NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL

CONVERSION, MIGRATION, WEALTH,

POWER, AND FEMININITY

Edited by Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman

palgravemacmillan

*NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL

Copyright © Mamadou Diouf and Mara A. Leichtman, 2009.

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009

All rights reserved.

First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the UnitedStates-a division of St. Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,NY 10010.

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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. em.Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Islam-Senegal. 2. Islam and state-Senegal. 3. Islam and politics­Senegal. 4. Senegal-Politics and government. 5. Senegal-History-20thcentury. I. Diouf, Mamadou. II. Leichtman, Mara.

BP64.S4N49 2008297.09663-dc22 2008021602

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Scribe Inc.

First edition: January 2009

109 8 76 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-349-37376-5 ISBN 978-0-230-61850-3 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-61850-3

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Contributors

Glossary

Acronyms of Muslim Movements and Political Parties

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

vii

IX

xiii

xvii

1

Part 1: Histories, Ethnographies, and Pedagogies ofIslam

1 The Longue Duree of Quran Schooling, Society, and State in Senegambia 21Rudolph T. Ware, III (Un iversity ofMichigan)

2 The Shifting Space ofSenegalese Mosques 51Cleo Cantone (School ofOriental and African Studies)

3 Murid Modernity: Historical Perceptions ofIslamic Reform , Sufism, and Colonization 71John Glover (Un iversity ofRedlands)

Part 2: Conversion and Spiritual Translations

4 The Greater Jihad and Conversion:Sereer Interpretations ofSufi Islam in SenegalJames Searing (Un iversity ofIllinois at Chicago)

91

5 The Authentication of a Discursive Islam: Shi'a Alternatives to Sufi Orders IIIMara A . Leichtman (Michigan State University)

6 Searching for God : Young Gambians' Conversion to the Tabligh [ama 'at 139MarloesJanson (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

vi CONTENTS

Part 3: Gender, Marriage, and Sexuality

7 Migration, Marriage, and Ethnicity: The Early DevelopmentofIslam in Precolonial Middle CasamanceAly Drame (Dominican Uni versity)

8 Beyond Brotherhood : Gender, Religious Authority,and the Global Circuits ofSenegalese Muridi yyaBeth A. Buggenhagen (Indiana Univ ersity, Bloomington )

9 Iambaar or Iumbax-out] How Sunnite Women NegotiatePower and Belief in Orthodox Islamic FemininityErin Augis (R amapo College ofN ewJersey)

Part 4: Modernity, Politics, and Dialectics

10 Dialectics of Religion and Politics in SenegalRoman Loimeier (Center for African Studies,University ofFlorida, Gainesville)

11 Islam, Protest, and Citizen Mobil ization: New Sufi MovementsPabienne Samson (L'Ecole deshautes etudes en sciences sociales,Centre d Jetudes Africaines, Paris)

Index

169

189

211

237

257

273

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

l. Senegal Vlll

2. Precolonial Senegambia 74

PHOTOS

2.1 The Mosque of Guede, Futa Toro 52

2.2 Lamp Fall, Great Mosque ofTouba 54

2.3 Great Mosque of Dakar 56

2.4 The Ihsan Mosque, Saint Louis 59

2.5 The Mosque ofSoprim 63

3.1 Mechanized Well of Darou Mousty 73

3.2 Grand Mosque of Darou Mousty 73

5.1 Library ofAly Yacine 114

5.2 Aly Yacine Calendar 122

5.3 Ashura Conference 124

5.4 AI-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Mosque 128

5.5 Al-Hajj Ibrahim Derwiche Dome 129

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CONTRIBUTORS

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, NationalScience 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)andTransnationalism in Islamic Reform, Augis has authored three articles on Senegalesereformist women. She also conducts a secondary research project on the economicmigrations ofSaharan Tuaregs to sub-Saharan tourist cities. Augis is currently a boardmember of the West African Research Association .

Beth A. Buggenhagen is an assistant professor ofsociocultural 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 ofSenegalese Muslims andthe 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 IslamicArt and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies . She majored inIslamic architecture and went on to write her PhD thesis on mosques in West Africa­particularly Senegal-and women's spaces in Islamic places of worship. She taught aterm 's course at Birkbeck College on Islamic architecture in the Mediterranean and iscurrently writing a book based on her thesis. Cantone lives in London with her twochildren.

Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner family professor of African studies in the MiddleEast and Asian languages and cultures and history departments, and director of theInstitute ofAfrican Studies at Columbia University in New York. His primary researchhas focused on the colonial, postcolonial, urban, and cultural history of Senegal andFrancophone West Africa. He is the author ofmany articles, book chapters, and booksincluding, Le Kajoor au lveme siecle. Pouvoir Ceddo et Conquete Coloniale (Paris: Kar­thala, 1990), Histoire du Senegal: Le Modele Islamo- Wolofet sesPeripheries (Paris: Mai­sonneuve & Larose, 2001) and a collaboration, La Construction de l'Etat au Senegal(Paris: Karthala, 2002).

x CONTRIBUTORS

AIy Drarne received his PhD in African history from the University of Illinois at Chi­cago. His current research focuses on processes of ethnic identity transformation inSouthern 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 atChicago. He is an associate professor of history at the University of Redlands insouthern California where he teaches courses on African, world, and Islamic history.His latest publication is Sufism andJihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order (Roch­ester : University of Rochester Press, 2007). His research concerns the production,meaning, and use ofhistorical narratives by the Sufi orders ofSenegal as they relate tonotions of modernity. His current research project concerns the Lebu fisherfolk andthe Layenne Sufi order of the Cap Vert peninsula .

Marloes Janson holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Leiden University, theNetherlands. She has conducted research on griottes, oral traditions, local Islamicexpressions, and religious reform in The Gambia and Senegal. Currently, she is aresearcher at Zentrum Moderner Orient/Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO)in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on youth participation, that of female youthin particular, in the Tabligh Iama'at in The Gambia. Janson has published variousarticles and book chapters and is working on a book manuscript entitled, Young,Modern and Muslim: The Tabligh [ama (at in The Gambia.

Mara A. Leichtman is assistant professor of anthropology and Muslim studies atMichigan 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 Islamin the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands. She has been conductingresearch and teaching in Senegal since 2000. Her research is multisited, includingfieldwork in Lebanon, France, and England, examining ties between Senegal andLebanon 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: LebaneseMigrants and SenegaleseConverts .

Roman Loimeier presently teaches at the University of Florida, Gainesville (Centerfor African Studies) . He has done extensive work in Senegal, Northern Nigeria, andZanzibar (since 1981) and has numerous publications on the history ofAfrican Mus­lim societies, Sufi brotherhoods, and movements of reform, including Islamic Reformand 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'erudes Africaines, Paris (France). She is an anthropologist and researcher atthe Institut de Recherche pour Ie Developpement (lRD). Her current work is on newChristian and Muslim movements among urban youth in West Africa, Her publica­tions include articles on Islam in Senegal and Les Marabouts de l'islam Politique. LeDahiratoul Moustarcbidina Wal Moustarchidaty, un movement neo-confrerique seneg­alais (Paris: Karthala, 2005).

CONTRIBUTORS xi

James Searing is the chair of the history department at the University of Illinois atChicago, where he teaches African history. His research focuses on the history ofSenegal, combining an ethnographic approach to peoples and cultures with Senegal'shistorical encounters with Islam, the Atlantic world, and French colonial rule . Hispublications include WestAfrican Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal RiverValley, 1700-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and" God Alone isK ing»: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1859-1914; The WolofKingdoms ofKajoorand Bawol (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001). His current research examines ethnicityand conversion through a fieldwork based study of the Sereer Safen, an ethnic minor­ity in the Thies region who converted to Islam in the colonial period.

Rudolph (Butch) Ware holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and isassistant professor ofhistory at the University of Michigan. He researches knowledgetransmission in Islamic West Africa. His first book manuscript, "A Walking Qur'an:Embodied Knowledge, Qur'an Schooling, and H istory in Senegambia," interrogatesthe role of traditional Islamic education in shaping Muslim identity and society.Warealso conducts research on private libraries in Senegal and Mauritania, new media andIslamic thought, and slavery in Islamic Africa. His publications include (with RobertLaunay) "Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran: Logique s de l'enseignement religieux auSenegal et en Cote d'Ivoire" in Gilles Holder (ed .) l'Islam en Afrique: vers un espacepublic religieux (forthcoming, 2008); "Slavery in Islamic Africa, 1400-1800," inStanley Engerman and David Eltis (eds.), Cambridge World History ofSlavery VolumeIII (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2008); and "Njangaan: The Daily Regime of Qur'anicStudents in 20th Century Senegal," InternationalJournal ofAfrican Histor ical Stud­ies, 37, no . 3 (2004): 515-38.

GLOSSARY

adat : Trad ition, customs.

addiya: Religious offerings.

adhan : Call to prayer.

alai: Wealth .

amal (pI. a'amal ): Work, religious tasks.

arabisant(s): Th ose educated in the Arabic language.

ashura: Th e tenth day of the month of Muharram on which Shi'a commemorate themartyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad from hisdaughter 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 (pI. bida): Innovation in religion .

Caliphate: A series ofSunni Caliphs who were the selected or elected successor ofthe prophet in political and military leadership, but not religious auth ority.

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 accompl ishment in th is world and in the hereafter.

fiqh: Islamic jurisprudence.

fitna: Division within Islam.

xiv GLOSSARY

griot: Poet, praise singer, bard; an expert on oral tradition .

gris-gris: Amulets.

hadith (pI. ahadith) : Collections of oral traditions relating to the words and deeds ofthe prophet Mohammad.

hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the 5 pillars of Islam.

hawza: Seminary ofShi'i Islamic training.

hijab (pI. hijabat) : Veil, headscarf.

hijra: Migration of the prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CEo

ijtima' (pI. ijtima'at): Conference (religious) .

imam: Head of a mosque, to be differentiated from Shi'a Imams as described inImamate.

imam ratib : Principal Imam .

Imamate: A series of (some believe twelve) Shi'a leaders, called Imams, who wereboth political leaders and religious guides, and the final authoritative interpretersof 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 apersonal struggle within oneself or against poverty.

jum'a: Friday prayer.

ka'ba: Sacred granite cuboid enclosure at Mecca, considered the holiest place inIslam.

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 (pI.) in SunniIslam: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools, while the Shi'a follow theIa'afari school. Most Senegalese Sufis follow the Maliki school.

madrasa (pI. 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 ofprostration.

GLOSSARY

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.

fieefio: Caste.

njebbel : Initiation rite into a Sufi order.

penc : Public Square

qibla: The direction of Mecca toward which a Muslim should pray.

qutb al-alam: Pole of the world .

qutb aI-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 theMessenger of God," the first pillar ofIslam.

shari'a: Islamic law.

xv

sherif: One who claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad.

Shi'a : From sbi'a; Ali, the partisans ofAli. Shi'a Muslims believe that Ali, theprophet's cousin and son-in-law, should have been his first successor, followed byother family members of the prophet.

silsila: Genealogies .

sokhna: Female spiritual leaders, often the daughters or wives of marabouts.

sunnah: The body ofIslamic law based on the words and deeds of Mohammad andhis successors.

tabaski (eid al-adha) : The holiday commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrificehis son Ishmael, which also commemorates the sacrifice offered during thepilgrimage to Mecca by slaughtering sheep .

tabligh: Missionary work to teach about Islam.

tafsir: Quranic commentary.

tahara: Ritual purity.

talibe: Disciple.

tariqa (pI. turuq) : Sufi order.

tasbih: Prayer beads.

xvi GLOSSARY

tawhid: Oneness of God, monotheism.

terranga: Hospitality.

timiss: Maghrib, or sunset, prayer.

turba: The small clay tablet representing the earth ofKarbala to which Shi'aMuslims touch their foreheads in prayer.

tuyaaba: Religious merit.

ummah: Muslim community at large.

ustaz : Teacher,

Wahhabi: Reformist Islamic movement named after the Saudi Arabian founderMohammad Ibn Abd AI-Wahhab (1703-1792) . This name is rarely used bymembers of the group today, and was first designated by their opponents. Themovement accepts the Quran and hadith as fundamental texts and advocates apuritanical and legalistic theology in matters of faith and religious practice .

wakil: Authorized representative of a marja, a Shi'a leader who is a reference foremulation.

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 PARTIES

AEEMS

AEMUD

AMEA

BFM

CIRCOFS

DEM

DMM

FAIS

FAL

HF

HT

IID

JIR

MF

MMUD

PUR

PVD

TJUCM

Association desBleveset Etudiants Musulmans du Senegal

Association desEtudiants Musulmans de l'Universite de Dakar

Association Musulmane des Etudiants Africains

Brigade de la Fraternite Musulmane

Comite Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Senegal

Dabira des Etudiants Mourides de Dakar

Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarsbidat

Federation desAssociations Islamiques du Senegal.

Frontpourl'Alternance

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

Hizb al-Tarqiyya

Institut Islamique de Dakar

[ama'at Ibadu Rahman

Matlab al-Fawzayni

Mouvemcnt Mondial pour l'Unicite de Dieu (Arabic: Diwan Silkal-fawahir ft-Akhbar Sagharir)

Parti de l'Unite et du Russemblement

Parti de la Verite pour le Diveloppement

Tabligh[ama (at

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