-imposed exile to start a new life in the Casamance and subsequently became the host of Fodey Heraba, he permitted him to harvest palm wine behind Karantaba despite his non-Muslim status. Rather than quarantine themselves from one another, the two men developed peaceful relations until Fodey Heraba converted Jemme to Islam, and prayed for him before he founded Bugnadu (house of honor) on the north bank of the Casamance River.69 The second group included itinerant traders and/or Muslim scholars looking for new religious or economic opportunities away from home. It is noteworthy to emphasize the cases of four men because of their prominent roles in the emergence and development of Islam in Karantaba and surrounding areas: Matiaku Diba, Fodey Musa Soly, Fodey Barro, and Fodey Sakho. By initiating a tradition of sanawo relations with most of them, Fodey Heraba was able to guarantee their definitive settlement in Karantaba.70 During one of his hunting adventures in the Middle Casamance, Matiaku Diba helped Fodey Heraba settle Karantaba, but he wanted to return to his native Badibu, The Gambia.71 Fodey Heraba persuaded Matiaku to stay in Karantaba when he offered him one of his daughters (Muso Dramey) in marriage.72 Fodey Musa Soly (Soly is a Mandinka corruption of the Fula name Sow) was a brilliant scholar from Macina who wanted to play a dynamic role in the propagation of Islamic learning. Soly’s strong Islamic background impressed Fodey Heraba, who hosted and treated him with respect and hospitality.73 While visiting his son in Karantaba, Soly’s father (Musa Sow) learned about his marriage to one of Fodey Heraba’s daughters (Na Dramey); he then congratulated him on fulfilling his religious obligation, exhorted him to work closely with Fodey Heraba, prayed for the prosperity of Karantaba, and returned home.74 Fodey Barro (commonly remembered as Barroba) was a merchantscholar from Macina who wanted to pay tribute to his maternal uncle, Fodey Musa Soly. Members of Barro’s family are referred to as “Barro did not come to stay” (barro amansiola), because Fodey Barro settled down in Karantaba only when Fodey Heraba married one of his daughters to him.75 Because Fodey Sakho shared the same mother as Fodey Heraba, sanawo relationships between their families were absolutely forbidden.

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After the arrival and settlement of these four men, Fodey Heraba then divided Karantaba into five original extended families most commonly known as kabila: Kanfoderi, Kantiaku, Solykunda, Barrokunda, and Sakhokunda.76 Kabila were family units regrouping “those who shared the same kola nut, attended mosque prayers together, and maintained good relationships with one another.” Nevertheless, people such as new converts to Islam, liberated slaves, and landless farmers in search of agricultural opportunities could become members of these kabila by adopting the same patronymic names.77 Each kabila was invested with specific tasks in the administration of Karantaba, where the rule of male primogeniture dictated the system of power distribution and redistribution within these five kabila. Kanfoderi (the Dramey founding and ruling family) monopolized the offices of Imam (almamiyya) and village chief (alkaliyya), the two most powerful social institutions of the Mandinka Muslims in the Casamance. The oldest members of Kanfoderi were automatically appointed village chief and Imam, respectively; but neither one of them could monopolize these two power positions. In the case of a power vacuum, such as resignation, death or long illness, the next person in line was invested. The family of Matiaku Diba (Kantiaku) provided the administrators of the land, the masters of key ceremonies (baptisms, funerals, weddings, and charity distribution), and the official investiture of the village chief.78 People leading the official investiture of the Imam and the spokespersons of Karantaba were chosen from the Solykunda kabila, founded by Fodey Musa Soly.79 The family of Fodey Barro, who established the Barrokunda kabila, assumed the function of Quranic schoolteachers and muezzins (wandalla). The descendents of Fodey Sakho, who founded the Sakhokunda kabila, were the direct advisers and the right-hand men of the Imam of Karantaba. They accompanied him to the mosque on Friday and during religious rites such as the Day of Sacrifice (bana saalo) or end of Ramadan celebration (sunkar saalo).80 This model highlights two factors of critical importance in the Mandinka country in the Casamance. The first one is the gerontocratic, conservative and male dominated nature of the Mandinka political system in which religious and political powers were the strongholds of men who relegated women to a subordinate position. The second one is the sacrosaint principle of landownership for the Mandinka who believed that those who cleared the space to build a community were ipso facto the owners of the land (banko tiyyo). Marriage ties and a system of power decentralization helped Fodey Heraba to create and maintain the cohesion Muslims needed in the Middle Casamance, where they were still a small minority in the early seventeenth century. Fodey Heraba and his companions also agreed to open new Quranic schools in every kabila to promote the demographic growth of Karantaba. In exchange for Islamic education those who sought Islamic knowledge were expected to perform agricultural tasks for their teachers (karamo). Farming activities took place between Thursday morning and the time of the Friday prayer (aljumat). This was all the more useful in a region where farming was historically the bedrock of the local economy, and consequently, a major source of income. 81 My description of sanawo is confined to Karantaba, which was the base of my operations during fieldwork. But additional research carried out in areas such as Balmadu, Pakao, and Yacin strongly insists that the method of Islamic development accomplished through the practice of sanawo had long been the rule rather than the exception in the Middle Casamance. I collected many oral accounts stressing the existence of a broad spectrum of sanawo relations between several clerical and founding families in this region: for example, Dramey-Samate and Sylla-Cissey in Darsilam; Dramey-Dabo

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and Seydi-Daffey in Njama; Barro-Gassama and Dabo-Seydi in Saligueniey; and SolyKontey and Dramey-Maney in Judubu.82

Th e N ineteen th C entu ry : Th e P hase o f C onsoli dati on The third phase in the early development of Islam in the Middle Casamance was when Muslims used different strategies to develop the tentacles of Islam from their original settlements. Whether motivated by trade, Islamic education, or both, Muslim migrants to the Casamance often targeted sites located near water systems, commercial crossroads, or in the proximity of non-Muslim local populations. Muslims did so with a strong confidence in the superiority of Islam over African religion.83 As indicated earlier, these migrants first began to gain social acceptance and recognition by coexisting with non-Muslims. When Muslims were given land concessions to build their own communities in the Middle Casamance, they did so while leaving their doors open to all people who wanted to join their communities. Whether Muslims settled near or away from their host communities, no compelling evidence indicates that Muslims wanted to quarantine themselves to preserve the originality of their faith. Where proselytism was the driving force behind Muslim presence in the Casamance, clerical figures such as Fodey Heraba would have run a big risk of defeating their own purpose by using the strategy of quarantine. From my perspctive, the need to lay the foundation for new community groups whose rules and regulations were in harmony with the tenets of Islam dictated the strategy used by Muslims. Although oral and written sources make clear that tensions could arise from time to time, during the precolonial era in the Middle Casamance religious boundaries were not hermetically sealed to prevent exchanges between Muslims and non-Muslims.84 After the building of their own communities, Muslims continued to develop extensive contacts with the Bainunk indigenous communities in the Middle Casamance, including with the political overlords who authorized their settlement. But at the same time they kept intact their original social and religious identity, their religion and language more specifically.85 Without a doubt, the phases of mixing and reform Fisher describes in his model of conversion to Islam were prominent factors in the propagation of Islam in many areas in West Africa; the Middle Casamance was no exception. In this region, however, ethnic and religious interactions such as marriage, the frequent recourse of non-Muslims to the Muslim art of divination, Islamic learning, and the sharing of the same geographic space were incompatible with the idea of quarantine. 86 Indeed, in their early encounter Muslims and non-Muslims in the Middle Casamance understood that they needed each other and consequently did not quarantine themselves from one another. The direction of religious change I describe moved from African religion to Islam, not the other way around. Men and women involved in exogamous and endogamous marriage, children resulting from these unions, as well as Muslims and non-Muslims seeking “new spaces of religious affiliation” through conversion or Islamic education provided the building block for the early Islamic community in the Middle Casamance. Muslims sought to continuously expand their territory through their dispersal over time and space, the creation of new settlements, the founding of Quranic schools, the teaching of the Holy Quran, and the welcoming of new Muslim and non-Muslim settlers. The Pakao al-kitabo provides the chronological order of the

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first twenty-seven mosques built throughout the Middle Casamance and the names of clerics who established them, beginning with those of Karantaba.87 These dramatic developments were a slow but continuous process that stretched from the first half of the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. In 1849, Bertrand Bocandé was the French resident on the Island of Karabane in the Lower Casamance. He understood many native languages in the region between GuineaBissau and the Casamance such as Mandinka, Creole and Portuguese. Bocandé spent more than a decade crisscrossing this area to learn about the development of French commercial activities and the state of mind of the local communities. For him, the settlement and resettlement of Mandinka Muslims over time and space was a defining characteristic of the history of the Casamance, where the influence of Islam consistently grew until the nineteenth century.88 Most importantly, Bocandé noted the persistence of marriage bonds between Mandinka Muslim men and local women in the Middle Casamance during this period. He reported that the way Muslim men dressed their new wives according to Islamic customs and traditions fascinated non-Muslim local women who tended to adopt the same dress code.89 Another French explorer, Hyacinthe Hecquard, described himself as the first European man to visit Karantaba in the first half of the nineteenth century. He portrayed Karantaba as a Muslim village whose inhabitants welcomed him with a great sense of hospitality when he visited Fodey Setama. Hecquard argued that during his short visit he saw the continuous arrival of Muslims and non-Muslims, and inhabitants of Karantaba and strangers, who showered the “holy man” with all kinds of gifts in exchange for his Islamic education and prayers.90 Because of this combination of factors, and marriage ties in particular, Islam was becoming slowly the dominant religion of the Middle Casamance before the creation of the fort of Sedhiou in the late 1830s, marking the beginning of French colonial settlement in this region. During this time, in many areas of the Middle Casamance, such as Suna, Pakao and Balmadu, Muslims were already the dominant group before the 1840s when the Pakao jihad broke out.91

Co nc lusi on In the final analysis, historical studies on Islam in Senegambia have the tendency to focus almost too exclusively on the period after the mid-nineteenth century. There is no doubt about the importance of this period marked by the beginning of European colonial rule, the emergence of new Sufi orders, and the development of military jihad. However, the period leading up to the rise and expansion of Islam in Senegambia was set in motion long before the mid-nineteenth century. This chapter attempts to show the pivotal role of marriage as a stepping-stone for the Islamization of the Casamance. Although the Casamance is a melting pot where many population groups have coexisted for several centuries, this chapter focuses mainly on the encounter between Mandinka Muslim migrants and the Bainunk local communities prior to the beginning of French colonial rule. During this time the language for social and religious change used by early Muslim scholars such as Fodey Heraba Dramey was expressed through policies of accommodation and pacific coexistence with the local populations among whom they settled. Endogamous and exogamous marriage and Islamic education provided the first vehicles for the early development of Islam in this region. This language changed for the first time with the outbreak of the first holy war known as the Pakao jihad in the early 1840s. This war inaugurated the beginning of a new era that transformed

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the Middle Casamance into a battleground between Islam and monarchy. Religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims lasted until the early 1900s when the French defeated one of their toughest opponents, Fodey Kaba Dumbuya. The Pakao jihad is the history of the interwoven relationships between three major actors: the French who wanted to incorporate the Middle Casamance into their colonial empire, the Mandinka who took advantage of the expanding dar al-Islam to eliminate the last non-Muslim power centers that existed in the region, and the Bainunk who attempted to resist both projects by redefining the nature of their relations with the French and Mandinka whom they had previously welcomed to their homeland. The Bainunk coped with these new challenges in three different ways: they accepted a process of cultural assimilation or “Mandinkization,” relocated from their native homeland to create much safer ecological niches like other social groups such as the Balant and Sereer Safen, or fought until they died heroically on the battlefield. In any case, the Bainunk progressively lost most of the key elements that defined their original identity, specifically their language and religion. Today the Mandinka language (Mandingo) and Islam are respectively the lingua franca and the dominant religion in the Middle Casamance.

Not es

1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the families of Al-Hajj Manding Dramey in Karantaba and AlHajj Djadji Sarr in Sedhiou, who were my hosts during my 2003 fieldwork. I would also like to thank all community leaders of the Middle Casamance for their hospitality, advice, and outpouring support. The Casamance is located at the crossroads of four West African states (Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and French Guinea), and as such it is a melting pot where many centralized and decentralized population groups have coexisted for many centuries. These people are farmers, fishermen, traders, hunters, and gatherers. They speak a rich diversity of languages and practice a variety of religions, including Islam and Christianity. The Casamance is divided in three geographic regions (the Lower, Middle, and Upper Casamance) where the Jola wet rice farmers, the Mandinka and the Fula cattle herders are the majority groups, respectively. See Horton, “African Conversion,” 85–108, and “On the Rationality of Conversion,” 373–79. See Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered,” 24–40 and “The Juggernaut’s Apologia,” 153–73.” Fisher’s model presents some similarities with the arguments elaborated by Trimingham, who also used a three-stage process (infiltration, conversion, and assimilation) when studying in the early 1950s how religion changed from traditional religion to Islam in West Africa. But contrary to Fisher, Trimingham argued that African societies only entered history with conversion. See Spencer Trimingham, Islam in West Africa, 33–46. For more insights on this issue see Dramé, “Planting The Seeds of Islam,” 50–63. Fodey is the highest religious distinction in Mandinka religious hierarchy. It could be described as a swan song because it usually occurs late in the life of people, who have established clear evidence of their piety, wisdom, and Islamic scholarship. During this important ritual ceremony, the recipient’s head and chin are surrounded with a long turban and a red hat placed on top of his head. I recorded more than 80 scholars who earned the title of Fodey in the Middle Casamance; all of them were men with most originating from Karantaba. This is a clear revelation that among Mandinka Muslims in the Casamance the priority of higher education is given to men, but the search for Islamic knowledge is mandatory for all Muslims, irrespective of gender. Group interviews with the author: Sedhiou, Bakum, and Kunayan, October 20, 21, and 29, 2003. See also Charpy, “Casamance et Sénégal,” 474–500.

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7. See Hecquard, “Rapport sur un voyage,” 418 8. Group interviews with the author in Sedhiou and private interview with Chief Mamadou Mansaly, village chief of Bakum, October 20, 2003. See also Bocandé, “Notes sur la Guinée Portuguese,” 57–93. 9. Group interview with the author, Bakum, October 17, 2003. 10. Group interview with the author: Sedhiou, November 17, 2003; and Mamadou Biaye, September 29, 2003. 11. Bakum, interview with the author, October 22, 2003. 12. Niamone Sanoussy Diatta, interview with the author, November 28, 2003. 13. See Sanneh, The Crown and The Turban, 1–36; and Goody, “Restricted Literacy in Northern Ghana.” 14. Hawthorne, “Nourishing a Stateless Society,” 1–24; and Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade. 15. Filidjié Mané, interview with the author, Sedhiou, October 17, 2003. 16. Sanoussy Diatta, interview with the author, Sedhiou, December 7, 2003. 17. Brooks, Euro-Africans in Western Africa, 44; and Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea, 1–38; and group interview with the author, Sedhiou, October 17, 2003. 18. Boulégue, Aux Confins du Monde Malinké. 19. Group interviews with the author, Karantaba and Sedhiou, October 22 and 28, 2003. See also Sweet, Culture, Kingship, and Religion, 179–88. Sweet has documented how African talismans were popular in the African-Portuguese world between the end of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth century. According to him Muslims and non-Muslims, Africans and non-Africans, were fond of these talismans known as “Bolsa de Mandinga” made by Mandinka Muslims from the coast of Guinea. 20. See Tall, “L’Histoire du Mandé.” 21. See Curtin, Economic Change in Pre-colonial Africa, 59–91; Launay, Beyond the Stream, 49–76. Griffeth, “The Dyula Impact,” 166–81; and Wright, The World and A Very Small Place, 65–94. 22. See Wilks, “The Juula and the Expansion,” 95. 23. Hunter, The Development of an Islamic Tradition; Sanneh, The Jahanké Muslim Clerics, 1–3; and Batran, “The Kunta, Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti,” 13–46. 24. Levtzion, “Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan to 1800,” 68. 25. Willis, “Introduction: Diffusion of Islam,” 1–39. 26. Only a handful of copies of the pakao al-kitabo are available throughout the Casamance. In the book are pieced together many important events that shaped the history of the Mandinka, since their early encounter with the Bainunk landowners in the Casamance. Important sections of the pakao al-kitabo are based on the life and time of Fodey Heraba Dramey and other early Muslim clerics who migrated to the Casamance. Some portions of the book were ravaged by frequent termite attacks, poor weather, and a series of wild fires in the 1970s. With the help of Al-Hajj Manding Dramey (my host in Karantaba), some griots, and other historical experts, I was able to exploit the content of the book. For more development on the Pakao jihad, see Dramé, “Planting The Seeds of Islam,” 137–97. 27. Group interview with the author, Karantaba, October 2, 2003. 28. For more discussion on the role of Timbuktu in the development of trade and Islamic education in Africa, see Hunwick, Timbuktu and The Songhay Empire. 29. One of the oldest Sufi orders, the Qadriyya was introduced to the Western Sudan in the early sixteenth century by the Kunta clerical network. Ndiassane is the bastion of Qadriyya in Senegal. Despite the rapid growth of Muridiyya and Tijaniyya, Qadriyya remains until today the dominant Sufi order among Mandinka Muslims in the Casamance. For more developments on the Qadr Sufi order see Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, 161–93. 30. Group Interview with author, and private interview with Mansani Dramey, Diatuma, November 12, 2003.Taking the wird makes official someone’s adherence to a tariqa or Sufi order, resulting in his or her commitment to abiding by the rules and regulations of this particular order. 31. Almamy Barro, interview with the author, Karantaba, September 29, 2001; and oral historian Fina Malang Fenda Faty, interview with the author, Sedhiou, November 6, 2003.

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32. Group interview with the author, Fodekunda, the ancestral house of the Dramey ruling family of Karantaba, October 23, 2003. 33. See Monteil, Les Kassonké: Monographie, 353–404. 34. Interview with the author, Mansani Dramey, village chief of Diatuma and other community elders, November 11, 2003. 35. When running away from the religious persecutions, the prophet Mohammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Yathrib, which became Medina. This event, which occurred in approximately 622 CE, marked the beginning of the Muslim calendar. 36. Bubacar Dabo, interview with the author, Bambajon, December 6, 2003. 37. The scientific name of the Tabo tree is Cola Kordifolia according to Schafer (see Djinns, Stars and Warriors, 5). 38. Interviews with the author: Jeli Mori Keba Kuyatey, Chicago, June 12, 2001; Sekuba Diba, Karantaba, November 13, 2003; Almamy Fossar Souané, Sandinieri, October 24, 2003; and Karamo Dinding Cissé, Kunayan, October 13, 2003; and Filidjié Mané, Sedhiou, November 3, 2003. 39. Kemo Soly, spokesperson of the Soly extended family of Karantaba, October 23, 2003. 40. The following generations are Fodey Heraba Dramey, Sambaya Kumba Barro Dramey, Fodey Bakari Dramey, Fodey Al-Hajj Dramey, Fonemuna Dramey, Mamadou Lamine Sitokoto Dramey, and Fodey Almamy Dramey. 41. Kemo Soly, interview with the author, Karantaba, October 23–24, 2003. 42. Group interview with the author, Karantaba, October 29, 2003. 43. Khadiry Barro, interview with the author, October 23, 2003. 44. The Holy Quran: 2:221 and 5:5. 45. Chief Almamy Fossar Souané of Sandinieri, interview with the author, October 23, 2003. 46. Fina Fenda Faty and Lamine Kuyatey during a seven-hour interview with the author, Sedhiou, December 5, 2003. 47. See Brooks, Euro-Africans in West Africa, 37–67. 48. Group interviews with the author: Sedhiou, November 17, 2003; Karantaba, November 21, 2003; and Bakum, December 1, 2003. 49. Interviews with the author: Al-Hajj Manding Dramey, Karantaba, October 23, 2003; Bubacar Dabo, Bambajon, December 6, 2003; and Mansani Dramey, village chief of Diatuma, October 25, 2003. According to some oral traditions Fodey had many, which included Yassa Tunkara, Nemuna Jakumba, and Jakumba Barro. 50. Bubacar Dabo, interview with the author, Bambajon, December 6, 2003. 51. Al-Hajj Manding Dramey, interview with the author, Karantaba, October 23, 2003. New scholarly research calls attention to the existence of many similar political arrangements between the temporal and the spiritual in several regions of Africa. A good example is the case of Muslim clerics commonly known as sëriñ lamb and sëriñ fakk taal in the Wolof kingdoms of Northern Senegambia, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. For more information see Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad, 22–28; Glover, Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal, 46–66; and Searing, God Alone Is King, 18–24 52. Levtzion, “Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan,” 63–91; and Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History, 124–38. 53. See Levtzion, “Islam in the Bilad al-Sudan,” 63–91. 54. Group interview, Sedhiou, October 29, 2006. 55. Bubacar Dabo, interview with the author, November 6, 2003. 56. Interviews with the author: Chief Mansani Dramey of Diatuma, November 11, 2003; Ansumana Biaye, Sandinieri, October 23, 2003; and Jeli Manlang Fenda Faty, Sedhiou, November 6, 2003. 57. Interviews with the author: Karamba Soly, September 29, 2001; Fakeba Soly, November 7, 2003; Kemo Soly, October 26, 2003, and a group interview including members of the Soly and the Dramey ruling family, Karantaba, November 7, 2003. 58. Group interview with the author, Njama, September 12, 2001. According to Yoro Tourey, the name of Njama, which means peace in Arabic, is a clear indication of the warm welcome

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59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

74.

75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80.

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Bainunk local people gave Burama and his nephew when they arrived in the Middle Casamance. Njama, however, means peace in Wolof, not in Arabic. Interviews with the author: Bubacar Cissé, Kounayan, November 2, 2003; Mamadou Mansaly, village chief of Bakum, October 20, 2003; group interview, Sedhiou, December 2, 2003. These developments occurred in the context of the expanding French colonial rule in the Casamance. For more information see Dramé, Planting the Seeds of Islam, Chapter 3. Mansani Dramey, village chief of Diatuma, interview with the author, November 11, 2003. Sana Seydi, interview with the author, Diatuma, November 12, 2003. Other ethnic groups in Senegal such as the Wolof, Fula, and Sereer also have a similar tradition of sanawo; they respectively call it Kaal, Denturao, and Maseer. Group interview, Sedhiou, October 24, 2004. Jeli Mori Keba Kuyatey, interview with the author, Chicago, October 11, 2001. To better emphasize the critical importance of sanawo, during the same interview Kuyatey decided to share his own experience. When he visited Mali in 1982, he was pressed for time and urinated near the walls of the National Assembly in Bamako. The last name of the security guard who caught him was Bayo. When he asked for his national identity card and realized that he and Kuyatey were sanawo, he let him go home instead of forcing him to pay a fee or to spend some days in prison. Group interview with the author, Sedhiou, December 3, 2003. Group interviews with the author: Karantaba, October 23, 2003; and Sedhiou, November 9, 2003. Al-Hajj Manding Dramey and Kemo Soly, interview with the author, Karantaba, October 23, 2003. Marriage ties between Manding’s daughter and Kemo Soly have consolidated their cordial relations. Schafer, Djinns, Stars and Warriors, 131. Keba Dakhaba, interview with the author, Simbandi Birrassu, December 10, 2003. Badibu was one of the Mandinka kingdoms located on the north bank of the Gambia River. For more information about the Mandinka Kingdoms see Quinn, Mandingo Kingdoms of the Senegambia, 29–52. Interviews with the author: Sekuba Diba, Karantaba, November 13, 2003; and Kebutey Diba, Karantaba, September 29, 2001. Oral testimonies recall that Fodey Musa Soly fascinated many of his fellow Muslims because of his mastery of the Holy Quran. One tradition recounts that one day a crocodile accidentally took away one of Fodey Heraba’s daughters. Through manipulation and interpretation of the Holy Qur’an, Soly saved the life of the young girl to the satisfaction of the whole village. Interviews with the author: Fakeba Soly, Karantaba, November 7, 2003; Fossar Almamy Souané, Sedhiou, October 24, 2003; and Al-Hajj Manding Dramey and Kemo Soly, Karantaba, December 8, 2003. Interviews with the author: Almamy Barro, September 29, 2001; and Khadry Barro, Sedhiou, November 29, 2003. Today Karantaba comprises nine different Kabilas. Besides the original five Kabilas there are also Kan Kumba Sara, Seni Kunda, Kagny Kunda and Kan Sahula. Some of them such as Seni Kunda and Kan Kumba Sara regroup people directly related to Fodey Heraba. Others such as Kagny Kunda comprise people such as the Syllamé, who resettled in Karantaba when their original homeland (Mandwar) was destroyed during the 1840s Pakao jihad. See Souané, Histoire des Manding de la Moyenne Casamance, 26. Sekuba Diba, interview with the author, Karantaba, November 13, 2003. Interviews with the author: Al-Hajj Karamba soly, Karantaba, September 29, 2001; and Al-Hajj Manding Dramey, Kemo Soly, October 23, 2003. Interviews with the author: Kemo Soly Sakho, Karantaba, September 29, 2001; and AlHajj Manding Dramey, Karantaba, October 23, 2003.

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81. Group interviews with author, Karantaba and Sedhiou, December 12 and 14, 2004; and Mamadou Mansaly, village chief of the Bainunk village of Bakum, interview with the author, November 29, 2003. 82. Group interviews with the author: Sedhiou, December 7, 2004; Bakum, October 23, 2003; Bambajon, September 30, 2003; and Njama, November 8, 2003. 83. Niane, Histoire des Manding de L’Ouest, 49. 84. Interviews with the author: Fina Malang Fenda Faty, Sedhiou, November 6, 2003; Fina Keba Dakhaba, Simbandi, December 10, 2004; and group interview in Karantaba, October 25, 2003. 85. Fina Malang Fenda Faty, interview with the author, Sedhiou, November 6, 3003. 86. Some traditions also suggest that despite their different religious identities, Muslims and non-Muslims in the Pakao region held together many ritual ceremonies such as circumcision. 87. See Dramé, “Planting the Seeds of Islam,” 227 88. Debrien, Bertrand Bocandé, 282. 89. For more development on Bocandé’s report see Debrien, “Bertrand Bocandé (1812–81).” 90. Hecquard, Voyage sur la cote et dans l’Interieur, 134. 91. Bocandé, “Notes sur La Guinée Portugaise, 57–93.

Bibl io g r aphy Babou, Cheikh Anta. Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007. Baum, Robert. Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Pre-Colonial Senegambia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Bocandé, Bertrand. “Notes sur La Guinée Portugaise ou Sénégambie Meridionale.” Bulletin de la société de Géographie, Paris 1849, série 3, Tome XI, 265–350. Boulégue, Jean. Aux Confins du Monde Malinké: Le Royaume de Kassa. Paper presented at the conference on Manding Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1972. ———. Contribution à l’histoire du Sénégal. Paris: Afera, 1987. ———. “La Participation Possible des Centres de Pir et Ndogal à La Révolution Islamique.” In Contributions a l’Histoire du Sénégal, edited by Jean Boulégue. Paris: 1987. ———. “La Sénégambie du Milieu du Quinzième siècle au Début du Dix Septième siècle.” Thèse de Doctorat d’histoire, Paris, 1968. ———. Le Grand Jolof (8TH-16TH). France, Blois: Editions Façades, 1987. Brooks, George. Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in West Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993. ———. Euro-Africans in West Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. Charpy, Jacques. “Casamance et Senegal au Temps de la Colonisation Française” In Pour Comprendre la Casamance, Dakar, 1994: 474–500. ———. Introduction aux Archives de l’Afrique Occidentale Française: Guide de Recherche. Paris: 1959. Curtin, Philip. Economic Change in Precolonial Africa. Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975. Debrien, Gabriel. Bertrand Bocandé (1812–1881): Un Nantais de Casamance, Bifan, Série B, XXXI, Dakar, 1970. Dramé, Aly. “Planting The Seeds of Islam: Karantaba, a Mandinka Muslim Center in the Casamance, Senegal.” PhD dissertation, Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2005. Fisher, Humphrey. “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conversion in Black Africa.” Africa 43, no. 1 (1973): 27–40

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———. “Dreams and Conversion in Black Africa.” In Conversion to Islam, edited by Nehemia Levtzion, 217–35. London: Holmes and Meir Publications, Inc, 1979. ———. “The Juggernaut’s Apologia: Conversion to Islam in Black Africa.” Africa, 55, no. 2 (1985): 153–73. Glover, John. Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order. Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007. Goody, Jack. “Restricted Literacy in Northern Ghana.” In Literacy in Traditional Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Griffith, Robert. “The Dyula Impact on the Peoples of the West Volta Region,” Paper on the Manding, edited by T. Hodge Carleton. Bloomington: Indiana University Publications, 1971, 166–81. Hawthorne, Walter. “Nourishing a Stateless Society during the Slave Trade: The Rise of Balanta Paddy Rice Production in Guinea-Bissau,”Journal of African History, 42, no. 1 (2000): 1–24. ———. Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations Along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900. Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2003. Hecquard, Hyacinthe. “Rapport sur un voyage dans la Casamance.” Revue Coloniale 6 (Paris, 1852): 418. ———. Vôyage sur la Côte et dans L’Intérieur de L’Afrique. Paris,1853. Horton, Robin. “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part one,” Africa 45, no. 3, 1 (1975): 373–99. ———. “African Conversion” Africa, 41 (1971): 85–108 Hunter, Thomas. “The Development of an Islamic Tradition of Learning among the Jakhanke of West Africa.” PhD dissertation, Department of History, University of Chicago, 1977. Launay, Robert. Beyond the Stream: Islam and Society in a West African Town. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Levtzion, Nehemia. “Islam in the Bilad Al Sudan to 1800.” In History of Islam in Africa, edited by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall R. Pouwels, 61–91. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Monteil, Charles. Les Kassonke: Monographie d’une Peuplade du Soudan Français. Paris, E. Lerroux, 1915. Niane, Djibril Tamsir. Histoire des Mandingues de L’Ouest. Paris: Karthala, 1989. Quinn, Charlotte. The Mandingo Kingdoms of Senegambia. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972. Robinson, David. Muslim Societies in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ———. Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Rodney, Walter. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast (1545–1800). New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980. Sanneh, Lamin. The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism. Boulder: Westview Press, 1997. ———. The Jahanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia. New York: University Press of America, 1989. Santerre, Roger. Pédagogie Musulmane d’Afrique Noire: L’Ecole Coranique Peule du Cameroun. Montreal, Canada: Les Presses de L’Université de Montréal, 1973. Sapir, David. A Grammar of Diola-Fogny: A Language Spoken in the Basse Casamance Region of Senegal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Saul, Mahir. “Stratification and Leveling in the Farming Economy of a Voltaic Village.” PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, 1982. Schaffer, Matt. Djins, Stars and Warriors: Mandinka Legends from Pakao, Senegal. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Searing, James. “Conversion to Islam: Military Recruitment and Generational Conflict in a Sereer-Safen Village (Bandia), 1920–38.”Journal of African History, 44. Cambridge, 2003: 73–94.

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———. “God Alone Is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal: The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002. ———. “No Kings, No Lords, No Slaves: Ethnicity and Religion Among the Sereer-Safen of Western Bawol, 1700–1914.” Journal of African History, 43. Cambridge, 2002: 407–29. ———. West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. “Time of Conversion: Christians and Muslims Among the Sereer-Safen of Senegal, 1914– 1950s.” Muslim-Christian Encounters. Paper presented at the third international colloquium, The Institute for Studies of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA), Northwestern University, May 22–24, 2003. Souané, Fossar. Les Mandingues de la Moyenne Casamance: Evolution Economique, Politique et Sociale, 1837–1900. Mémoire de Maitrised’histoire. Dakar: Université de Dakar, 1990. Sweet, James. Culture, Kingship and Religion in the African-Portuguese World (1441–1770): Recreating Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003 Tall, Ly Madina. L’histoire du Mandé, d’après le Jeli Kuku Madi Diabaté de Kela. Presented at the Premier Collogue de Bamako, Mali, 1975. Trimingham, Spencer. Islam in West Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. Villard, André. Histoire du Sénégal. Dakar: Maurice Viale, 1943. Willis, Ralph. The Cultivators of Islam. Vol. 1, London: Frank Cass and Company, LTD, 1979. Wilks, Ivor. “The Jula and the Expansion of Islam into the Forest in History of Islam.” In History of Africa, edited by Nehemia Letvzion and Randall R. Pouwels, 93–108. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Wright, Donald. The World and a Very Small Place in Africa 92–115. London: M. E. Sharpe, 2000.

Chapter 8

4 Beyond Brother ho od Ge nder, R el igio us Auth or i ty, an d t he G lobal C irc u its o f S enegalese M u r i di y ya

Beth A. Buggenhagen (Indiana University, Bloomington)

Th e P ro mise of Par adi se ?

Donal B. Cruise O’Brien wrote in his 1971 monograph, The Mourides of Senegal,

that “the Mourides present their own system as one in which they labour unremittingly in return for nothing more than the promise of paradise, but it would (I think) be an error to take them at their word.”1 Cruise O’Brien, like many scholars of the Muridiyya of this period, sought to understand the disciples’ devotion in body, spirit, and purse to the will of the spiritual hierarchy and the emergence of the Murid way as an economic force in Senegal.2 He was among many scholars of the Sufi order who privileged an analysis of the state noting the ways Murid leaders have wielded their control over their largely agricultural base to extract favors from the postcolonial state and how the relationship between the state and the Sufi orders has contributed to what came to be called, not uncritically, Senegalese exceptionalism.3 Tariqa Murid emerged in the late nineteenth century in colonial Senegal around the Sufi scholar and wali, or friend of God, Amadou Bamba (1850–1927). Today, Tariqa Murid includes the devotees of the descendants and great talibe, or disciples, who have since inherited the baraka, or grace, and the ever-growing band of Bamba’s devotees. Although a spiritual guide may be a central feature of Sufism, for Murid adepts, the significance of the sheikh derives from his or her genealogical claim of descent from Amadou Bamba and his (Bamba’s) “redeeming power.”4 This emphasis on the relationship to a sheikh as the surest path to salvation has distinguished this Sufi path from the Qadr and Tijan congregations to which many men and women in the region have belonged.5 Cruise O’Brien observed that the hierarchical organization of the Murid order—each branch

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led by a khalifa, or head of each important family with connections to Bamba, who in turn would submit to the Khalife General, or supreme leader of the order, and succession determined by birth order—had roots in the endogamous hereditary occupational orders, or castes, which structured Wolof kingdoms in the precolonial era and continue to have a bearing on Wolof interpersonal, economic, and political relations.6 Many early converts to the Murid way came from the casted sectors of society including slaves (jaam) and warriors (ceddo).7 Although the disciples’ deferential demeanor toward their masters had as much to do with the early intermarriage of the saintly families and those of high status (géer), that is, those belonging neither to the artisan (ñeeño) nor to the slave groups of Wolof society,8 caste is not absolute; and although it is determined by birth, it is relational such that relations of high to low come to configure all Wolof social interactions.9 The disciples’ deferential bodily comportment and devotion to their leaders in the form of labor and offerings of crops, livestock, and cash were not indicative of the reinstitution of slavery, Cruise O’Brien argued, as the colonial Arabist Paul Marty suggested in his 1913 monograph.10 Rather, as Cruise O’Brien’s interpreter Thierno Sow reminded him, disciples were often “boasting” of their offerings to the religious clergy.11 Disciples were not “laboring in return for nothing but the promise of paradise”;12 disciples hoped to gain not only salvation, a position argued by Cheikh Tidiane Sy, but also security, social welfare, and a buffer between the colonial powers and later the postcolonial state in return for labor and economic devotion. The Murid tariqa has become one of the most studied Sufi congregations on the continent, and some posit it has come to define scholarly understandings of Muslim thought and practice in West Africa.13 Cruise O’Brien’s emphasis on the political and economic contexts in which disciples were purported to submit to their religious guides “like a corpse in the hands of the embalmer”14 offering labor, cash, and rights in persons (such as daughters for marriage) has been criticized for not giving enough weight to the religiosity of his interlocutors15 and for focusing more on structure than meaning.16 Recent scholarship on the Murid way has sought to mitigate the view of the absolute authority of the Murid caliphate.17 A new generation of scholars of the Murid order, most notably Cheikh Anta Babou and Cheikh Gueye, has sought to complicate the disciple–sheikh relationship, suggesting that the view of the extreme hierarchy between sheikh and disciple is a misnomer and pointing to recent events indicating a crisis of khalifal authority.18 If indeed the spiritual authority of the sheikhs might have been, or is currently, more restricted than described in the Murid literature, what do we make of Cruise O’Brien’s insistence that Murid disciples “ham it up”?19 They have done so, he argues, because they have received tangible worldly benefits from the spiritual hierarchy; the disciple–sheikh relationship is one of reciprocal rights and obligations.20 Although this may be in part a meaningful assessment of the disciple–sheikh relationship, I also argue based on my own field-based research that if disciples ham it up, they do so to mask what they keep back from the pressure to give. That disciples may not have practiced total devotion on the financial plane suggests that perhaps their Sufi guides were not the only persons in whom they were investing value. The Murid order may be the most studied and most well known of the Sufi orders of West Africa. But the extant scholarship, focused as it has been on the state, the economic power of the Murid way, and the ability of the clergy to command offerings from disciples, threatens to fall into the kind of exceptionalism that dominated French colonial views of Islam in Africa as an African Islam, as a derivation from a supposed center—a view to which many Muslims in Africa, indeed many Murid

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adepts, as Benjamin Soares rightly argues, would not agree.21 Has the effect of Murid studies on the study of Islam in West Africa led scholars to overemphasize the significance of the tariqa and its forms of authority in the lives of ordinary Muslims across West Africa as Soares argues?22 The literature offers little insight into the broader and considerably more complicated lives of ordinary Muslims, of men and women, young and old, of varying educational and occupational backgrounds in West Africa. The scholarship has been so focused on analyzing the disciple–sheikh relationship as pertaining between men and brotherhood as the paramount value that it tells little of the lives of its followers beyond the tariqa. Here I seek to dislodge the pervasive, and mistaken, emphasis on brotherhood by focusing on relations of hierarchy and difference among members of the tariqa and the role of women in particular in producing sociocultural difference.23 I look beyond disciples’ narratives of total devotion by focusing on what disciples do not give to their religious leaders, and how the circulation, or keeping out of circulation, of particular forms of value produces sociocultural difference among followers. In so doing, I argue that attention to the forms of wealth and value that women control, and keep out of circulation, may produce a more complex view of the limits of spiritual authority and the significance of the tariqa to the lives of ordinary Muslims in West Africa. The extant literature on the Murid way with its focus on initiation (njebbel) and grace or religious blessings as the basis of religious authority has maintained that women participate little in the life of the tariqa. My female interlocutors disagree, however, not only do they contribute to the tariqa, they further emphasize the centrality of Islam to their lives through their search for religious merit, or tuyaaba,24 which is often achieved through offerings of cooked food on ritual and religious occasions including pilgrimage, Tabaski (Eid al-Adha), Ramadan, birth, matrimonial and mortuary rituals, acts of charity and hospitality and ndawtal, or gifts given during life cycle rituals. The degree to which women participate in the tariqa and how their ritual practices during life cycle ceremonies are central to their articulation of what it is to be a good Muslim are under debate by Muslims in West Africa, and they are little reflected in scholarly literature. In the late 1990s Cruise O’Brien’s prediction that the outward migration of many male disciples away from Touba in search of wage labor and trading opportunities would lead to tenuous relations between these disciples and their leaders manifested itself instead in calls (ndiggel) on behalf of the spiritual hierarchy to build a home in Touba; and eager to expand their following, many clergy sought to grant land, extending the domain of Touba to these willing disciples.25 As the state implemented a series of neoliberal reforms, life in Senegal became all the more tenuous. Male disciples who had gone abroad in search of employment as wage laborers and traders congregated into prayer circles and organized contributions to build clinics and schools, extend the mosque, and provide infrastructure for the annual pilgrimage to Touba, which garnered the notice of their leaders centered in the sacred city. Individually, these disciples aimed to build a home in Touba where their eventual burial would further secure their salvation.26 Touba grew to become Senegal’s second largest city with an advanced infrastructure developed largely through the social projects of the prayer circles abroad. Yet, many women who remained in Senegal, particularly Touba, and its neighboring village, Mbacke, as wives, sisters, and mothers of Murid disciples abroad observed this housing boom with some derision. Abandoned for many months or even years on end, in half-completed structures, women complained of receiving a paltry sum of remittances, or none at all, which barely afforded daily meals, much less education and medical services, in the dry interior of the country. According to Fatou Sow27, many of these rural women were to bear the brunt of globalization and

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the reduction in state services including education, healthcare, and infrastructure, especially the provision of water and electricity. Women eked out a living selling street food such as mangos, millet beignets (doughnuts), and roasted peanuts; they served a single meal to their extended family at midday consisting of millet, black eyed peas, manioc, and small bits of dried fish when they longed for rich red rice, fresh ocean fish, and buttered loaves of French bread. In addition to compelling followers to build homes and contribute to the extension of the mosque complex and infrastructure in and around Touba, the spiritual hierarchy also sought to encourage women to contribute to the order’s social projects. Although many women suffered the financial loss of male kin and affines abroad who were unable or unwilling to send remittances, some women were the beneficiaries of men’s efforts to secure processes of social production, at home in Senegal, through remittances of cash and cloth for birth, marriage, and mortuary rituals. Many women migrated abroad as traders, hair braiders, and restaurateurs, and invested at home and in homes in Senegal.28 Some women became leaders in their communities through their stewardship of rotating credit unions and other financial schemes organized by nongovernmental organizations, which sought to fill the gap in social services created by the re-envisioning of the state. The vast organizational and financial potential of these women was sought after by a spiritual hierarchy claiming that women’s demands for valued objects for family ceremonies drew resources away from the developmental and spiritual mission of the Murid way.29 Both men and women gave offerings to the Murid way, invested in real estate, and financed their respective obligations related to family ceremonies. Yet prompted by the spiritual hierarchy, men complained that women diverted funds sent for medications, school fees, and the upkeep of homes and parents toward ostentatious display in family ceremonies, during which they displayed on their bodies vast amounts of cloth wealth, and participated in competitive gift exchange of cloth. Despite their concerns, as men boasted of their offerings to the spiritual hierarchy, they continued to draw discreetly on their social relations to obtain cloth for wives, mothers, and sisters. Men needed to negotiate the forms of value and wealth controlled by women to contract marriages, name their children, participate in the Hajj, and die with dignity.30 Men helped women accumulate cloth wealth because they were concerned about the creation of wealth, or alal, and its connection to the continuity of collective identities based on descent relations. How then did men manage to boast that they gave generously to the point of penury to their spiritual masters and to secure processes of social production that cast individual and collective identities into the future? Attention to the ritual and reproductive activities of women, men’s role in assisting women in these endeavors, and the efforts of the spiritual hierarchy to limit these expenditures by locating them outside of Islam, reveals a set of limits on what disciples can give to their spiritual leaders and the limits of spiritual authority within the Murid way.

I s l am Beyo nd B R OT H E R H O O D : Women’s Ritual and Reproductive Practices Cruise O’Brien maintained that his Murid interlocutors did not attach as much importance to the prayer formulas, or wird, and litanies, or dhikr that differentiated congregants of other Sufi turuq.31 Rather, his interlocutors emphasized initiation, or njebbel, a Wolof word that he defined as “the gift of a person without conditions,” as the act that defined Murid affiliation.32 He reasoned that his interlocutors emphasized the

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act of njebbel because Amadou Bamba was said to have promised paradise to those who submitted themselves to the will of a spiritual master. Cruise O’Brien’s insistence on njebbel as the act defining membership in the Murid way was not reflected in previous scholarship. For example, Cruise O’Brien noted that Paul Marty’s 1913 monograph denied the existence of rites of initiation and that Cheikh Tidiane Sy’s work downplayed njebbel as a promise on behalf of the sheikh to assist the disciple in discovering religion.33 It was Cruise O’Brien’s insistence on njebbel that led him to claim that women were marginal to the tariqa because they did not perform this ritual of initiation. He wrote, “women do not normally submit themselves directly to a shaikh. A wife is considered to be attached to a shaikh through her husband . . . this makes their position marginal, as the Mourides clearly insist that to do the njebbel is a necessary condition of membership.”34 There were exceptions to this statement, which Cruise O’Brien pointed out as well; he observed that daughters of a sheikh would often njebbel to their father and that widowed women might also njebbel to Sufi masters. Yet it was Cruise O’Brien’s position concerning women that contributed to the scholarly standpoint that largely focused on the disciple–sheikh relationship as between men.35 Such a conclusion was further justified by pointing out that women did not lead public prayer; did not serve as imams in the mosques; and often lacked spiritual education and the requisite ritual purity (tahara), such as during menses and bleeding after childbirth,36 to engage in religious practices including approaching prayer, the mosque, and reading the Quran.37 Scholars of Islam based in Senegal have rightly criticized the lack of leadership roles open to women in the Sufi orders. Although acknowledging the contributions of feminist readings of the Quran by scholars interested in gender and Islam, Codou Bop argues that in Senegal, given the “ideological construction of notions of divine grace or baraka, of impurity, and of the image of the ideal Sufi woman, most women remain in unequal positions of power.”38 Fatou Sow argues that leadership of religious rites, including healing practices, in which women once held leadership roles, have largely been taken over by Muslim holy men.39 Yet it has also been suggested by Christian Coulon, Penda Mbow and Eva Evers Rosander that Sufism may offer women more opportunities for participation than previously assumed by scholars of Islam.40 Coulon argues that the lack of attention to gender by scholars of Islam is reflective of a pervasive association of men with public and women with private. To overcome this split, Coulon suggests a focus on baraka “even if women are excluded from public places of worship, nothing prevents them from having baraka, worshipping saints, or becoming agents of a particular marabout.”41 The baraka of Amadou Bamba is considered to be transmitted through his daughters as well as his sons, and thus daughters also have the potential to act as spiritual leaders (or sokhna, as they are called).42 In addition, attention to gender reveals that women are enormously important in the configuring of genealogies that are the basis of men’s claims to the status of sheikh and the inheritance of baraka, political office, and inheritance of land in and around Touba. Leadership positions are transmitted through men; but the mother’s rank (in relation to hereditary occupational orders and her ties of descent from Bamba) plays a role in designating the highest positions within the tariqa.43 The importance of women is further reflected in that the mother of Bamba, Mame Diarra Bousso, is remembered annually through the pilgrimage to Porokhane, her place of burial.44 The wives of religious clergy also have privileged positions within the tariqa; they often have their own agricultural fields on which disciples offer their labor and prayer circles or, dahira.45 Rosander argues that the pervasive emphasis on the political economic organization of the Murid order by scholars led them away

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from attending to women’s practices46 including participation in Quranic schools, pilgrimages, and ziyara, or visits to masters, some of whom are female descendants of Bamba.47 Lucy Creevey argues that although women do not make the njebbel to a sheikh, this does not preclude them from visiting religious leaders in search of advice, offering labor and cash, and generally proclaiming membership in the tariqa.48 Moreover, as I mentioned, the spiritual hierarchy has sought out women for their financial contributions.49 Arguments pertaining to women’s exclusion from the tariqa and Islam more generally are equally inconsistent with my own observations and interviews with Murid women in Senegal and their statements about themselves. During my fieldwork, women began to participate in the rural work groups, or daara (house or place), such as that in Khelcom, a forest preserve signed over to the Murid clergy by the state for cultivation, which they were not doing in the 1970s according to Cruise O’Brien. I observed that tariqa affiliation was enormously important to women; and many women kept the tariqa affiliation of their father, or even that of their mother, even when they married a husband belonging to another tariqa. I witnessed both men and women prostrating to Sokhna Gedde Bousso in Touba daily in her home where she received her disciples as well as to Sokhna Mai Mbacke during the annual pilgrimage to Porokhane. Women also took a leading role in organizing pilgrimages, all-night prayer sessions, dahira meetings in their homes, and life cycle ceremonies to mark the passing of individuals from birth to marriage to childbirth to death. It was clear that women were enormously important to the order for their economic potential and ability to mobilize and organize followers often to provide visual effect for televised events. In the dahira women organized regular contributions to gain an audience with a sheikh and to support particular pilgrimages, religious visits, and all-night prayer sessions; they shared food and admired each other’s dress. Women used the organizational structure of the dahira to support politicians, advance their interests, and finance businesses. As Coulon argued, these are not activities associated with the domestic sphere.50 Thus it was not women’s participation in Sufi rituals; it was not their visibility or viability that was the subject of debate among my Murid interlocutors. It was the practices surrounding the rituals associated with reproduction that fueled fiery debates among Murid disciples. It is on this point that I suggest, contrary to Rosander, that the disciple–sheikh relationship does not “[cut] through family ties and ethnic and regional belonging.”51 In particular moments in the life cycle, it may be the most significant social relationship; for example, the Murid way provides an important interstitial space for young men outside of marriage that is socially and morally valued. In the colonial era, answering the call of the sheikh afforded young men the means to obtain the necessary cash for bride wealth for marriage; often in return for ten years of service they were also accorded land on which to establish their own household. Even today, many young men escape the charge of being idle by devoting themselves to clearing the land at Khelcom for the tariqa or by assisting senior women in their ritual endeavors. For example, Rosander’s substantial research shows how young men in particular seek to fulfill a wider set of social obligations beyond the disciple–sheikh relationship; they help women in the Mame Diarra Bousso dahira and in return receive cash and cloth to help finance their own marriages.52 That marriage, birth, and funerary rituals have not been the subject of the extant literature on Islam in West Africa is striking considering how intensely it has been debated since the 1990s and how fiercely women defend their practices as a means of achieving religious merit, or tuyaaba.53 I suspect that scholars of Islam did not

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inquire into these debates in part because there has been a longstanding tendency in the West to associate women with biological reproduction, which is often assigned a negative value. Furthermore, scholars of Islam associated women’s reproductive rituals with pre-Islamic practices and artificially presented two worlds: the pre-Islamic world under the control of women and the Muslim world under the control of men.54 David Ames and David Gamble perpetuated the assumption that “in general rites which involve women seem to comprise more pre-Islamic elements, those involving men are more influenced by Islamic practice.”55 To purport that women are excluded from the world of Islam, or relegated to the realm of popular Islam or African Islam, is to promote an idea of Islam based largely on the normative and legalistic aspects of Islam56 (e.g., textual practices). It is to bypass religious practices inconsistent with orthodox thinking and disregard or underanalyze our interlocutors’ statements about their worlds. I make this last point, because at no point in my own field based research did women suggest that they were less devout, pious, or devoted Muslims or disciples of the Murid way. Women’s practices have rarely been noted in the major monographs of Muslim West Africa because these works have sustained a focus on religious scholars and leaders, on the lineages of the Sufi masters and not on the mass of disciples; the latter may serve to broaden our understanding of Muslim thought and practice in West Africa. The devaluing of rituals associated with reproduction by assigning them to the private and profane, another Western assumption that does not pertain to West African social and political formations, does not acknowledge the importance of these ritual practices in terms of how they connect individuals to the divine. As the anthropologist Annette Weiner has argued, a focus on the forms of value and objects of exchange enables one to move beyond a narrow focus on oppositions between male and female value systems, private/public, or profane/sacred, toward a commingling: “Women’s control over political and cosmological situations and actions can be beneficent or malevolent, matching the ambiguous potential of men’s control and power . . . Reveals sociopolitical ramifications of how women and men are, at the same time, accorded and deprived of authority and power. Men’s autonomy is held in check, undermined, supported, confounded, or even, at times, superseded by women’s economic presence.”57 Why should scholars relegate life cycle rituals to the domain of the private and the profane and assume them to be associated with pre-Islamic practices? What is the relationship, if there is one, between these seemingly non-Islamic practices and those of Islam proper as it has been defined by scholars of Islam? Throughout the 1990s Murid male talk associated women’s cloth wealth, which was exchanged during family ceremonies, with cosaan, or history or tradition (not ceddo, or pagan) and opposed this practice to Islam. Scholars of Islam in Senegal often took these male categories of traditional and Muslim at face value; they dismissed women’s gift giving practices and objects of adornment as “women’s business” and folk beliefs and claimed, according to Cruise O’Brien, that Islam hardly touched the world of women. Women’s devotional practices were not external to mainstream religious thought; they were not relics of pre-Islamic or traditional practice. Moreover, neither were their rituals associated with reproduction; despite the widespread conversion to Islam in the region in the late twentieth century and the incorporation of African subjects into capitalist modernity, the persistence of gift exchange during these events should not be taken as a sign of the persistence of tradition. It should be understood as a modern, dynamic, and critical phenomenon.58 In fact, Soares argues that such seemingly local practices are often informed by supralocal discourse of Islam.59 In focusing on women’s moral

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and material practices, we might understand the basis of khalifal authority differently by seeing that men do not entirely submit to their spiritual guides; they turn to women to help them conserve certain forms of value, such as those relating to lineage identity like land and cloth, in the face of the pressure to give generously to the clergy. As Weiner argues, although keeping some forms of wealth back from the pressure to give creates the illusion of conservatism, of something one might refer to as traditional or pre-Islamic in the Murid case, “the problems inherent in ‘keeping’ nurture the seeds of change.”60 Women’s search for religious merit through the exchange of wealth in family ceremonies has become an intense subject of debate among Murids, because through these rituals and their control over biological and social reproduction women challenge forms of authority: the state and the Muslim leadership that excludes or devalues their participation and its particular vision of the Muslim here and hereafter. Women’s circulation of cloth in the ritual sphere of family ceremonies checks the potential for men’s offerings in the religious sphere to spin out of control.61 Here then I focus on the social labor and economic resources invested in the process of reproducing social relations of kinship and spiritual community. Kinship relations in particular are legitimated in each generation through the transmission of inalienable possessions such as right to land, cloth, and knowledge. This process is not without debate, because the exchange of wealth objects, whether between a sheikh and disciple or kin, is ultimately competitive and creates difference, hierarchy, and power.

Be tween th e C o nc ret e and the Cor pora l: Th e Po l itic s o f Value and the Globa l Circ u its o f S eneg alese M u r i di y ya If Murid traders weave cargo and currency through official and unofficial spaces of the global economy, they also circulate the media of social production along these same routes: religious texts and images, cloth and clothing, and portraits and videos from life cycle ceremonies. They contribute to processes of social production, marriages, naming ceremonies, and the establishment of new households, made all the more tenuous by re-envisioning the state through structural adjustment programs and economic liberalization. Men and women construct and adorn domestic interiors and exteriors, bodies and fashions, to defy the potential for loss inherent in the desire to circulate valued objects and invest value in others to project themselves and their vision for their community into the future.62 They do so through their control of the circulation of valued objects; some of which are controlled by men (such as land) and others of which are controlled by women (including genealogies as regards birth, rank, and hierarchy, often expressed in the medium of cloth). Focusing on the global circulation of objects of value, such as money and cloth, and the relations they engender brings into relief Murid insertion into the global economy as well as the consequences for the politics of social production and the nature of religious authority at home in Senegal.63 Neoliberal economic reform in Senegal in the 1990s spurred debates among Senegalese men and women over local social and moral orders: on life cycles and households, on gendered and generational bonds and struggles, and on the politics of value. In the 1990s the state and Muslim clergy attempted to reform the competitive circulation of gifts taking place during family ceremonies by reforming the Code de la Famille (Family Code), which regulates social payments. The 1972 Code de la Famille

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au Sénégal, which legislates many aspects of domestic life including capping payments at family ceremonies, came under scrutiny by a new organization seeking to render the family code compatible with Muslim law, the Comité Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Sénégal (CIRCOFS, Islamic Committee for the Revision of the Family Code).64 The Murid central hierarchy resisted the intrusion of the state into family matters, such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance, and sought to limit large social payments at family events that could erode the disciple–sheikh relationship signified by offerings, called addiya, already made tenuous by overseas migration in the 1990s. The debate over women’s prestations, and family law more generally, signaled that fundamental changes in cycles of domestic production and reproduction were underway, wrought, in part, by the 1990s overseas migration of Senegalese men and, increasingly, women.

Concrete Wealth: Cementing Social Relations Murid men and women participate in two interlocking circuits of exchange. The first is the circuit of blessings into which disciples enter through offerings to Murid hierarchy: blessings that are both spiritual and material at once, because through them disciples gain access not merely to eternal prosperity but also to this-worldly wealth. Male disciples often make offerings of labor, cash, livestock, or crops as addiya to the spiritual hierarchy on the occasion of personal visits known as ziyara and during the numerous pilgrimages or magal that take place throughout the year. Offerings during pilgrimage serve to renew one’s vow of submission and contribute to the event. Initially, addiya contributed to building the impressive Murid mosque in Touba, and these offerings have since contributed to expanding Touba’s infrastructure as it has been transformed from a small rural village into a “spiritual metropolis.”65 As previously mentioned, disciples are exhorted to build a home in Touba and may even receive a parcel of land near Touba from their sheikh to facilitate their efforts and expand the spiritual domain of Touba. Whether or not women give addiya is a subject of some debate; but it is clear that female dahira members do organize collective contributions of cash and cooked food, usually for the support of annual pilgrimages, especially the Magal de Porokhane. Offerings also reflect substantial difference of rank and wealth and can range from several hundred heads of cattle to a small envelope with a 500 or 1,000 CFA note.66 Religious leaders convert their disciples’ cash offerings into the material forms of the spiritual metropolis Touba: a feat of architectural and economic development that aims to realize the vision of the order’s founding “friend of God” (wali), Amadou Bamba. During the real estate boom of the 1990s, Murid men and women abroad sought to build at two strategic nodes in the Murid circuit: the capital city of Dakar—urban, cosmopolitan, and consumer oriented with vast markets, shopping, and nightclub districts as well as the major shipping port and home to the national airport—and Touba—with a colonial legacy as an independent administrative district and thus a tax- and duty-free zone and the holy center of the Muridiyya.67 According to Cheikh Gueye Touba’s population doubled between 1988 and 1998 and its developed area has expanded from 575 hectares in 1970 to 3,900 hectares in 1990, and finally surpassing 12,000 hectares in 1997; more than 300,000 Senegalese out of a national population of 9.5 million inhabited or maintained a home in this rural region plagued with the weekend traffic of urban disciples seeking respite in the country, a visit with their sheikh, or a long holiday weekend and family reunion.68 By 1990 Touba was

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the second largest city in Senegal and a hub of rural–rural migration. As increasing numbers of disciples migrated abroad in search of wage labor and capital, between 1988 and 1989 Touba’s annual growth rate was more than 19 percent. Much of this growth was artificially sustained by the remittances of those from abroad.69 The spectacular growth of Touba at a time when most rural areas were in decline could be understood as the product of the purposeful activity of the Murid clergy to ensure its dominance. Not merely an agricultural town, Touba’s very existence depended on its connection to globalized economic processes. Unlike the ad hoc growth of other African cities, Touba’s rationalized development is iconic of the Murid clergy’s view of their role in the global economy. Touba’s development proceeded from the Murid clergy’s control over circuits of production and exchange at local, national, and transnational levels and from their disciples’ submission to this authority through their cash or kind offerings to the clergy. Touba homes, and the materials garnered for their construction, told of a vast array of international networks of exchange, of circuits of merchant goods imported through this village metropolis—ceramic tile, Italian marble, and European toilets and basins. They also revealed the financial linkages through which these merchants transacted commercial arrangements involving procuring, shipping, and remitting cash and merchant goods to fulfill filial obligations and spiritual duties. The fact that the builders of these homes lived their lives elsewhere—in overseas and urban locals—reveals the centrality of Touba as a spiritual center for these vast circuits of globalized exchange. Securing land and homebuilding in Touba and Dakar for young men reflected the desire to invest in and create inheritable and inalienable forms of value. Touba has become not merely a representation of paradise; it is how disciples access paradise70 through their industrious efforts to expand this Muslim community, the sacralization of work and interment in Touba. These homes gave both shape and meaning to spiritual endeavors. Aspiring homebuilders laid the foundation of their dwellings on the land in and around Touba to stake a claim to the property in this rapidly growing spiritual metropolis, or to benefit from free, although salty, water (an exceptional benefit given the drying up of rural villages as the Sahel expands) but also to generate an eternal sacred connection to the land and the collectivity that it signifies. Touba homes expressed a concern with death and final destiny; a devotee buried in Touba avoids intercession by the angel Jibril and thus ascends directly to paradise.

Corporal Wealth: Unraveling Social Production The second circuit is the circuit of honor (kersa), into which men and women entered through their participation during family ceremonies. The legal functions carried out during marriage and naming ceremonies involved a male imam, or head of the mosque, and were often stated by men to be the central and essential Muslim practice to take place during the life cycle ritual. Coulon argues that the Sokhna or female religious leaders were prohibited from performing these legal functions.71 Women were also largely excluded from observing these legal rites, unless the child was to be the namesake of a senior woman, who would then be present. During the naming ceremony for example, men gathered in a room designated in the home as the men’s room for the ritual naming the child, which was carried out by the imam. Men often gathered and paid the imam a nominal symbolic amount of money and then distributed kola nuts after the ritual, which they explained was an expression of baraka. Men also brought symbolic objects such as millet, ruy (a cooked millet porridge, which

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might also be offered as cash by the same name), bottled sodas, tea, and kola nuts to family ceremonies. Commonly, a man provided a sheep or a cow for ritual slaughter, the meat of which would be distributed to kin and clients and often served during the afternoon feast. Gifts of food, of ruy, meat, milk, and millet porridge called lakk and kola circulated as hospitality, or terranga, and worked to bring new persons into relations of reciprocity and to create kinlike obligations with non-kin. Other exchanges were merely reciprocal, such as the gifts of sugar and soap given by women to the mother of a newborn or the millet brought by men (or symbolic sum of cash in its place) to a naming ceremony. These items tended to invite reciprocity but never compelled an exact replacement to the donor at the same event or to his or her relation at a later point in time. The part of the life cycle ritual that the religious hierarchy opposed involved the ritualized exchanges of cloth and other objects of value that women exchanged, often following the afternoon prayer, and the ostentatious way they accused women of dressing to shine or sañse.72 Women countered that the clean and properly prepared body was beautiful in Islam, as were displays of hospitality, mutual aid, and generosity; such practices were expressions of religious merit, or tuyaaba. As an object of baraka, cloth embodied the relation of the person to the sacred. As Gillian Feeley Harnick has shown so beautifully in Madagascar, women in Senegal also bound the living and the dead through gifts of cloth to swaddle newborns and to shroud the deceased.73 When women donned cloth, when they dressed well, they incorporated their ancestors’ fame, authority, and rank into themselves; this was their cosaan, their history. While men invested in cement bricks and the land they claimed throughout the 1990s to defy the potential for loss through circulation, women invested in cloth, clothing, objects of adornment, and items to furnish their domestic interiors, objects that symbolized their productive and reproductive potential through their circulation. Unlike offerings made to the religious clergy, or items expressing hospitality during family ceremonies, gifts of cloth to female kith and kin ensured an eventual replacement, to themselves or their offspring, that formed the basis of future wealth and lineage continuity. Unlike other forms of wealth, cloth defied loss (of honor, of lineage continuity) through its circulation. As men boasted of their offerings to the Muridiyya in the form of crops, livestock, and even cash, during my fieldwork I came to appreciate the ways men discreetly drew on their social networks to acquire cloth for wives, sisters, and mothers. Clearly, men and women were not individual agents, as Deborah Heath has argued, they achieved honor through investments made in them by each other.74 In distributing resources to women, men were not merely giving money away, although some certainly complained that this was the case; they were ensuring a replacement in the future, either to themselves, through women, or to future generations. As far as women’s worlds were underanalyzed by scholars of this Muslim order, so too were the forms of wealth they controlled. Textiles are thought to be ephemeral forms of value because of their potential to decay; yet as Weiner has noted, these soft objects often circulate in relation to precious metals, coins, and other hard objects. In the context of gifts to religious leaders, hard objects signified submission, whereas soft objects indicated the desire to keep something back from the pressure to give.75 As Weiner has so brilliantly shown, by keeping some objects out of circulation women were “keeping-while-giving.”76 During feasts, women demonstrated largesse in the provision of food as hospitality, in payments to griots who amplified their reputation in these public fora, and in gifts of cloth to nondependents (such as other persons of high social status and kin). They aimed to create relations of inclusion and difference, to control persons, and to define

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who they were in the present by reference to the past. Women gave, or maye, gifts of clothing as payment for labor at family ceremonies to cross-cousins and casted griots and slaves. During the family ceremony, more substantial and visible gifts of cloth and more scrutinized gifts were given to peers along the axis of kinship and filiation and increasingly along the lines of neighborhood, religious, and political affiliations. These gifts were classified as ndawtal.77 Women said that they gave ndawtal (maye ndawtal), and ndawtal was loaned, expressing its inalienable qualities.78 These competitive exchanges were recorded in ledgers, because to fall short in exchange was not a matter of individual deficit but of a lineage’s loss of “its power to sustain itself for future generations.”79 Cloth gifts compelled a replacement because of their association with generational continuity.80 Cloth embodied the reproduction of essential ties of kinship by its close association with the female body, especially as an underskirt, wedding veil, baby blanket, and funeral shroud and for this reason it was considered an inalienable possession. An ideal gift of cloth during a family ceremony would be strip woven cloth underwraps, or ser-u-rabb. Wolof women wore these wrappers as undergarments on the lower half of the body, never as an outer garment and never covering the upper body. It was only married women and usually senior women who wore these garments. During a naming ceremony, a baby would be swathed in woven skirts and later laid on a bed on top of a woven skirt. Similarly, a woven cloth would cloak the head of the paternal grandmother who held the newborn in preparation for its naming by an imam.81 When a new bride entered her husband’s compound for the first time, her head would be covered with a woven skirt. Women also gave gifts of sewn cloth garments called boubous, which consisted of ten meters of hand dyed brocade cloth called tuub. Women would also substitute cash for cloth, which would also be called ndawtal; in fact, early on in my research, ndwatal was explained to me as cash given at a family ceremony by women. In consulting several ledgers of gift exchange, most of the gifts were recorded in cash rather than lengths of cloth, but the latter appeared occasionally as well. Although strip-woven cloth endures as the central form of prestation for women, it is often supplemented by cash. Cash contains what David Graeber calls “hidden capacities for action.” Cash, unlike cloth, more directly conveys potential for future exchanges because it is so easily hidden outside of ritualized exchange. As an object of adornment, a form of display, cloth persuades: “[B]y covering themselves with gold, then, kings persuade others to cover them with gold as well.”82 A woman would give not only strip cloth as a prestation at family ceremonies; she would also wear as many as five layers of strip cloth under her boubou, creating quite a bulk. Not only was she like a king, covering herself with gold, she was keeping something back from the pressure to give and “the things kept allow a person to circulate other things.”83 Underpinning contests of ritualized exchange were ideas about high status, or a beautiful birth (rafet-u-juddo), thought to confer moral character including honor (kersa) and wealth (alal) expressed as generosity and hospitality. Family ceremonies were the ideal occasion to configure genealogies, which were important for Wolof persons seeking to maintain a society based on rank and patronage relations. Configuring genealogies was crucial because blood relations were held to determine one’s status as well as one’s social and moral qualities. Griots publicly praised genealogies in the context of feasts for Muslim holidays and life cycle ceremonies, oftentimes to aid women in the distribution of their cloth wealth during the latter. Therefore, refusal or inability to bestow cloth during family ceremonies was considered suspect. The debate about cloth among Murid adepts appeared to be a debate about conspicuous consumption and the push for austere dress and demeanor among Murid

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faithful. However, the debate was also about the nature of religious authority and the character of history, which manifested itself in a debate concerning women’s authority in the ritual sphere. Cloth was an ideal medium through which to discuss the production of social futures and fortunes in contemporary Senegal given its role as a visual substitute “for history, ancestors and the immortality of human life.”84 This was not a debate about Islam and pre-Islamic traditions, or custom, but a dynamic debate about the nature of the present: the conjuncture of neoliberal reform, the rise of a religious elite, and the predicaments of social production amidst fiscal austerity. It was a debate about Islam in Senegal, and Islam elsewhere, in history, globally, in bodily memory and practice, and in texts. As Soares has suggested, rather than focusing on the normative and legalistic universe of Islam, we might “treat Islam as a discursive tradition that relates to a broader scriptural tradition of Islam.”85 In the debate over the circulation of cloth wealth, the categories of locally contextualized forms of Islam and global Islam were never fixed. That men and women debated whether the practice of exchanging cloth wealth was consonant with the broader scriptural tradition of Islam was itself a critical Islamic practice. In part, the debate about cloth was also a debate about gifts to spiritual masters as the essential act of submission and a particularly onerous obligation practiced largely by Murid disciples. The circulation of cloth in family ceremonies held the potential to be transformative of relations of gender and generation and most importantly of the boundaries of the Muslim community. Through the ritualized exchange of cloth and clothing with kin and affines during family ceremonies where the relations between high and low, asking and giving were amplified, women sought to generate new centers of authority and produce sociocultural difference. They employed a strategy of at once concealing and revealing their sources of wealth. This is why cloth exchange became the center of a contentious debate about the boundaries of the Muslim community and the state.

Co nc lusi on Although women accused men of long stays abroad, of not sending remittances to support the family, only to return home to invest in the construction of the house and to display their wealth through grandiose gifts to spiritual leaders, men accused women of squandering their (men’s) wealth on flamboyant dress and displays of generosity at family ceremonies. Clearly, this was a battle over a particular vision of a Muslim hereafter based on submission to Sufi masters in contrast to women’s control over the continuity of the lineage, its honor, wealth and nobility based on descent. Though Bamba opposed caste hierarchy, Islam never succeeded in doing away with castebased distinctions, and the Muridiyya succeeded in transposing notions of hierarchy based on descent, such as rafet judo, onto the religious hierarchy. So although hereditary occupational castes continued to be recognized within the order, a new nobility emerged in the figure of the sons and brothers of Bamba known as the Mbacke Mbacke; and thus descent and difference, not brotherhood, persisted as a paramount value, and these relations of descent were to be worked out in family ceremonies among the religious elite as well as the mass of followers. Attention to gendered forms of value, objects that women withhold from circulation, reveals that the disciples cannot be deemed an undifferentiated mass of followers; in fact, these objects of value are the means of generating sociocultural difference. Focusing on these caste-based aspects of individual and collective identities complicates our understanding of the Murid way where aspects of solidarity and brotherhood

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are all too often emphasized at the expense of deepening our knowledge of the social basis of allegiance and the broader lives of Muslims beyond their membership in particular Sufi congregations. Moreover, attention to gendered practices reveals the ways in which women’s practices often restrain male authority, particularly in the role as reproducers of the lineage, and mitigate khalifal authority to command the productive and reproductive potential of their followers.

Not es

1. 2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

Funding for the field research that was carried out in Senegal between 1999 and 2000 was provided by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Subsequent research in New York City in 2005 was supported by a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 82. Scholarship on the Murid way between the 1960s and 1980s included works by Ane, La vie de Cheikh Amadou Bamba; Copans, Les marabouts de l’arachide; Coulon, Le Marabout et le prince; Creevey, “Amadou Bamba 1850–1927”; Diop, “Fonctions et activités des dahira Mourides urbains (Sénégal)”; Dumont, “Le Mouridisme Sénégalais”; Vincent Monteil, “Une confrérie musulmane”; Cheikh Tidiane Sy, La confrérie sénégalaise des mourides; Wade, La Doctrine Economique du Mouridisme. Cruise O’Brien, “The Senegalese Exception.” For examples privileging the state see, for instance, Beck, “Reining in the Marabouts?”; Cruise O’Brien, Saints and Politicians; Diop, Senegal. Essays in Statecraft; Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 84n4. Whether or not female disciples may perform initiation rites (njebbel) or whether male and female disciples may perform the njebbel to female descendants of Amadou Bamba is a subject of some debate; see Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka.” Cruise O’Brien (The Mourides of Senegal, 109) indicated that adepts would rather recognize the daughter of a sheikh, in cases where the direct male line is distinct, than submit to a male figure whose genealogical claims were more diffuse. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 83–84. For a discussion of Wolof caste see Irvine, “Caste and Communication in a Wolof Village” and Diop, La famille Wolof. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 84; Marty, Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba; Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa; Searing, God Alone is King. Concerning marriages between Murid leaders and the noncasted aristocracy see Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods in Senegal” and Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 84. On this point Cruise O’Brien remarks that Pélissier (Les Paysans du Senegal, 122) hypothesized that the Tijaniyya tariqa was more egalitarian due to the balance of its adherence’s origins in the noncasted social orders. Irvine, “Caste and Communication in a Wolof Village.” Marty, Les Mourides d’Amadou Bamba. Cruise O’Brien, Saints and Politicians, 62n8. Cruise O’Brien, Saints and Politicians, 82. See Soares, “Rethinking Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa.” Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 85. Robinson, “Beyond Resistance and Collaboration”; Rosander, “Mam Diarra Bousso”; Sy, La confrérie sénégalaise des mourides. Soares, “Rethinking Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa.” Though it is apparent from Cruise O’Brien’s monograph that he did not hold this view. Villalón (Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal) has also shown how disciples may not obey the leadership’s ndiggel. Babou, “Brotherhood Solidarity, Education and Migration,” 153n7; Cheikh Gueye, “Touba: the New Dairas and the Urban Dream.”

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19. Cruise O’Brien, Symbolic Confrontations, 9. 20. Cruise O’Brien, Saints and Politicians, 63. 21. Soares, “Notes on the Anthropological Study of Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa.” See Triaud, “Islam in Africa Under the French Colonial Rule,” 169–89. For examples of these approaches to African, black, or popular Islam, see Bravman, African Islam; Stewart and Peel, “Popular Islam South of the Sahara”; Westerlund and Rosander, African Islam and Islam in Africa. 22. Soares, “Rethinking Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa.” 23. For instance, Babou, “Brotherhood Solidarity, Education and Migration”; Coulon, “The Grand Magal in Touba”; Cruise O’Brien and Coulon, Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam; Knut, “Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa”; Monteil, “Une confrérie musulmane”; Sy, La confrérie Sénégalaise des Mourides. 24. Rosander (“Women and Mouridism in Senegal”) has also noted that her female interlocutors emphasized the importance of their quest for “tiyaba,” which she defines as a Wolof word; I use “tuyaaba” based on the Dictionnaire wolof-français et français-wolof by JeanLéopold Diouf, which defines the word as “Grâce divine à la suite d’une bonne action.” Though I suspect it may be related to the Arabic tayyib, meaning all that is good such as things, deeds, beliefs, persons, or foods. 25. Cruise O’Brien suggests that it was Abdou Lahat Mbacke who initiated the call to disciples to return to Touba and build a home in Symbolic Confrontations, 44–45, and on land donated to disciples by the clergy see Symbolic Confrontations, 64. Scholarship on globalization of Murid networks includes work by Babou, Bava, Bredeloup, Carter, M. Diouf, Diop and Michalak, Ebin, Riccio, Rosander, and Tall; of West Africans more generally see, for instance, D’Alisera, MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga, Reynolds and Youngstedt, Soares, and Stoller. 26. See Ross, “Tuba: A Spiritual Metropolis in the Modern World” and Cruise O’Brien, Symbolic Confrontations, 65. 27. Sow, “Fundamentalisms, Globalization and Women’s Human Rights in Senegal.” 28. Tall, “Les investissements immobiliers d’émigrants sénégalais à Dakar”; Babou, “Brotherhood Solidarity.” 29. Cruise O’Brien (Symbolic Confrontations, 46) noted that Abdou Lahat Mbacke was exceptional in that he encouraged disciples to meet their familial obligations first and then donate to the Murid clergy; In contrast, Gueye (“Touba: The New Dairas and the Urban Dream,” 120) discusses the pressure experienced by members of the dahira Hizb al-Tarqiyya to give offerings, even at the expense of family obligations. 30. For further discussion of the relationship between cloth, kinship identity and life cycle rituals see Feeley Harnick, “Cloth and the Creation of Ancestors.” 31. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 87. 32. Cruise O’Brien (Ibid., 85n2) notes that this word is also used in instances of slavery and with regard to a wife who is given by her parents to her husband; See also Copans, Les marabout de l’arachide. 33. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 86n2. 34. Ibid., 85–86. 35. On this point, Creevey (“Islam, Women and the Role of the State in Senegal,” 281) reversed her earlier position in “The Impact of Islam on Women in Senegal” that “women were not members and counted for nothing officially.” 36. Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods,” 1114. 37. This would not include postmenopausal women; Rosander, “Women and Mouridism in Senegal,” 151. 38. Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods in Senegal,” 1102. She cites for example, Hassan, “Théologie Féministe et les femmes dans le monde musulman”; Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite; and Mir-Hosseini, “Stretching the Limits.” 39. Sow, “Fundamentalism, Globalization and Women’s Human Rights in Senegal,” 70. 40. Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka,” 116; Mbow, “Les femmes, l’Islam et les associations religieuses au Senegal”; Rosander, “Women and Mouridism in Senegal.”

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41. Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka,” 116. On this point, Rosander (“Women and Mouridism in Senegal,” 151) argues that women obtain “less social recognition for the blessing they have inherited from the maraboutic lineage through descent.” 42. Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka”; Rosander, “Women and Mouridism in Senegal”; Creevey, “Islam, Women and the Role of the State in Senegal,” 291. 43. Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods,” 1107. 44. See Rosander, “Women and Mouridism in Senegal.” 45. Bop, “Roles and the Position of Women in Sufi Brotherhoods,” 1111. 46. Here she cites the work of Cruise O’Brien (The Mourides of Senegal), Copans (Les marabouts de l’arachide), Coulon (“Women, Islam and Baraka”), and Villalón (Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal). 47. See also Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka,” 117. 48. Creevey, “Islam, Women and the Role of the State in Senegal,” 283. 49. Coulon (“Women, Islam and Baraka”) attributes the increasing interest of the clergy in recruiting women to the increasing number of clergy members and their need to recruit new disciples to build their base. 50. Ibid., 124. 51. Rosander, “Women and Mourdism in Senegal,” 153. 52. Ibid., 164. 53. Rosander (Ibid., 152) suggests that women may in fact be more in search of religious merit because “their possibilities to get baraka through the mediation of the marabouts are more limited.” 54. Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka,” 114. Scholars who have argued that women are the maintainers of pre-Islamic practices include Trimingham, Islam in West Africa; also The Influence of Islam upon Africa; Bovin, “Muslim Women in the Periphery”; Sow, “Muslim Families in Black Africa.” 55. Gamble and Ames, A Wolof Naming Ceremony, 153. 56. Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka,” 115. 57. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 3. 58. See for example, Charles Piot, Remotely Global. 59. Soares, “Notes on the Anthropological Study of Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa.” 60. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions, 8. 61. Ibid., 7. 62. For further discussion of debates concerning reciprocity see Weiner, “Reproduction: A Replacement for Reciprocity”; and Foster, “Dangerous Circulation and Revelatory Display.” 63. For a discussion of the relationship between persons and things and how the meaning of objects shift at different moments in their circulation see for example, Foster, “Tracking Globalization,” 285; and Comaroff and Comaroff, “Goodly Beasts and Beastly Goods.” 64. For further discussion of this debate see Villalón, “Senegal. Islamism in Focus,” 67. 65. See Ross, “Tuba: A Spiritual Metropolis in the Modern World.” 66. The equivalent of one or two U.S. dollars. 67. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal; Gueye, “Touba: The New Dairas and the Urban Dream,” 107. 68. Gueye, “L’organisation de l’espace dans une ville religieuse: Touba (Sénégal).” 69. Gueye, “Touba: The New Dairas and the Urban Dream,” 107–8. 70. Ross, “Tuba: A Spiritual Metropolis in the Modern World,” 223. 71. Coulon, “Women, Islam and Baraka,” 131. 72. For further discussion of women’s dress practices, see Heath, “Fashion, Anti-Fashion and Heteroglossia in Urban Senegal”; Mustafa, “Practicing Beauty: Crisis, Value and the Challenge of Self-Mastery in Dakar 1970–1994.” 73. Feeley Harnick, “Cloth and the Creation of Ancestors.” 74. Heath, “Fashion, Anti-Fashion and Heteroglossia in Urban Senegal.” 75. Weiner, “Why Cloth? Wealth, Gender and Power in Oceania,” 62. In Senegal, cloth, and in particular heirloom strip cloth, is not among the typical items offered to the clergy.

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76. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions. 77. I have yet to come across a description of ndawtal in the literature on Senegal with the exception of Mottin-Sylla (L’argent et l’intérêt), who describes this category of gift as that which is given at a family ceremony. 78. Some persons even suggested that gifts given by men at family ceremonies were also ndawtal, though they were never returned and were not recorded in a ledger or given publicly. 79. Weiner, “Inalienable Wealth,” 212. 80. See for example Weiner on Mauss, “Inalienable Wealth,” 213. 81. Ames and Gamble, “A Wolof Naming Ceremony,” 150. 82. Graeber, “Beads and Money,” 9. 83. Weiner, “Inalienable Wealth,” 222. 84. Weiner, “Inalienable Wealth,” 224. 85. Soares, “Notes on the Anthropological Study of Islam and Muslim Societies in Africa,” 281.

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Chapter 9

4 Jamba ar or Ju mbax -out ? How S u nnite Wo men N eg oti ate Powe r a nd B el ief in Ortho dox Isl ami c Fem in in it y

Erin Augis (Ramapo College of New Jersey)

T

he worldwide proliferation of women’s involvement in orthodox Islamist movements during the past three decades has sparked great interest among scholars of religion, feminism, and the social sciences, who consistently ask the following: Are female adherents “empowered” by participating in these groups? Contemporary studies have surpassed old academic assumptions that female Islamists were passive subjects dominated by their male counterparts. They now focus on whether Islamist women’s agency is primarily spiritual, wherein adherents cultivate a private subjectivity of the religious self, or identitarian, where they instead represent political interests through religious and transnational symbolism. This new conversation neglects to theorize the private and public duality of religious volition, which in today’s global renderings of orthodox Islam is manifest both in the personal spirituality and transnational engagement of its mostly young adherents. This debate, moreover, myopically excludes women in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of the world replete with the involvement of youth in transnational Sunni Islamist movements.1 Recent studies have documented orthodox Sunni activism in Mali, Niger, Chad, The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast;2 but this chapter specifically addresses how young women in Dakar, Senegal’s Sunnite movement combine spiritual growth and political critique as they shape discourses, beliefs, and behaviors concordant with their understandings of Islamic requirements for female sexuality as well as women’s public and household roles.3 Dakar’s Sunnite movement consists of a wide range of organizations with varying doctrinal perspectives, demographic compositions, cohesiveness, and transnational affiliations. Nonetheless, Sunnite adherents collectively support conservative interpretations of the Quran and ahadith, as well as the widespread establishment of neotraditionalist norms that would integrate ethics and culture reminiscent of the prophet’s lifetime with the economic structures of

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contemporary society. Dakar’s Sunnites also oppose Sufi exegesis, and they challenge the tenets of secular governance. In analyses of young women members’ narratives on veiling, love, and marriage, I argue that their participation in Sunni orthodoxy is an interplay between three layers of engagement: personal spiritual cultivation, local activism, and a feeling of solidarity with orthodox Muslims worldwide. When analyzed together, these layers help reveal the dialectic of women’s spiritual and political agency in today’s transnational Islamist movements, and they provide insight into the ways youthful adherents interpret their local affiliations as subsumed within belonging to a global orthodox diaspora.

Ad d res s ing I s l amist Women’s For m s of Age nc y In contrast to some scholarly work in the 1980s that attributed women’s involvement in orthodox Islam to a passive acceptance of patriarchal control,4 several contemporary researchers have attempted to restore female adherents’ self-determination by examining their activism from a utilitarian perspective, where they are seen to challenge the power structures of male domination or western hegemonies through their participation in Islamism. Although these researchers illuminate several ways Islamist women exert agency, they grapple with the dilemma of explaining an outcome, which translates to success in a quest for power as defined by secular humanist and feminist ideals. Their work becomes caught in the tautological argument that female adherents’ conscious or subconscious attempts to subvert male control by participating in orthodox Islam ultimately compound the patriarchal forces that subject them in the first place.5 Studies that emphasize Islamist women’s overt or implicit defiance of men’s power center on their practices of hijab (veiling), their interpretations of Islamic texts, and their involvement in local Islamist political organizations or identity movements. Some studies, for example, contend that women who live in Muslim countries that traditionally segregate the sexes now find themselves in the public sphere for employment, school, or shopping as a result of macroeconomic and social changes; thus they don hijab to assert their rights to male courtesy in the streets or at work. At home, veiling compensates for their new public lives, restoring their traditional femininity and thus garnering their husbands’ respect and attraction. Other research highlights the ways women question patriarchal control by claiming Islamic knowledge for themselves, and by shaping religious discourse on family law and female reproductive health.6 Some works underscore the identitarian, class-related interests of women who lobby for conservative Islamic political parties, identifying low-income women’s popular sentiments in Bahrain, Turkey, Iran, and Tunisia, as well as shedding light on the capitalist motivations of female activists in Sudan.7 Analyses of women who live in contexts of colonial and postcolonial strife, as well as of those who endure the alienating experience of migration, show how they demonstrate ethnonational loyalty by veiling and otherwise adhering to orthodox Islamic tenets.8 Each work demonstrates that women adherents actively engage in self-determined forms of resistance; however, they cannot counter arguments that their respondents futilely promote politicaleconomic and moral agendas, which ultimately restrict female emancipation. In fact, many highlight this apparent contradiction in the women’s activism. Scrutinizing orthodox Muslim women’s beliefs and practices for evidence of their gains in an individualistic conception of liberation inevitably prompts questions such as that of Hirschmann’s: “To say that women veil as a way to reconcile work with

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traditional values, or independence with honor, or to express political solidarity, may recognize women’s active agency but circumvents a larger question: is it a mark of women’s agency to uphold values or codes that oppress women?”9 Yet framing the question of Islamist women’s agency as only attainable in a Western, secular humanist understanding of personal freedom and political power permits no examination of other forms of feminine self-determination, including those that respond to communal desires. Contrary to many western academic assumptions, the desire for individual liberation is not inherent to human nature. It is, as are all forms of desire including those that are religious and communal, a social construct.10 A surprising number of studies that claim to explain Muslim women’s religious behavior never actually address their spiritual beliefs, discourses, or practices.11 Indeed, in efforts to highlight their capacities for rational choice, much of this research simply ignores or even negates the possibility of women’s religious intentions, going so far as to argue that “[Muslim] fundamentalists do not speak of visions, miracles, or other supernatural events precipitating their embrace of Islamic fundamentalism . . . nor is their evidence of an abrupt moral change” and “these veiling women seldom . . . indicated personal religious emotions.”12 Agency in this perspective is typically equated with female adherents’ abilities to garner access to material forms of power. Agency can be construed not just as the ability to realize one’s interests against hegemony, however. It can also be understood as a capacity for subjective action within historically specific and socially constructed norms, many of which were built on relations of domination and subordination.13 For the fundamentalist Christian and Muslim women in Franks’14 research, this means creating their own identity and life experiences, while adhering to ideals that facilitate their roles as women, mothers, and wives in a communal model of empowerment. Mahmood15 argues that Cairene Islamist women display agency in their conscious efforts to cultivate submission to Islam’s norms, including forms of discipline and modesty that conform to patriarchal precepts, to improve their spirituality. 16 The political aspects of these adherents’ decisions, such as defying male authority or the secular government, are secondary and unintended consequences of their spiritual work. Furthermore, their sense of identitarian politics—or their practice of orthodoxy as part of an oppositional, pan-Islamist solidarity movement—is nonexistent. Although Franks’17 and Mahmood’s18 broader definitions of agency allow for a better understanding of female self-determination in religious contexts, their works do not address the possibility that Islamist women’s religiosity can be equally spiritual and politically identitarian. Just as the utilitarian approach bypasses opportunities for investigating women’s spirituality, an emphasis on spirituality and the subjective construction of self can gloss over analysis of political sentiment. In cases of women’s involvement in contemporary, transnational Islamist movements, these elements of participation need not be understood as mutually exclusive or hierarchical. Rouse,19 for example, identifies African American Sunni Muslim women’s advocacy of traditional gender roles and feminine submission as simultaneously religious faith (“surrendering to Islam”) and resistance praxis, given the challenging circumstances of their lives. As such, African American Sunni women’s beliefs and practices comprise a “liberation theology” that demands pious sentiment and conscious defiance of popular norms, a significant part of which focuses on the Sudan as a haven for proper religious practice far from secular American culture. In many contemporary Sunni Islamist movements, particularly those that lie beyond the Gulf’s epicenter of Sunni orthodoxy but look to this region for religious influence, adherents animate their religiosity with a liminal sense of connection to

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orthodox Muslims around the world. These ties, some imagined and some real, are constructed through the consumption of transnationally produced Islamist commodities and media, as well as through local organizations’ liaisons with Islamist groups elsewhere.20 As Roy21 argues, this transnationality carries with it a political dimension; Islamist activists frequently see themselves as a minority fighting in their own communities for the ascendance of a global ummah. For Dakar’s Sunnite women, the re-creation of self through orthodox belief and sentiments of political defiance associated with the concept of a global ummah do not negate, but in fact compliment one another. Embodying piety in dress, behavior, and ritual practice are reinforced by commitment to a sense of pan-Islamic struggle. This dialectic of the spiritual and political can be observed at three interwoven levels of female adherents’ engagement in Sunnite Islam: the self, local activism, and the transnational imaginary, each of which are revealed in their discourses on veiling as well as on love and marriage.

Da k a r’s S unnite Wo men: N ei ghbor hood Activists and Believers in a Global Movement Although membership in Dakar’s Sunnite groups has proliferated in the last two decades, the movement’s trajectory spans nearly eighty years in Senegal. Although it has changed form throughout this time, it has always integrated local resistance with international Sunni influences. Sunnite ideology, based on Salafist philosophies, was first embodied during the 1930s in the Brigade de la Fraternité du Bon Musulman, an organization that aimed to diminish the economic and political sway powerful Sufi marabouts held over their followers, as well as improve Islamic education. By the 1940s and 1950s, a number of young Quranic scholars sympathetic to these goals left Senegal to attend theological schools in Algeria and Saudi Arabia.22 Upon returning home, they established the orthodox organizations Harakat al-Falah (Movement for Success), Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM), and Jama’at Ibadu Rahman (Organization of the Servants of God), which each challenged the secular state and its clientelist ties to Senegal’s Sufi orders.23 Furthermore, they advocated the purification of Islamic practice through Arabic literacy and strict adherence to the sunnah, or traditions of the prophet Mohammad, which define the Sunni branch of Islam.24 Today, Harakat al-Falah, Jama’at Ibadu Rahman, groups descended from UCM, and multifarious Sunnite neighborhood organizations are highly diverse with respect to their membership, affiliations, and discourses on the Sufi orders as well as the government; but members still largely distinguish themselves from other Senegalese by their adherence to tawhid (the philosophy of the indivisibility of God), their discursive reproach of Sufi innovations as well as of secular ideals, and their familiarity with international forms of Sunni practice. Although Sunnite groups still mostly operate on the fringe of Senegalese civilreligious society, in the mid-1990s urban youth ages fourteen to thirty, particularly in Dakar, started to join them in rapidly increasing numbers. Young people in the city’s high schools, universities, and residential and popular neighborhoods began to organize associations affiliated with orthodox mosques and imams, referring to themselves as Sunnites, to indicate semantically that they were the only Senegalese who correctly practiced the sunnah, or the religious acts of the prophet Mohammad passed on through Sunni tradition. Still today, young women describe their decisions to “become Sunnite” as a conversion: an experience of spiritual rebirth that requires

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them to completely reorient their world views with respect to a new set of religious beliefs and to eschew a number of their former cultural practices. Contrary to arguments that Islamist youth in the developing world hail only from the ranks of the unemployed middle-class intelligentsia, Dakar’s young Sunnites represent a broad range of socioeconomic groups, from residents of the city’s poorest banlieues and shanty towns, to high school–educated children of merchants and state functionaries, to elites with university degrees. Although scholars have readily pointed out the ways Senegalese women carve out spaces for participation in Sufism,25 Sunnite Islam—particularly in its current, transnational form—offers multiple possibilities for women to shape spiritual and political ethics based on orthodox knowledge and practice, defiance of local secular norms, and awareness of international forms of Islamic observance. Jama’at Ibadu Rahman, for example, has active women’s sections in all local levels, and their national administration is directed by Al Hajja Binta Thiaw, who inhabits her private Quranic school for girls in Dakar, funded by Saudi Arabia’s World Association for Muslim Youth.26 Harakat al-Falah’s Dakar high school, with teachers educated in Moroccan and Egyptian institutions, graduates young women on an annual basis who pass their baccalaureate exam as full-fledged arabisantes (female Arabic scholars), receive scholarships to study in Sudan, and often open their own Sunnite schools. Young women in these organizations as well as in affiliated groups attend conferences sponsored by umbrella Sunnite organizations that include lectures titled, “The Use of Women for the Destruction of Senegalese Society,” “Crisis in the Senegalese Secular System,” “The Politics of Population Control: The West’s Tool of Domination,” and “Which Family Code for the Senegalese Muslim?”27 Female adherents gather in Quranic schools, university dorms, high school classrooms, and private homes to socialize, support one another, learn Arabic, and teach each other orthodox habitus. Although the Sunnite movement’s transnational ties to funding and education are in many ways diffuse,28 it is these linkages in addition to globalized Islamist media and goods that animate female Sunnites’ imaginations of places in the Muslim world more militant, and in their eyes more devout, than Senegal, thus fueling their senses of activism within a global resistance movement. Films such as Rabbia (a story about a young Arab mystic who dons the veil before her untimely death); foreign television series like The Life of the Prophet; footage of interviews with Arab religious leaders; primers on orthodox practice published in the Gulf; cassettes recorded by converts in London; scholarships offered in Sudan; Internet sites developed in the United States; and media reports on the Iranian Revolution, resistance in Iraq, and veiled girls in France inspire Dakar’s Sunnite women to view themselves as part of an expanding Islamist world minority resistant to secular norms and western hegemony. They interpret the aforementioned international sources as models for Senegalese governance as well as for the personal ethics that each individual should cultivate for her own salvation, the collective national interest, and the fortification of Islamic piety worldwide. From 1998 to 2003 I interviewed 150 of Dakar’s Sunnite women, in Wolof and French. I also spoke with young Sunnite men, as well as male and female movement leaders. I conducted all interviews in life history narrative sessions or focus groups, and I spent many hours visiting my respondents’ homes, mosques, and religious organizations. These organizations, which represented the diversity of members’ socioeconomic statuses and ethnic backgrounds, were the national groups Association des Etudiants Musulmans de l’Université de Dakar (AEMUD), the Association des Elèves et Etudiants Musulmans du Sénégal (AEEMS), Jama’at Ibadu Rahman, and Harakat al-Falah, as well as the neighborhood associations Mosquée à Rond Point, Association

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Rabi Sarr, and Association Thiaroye.29 My identity as a non-Muslim, white American female posed some challenges to my research but also provided unique opportunities. I cannot deny that the weighty combination of protest symbols I represented for my young women respondents (and perhaps more so for their male counterparts) engendered varying degrees of mistrust regarding my motives, yet even adherents who had great reservations participated in my interviews with a mix of curiosity and optimism. Most of the time female adherents welcomed this occasion to discuss their conversion experiences to the Sunnite movement, and learn about Americans. My position as an outsider created regular opportunities to hear my informants describe their own feelings of difference from other Senegalese, and gave them the chance to teach me their understandings of Islam’s requirements for cultivating feminine piety in oneself, for building a strong nation, and for solidarity with a devout, global ummah.

B eing a Ja mbaar and N ot a Jum bax -out: Layer ing Bel ief, Femi ni ni ty, a nd Power in S unn i te Reli g i osi ty Hijab: Symbol and Catalyst Veiling is by far the most public symbol of feminine engagement in the Sunnite movement,30 and by the mid-1990s the sight of a young woman whose head was covered with a neatly wrapped, white or dark colored triangle of fabric that dropped to the middle of her back had become so common that she was called an Ibadu, regardless of whether she was actually a member of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman. Indeed, Ibadus were so visible that in October 1999 the popular newspaper Info Sept weighed in with an issue entitled, “Entre le voile et le jumbax” (Between the veil and the navel ), juxtaposing a front-page photo of two Sunnite women next to another of a woman in a miniskirt. In an article called, “Daring Outfits [on the streets of Dakar] clash with the veil,”31 the paper focused on the “moral” differences between women who dressed in the fashion of halter tops that expose the navel (jumbax-outs) and women who don hijab. Just as public conversations distinguish between unveiled and veiling women, so do Sunnite discourses. Male Sunnite leaders extol the virtues of women who wear hijab, and, as in a pamphlet penned by Imam Aboubacar Diakhe,32 occasionally refer to those who do not as “naked of piety” and “damned to hell.” Young Sunnite women learn Quranic verses that the movement interprets as requirements for women to veil, such as Surah 23 Verse 53 and Surah 24 Verse 31,33 and ahadith about covering like those attributed to Abu Daoud and Al-Bayhaqi.34 Although this chapter later shows that veiling is used by Senegalese women to cultivate personal piety and private spirituality, it also immediately represents an exterior Islam that most Senegalese associate with Middle Eastern and Gulf countries. A growing minority of women has begun wearing the dark colored Iranian chador. However, more commonly worn is the shorter veil made of a cotton/polyester blend, which falls to the middle of the back and comes with a lace-fringed cap to cover any hair around the forehead, often accompanying matching jilbab or loosely cut pants outfits. These ensembles are sold ready to wear at Moroccan and Lebanese shops in Dakar’s Sandaga market, or at periodic, multicountry commercial fairs such as the Foire Afro-Arabe at the Centre Internationale du Commerce Extérieur du Sénégal. At forty dollars (20,000 FCFA35) for an entire outfit, they are popular among middle to upper middle class students, who are the most likely to be able to afford them. Other young women purchase material and commission a tailor to make them an outfit, or

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they sew the clothing themselves. Those with more limited means use homemade veils of white or dark cloth, in addition to printed scarves sold for other purposes, which are considered just as acceptable. Finally, some fortunate Sunnite women have family members who conduct commerce in North African countries and occasionally bring clothing back for them, like the Mauritanian mulfah, a gauzy swath of material wrapped loosely around the body several times before covering the head. Female Sunnites associate veiling with religious practice in the Middle East and the Gulf, and they relate it to their beliefs about the strength and piety of the people living in these regions. Veiling in this perspective is a defiance of Western and indigenous cultural norms, and a statement of affiliation to an alternative religious and political identity. Nabou, a high school student who resided in a low income community and belonged to Association Thiaroye, defended the practice of veiling this way: “Do you want to know why Saudi Arabia is so rich? Because of how they practice Islam. People work and they are honest. And the women there are doing everything they can to lead righteous lives, adhering to the laws of Islam to succeed.”36 Women adherents also connected French girls, who insist on veiling despite the state’s ban, to moral fortitude and the defense of an Islam under siege by Western and secular interests.37 They frequently asked me if young women in the United States were allowed to veil at school and at work. Yet for many male theologians of previous generations, these young adherents’ intentions represented little more than a trend. Al Hajj Rawane Mbaye, the director of Dakar’s Grand Mosque and Islamic Institute, expressed skepticism about young Sunnite women’s interest in the veil: “Globalization reinforces this whole fad of veiling, for girls in secondary schools, the experiences of women elsewhere. They see other women wearing the veil. . . . They have learned that it has been forbidden to young girls in Europe to wear the veil to school, and they ask, why? Why shouldn’t we be able to wear a veil if we want to? That is not fair, [they say] . . . This fashion of veiling in Senegal is an effect of reaction.”38 Sunnite women’s consumption of these commodities exceeds an aesthetic of identitarian reactionism, however. Female adherents’ interpretation of the veil as a turn toward a “more orthodox” Islam exogenous to Senegal and as a symbol of solidarity with Muslims in those places does not singularly inspire, but nonetheless it fortifies their efforts at spiritual development. Similar to the women in Mahmood’s39 research, Dakar’s Sunnite women find that veiling, as a repeated bodily act, endows the self with certain qualities. As such, veiling can be interpreted less as a sign of interior piety than as a means of acquiring the physical and mental potential for pious discipline.40 Dienaba, an AEMUD member, recounted, “I like wearing the veil because I know it makes me strong. And older people respect me. You walk by an older person on the street, and they congratulate you. They smile and say, ‘Yow, jambaar nga.’I am fighting for myself and for the cause of Islam.”41 The Wolof word jambaar, or fighter, implies someone with personal determination; and when used to describe a Sunnite woman, it refers to someone who struggles against secular society for what is deemed religiously and morally correct. Female adherents frequently characterize the decision to veil and convert to the Sunnite movement as a personal trial. Veiling is one part of a demanding spiritual conversion that requires religious study, fastidious attention to ritual, and giving up a range of youthful enjoyments. Young Sunnite women describe moments of great reflection and personal resolve, demonstrated by their abilities to evaluate their own commitments to the movement, overcome fears about abandoning their former lives, and change their past social and religious practices. They also discuss the strength necessary to endure the loss of friendships and the skepticism of local authority figures.

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Khadija, also a member of AEMUD, describes her great reluctance to give up athletics for Sunnite Islam in the following excerpt. However, she finally overcomes this malaise and chooses to convert, chiefly to resolve a spiritual and existential crisis that has become unbearable: I started veiling in high school . . . I was someone who was too attached to life . . . I was even participating in the [handball] championships. There was a [guy] there who said that [I was so good] . . . he was going to tell his coach to bring me to play at Dakar University Club (DUC) and at Diaraf [sports club] too. I wanted to go but I also wanted to veil. . . . I didn’t know what to do. Everyday when I went to school I carried my veil in my bag . . . One day there was a sister [Sunnite woman] in the stairway . . . and I told her I wanted to pray [with her group] but that I . . . was embarrassed. She said not to be ashamed, that I should come everyday at prayer time and ask for her so we could go together . . . that really motivated me. Alhamdulilahi, when I saw that God had helped me. One day my knee was hurting really badly. I believe God made it that way. . . . I told myself . . . I will try to discontinue sports little by little, but at the same time, practice my religion better and better. [Once after a Sunnite conference] I decided to veil. [At school] the students said there’s a new Ibadu in our class . . . I took my veil off that day. [One night much later while I was praying] suddenly something really scared me, and I didn’t quite know what it was . . . so I picked up the mat and left without even having finished my prayer. . . . When I went to bed I started asking myself so many questions. I wondered, why are we even here? Why doesn’t God just let the sky drop, why do we walk on earth without anything even moving? So many questions without answers. So I said, well, you can be embarrassed in front of God or in front of people. It’s up to you. The next day when I woke up, I put on the veil. Yet I was embarrassed to leave the house. [Finally one day in October 1997,] I had orientation at the university . . . [and I was wondering], how am I going to leave the house with this veil? I didn’t know but I said since I decided in front of God to veil, I have to keep my promise no matter what the situation is, even if people make fun of me . . . [So] I left the house without paying attention to anyone. People said in three days you’re going to take that veil off. I didn’t even look at them. And I have gone on like that up to now.42

In her commentary, Khadija explains that she overcame her hesitation to quit handball through personal reflection, strength, and devotion to God. Finally, her commitment to Sunnite Islam triumphed over her shame and her reluctance to leave her sport. Because most Sunnite women believe that putting on a veil and taking it off later is a bigger sin in God’s eyes than never putting one on in the first place, they view the choice to become Sunnite as a life-changing and permanent decision. In addition to describing the self-determination required for deciding to veil, Sunnite women explain that veiling as a quotidian routine enables them to continue building moral discipline, piety, and a sense of closeness to God. Arame and Coumba, members of AEEMS and AEMUD, respectively, explain: Arame: Before, I was too attached to bad things. The veil permits you to question those things, and it brings you closer to God. Each time you’re in contact with God, you think of Him. Coumba: I had been veiling for a long time with just a short veil and long sleeves with loose pants or a dress, but I did not feel my faith growing. Everyone was shocked when I began to wear this veil à l’Iranienne [motions to her chador] but . . . I finally feel good now; I feel good in my own skin, so to speak.43

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Arame and Coumba’s comments exemplify Sunnite women’s explanations of the merits of covering for cultivating discipline, and for focusing on interior piety instead of exterior appearance, by wearing a veil that requires tenacity and religious deliberation. Between this interior development of personal spirituality and the identitarian aesthetics of global, pan-Islamist affiliation discussed previously, lies Sunnite women’s critique of the cultural practices of their peers and elders, a stance that ultimately questions local power structures. As such, private subjectivity and a sense of transnational solidarity together inspire Sunnite women’s local political critiques. In their conversion narratives, Sunnite women describe how they combined the will to develop piety with opposition to influential indigenous forces. They particularly frame their discourses within stories of the bravery they mustered to risk defying entrenched values under the watchful eyes of skeptical friends, family, and teachers. Through the personal and communal rigors of conversion, female participants come to view their religious devotion as a series of private triumphs as well as a public challenge to local social order. Below is an excerpt from a poem the young women in Association Thiaroye affixed to the wall of their school, which juxtaposes a virtuous veiled woman to women who do not veil: Listen Well, Dear Sister O! You, go under the wind which blows over your veil . . . O! Woman of contours unknown . . . Know that you have reaped success. Know that you will have, next to your LORD, Gardens of delicacies, places of rest Especially, with patience, endure the words of proud women Ignorant without souls, speaking every lie Showing off their thighs and their shapes Dressing expensively but naked, playing off their curves Of their faded and artificial charm. Vile body, catalyst of sinful perdition, denying her LORD She has disbelieved in her cr eat or , al l ah t he highest pur it y upon him.

The Association Thiaroye members who publicly disseminated this poem demarcate themselves from “proud women” who show off their “thighs and shapes,” “dressing expensively but naked.” They bring sexuality into the public realm to overconstruct distinctions between veiling and unveiled females who are portrayed as malevolently defiant of God.

Hijab, Orthodoxy, and Generational Change Female adherents also describe their perceptions of these differences in more quotidian terms, particularly with reference to their parents, teachers, and bosses. They manifest a conflict inherent in their decisions to be Sunnite: To cultivate orthodox piety is to rebel against ideological vestiges of Senegal’s colonial past as well as its Sufist religious traditions, both of which are embodied in their elders’ world views and actions. This defiance is not simply the next generation’s natural inclination to distinguish itself from the previous; it is more so a way to negotiate new social, political, and economic circumstances as well as introduce new belief systems by challenging old ideologies.44 As Sunnite youth construct new selves as devout Muslims in an international field, they contrast their morality to their parents’ values, which they view as parochial.

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They evoke their parents’ applications of European and maraboutic culture as misled and contrary to the tenets of orthodox, or true Islam. These narratives, like so many aspects of their discourse on participating in the Sunnite movement, center on their conversions and choices to veil. They ascribe their elders’ disapproval of their new dress and habitus to Western-colonized consciences and tastes, as well as to their ignorance of proper religious praxis, and they explain that the greatest test of their religious faith was to face the criticisms of their parents and professors. Strict parental authority has traditionally been an institution in Senegalese society, and even in recent times of loosened family bonds, most young people still dread an open confrontation with older family members. Yet as female adherents resist their elders’ pressures to unveil, they confirm their commitment to the movement and to themselves. Astou, an AEMUD member who grew up in the popular neighborhood of Parcelles Assainies, describes how she won her father’s respect: “My father was always very, very strict. He demanded nothing less than perfect grades from us at school, and he would beat us if that didn’t happen . . . When I began to veil, my parents were really worried about me. They didn’t understand why I was doing it. My father told me to take it off, but I would not. The next day he came to apologize to me.”45 Although some parents register shock and often indignation at their daughters’ decisions with orders to remove the veil, others resort to jokes and teasing. Many respondents, like Astou’s AEMUD colleague Kine, laughingly related their relatives’ attempts at getting them to unveil: Do you remember when all the terrorism was happening with Algeria? [Kine directs this question to the other women in the AEMUD focus group who are listening intently and bemusedly; they nod and laugh a little.] Well, my father asked me to take [my veil] off, because he was afraid I would be attacked. And too, at my house, they joke about me—they call me “The Terrorist”!! [Laughs loudly, eyes bright] because I am so strong, so forceful, and I always say what is on my mind—and then with my veil, they call me “The Terrorist”! [Laughs, whole group laughs]. But that is not the case. I am a very open person. I like everybody.46

In each case of parental reproach, Sunnite women report veiling as a victory of their personal willpower and religious devotion over the people who previously held the most authority in their lives. Yet they also contrast their ideologies and habitus from that of their parents through critiques of French imperialism, Western secular influence, and inadequate Quranic education. Female adherents’ elders rely on a combination of indigenous and Western norms that date from their coming of age, and thus they cannot comprehend why a young person would find it beneficial to be too austere; they associate a woman’s youth with a time to be courted by young men, to profit from beauty and health, and to enjoy life. Here, AEMUD member Fatim describes her resistance to her parents’ views in this regard: “They wanted me to take it off; they said if you veil you won’t find a husband or a job . . . but I refused; I said you are not my reference and I know what is in the Book and if I’m going to call myself Muslim then I will conform to what is said in the Book.”47 As Fatim’s comment reveals, young Sunnites credit their parents’ objections in part to a poor understanding of Islamic doctrine. Adama, like many of her colleagues in AEMUD, specifically relates this problem to the influence of Sufi orders: “The problem with turuq . . . [is that] people limit themselves to asking a marabout to pray for them, they celebrate the magal [pilgrimage] without even knowing the bases of the religion. This is what has created problems between us and our families . . . they haven’t even mastered the Quran.”48 Many also related their parents’ mistaken impression that veiling

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belonged to a new religion, in other words, a new permutation of Islam: “[T]hey said perhaps this is something new; you’re taking on a new religion. But I said to myself, this is not a new religion, perhaps [they said this] because they didn’t know a lot about their religion themselves . . . ”49 “My mother told me to take it off because that was not part of our tradition. For them it’s Arab culture. It is part of Arab culture and so there was no question that I should put on the veil.”50 For Sunnite women, equally difficult to standing up to their parents is facing influential figures in their community who oppose veiling, particularly in educational institutions. Although they receive support from campus religious associations and Sunnite instructors who sympathize with the movement, female adherents in secular high schools and at the University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) still face considerable scrutiny from liberal professors, who were mostly educated in the French system during the 1960s and 1970s. Sunnite women recount defying their criticism with great pride, as does Dabax, a high school student from a residential neighborhood, who attends Quranic classes at Mosquée à Rond Point: “One Friday I wore the veil [to school], and my teacher told me “the next time you wear these implements of Satan, you will no longer attend school.” I responded to him, “If it pleases God I will come back, and with my veil.” The next day I came back with my veil he didn’t say anything; he knew that I would recite the Quranic verse [about veiling] to him. I took my courage in my two hands because when you veil you should never feel desperate. You shouldn’t listen to what others say. . . .”51 Discussions of the tenacity and faith required to face these hardships in the work force are also frequently echoed by Sunnite women. As Majigeen, an AEMUD member, explained, When looking for work, [veiling complicates things]. [My private marketing school] makes us do internships each year, and so one day they put me in contact with a multinational that had offices almost everywhere in the world. I had an interview with [the boss.] . . . Then when he saw my veil, he was a little surprised! “Well,” he said, “you’re dynamic, you have a good CV, a good education, but it would surprise me if you could work in France.” He had an export branch [there]. “That just won’t work out in France with you wearing the veil.” . . . Then he asked me if one day he hired me, would I ever take my veil off. I said that was out of the question. I would keep the veil for the rest of my life . . . They understood, but they did not give me the job . . . I was a little disappointed, but I expected it . . . a girl wearing miniskirts will get a lot further than me. So if that girl makes fifty percent of an effort, I’ll have to make one hundred percent, and I’m ready to do that.52

Majigeen’s commentary points out that for her, veiling in opposition to local and international secular norms exists in a mutually supportive relationship with her efforts to sustain her own piety. Piety for Majigeen, as for all the women quoted here, consists of working to achieve ritual perfection and closeness to God as well as challenging local ethics that would inhibit the proper practice of Sunni ritual and lifestyle or mitigate the cultivation of one’s spiritual purity. These values are hybrids of indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial influence that exist in conflict with Senegalese Sunnite objectives as well as defy female adherents’ imaginations of Muslim mores and practices in parts of the Sunni world they consider more devout, and sometimes more militant, than Senegal. As such, young Sunnite women’s sense of veiling as identitarian solidarity with a burgeoning worldwide ummah also enhances their personal spiritual development.

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Love, Marriage, and Piety In addition to veiling to develop faith and express political affiliation with a global movement that challenges local norms, my Sunnite respondents (who were, for the most part, unmarried at the time of research) adapted universalist canons to their plans for marriage in the name of private spirituality, national progress, and awareness of Senegal’s international position as a Muslim country. Their conflicting discourses on subjects such as polygamy, birth control, and work outside the home highlight their private efforts to adhere to orthodox values and accommodate their personal desires for love, sexuality, and often economic independence, in the way that Rouse53 defines ambivalence as a part of religious faith in which followers transform themselves and also adapt their religion to meet life’s challenges. Within these negotiations, female adherents work to cultivate Sunni piety, including their beliefs that only adherence to orthodox criteria can create in women the moral discipline required for the enhancement of personal devotion to God, harmonious families, and Senegalese development, comprised in part by the country’s transition to forms of shari’a that reflect laws of Islamic republics throughout the world. Sunnite women’s efforts to build a stronger interior faith focus in part on recasting courtship in orthodox as well as personal terms. My respondents readily admit that although they try to adhere to Islamic protocol, they do not always succeed. Nonetheless, it is the continuous striving toward an ideal that Sunnite women believe will lead them to spiritual improvement: The most radical among us would say that the man who decides to court a woman should go [to her house] with a friend because he cannot be sure there is a chaperone at her house. They even go so far as to say that couples do not have the right to look at one another in the eyes. But I say there is always a little distance between what is prescribed and what is done. We tend toward that, and I know it isn’t permitted to look at each other in the eyes, but it is difficult for me to respect that. Sometimes it happens that I look at my male friend in the eyes and then I look down because I remember it is forbidden.54

While espousing orthodox norms for courtship, Sunnite women nonetheless relate that they exercise a great deal of choice in whom they marry, and they frequently discuss the importance of romantic love in their decisions. My respondents often laughingly told of moments when they did not hesitate to dismiss the undesirable men who came to court them. Dienaba, an upper middle class woman pursuing a master’s degree in social work, described her experience with one such suitor: It gets on my nerves when men try to use religion, the Quran, to pick me up [pour me draguer]. If you want to pick me up, just say so! If you want to talk religion, then, let’s talk! But don’t even start talking religion, talking about ahadith, to pick me up. One time a boy [a young man] came to my house. He was bothering me, going on and on about religion. He even had the nerve to tell me okay, now I will lead you in the evening prayer. But you know, Muslims are allowed to do the evening prayer right before they go to bed. On time or right before you go to bed are both acceptable. I prefer the second. He told me that, and I told him, I’m not changing the way I do things for you! He left. The next day he came by to tell me he was married and that he already had three children. He told me, “you know, I said to my wife, I’m going to find a co-wife for you because you have only given me girls.”

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I looked at him and said, “Idiot! You’re the one whose body decides the sex of the child. You didn’t know?” He was so embarrassed he looked down and started to snicker. That was the last time I saw him.55

Dienaba’s incorporation of discourse on religious practice in her account about dating is not unusual for Sunnite women. Although here she argues that such an undesirable young man could not possibly alter the way she practices her religion because it is something she reserves for herself, quite often Sunnite women use religious reasons to describe the appropriateness of their liaisons. Yet despite the increasing difficulty for young people to find a mate in Dakar because of rising unemployment, dowry prices, and a growing lack of social control between generations, becoming Sunnite is not simply a marriage strategy for young women. Many female adherents left their boyfriends and even fiancés who could not tolerate their decisions to veil, because they instead sought ways to lead pious lives with others who shared their views. Ndeye, an undergraduate English major explains about her engagement to Omar, the amir (president) of Univerisité Cheikh Anta Diop’s AEEMS: “Before Omar, I was with someone for five years, and we were supposed to get married that June. But he broke up with me because he didn’t like the fact that I put on a veil . . . I didn’t care. I knew I had a choice—I could either live my religion properly, or suffer the consequences. He just called me recently to tell me he was getting married to a Saint Louisienne who doesn’t veil. I said, ‘I’m getting married too.’ That’s life; you meet people finally, who share your ideas, share your values.”56 Besides veiling and other observances of Sunnite ritual, these values include female adherents’ belief in sacred aspects of complementary roles between spouses, including a wife’s submission to her husband’s wishes. Sunnite women justify their stances not only by referring to local traditional norms, but also by citing Quranic injunctions and ahadith announced at religious conferences and published in Sunnite tracts. They argue that marital submission is part of their special religious duty to support their husbands. Sali, a psychology major at UCAD, explains her vision of Muslim women’s duties to their husbands: “Our veiling is not about women ‘reclaiming’ Islam for ourselves! No. In Islam, the men are the leaders. The men are the leaders! But women have a major role supporting the men. Women are a place of rest for their men. When the man comes home, full of worries from his job and problems in society, it is up to us the women to provide him with comfort. Women do have to put up with chaos, the chaos of our times, the chaos in men’s lives. Women are not ‘out there in front,’ but they are in front anyhow.”57 Sali’s assertion that female roles in Sunnite Islam have nothing to do with an agenda for reclaiming power but instead are a fulfillment of religious and spiritual requirements is also manifest in a number of her colleagues’ adamant support of polygamy, an institution often challenged by urban Senegalese women. Although female adherents contend that the Quranic legislation of polygamy58 helps women by regulating the number of sexual liaisons in which men can become involved, the issue of faith largely surpasses questions of fairness in their discussions of the problem. For many Sunnite women, accepting polygamy is mostly about trusting God and fulfilling the religious duty of wifehood: For polygamy, I would say that I accept it because my religion has accepted it, and God permits it . . . the Muslim community is one of brotherhood . . . you see your sister there and that she is living Islam, the religion that loves fraternity, equality. . . . Nobody ever said that all of Mohammad’s community, Peace be Upon Him, will go to heaven. You have to earn

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your faith. . . . God wants all of us Muslim women to strive for perfection . . . But [if] we are jealous and don’t want to share our husbands, it is because we are too attached to our worldly lives . . . If you are Muslim then you want fraternity between Muslim women . . . If I see that [for example] “Farimata” cannot live her religion, because she is not stable, she is always looking at men, she would really want to have [need] a husband. And me, I [might] have a husband who can satisfy me and gives me everything I want. Why wouldn’t I welcome “Farimata?” That, after all, is the goal.59

Despite many of my unmarried respondents’ idealistic professions to this effect, two young women who had recently married expressed reservations and depression at the prospects of polygamy. As one young respondent from AEMUD stated, “Any Sunnite woman who says she likes polygamy is a liar. We accept polygamy in spite of ourselves, because God knows man better than we do.”60 Nonetheless, female Sunnites discuss the possibilities of subverting men’s decisions to take another spouse by working to maintain their husbands’ sexual interest in them. Rama, an upper middle class accountant, was at first blissfully happy in her marriage to a Sunnite man; yet not long after began to fear that he would take a second wife. Her cousin, also Sunnite, explained, “My sister and I went over to Rama’s house to give her a pagne [lingerie-style underskirt] and to make her wear powder to cover up her pimples. We know it is a sin to wear make up, as does Rama, but she agreed because she couldn’t bear the thought of someday losing her husband to a second wife.”61 Indeed, Sunnite women discuss sex as a religious duty to submit to one’s husband’s desires as well as a mechanism for leveraging control in the marriage relationship. One member of the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman described the meaning of chomolong to me, accompanied by the scandalized laughter of her non-Sunnite friends, as we stood outside one evening. The term is used in the well-loved hit, “Sama Néné,” by pop singer Viviane: “Chomolong? That means how you would treat a baby, or how you treat your husband if you want to keep him!! You know how it is to comfort a baby!! You hold him, rock him (she imitated a silly, jaunty, rocking motion with her arms) and scratch his head! That is the same with your man, except you wear a pretty underskirt, and binbins62, and when you walk across the room and bend over to light the incense, you roll your bottom, look back at him, and smile!”63 Combined with female Sunnites’ negotiations of romantic love, sex, and polygamy within orthodox standards is the reality that most will be economically productive, as has always been the case for Senegalese women. In 1991 social scientist Fatou Sarr found that a growing number of women in Dakar contribute to between 51 and 85 percent of their households’ incomes.64 Worsening economic hardship, as well as the visual presence of women in almost all public work environments in the capital, indicates that this trend has likely intensified. Sunnite women with little formal education work in commerce or as domestic servants, whereas those with university degrees most likely pursue careers in their fields of study or, because of the poor labor market, accept lower-status clerical jobs. Given the recession and the rise in men’s unemployment, female adherents recognize the increased necessity of assisting in the financial support of their families, but many do not view this situation as ideal. Sali, the psychology student at UCAD, explained, “A woman is like a princess, who should be doted on, who should rest in the arms of her man. So a woman should not work except in the case where the man cannot pay for all the needs of the family. If all the conditions are filled, she should stay at the house. That’s not to say that she doesn’t work. It is work that God has attributed to women: have children, raise them, and

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cook . . . The people who make up this society should be brought up in a way that instills God’s values in them.”65 Conversely, adherents with professional ambitions argue that pious women can work even in good economic circumstances for the family. Majigeeen, an MBA student, related, The religion tells you to follow your husband. That means if he can support you, you should stop working. But I don’t think I would. I’m not yet ready to abandon my career. I sacrificed a lot for my studies, so did my parents, frankly! It’s my nature; I’m too dynamic just to be happy at home with the kids. I want to change a lot of things in my field [of business marketing] and I can’t change them if I stay at home . . . I can work and take care of my husband. It will be difficult, but you can do both.66

Whether they feel they must work out of economic necessity or to fulfill career aspirations, Sunnite women plan to maintain the religious value of these obligations. In their discourses on the subject, they frequently refer to the wives of the prophet as their models: “If you take the case of Aisha, even after the prophet died she continued to be a teacher. Even the Sahabah, the companions of the prophet, came to her and she taught them ahadith that the prophet had left her.”67 “If we take for example the case of Khadija, she conducted commerce, and when she married the prophet and converted to Islam, this did not prevent her from continuing and she was able to materially support him in the work she was doing.”68 By invoking the virtues of the prophet’s wives and adhering to orthodox standards for dress and comportment, Sunnite women reconcile their work roles extraneous to wife and mother with their religious beliefs, thus shaping a spiritual subjectivity within their personal development. In similar fashion, female adherents negotiate between their personal hopes for romantic love and their desires to adhere to orthodox perspectives on courtship and polygamy. The combination of their conscientious efforts to follow Sunnite prescriptions and their ambivalence in these private matters is also reflected in young women’s deliberations on beginning to veil and cultivating pious selves. Yet as in their discourses on the local and global stakes of veiling, female adherents complement this amorphous, ever-evolving subjectivity with an identitarian political consciousness when they address the community and worldwide effects of orthodox norms for marriage. Sunnite women’s discussions on love and choice of spouse, as well as their beliefs about how marriage ceremonies should be performed, frequently oppose local practices. Although most families in Senegal’s urban centers agree that their daughters should have a say in who they wed, Sunnite women explain that their parents often disagree with their wishes to marry Sunnite men. They maintain that ultimately the decision is theirs, quoting ahadith to this effect.69 Female adherents also eschew contemporary Senegalese weddings that consist of lavish parties and large exchanges of money and other gifts between the bride, her parents, the groom’s parents, and wedding guests. Sunnites view these popular and grandiose displays of wealth as contradictory to the religious solemnity of matrimony. Ndeye and Omar’s wedding, for example, was of a tone considerably more conservative than any non-Sunnite marriages I had attended. At first, I could not find Ndeye’s aunt’s home, where the festivities were scheduled, because no music was broadcast from a public address system in the back courtyard as is typical for a Senegalese celebration. Instead, as I walked through an alley leading to the address, I passed a group of approximately twenty Sunnite men seated on chairs around an Imam who

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was preaching the virtues of marriage. One Ibadu frère silently motioned me toward the house, where I came upon Ndeye, who was chatting softly with her female friends and sisters around a television in a tiny living room. The television sputtered a poorly transmitted soccer match in the background, and the sound was turned off. The bride, dressed in a new beige polyester pants suit and flowing over-jacket, with a veil of the same color and material wrapped neatly around the contours of her face, introduced me to her other female guests, most of whom were Sunnite. Then she took me to the large outdoor kitchen in the back of the house, and left me momentarily with her mother, aunts, and older sisters. They greeted me warmly, but in the midst of cooking over large pots and six or seven excited children younger than five years old, they could not pass up the opportunity to test my knowledge of indiscreet Wolof vocabulary. The generational difference between Ndeye’s wedding behavior and that of her older relatives was striking. Sunnite women contend that their movement’s economic and moral austerity, so apparent in Sunnite wedding style, will effectively promote Senegal’s national progress. Citing Quranic verses that God helps a people who better themselves through religious practice,70 Sunnite women make an implicit critique of problems they perceive to be associated with the secular societies whose path Senegal seems to relentlessly follow. A former member of AEMUD, now a married doctor with her own children, elaborated, “The movement can change a lot in Senegal—in raising children. Like children shouldn’t steal. If the mother is a better Muslim, she will inform the father of their children’s faults, things she might have tried to hide from him before. This will help keep her children from being vulnerable to the society; warning her children away from danger. There will be less chance of a girl getting AIDS if she is brought up in Islam. You know, otherwise she would just say, ‘I’ll go on the pill.’ Well, the pill does not prevent AIDS.”71 Besides touting Sunnite Islam’s potential to change Senegal through the moral improvement of its people, female activists also voiced hope for the movement’s ability to encourage the implementation of shari’a law in their country. Al-Hajja Binta Thiaw, leader of the women’s national section of Jama’at Ibadu Rahman, simply stated, “Insha’allah, one day we will see the shari’a [here],”72 whereas an AEEMS member detailed the goal of political change this way: “If the authorities applied the law of the shari’a thieves and all wrongdoers would see their existence destroyed, as well as the embezzlement [sic] of public funds and business in the government. This constitutes one of the factors of the underdevelopment of our country today.”73 By 2003 Sunnite backing of religious jurisprudence was widespread, particularly evidenced by followers’ support for a national referendum that would convert Senegal’s national, secular family laws to shari’a for all Muslims. Although CIRCOFS (Comité Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Sénégal) leaders’ efforts were rejected by many in the Senegalese public and by President Wade in an international forum,74 Sunnite women remained vocal on the matter. Despite the proposal’s potential to legalize a husband’s authority over his wife, wife repudiation, and female excision,75 female adherents supported the measure on the basis that it instated complementary responsibilities between husband and wife, and that legally reinforced polygamy kept men’s behavior in check. Ndeye Faty Sarr, who held a bachelors’ degree in sociology from UCAD, wrote in defense of the proposed Code in an editorial to Walfadjri newspaper at the height of the controversy: “ . . . the man is generally the head of the family and it is his duty to give out the family’s daily expenses. The woman is generally looked after. . . . Whether your man recognizes it or not, it is in his blood to want to possess several women. Becoming conscious of this fact

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will put your mind at ease. And between a monogamous husband who chases skirts and a polygamous but restrained husband, which would you prefer?”76 Additionally, Sunnite women supported the referendum as a rejection of secular norms imposed by colonial and postcolonial powers, as is evidenced by school teacher Aichatou Fall Diagne’s editorial to Walfadjri during the same period: “French secularism . . . was conceived for the French state given its history and political sociology. Nothing in French history, with respect to the relationship between civil society and the church, is similar to our own . . . Should we, under the pretext of international conventions signed and ratified, permit everything here?”77 Sunnite women’s support for the CIRCOFS referendum of 2003 thus represented identitarian sentiment about Senegal’s subjugated role in global modernity in addition to a moral initiative directed at Muslims at home. Their efforts to shape orthodox gender roles within marriage are personal endeavors to enhance their spiritual selves, and they also contribute to defining the movement’s basis for political change domestically and internationally.

Feminine Agenc y i n Tr ans n at ion al Isl amist Movements Although it has been observed that Muslim womanhood is often evoked by men as a symbolic “repository” of national history, religious pride, and family honor,78 women may actively create and perpetuate these notions. In Islamist movements that develop within secular or religiously plural societies, female adherents may engage the gender specificity of pious women’s roles in nationalist arguments about the benefits of orthodoxy to their country’s progress as well as in discourses supporting international forms of Islamist practice. However, understandings of agency in social movements that rest solely on interpretations of how actors represent identitarian attitudes through politicized symbols or actions are limited in their power to explain the depth of contemporary social movements that empirically surpass national boundaries and Western models of resistance to hegemonic powers. Forms of social activism can also be unsystematic processes of subjectivation, where actors work to embody private emotions, collective viewpoints, and even religious feelings in tandem with the diffuse ideologies of a loosely organized cultural movement.79 These creations and re-creations of self do not occur in social contexts that are devoid of political tension or transnational flows of identitarian sentiment, however. Female Sunnites’ private efforts at spiritual cultivation and religious devotion are in fact enhanced by their views of themselves as moral militants in solidarity with a global Muslim diaspora under siege by western world hegemonies. Far from the Gulf’s epicenter of Sunni orthodoxy, Dakar’s Sunnite women articulate their personal ethical development, visions for national change, and beliefs about other orthodox Muslims in a worldwide ummah, through conversations on veiling and marriage, two local phenomena that bring to bear these youths’ awareness and manipulation of transnational symbols. When understood in this context, these young African women’s discourses and actions illuminate the dialectics of political and spiritual agency in private, local, and global spheres of Islamist religiosity, and as such, the possibility for contemporary social movements to encompass members’ identitarian politics as well as their personal efforts at self-transformation.

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Not es 1. Scholars debate the use of the terms Islamist and reformist when describing Sunni protest organizations, which aim for society’s statutory return to divinely revealed principles of Islamic order by reforming local religious, political, legal and cultural practices according to literal, orthodox interpretations of the Quran and ahadith. See Almond, Appleby, and Sivan, Strong Religion; Kane, Muslim Modernity in Post-Colonial Nigeria; Riesebrodt, Pious Passion; and Roy, Globalized Islam. Although many make the distinction between reformists who would gradually change hearts and minds to win popular support, and Islamists who would directly confront a society’s political and governmental structures, I fully concur with Alidou’s argument that this distinction may not be so clear in analyses of activists’ real sentiments; a group’s empirical capacity to instate shari’a given the constraints and possibilities of the social context at hand may dictate whether it is reformist or Islamist. Most respondents, like the Izala in Alidou’s Niger study, revealed sympathy with the establishment of an Islamic state, and thus I use the term Islamist here. See Alidou, Engaging Modernity. 2. See Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women, and “Dakar’s Sunnite Women”; Janson, “Roaming About for God’s Sake”; Miles, “Sharia as de-Africanization”; Miran, “Vers un nouveau”; Schulz, “Political Factions, Ideological Fictions”; Seesemann, “The Quotidian Dimensions”; Kone-Dao, “Implantation et influence du wahhâbisme.” 3. This work has been funded by Fulbright IIE, National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Princeton University’s Transregional Institute for the Study of North Africa and the Middle East. 4. El Saadawi, “Fundamentalism: A Universal Phenomenon”; Mernissi, Beyond the Veil; Millet, Going to Iran. 5. Augis, Dakar’s Sunnite Women; Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment,” Politics of Piety. 6. Alidou, Engaging Modernity; Boubekeur, Le voile de la mariée; Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire; Fernea, In Search of Islamic Feminism; Hessini, “Wearing the Hijab”; Kausar, Women in Feminism and Politics; MacLeod, Accommodating Protest. 7. Hale, Gender Politics in Sudan; Hoffman, “Muslim Fundamentalists”; Saadatman, “Separate and Unequal”; Seikaly, “Women and Religion”; White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey. 8. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam; Khosrokhovar, “L’islam des jeunes”; Neuberger, The Orient Within. 9. Hirschmann, The Subject of Liberty, 193. 10. Mahmood, Politics of Piety. 11. Ibid. 12. Hoffman, “Muslim Fundamentalists,” 223; MacLeod, Accommodating Protest, 110. 13. Mahmood, Politics of Piety. 14. Women and Revivalism. 15. Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment,” and Politics of Piety. 16. See also Bartkowski and Read, “Veiled Submission.” 17. Franks, Women and Revivalism. 18. Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment,” and Politics of Piety. 19. Rouse, Engaged Surrender. 20. See Afshar, Aitken, and Franks, “Feminisms, Islamophobia and Identities”; Augis, “Dakar’s Sunnite Women”; Bernal, “Migration, Modernity, and Islam”; D’Alisera, “I Love Islam”; Fischer and Abedi, Debating Muslims; Franks, Women and Revivalism; Hussein, “Cybercrusades: Islam and anti-Islam on the Internet”; Janson, “Roaming About for God’s Sake”; Singerman “Islamist Women in Yemen.” 21. Roy, Globalized Islam. 22. Brenner, Controlling Knowledge; Kane, Muslim Modernity in Post-Colonial Nigeria; Loimeier, “Implantation et influence.”

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23. It has been shown that each organization has, after its inception, acquiesced to pressures of the Senegalese state or the political sway of the Sufi orders and thus moderated their positions. For example, the UCM eventually became an arm of the Senghor administration, and the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman encourages its adherents to participate in national elections and makes overtures to the Sufi orders. These official changes, however, do not efface the strong reservations about secular government and Sufi religious culture held by most movement leaders and adherents, as indicated in their discourses, publications, and interviews with the author. In fact, the UCM’s official sympathies with the state led to the eventual dispersion of the group’s original supporters. See Loimeier, “The secular state and Islam in Senegal”; Villalón, “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation.” 24. Loimeier, “The Secular State and Islam in Senegal,” 183–97; 575. Kane, “La vie et l’oeuvre d’Al-Hajj Mahmoud Ba Diowol.” These facts were corroborated in Augis’ interview with Imam Cheikh Touré, one of the founders of the reform movement called Union Culturelle Musulmane, in Dakar, November 1999. 25. See Coulon, Femmes, Islam, et Baraka and “Women, Islam, and Baraka”; Coulon and Coulon, L’Islam au féminin; Heath, “Fashion, Anti-Fashion, and Heteroglossia”; Callaway and Creevey, The Heritage of Islam; Laborde, Le confrérie layenne; Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal. 26. “Interview avec l’amir du movement des femmes,” Le Musulman 45, February- March 1994; and interview with author May, 1999. 27. Mosquée Inachevée Ramadan series, 1998. 28. Gomez-Perez, “Généalogies de l’Islam.” 29. To protect the privacy of participants in this study, pseudonyms are used for all respondents, as well as for the three neighborhood Sunnite associations. 30. It is important to note that older women, and some younger women, not affiliated with Sunnite organizations but with Sufi and hybrid Sufi-reform groups (including the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Niassene Tijans) may also veil. Sunnite women’s veiling is essential to Sunnite membership, often distinct in its imitation of Arab sartorial style, and closely associated with Sunnite membership in Senegalese public opinion, however. 31. M. N. Ndiaye, “Les tenues osées.” 32. Imam of the Sunnite mosque at Yoff. 33. And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers or husband’s fathers, or their sons or their husband’s sons, or their brothers or their brothers’ sons or sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves or male attendants who lack vigor, or children who know naught of woman’s nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And turn unto Allah together, O believers, in order that ye may succeed (Surah 24:31); . . . And when ye ask of them (the wives of the Prophet) anything, ask it of them from behind a curtain. That is purer for your hearts and for their hearts. . . . (Surah 23:53) 34. “When she has begun to menstruate, it is no longer acceptable for a woman to be seen except for this, and the Prophet, Peace be upon him, designated his face and hands.” 35. Franc Communauté Financière Africaine. 36. Nabou, interview with the author, September 1999. 37. “La France en mal de laïcité,” L’étudiant musulman, March 1999, 19. 38. El Hajj Rawane Mbaye, interview with author, February, 1999. 39. Mahmood, Politics of Piety. 40. Ibid. 41. Dienaba, interview with the author, December 1999. 42. Khadija, interview with the author, March 1999. 43. Arame, interview with the author, April 1999 and Coumba, interview with the author, November 2000. 44. Mannheim, “The Problem of Generations.”

230 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Er i n Augis Astou, interview with the author, March 1999. Kine, interview with the author, March 1999. Fatim, interview with the author, March 1999. Adama, interview with the author, March 1999. Maimouna, interview with the author, April 1999. Oumou, interview with the author, April 1999. Dabax, interview with the author, May 1999. Majigeen, interview with the author, April 1999. Engaged Surrender. Fatim, interview with the author, April 1999. Dienaba, interview with the author, August 1999. Ndeye, interview with the author, August 1999. Sali, interview with the author, January 1999. “And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women who seem good to you, two or three or four, and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice” (Surah, 4:3). Arame, interview with the author, August 1999. Sira, interview with the author, September 1999. Seynabou, interview with the author, August 1999. Small beaded elastic waistbands, which are considered erotic. Aissatou, interview with the author, November 1999. Conseil Sénégalais des Femmes, “COSEF Infos: Femmes et Processus de prise de decisions” workshop-seminar publication May 30–31, Sénégalaise de l’imprimérie, 1996. Sali, interview with the author, February 1999. Majigeeen, interview with the author, February 1999. Fari, interview with the author, Febraury 1999. Majigeen, interview with the author, February 1999. Literature containing such ahadith is often distributed at Sunnite conferences. See for example, Niasse, Place de la femme. For example, “Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way are of much greater worth in Allah’s sight. These are they who are triumphant” (Surah 9:20). Former AEMUD member, interview with author, December 1999. Adji Binta Thiaw, interview with author, May1999. AEEMS member, interview with author, May 1999. “Wade s’oppose aux associations muslumans,” Sud Quotidien, May 16, 2003, 8. Cissé, “Regards sur le projet,” 18. Ndeye Faty Sarr, letter to the editor, Walfadjri, May 6, 2003, 10. Diagne, “Qui a si peur du code,” editorial, 10. See for instance, El Saadawi, “Fundamentalism: A Universal Phenomenon”; Mernissi, Beyond the Veil. Touraine, Can We Live Together?; MacDonald, Global Movements.

Bibl io g r aphy Afshar, Haleh, Rob Aitken, and Myfwany Franks. “Feminisms, Islamophobia and Identities.” Political Studies 53 (2005): 262–83. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Alidou, Ousseina. Engaging Modernity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Almond, Gabriel, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around The World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

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Augis, Erin. “Dakar’s Sunnite Women: The Politics of Person.” PhD thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago 2003. ———. “Dakar’s Sunnite Women: The Politics of Person.” In Islam politique au sud du Sahara, edited by Muriel Gomez-Perez. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Bartkowski, John, and Jen’nan Ghazal Read. “Veiled Submission: Gender, Power, and Identity Among Evangelical and Muslim Women in the United States.” Qualitative Sociology 26, no. 1 (2003): 71–92. Bernal, Victoria. “Migration, Modernity, and Islam in Rural Sudan, Middle East Report, no. 211, Trafficking and Transiting: New Perspectives on Labor Migration (Summer, 1999): 26–28. Boubekeur, Amel. Le voile de la mariée: Jeunes musulmanes, voile, et projet matrimoniale en France. Paris: Harmattan, 2004. Brenner, Louis. Controlling Knowledge: Religion, Power, and Schooling in a West African Muslim Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Brooks, Geraldine. Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women. New York: Anchor, 1995. Callaway, Barbara, and Lucy Creevey. The Heritage of Islam. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994. Cissé, Abdoullah. “Regards sur le projet de code de statut personnel islamique.” Le Soleil, May 26, 2003. Coulon, Christian. Femmes, Islam, et Baraka. Bordeaux: CEAN, 1985. ———. “Women, Islam, and Baraka.” In Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam, edited by Donal Cruise O’Brien and Christian Coulon. Oxford: Clarendon 1988. Coulon, Christian, and Odile Reveyrand Coulon, L’Islam au féminin: Sokhna Magat Diop, cheikh de la confrérie mouride, Sénégal. Bordeaux: CEAN, 1990. D’Alisera, Joann. “I Love Islam: Popular Religious Commodities, Sites of Inscription, and Transnational Sierra Leonean Identity.” Journal of Material Culture 6, no. 1 (2001): 91–110. Diagne, Aichatou Fall. “Qui a si peur du code musulman et pourquoi?” Walfadjri, May 7, 2003. El Saadawi, Nawal. “Fundamentalism: A Universal Phenomenon.” WAF Newsletter 1 (November 1990): 12–13. Fernea, Elizabeth. In Search of Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global Journey. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Fischer, Michael M. J., and Mehdi Abedi. Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Post-Modernity And Tradition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. Franks, Myfwany. Women and Revivalism in the West: Choosing “Fundamentalism” in a Liberal Democracy. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Gomez-Perez, Muriel. “Généalogies de l’Islam réformiste au Sénégal: Figures, saviors, et réseaux.” In Entreprises religieuses transnationales en l’Afrique de l’ouest, edited by Laurent Fourchard, André Mary, René Otayek. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Hale, Sondra. Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism, and the State. Boulder: Westview, 1996. Heath, Deborah. “Fashion, Anti-Fashion, and Heteroglossia in Urban Senegal.” American Ethnologist 19 (1992): 19–33. Hessini, Leila. “Wearing the Hijab in Contemporary Morocco: Choice and Identity.” In Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity, and Power, edited by Fatma Müge Gocek and Shiva Balaghi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Hirschmann, Nancy. The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Hoffman, Valerie. “Muslim Fundamentalists: Psychosocial Profiles.” In Fundamentalisms Comprehended, edited by Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Hussein, Shakira. “Cybercrusades: Islam and Anti-Islam on the Internet.” Journal of Arabic, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies 5 no. 2 (1999). Janson, Marloes. “Roaming About for God’s Sake: The Upsurge of the Tabligh Jama’at in The Gambia.” Journal of Religion in Africa 35, no. 4 (2005): 450–81.

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Kane, Moustapha. “La vie et l’oeuvre d’Al-Hajj Mahmoud Ba Diowol.” In Le temps des marabouts: Itinéraires et stratégies islamiques en Afrique occidentale Française, edited by David Robinson and Jean-Louis Triaud. Paris: Karthala, 1997. Kane, Ousmane. Muslim Modernity in Post-Colonial Nigeria. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Kausar, Zeenath. Women in Feminism and Politics: New Directions Toward Islamization. Selangor, Malaysia: Women’s Affairs Secretariat, IIUM, 1995. Khosrokhovar, Farhad. “L’islam des jeunes filles en France.” In Le foulard Islamique en question, edited by Charlotte Nordman. Paris: Editions Amsterdam, 2004. Kone-Dao, Maïmouna. “Du wahhâbisme au Burkina Faso de 1963 à 2002.” In Islam politique au sud du Sahara, edited by Muriel Gomez-Perez. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Laborde, Cécile. Le confrérie layenne et les lebous du Sénégal: Islam et culture traditionelle en Afrique. Bordeaux: CEAN, 1995. Loimeier, Roman. “Cheikh Touré, un musulman Sénégalais dans le siècle: Du réformisme à l’Islamisme.” In Islam et Islamismes au sud du Sahara, edited by Ousmane Kane and JeanLouis Triaud. Paris: Karthala, 1998. ———. “The Secular State and Islam in Senegal.” In Questioning the Secular State, edited by David Westerlund. London: Hurst and Co., 1996. MacDonald, Kevin. Global Movements: Action and Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. MacLeod, Arlene. Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Mahmood, Saba. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 2 (2001): 202–36. ———. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Mannheim, Karl. 1952. “The Problem of Generations.” In From Karl Mannheim, edited by Kurt Wolff. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993. Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Miles, William. “Sharia as de-Africanization: Evidence from Hausaland.” Africa Today 50, no. 1 (2003): 51–75. Millet, Kate. Going to Iran. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1982. Miran, Marie. “Vers un nouveau prosélytisme islamique in Côte d’Ivoire: Une révolution discrète.” In Islam et Villes en Afrique au sud du Sahara: Entre soufisme et fondamentalisme, edited by Adriana Piga. Paris: Karthala 2003. Ndiaye, M. N. (1999, October 16–17). “Les tenues osées tranchent d’avec le voile” Info Sept no 309, p.6. Ndour, Viviane. 1999. Sama Nene. On Entre Nous. Dakar, Senegal: Jololi. Neuberger, Mary. The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Niasse, Sidy Lamine. Place de la femme au plan social, politique, économique. Dakar: photocopy, n.d. Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States And Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Rouse, Carolyn Moxley. Engaged Surrender: African American Women And Islam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Roy, Olivier. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Saadatman, Yassaman. “Separate and Unequal Women in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 28, no. 4 (1995). Schulz, Dorothea. “Political Factions, Ideological Fictions: The Controversy Over Family Law Reform in Democratic Mali.” Islamic Law and Society 10, no. 1(2003). Seesemann, Rüdiger. “The Quotidian Dimensions of Islamic Reformism in Wadai.” In Islam politique au sud du Sahara, edited by Muriel Gomez-Perez. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Seikaly, May. “Women and Religion in Bahrain: An Emerging Identity.” In Islam, Gender, and Social Change, edited by Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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Singerman, Diane. “Islamist Women in Yemen.” In Islamic Activism, edited by Quentin Wiktorowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Touraine, Alain. Can We Live Together? Equality and Difference. Cambridge: Polity, 2000. Villalón, Leonardo. “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation, and the Evolving Dynamics of Religion and Politics in Senegal.” Africa Today 46, no. 3/4 (1999): 129–47. ———. Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and citizens in Fatick. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. White, Jenny. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.

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Pa rt 4

4 Moder ni ty, Politics, and Dial ect ics

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Chapter 10

4 Di a lectics of R eligion and Politics in Sene gal Roman Loimeier (Center for African Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville)

I ntro duc tio n: As Ti me Goes By . . .

When I visited Senegal for the first time in the summer of 1981, I came to see a

country that was very much under the bane of Leopold Sedar Senghor1 and the influence of two major Sufi orders, the Muridiyya and the Tijaniyya. Political discussions were dominated by the hegemonic Parti Socialiste (PS), and Le Soleil was Senegal’s major and only daily paper. Contemporary mondialisation (globalization) had not yet really reached Senegal. In many respects Senegal made a museum-like impression: Railway stations, in particular, looked as if frozen in time. Senegal still was a predominantly rural country and a rural society. Despite the effects of the Sahel droughts of the 1980s, groundnuts were the major cash crop; and even if Dakar and the Cap Vert metropolitan area had become a sizable agglomeration, most of Senegal’s 5.6 million people continued to live in the countryside and some few urban centers such as Thiès, Saint-Louis, Ziguinchor, Louga, or Kaolack. Most villages were not yet connected to tap water, electricity, or even a road; and in some hinterland areas such as Kountouata, a small village on the border of The Gambia where I stayed for some time as a coopérant (volunteer) for the Service Civil International (International Civil Service), life could be imagined to be pretty much as in early colonial times. There was no television, only one old, battery-driven radio, no newspapers, and transport relied on ox- or horse-drawn carriages.2 When I came back to Senegal between 1990 and 1993, this time with my family to do the research for my Habilitation,3 Senegal had changed vastly, particularly in the urban areas: Abdou Diouf’s sursaut national (national mobilization) had led the country into postcolonial modernity, and it was possible to sense the hope that the future would bring better life. Groundnuts no longer Senegal’s dominant product,

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were replaced by income from tourism, fisheries, and the remittances of an increasing number of Senegalese migrants. Senghor’s ghost had faded and the Senegalese political arena was opening up to a number of opposition parties. The Sufi orders had to fight the polemics of Muslim reformist groups, in particular, the Jama’at Ibadu Rahman (JIR, see below) In fact, Senegal was undergoing a process of national Set Setal (cleanup) supported by new papers such as Wal Fadjri or Sud Hebdo. The political field was still dominated by Abdou Diouf and the Socialist party, however, even if the call for sopi (change) was becoming more and more audible. When I returned to Senegal in March 2006, sopi had occurred and passed by. The elections of 2000 brought about some political change; yet, Maître Abdoulaye Wade, the new president, quickly disappointed great expectations, and his erratic style of politics was presented satirically as “www.ttt.sn” (wade wax weddi, Wade talks and disclaims, at the same time) and tukki touba télé (Wade’s favorite activities: traveling, going to Touba, and appearing on television).4 Sopi had brought about change in persons but not in structure. In fact, since 2000 Wade had appointed four prime ministers (Moustapha Niass, Mame Madio Baye, Idrissa Seck, and Macky Sall, who was still in office in November 2006) and proclaimed numerous plans for national development such as a new airport in Ndiass, southeast of Rufisque; a car factory in Dakar; a bus factory in Thiès; the réseau hydrographique national (new national water network system); a université du futur (university of the future); a new public transport system, “Dakar Dem Dikk” and an express motorway à péage in Dakar; a transcontinental road to Tangier; the heliport for Touba; and, finally, the bassins de rétention d’eau (rain water reservoirs) scheme that by early 2003 had produced only twenty-eight of the promised thirteen thousand water reservoirs.5 Senegal also defeated France in the 2002 football world championship, and its orientation toward the United States was increasingly stronger since the 1990s. A young generation replaced the old, who still saw colonial times, and the population had exploded: Most of Senegal’s nearly twelve million people now lived in the Dakar–Cap Vert agglomeration and a series of secondary cities, as well as the ever-growing Touba, the capital of the Muridiyya.6 At the same time, the peace agreement with the rebel movement in the Casamance misfired in 2004; and the government failed equally badly in the context of the Joola ferry boat catastrophe, on September 27, 2002, which caused the death of 1,863 passengers. Thus Senegal was suffering from the sobering effects of fading hopes and new questions about how the immediate future in a globalized economy would develop. The devaluation of the CFA Franc in 1994 and a serious economic crisis were only recently overcome in a precarious recovery, essentially based on remittances of the Senegalese migrant worker diaspora in Europe and the United States, which found expression in an impressive building boom in greater Dakar. Indeed, this building boom could be seen as a manifestation of basic changes in the social structure of Senegalese families, especially the demise of the keur, the compound that united extended families, at least in urban areas, and the respective rise of privacy and the Western core family.7 Senegal has changed a lot, indeed, in the last five decades, and in many respects, religion was one of these aspects of change. Even if “reformist Islam” has not become a major force in the negotiation of religion, reformist ideas and modes of expression have thus been adopted by some branches of the Sufi orders in the last decades. In this contribution, I will look at some aspects of religious development and the dynamics of religious and political change in postcolonial Senegal. Is the contrât social à la sénégalaise (the Senegalese social contract) as based on the rules of échange de services

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(exchange of services)8 still valid, for instance, or have the multiplication of religious and political actors, the fragmentation of both religious and political fields, as well as the emergence of an array of reformist and activist Muslim movements and associations, produced new contexts for the negotiation of religion and politics?

Wa- til k a a l -ayam: Nud aw i luha b ayn al-n as 9 In contemporary Senegal, religion has indeed acquired a multitude of new spaces and modes of expression. Already an identifiable topic even long before the 1980s and early 1990s, in the whole of the colonial period, religion is now part of quotidian life in Senegal to such an extent that religion can be found everywhere: in forms of established religion (mosques, pictures of saints) as well as “crossovers”10 in totally new and seemingly secular contexts such as fashion, rap music, and sports. Crossovers are particularly visible in Senegal, when considering the development of the media and new forms of publication in Africa, or new ways of approaching audiences through the theater, films, and print; Islamic cartoons; the publication of pamphlets and photo-novellas in vernacular languages; as well as multiple forms of visualization of the sacred, saints, and Muslim icons (such as Amadou Bamba, the founder of the Muridiyya Sufi order) in the Dakarois graffiti scene. The visualization of saints has indeed become a major feature of Senegal’s public sphere,11 most dramatically in the context of the Set Setal campaign.12 What has been said for the visual media is also valid for music, in particular, rap music. In Dakar the trade in music cassettes is dominated by Murid traders. Most rappers are Muslims, and many bands have written praise songs for Amadou Bamba or other saints. One of Youssou Ndour’s latest CDs, Egypt, for example, contains four praise songs for Amadou Bamba, who is depicted as an icon of anticolonial resistance. Interestingly enough, the Arabic label of the CD is Allah, whereas the CD is marketed in Senegal under the label Sant, praise.13 Other groups have named their band Bamba J Fall, Les Talibés, or F.I.T.N.A. (Fight In The Name of Allah, Arabic: strife, dissent, civil war),14 or represent a different musical tradition altogether, namely reggae, which has become particularly popular among the Baye Fall movement.15 Also, the number of daily newspapers and periodicals has increased tremendously since the late 1980s. In addition to Le Soleil, four periodicals managed to find acceptance in the market since the late 1980s: Sud Hebdo, Wal Fadjri, Le Témoin, and Le cafard libéré. Some of these periodicals have become dailies, whereas additional political papers, journals, and periodicals such as Le Politicien, a whole series of fashion journals such as Thiof, or religious periodicals such as Mouride were established on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis in the 1990s. Since 1993 these print media have been complemented by approximately forty radio stations such as Matin, Com7, SUD FM, and Wal Fadjri FM or radio stations that specialize in programs for the youth, such as Oxy-Jeunes in Pikine, established in 1999.16 The expansion of the media has also influenced patterns of communication and new modes of communication, in particular, the Internet, as well as new forms of addressing public audiences. A paradigmatic example for new forms of addressing religious crowds was presented by Serign Moustapha Sy, leader of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat (DMM, the “group of rightly guided men and women”), a youth movement of the Tijaniyya. In a famous public speech in Thiès in 1993, Moustapha Sy repeatedly switched between three languages, French, Wolof, and Arabic: Arabic was used to signal his rootedness in the sacred Islamic religious tradition; Wolof was used to express

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his rootedness in the local, Senegalese, and authentic tradition; and French was used to express his rootedness in global discourses. In fact, when Moustapha Sy started his speech, he pointed out the crossover character of his public appearance by quoting from the Quran (sura 3:140), thus sanctifying his discourse: “ . . . wa-tilka al-ayam: nudawiluha bayn al-nas” (translated as “these are the times: we cause fortune to change among the people”). In the context of the time, this statement could be understood as a comment on contemporary events in Senegal, or, more particularly, the surprising shift of alliance of his religious and political movement, the DMM, from Abdou Diouf to Abdoulaye Wade. More particularly, however, Moustapha Sy wanted to legitimate his unconventional outfit in a Western, rock-star garb, leather cap, leather trousers and vest: “Forgive me. I am dressed as I am today because I am participating in an electoral campaign. Like many political leaders who borrowed our large grands boubous, shawls, hats, canes, Quranic verses and hadiths, I have also decided to borrow their trousers, verses and caps. These days, I will be moving from one tradition to the other.”17 Thus Moustapha Sy’s public speech can be seen as a form of crossover that was expressed in language as well as dress codes and fashion, simultaneously conveying political and religious messages. As such, Moustapha Sy’s speech clearly manifests the influence of new, reformist modes of approaching public audiences and the growing influence of reformist Islam in Senegal as well as that of a globalized mediascape.

Th e E mergenc e o f A s soc i ati oni st Isl a m A major feature of Senegal’s development in the twentieth century was indeed the emergence of a Muslim reformist tradition,18 even if so far Muslim reformers have been unable to come close to the social, religious, and economic importance of Sufi orders in Senegalese society. Despite some “loud” protest against specific features of Senegal’s social and political development, such as the Code de la Famille (Family Code),19 Muslim reformist and associationist movements have basically accepted established rules. Modern reformist thought in Senegal indeed goes back to the midnineteenth century. In the context of the emergence of the so-called Quatre Communes20 in Senegal after 1848, a “Muslim civil rights movement” developed which fought for public recognition of distinctive Muslim norms, customs, and rites as well as Islamic personal law.21 This Muslim civil rights movement was connected with the activities of Muslim intellectuals and scholars such as Amadou Ndiaye Hann, Mohammad Seck, and Ndiaye Sarr. These ulama-citoyens (scholars-citizens) were the first to cultivate what David Robinson has called “paths of accommodation,”22 seeking a modus vivendi with French colonial rule by agreeing to work within the institutional parameters as established and defined by the French colonial administration, in particular, tribunaux musulmans (Muslim tribunals) and écoles franco-arabes (French-Arab schools). In the course of this modus vivendi’s development, an “exchange of services” tradition emerged that was extended, in the early twentieth century, to cover the state’s relations with Sufi orders and came to define Senegal’s political and religious development until today.23 In the early twentieth century, the Muslim civil rights movement in the Quatre Communes acquired a new character and developed the typical features of modern French political associations. These associational forms of organization24 were not only better suited to translate Muslim aspirations into the colonial context but they were also close to French conceptions of organization and thus easily identifiable for

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French colonial administrators as “modern” religious and political movements. To improve the conditions of the hajj, a Union Fraternelle des Pèlerins Musulmans de l’A.O.F was established, for instance, in 1922, followed by many other pilgrim associations. In 1936 the French colonial administration estimated the number of these associations to be more than fifty in Dakar alone.25 The vanguard of this new form of reformist organization was the Liwa Ta´akhi al-Muslim al-Salih,26 which started to campaign for a more encompassing program of reform, such as modern concepts of Islamic education. Most of these associations were confined to urban areas, however, and fought for limited goals such as the improvement of the pilgrimage, Islamic personal law or a distinctive Muslim code of dress. In addition, these associations, their leadership, in particular, were still affiliated with a Sufi order, mostly the Tijaniyya.27 The 1953 establishment of the Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM, Ittihad alThaqafi al-Islami, ITI,), may be seen as the real watershed in the development of modern reformist organizations, because the UCM, under the leadership of Cheikh Touré,28 was the first organization to develop an encompassing program of reform.29 In addition, the UCM cultivated a religiopolitical discourse that was not only critical of the French colonial administration but also attacked the Senegalese Sufi orders, in particular, marabouts who cooperated closely with the colonial administration. The UCM advocated thus a distinctive antimaraboutic turn in the development of Senegal’s Muslim communities and the polemics against the so-called un-Islamic innovations (bida, singular bid´a), such as faith in amulets, became an important element of the public discourse of the UCM. The UCM could consequently be regarded as the first tradition of reform in Senegal that turned against what Louis Brenner has called the “esoteric episteme.”30 At the same time, the UCM established Senegal’s first reformist journal (Le Réveil Islamique) and propagated the theater as a new form of expression of religious and political thought in Senegal’s public sphere.31 The UCM program of reform has influenced all subsequent movements of reform in Senegal and has exerted considerable influence over Muslim movements of reform in neighboring countries. However, when we take a closer look at Cheikh Touré and the program of the UCM, we discover that neither categorically refused to cooperate with the colonial or postcolonial state. Cheikh Touré and his followers were rather prepared to work with the state when specific issues of reform such as the struggle against “obsolete social and religious customs” could be linked with respective state reform policies. Indeed, Muslim reformers have often supported the strategies of development as propagated by colonial or postcolonial administrations, in particular, when these development strategies were presented as a kind of “Islamic state reformism.” Such Islamic state reformism was characterized by its modernizing orientation, such as in Mamadou Dia’s policies of development in Senegal in the early 1960s, and was often directed against established religious scholars, in particular the marabouts of the Sufi orders.32 When Senegal became semi-independent in 1958, Muslim reformers quickly changed their oppositional position and started to support the reformist policies of the Mamadou Dia government until 1962, when the marabouts supported Leopold Sedar Senghor to depose Dia on account of his radical socialist policies and his efforts to weaken the marabouts as political and economic brokers. As a consequence, from 1962 Senghor could rely on the alliance with the grands marabouts and was subsequently able to gradually domesticate the reformist movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, Muslim reformist organizations in Senegal lost their political autonomy and were incorporated into state-controlled associations such as the Fédération des Associations Islamiques du Sénégal (FAIS). Associations such as FAIS were again controlled

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by young marabouts of the Tijaniyya and Muridiyya who were closely associated with the ruling party, Senghor’s Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS). In this period of time, loyalist Arabic-trained/Islam expert civil servants (Islamologues fonctionnarisés), “reformers in the pay of the state,” came to dominate both Muslim- and stateinformed developmentalist discourses. As a result, leading members of Sufi orders such as the late Khalife General of the Sy branch of the Tijaniyya, Cheikh Abdoul Aziz Sy, have labeled Muslims reformers who came to support these state-informed policies of modernization as Islamologues fonctionnarisés.33 Only in the late 1970s were Muslim activists able to free themselves of state control and to establish new and independent organizations such as the JIR or the Harakat al-Falah (HF).34 Today, the JIR may be regarded as Senegal’s most important reformist organization, even though it has not managed to break the overwhelming position of power of both the Tijaniyya and the Muridiyya.35 Initially, the JIR continued the reformist discourse of the UCM with respect to the so-called un-Islamic innovations, such as excessive spending for marriage ceremonies, burials, the practice of the dhikr,36 as well as specific features of local Islamic ritual and religious concepts as, for example, faith in amulets (gris-gris). In the late 1980s, the JIR seems to have realized, however, that the struggle against the marabouts was largely counterproductive due to their persisting popularity. As a consequence, the JIR has suspended, since the early 1990s, its polemics against the marabouts and redirected its polemics against the “secular state.” Thus, the JIR has managed to escape the dilemma of being accused of creating fitna (chaos) by fighting against fellow Muslims.37 More recently, the JIR seems to cultivate a public discourse that concentrates on topics such as the “moral decay of contemporary Senegalese society” and issues such as drug abuse, prostitution, and some of the nefarious effects of modernization that may easily be pinned on the secular state and its inability to provide a balanced social development. As a result, the JIR continues to be Senegal’s most important reformist movement, which seems to address and mobilize Muslims in considerable numbers (including women),38 at least in some urban agglomerations, even if the JIR has still not yet acquired the economic resources necessary to develop a social network and a respective power basis comparable to those of the different branches of the Sufi orders.39 At the same time, bida and marabouts have ceased being major targets of critique. Rather, contemporary movements of reform concentrate on the development of modern Islamic schools and social activities—in particular, those aiming to incorporate youth and women. In fact, the JIR as well as the HF nowadays seem to focus largely on education.40 Their educational efforts have led, in the 1990s, to the establishment of numerous reformist Islamic schools that not only taught established Islamic sciences but also stressed the importance of “marketable skills”41 as well as female education.42 The success of these new schools has forced the Sufi orders to follow suit with educational programs of their own, which reproduce this trend in the development of modern Islamic education. Thus, since the late nineteenth century, Senegal has been characterized by the emergence of a distinctive tradition of reform. Senegal has tried to translate multiple colonial and postcolonial modernities into Muslim contexts, by adopting, among others, associationist forms of organization, and by starting to criticize Sufi rituals and specific expressions of popular religious customs alike. These critiques have triggered multiple responses from the Sufi orders, yet, in a considerable number of fields such as education, public representation, approach to media, and so forth, Sufi orders have copied and adopted reformist ideas and strategies. In a complex dialectic of responses to both external and internal dynamics of change, a distinct second tradition of reform

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has developed within the Sufi orders that also tried to translate multiple modernities into Muslim contexts while remaining true to established Sufi modes of organization and expression. As a consequence, associationist movements of reform have influenced Sufi-oriented movements of reform to a considerable extent and vice versa.

Th e M A R A B O U T S -P E T I T - F I L S an d a New G ener atio n o f S ufi As soc iati ons Sufi orders have indeed been influenced by reformist issues for some time. Since the 1950s, for example, Sufi leaders have been willing to enter into alliances of convenience with the UCM and, in the 1960s, the Muslim associations controlled by the state, such as the organizations grouped under FAIS, to cultivate a new elite of Muslim functionaries. These associations were overwhelmingly controlled by the Sufi orders, in particular, the Tijaniyya, and even more specifically, the generation of “sons” of the grands marabouts of the 1920s to 1940s. Generational conflicts43 and questions of positioning vis-à-vis both the state and competing family branches also led to the emergence, in the 1980s, of a generation of grandsons, marabouts-petitfils,44 who disputed the claim for leadership of their own fathers or elder brothers and also started to create new associationist movements that were no longer controlled by the state, like the Muslim associations of the 1960s. In fact, the marabouts-petit-fils, who emerged as a new generational group of marabouts in the 1980s,45 as well as a number of young Muslim activists who joined them, came to develop modern movements within both the Tijaniyya and the Muridiyya. Movements such as the DMM for the Tijaniyya or the Hizb al-Tarqiyya (HT, the “group for advancement”), the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu (MMUD),46 the Matlab al-Fawzayni (MF),47 or Mame Diarra Bousso for the Muridiyya,48 were marked by their associationist character and their modern (reformist) style of approaching audiences (see Moustapha Sy’s speech). The generation of grandsons and Muslim activists has cultivated independent strategies with respect to politics and seems to be increasingly prepared to question the authority of the fathers, as expressed, for instance, in the “ndiggel”49 of the Khalife General of the Muridiyya. We witness thus a process of fragmentation of authority within the Sufi orders as well as a process of merging and blending of different modes of organization and expression of reform beyond established ascriptions such as Sufi Islam. Both the DMM and the HT have already seen today several stages of development that reflect their efforts to negotiate specific religious, political, and social issues as well as personal disputes within the respective Sufi orders. The DMM was established in the middle of the 1970s as a youth movement of the Tijaniyya, and its “responsable moral” Serign Moustapha Sy began to lead it in 1976. In the 1980s the DMM became a major movement of support for President Abdou Diouf.50 According to Moustapha Sy, son of Cheikh Tidiane Sy, a major contender for leadership within the Tijaniyya,51 the DMM has approximately 500,000 members, a claim that seems to be frequently made by several religious and political movements in Senegal.52 In 1993, however, Moustapha Sy organized a complete political volte-face and switched support to Abdoulaye Wade, Abdou Diouf’s challenger in the 1993 presidential elections. In a short period of time, the DMM became one of the most outspoken movements of opposition to Abdou Diouf. DMM protests against Abdou Diouf triggered riots in Dakar and led to Moustapha Sy’s imprisonment in 1993, whereas the DMM was interdicted in early 1994. In 1995 the movement was rehabilitated and in late

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1996 subsequently renewed its support for Abdou Diouf, albeit for a short period of time only. When the Tijaniyya Khalife General Abdoul Aziz Sy died in 1997, Cheikh Tidiane Sy’s efforts to rise to the position of the supreme leader of the family misfired again, as it had in the 1950s; and an old feud reopened between the two branches of the Sy family, as represented by Cheikh Tidiane Sy, Moustapha Sy, and the new Khalife General Mansour Sy, who continued to support Abdou Diouf. Consequently, Moustapha Sy and the DMM decided to support Abdoulaye Wade’s call for sopi. However, in the run-up to the 2000 elections, Moustapha Sy decided to switch political allegiances yet again and to support a religious party, the Parti de l’Unité et du Rassemblement (PUR), as established by Khalifa Diouf,53 even if Moustapha Sy withdrew his candidature after only a few days. Although the DMM has dominated the development of a reformist youth movement within the Tijaniyya, the Hizb al-Tarqiyya had a similar role within the Muridiyya. Gaining attention by promoting new projects and concepts of Murid development,54 the Hizb al-Tarqiyya was actually founded in 1978 in Dakar as a Murid students’ dahira (circle), namely, the Dahira des Étudiants Mourides de Dakar (DEM), under the patronage of the Murid Khalife General Abdou Lahat Mbacke. The movement became popular in a short period of time and emerged as a major youth organization of the Muridiyya, led by Atou Diagne. When Abdou Lahat Mbacke dissolved the rival Association des Jeunes Mourides for being too outspoken, the dahira became even more important for the organization of the Murid youth as well as, more recently, the Murid diaspora; and in 1992 it was finally renamed Hizb al-Tarqiyya by the new Khalife General, Saliou Mbacke. In the 1990s the influence of the Hizb al-Tarqiyya grew to such an extent that in 1995 it was asked to organize the annual magal (shrine pilgrimage) in Touba in 1996.55 As the Hizb al-Tarqiyya appropriated an increasingly larger role in the management of the order in the mid-1990s, with respect to the organization of the annual magal, the representation of the Muridiyya in Senegal’s public sphere, and access to the Khalife General, the Hizb al-Tarqiyya was about to exclude all other forms of legitimacy within the Muridiyya. The increasing prominence of the movement was resented, however, and it was regarded as a form of defiance and disrespect by a number of third-generation marabouts-petit-fils of the Mbacke family. They objected to the rise of a non-Mbacke group to leading ranks within the order as well as certain Hizb proclamations; furthermore, they publicly rejected the authority of the younger generation of Mbacke marabouts and, implicitly, the authority of inherited power. The leader of the Hizb al-Tarqiyya, Atou Diagne, even dared to challenge third-generation marabouts of the Mbacke family by claiming that leadership within the Muridiyya must not necessarily be linked with the Mbacke family, that any Murid disciple could become the Khalife General and that the direct allegiance with Amadou Bamba was more important for Murids than loyalty toward his grandsons. When members of the Hizb al-Tarqiyya eventually refused Serign Moustapha Saliou Mbacke access to his own father, Khalife General Saliou Mbacke, the Khalife General disowned the group in July 1997.56 In recent years Hizb al-Tarqiyya seems to have recovered and reclaimed its important role for the organization of the magal.57

Th e S uf i Order s and the State Neither reformist groups nor Sufi orders thus form homogenous movements in Senegal. Rather, they must be viewed as an array of competing networks that negotiate

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their relations with the state on an individual basis and consequently develop vastly different paths of accommodation with the state. Amadou Bamba’s return from exile in 1903, for instance, not only pacified relations between his supporters and the French colonial system,58 but also established a pattern of understanding that proved to be rather profitable for both sides. Murid farmers would continue to produce Senegal’s major cash crop, groundnuts, and support the colonial system (i.e., pay taxes and support French war efforts in World War I and World War II). France (and later the Senegalese state) would grant the Murids a certain degree of internal autonomy, particularly with respect to religious affairs, a privilege that found expression in French support for Murid development projects such as the construction of a railway line from Dakar to the seat of the Khalife General in Touba.59 The acceptance of these unwritten rules of échange de services came to constitute a basic pillar of the development of Senegal’s (post)colonial system. Efforts to modify or even abolish this basic understanding between the state and the Muridiyya (or the Tijaniyya), for example under Prime Minister Mamadou Dia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, were strongly countered (in Mamadou Dia’s case by his deposition as prime minister by President Senghor in late 1962).60 Only when either the state or a religious group were unable to deliver the goods that constituted the material dimension of their relationship were Murid and Tijan leaders ready to shift gears and voice critique, even to the extent of disobedience. This was true during the severe economic crisis in the 1970s aftermath of the Sahel drought and the subsequent collapse of the national groundnut marketing board, or in the 1990s with President Abdou Diouf’s silent withdrawal from established traditions of mutual recognition and the increasing unwillingness of the bureaucratic elite to respond to maraboutic demands. In 1973, responding to the economic failure of the state in the Sahel drought, Abdou Lahat Mbacke, Khalife General of the Muridiyya in the 1970s and 1980s, publicly denounced the Senegalese state as a manifestation of “Satan”61 and started a movement of distanciation from the state. His successor, Khalife General Saliou Mbacke,62 abstained to direct his followers to cast their votes for Abdou Diouf, after 1993, due to increasing dissatisfaction with the government’s economic policies as well as unconditional Murid support for these policies. The ndiggel of the Khalife General, in particular the ndiggel politique,63 was questioned for the first time in 1988, when a number of young Murid marabouts such as Serign Khadim Mbacke and many Murid youth were no longer prepared to follow the ndiggel of Khalife General Abdou Lahat Mbacke or support the Socialist Party in the presidential elections. Instead they supported opposition leader Abdoulaye Wade.64 Abdou Lahat Mbacke’s successors, Abdou Khader Mbacke (1989–1990) and Saliou Mbacke (1990–2007) have actually stopped proclaiming the ndiggel politique. Efforts to impose a ndiggel politique have since failed dramatically, as in the case of Modou Kara Mbacke’s 1999 effort to ask his followers to vote for the Socialist Party in the 2000 presidential elections.65 Still, an important differentiation must be made here. Although the Muridiyya has managed to conserve internal unity so far, despite disputes over succession, and has eventually followed the supreme religious guidance of its Khalife General, the Tijaniyya has visibly disintegrated, in religious and political terms, in a number of family networks that do not accept the authority of one Khalife General. At the same time, the Muridiyya appears to have been almost unanimously supporting the state in political terms, whereas the Tijaniyya has brought forth a number of politically dissident personalities and movements and were prepared to form alliances of convenience with associationist reformist organizations.66 Because in the last decades the Muridiyya has been rather successful at getting its goods delivered, it also appears to be the

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more successful group in political terms. The Tijaniyya, by contrast, seems politically handicapped by its manifold internal religious divisions, an impression that has led to assumptions of Murid political and demographic superiority over other Sufi orders in Senegal, in particular, the Tijaniyya. The resulting mouridocentrisme67 is vastly misleading: Although the Muridiyya has been, for a large part of its history, an essentially rural movement, the branches of the Tijaniyya have effectively conquered the urban areas since the early twentieth century.68 As a consequence, the Tijaniyya has evolved into the Sufi order of urban middle classes; political elite; intelligentsia; bureaucracy; employees in education, health, and virtually all state-related agencies and institutions. That is, the state became Tijan a long time ago; followers of the Tijaniyya have been sitting in government offices for decades and were able to silently look after the proper distribution of their goods. By contrast the Muridiyya has always been aloof, rural, and proud of its separate, autonomous identity as symbolized by its holy city, Touba. Also, Murids have been practically nonexistent in state bureaucracies and the political nomenclatura of the country until very recently. Thus, Murids always had to ask for their goods rather loudly. Loud claims and politically conspicuous presentation should not automatically be associated with corresponding political power, however, and discreet claims and inconspicuous political presentation also do not necessarily point to political weakness. Until 2000 Tijans were not forced to resort to Murid strategies, because they were already in power.69 The scenario of the Muridiyya as monolithic yet far removed from power and a Tijaniyya close to power yet split into many family networks has changed dramatically in 2000; Abdou Diouf and the PS lost the elections and Abdoulaye Wade and the Sopi coalition of opposition parties became the first democratically elected non-socialist government of Senegal. An analysis of this unprecedented overturn of power in Senegal’s postcolonial history shows that Abdou Diouf and the PS lost the 2000 (and 2001) elections because in the economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s they were virtually unable to deliver the goods or provide sustained economical development, particularly regarding the growing urban populations and above all the youth. Abdou Diouf and the nomenclatura of the PS became increasingly wary of the established system of échange de services.70 The sheikhs of the Muridiyya, in particular, felt increasingly neglected by the political nomenclatura. Subsequently, they started to think about political alternatives, especially when Abdoulaye Wade stressed that he would become their president. When the Khalife General of the Murids did not proclaim a ndiggel in favor of Abdou Diouf in the 2000 elections and the leading sheikhs of the Tijaniyya (except for Cheikh Tidiane Sy, who had performed another U-turn in political orientation), remained vague about their political preferences, the voters, specifically the rural electorate, eventually turned their back on the PS in masses.71 Thus the 1990s witnessed a redefinition of the relationship between state and Sufi orders. This redefinition was caused by a certain disenchantment of government functionaries with the established system of échange de services as well as a considerable change in the economic frame conditions since the 1970s: An ongoing economic crisis has forced the state to allow for a far-reaching policy of economic liberalization. As a consequence, the state lost direct control over the goods to be allocated to marabouts. On the other side, the marabouts started to diversify their economic activities long ago. Groundnut production is no longer the major asset of the Muridiyya; whereas in the last decades Murid (but also a number of Tijan) marabouts and their followers have largely conquered the informal sector: transport, large-scale import and export and retail trade, as well as the organization of considerable expatriate activities (and capital transfers). The marabouts are no longer constrained to pass

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“through politics” to access resources.72 This might be one reason why politics have not assumed a religious character. In the presidential elections of February and March 2000 as well as the parliamentary elections of 2001, which brought about the victory of Abdoulaye Wade and a coalition of forty opposition parties, religious candidates and parties such as PUR or PVD73 failed to score a significant number of votes.74 The failure of the religious candidates may be explained to some extent by the fact that most (young) voters did not want to jeopardize the victory of Abdoulaye Wade by voting for a particularistic religious party. By following a political rationale, they wanted sopi to prevail.75 It is rather interesting to observe that since 2000 the administration of Abdoulaye Wade has returned to established rules of échange de services and appears to be increasingly dominated by Murid interests, a perception enhanced by repeated visits of Abdoulaye Wade in Touba, his claim to be le Président Mouride,76 and his promises with respect to “Murid” development.77 The reallocation of bonds that commenced after 2000 has consequently triggered first signs of loud protest among the Tijaniyya who is afraid of losing established pastures.78 Consequently, Tijans have become increasingly outspoken in the last years, whereas Murid public declarations have correspondingly become more silent and less conspicuous in their public presentation. As a matter of fact, there is a reversal of roles and positions in the relationship between the Sufi orders: The Tijaniyya, now removed from power, is becoming increasingly outspoken in public; the Muridiyya, now closer to power, is becoming increasingly silent (“muet”).79 This role reversal is not unanimously welcomed by the Murids, however. Some Murids seem rather torn with respect to their relationship with le Président Mouride: One group is proud that the state has acquired a more visible Murid character, whereas a second group dreads too close a relationship with the state and hopes to continue a policy of neutrality and aloofness as expressed, in historical times, by Khalife General Abdou Lahat Mbacke. These Murids are afraid that the new character of their links with the state may become embarrassing in the future, particularly in the case of the Wade administration’s political and economic failure. The family of the incumbent Khalife General and successor to Saliou Mbacke, Mohammad al-Amin Bara Mbacke,80 thus refuses contact with Wade as much as possible.81

Co nc lusi on Religious and political debates in Senegal’s public sphere must be seen as having evolved in a long tradition of political debates since the mid-nineteenth century. These debates have changed in character but have always kept a clear political character: Religion has not become a defining issue of political debates in Senegal’s public sphere so far, despite a strong reformist religious discourse in the late 1980s. Senegal’s secular system as inherited from France has never come under serious attack, at least until today, despite the critique of the reformist groups in the 1980s and recurring critique of the process of legal reforms (in particular, the Code de la Famille). In addition, the Senegalese state has not only defined clear spheres of influence and thus provided space to the different religious movements, it has also defined the secular character of the Senegalese state as “to protect religion.”82 Consequently, Sufi orders never had to fight hard for acceptance; they were viewed by the state as indispensable translators and brokers between the state and the population, providing religious legitimacy to the state. Equally, Muslim movements of reform and modern Muslim activist associations have emerged in a political context in which they were accepted,

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despite their at times radical character, as political players. In addition, the different religious movements in Senegal (marabouts, reformers, and activist associations) have always had clear political positions and never asked, with a few exceptions, for an Islamization of the state. Rather, they regarded the secular state as a body that could provide, under the established rules of accommodation and cooperation, space for expression and considerable religious autonomy. Thus the functioning of this system could be considered a safeguard that prevented undue interference into either sphere. At the conclusion of my analysis, I am not sure whether recent dynamics of religious and political development in Senegal should be seen as a reduction or an expansion, a confirmation or contestation of the religious field. Perhaps we are witness to all these processes at the same time, though in different social and political contexts in different modes.

Not es 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

A first version of this text (2006) was written while I was research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. For a recent presentation of L. S. Senghor’s life and legacy, see a special edition of Jeune Afrique, “Senghor,” hors-série, No. 11, 2006. Of course, this long-term perspective on Senegal’s development would acquire still other accents if seen from the perspective of the venerable forefathers of social science research on Senegal such as Lucy Behrman, Jean Copans, Christian Coulon, Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, Abdoulaye-Bara Diop, David Robinson, or Amar Samb. The Habilitation completes the process of getting a permanent academic position in Germany. A Habilitation is usually based on a second book, which makes the candidate eligible for a chair at a German university. Coulibaly, Wade, un opposant au pouvoir, 224. See Coulibaly, Wade, un opposant au pouvoir, 150–52. For the development of Touba see Gueye, Touba, la capitale des Mourides. Babakar Lô, communication with the author, Dakar, March 31, 2006. Authoritative analysis of these terms can be found throughout the work of Christian Coulon and Donal B. Cruise O’Brien (see bibliography). Literally: “ . . . and such days (of varying fortunes) we give to men and men by turns” (Quran 3:140, translation Abdallah Yusuf Ali). Crossovers have been diagnosed, with respect to Senegal, as “mutualities of position” (“Senegal,” 69) and “hybrid” features of organization (“Generational Changes, Political Stagnation,” 142), as well as a “hybridization of religion and political practices” (Salzbrunn, “Hybridization of Religious”). For a discussion of this term in Islamic contexts, see Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy. Set Setal took off in Dakar in 1990 and was an independent youth movement inspired by a Youssou Ndour song. See Gellar, Democracy in Senegal, 105; Baller, Die postkoloniale Stadt leben, 99. For a photographic documentation of the Set Setal campaign see ENDA, Set: Des murs qui parlent. Villalon, “Senegal,” 70; for the CD: Nonesuch Records, New York, 2004. Kuhn, “HipHop und Muridiyya,” 4. Ibid., 43; and Savishinsky 1994. Gellar, Democracy in Senegal, 83. Kane and Villalon, “Entre confrérisme, réformisme et Islamisme,” 139, translated by Mamadou Diouf. For the development of reformist Islam in Senegal see Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, and Gomez-Perez, “Une histoire des associations.” For this debate see Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft. In 2002, debates about the Code de la Famille were revived by the “Comité Islamique pour la Réforme du

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20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

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Code de la Famille” (CIRCOFS) as led by Maître Babacar Niang, yet, hotly disputed by a number of secular voices (see Brossier, “Les débats sur le droit,” 82). Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar, and Rufisque; these four communes came to enjoy French community status in the nineteenth century. See Johnson, Naissance du Sénégal, 73 and 140. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation. The expression échange de services has been coined by Coulon (Le Marabout et le Prince, 174). Cruise O’Brien has even called the échange de services a “social contract.” See Cruise O’Brien, “Le ‘contrat social’ sénégalais à l’épreuve” and Symbolic Confrontations; as well as Cruise O’Brien, Diop, and Diouf, La Construction de l’État au Sénégal. Muslim associations (today often defined as Islamic nongovernmental organizations [NGOs]) adopt organizational structures which are defined by the “President-Secretary General-Treasurer” setup of functional associations. Dieter Neubert has characterized these associations, in a personal communication as “Schatzmeister-Vereinigungen,” treasurer-associations. Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft,168. Brigade de la Fraternité du Bon Musulman, or Fraternité Musulmane, founded in 1934. Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 168. Touré was the doyen of Senegal’s Muslim reformist movement. He was born in 1925 and died on September 28, 2005. For his biography see Loimeier, Cheikh Touré, and Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft. For an obituary see Kane, “Figures Islamiques: El-Hadj.” As Muriel Gomez-Perez has shown, the establishment of the UCM could even be seen as an expression of a generational conflict within the older Fraternité Musulmane, in particular, with respect to the moderate political positions of some old members such as Abdulkadir Diagne, and the more radical positions of the younger ones, such as Cheikh Touré, who had been, until 1952, the secretary of the Fraternité Musulmane (FM) in Saint-Louis (Gomez-Perez, “Une histoire des associations,” 126). Brenner, Controlling Knowledge, 17. At the same time, this turn against the “esoteric episteme” could be seen as being part and parcel of the process of “secularization,” a process which was characterized by Max Weber as a process of “disenchantment of the world” and a process of gradual rationalization of religion and society in which “all forms of magic are rejected as superstition” (Gesammelte Aufsätze, 94–95). The UCM set up a Muslim theater group and performed theater plots, such as “L’heure de la vérité” or “Le cadeau politique,” which attacked the collaboration of marabouts and colonial administration. Because these theater plays were performed in Wolof, they gained considerable audiences (Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 183). See Dia, Mémoires d’un militant. Abdoul Aziz Sy. “Khalifa Général of the Tijaniyya in Senegal.” Interview in Wal Fadjri No. 258, August 25, 1991. In fact, the first protest against functionary Islam (L’Islam des fonctionnaires) came from Sidi Khaly Lo, the future president of the JIR, in October 1974, in the context of elections for the members of the bureau of the FAIS/UCM. He accused the old nomenclatura of these loyalist organizations of being “agents of the state” (Gomez-Perez, “Une histoire des associations,” 243). After October 1974 the young members of these organizations and Cheikh Touré started to regroup in much the same way as the Fraternité Musulmane in the early 1950s before establishing the UCM. See Gomez-Perez, “Associations Islamiques à Dakar.” The dhikr is the ritual of meditation propagated by Sufi orders, often the solemn and rhythmic recitation of specific prayers. Each Sufi order cultivates a specific dhikr. See Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft. For the remarkable success of the JIR among Muslim women, see Sieveking, “Negotiating Development in Senegal”; and Augis “Dakar’s Sunnite Women.” Ndiouga Benga, communication with the author, Dakar, April 5, 2006.

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40. After a series of internal disputes caused by allegations of mismanagement of funds raised against Khalil Marega, the president of the association, the Harakat al-Falah, seems to have largely lost its impetus since 1993 (see Gomez-Perez, “Généalogie de l’Islam,” 197 and 215). By contrast the Jama´at Ibadu Rahman, has managed to expand in urban contexts and to multiply its network of schools. Because the JIR stopped attacking the Sufi orders in the 1990s, the organization has become increasingly acceptable to Muslims in Senegal. As a result, two leading members of the JIR, Serign Babou and Marietou Dieng, were nominated members of the Senegalese national pilgrimage board in 2002 (for the JIR see Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 269; Augis “Dakar’s Sunnite Women,” 309; Cantone, “Radicalisme au féminin?” 119 and Gomez-Perez, “Généalogie de l’Islam,” 193 and 219). 41. For this term see Launay, Beyond the Stream, 92. 42. For the development of Islamic education in Senegal in the postcolonial period, see Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 227 and 349. The success of the Islamic schools has possibly motivated President Abdoulaye Wade to introduce religious instruction in government schools in 2002 (Sow, “Les femmes, l’État et le sacré,” 300). 43. It must be stressed here that the term generation is not understood in this contribution in its purely biological dimension. A generation of reform may comprise, for instance, two or even more biological generations of reformers, if the issues of reform and the orientation of a movement of reform are not modified substantially. A shift to a new generation of reformers implies a significant break with an established episteme. 44. Both Gueye (Touba, la capitale des Mourides, 248) and Villalon (“Generational Changes, Political Stagnation” and “The Moustarchidine of Senegal”) have pointed out the importance of generational dynamics of development within Senegalese Sufi orders and have stressed the role of the marabout-petit-fils (grand-son marabouts). 45. For these generational dynamics of Sufi order development see Loimeier, “Traditions of Reform.” 46. For the MMUD see Samson “Entre confrérie et Islamisme,” 48; and Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 99. In Senegal the MMUD is also known as Diwan or Diwan Silk al-Jawahir fi-Akhbar Sagharir. The movement was established in 1995 to recuperate the unemployed and often destitute urban youth (see Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 110). 47. Literally, this means “the quest for both kinds of accomplishment,” referring to success and accomplishment (fawz) in this world as well as the hereafter; it is also referring to a poem of this title as written by Amadou Bamba (see Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad, 72). Matlab al-Fawzayni was established in 1990 as a Murid initiative in the European diaspora by Dame Ndiaye and has been recognized as an NGO. The organization was seen as a “dahira of the émigrés” but has also acquired support among intellectuals and academics of Murid inclination (see Gueye, Touba, la capitale des Murides, 249). 48. For Mame Diarra Bousso, see Babou, “The Senegalese ‘Social Contract’ Revisited”; Evers Rosander, “Mam Diarra Bousso”; and Sieveking, “Negotiating Development in Senegal.” Mame Diarra Bousso is a Murid women’s association based in Porokhane. 49. The ndiggel may be defined as a command issued by the religious leader of the Muridiyya, the Khalife General. The ndiggel is seen to be binding for all Murids because it expresses the ultimate submission of each individual Murid to the supreme authority of the Khalife General. In Senegal’s political history, the different Khalife General of the Muridiyya have proclaimed a ndiggel to vote for the ruling party since independence. 50. Samson, “Entre confrérie et Islamisme,” 38. 51. For Cheikh Tidiane Sy see Behrman, Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal, and Samson, “Entre confrérie et Islamisme.” 52. See, for example, corresponding claims of the Hizb al-Tarqiyya and the MMUD, the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu; see Samson, “Entre confrérie et Islamisme,” 48; and Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 99. 53. Khalifa Diouf’s father was a secretary of Abubakar Sy, Cheikh Ahmad Tidiane Sy’s father, and also worked with Cheikh Ahmad Tidiane Sy in the 1960s (Samson, “Entre confrérie et Islamisme,” 120).

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54. Cheikh Gueye and Cheikh Anta Babou, September 12, 2004; as well as Cruise O’Brien, Symbolic Confrontations, 76 and 89. 55. Gueye, Touba, la capitale des Mourides, 245; see 239 for extensive discussion on the development of the HT. 56. Villalon, “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation,” 138; and Gueye, Touba, la capitale des Mourides, 239. The HT had eclipsed Moustapha Saliou’s leading role in the order in the context of the organization of the magal of 1996. Until 1996, Moustapha Saliou had effectively led the order, represented the order in the context of international conferences and had been in charge, due to his managerial qualities, of major projects of development in Touba (Gueye, Touba, la capitale des Mourides, 233). 57. Mamadou Diouf, communication with the author, November 17, 2006. 58. See Searing, “God Alone Is King.” 59. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal, 58; and Behrman, Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal, 50. 60. Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 151; see also Lô, L’heure du choix; and Coulibaly, Le Sénégal à l’épreuve, for a discussion of Mamadou Dia’s politics and Senghor’s take-over of power in 1962. 61. Coulon, Le Marabout et le Prince, 276. 62. For a recent presentation of the different Khalife Generals of the Muridiyya, see the bimonthly journal Mouride, No. 40, February 2006, a special issue on “Le Khalifat 1927– 2006” that was published for the annual magal to Touba. 63. Cruise O’Brien, “Le ‘contrat social’ sénégalais à l’épreuve,” 18. 64. See Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 328–29. 65. Modou Kara was the leader of the MMUD; Gueye claims that the ndiggel has probably been overemphasized in the political analysis of the past as a spectacularly visible symbol of religious authority in the political domain. Still, the failure of the ndiggel politique since the late 1980s supports the argument of the fragmentation of the Muridiyya as a religious and political movement. For an analysis of the ndiggel electoral see Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 104; as well as Gueye, Touba, la capitale des Mourides, 280. 66. See Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft. 67. Villalon, Islamic Society and State Power, 68. 68. According to the census of 1994, Murids had 85.5 percent of the population in Diourbel (Tijans [T] 9.5 percent, Qadrs [Q] 3.7 percent), 44.7 percent in Thiès (T: 40.3 percent, Q: 7.4 percent), and 45.9 percent in Louga (T: 37.3 percent, Q: 15.1 percent). In all other regions, Murids (M) constituted a minority: Dakar (M: 23.4 percent, T: 51.4 percent, Q: 6.9 percent), Ziguinchor (M: 4.0 percent; T: 22.9 percent; Q: 32.9 percent), Saint-Louis (M: 6.4 percent; T: 80.2 percent; Q: 8.4 percent), Tambakounda (M: 7.5 percent; T: 54.1 percent; Q: 25.2 percent), Kaolack (M: 27.2 percent; T: 65.4 percent; Q: 4.9 percent), Fatick (M: 38.6 percent; T: 39.5 percent; Q: 12.4 percent) and Kolda (M: 3.6 percent; T: 52.7 percent; Q: 26.0 percent). On the national level the Muridiyya accounted for 30.1 percent of the population, the Tijaniyya for 47.4 percent, the Qadriyya for 10.9 percent, while other groups (Layen, Christians etc.) had 11.3 percent of the population. See Piga, Dakar et les ordres soufis, 35. 69. Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 323. 70. Villalon, Islamic Society and State Power, 219; see also Cruise O’Brien, Symbolic Confrontations, 197. Dissatisfaction with maraboutic whims was not confined to the ranks of the Socialist Party. In 1995, the independent daily paper Sud Quotidien, for two consecutive days, published the headline, “Terrorisme spirituel: Ces petits marabouts qui nous tiennent en ôtage” (Spiritual Terrorism: These Junior Marabouts Who Hold Us Hostage), while the respective articles criticized the “junior marabouts” who took advantage of their descent to profit personally (see Villalon, “The Moustarchidine of Senegal,” 495). 71. In a first round, Diouf managed to score 42.3 percent of the votes, while Wade gained 28.1 percent, Moustapha Niass 18 percent, and Djibo Ka 6 percent. In the second round, Wade united most opposition votes and gained 58 percent, while Diouf lost with a score of 42 percent. In the parliamentary elections of 2001, sopi (“change”), an electoral alliance of

252

72.

73.

74.

75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80.

81.

82.

Roma n L oimeier PDS (Parti Démocratique Sénégalais) and 40 other parties, scored 89 of 120 seats, while the PS (Parti Socialiste) was left with 10. In 1998 the PS still garnered 93 seats (50.12 percent of the vote) against 23 for the PDS (in a parliament of 140 seats). In the 1993 elections, the PDS won 27 seats (PS: 84, 56.24 percent) in the 1988 elections 17 (PS: 84, 71.05 percent) and in the 1983 elections 9 (PS: 111, 79.6 percent). These election results show a constant increase of votes for the opposition and almost present the victory of the opposition in the 2000 and 2001 elections as inevitable. However, the rise of the opposition was linked with the simultaneous fatigue, constant in-fights, and a structural crisis of the PS. The next round of elections in 2007 confirmed Abdoulaye Wade as president of Senegal (56 percent of the votes), while his most prominent opponents Idrissa Seck, Tanor Dieng and Moustapha Niass garnered 15 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent of the electorate respectively. In the parliamentary elections of 2007, the ruling sopi coalition won 131 of 150 parliamentary seats, 19 going to twelve small opposition parties. The big opposition parties boycotted these elections. Mamadou Diouf in Samson, “Entre confrérie et Islamisme,” 185. In fact, remittances from the Murid diasporas have become so important nowadays that the Murid movement has become virtually independent of state patronage (see also Babou, “The Senegalese ‘Social Contract’ Revisited”). PVD is the acronym for the Parti de la Vérité pour le Développement or Hizb al-Haqq. The PVD was created in 2004 by Serign Modou Kara Mbacke, the leader of the MMUD and could be viewed as the “political wing” of the MMUD (see Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 102). The outcome of these elections confirmed the “defeat of the ndiggel politique” (Villalon, “Generational Changes, Political Stagnation,” 142; and Samson, “Une nouvelle conception,” 164), a process described as a “weakening” (affaiblissement) or “breaking away” (effritement) of the ndiggel (Diaw, Diop, and Diouf, “Le baobab a été déraciné,” 167–68); for an analysis of the “religious vote,” see Samson, “Entre confrérie et Islamisme,” 326; and Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 99. This should not be interpreted as a vote against religion, however. For an analysis of the presidential elections of 2000 see Audrain, “Du ‘Ndiggël avorté’,” 99. Cheikh Anta Babou, communication with the author, September 12, 2004; Wane, Le Sénégal entre deux naufrages?, 120. Among others, he committed himself to the construction of an international airport in Touba (see Villalon, “Senegal,” 64; and Gervasoni and Gueye, “La confrérie Muride,” 621). See Wane, Le Sénégal entre deux naufrages?, 45, 115. Mamadou Alassane Bâ, communication with the author, May 10, 2005. Mohammad al-Amin Bara (born 1925; also “Serign Mouhamadou Lamine Bara” or “Cheikh Bara”), the eldest son of the second Khalife General Falilou (1945–1968), became the new Khalife General of the Muridiyya when his uncle Saliou died on December 28, 2007. His succession was quickly accepted by all major leaders of the Muridiyya, including Serign Moustapha Saliou. Cheikh Anta Babou, communication with the author, November 14, 2004; to his great surprise the Khalife General of the Muridiyya found himself leading the PDS list of Touba for the local government elections in 2002, which was immediately withdrawn after publication, yet by then fulfilled its obvious purpose: namely to gain Murid popular support for the PDS (Coulibaly, Wade, un opposant au pouvoir, 133). See Loimeier, Säkularer Staat und Islamische Gesellschaft, 375.

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Chapter 11

4 I sl a m, Protes t, and Cit izen Mobiliz ation New Sufi Movements

Fabienne Samson (L’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Centre d’études Africaines, Paris)

Just over ten years ago, a new Islamic trend emerged in Senegal, and since the 2000

presidential election it has become more politically radical. It consists of new movements affiliated with the most important Sufi orders (Arabic, turuq, sing. tariqa) in the country. These new movements lead us to reevaluate the contemporary system of Sufi orders. Over and above any differences between the Sufi orders from which they derive, these movements share a determination to distance themselves from their original zawiya (Sufi center)1 and are now united in their clear desire to confront state power. They are distinguished by their mass teaching and their active and direct participation in electoral debate with the goal of transforming both society and the world of politics. A comparative analysis of two Senegalese Islamic movements,2 precursors of this trend, shows how they offer another way of conceiving religion, its practice, and its role in society. The Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat (Men and Women on the Path of God) was founded in the 1970s in Tivaouane, but its real development dates to the late 1980s and the 1990s, when the Tijan Moustapha Sy acceded to its leadership and based himself in Dakar. The Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu (World Movement for the Oneness of God) was founded by the Murid religious leader (or marabout) Modou Kara Mbacke in Touba in 1995. Its original Arabic name is Diwan Silk al-Jawahir fi-Akhbar Sagharir. Adepts often use the Arabic term diwan, which means collection or anthology, to refer to their movement. Granted, these two movements are considerably different from one another, because they are descended from distinct lineages of Muslim religious leaders. Their rituals are profoundly divergent, signs of particular relationships to the sacred and to mysticism. Nevertheless,

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they can both be classified as new movements within Sufi orders because of their similar ways of distinguishing themselves in the religious sphere and of participating in society and politics. They are organized on the same pyramidal model, their leaders have similar family backgrounds, and the two movements sometimes unite on exceptional political and religious occasions. Their leaders like to give the impression that an alliance between them remains possible in the struggle for the nation’s re-Islamization. Inspired by contemporary Islamic reformism in the Arab Muslim world, but always profoundly tied to the traditional system of Sufi orders and their religious leaders by their modes of legitimacy and operation, these two movements elaborate new types of religious identities, adapted to the local religious context but strongly innovative with respect to the teachings of the founders of their leading families. They have become, in a way, not so much reformist movements led by Sufi leaders as Sufi movements influenced by ideas of reform.3 Religious products of modernity, as evidenced by the themes they preach and the ways they proselytize, they deliberately settle in urban spaces and exclusively address themselves to a young audience, whose environment they criticize as not conducive to Islam. In this manner they convey moral judgments about the conditions in which young people live. Both have attracted a considerable number of followers4 and seem to have spurred other spiritual leaders to follow their example. They preach that religion should ideally be inscribed in the daily activities of their followers and in all spheres of society. Since their expansion in the 1990s, then, they have expressed a secularized Islam generating a social dynamic whose goal is to progressively convert society from below. Moreover, the recent politicization of their leaders, each of whom has become president of a political party, is a logical and coherent outcome of their past religious undertakings. Consequently, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu both serve to socialize urban dwellers. Confronted by a state that is increasingly privatized and withdrawing from its obligations in the domains of health and education, they assume responsibility for the Islamic instruction of youth as well as the social reinsertion of the marginalized and least privileged, even if their own followers are more heterogeneous.5 Established in all the neighborhoods of the capital, they specifically highlight the most disadvantaged among their adepts, pride themselves on educating those whom everyone else abandons, and have in this way persuaded themselves that they have substantially reduced juvenile delinquency in Dakar. Each depicts itself as the only possible alternative in a society they describe as sick because it is too much under the sway of the West, which they see as the source of vice and loss of faith. With a vision that approaches the apocalyptic, they are convinced that the state of perdition in which they see Senegalese society is the sign of the immanent end of the world. It thus becomes all the more urgent for them to save the population and bring it back to Islam. As “Islamic spaces”6 whose structures, conceived in terms of their urban environment, perfectly channel their followers, they teach their disciples to become true Muslims. These disciples experience a rebirth of identity and, proud of this new identity, assume in turn the mission of recruiting other youth and propagating the teachings of their leader. The ultimate goal of these movements is thus the gradual transformation of society. This program, inspired by reformist Islam, shows that these two movements have moved considerably beyond the framework of the Sufi teachings of their respective orders and are in the orbit of globalization. Although in their speeches their leaders often refer to Arab leaders and religious groups (particularly those linked to the

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Muslim Brothers) with whom they ostensibly share a conflict with the Western world, a will to re-Islamize society, and a conception of a totalizing Islam, they nonetheless feel that only they understand true Islam. Thus this transnationalization of the religious domain certainly transforms the Senegalese system of Sufi orders, but these two movements also keep their distance from their ideological inspirations: They remain vague on the subject of secularism (laïcité) and do not seem to seek the establishment of an Islamic republic. On the contrary, persuaded that they possess the only truth (thanks to the precepts of their Sufi orders, which they propagate while simultaneously reforming them), they think they can set an example and impose themselves on the global Islamic Ummah to rally all Muslims to their conception of Islam. This evolution of Islam in Senegal, a demonstration of a worldly Islam (Islam mondain) inscribed in the daily lives of its adepts, tends to become frankly political, which invites us to redefine such movements. In other words, the fundamental question is whether the two religious leaders now seek power to transform society, or whether their politicization is just another means to influence the state. Whatever the case, their new positioning will only be really effective if they achieve political legitimacy, both among their followers and in society at large. If the adepts clearly see in the political ambitions of their leaders a prolongation of their religious activities, the militancy of the disciples (who, in the previous elections of 2000 and 2007, have tended to demonstrate their political autonomy) will remain questionable.

Fro m th e R el igio us to the Poli ti ca l Dom ai n Religious Similarities Modou Kara Mbacke and Moustapha Sy, the Murid and the Tijan, are both called religious leaders of youth, each having sought an audience of adolescents and young adults. But the resemblance does not stop here. Distant cousins, almost the same age, they know each other well and claim to be friends.7 Their family situations are also similar. Moustapha Sy is the great-grandson of the founder of the Tivaouane zawiya, Al-Hajj Malick Sy, and the grandson of Ababacar Sy, the first Tijan Khalife in Senegal. Modou Kara Mbacke is the grandson of Mame Thierno Birahim Fati Mbacke, the younger brother of the founder of the Murids, Cheikh Amadou Bamba. This ancestry provides both of them with legitimacy as religious leaders. Nonetheless, they are members of the youngest (adult) generation of direct or indirect descendants of the founding fathers. Thanks to polygamy, the lineages of Muslim religious specialists are large, and the two leaders have a significant number of older uncles and cousins. To distinguish themselves from this multitude of rivals, recruit followers, and make a name for themselves as religious leaders, each was obliged to found his own movement and recreate a legitimate religious lineage in rivalry with other branches of the zawiya. Moustapha Sy had no problem distancing himself from Tivaouane, because his father Cheikh Ahmed Tidiane Sy broke off from his brothers back in the 1960s as a result of rivalry for the position of Khalife.8 Settled in Dakar, he had already composed his new genealogy. All his sons were grouped around him and had formed a clan to rival that of Tivaouane. He is the spiritual guide of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat, his son Moustapha Sy is responsible for the organization, and Moustapha’s brothers occupy important positions.9 Because Modou Kara Mbacke is not a direct descendant of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, he has strived to demonstrate his supremacy as religious leader over the children of the Sufi order’s founder. He constantly alludes to the close links between the two ancestors, and his followers like

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to say that Cheikh Amadou Bamba declared that he would “return” after his death as one of the descendants of his younger brother,10 and that he who was destined to replace him would, moreover, be named gold (kara). Modou Kara Mbacke thus anchors his religious genealogy on his grandfather. Like Moustapha Sy, he is surrounded by brothers and sisters who assist him, and his youngest brother, Mame Thierno’s namesake, is entirely at the service of his movement, just as his grandfather was entirely devoted to the founder of the Murids. Although several years separate the birth of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat from that of the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu, both movements are built on the same pyramidal model.11 Vastly hierarchical, this model covers all the territory of the nation and coordinates foreign cells, while leaving the leaders in total control of the movement’s activities. Adepts are grouped into cells (among the Murids) or sections (among the Tijans), which are implanted in every neighborhood of every town of Senegal. This organization is particularly well adapted to the urban context and allows every follower to find a unit of one movement or the other nearby. Each cell or section is led by a president whose principal task is to organize meetings, follow the orders of his superiors, and provide an account of the group’s activities. These base units are in turn grouped into geographical zones (several neighborhoods in Dakar, for example), which are further grouped into regional cells (among the Murids) or sectors (among the Mustarshidin), and those in turn are grouped into divisions.12 Thus, from the base to the apex, intermediary units unite in successive steps the disciples of a neighborhood, town, and region. The two religious leaders oversee everything. Moustapha Sy is assisted by his advisors, while Modou Kara Mbacke relies on an executive committee and several commissions (supervising projects, finance, communications, management of cells, etc.). Alongside these two pyramidal organizations, each movement has also established a series of structures to unite followers around specific activities. These extend well beyond a simple apprenticeship in the Quran, the Arabic language, or the specific teachings of the order. Their goal is to transform the faithful into Muslims whose practice conforms to the religious ideals of the two leaders. The disciples thus learn to conduct all their daily activities according to the precepts of the Quran. For example, the Bureau des Femmes (BEF, Women’s Bureau) of the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu teaches its female members their place and role within Islam. The Fédération des élèves et étudiants du diwane (FEED, Federation of students of the diwan) enlightens secondary school and university students about the importance of Muslim spirituality in daily life. The nine cells of the Mustarshidin movement (one for women, one for students, one for athletes, etc.) invite the disciples (or talibe) of Moustapha Sy’s order to see their lives through a religious prism. In this way the two movements offer a thorough Islamic education to all youths whose lifestyles they want to change. They teach them to behave properly, speak correctly, greet elders with respect, dress decently (preferably in white, to demonstrate cleanliness), and so on. They also offer classes in family planning, cooking, housekeeping, and handicrafts. These movements become microsocieties13 in which the faithful experience a community life governed by Islam and the principles of their order. They say that they are reborn in these communities, acquiring and taking pride in new identities as good Muslims, and that they find in them a true family, under whose care they flourish. They often assume roles that gratify them and offer them responsibilities they cannot assume in civil life. They feel safe, loved, understood. Some of them, admittedly a minority among thousands of followers, choose to leave their parents’ home to live with their religious leader. This behavior is more visible among the Murids,

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for whom it is made easier by the fact that Modou Kara Mbacke owns houses in all parts of Dakar and Touba; disciples can move in and consecrate their whole lives to their teacher. As a result, the movement has created two important organizations, the Islamic philharmonia and Kara security, which employ these youth on a daily basis to teach them, throughout the day, to play music or to train physically to ensure security services during large social and religious gatherings. Life in the two movements is essentially the same, except for differences in rituals. The disciples participate in sessions of prayer and chanting (according to their movement) every Thursday evening in the cell or neighborhood section. These meetings may be held in someone’s home or simply in the street. Throughout the year they also participate in great religious festivals, such as the birthday of the prophet Mohammad or of their order’s founding saint. The two leaders also regularly give lectures to which all the faithful are invited. On these occasions they show themselves to their followers, offer advice or specific religious instruction, and reenergize the allegiance of their disciples, who always leave these assemblies happy and more devoted than ever. These lectures are vital in the life of these movements. During every Ramadan Moustapha Sy organizes a series of discussions over several days, to which he invites people from outside the movement: intellectuals, professors, specialists on Islam. The faithful are also called on to elaborate on chosen themes. The religious leader gives a long opening speech attended by thousands of disciples. He is also present at every lecture, providing a privileged moment when his followers can meet and converse with him. Similarly, Modou Kara Mbacke gives lectures in the stadiums of Dakar, which attract thousands of disciples. But his favorite strategy is to take the faithful by surprise with sudden and unexpected appearances during the most ordinary gatherings, such as Thursday night meetings. It is at these moments that he truly excites the admiration of his disciples, who feel rewarded for having come to the meeting on that day. He also visits renowned Murids in different neighborhoods of the capital. The faithful, informed by word of mouth, flock to the honored person’s house to meet the leader personally, even if only for several seconds, and receive a prayer from him. These youths are strongly affected by such moments, experiencing each personal meeting with the leader as exceptional, fortifying, and reaffirming their belief.

Politicization of Religious Leaders If the two religious movements resemble one another in several respects, certainly the most significant is the politicization of their leaders. Because these movements offer a new way of conducting politics in Senegal and considerably transform the relationship that has existed for decades between religion and politics, it is interesting to compare them. Despite Senegal’s secular constitution, the leaders of the two movements do not hesitate to involve themselves ever more openly and directly in politics, and they exchange the role of religious leader for that of citizen. This is how they justify to the public their participation in elections. Among the faithful, their political legitimacy derives directly from their religious legitimacy: If they are special beings chosen to accomplish a social and religious mission on earth, this mission can easily be understood to have a political dimension. Most disciples see no conflict between their spiritual leaders’ religious, social, and political responsibilities. Because Islam should encompass all facets of Muslims’ lives, they see politics as one means among others to transform society.

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Moustapha Sy entered the political field in 1993, before Modou Kara Mbacke, but in 1999 the two leaders considered creating a politico-religious coalition for the presidential elections of 2000. The first electoral positions taken by the Tijan leader were uncustomarily extreme and responsible for his imprisonment. His movement was also banned until 1995, when it was rehabilitated by the Socialist Party, in power at that time.14 However severe the government’s reaction may have been, the religious leader’s taking a political position was routine: like ten or so Sufi leaders before him, Moustapha Sy chose to support a presidential candidate. His originality was in supporting the opposition. His criticisms of President Abdou Diouf’s regime were also of a heretofore unequaled virulence.15 After the rehabilitation of his movement, with his father’s support, he embarked on a political trajectory that was anything but straightforward. Although he had supported Abdoulaye Wade, at that time the leader of the opposition, from 1993 to 1994, in 1995 he defended President Abdou Diouf, whom he had previously criticized so stridently. His support earned the movement official recognition once again. These changes of direction were often misunderstood by the faithful, who somewhat imperfectly followed the carryings-on of their leader, and by non-Mustarshidin Senegalese, who were astonished by these radical reversals. Modou Kara Mbacke’s first political act, in 2000, was equally conventional. Nonetheless, his support for Abdou Diouf brought him considerable public visibility, like it or not. Several months before an election that would ultimately lead, for the first time, to a democratic transition, the religious leader decided to give a lecture, to which he invited leaders of the Socialist Party. These latter were roundly booed by the thousands of faithful who had come for the occasion, who thus disavowed their leader’s support for the party in power. Because Murid disciples normally feel a strong attachment to their religious leader and accord great importance to his instructions (Wolof, ndiggel), this event made a considerable splash and received prominent news coverage. But the will to change the regime was decidedly stronger than any instructions issued by a religious leader. Nevertheless, disinclined to shun politics, because it allows them to distinguish themselves from other religious leaders and recruit youth discontented with the regime in power, the two leaders, one after the other, created political parties for themselves. Once again Moustapha Sy was the first, rallying his movement in 1999 to Khalifa Diouf’s Parti de l’Unité et du Rassemblement (PUR, Party of Unity and Togetherness), of which he became president. In March 2000 he was a candidate in the first round of presidential elections, but he withdrew three days before the vote, no doubt aware that a lack of votes could damage his reputation as a religious leader. Modou Kara Mbacke waited until 2004 to create his own party, the Parti de la Vérité pour le Développement (PVD, Party of Truth for Development). The PUR and the PVD are both structured on the model of the religious movements: a leader at the top oversees commissions, sections, cells, and so on. Their political programs and ambitions remain unclear;16 during the presidential election of February 2007, they both refused to contribute to their own parties. Modou Kara Mbacke supported, by force of habit, the government in position (here Abdoulaye Wade), whereas Moustapha Sy, also as usual, fustigated in the press the retiring president and supported Idrissa Seck, first opponent of Abdoulaye Wade.

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Is l a m a nd the Withd r awal of the Stat e The Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu are secularized movements; they pursue their goal of re-Islamizing society through social actions, which are a response to a perception that the state is ineffectual. Their guiding principle is work for the well-being of the community, and the movements organize “citizenship” activities such as cleaning streets, hospitals, and schools, intended to transform the urban environment in the name of an Islam, which should encompass all aspects of life. In fact, the two movements arrive at the same diagnosis of their society and the same understanding of what they must do to re-Islamize it. Founded as political ideologies were being reevaluated because of growing unemployment, the persistence of economic problems, and the increasing pauperization of society in spite of the socialism of Leopold Senghor, Senegal’s first president, the relative economic and political liberalization of Abdou Diouf, and the devolution of power to Abdoulaye Wade, they have decided to replace the state and to recuperate a disoriented urban youth. Since then, they have emphasized their desire to change the behavior of city dwellers. They criticize youth who drink, take drugs, or go to nightclubs. Girls who wear miniskirts or close-fitting T-shirts that show their navels are lumped together with prostitutes. Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke depict themselves as reformers of behavior: Modou Kara Mbacke has declared, “Give me bandits and hooligans of every kind, the excluded and the marginal, the antisocial and the anarchists, the drug addicts and the alcoholics, along with all the failures of society. I want them because I possess the spiritual detergent with which I will patiently scrub them and transform them into true worshipers of the One God.”17 The two religious leaders fight a veritable holy war for a return to Islamic morality. The Murid leader has named himself General Kara, and his disciples refer to themselves as soldiers of the general. “Kara security,” constituted like an army in which the faithful wear khaki uniforms and march in formation,18 is the official representation of the jihad that must be pursued; and video clips showing the religious leader at the head of his military following are regularly shown in the movement’s headquarters and in Modou Kara Mbacke’s houses. Moustapha Sy speaks similarly of the fight that he must wage: “We must arm youth against all forms of alienation, to confront this ideological crusade.”19 The work of re-Islamizing society must begin with the followers themselves. Their leaders wish them to completely incorporate the teachings they have received to build a new world. If, in every Sufi order, the leader shapes the personality of the faithful to lead them along the mystical path,20 the disciples of these movements should be superTijans or super-Murids, “true athletes of religion.”21 Thus, thanks to the guidance of their spiritual leaders, they hope to be thoughtful, responsible, and adult. They value respect for others, tolerance, sharing, solidarity, patience, and simplicity; and they all claim to be prepared to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the community. They should wage an interior jihad against passions that enslave their souls and prevent them from thinking correctly, and in this way progressively abolish all vices and excesses, as their spiritual understanding of the Sufi order develops. Although many of them say that they feel lost in the face of an uncertain future, belonging to such a movement reassures them. They believe that, by joining, they acquire a solid religious identity that permits them to confront the problems in their lives. Most of them like to relate how the teachings of their leader enabled them to quit practices forbidden in Islam22 in which they indulged prior to entering their new extended family of mbok talibe (brother disciples). By belonging to a group in which they are recognized, and

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making friends who share their vision of life, they find a moral security that helps them, whatever their social origins, construct a personality for themselves that suits them and permits them to envisage the future more serenely. Persuaded that they find well-being as well as religious truth, they are convinced that their own movement is divinely inspired. All of them believe that their religious leader is an emissary of God, come to Earth to help them follow the way. Thus, the disciples of both movements think that theirs is the best, the only valid one. They say that they did not join it by chance, but have been chosen by God and by their leader to take part.23 In this way, not only are they committed to their movement, they constitute it and keep it alive. They also represent it. Outside the sacred time they share with their brothers in the movement, the disciples project their new identity in civil society. All are convinced that their religious leader is a savior of the country’s youth, and they consider themselves responsible for propagating his work in their surroundings to cure the society in which they live. Certain that they have become models of behavior and examples to follow, they adopt the mission of propagating their movement’s religious values. The Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu proselytize in various ways. As modern movements, they use radio, television, video clips, and DVDs to make themselves known. The Mustarshidin also have a website, and the disciples of Modou Kara Mbacke are in the process of constructing one. Even so, their most efficient mode of recruitment is an old and classic one: the faithful visit the sick, prisoners, and the marginalized, offering copies of the Quran and holy writings of their Sufi order. They say that in this way they bring new hope, and they hope that those they visit, if they become members of the movement, will themselves bring in others. In their eyes this manner of proceeding is a direct response to the state’s withdrawal from its responsibility to educate youth and protect the poor, the sick, and the excluded. As private entrepreneurs, these movements act like religious and secular NGOs to reinsert the most marginalized into society. They do so through both religious instruction, aimed at helping them morally and spiritually, and concrete economic aid. If the Murid Sufi order is better known for its commercial and financial investments in urban and rural settings,24 nonetheless both movements are of the opinion that one cannot ask youth to pray if they are underfed or overwhelmed by their personal problems. By teaching various manual trades, both hope to compensate for the poor education of many of their followers and enable them to rethink their future. Both (especially the Murid movement, which has ties to a well-tested economic system) find work for their disciples, sometimes by helping them to set up a small shop or workshop, or more simply by placing a youth as an apprentice in a business managed by other disciples. The state does not consider such activities as competing with its own prerogatives, but on the contrary encourages them. Granted, ever since the colonial period, Senegalese politicians have relied on the religious system to buttress their authority. In exchange for electoral support, they have accepted the economic enterprises of important religious leaders, whether agricultural or commercial.25 Senghor, Catholic as he was, was the first after independence to realize the importance of such collaboration with Sufi leaders, and he was imitated by his successors. Today, President Abdoulaye Wade, criticized by the local press for his ostentatious gifts to the late Murid Khalife Serign Saliou Mbacke,26 unequivocally supports the two movements, which he deems beneficial to the country. Their religious dimension does not seem to threaten the secular nature of the state, and even in the late 1980s Abdou Diouf congratulated Moustapha Sy, whom he liked to call “my dear son,”27 for his activities in behalf of

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youth. Such citizenship activities organized by both movements are highlighted in the media; but the disciples generally prefer to be perceived as disliked by a government that, according to them, acts against Muslims. This constant need to be seen as victims is precisely what allows the leaders and the disciples of both movements to justify their citizenship activities, which they present as the only answer to the state’s immobility in the domains of education and social protection. If the politicians do nothing and leave society in a state of perdition that signals, in their eyes, the end of the world, they must act against the current to save humanity through Islam. The young faithful want to work for the country’s development. They are taught to become Muslim patriots and to mobilize to reform people’s lives in conformity with their religion. Although now the state allows these movements to act as they will, it was more concerned in the past with the possible political excesses of the Sufi leaders. This was the case from 1993 to 1995, and the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat paid a stiff price for Moustapha Sy’s political stance in favor of the opposition during that period. The measures it suffered put considerable financial strain on the movement; it has never been able to match its earlier social activities and has been overtaken in this respect by the Murid movement. Today, Abdoulaye Wade’s government seems more willing to accept the politicization of religious leaders, and he has legalized the PVD. As modern Muslim religious leaders and citizens, Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke have become political entrepreneurs and party leaders. Far more than their elders, they place their movements, of Sufi origin, within the orbit of a more reformist political Islam, opening themselves up to religious trends from the Arab Muslim world, taking inspiration from them to transform the local system of Sufi orders and their religious leaders, and presenting themselves, in turn, as models for non-Senegalese Muslims.

With in the Or bit of Glob ali z at ion In their capacities as religious leaders of a social and political Islam, Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke seek, each in his own way, to give their movement a transnational dimension. They compare them to the great reformist trends of Muslim countries in the Arab world. Nonetheless, as Sufi leaders, they cannot rid themselves of the teachings of the order that confers legitimacy upon them. The analysis of their relationship to the principal themes of Islamism furnishes several indices to how they adapt external influences to the local system of Sufi orders and religious leaders, reforming it and presenting it as a new path.

The Relationship to Secularism and to the Islamic State Classical Islam does not recognize a separation between a religious and a secular social sphere.28 Consequently, the life of mankind is governed by a single reality, that of the Quran. Longing for an idyllic return to the time of the prophet, when Islam dominated the everyday existence of believers, Islamists29 consider each social problem, each historical phenomenon, in light of the Quran and of the scholars whose authority they recognize. Similarly, the adepts of the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu and of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat admire their leaders’ ability to adapt the messages of the Quran to their daily life, offering in this way answers to every question raised by the contrast between the society in which they live and the ideal one that they wish to construct. To them and to Islamist militants,

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Islam is a totality in the sense that it should encompass all aspects of society, that is to say, the political, economic, social, and cultural fields. With this in mind, they organize Islamic spaces to progressively Islamize society. Religion becomes the supreme criterion of identity and the sole variable that defines the Other, the stranger, the unbelievers of the Islamic world. Their vision of history becomes radical30; they call into question the global political and economic order, and offer in exchange political Islam as a solution. They then seek to increase the awareness of youths, to proclaim themselves their spokesmen, to legitimate their political actions by defining them as the best means of helping the oppressed. However, if the Islamists’ project is to seize power to apply shari’a, so that an ideal of social justice based on the precepts of Islam may see the light of day, Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke have never, in their various religious or political speeches, suggested the abolition of the secular state. The disciples of both movements are thus much divided on this issue. Some of them say that their ideal is to live in a society whose only rules are those of their religion and their order. They believe that their spiritual leaders’ social and political actions will eventually lead to the creation of such a society. However, many of them admit that they are not totally prepared to live in such a society; they hope that it will come tomorrow, but today they are still young, and they have a hard time imagining themselves observing such strict rules in their daily lives. They say they still want to enjoy their youth before entering into such a puritan life. Conversely, other disciples categorically refuse such a political transformation of their country. They certainly aspire to be guided in their daily lives by the precepts of their religion and wish for a more moral society, but they completely reject the idea of assuming power and creating an Islamic republic. If Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke have never made any statements on these issues, it is because, in spite of their criticism of the regimes in power and the morality of their compatriots, they remain Sufi leaders, legitimated by their religious ancestry; and the establishment of an Islamic republic could be contrary to their interests. The system of collaboration and clientage between religious and political leaders protects them, even if they deny it. The political game they play allows them to proclaim their conception of Islam, publicize themselves, and recruit new disciples; but to date they have not sought to seize power.

The Relationship to the West and the Question of Modernity Islamism is a modern ideology that recognizes the importance of science and technology and uses them to proselytize. Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke, modern religious leaders and products of their times, understand this well. They dress differently from classic Sufi sheikhs, appearing as easily in traditional African robes or jellabas as in jeans or in leather, with a hat or cap on their heads. They also have a different way of appealing to their public, addressing themselves directly to the audience, microphone in hand, and making jokes that provoke an enthusiastic response.31 Still, like Islamist activists in Arab Muslim countries, they propose to Islamize modernity and use it as a propaganda tool, removing it from any historical context that might link it to the construction of secular political regimes. The rejection of the Western world and its conception of modernity is a frequent theme in their speeches. They reproach Senegal with letting itself fall under the influence of the former colonizer, France, and with seeking material progress while leaving the spiritual aside. Atheist and immoral Western culture imposes itself on Muslim space, according to them, to

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reduce it to a “cultural subject.”32 In this way it becomes the source of all the evils of society. However, this Western world, which they so deplore, is paradoxically also attractive to the two Sufi leaders. They like to state that they travel through it frequently, are well received, and even have non-Senegalese friends there. This paradox is even more striking in their speeches: They like to refer to Western authors such as Descartes, Victor Hugo, Marx, and Bourdieu. They use these references, which they make without specifying their sources,33 to support the messages of their speeches, to give them a scholarly dimension even when they concern the Quran. The questions of modernity and the relationship to the West also raise the problematic matter of their disciples’ training in Arabic. The defenders of Arabic in subSaharan Africa argue that teaching the language of the Quran is a means of resisting the prevalence of the colonizer’s language, which has been imposed as an official language since independence.34 Although many reformist associations in Senegal believe that it is necessary to teach the population Arabic,35 Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke do not seem to see Arabic teaching as a struggle against French. Granted, initiation into this language is fundamental for both movements, because it enables people to read and comprehend the sacred texts. But neither the leaders nor their followers ever argue that the language of Islam should supplant that of the administration. The important thing is to be a good believer, a good representative of one’s Sufi order. The Islamization of society does not require, in their eyes, mass Arabization. The two movements distinguish themselves in this way, at several levels, from their Muslim Arab influences. They excoriate both Marxism and liberalism, but the third way they want to impose is not Islamism properly speaking, but their own conception of a social and political Islam adapted to the order to which they belong.

The Islamization of the World The Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu are both established outside the frontiers of Senegal, thanks to a diaspora that has set up international sections and cells in several African countries, Europe, the United States, and Asia. They permit Senegalese disciples who emigrate to continue their religious activities. But they are also intended to recruit new disciples, either members of the Senegalese diaspora or natives of the host countries, and indeed Europeans and North Americans have joined these movements. These foreign disciples, who visit Senegal to participate in major religious celebrations and to visit their leader, are far more visible among the Murids than among the Mustarshidin. This is certainly the most important difference between the two movements. Both want to play a decisive role in the Islamization of the various peoples of the planet, but they assign different levels of importance to that role. Moustapha Sy and his disciples do not consider the transnational implantation of their movement to be fundamental,36 whereas the teachings of the Murid movement cannot be dissociated from its international objectives. For Modou Kara Mbacke, regenerating the lifestyle of Senegalese youth and re-Islamizing the country have meaning only if the world of which his society is a part also conforms to the requirements of Islam and of his order. Spreading the thought of Cheikh Amadou Bamba across the globe is thus his first priority. A variety of methods are employed to recruit this coveted foreign audience, but the most visible is the Islamic philharmonic, which includes both disciples, who play a divine melody inspired by the angels and musicians, often famous ones, who perform the compositions of Modou Kara Mbacke, called spiritual melodies. Both

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groups specifically target Westerners. The divine melody, played by a chorus of violins, is adapted to Western musical conventions, and singers circulate the spiritual melody in reggae, salsa, and mbalax adaptations, which move all Senegalese as well as anyone else who listens to them. In spite of this difference between the two movements, they both critique Islamic practices in Arab Muslim countries, in spite of the influences that may inspire them. The Iranian Revolution, which remains for many Islamists in the Arab world an example of the struggle against Western imperialism, is not a model for most of the followers of Moustapha Sy or Modou Kara Mbacke, who hold that Islam in Iran and Saudi Arabia is not sufficiently tolerant and just. They consider themselves, thanks to their respective movements, the best possible practitioners and believe that they should impose the religious teachings of their own order on the rest of the Islamic world. Thus even as they look to Muslim Arab movements for means of reforming their local system of Sufi orders, the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu seek in return to impose their views on the global Islamic ummah.

Social or Political Perspectives? The politicization of Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke follows logically from the social actions they have undertaken over several years to remedy the state’s lack of involvement and dominate the arena of Sufi orders and Sufi leaders, thanks to a dynamic that unites a large proportion of urban youth in the country. Exemplars of a social, secularized Islam, the two movements are now part of a political Islam that they have reinvented in their own way and readapted to the local Sufi context. Will their task of progressively Islamizing society necessarily eventually lead to a will to act from above by seizing power? The analysis of the two last presidential elections (2000 and 2007) seems to prove the contrary: The support of the two leaders for traditional politicians suggests that they do not personally seek the power. Then several variables allow us to better understand the stakes of such politicization. First of all, the disciples of both movements consider that the political world is a universe of lies, treachery, and corruption. If they believe that their leader’s politicization will push politicians to behave better, nevertheless some are worried that their movement will suffer from slander and deceit. This fear is particularly prevalent among Mustarshidin, who bear in mind their past misadventures. Many hope that their leader is not looking to make a career in politics and that the party will simply remain a powerful tool with which to press the state to restore its lost ethics and principles. Moreover, most disciples of both leaders are absolutely ignorant of their leader’s political perspectives, even while they affirm that they follow him unconditionally. It is difficult for them to defend a project that remains vague, and their only argument is consequently religious: The political instructions of their leader are like all other ndiggel, and following them is a form of proper Islamic practice that earns entry into paradise. Conversely, many disciples are activists in their own right for one political party or another. Even if they emphatically criticize the attitude of the government, their political conscience is in part a product of the sense of citizen responsibility awakened by the movement. It is not certain that these youths will decide to leave their parties to become activists in the PUR or the PVD, whatever they may assert to the contrary.37 The presidential election of 2000 is proof: The Mustarshidin massively supported the candidacy of Moustapha Sy for religious reasons, but many

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whom I surveyed eventually confessed that they wanted to vote for the Front pour l’Alternance (FAL, Front for Alternation), comprising different opposition forces, because they knew that this electoral strategy was the only way to change the regime. Moustapha Sy, who withdrew his candidacy, certainly understood his disadvantage in such a situation. During this period, the disavowal of Modou Kara Mbacke by his faithful when he supported the retiring president, Abdou Diouf, is new proof of this political autonomy of urban youth in Senegal. At the time of an election, young adepts vote according to a social and political context and they can thus vote for a candidate other than the one indicated by their leader. Even after Modou Kara Mbacke as well as several other religious leaders predicted a victory for Abdoulaye Wade in Thiès, fief of Idrissa Seck, his February 2007 defeat also shows that a vote instruction of a Sufi leader is not infallible in spite of the obvious reinforcement of clientelist logics by Abdoulaye Wade. Nevertheless, Moustapha Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke have their share of responsibility in this social and political individualization of their young followers. They ask them to become good citizens in the development of their nation and encourage them to have a new representation of the political, which ineluctably transforms their conception of power. Thus the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu became places of training a social and even political militancy. So, the defeat of the ndiggel during the last elections does not mean that the religious and the political, always closely related in the country’s history, have suddenly divergent interests. On the contrary, the young disciples seek a new social and political imaginary from the two religious leaders. In their movement in knowledge, they adhere to the particular religious orientations of the leaders who work, by their religious education, on the re-Islamization of the society. But that does not prevent the disciples from adhering to other political parties as well. On their side the religious guides of this new generation know that they need the political to be different within the very competitive religious field; then they can say they are the spokesmen of their faithful, who aspire to a new social ideal. In the end, this exchange of good processes characterizes the current evolution of the new Sufi practices in Senegal where Islam is always narrowly overlapping in the country’s social and political affairs.

Not es 1. 2. 3. 4.

A zawiya is the headquarters of a Sufi order, led by a family of religious teachers. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 1998 and 2007. Kane and Villalon, “Entre confrérisme, réformisme et Islamisme,” 124. Each claims approximately 500,000 followers, but the figures cannot be verified in absence of any statistics. 5. The base of both movements generally includes social juniors who have completed little schooling and who, if they are employed, are principally manual laborers or artisans. Still, membership also includes students, nurses, young teachers, and so on. The elite of both movements is generally composed of executives, doctors, lawyers, university professors, and politicians. Thus both movements recruit throughout all levels of society, but most followers are from a lower-status background. 6. Roy, Généalogie de l’Islamisme. 7. Moustapha Sy was born on January 11, 1952, and Modou Kara Mbacke on January 6, 1953, or September 5, 1954, depending on the source. Moustapha Sy’s great-grandfather Al-Hajj Malick Sy and Modou Kara Mbacke’s great-uncle Cheikh Amadou Bamba were

270

8. 9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

Fa bi e n n e Sams on cousins. Although this family link is rather distant, it is important to many of their adepts, who refer to it when they talk of the links between the two men. Samson, Les marabouts de l’Islam politique. For an analysis of problems in the Sy family, Villalon (Islamic society and state power, 25) demonstrates the rehabilitation of Cheikh Ahmed Tidiane Sy by his son Moustapha Sy, thanks to the new social and political trend of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat. I developed his analysis in my book (Samson, Les marabouts de l’Islam politique). Reincarnation is not a doctrine of Islam, and Modou Kara Mbacke does not publicly approve such assertions; but this belief is strong among most of his adepts. Moustapha Sy, who assumed the leadership of the Tijan movement at the end of the 1980s and established it in Dakar, reorganized it on this model. He was inspired by the organization of the dahira (associations of believers) developed by his grandfather Ababacar Sy as a means of coordinating all the disciples in the country (Kane and Villalon, “Senegal: The Crisis of Democracy,” 159). Modou Kara Mbacke was unquestionably influenced by the structuring of the Tijan movement in the creation of his own. Since 1998, the organization of the Mustarshidin movement has been simplified and the zones, sectors, and divisions have been replaced with five major axes, each representing a region. The financing of these movements is a taboo subject. Money is apparently contributed by members during large religious gatherings, as well as by religious leaders and their backers, both Senegalese and foreign. Libyan and Saudi organizations are also sometimes said to finance them. Moustapha Sy’s arrest on November 2, 1993, followed his tumultuous speech in favor of Abdoulaye Wade during the legislative campaign. Sy remained in prison until September 12, 1994. The banning of his movement followed a demonstration organized on February 16, 1994, supporting the opposition, in which the Mustarshidin participated; it degenerated so badly that five policemen were killed. However, the subsequent trial never proved that the Mustarshidin had participated in the rioting. On February 23, 1993, Moustapha Sy gave a speech against Abdou Diouf in Thiès in which he accused the president’s associates of murder, among other crimes (Kane and Villalon, “Entre confrérisme, réformisme et Islamisme”). The political program published by the PUR for the 2000 presidential election made few concrete suggestions, offering as a general goal a “new political contract.” Mélodie divine (the divine melody) is an internal text of the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu. The image of the soldier has a rich meaning in Islam. It represents the reliable person, ready to make personal sacrifices in the name of religion. Instrument de travail cellule culturelle (tool of the cultural cell) is an internal text of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat. Gaborieau, “Les modes d’organisation.” C. S., a Mustarshid, interview with the author, Dakar, August 17, 1998. In reality, many young adherents do not manage to follow all the instructions of their leaders in their day-to-day lives, and most of them accommodate their movement’s moral and religious precepts in their own ways. Young people generally join a movement because a relative or friend is already a follower. Diop and Diouf, Notes sur la reconversion. Coulon, Le marabout et le prince; Diop and Diouf, Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf. Serign Saliou Mbacke died on December 28, 2007. From the announcement of his death, Abdoulaye Wade was the first one to go to Touba to publicly announce his allegiance to the new Khalife Serign Al-Hajj Bara Mbacke. Speech by Abdou Diouf at the opening of an international colloquium on Muslim youth, February 1989, quoted in an internal text of the Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat. Lewis, Le langage politique de l’Islam, 13.

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29. The term Islamist includes various actors within political Islamic movements appearing after 1960, who are inspired by Hassan al-Banna (1906–1949) and Abu Ala Mawdudi (1903–1979) and struggle both against regimes in place in the Arab Muslim world and against the Western model of society. 30. Étienne, L’Islamisme radical, 23. 31. Kane and Villalon, “Entre confrérisme, réformisme et Islamisme.” 32. Moustapha Sy used this term in “a speech introducing an international colloquium on Muslim youth,” November 8, 1988. “Discours introductif sur le colloque international consacré à la jeunesse musulmane,” a document internal to the movement, p. 3. 33. They use several terms that they claim derive from one or another of these authors, but they never identify the original text or explain its meaning. It is thus impossible to know whether the term is really taken from the Western author’s work. 34. Otayek, Le radicalisme Islamique. 35. Gomez-Perez, Une histoire des associations Sénégalaises. 36. Because the Tijaniyya is already international, owing to its origins in the Maghreb, the Mustarshidin do not need an international proselytism, whereas the Senegalese Muridiyya needs to spread outside its borders. 37. Beginning in the 1990s, Donald Cruise O’Brien (“Le contrat social Sénégalais à l’épreuve,” 18) relativized the follow-up of the political ndiggels by the faithful, in particular the Murids, who portray themselves as entirely devoted to their guide.

Bibl io gr aphy Copans, Jean, Les marabouts de l’arachide. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988. Coulon, Christian, Le marabout et le prince: Islam et pouvoir au Sénégal. Paris: Pedone, 1981. Cruise O’Brien, Donald B. “Le contrat social Sénégalais à l’épreuve.” Politique Africaine 45 (1992): 9–20. Diop, Momar Coumba, and Diouf, Mamadou. Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf. Paris: Karthala, 1990. ———. Notes sur la reconversion des marabouts dans l’économie urbaine. Année Africaine, 1992– 1993, 323–32. Bordeaux: CEAN-CREPAO, 1993. Diop, Momar Coumba, Diouf Mamadou, and Diaw Aminata. “Le baobab a été déraciné: L’alternance au Sénégal.” Politique Africaine 78 (2000): 157–79. Étienne, Bruno, L’Islamisme radical. Paris: Hachette, 1987. Gaborieau, Marc, “Les modes d’organisation.” In Les voies d’Allah: Les ordres mystiques dans le monde musulman des origines à aujourd’hui, edited by A. Popovic and G. Veinstein, 205–12. Paris: Fayard, 1996. Gomez-Perez, Muriel, Une histoire des associations Sénégalaises (Saint-Louis, Dakar, Thiès): Itinéraire, stratégies et prises de parole (1930–1993). PhD diss., Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, 1997. Hesseling, Gerti, Histoire politique du Sénégal: Institutions, droit et société. Paris: Karthala, 1985. Kane, Ousmane, and Villalon Leonardo, “Entre confrérisme, réformisme et Islamisme: Les Mustarshidin du Sénégal.” Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara 9 (1995): 119–201. ———. “Senegal: The Crisis of Democracy and the Emergence of an Islamic Opposition.” In The African State at a Critical Juncture Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration, edited by L. Villalon and P. A. Huxtable, 143–66. London: Lynne Rienner, 1998. Lewis, Bernard, Le langage politique de l’Islam. Paris: Gallimard, 1988. Mbow, Penda, “Succession: Quel avenir pour la confrérie?” L’autre Afrique (September 1997): 11. Otayek, René, ed. Le radicalisme Islamique au sud du Sahara: Da’wa, arabisation et critique de l’Occident. Paris: Karthala, 1993. Roy, Olivier, Généalogie de l’Islamisme. Paris: Hachette, 1995.

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Samson, Fabienne, Les marabouts de l’Islam politique: Le Dahiratoul Moustarchidina Wal Moustarchidaty, un mouvement néo-confrérique Sénégalais. Paris: Karthala, 2005. Villalon Leonardo, Islamic society and state power in Senegal, disciples and citizens in Fatick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “The Moustarchidine of Senegal: The Family Politics of a Contemporary Tidjan movement.” Presentation at the workshop Tidjaniyya Traditions and Societies in West Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Urbana, Illinois, April, 1–5, 1996.

Index

Abduh, Mohammad, 98 Abou Ubaydata mosque (Unité 26), 61, 65 accommodation, 3, 5–6, 8, 37, 76–77, 80, 82–83, 87n13, 91, 99, 240, 245, 248 Afghani, Jamal Al-Din Al-, 119 African Islam, 1–2, 132n3, 140, 156, 157n8, 190–91; Islam in Africa vs., 6, 114 Africanization of Islam, Islamization of Africa vs., 3, 91–92, 133n28 Afrique Nouvelle (newspaper), 119 Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF), 29, 42n42, 44n66 Ahmadinejad, President, 117, 134n44 Al-Azhar University (Cairo), 32, 119 Al-Bakri, 40n5, 41n24, 86n13 alcohol and tobacco, 8, 53, 96, 101, 263 Al-Falah mosque (Dakar), 61 Algeria, 118, 134n63, 214 Al-Ghazali, 98–100 Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Mosque (Dakar), 127–28, 128–29 Ali, Imam, 116, 126–27, 135n86 Alidou, Ousseina, 228n1 Almada, André Alvares d’, 40n12 Almoravid movement, 22, 40n5, 77, 132n17 alms seeking, 25, 34–35, 37–38 Al-Naqar, Umar, 40n5 Al-Sadi, 22 Alvares, André, 172 Aly Yacine (PSLF) Centre Islamique de Recherche et d’Information, 114, 121– 23, 122, 135n73. See also Yacine, Ali Al-Zahra school, 127 Ames, David, 195 Anas, Malik ibn, 100 Anderson, Jon W., 130 Ansar Mohammad association, 123–24 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 85–86n11 Arabic-French schools (écoles franco-arabes), 123, 240 Arabic language and education (écoles Arabes), 4, 28, 32–35, 37–39, 45n85,

111, 113–14, 116, 118–21, 123, 130, 132n4, 162n157, 214, 239–40, 267; lack of, in The Gambia, 142, 144, 152, 156 Arabisantes (female scholars), 215 Arabisants, 65, 69n34 Arab Muslim world, 2, 7, 11, 15n18, 61–62, 79, 156, 215, 258–59, 265, 268. See also specific countries and regions Arberry, A. J., 87n46 architecture, 9, 63–65 Archives Nationales de France Section d’Outer-Mer (ANFOM), 44n67 aristocracy, 4, 75, 77–78, 86n15, 91, 93 Asad, Talal, 98, 112–13, 132nn Ashura, 121 Ashura conference, 124, 125, 135n78 assimilation, 6 Association des Elèves et Etudiants Musulmans du Sénégal (AEEMS), 215, 218–19, 223, 226 Association des Etudiants Musulmans de l’Université de Dakar (AEMUD), 215, 217–21, 224, 226 Association des Femmes de la Cité de Ngalèle, 57–58 Association des Jeunes Mourides, 244 Association Fatima Zahra, 123 associationist Islam, 215–16, 240–45, 249n24 Association Musulmane des Etudiants Africains (AMEA), 32, 44n64 Association Pour le Développement Humain Durable, 123 Association Rabi Sarr, 215–16 Association Thiaroye, 216–17, 219 Augis, Erin J., 6–8, 12, 133n21, 156, 159n45, 211–33 authenticity, 6, 111–13, 115, 117, 121–28, 130–31, 240 authority, 2, 7, 11–13, 16–17, 25–27, 32, 36, 53, 55, 75, 83, 98, 100, 113–15,

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authority (continued) 117, 119, 123, 126, 130, 141, 144, 153, 155–56, 170, 213, 217, 220, 226, 243–45, 250n49, 251n65, 264; gender and religious, 189–210 Ba, Maba Jaaxu, 42n39. See also Jaaxu, Maba; Maba Ba, Sheikh Amadou, 42n39 Babou, Cheikh Anta Mbacké, 2, 41n22, 43n47, 75, 190, 250n40 Badokore, Chief of Jududu, 176 Bahrain, 212 Bainunk, 3, 8–9, 170–72, 175–82 Balant society, 170–72, 182 Balla, Serign Modou Awa, 71–72 Bamba, Amadou. See Mbacke, Amadou Bamba Bambara, 58, 94 Bandia, 93–95, 101–5 Bangladesh, 140 Banna, Hassan al-, 271n29 baptisms, 8 Bara, Mohammad al-Amin (Serign Mouhamadou Lamine), 252 baraka (blessing or grace), 84, 176, 189, 193, 198 Barreira, Beltesar, 23 Barro (Barroba), Fodey, 178 Barro-Gassama family, 180 Barrokunda kabila, 179 Barry, Boubacar, 42n29, 86n15 Barth, Frederick, 93 Baudelaire, Charles, 75, 84 Bawol kingdom, 29, 74, 74, 86n15, 94, 171 Baye, Mame Madio, 238 Baye Fall movement, 85, 239 Bayo clan, 177 Béchard, Paul, 71–72 Berbers, 30, 41n22, 108n38, 132n17 Biaya family, 145, 177 Bichgango kingdom, 170 bida (bid’a, un-Islamic innovations), 65, 111, 153, 241–42 Bilal Mosque (Thiès), 61 birth control, 12, 222 birth rituals, 12, 191, 194–95 Bocandé, Bertrand, 181 body, 11, 142, 154–55, 162n141, 192, 196, 199–200 Boilat, Abbe, 94 Boone, Catherine, 44n61 Booth, Wayne C., 152 Bop, Codou, 193 “born-again Islam,” 147–48

Bouche, Denise, 43n58, 44n69 Boulègue, Jean, 40n12, 86n15 Bousso, Mame Diarra, 193–94 Bousso, Sokhna Gedde, 194 Bowen, John R., 161n124 Brasher, Brenda E., 161n110 Brenner, Louis, 23, 28, 44n68, 102, 132n4, 241 Brett, Michael, 132n17 bride-price, 153 Brigade de la Fraternité du Bon Musulman (BFM, or FM), 214, 249nn British colonial rule, 140–42 Brooks, George, 175 Brue, André, 173 Buggenhagen, Beth, 2, 11–12, 189–210 Bureau des Femmes (BEF, Women’s Bureau of MMUD), 260 Burkina Faso, 211 Ca Da Mosta, Alvise de, 23 Cafard libéré, Le (periodical), 239 Caliphate, 97–98 Cantone, Cleo, 9, 51–69 Cappelle, Jean, 44n69 Casamance, 3, 8–9, 120–21, 125, 127, 158n30, 169–88, 238 cash crops, 74, 83, 84, 92, 237 cash offerings, 197–98, 200 castes (ñeeño), 21, 23–25, 36, 39–40n3, 41n22, 79–80, 92–93, 190, 201 Catholic Church, 119 cement, 60–61, 67–68 Center Bilal mosque (Thiès), 65–66 Centre International du Commerce Extérieur du Sénégal, 216 Chad, 211 Chambonneau, Louis M. de, 27, 42n29 Charles, Eunice A., 41n22 Cheikh Anta Diop University (Dakar), 117 Christianity, 8, 32, 64, 67, 97, 104, 112, 120, 131, 141, 146, 147, 158n22, 161n110, 162n157, 213 Christianization, 97 Ciaw, Yagup, 105–6 Cisse, Dong, 108n24 Cisse, Ibrahima, 93, 105–6, 107n6 Cissé, Imam Abdoullah, 58–59, 66 Cisse, Mbaye Dali, 93, 102, 106, 107n8 Cisse, Moussa (Ndick), 105 citizen mobilization, 257, 263–65, 269 citizenship rights, 5, 15n13 civic community, 9, 15n15 civilizing mission, 10, 72 civil society, 100, 264

I n d ex clerical lineages and communities, 4, 9–10, 22–29, 32–34, 36, 41n24 cloth and clothing, 8–9, 204n72; exchanges of, 12, 195–96, 199–201, 203n30, 204n75; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 153–54, 162nn; veiling and, 200–201, 214, 216–21 Code de la Famille au Sénégal (Family Code), 196–97, 240, 247, 248–49n19 Colin, Roland, 35, 44n81 Colvin, Lucie G., 40–42nn, 86n15 Com7 (radio station), 239 Comité Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Sénégal (CIRCOFS), 197, 226–27, 248–49n19 Comité Permanent pour l’Edification du Complexe Islamique de la grande Mosqué de Soprim et environs (COPEMS), 62 Commision pour l’organisation de la mosquée, 67 communitas, 115, 119–20, 131, 134n68 Compagnie du Sénégal, 173 consolidation phase, 9, 170, 180–81 consumerism, 6, 11, 14 conversion, 3–4, 8; from one aspect of Islam to another, 7–8, 131–32n1, 146–48; Horton-Fisher debate and, 8, 92, 95–97, 169–70, 180, 182n3; marriage and, in precolonial Casamance, 169–88; mosques and, 67; Sereer Safen and, 91–95, 102–5; Shi’a and, 6–7, 11, 111–35, 156, 132nn; Sunnite women and, 214–20; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 139–66 Cook, David, 98 cosaan (tradition), 92–97, 104, 195, 199 cotton, 8, 170, 172 Coulon, Christian, 193–94, 198, 204n49, 249n23 Creevey, Lucy, 194, 203n35 crossovers, 239–40, 248n10 Cruise O’Brien, Donal, 2, 43n40, 85n4, 115, 189–95, 202–3nn, 249n23, 271n37 Curtin, Phillip, 41n24, 172 daara. See Quran schools Dabo-Seydi family, 180 Daffey, Bahumba, 173–75 Dahira des Etudiants Mourides de Dakar (DEM), 244 Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarshidat (DMM), 239–40, 243–44, 257–71 Dakar, 5, 28, 34, 127, 197–98, 237–39, 241, 258–59, 261; Great Mosque, 55–57, 56, 62, 217; mosques in, 52, 55–57,

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61–62; Shi’a Muslims in, 115–17, 120–21, 124–25; Sunnites in, 6–7, 12, 211, 214–33; Tabligh Jama’at mosque in, 142 Dammel, king of Kajoor, 23 Damosto, Alvise, 172 Danfa, Yeri, 176 Daoud, Abu, 216 Daramane, Mali, 170, 173 Darboe, Momodou, 158n28 Darou Mousty, 2–3, 10, 71–85, 73–74; Murid mosque in, 72, 73 Derwiche, Al-Hajj Ibrahim, 127–28 Destaing, E., 43n54 development, 33, 120, 241–42, 245, 248n2. See also modernization Dia, Mamadou, 44n81, 241, 245, 251n60 Diagne, Abdulkadir, 249n29 Diagne, Atou, 244 Diakhaté, Imam Boubacar, 57–58 Diakhe, Imam Aboubacar, 216 Diallo, Imam, 58 diaspora, 12, 15n14, 212, 227, 238, 244, 250n47, 252n72, 267–68. See also migration Diba, Matiaku, 178, 179 Dieng, Marietou, 250n40 Dieng, Tanor, 252n71 Din, Nasir Al-, 26–27, 42n29 Din, Sharaf Al-, 119 Diop, A. M., 157n7 Diop, Ndey Khady, 66, 68, 117 Diouf, Abdou, 13, 35, 113, 117, 237–38, 240, 243–46, 251–52n71, 262–65, 269, 270n15 Diouf, Jean-Léopold, 203n24 Diouf, Khalifa, 244, 250n53, 262 Diouf, Mamadou, 1–18, 117 disciple-sheikh relationship, 4, 12, 190–98 discursive tradition, 98, 99, 111–38 divination ceremonies, 95, 102–4 divine melody, 267–68, 270n17 diviners, 101–7 divorce, 197 Dobour village, 94–95, 103 domes, 51, 62, 64–65, 72 Dramé, Aly, 3, 8–9, 12, 169–88 Dramey, Al-Hajj Manding, 178, 183n26 Dramey, Fodey Almamy, 174 Dramey, Fodey Heraba, 170, 172–81, 183n26 Dramey, Harunaba, 176 Dramey, Muso, 178 Dramey, Na, 178 Dramey, Sanaba, 176–77

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dress. See cloth and clothing; fashion droughts: of 1913–14, 95, 105; of 1960s and 1970s, 34; Sahel, 237, 245 drug abuse, 242, 263 Dukureh, Karammoko, 142–43 échange de services (exchange of services), 238–40, 245–47, 249n23 Ecole Al-Rasul Al-Islamiyyatu As-Sahihatu (Zinguinchor), 125 economic problems, 144, 238, 245, 263 education, 4, 6–10, 22–39, 72, 113–15, 120, 130–31, 142, 144, 152, 159n49, 179–81, 192, 214–15, 221, 241–42, 264 Egypt, 32–33, 119, 157n4, 215 Eickelman, Dale F., 111, 113 elections (Senegal): of 1988, 245, 252n71; of 1993, 243, 270nn; of 1998, 252n71; of 2000, 13, 238, 244–47, 251–52nn, 257, 259, 262, 268–69; of 2001, 246–47, 251–52n71; of 2007, 13, 252n71, 259, 262, 268–69 elections (The Gambia): of 2006, 144 electricity, 192, 237 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 51 English language, 4, 139, 142, 144, 152, 156 Ernst, Carl, 87n46 esoteric episteme, 241, 249n30 essentialist stereotypes, 31, 156 eternal, Murid sense of, 84–85 ethnicity, 21, 41n15, 51, 79, 120, 143, 160nn, 215; ethnic boundary and, 93, 95, 107nn; ethnic identity and, 3–4, 8–9, 30, 102, 194; migration, marriage and, in precolonial Casamance, 169–88 Europe, 27–28, 71, 75, 142, 220, 267 exceptionalism, 189–90 Faidherbe, Louis, 27 Faisal, Sheikh el-, 158n32 family, 150, 152–56, 220, 238 family ceremonies, 11, 12, 196–201, 205nn family code or law, 12, 197, 212, 226–27. See also Code de la Famille au Sénégal famine, 83, 94, 106 Fanney, Chief Bambara, 176 farming, 83, 92, 94–95, 125, 126, 172, 179, 193, 194, 245 fashion, 4, 11, 14, 196, 239–40. See also cloth and clothing Faty, Fina Fenda, 175 Faye, Al-Hajj Abdou, 93, 103, 107n5 Fédération des Associations Islamiques du Sénégal (FAIS), 241–43, 249n34

Fédération des élèves et étudiants du disane (FEED), 260 Fernandes, Valentin, 172 Fire Service (Gambian), 144 Fisher, Humphrey, 8–9, 77, 86n13, 94–97, 107nn, 146–47, 169–70, 180, 182n3 F.I.T.N.A. (Fight in the Name of Allah, band), 239 Foire Afro-Arabe, 216 food; women and gifts of, 191–92, 197–200 Foucault, Michel, 10–11, 75–76 Four Communes (Quatre Communes), 5, 29, 240, 249n20 France, 123, 131, 145, 215, 217, 266 Franks, Myfwany, 213 Frap party, 134n54 Fraternité Musulmane. See Brigade de la Fraternité Musulmane freeborn lineages (géer), 21, 23, 24, 79 French colonialism, 2–7, 9–10, 22, 27–33, 36–39, 40n4, 42–44nn, 55, 99–101, 116, 171, 176, 181–82, 190–91, 219–21, 227, 245; Islam noir and, 91–94; Murids and, 71–84, 87n46, 101; Muslim civil rights and, 240–41 French education (écoles française), 27–28, 31–33, 36–37, 39, 43nn, 44n69, 83–84, 121 French explorers, 181 French Guinea, 182n1 French language, 4, 28, 38–39, 83–84, 113, 121, 123, 130, 142, 239–40, 267 French National Assembly, 118 French political associations, 240–41 French protectorate of Cayor (Kajoor), 74 French West Africa, 71–72 Front pour l’Alternance (FAL), 269 Fula people, 160n70, 182n1, 185n63 Functionary Islam, 249n34 fundamentalists, 99, 108n29, 156; conversion narratives, 152; women, 151, 161n110. See also Islamists funerals, 3, 8, 12, 12, 96, 105, 242; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 153; women and, 191, 194–95 Futa Aerelawa (place), 176 Futa Jalon, state building in, 5 Futa Toro, 5, 23, 26, 42n37, 45n92; Mosque of Guede in, 52; mosques in, 52, 60–61, 65 Futa villages, Shi’a converts and, 120, 124 Gabon, 123 Gaborieau, Marc, 143 Galvan, Dennis G., 101

I n d ex Gambia, The, 4, 7, 133n21, 139–66, 178, 182, 211 Gambian Students Union (GAMSU), 144, 159n48 Gamble, David, 195 Gaston Berger University, 58–59 gender and gender roles, 3, 6, 8–9, 12, 153, 156, 213; effect of discourse on, and mosques, 52, 57–60; religious authority and global circuits of Muridiyya and, 189–210. See also women generational change, 219–21, 250nn Ghana, 22, 41n24, 86n13 Ghita, Kashif Al-, 119 gift giving, 11–12, 176, 191–201, 225 global Islam, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 115, 131, 155–56, 215, 217, 219, 222, 227, 240; Murid women and, 191–92, 196–201, 203n25; new Sufi movements and, 258–59, 265–68 globalization, 2, 6, 7, 10–11, 13–14, 75, 131, 198, 237–38 Glover, John, 2–3, 9–12, 71–88 Gning, Amadou, 101 Gomez-Perez, Muriel, 45n85, 249n29 Goody, Jack, 102, 171 Gorée, 5, 28 Graeber, David, 200 Guediawaye, 114, 121 Gueye, Cheikh, 190, 197, 203n29, 250n44, 251n65 Gueye, Sega, 31 Guinabour village, 95, 105 Guinea-Bissau, 170, 178, 181, 182n1 hadith, 98, 100, 112, 128, 153–54, 162n136 Hann, Amadou Ndiaye, 240 Harakat al-Falah (HF), 34–35, 45n92, 118, 214, 215, 242, 250n40 Harrison, Christopher, 42n42, 43nn, 108n36 Hasan, Mawlana In’amul, 142 Hassan II, King of Morocco, 55 Hastings, Adrian, 130 Hausa people, 96 Hawthorne, Walter, 171 Hawza Al-Rasul Al-Akram, 117 healer-diviners, 102–3 health care, 8, 38, 192–93 Heath, Deborah, 199 Hecquard, Hyacinthe, 181 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, 147 Hindu, 98, 141, 158n22 Hirschkind, Charles, 157n4

277

Hirschmann, Nancy, 212–13 historical narratives, 3, 30; marriage and Islamization as, 169–88; Murid, vs. French, 10–11, 71–72, 75–76 Hizb al-Tarqiyya (HT), 203, 243–44, 250n52, 251n56 Hizboulahi party of Senegal, 118 Hobsbawm, Eric, 112 Hodgson, Marshall, 85n8 Holod, Renata, 55 Horton, Robin, 8, 95–97, 146, 169–70 Hunter, Charles Thomas, 172 Hussein, Imam (son of Ali), 116, 121, 125–26, 126, 135n82 Hussein, Saddam, 119 Ibadu mosques, 51, 57, 61–62, 64–68 Ibadu Rahman movement, 133n21. See also Jama’at Ibadu Rahman Ibn Battuta, 22–23 identitarian aesthetics, 7, 219, 221, 227 identity, 9, 11, 85–86n11; Islamist women and, 213, 217–19; mosques and, 52, 57–60; Murid order and, 71, 79–80; Muslim, 4, 31–32, 36–39, 141; new Sufi movements and, 258–61, 266; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 145 ideology, mosques and, 52, 61–67 Ihsan Mosque (Saint-Louis), 58–60, 59, 65, 67 Ilyas, Mawlana Mohammad, 140–42 Imagined Communities, 130 immigration, 11, 14, 80, 116, 125, 206. See also migration impurity, women and, 58–59, 193 inculturation, 8, 92, 97, 106–7 India, 98, 123, 141, 142, 145 Info Sept (newspaper), 216 initiation (njebbel), 3, 8, 96, 116, 123; women and, 191–94, 202n4 Intellectualist Theory, 169 International Human Rights discourses, 36–37 Internet, 113, 150, 215, 239 Iran, 6, 111, 115–21, 123–26, 130, 212; Revolution of 1979, 6, 112–13, 115–20, 215, 268 Iranian embassy, 113, 117 Iran-Iraq war, 119 Iraq, 119, 131, 134n44, 215 Islamic education, 10, 13, 28–31, 34, 36, 123, 242, 250n42, 260–61. See also Quran schools Islamic state, 99–100, 118, 259, 265–66 Islamic Institute of Dakar (IID), 35, 120

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Islamic law, 25, 27, 98, 119, 131. See also shari’a Islamic Students Association (University of The Gambia), 145 Islamic Summit (Dakar, 2008), 124 Islamist movement, 51, 85, 97–98, 117–20, 213, 228n1, 271n29; MMUD and DMM and, 265–68; women and, 212–33 Islamization, 3, 40nn, 77, 140, 177–81, 267–68 Islamization model, 107n22 Islamization of Africa, 3, 91–92, 133n28 Islam Noir, 14, 30, 33, 43n53, 87n46, 91–92, 97, 108n38, 132n3 Ivory Coast, 55, 211 Jabi, War, king of Takrur, 22, 40n5 Jaghanke (Jakhanke) tradition, 23, 41n21, 86n16, 172 Jagha (old Ghana), 22–23 Jagra kingdom, 170 Jakumba, Nemuna, 175 Jama’at Ahl Al-Beit (Shi’a Islamic youth association), 123 Jama’at Ibadu Rahman (JIR), 34–35, 52, 57, 65, 113, 118, 156, 214–16, 224, 226, 229n23, 238, 242, 249nn, 250n40. See also Ibadu Rahman movement Jammeh, Yahya, 142, 144, 158n28, 160n93 Janson, Marloes, 6–8, 133n21, 139–66 Jaxu, Maba, 86n24. See also Ba, Jaaxu Maba; Maba Jemme, Koli, 178 Jenne (Mali), Great Mosque of, 58, 60 jihad, 10, 26–28, 42nn, 43n43, 86n15; armed, 5, 77–79, 84, 91–92, 140, 171–72, 174, 263; Futa Toro and, 60; greater or mystical, 8, 77–78, 84, 92, 97–101, 106–7, 108n34, 152; Maba, 8, 97, 101; Pakao, 171 Jilani, Abd al-Qadr al-, 173 Jola society, 170–72, 182n1 Jolof empire, 27, 74, 79, 93, 132n17 Joola ferry catastrophe (2002), 238 journée de solidarité avec les talibés, 36 Judubu community, 178, 180 Jula migrants, 172 Ka, Djibo, 251n71 Ka, Sheikh Musa, 78, 86 Ka, Thierno, 41n14 Kaba, Lasiné, 44nn, 133n20 Kabari, Muhammad al-, 23

kabila (family groups), 179, 185n76 Kajoor, kingdom of, 74, 86n15, 100 Kajoor province, 23 Kala, Majaxate, 100 Kamara, As, 78, 86n20 Kamara, Karamo, 176 Kamara, Muusa, 42n37 Kamara, Ndura, 176 Kane, Cheikh Hamidou, 31–32, 36, 42n33 Kane, Ousmane, 3 Kanfoderi kabila, 179 Kanté, Imam, 62 Kantey, Sumanguru, king of Sooso, 175 Kantiaku kabila, 179 Kara, Modou, 251n65 Karantaba settlement, 173–79, 181, 185n76 Kara security, 261, 263 Karbala, battle of, 116, 128, 135n82 Kayes, Mali, 173 Keddie, Nikki R., 117, 120, 151 Kepel, Gilles, 117, 120 Khaldun, Ibn, 21, 39 Khalifal authority, 190, 196, 202 Khamenei, Ayatollah, 121–23, 122 Khan, Hassan Uddin, 55 Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin, 158n20 Khatani, Ahmed, 139–40, 142, 156, 157n4 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 112–13, 117–21, 122 Kiim Koox (Safen God of heavens, rain), 96, 104–6 kinship, 196, 200, 203n30 Kirene village, 93–95, 101–4, 106 Klein, Martin, 41n21, 43n45, 86n15 Kunta clan, 26, 29, 183n29 Kutatey clan, 177 Kuyatey, Jeli Mori Keba, 185n65 Lamin, Mamadou, 42n39 land grants, 9, 101, 179–80, 191, 196 Lari, Ayatollah Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi, 121, 135n75 Laye, Insa, 133n37 Laye, Limamou, 133n37 Layen order, 133n37 Lebanese community, 6, 115–17, 120, 130, 134n43, 135n88 Lebanese Islamic Institute, 117 Lebanon, 123, 126, 131; civil war (1975– 90), 117, 119; Senegalese schools and institutes and, 120–21, 123, 127–28 Leemu clan, 95, 102, 105–6 Leichtman, Mara A., 1–18, 111–38, 156 Levtzion, Nehemia, 40n7, 107n22, 133n28, 145, 171–72, 175 liberalism, 267

I n d ex liberation theology, 213 Libya, 270n11 life-cycle rituals, 12, 153, 194–96, 198–201, 203n30 Life of the Prophet, The (TV series), 215 literacy, 38, 102, 111, 113, 123, 130 Liwa Ta’akhi al-Muslim al-Salih, 241 Lo, Sidi Khaly, 249n34 Lofland, John, 146 Loimeier, Roman, 12–13, 44n71, 45n91, 237–56 love, 12, 212, 214, 222–27 Maba (jihad leader), 91, 101. See also Ba, Maba Jaaxu; Jaxu, Maba madrasa (madaris, religious schools), 120, 132n4, 141 Madrasat Imam Al-Baqr (Arabic-French school), 123 magal (shrine pilgrimage), 197, 244. See also pilgrimage Magassouba, Moriba, 118 Maghreb, 32–33, 64, 271n36 Mahmood, Saba, 140, 162n141, 213, 217 Malal, King (Musulmani), 175 Mali, 33, 38, 41n24, 44n68, 58, 112, 132n4, 133n21, 150, 157n11, 170, 176, 211; Empire of, 22, 40n3, 170, 172, 174; mosques in, 9, 52, 60, 68 Malik, Imam, 58 Maliki, 55, 123, 131, 142 Mamdani, Mahmood, 108n29 Mame Diarra Bousso, 243, 250n48 Mande language, 22 Mandingo language, 21, 170, 181–82 Mandinka Muslims, 3, 8, 143, 153, 170–82, 185n71 Manjago ethnic group, 160n71 Mankawali, chief, 176 Mansaly family, 177 marabouts (religious leaders), 2, 4, 9–10, 25–26, 28–36, 77, 91, 108n38, 130; Shi’a and, 113–18, 126; state and, 13, 113, 241–47; Sunnite movement and, 214, 220; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 142–43, 153, 156, 158n17; as term, 41n16, 133n38 marabouts-petit-fils, 243–44, 250n44 Marega, Khalil, 250n40 marriage, 3–4, 8–9, 24, 153; Murid women and, 191, 194–95, 197–98, 202n8; precolonial middle Casamance and, 169–88; Sunnite women and, 12, 212, 214, 222–27 Martin, Bradford G., 42n33

279

Marty, Paul, 1–2, 30–31, 43n52, 57, 60, 65–66, 85n4, 87n46, 99, 190, 193 Marxism, 267 Massar, Ibrahima Joob, 79 Masud, Muhammad Khalid, 159n62 Matin (radio station), 239 Matlab al-Fawzayni (MF), 243, 250n47 matrilineal clans, 3, 8, 92–93, 95–96, 102–6, 170 Mauritania, 26, 30, 42n29, 43nn, 55, 101, 118, 145, 217 Mawdudi, Abu Ala, 271n29 Mbacke, Abdou Khader, 245. See also Mbacké Mbacke, Abdou Lahat, 203nn, 244–45, 247 Mbacke, Al-Hajj Bara, 270n26 Mbacke, Amadou Bamba, 2–3, 29, 34, 53, 57, 72, 76–84, 86nn, 92, 108n45, 115, 189, 193, 197, 201, 239, 244–45, 250n47, 259–60, 267, 269–70n7; female descendants of, 193–94, 202n4; jihad and, 91, 99–101; tomb of, 53 Mbacké, Bachir, 100, 108n45. See also Mbacke Mbacke, Bassirou, 72 Mbacke, Falilou, 72 Mbacké, Khadim, 44n73, 245 Mbacke, Modou Kara, 13, 245, 257, 259–70 Mbacke, Mohammad al-Amin Bara, 247 Mbacke, Moustapha Saliou, 244, 251n56 Mbacke, Saliou, 244–45, 247, 264, 270n26 Mbacke, Sheikh Ibrahima Fary (Mame Thierno Birahim), 2–3, 10, 71–72, 76, 78–85, 86nn, 259–60 Mbacke, Sokhna Mai, 194 Mbacke Mbacke lineage, 201 Mbacke village, 191 Mbaye, Al Hajj Rawane, 217 Mbaye, Ravane, 35 Mbengue, Babacar, 44n72 Mbok talibe, 263–64 Mbow, Penda, 193 McIntosh, Roderick, 41n24 Mecca, 103, 123, 140, 142 médersa of Saint-Louis, 28 media, 6, 113, 119, 127, 130, 156, 215, 238–40, 264 Medina, 9, 51, 53, 184n35; mosque, 51, 123 Metcalf, Barbara D., 161n105 Middle East, 65–66, 111, 125, 142, 216–17 migration, 8, 11, 93, 95, 105, 116–17, 143, 145, 152, 154, 191, 197–98, 212, 238, 267; marriage and Islam and, in precolonial middle Casamance, 169–88. See also immigration

280

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minarets, 51–53, 61–62, 64–65, 69n33, 72, 123 missionary work, 141–43, 145, 150, 172 Mitterand, François, 118 mixing stage, 94, 96–97, 169–70, 180–81 modernist orthodoxies, 97–100 modernity, 2, 7, 10–11, 13–14, 28, 36–37, 64, 71–72, 75–77, 82–85, 108n29, 131, 155–56, 237–38, 242–43, 258, 266–67 modernization, 117, 241–42 Mohammad (prophet), 15n18, 53, 58, 78, 80–81, 84, 97, 100, 116, 127, 135nn, 141, 148, 214, 261; wives of, 225 monarchy, 92–93, 95, 106, 170, 182. See also royal lineages Monod, Theodore, 40n12 morality, 4, 140, 146, 153, 155, 242, 263 Moreau, René Luc, 118 Morocco, 55, 66, 79, 101, 115, 132n17, 160n88, 173, 215 Mosquée à Rond Point (Dakar), 215, 221 Mosquée de l’Université de Dakar (MUD), 55–57, 61–65, 67 Mosquée Ihsan (Saint-Louis), 58–59, 59 Mosquée Ngalèle (Saint Louis), 57–58 Mosque Impôts et Domaines (Dakar), 62–63, 65 Mosque of Guede (Futa Toro), 52 Mosque of Omarian Tijans (Dakar), 57 Mosque of Soprim (Dakar), 55–57, 61–66 mosques, 72, 73, 116, 127–30, 128–29, 175, 181; design and role of, 9–11, 51–69; women and, 52, 57–60, 65–67 Mottin-Sylla, Marie-Helene, 205n77 Mouride (periodical), 239 mouridocentrisme, 246 Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu (MMUD), 243, 250n46, 251n65, 252n73, 257–71 Mozdahir International, 125 Murid order (Muridiyya), 2–3, 6, 10–11, 43nn, 78, 183n29, 250–52nn, 260; Darou Mousty and, 3, 10, 71–72, 80–82; diaspora of, 244, 252n72; education and, 11, 29; established, 2–3, 29, 79; Grand Mosque of, in Dakar, 55; hierarchy and, 189–90, 201; historical perspectives of, 11, 71–88; influence of, 237; MMUD and DMM and, 4, 7, 13, 257–71; modern movements within, 243–44; music and, 239; orthodoxy and, 99–101; reformists and, 114; Shi’a converts from, 120, 126–27, 130–31; size of, 115; state and, 242, 245–47; Touba as capital of, 53, 238;

women, religious authority and, 11–12, 189–210 music, 239, 267–68 Muslim Brothers, 259 Muslim scholars and traders, 5–6, 9, 98–100, 104, 170, 172–81 Muslim World League (MWL), 61 mystical powers, 92, 97, 102–4 Nakash, Yitzhak, 131n1 Nalia, Imam Elfadi, 58 naming ceremonies, 12, 153, 198–200 National Youth Policy Document, 159 Ndiaye, Dame, 250n47 Ndiaye, Imam, 62 Ndiaye, Mamadou, 35, 43n46, 44n73 Ndiaye, Pape Lamin, 39 Ndiegen, Mame Baro, 53–55 ndiggel (maraboutic order or instruction), 3, 12, 80, 82–83, 191, 202n17; politics and, 243, 245–46, 250n49, 251n65, 252n74, 262, 268–69, 271n37 Ndione, Imam Babacar, 101–5 Ndour, Youssou, 127, 239, 248n12 neoliberal reforms, 3, 11, 191, 196–97 neopagan survivals, 99 Neo-Sufi thesis, 42n33 neotraditionalist norms, 211 Neubert, Dieter, 249n24 Ngalèle, mosques of, 57–58, 64–66 Niamey area, 171 Niang, Babacar, 249n19 Niass, Ibrahim, 162 Niass, Moustapha, 238, 251–52n71 Niasse, Al-Hajj Ahmed Khalifa, 118 Niasse, Sidy Lamine, 117–19, 134nn Niezen, R. W., 131n1, 132n4 Niger, 211 Nigeria, 117, 123, 135n80, 162n138, 211 Njama area, 174, 176, 180, 184–85n58 Njangaan (film), 34–35 njebbel. See initiation non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 123, 192, 264 Nyang, Sulayman S., 158n28 objectification, 111, 113 O’Fahey, R. S., 42n33 Office for the Diffusion of Islamic Culture Abroad (Qom), 135n75 oil profits, 117 Organization of the Islamic Conference, 117, 119 Orientalists, 85, 97–99, 108nn, 132n3 originaires, 5

I n d ex orthodoxy, 2, 11, 91, 98–99, 113, 130–31; Sunnite women and, 211–33 orthopraxy, 112, 130, 142, 161n124 Ottoman empire, 29, 65–66, 99 Oxy-Jeunes (radio station), 239 Paccard, André, 55 paganism, 30, 41n22, 104 Pakao, holy book of, 173 Pakao al-kitabo, 180–81, 183n26 Pakao kingdom, 170, 179, 186n86; jihad, 171, 181–82, 183n26, 185n76 Pakistan, 140, 142, 145, 152 pan-Islamists, 33, 213, 219 parental authority, 219–21 Park, Mungo, 40n12 Parti de la Vérité pour le Développement (PVD), 13, 247, 252n72, 262, 268 Parti de l’Unité ed du Rassemblement (PUR), 13, 244, 247, 262, 268, 270n16 Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS), 134n54, 252n71, 252n81 Parti Socialiste (PS), 237, 238, 245–46, 251n70, 252n71, 262 patron-client ties, 25, 27, 34, 38, 75 peanut crop (groundnut), 74, 80, 83–84, 85n4, 116, 237–38, 245 pedagogical reform, 32, 35, 37 Peel, J. D. Y., 8, 97, 104 Pélissier, Paul, 202n8 Perry, Donna L., 45n86 Persian Gulf, 61–62, 66, 216, 217 Peters, R., 108n34 Piga, Adriana, 44n71, 45n85 pilgrimage, 11, 191, 194, 197, 241, 244 Piot, Charles, 75 Piscatori, James, 111, 113 Podor, mosque in, 61, 67–68 Point E mosque (Dakar), 69n36 Politicien, Le (periodical), 239 politics, 4; dialectics of religion and, 13, 237– 56; MMUD and DMM and, 261–65, 268–69; separation of, from religious authority, 99–100, 115; Tabligh Jama‘at, 144–45. See also elections polygamy, 12, 222–27, 259 Ponty, William, 30, 31 Porokane, pilgrimage to, 193, 197 Portuguese, 40n12 Portuguese language, 181 postcolonial period, 2, 9–10, 30, 33–36, 189–90, 227, 237–38, 241 Pouwels, Randall L., 133n28 power, 2, 5, 7–9, 14; Islamic, and British rule, 141–42; Muridiyya and gender

281

and, 189–210; Muslim migrants and religious vs. political, in Casamance, 169–72, 176, 179, 182; mystical and political, 92–105; religion and political, 25–39; secular, 78, 82; search for authentic Islam and, 130–31, 132n2; social, political and economic, 113–16; spiritual and temporal, and mosque, 53; Sunnite women, orthodoxy, and negotiation of, 211–33. See also authority prayer, 11, 97, 142, 154, 162n138, 191, 261 precolonial period, 2, 22–29, 65, 74–75, 79, 86n15, 169–88 pre-Islamic world, 104, 195, 204n54 prostituiton, 242, 263 Pular ethnic group, 21, 27, 41, 115 pure and purity, 1, 58–59, 96, 101, 146–47, 157n8, 160n74, 161nn, 193, 214, 221 pyramidal organization, 13, 260 qabd-sadl dispute, 162n138 Qadr order (Qadriyya), 29, 78–79, 115, 131, 173, 183n29; identity and, 26; Murid vs., 189; Shi’a and, 120, 127, 130 Quarantine, Mixing, and Reform paradigm, 3, 8–9, 92, 96–98, 170 quarantine stage, 24, 77, 94, 96, 170, 176, 178, 180 Quatre Communes. See Four Communes Quran, 3, 98, 112, 123; memorization of, 38, 102–3, 106–7; Shi’a study of, 126–28, 135n75; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 153 Quran schools (daara), 9–10, 22–39, 67, 115, 142, 158n17, 179–80; women and, 194, 215, 220 Rabbia (film), 215 radio, 127, 130, 239, 264 Radio Dunya, 127 Radtke, Bernd, 42n33 Rafsanjani, President, 117 Rahman, Abd al-, 173 rainmaking ceremonies, 92, 102, 104–6 Ramadan, 121, 128, 179, 191, 261 Ranger, Terence, 112 Rashid, Harun al-, 100 Reetz, Dietrich, 145 reformist Islam, 4, 6–7, 9, 51, 108n37, 140, 228n1, 249nn; DMM and MMUD and, 257–72; education and, 32–35, 130, 132n4, 133n20; growth of, 113–19, 238–48; Murid orders and, 2, 10, 71–72, 84; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 142, 145–47, 155–56

282

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reform stage, 8, 106–7, 170, 180 religiosity, “doctrinal” vs. “imagistic,” 156, 158n21, 162n154 reproduction rituals, 194–95 reproductive health, 212 Réveil Islamique, Le (journal), 241 Rida, Rashid, 98 ritual ceremonies: Bainunk and, 171; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 153, 162nn; women and, 191, 214. See also life-cycle rituals ritual purity (tahara), 193 Robertson, Pat, 108n29 Robinson, David, 3, 15n1, 41n22, 42–43nn, 75, 78, 133n28, 240 Rodney, Walter, 44n70 “Role of the Ahl Al-Beit Imams (PSLF) in the Preservation of Islam” (conference), 125 Rosander, Eva Evers, 6, 16n33, 114, 193–94, 203–4nn Ross, Eric, 53, 55 Rouse, Carolyn Moxley, 213, 222 Roy, Oliver, 147, 214 royal lineages (garmi), 21, 23–27, 41nn. See also monarchy Rufisque, 5, 28 rural society, 10, 26, 52, 194, 237 Saafi, 102–3 Saafi-Saafi language, 92–93 Sadr, Sayyid Mohammad Baqr Al-, 119 Safen, 3, 8, 92–97, 101, 103, 105–7, 107n1, 171, 182 Said, Edward, 87n46 Saint-Louis, 2, 5–6, 28, 120, 237; mosques in, 57–59, 64 Sakho, Fodey, 178 Sakhokunda kabila, 179 Salafism, 65, 67, 120–21, 133n20, 214 Sali, Momar Anta, 29 Saliou, Moustapha, 251n56, 252n80 Sall, Macadou, 83 Sall, Macky, 238 Sallah, Halifa, 144 Samb, Amar, 51–52 Samson, Fabienne, 6–8, 12–13, 257–72 San, Wahabbi mosque in, 58, 60 sanawo (cross-cousin marriage), 177–80, 185nn Sanhaja clerics, 23 Sanneh, Lamin, 40n7, 41n21, 156, 162n157, 171–72 Sanusiyya, demonization of, 42n42 Sarr, Fatou, 224 Sarr, Ndeye Faty, 226

Sarr, Ndiaye, 240 Saudi Arabia, 33, 44n66, 61–62, 67, 113, 118–19, 123, 142, 214–15, 217, 268, 270n13 Schmitz, Jean, 25 Schulz, Dorothea E., 133n21 Searing, James F., 3, 8, 43n45, 75, 86n24, 91–110, 171 Seck, Alioune, 67 Seck, Idrissa, 238, 252n71, 262, 269 Seck, Mohammad, 240 secret knowledge (mystical power), 8, 24, 97, 102–7 secular governance, 212, 214, 226, 242 secularism, 217, 220–21, 226–27, 259, 265–66 Seesemann, Rüdiger, 145 Séminaire sur l’enseignement du Coran au Sénégal, 35 Senghor, Leopold Sedar, 55, 117–18, 229n23, 237–38, 241–42, 245, 248n1, 263–64 September 11, 2001, attacks, 134n48, 156 Serahulis people, 143, 159n33 Sereer, 3, 8, 21–23, 91–110, 171, 182, 185n64 Serrekunda; Markaz mosque in, 143, 145, 148, 150, 152, 154, 156, 159nn; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 140, 143, 145, 148 Service Civil International (International Civil Service), 237 Service des Affaires Musulmanes, 30 Service d’Urbanisme (Thiès), 61 Setama, Fodey, 181 Set Setal campaign, 238–39, 248n12 sexuality, 4, 9, 224 Seydi, Burama, 176, 185n58 Seydi-Daffey family, 180 shadow state, 84 Shar bubba (Shurbubba) movement, 42nn shari’a (Islamic holy law), 77, 79–80, 99, 125, 135n80, 150, 174, 222, 226, 228n1, 266 Shi’a Islam, conversion of Sunni Senegalese to, 4, 6–7, 11, 111–35, 156 shrines, 95, 101–7, 171, 175, 244 Sierra Leone, 41n17 Siin, 23, 92–94, 101, 106 Siin-Sinn group, 93, 103 Sitokoto, Fodey, 173 Skinner, David E., 40n7 slaves (jaam) and slavery, 5, 21, 23–25, 27, 36, 38, 41–42nn, 43n45, 81, 78–79, 86n15, 91–94, 100, 171, 179, 190, 203n32; legal end of, 29

I n d ex Soares, Benjamin F., 160n87, 191, 195, 201 Socialist Party. See Parti Socialist social macrocosm and microcosm, 169 sokhna (female religious leaders), 198 Soleil, Le (newspaper), 119, 135n90, 237, 239 Soly, Fodey Musa, 176, 178–79, 185n73 Soly-Kontey family, 180 Solykunda kabila, 179 Songhay, 132n4 Soninke/Saraxolle societies, 21, 41n24 sopi coalition, 13, 238, 244, 246–47, 251–52n71 South Africa, 139, 142–43, 157n7 South Asia, 7, 140, 142–43, 155–56 Southeast Asia, 142 Sow, Boubacar, 61 Sow, Fatou, 191–93 Sow, Musa, 178 Sow, Oustaz Amadou, 45n92 Sow, Thierno, 190 Spain, 77, 132n17 spirits, 103 spirituality, 1–2, 9, 213, 217–19; conversion and, 151–52, 154–55 spiritual melodies, 267–68 spiritual topography, 55–57 Stark, Rodney, 146 state, 2, 35, 101, 192, 240–47, 257–72 stereotypes, 4, 30, 156 student demonstrations, 144, 159n48 Sudan, 22–24, 60, 135n80, 183n29, 212, 215 SUD FM (radio station), 239 Sud Hebdo (newspaper), 238, 239 Sud Quotidien (newspaper), 251n70 Sufism: adaptation of, 84–85; as antimodern other, 11, 85; bias of scholarship on Senegal and, 140; Casamance and, 120, 183n29; education and, 9–10, 28–29, 33–34, 39; force of cohesion and, 98; foundation of, in Senegal, 2, 5, 78; French colonial rule and, 28–31, 130–31; generational dynamics of, 250nn; influence of, in Senegal, 237– 38; Islamists and, 51, 116–17; jihad and, 26, 99–101; modernist orthodox and Orientalist attacks on, 85, 97–99; mosques of, 51, 72; new movements and associations and, 7, 11–13, 241–44, 257–72; orders vs. brotherhoods, 15n3; political stance of, 106; reformed, 42n33; reformists and, 9–10, 14, 238–43; Sereer and, 8, 91–110; Shi’a converts and, 6–7, 111–17, 120, 123, 128–29; social order and, 26, 28–29,

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31, 38; spirituality and, 6; state and, 240, 242, 244–48; Sunnites and, 7, 12, 146–47, 212, 214–16, 219; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 6–7, 140–43, 145–47, 152–54, 156, 158n17; Touba as city of, 57; UCM critique of, 241; women and, 193 Sundiata, Emperor of Mali, 170, 175 sunnah (prophetic traditions), 140, 142, 147, 153, 214 Sunni Islam, 12, 115; defined, 116; conversion of, to Shi’a, 111–35; founding of, in Senegal, 132n17; reformist, vs. Sufi, 113, 131, 146–47, 160n74; schools of law, 97–98 Sunni-Shi’a schism, 112, 116, 119, 135nn Sunnites; African Islamic history and, 112; defined, 6–7; women, 6, 11–12, 133n21, 211–33 sursaut national (national mobilization), 237–38 Sweet, James, 183n19 Sy, Ababacar, 259, 270n11 Sy, Abdoul Aziz, 55, 242, 244 Sy, Abubakar, 250n53 Sy, Ahmad Tidiane, 250n53, 259, 270n9 Sy, Babacar, 101, 102 Sy, Malick, 29, 91–92, 101–2, 106, 259, 269n7 Sy, Mame Thierno (brother of Moustapha Sy), 260 Sy, Mansour, 123, 244 Sy, Moustapha, 13, 239–40, 243–44, 257, 259–70 Sy, Tidiane, 190, 193, 243–44, 246 Sylla, M’Baye Gueye, 86n20 Sylla-Cissey family, 179 “symbolic capital,” 78 syncretism or mixing, 40n4, 96–97, 169. See also mixing stage “syntonic identity” path, 145 Tabligh Jama’at (TJ), 4, 6–7, 133n21, 139–66 tabligh (missionary work), 7, 140, 145, 151, 152 Tal, Umar, 26, 79, 101, 160n88 talibe (disciples), 2, 29, 31, 34, 36–39, 79–83, 113, 115–16, 130, 189, 260, 263–64 Talibés, Les (band), 239 Tamari, Tal, 40n3 Tarikh al-Sudan (chronicle), 22 tariqa (turuq), 2, 13, 26, 28–29; mosques, 9, 51, 55, 61–64, 67–68, 142; women’s contributions to, 191–201

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taxes, 83 Taylor, Charles, 78 technology, 11, 14, 72 Témoin, Le (periodical), 239 terrorism, 4, 117 textual knowledge, 112, 114, 123, 130, 152, 161n121 Thiaw, Al Hajja Binta, 215, 226 Thiès, 53, 94, 237, 238; new Bilal mosque, 61 Thiof (fashion journal), 239 Tijani, Ahmad al-, 160n88 Tijan order (Tijaniyya), 3, 10, 63, 134n63, 135n87, 183n29, 202n8; colonialism and, 101; education and, 29; Great Mosque of Dakar and, 55; identity and, 26; influence of, 237; internal divisions of, 245–46; jihad and, 91, 101; MMUD and DMM and, 4, 7, 13, 257–71; Morocco and, 55, 78–79; mosques of, and women, 59, 66; Murid order vs., 189, 271n36; radicalism and, 42n42; reformists and associations and, 114, 241, 243–44; Shi’a converts from, 120, 123, 125–27, 130–31; Sereer Safen and, 102, 104, 106; size of, 79, 115; state and, 242, 245–47; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 148; Tivaouane as spiritual center for, 29; youth movement of, 239 Timbuktu, 22, 173–74 Tivaouane, 29, 101–2, 257, 259; great mosque in, 55 Togo, 75 Tontines (credit associations), 123 torodbe revolt, 26 Torodo revolution, 42n37 Touba, 74, 76, 238, 244–46, 251n56, 252nn, 257, 261; Great Mosque of, 11, 53–55, 54, 57, 197; Murids abroad build at, 197–98, 203n25; women and, 191–94 Touré, Cheikh Mohammad, 34, 118, 134nn, 229n24, 241, 249nn Tourey, Yoro, 184n58 tourism, 238 trade, 8, 15n14, 25, 94, 140, 170, 172 tradition, 8, 36–37, 58–59, 64, 92–93, 96, 112 traditional African religion, 41n22; conversion to Islam from, 8, 30, 96, 169–70, 173–74, 182n3 transnational Islam, 3, 6, 9, 12, 115, 117, 130–31, 140, 211–33, 259 Traoré, M. J., 34–35 Triaud, Jean-Louis, 3, 40n7, 42n42, 44n67

tribalism, 30 Trimingham, J. Spencer, 87n46, 182n3 true believers, 140–41, 146–48, 150, 153 true Islam, Shi’a as, 120, 131 Tunisia, 123, 212 Tunkara, Yassa, 173, 175 Turkey, 212 Turner, Victor, 119, 134n68 tuubanaan revolution, 27–28, 42n29 Uganda, 157n7 Umar, Abu Bakr b., 132n17 Umar, Al-Hajj, 42n39 Umarian jihad, 101 Umarian Segu, 84 Umayyids, 69n33, 127 ummah (Islamic community), 6–7, 67, 177; global, 155, 214, 221, 227, 259, 268 unemployment, 144, 159n47, 223–24, 250n46, 263 UNESCO, 36 Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM), 32, 118, 214, 229nn, 241–43, 249nn Union Fraternelle des Pèlerins Musulmans de l’A.O.F., 241 Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS), 242 Unité 21 mosque, 65 United Kingdom, 150 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 35–36 United States, 123, 142, 215, 217, 238, 267 université du futur, 238 universities, 215 University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), 221, 223–24 University of Dakar. See Mosquée de l’Université de Dakar University of the Gambia, 145 urbanization, 5, 67, 117, 145, 155, 258, 263 Urdu language, 152 Usman dan Fodio movement, 26 veiling (hijab), 12, 216–21, 223, 225, 229nn vernacular cosmopolitanism, 11 vernacularization, 114, 130, 133n28 “vernacular modernity,” 75 Vikør, Knut, 42n42 Villalón, Leonardo A., 44n61, 51, 114–15, 117, 202n17, 250n44, 270n9 visualization of sacred, 239 Wade, Abdoulaye, 13, 117, 134n44, 158n28, 226, 238, 240, 243–47, 250n42, 251–52n71, 262–65, 269, 270nn Wahhab, Mohammad ibn Abd al-, 133n20

I n d ex Wahhabism, 32, 42n33, 44n66, 58, 68n22, 108n29, 113, 127, 133n20 Wal Fadjri (newspaper), 119, 226, 134n61, 238, 239; Radio, 127, 239 Wane, Amadou, 31 Ware, Rudolph T., III, 9–10, 12, 21–50 warriors (ceddo), 26–27, 75, 190 water, 80, 180, 192, 237–38 Watson, Ruth, 15n15 wazifa practice, 63–64 wealth, Murid women and, 191–92, 195–201 Weber, Max, 249n30 weddings, 153, 225–26, 242 weeping, 140–41, 152, 154, 157n4 Wehr, Hans, 40n12 Weiner, Annette, 195, 199 well, mechanized, 71–72, 73, 80–81, 84 Welsh, 92 West, 4, 9, 12, 119, 131, 148, 156, 271n29; historigraphy of Murids and, 74–75; Iranian Revolution and, 120; new Sufi movements and, 258–59, 266–68; Sunnite women veiling and, 217, 220 Whitehouse, Harvey, 156, 158n21, 162n154 Wiegelmann, Ulrike, 45n91 Wilks, Ivor, 172 Willis, John R., 41nn Wolof language, 15n18, 21, 58, 62, 126, 239–40 Wolof people, 2–3, 5–6, 8, 23, 25–27, 29, 35, 38, 41n22, 42n39, 77, 79–80, 86n15, 91–95, 100–102, 171, 190, 132n17, 184n51, 185n63, 190 women, 2; development organizations and, 123; dress of, 11, 67; education and, 36, 242; emigration and, 191–92; healer-diviners, 103; marriage and Sunnite, 222–27; marriage of

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non-Muslim, to Muslim migrants, 175–77, 179; MMUD and DMM and morality, 260, 263; mosques and, 9, 52, 57–60, 62, 65–68, 69n36; Murid, and ritual and reproductive practices, 11–12, 191–96, 202; reformist movements and, 6–7; Sunni, 6–7, 11–12, 133n21, 211, 214–33; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 148–49, 151, 153, 161nn; veiling and, 216–21. See also gender and gender roles work, 72, 116, 126; women and, 12, 222, 224–25 World Association for Muslim Youth, 215 World War I, 3, 31, 82–84, 92, 99, 102, 245 World War II, 245 Yacine, Ali, 135n73. See also Aly Yacine (PSLF) Centre Islamique de Recherche et d’Information yar (suffering and knowledge), 35, 38 Yasin, Ibn, 40n5, 132n17 Yatabaré lineages, 173 Yeumbeul suburb of Dakar, 121, 123 Yoff village, 55, 101 Yookam matriclan, 102–3 Yoruba, 8, 97, 104 youth, 3, 6–8, 239, 243–44; MMUD and DMM and, 259–69, 270nn; subcultures of, 159n45; Sunnite movement and, 214–15, 219–21; Tabligh Jama‘at and, 139–66 Yusuf, Hamza, 158n32 Yusuf, Mawlana Mohammad, 142 Zein, Sheikh Abdul Monem El-, 116–17, 120–21, 123, 127, 134n43 Ziguinchor village, 121, 125–27, 158n30, 237