JOME 3.1 26-48-Smith.Indd

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48

brill.com/jome

Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges: Recreating Senegalese Tijani Islam in Metropolitan France

Gina Gertrud Smith University of Copenhagen, Koege, Denmark [email protected]

Abstract

Every year, in agreement with municipal authorities and without publicity, a Senegalese Haalpulaar Sufi sheikh and his Fulfulde-speaking adherents create a daaka, a religious space, in Mantes-la-Jolie. Some 5000 migrants re-establish the social and religious life of their Tijani culture, vitalising the programme of a retreat of the sacred village of Medina Gounass in Senegal and the chain of sheikhs and their Baraka. The article uses various concepts of memory (Jan Assmann, Astrid Erll and Danièle Hervieu-Léger) in order to place the daaka within a transcultural and French context. This is done on the backdrop of Haalpulaar history.

Keywords pilgrimage – Mantes-la-Jolie – Haalpulaar migrants – daaka – Medina Gounass – Tijaniyya – Sufi-sheikh – travelling memory – transcultural – Danièle Hervieu-Léger

* My warm thanks to Ousmane Barry, Mayram Djigo and Amadou Ba without whom I would not have been able to attend and understand the daaka Medina Gounass and to Abdoulaye Kane who introduced me to daaka Mantes-la-Jolie.

Introduction

The Tijani Haalpulaar1 in France who established the daaka are mainly immigrants who arrived as unskilled labourers in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the 1970s, they also settled in France with their families.2 They have their roots in the Senegal River basin, now split between Mauritania and Senegal. At this economic and cultural crossroad, the Haalpulaar Islamic culture developed around Fulbe pastoralists who became sedentary farmers and learned Muslims and, in the 18th century, the leaders of a Haalpulaar theocracy. In the 19th century, the region suffered from desiccation and at times, the population became very vulnerable. When a local sheikh, al-Hajj Umar Tall started a jihad in 1852, many Haalpulaar followed him towards south and southeast, fighting with French invaders and local Muslim and non-Muslim rulers.3 As it took place, the campaign left groups of Haalpulaar, especially in Futa Jallon, today split between Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. A generation or two later, two Tijani sheikhs, important figures in this article, also left Futa Toro after having com- pleted their basic education here. One of them settled in Mbour by the Atlantic in the early part of last century, the other settled in an area between The Gambia and Guinea Bissau where sedentary Fulbe were agro-pastoralist and largely non-Muslim. The family name of the first sheikh was Barro, the other’s Ba. In 1936, the latter established a paradigmatic Islamic community, Medina Gounass, and later a yearly reunion, daaka, which the sheikh from Mbour and

1 Haalpulaar or Pulaar (Fulfulde) speaking is the term used for the people earlier named ‘tou couleur’. They are the sedentary people living in Futa Toro along the Senegal River and are related to the Fulbe (sing. Pullo) pastoralists living also in this part of the Sahel. 2 The total number of immigrants from Senegal was 70,867 in 2006. http://www.insee.fr/fr/ themes/tableau.asp?reg_id=0&ref_id=NATTEF02158, accessed 7 August 2010. Among these the Haalpulaar from the Senegal River Basin are the most numerous (personal information 2009). 3 Al-Hajj Umar Tall (1796-1864?) grew up in Futa Toro along the Senegal River and followed the Islamic educational pattern of his time as he set out on journeys in order to study with Sufi- masters elsewhere. He first stopped in Futa Jallon, then in Mecca where the Tijaniyya khalifa in Hijaz named him the Tijaniyya khalifa of West Africa. After his journey back with stopover in Sokota in 1840, he settled in Futa Jalon. In 1852, he launched a jihad against the French troops and local Muslim and non-Muslim rulers. See Abun-Nasr, Jamil M., Muslim Com munities of Grace. The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2007), 205-9. The author’s approach to Sufism is indebted to Carl W. Ernst, The Shambala Guide to Sufism. An essential introduction to the philosophy and practice of the mystical tradi tion of Islam, Boston, Shambala Publications, 1997: ‘I only use the term Sufism in the broadest descriptive sense . . . the whole range of historical traditions, texts, cultural artefacts, and practices connected with Sufis’ (p. xvii).

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 28 Smith his adherents attended.4 The crippling droughts in the Sahel in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in many men seeking richer regions in Senegal as well as other areas in Africa and Europe, wherever labour was in demand. The sheikh in Mbour became a ‘travelling sheikh’ and followed migrants into other African countries and then into Europe. In France, he found a permanent site for his daaka in Mantes-la-Jolie, near Paris. This became the point of departure for his visits to other Haalpulaar Tijani in Europe. The Tijani Haalpulaar have a much wider horizon than what is now Senegal. This verges on a truism when the subject is pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina and it stands to reason with regard to places and persons tied up with the ori- gins of Tijaniyya in Algeria and Morocco.5 West African transnationality is a basic condition, especially with regard to the split of the Senegal River basin into Mauritania and Senegal due to French colonial politics. Jihad movements and nature have created a culture, which on the one hand is closely connected to the Senegal River, but on the other hand is a translocal culture kept up through marriage patterns and communication of core religious practices.6 The word daaka is Pulaar (Fulfulde) and signifies that men withdraw themselves and meet around prayer and meditation. Pilgrimage is the word used about these events in this article even if the daakas are not in the same cate- gory as the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca; they rather match ziyara, a visit to a sacred place or to a sheikh. The word pilgrimage is also used about events among the Murids belonging to another Sufi tariqa. Their yearly magal in Touba, the sacred town of the founder, has clones among migrants outside Senegal. These are not the subject of this article, but they are similar examples

4 Their followers are often named Gounassianke, ‘people tied to (Medina) Gounass’. On Medina Gounass, see also Wane, Yaya, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa ou Le soufisme integral de Madiina Gunaas”, Cahiers d’études africaines, 56-vol. XIV-4, (1974), pp. 671-698; N’Gaïde, Abderrahmane, “Les marabouts face à la modernite” in Le Sénégal contemporain, Momar- Coumba Diop (ed.) (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2002), pp. 617-651; Ngaïdé, Abderrahmane, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout. Le royaume peul du Fuladu de 1867 à 1936 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012); Smith, Gina Gertrud, Medina Gounass. Challenges to Village Sufism in Senegal (Copenhagen, BoD, 2008); Sow, Daouda, Contribution à l’Étude de L’Islam en Afrique. La Communauté Tijani de Madiina Gunaas (Unpublished Memoire de Maitrise, Département d’Histoire, Université de Nouakchott, 1986). 5 94% of the population in Senegal are Muslims, almost all connected to one of the two major Sufi turuk: Tijaniyya or Muridiyya. Turuk is pl. of tariqa, way, method. 6 On the translocality among sheikhs, see Loimeier, Roman, “Translocal networks of sheikhs and the negotiation of religious disputes in local contexts,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions, no. 135 (2006), pp. 17-32, http://assr.revues.org/3687, accessed 10 April 2013.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 29 of the ability of sheikhs and adherents to consolidate Sufi movements in new contexts.7 The article rests on the limited literature written about the daakas and on fieldwork in Senegal and France, including participation in the minute groups of women in the Senegalese daaka in 2003 and the French daaka in 2009.8 Visits to both sites in 2010 and 2011 were a follow-up. Videos showing the daaka of the men have added to the data, since the gender division is very strict at these meetings. What enabled the author to study the situation of the women, to some extent, excluded her from the sphere of the men. The literature treating Muslim minorities in France mainly deals with the minorities with North African roots and relatively little has been written on West African Muslims, les noirs or les sans-papiers.9 They came later and in

7 See Bava, Sophie, “Les cheikhs mourides itinérants et l’espace de la ziyâra à Marseille’, Anthropologie et sociétés nr. 27,1 (2003), pp. 149-166. See also, Monika, “Senegalese Networks in Switzerland and USA—How Festive Events Reflect Urban Incorporation Processes”, in Religion, Ethnicity and Transnational Migration between West Africa and Europe, Stanisław Grodź and Gina Gertrud Smith (eds.) (Leiden, Brill, forthcoming). A thorough presentation of the relations between various Sufi sheikhs and Senegalese migrants, whether adherents or not, would offer a varied picture and discussion, as demonstrated in Abdourahmane Seck, La question musulmane au Sénégal (Paris, Karthala. 2010) with regards to Senegal. 8 See Kane, Abdoulaye, “Les pèlerins sénégalais au Maroc: la sociability autour de la Tijaniyya”, in Les nouveaux urbain dans l’espace Sahara-Sahel. Un cosmopolitisme par le bas, Laurence Marfaing and Elisabeth Boessen (eds.) (Berlin og Paris: Editions Karthala & ZMO, 2007), pp. 187-208; Kane, Abdoulaye, “Senegalese Sufi Orders in the Transnational Space: Moving Religious Activities from Home to Host Countries and Creating Diasporic Identities”, in Migrations and Creative Expressions in Africa and the African Diasporas, Toyin Falola, Niyi Afolabi & Aderonke Adesanya (eds.) (Carolina Academic Press, 2008), pp. 471-481; Soares, Benjamin F., “An African Muslim Saint and his Followers in France”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 30, nr. 5 (2004), 913-927. 9 See Césari, Jocelyn and Seán McLoughlin, European Muslims and the secular state (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Bowen, John R., Can Islam be French? Pluralism and pragmatism in a secular ist state (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010); Timéra, Mahamet, Les Soninkés en France, d’une histoire à l’autre (Paris: Karthala, 1996); Kane, Abdoulaye, Tontine, Caisses de solidarité et banquiers ambulants. Univers des pratiques financières informelles en Afrique et en milieu immigré africains en France (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010); Salzbrunn, Monika, “La Campagne Présidentielle Sénégalaise en France”, Hommes et Migrations, no. 1239 (Sept.-Oct. 2002), pp. 49-53; Smith, Etienne, “Religious pluralism and secularism between Senegal and France: A view from Senegalese families in France”, in Grodź and Smith (eds.), Religion, forthcoming.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 30 Smith much smaller numbers than the North African immigrants did.10 This literature places the data from the fieldwork in a context. In order to analyse the re-creation of the Senegalese daaka in a France that insists on ‘les principes républicains’, the article also makes use of the writings of the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, Professor in Anglistics Astrid Erll and the sociologist of religion Danièle Hervieu-Léger and their theories on memory and on the transmission of socioreligious identities. Jan Assmann splits collective memory into communicative and cultural memory. “If we think of the typical three-generation cycle of communicative memory as a synchronic memory-space, then cultural memory, with its traditions reaching far back into the past, forms the diachronic axis.”11 He is especially concerned with the cultural memory which “takes off” with the emergence of writing, but which also includes memory sites such as “monu- ments, rituals, feast days and customs.”12 Whereas anything may trigger an individual’s memory, the group uses certain mnemonic ‘institutions’ with stable and situation-transcendent reminders, cultural memory. The carriers of this are specialists and the participation structure is never strictly egalitarian.13 However, cultural memory is knowledge about oneself; it is one’s own diachronic identity. Concentrating on the diachronic aspect of memory, Assmann links synchronic communicative memory to everyday interaction; it is non- institutional but has certain frames, traditions of communication, and though the participation of a group in communicative memory is diffuse, there are affective ties and a sense of belonging. Remembering is a way of acknowledging one’s belonging. It is a social obligation, and cultural memory matters in the diaspora, challenged by assimilation.14 Whereas Assmann is of interest since he reflects on questions concerning religion, Astrid Erll reflects on a tendency to ‘container memory’ within the research done on collective memory. It is a problem if the research reifies culture and does not consider important dimensions such as social classes, gen- erations, ethnicity, religious groups and subcultures. She finds it pertinent to

10 The Fulbe migrants form a marginal group, even among the six per cent of the French population estimated to be Muslim according to Zarka, Yves Charles, SylvieTaussig and Cynthia Fleury (eds.), Islam en France (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2008). 11 Assmann, Jan, Religion and Cultural Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 8. 12 Assmann, Religion, pp. 8-9, 21. 13 Assmann, Jan, “Communicative and Cultural Memory”, in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds.) (Berlin/New York, De Gruyter), pp. 109-18 (110-111, 114). 14 Assmann, “Communicative”, pp. 113-114.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 31 use the word ‘transcultural’ as an umbrella term for the “transnational, diasporic, hybrid, syncretistic, postcolonial, translocal, creolized, global, or cos- mopolitan.” The term ‘transcultural memory’ covers a research perspective, “which is directed towards mnemonic processes unfolding across and beyond cultures.”15 And thus she develops her concept of ‘travelling memory’ from a concept of “transcultural memory: as ‘the incessant wandering of carriers, media, contents, forms, and practices of memory, their continual ’travels’ and on-going transformations through time and space, across social, linguistic and political borders.”16 Her concept is relevant when trying to analyse the idea of recreating Tijani Islam in France from concepts such as the wandering of carriers, media, contents, forms and practices of memory.17 Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s reflections on religious production in ultra-modern societies such as France are important when looking at the attempt to recreate Senegalese Islam in France.18 She has reassessed the classical secularization theories and mainly focused on the interaction between modernity, French history and the Catholic Church in France. The crumbling authority of religious institutions together with the very few parents having a burning sense of need to pass the faith on leads to a transmission crisis. It weakens the chain of memory and impairs “the very movement by which religion constitutes itself as religion across time.”19 The Islamic Umma has a fluidity and consequently less institutional centralization than the Catholic Church and its reflected

15 Erll, Astrid, “Travelling Memory”, Parallax, 17:4, (2011), pp. 4-18 (9). 16 Erll, “Travelling”, p. 11. 17 In La question musulmane au Sénégal the Senegalese anthropologist Abdourahmane Seck, researches the memory building and its significance. He uses oral sources such as music and film and life stories of individuals and the discourse at meetings of friends and family, including those connected with ziyaras, (participant)observations and written sources such as the press. As a result concepts such as the individual as a trait of social change or the individualisation of religious belief materialise empirically in the ‘personalised ways in which the individual adapts his religious identity and the possible disparities between these and the constructions of the organisational cadres, qualified traditionally to define and lay out the course’ (Seck, La question, 56). He concludes that his research into La question musulmane depicts Senegal as a society confident in its own modernity while constantly reinventing its ‘corpus fondateurs’ (Seck, La question, 239). His methods and conclusions are pertinent also for the question of Muslims in France and for the discussion of the transcultural memory among the Senegalese Muslims. 18 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, Religion as a Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000); Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, “The Transmission and Formation of Socioreligious Identities in Modernity. An Analytical Essay on the Trajectories of Identification”, International Sociology, vol. 13/2 (London: Sage, 1998), pp. 213-18 (214). 19 Hervieu-Léger, “The Transmission”, p. 216.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 32 Smith image the French state.20 This plasticity sheds light on a global tendency towards a strong model of belief-validation through communitarian systems on the one hand, and, on the other, to a weak model of validating the belief in a fluid nebula of moving spiritual reseaux.21 The lack of institutional coordina- tion leaves it to young Muslims to adhere to an Islam that signifies their cultural and symbolic ‘capital’, and thereby to transform the exclusion of them into a difference, shouldered voluntarily.22 Maybe, this is not only a question of young Muslims but of many members of the Muslims diaspora. Danièle Hervieu-Léger suggests that pilgrimages, such as those to Taizé in Southern France, are ways of coordinating the four socioreligious dimensions: The communal, the ethical, the cultural and the emotional in modernity.23 Her theory is that the religious institutions try to canalize an individual and mobile religiosity into the religious sociability of a pilgrim when they face the growth of this form of religiosity, of which they do not have a grip.24 After the introduction, the paper first deals with the narratives around sheikhs belonging to the Gounassianke branch of the Tijani tariqa. The sheikhs are religious specialists and their positions are due to the cultural memories around such figures, their chain of initiation and their esoteric knowledge. The narratives about them are central to the creation of pilgrimage goals such as tombs or retreats, daakas. The rest of the paper presents the French and the Senegalese daaka and analyses the first as a French memory site recreating Haalpulaar Islamic culture without reifying it.

The Biological and Spiritual Chain of the Sheikh in Mantes-la-Jolie

This chain is a memory chain connected with the ability of a Sufi sheikh to bless, Baraka. In Senegal, it implies a biological lineage. Sons of a sheikh are born with the Baraka. However, in order to become sheikhs they must have acquired Baraka through their teachers, who have initiated them and authorized them to initiate others. Thus, they have their own silsila, an initiation chain with the names of their Sufi masters (they may be initiated by more than

20 Hervieu-Léger, Le pèlerine et le converti. La religion en mouvement (Paris: Champs, Flammarion, 1999), pp. 211-212, 214-240. 21 Hervieu-Léger, Le pèlerine, p. 212. 22 Hervieu-Léger, Le pèlerine, p. 228. 23 She is researching monasticism from 19th century till today as a laboratory of Christianity’s confrontation with modernity. 24 Hervieu-Léger, Le pèlerine, pp. 111-12.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 33 one) and again with the names of the teachers of these and so on, and they may themselves figure in the silsila of their students, tulab (sing. talib). It is important to know the silsila of a sheikh as it attests that he is properly qualified. Tierno Barro and Tierno Ba, the two sheikhs who left Futa Toro around 1900, were almost the same age. Meeting each other on their travels, the slightly older Ahmad Barro became a teacher of Mouhammadou Saidou Ba and initiated him. Tierno Barro then put his sons into the hands of Tierno Ba whose silsila held al-Hajj Umar Tall from Futa Toro and the founder of Tijaniyya. Tierno Ahmad Barro in Mbour was followed by his son Tierno Mansour Barro who also became the axis of the daaka in Mantes-la-Jolie. He died in 2007 and his younger brother Tierno Cheikh Barro has followed in his position. Tierno Mouhammadou Ba of Medina Gounass had initiated Tierno Mansour Barro, who not only knew the Qur’an by heart but also, according to his adherents, he embodied it and internalised the exoteric and the esoteric sciences that he had studied.25 His followers in France explained the impact of this embodiment; in interviews, they drew on the memories of how he had led migrants back to Islam when he arrived in France in 1974, and they passed on the narratives about his special charisma. He is said to be a wali, a saint.26 Adherents organised associations that arranged religious meetings with the Tierno in the factories where they worked. It was possible for a large group of men to pray as well as recite the wird, a liturgical collection of prayer and praise, together with him. They also arranged for women and children to meet with him. The meetings with the women were a well-established tradition, whereas the meeting with the young ones seemed to be a new arrangement. This way everybody benefited from being close to the Tierno as well as from his admonishments and recordings on cassettes and videos. However, there was a need for finding a more permanent space for these reunions, somewhere near the most numerous group of adherents and with good connections to both the northeast and the south of France. The narratives heard in two interviews described a crucial phase in this process. In the mid-1990s, a small group of adherents together with the Tierno met with a politician who was

25 This tradition of embodying written texts by oral and physical expressions is well known not only in Senegal, but also in other Muslim cultures. See Launay, Robert and Rudolph T. Ware III. “Comment (ne pas) lire le Qoran? Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au Sénégal et en Côte d’Ivoire”, in L’islam, nouvel espace public en Afrique, Gilles Holder (ed.) (Paris: Karthala, 2009), pp. 127-145. Abdourahmane Seck presents the voices that criticise the common idea that a sheikh has a certain power, a baraka, which enables him to mediate between his adepts and Allah, and that the concepts of sheikh and wali or saint merge (Seck, La question, pp. 45-47). 26 Interviews: Hadja 14.6.2009; Cheikh 23.1.2010. See also Soares, An African, pp. 913, 922-25.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 34 Smith campaigning for the post as mayor of Mantes-la-Jolie, north-west of Paris. The politician and the Tierno talked for an hour while the rest of the group sat further away. One of my informants was able to observe the politician ask the Tierno to pray for him.27 The Tierno did so and the politician kept his promise to give the Tierno’s followers access to a hall where they could meet when he won the election. The mayor’s successor continued meeting with the Tierno. Since then the daaka has been safeguarded and put on the municipal calendar every year.28 It is a recursive enactment of longstanding cultural memories of Islam and the Islamic culture of the Haalpulaar, of daaka Medina Gounass and of the sheikh who instituted the event in Senegal. Tierno Mouhammadou Saidou Ba established Medina Gounass in 1936 and organised the first daaka in 1942.29 This religious retreat was later traced back to al-Hajj Umar Tall, Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane and further back to Prophet Muhammad and to the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1974, Tierno Mouhammadou Saidou Ba sent Tierno Mansour Barro to France in order to visit the migrants there. The sociologist Yaya Wane’s article on Tierno Mouhammadou Saidou Ba and Medina Gounass includes a postscript in which Wane relates one of his experiences in 1968, while he was staying with the Tierno in his village. The narrative is an instance of a young Senegalese lending topicality to the Tierno as he recounts his experiences being a migrant worker in a diamond field in Congo. The police had caught him in a round up and caged him. He tells the Tierno that he could not lie down, only crouch or stand upright even when sleeping.

It was in this bad position that I saw you in person, and you asked me what I was doing. I told you, and you advised me to recite Fatiha and other suras from the Qur’an; this I did. All of a sudden, I discovered that the door of the cell was open; I left and found a sentry who asked me whether I wanted to leave. When I said yes, he let me depart.30

27 This information was given by Haalpulaar several times in slightly varying versions. It has not been confirmed by other sources. It is well known that sheikhs or marabouts set up practices which are consulted also by French officials. See Kuczynski, Liliane, Les marabouts africain à Paris (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2002). 28 Interview: Oumar 11 November 2010. 29 Smith, Medina Gounasse, 53; Sow, Contribution, pp. 78-86. 30 Wane, Yaya, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa ou Le soufisme integral de Madiina Gunaas”, Cahiers d’études africaines, 56-vol. XIV-4, (1974), pp. 671-698 (697).

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 35

This is not a narrative about a Sufi trained to receive a vision even when awake. It relates to an ordinary man, a migrant worker, who experienced that in his plight, his sheikh helped him through a dream. His statement certifies that Baraka works without normal physical limitations such as space and time, and it bears out the importance of visions and the recital of the Koran. An oral narrative such as this in France and the oral narrative recorded in Senegal construct a synchronic memory site; they are also diachronic as they point further back to leading mnemonic forms of prayer and Qur’an memori- sation. Wane’s narrative has been recorded in writing via the studies of a sociologist and has become a stable and situation-transcendent part of a cultural memory. The lineage of the sheikhs in Mantes-la-Jolie and Medina Gounass includes al-Hajj Umar Tall. After his many years as a pilgrim, around 1820, he began to initiate people in the Sudan area into Tijaniyya. During his stay in Mecca, a talib of the founder of the tariqa had initiated him and authorized that he initiate others. This way the chain reaches all the way back to the foundation of the Tijaniyya and to the Prophet Muhammad who is a paradigmatic figure to Muslims. Sufis see his visions and his relation to God as an ideal setting a pattern for their own quest. Back in the Maghreb after a period in Mecca and Medina around 1772-1780, Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane (buried in Fez, Morocco) experienced the Prophet Muhammad address him in a vision while awake.31 In his visions, the Prophet abolished the silsila, the spiritual initiation chain acquired by the sheikh as an adept of several turuk. He then initiated him and told him to pass on to his tulab a new wird, thereby establishing a new tariqa.32 ∵

31 Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane’s new tariqa seems close to simultaneous reform movements, such as those of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and other neo-Sufi movements. See Triaud, Jean- Louis and David Robinson (eds.), La Tijâniyya. Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2000), pp. 9-17; Beyer, Religion, 160; Andrew Rippin, Muslims. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 2001), 159. On Tijaniyya see also Jamil Abun-Nasr, The Tijâniyya. A Sufi Order in the Modern World. London, Oxford University Press, 1965; Jillali El Adnani, “Les origines de la Tijâniyya: quand les premiers disciples se mettent à parler”, in Triaud, La Tijâniyya, pp. 35-68; Jilali El Adnani, La tijâniyya, 1781-1881. Les origines d’une confrérie religieuse au Maghreb. Marsam, 2006. 32 http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/spiritualite/39893-biographie-cheikh-ahmed- tidjane-sherif-1-a.html, accessed 10 April 2013. It is an instance of a hagiography describing this central experience in the life of the Sheikh.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 36 Smith

Repeated either orally or in writing, these narratives are memory sites. The presentations are not identical, yet they refer to well-known forms such as travels, sheikhs, dreams and prayers, whether they tell of the shaping of a new tariqa in the Maghreb, a sacred village in Senegal or a religious reunion on an island in the Seine. The most important physical travels are the pilgrimages to Mecca and back that resulted in the new tariqa, which Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane founded, and al-Hajj Umar Tall’s conversion of West Africans to this new tariqa. To be able to give advice via a dream implies an access to batin, the other world accessible to the sheikhs with an esoteric training and thus information travelled in a dream between a migrant in Congo and the Tierno in Medina Gounass. Batin and Baraka are forms, ‘shorthands’ for connecting with God. As carriers of meaning, they are the backdrop of the success of Tierno Mansour Barro’s prayers on behalf of the French politician.33 The belief in the sheikhs and their ability to transgress rationality is marked both in the narratives recorded here and in the impact of their presence in Medina Gounass and Mantes-la-Jolie. It is re-created orally and on internet pages of a fleeting nature.34 Thus, the re-creation of this belief is within what Assmann calls the ‘communicative memory’, the re-collection of a chain of Sufi sheikhs and of the diachronic ‘cultural memory’. The re-enactment of the Medina Gounass daaka in France differs through its reference to mnemonic forms such as retreats and ziyara.

The Daakas

Preparations in France and Senegal In France, the daaka implies a meeting at a place that the municipality of Mantes-la-Jolie controls. The dental daaka, the association of Haalpulaar men,

33 Erll, “Travelling”, pp. 13-14. 34 http://siradji.unblog.fr/, accessed 3 May 2013. The links function except for the official page of the daaka: http://www.daaka.net/spip.php?page=index2, which has been taken over. Astrid Erll’s focus on the dynamic element stresses that the communicative memory is an open memory that is subject to the involvement of the persons transmitting it and to the possibilities of comments and strategies behind comments and changes in internet pages. Erll, Astrid, “Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics,” in Erll, Astrid and Ann Rigney (eds.). Media and Cultural Memory/Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung: Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory (Berlin, DEU: Walter de Gruyter, 2009) pp. 1-11.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 37 arrange it in cooperation with the religious ‘institution’ of a sheikh.35 The daaka depends on the contributions and on the arrangements made by the dental daaka, and the women contribute to the expenses of the travel of the Tierno and his family through their tontines, money-saving associations.36 There are three meetings of the dental daaka during the time between two daakas. They all allow time for the representatives from associations far away to arrive without having problems at work. The first takes place in Trappes, west of Paris, when the stay of the Tierno has run its course. At this meeting, the bureau presents the accounts of the previous daaka. The second meeting in Étampes south of Paris plans the finances of the next daaka. The elected representatives of the various dentals in France are at this meeting encouraged to raise money. They signal their intention to gather a certain sum, maybe 1000 Euros. Finally, they call for the third meeting in Mantes-la-Jolie, which takes place not too long before the Tierno arrives from Morocco. At this third meeting, the amount money raised will be evaluated so that the budget may be adjusted or new financial sources found. The Tierno and his family will live in an apartment during their time in France. Since they left the year before, a ten- ant has rented it. He will now have to leave, and the apartment examined to assess and initiate any necessary repairs for it to be ready by the time Tierno arrives. During the daaka, people coming from places far away such as Marseilles will also bring money if they have not been able to come to the meetings in between the daakas.37 The sheikh travels over long distances in order to meet his adherents. Together with a small group of family and assistants the Tierno and his family set out from Mbour in Senegal some weeks before the daaka that normally takes place in June. He breaks the journey in Morocco in order to visit Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane’s tomb and home in Fez, a goal for Tijani pilgrims. Thus, he revives a physical memory site for this branch of the tariqa. A group of men travels from France down to Fez in order to meet him there and they return to Paris with him.38 At the arrival of the Tierno in Paris the Sunday before the

35 This is of importance in Hervieu-Léger’s thinking, based as it is on France and the decisive role of the religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church. 36 According to a sociologue Oumar Ba, interviewed 9 July 2009, the Haalpulaar always establish an association when something has to be done. This is different from the Fulbe south of The Gambia, where migrants in 2010 mentioned to the author that there was no tradition for establishing associations such as an ‘association villageoise’, which the Haalpulaar have in order to support their native villages. 37 Interview: Cheikh 23 January 2010. 38 See Kane, Les pèlerins, Some adepts in France make the ziyara, pilgrimage to Fez with their families at other times of the year. Both groups trade in Fez as a habitual practice.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 38 Smith daaka starts, his adherents, festively dressed, receive him in the Orly airport. He prays the midday prayer together with the men in a corner of the arrival hall while equally well-dressed women, married to his followers, receive the wife of the Tierno and bring her to Mantes-la-Jolie. The men and women have come from Le Havre, from the region adjacent to Belgium, and from Ile-de- France, the region around Paris. They are the core of the attendants who later participate in the daaka. During five days from Thursday evening until Monday morning, some 5,000 men meet in a hall in the municipal Parc des Expositions on an island in the Seine River running through the town. Normally used for exhibitions, the hall is now a mosque. Outside, 15-20 stalls present various items for sale: festival clothes for men, skullcaps, religious booklets, sandals, prayer chaplets, CDs, perfume, watches and laminated photos of the Tierno Barro, his father and brothers, the Tierno Ba from Medina Gounass, Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane, of tombs and mosques in Fez, Mecca and Medina. They are religious and cultural artefacts, signifying that the daaka Mantes-la-Jolie takes place in an urban diasporic context, different from the rural daaka in Senegal.39 The local Haalpulaar live some 10 minutes by car from the centre and the island in a neighbourhood, Cité, on the outskirts of the town. During the daaka some of the men sleep in the mosque, others stay with family in town. A flat lodges a small group of dedicated women. It is one of the two flats at the Tierno’s disposal while he is in France. The Tierno and his wife live in the other flat, where the wife receives visiting women in the evening, while the Tierno is with the men on the island. Thus, the activities of the women take place in a space, physically separated from that of the men. The daaka in Senegal differs from the French daaka in several ways. First, it lasts twice as long, ten days instead of five, and the number of participants is at least half a million. It is also much older and involves visits to places of special significance in the sacred village, ten km away from the daaka site in the bush. Pilgrims come from the neighbouring villages, from Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, The Gambia, Mali and the Senegal River Basin and gather in Medina Gounass. Many visit family there before leaving for the daaka in the bush. In 2003, when the author made her observations, everybody, including the Tierno and his family, lived in lodges made of poles and straw matting constructed during the weeks leading up to the daaka, under the management of a follower charged with this work by the Tierno. The distribution of the families taking part was done according to a master plan and everybody knew where to go. Some ten families have women from their family joining them, meeting in Medina Gounass before leaving for the daaka and their annex to the lodge of the family’s

39 Interview: Jacob 14 June 2010.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 39 men. In the women’s enclosure were two trees, stones for setting the fire and a water tap, and a private and sheltered area which only the stars could look into and where hygienic facilities were established. The leading sheikh of the daaka is Tierno Ba from Medina Gounass. Closely related to him was Tierno Mansour Barro from Mbour who led the five daily prayers in 2003. Opposite their lodges was the provisional mosque, a large area covered by tarpaulin providing shadow. Some distance farther off is the market area. Here they sell mats made from plastic ribbons, textiles, boards Qur’anic with writing, farming and household implements. The market is important, since it is an opportunity to buy at low prices from pilgrims and traders from the nearby Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali and The Gambia.40

The Daaka of the Women in France and Senegal Once the Tierno and his entourage have arrived in France, the women take care of the Tierno’s wife who enjoys their service and their company. A small group lives in an apartment next door to the apartment of the Tierno, but also women who live in the same neighbourhood, Cité Val-Fourrée, take part in the household. The number of women sleeping in the apartment varies, since some women visit only one night while their husbands attend the daaka. The men bring their gifts ranging from rice and meat to juice, water and sanitary necessities to the door. Women send bowls with food that they have made at home. In the evening, the sitting room is crowded with women sitting on the floor. There is room for around 25 women at a time and after an hour or so, some of the women living nearby withdraw and give room for newcomers. There are one or two mattresses, one of them reserved for the wife of the Tierno. The author estimates that some 75 women passed through the room from around 6 p.m. until midnight. During the five evenings of the daaka, some ten young women paid a visit to the flat, most of them together with their mothers. The style of their clothes was different from that of the older women; smart modern Senegalese style, moderated French outfits, and two in niqab. Several of them expressed that this was their mother’s interest and not their own. One commented on the fact that some women crossed the room in front of the praying women, remarking that this was not correct.41 The evening meal was

40 The author visited the site a few days before the daaka started, accompanied by a son of the Tierno as guide. During her stay there, from one spot in the women’s quarter she could observe life outside. Otherwise she obtained her data from video and from interviews. 41 Another young woman, well educated both within both Haalpulaar and French culture later explained that it was not a problem if somebody had to pass in front of her while she

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 40 Smith served around 11 p.m. and there was an informal higherarchy between the women invited to share the Tierno’s wife’s bowl of food and those sharing the other bowls. The Tierno had left the flat towards the end of the afternoon in order to be together with the men on the island for the afternoon prayer until after the last prayer around midnight. Once prayers are over he then returns to the flat. At that time, there are only a few women left in the sitting room, mainly the ones sleeping in the other apartment. The Tierno stops at the threshold so as not to transgress the line between men and women. He talks to them, prays and gives them his blessings. The first night during the 2009 daaka, the eldest son of the Tierno Mansour reminded the women that every Fatiha recited during the daaka would ensure access to Paradise, not only for themselves, but also for their families. The evenings in the sitting room of the Tierno were unstructured. The women talked, traded, ate and, as many as it was possible under those conditions, prayed the afternoon and the sunset prayer together. Their recital of the wird and especially the individual extra Fatiha took up a lot of time. The prayer beads keep track of the number of recitals. In between, a tape-recorder played some of Tierno Mansour’s admonishments to the participants in daaka. In an interview, the widow of Tierno Mansour emphasised that it is important to behave correctly, to pray and to fast. “It is important to follow the path leading to Paradise. It is all about being humane and about having a ‘guide’. Underlying everything is baraka.” Since she is born into a family of sharifs, and because of her marriage to Tierno Mansour, she, too, is imbued with Baraka.42 She had clearly been of great importance to the women, when Tierno Mansour still lived and she was the wife he mostly took with him to France. Tierno Cheikh Barro has four wives and they take turn to follow him to France. Those women who stayed for a longer period while the Tierno was in France had more possibilities to meet him and get his blessings but via his wife also to persuade him to say a special prayer to help them. Thus, one of them asked the Tierno to say a du’a over a pencil, which her young son should use during his exams. When in 2009 the author asked the women what they considered the most important thing about the daaka they answered: “Daaka is important to the whole world, since Baraka is there; it is important to pray and to concentrate on tawhid.”43 Thus, the core is the prayers, especially the repetitive praying of

was praying. She just took care to mark the space of the prayer, putting a scarf or something else in front of her as a demarcation. Interview in Trappes, Huley 16 June 2010. 42 Interview: Rouguye 26 June 2009. 43 The concentration on tawhid, the oneness of God, was only mentioned among the women in Mantes-la-Jolie; it is a central Islamic concept but also an important Sufi

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 41

Fatiha, maybe just in its condensed form ‘Amen’, as well as the thought that the Baraka of the Tierno permeates everybody within the space of the daaka. The women may also fund the meetings of women and children with the Tierno after the daaka is over. In 2009, there was a demand from a group of women that the Tierno go to Rouen for a meeting with them. The demand seems to have dwindled and many of the children no longer want to join such meetings.44 To sum up, in France being near the Tierno is considered a blessing, as something to ensure success; together with the repetition in the flat of collective and individual praises and prayers, night after night, year after year, these evenings become memory sites bearing out central elements of Sufism and of Islam. In Senegal, a car fetched the author and the women she had met in a family home in Medina Gounass at sunset one Saturday in April 2003 and together with other women from the family, they all went to the site of the daaka. While night was falling and the men were in the mosque for the first prayer of the retreat, the 12 women slipped ‘unseen’ into the women’s quarters, connected with and separated from that of the men of the family. Immediately, some of the women started sweeping. First the annex and then the yard under the trees where the cooking stones were and the fireplace was to be. There have been several fires in the daaka area in earlier years and everything there is highly inflammable. Only then did they start to pray and settle in. The wird in the early morning and the following prayer was to be heard also outside the covered mosque area. Early in the morning, while it is still dark, the 12 women in the women’s sector got up; turning towards the mosque, they recited their wird at the same time as the men in the mosque. When this had ended and the day dawned, they rose, turned towards Mecca and were absorbed in the prayer, led in a very slow rhythm by Tierno Mansour Barro. Life among the women was structured by the prayer hours and the wird, by cooking, also for the men of the family, and by the supererogatory prayers. The oldest women spent a lot of time on the recitation of Fatiha, considered a condensation of the Qur’an. They repeated it again and again, using prayer beads to count the number recited.45 Without any doubt the daaka and the opportunity to concentrate spiritually is of great importance to the women in Senegal. The space offers

concept, implying the highest level where the self disappears before God, al-fana. Gimaret, D. “Tawhīd.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online, 2013, accessed via Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, 3 May 2013. 44 Interview: Ramata 16 June 2010. 45 Gina Gertrud Smith (video producer), Medina Gounass 2003.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 42 Smith them the chance to concentrate on something different from the life in the household where, all the time, their attention is concentrated on the demands of everyday life. It is only a minute group of the women, perhaps about hun- dred, who have this tradition. Other women will remain in Medina Gounass with their family there.

The Daaka of the Men in France and Senegal When the Tierno arrives Thursday at sunset at the ‘Parc des Expositions’ and enters into the exhibition hall, now changed into a mosque, he is welcomed by a line of men most of whom he knows well from his previous visits. Some of them have helped arrange daaka since the migrant workers received permis- sion to use premises of the factories where they worked.46 Everybody then joins in the sunset prayer. After that, there is time for greetings of a formal nature. The mayor of Mantes-la-Jolie also pays a visit, thus continuing the line of earlier mayors and acknowledging the (religious) reunion of an important part of the population in the town. This contrasts with French republican val- ues that consider the political and public sphere to be strictly laïc. The Tierno goes back to the flat around midnight after the last prayer and after blessing those present. This he does every night just as every morning he is back again before sunrise in order to recite the wird and lead the first prayer of the day. After this, it is time for more prayers and for one or more recitals by specialists, hafiz, of parts of the Qur’an. The morning is also the time for lectures on the religion and on religious instructions by him or his compeers such as a descendant of Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane. The participants get very general ethical instructions. They must practise their religion, fast, pray, behave according to the appropriate ethics, be law-abiding and respect the government.47 It is also possible for his followers to seek him and exchange a few words, maybe ask him to do a du’a for them.48 A few of the attendants are not part of or only somewhat connected with this branch of the Tijani tariqa. Some are followers, initiated into the Tijaniyya by Tierno Mansour or other sheikhs, some come because they want to learn about Islam and they are convinced that they can learn more here, others because the charisma of the Sheikh, and his Baraka, draw them. However, they all speak Pulaar even if some speak Arabic with a

46 Abdoulaye Lam (video producer), Daaka Mantes-la-Jolie 2006; also: Daaka—Le Havre 1995; Daaka Mantes-la-Jolie 2008; Daaka Mantes-la-Jolie 2009 (Aubervilliers, Paris 2009). Personal information 2010. 47 Interview: Cheikh 23 January 2010 “It is up to people as responsible Muslims to decide how to act when there is a problem”. 48 Lam, Daaka 2006.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 43 few Arabic speaking visitors from Morocco or French converts to this branch with their roots in North Africa. The key participants have established families, and fathers bring their little boys to the Tierno who puts his hand on the children’s heads and blesses them. There are not many children and the young men participating are busy preparing food in a building next to the mosque or acting as messengers or as chauffeurs taking people to the train station or to the Cité Val-Fourrée.49 Continually, during the five days of the daaka there is a heavy traffic of men walking and driving to and fro the enclave of the daaka since many do not stay all the time. Many men do not arrive until Friday night. In France, darkness falls late in June and so the hadra starts late.50 The Tierno—or on one occasion a descendant of Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane—sits on one side of a large white cloth encir- cled by men sitting on the floor. Even if this hadra does not involve special movements, the many repetitions of ‘la ilaha illa Allah’ and ‘Allah, Allah’ result in some kind of meditativeness thanks to the concurrent rhythmic repetition in the lauding of God.51 On Sunday night the Tierno left the hall and went outside to the daaka’s green enclosure where he blessed people. Quietly he recited Fatiha, while his human ‘loudspeaker’ repeated and all the men received the blessing with their open hands. Not long after, when they had finished the prayer people poured out of the daaka enclave.52 Officially, daaka only closes down the next morning after the morning prayer and the Tierno’s blessings of the remaining participants. The Tierno’s instructions to the participants on normative issues were not binding. They protest over their bad housing situation, they work in unions and in organisations such as SOS-racism.53 When interviewed about how he counselled people around him, an imam was lenient in circumstances where a man has to deal with the situation that it was only possible to land a job in a bar or a restaurant where he might have to touch pork. He said: “It is up to people as responsible Muslims to decide how to act when there is a problem”,

49 Interview: Jacob 14.6.2010. The daaka and Tierno Mansour have been described in a broader French context by Benjamin F. Soares, An African. It is a Fulbe way that young men do not attend to religious practice in a very active way till they have become householders. The author observed this as early as 1987 during her first visit to Senegal. 50 Hadra is an extended wird recited Friday before the sunset prayer. It includes repetitions of the first part of the Shahada, “there is no God but God” as well as prayers to and praise of the Prophet and of the central figures of the tariqa. 51 Lam, Daaka 2006. 52 Interview: Jacob 14 June 2010. 53 Interview: Amadou 11 November 2010 in Senegal; see also Soares, An African, 924.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 44 Smith though he was authoritative when challenged by the interviewer whether it was more important in a conflict to join the sides of a Muslim doing wrong than to accept the conduct of his counterpart acting correctly. He answered that speaking the truth is of absolute necessity. He was strict when he talked about the behaviour of women, who should obey their husbands.54 It is up to the parents to instruct the children in the religion and many took part in classes in the weekends or Wednesday afternoon together with other children. The classical Senegalese Islamic elementary education involves the memorization of parts of or the entire Qur’an. The last did not seem possible in France, and some sent one or more of their sons to stay with the Tierno or family in Senegal to learn this. There was no demand among the young for courses in the Haalpulaar religious tradition.55 When asked, grown up Haalpulaar did not know about religious education done in private schools (mainly attended by North Africans). Nevertheless, one young girl whom the author met during the daaka said in a later interview that she had taken part in courses on Islam with non-Haalpulaar. She was critical of the way the women prayed in the apartment of the Tierno.56 During or as a continuation of his visit to France, groups of followers invite the Tierno to meet them in Belgium, Italy and Spain—all countries with a number of migrants that can organize such meetings, but none of them has the size of or the name daaka.57 In Senegal, the task of arranging the daaka is delegated to followers, close to the Tierno.58 Participants have arrived by air, bus or car. According to Daouda Sow, the Tierno had stopped the practice of the women’s attendance of the

54 Interview: Cheikh 23 January 2010. This had nothing to do with the fact that the interviewer was a woman, and probably not even with the fact that his well-functioning married daughter was in the room. He tackled a general problem of the women’s’ consumerist behaviour and complaining and creating problems while the men were out there working under harsh conditions. 55 Interview: Cheikh 23 January 2010 and with his daughter 4 July 2009. 56 Interview in Paris: Senabu 24 June 2009. 57 In Senegal, more daakas have been established during the last 15 years. In at least one of these (Yeumbeul 2012), both the leading Tierno Ba and the leading Tierno Barro took part. Tierno Ba has not taken part in the daaka Mantes-la-Jolie though, though in 2012, he visited Ile-de-France later the same summer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =xpuOyOIfeJ4, accessed 3 May 2013. 58 The author stayed with the person responsible for the physical arrangement in the bush. Since she was closed up in a women’s lodge, she could only observe the immediate surroundings and thus relies on a video by a man recording the daaka 2003 and on interviews before and after.

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 Religious Retreats and Transcultural Challenges 45 daaka in 1969.59 In 2003, more than a thousand women gathered for a ziyara in the covered area in front of the home of the Tierno in Medina Gounass, a week before the daaka. The wife and sisters of the Tierno were there, seated near the Tierno in the middle, and instrumental in bringing messages from and to the women having asked the Tierno for something.60 As in others years, the daaka started at sunset after Tierno Ba and Tierno Barro and their entourage arrived to the grounds in the bush. Under the tarpaulin in the mosque area, they gathered for the sunset prayer and the wird. This first evening is also the time when representatives of other Tijani branches present their greetings. The represen- tative of the Senegalese government conveys official greetings and declares that the state will do its best to ensure a favourable course of the daaka. They are actually responsible for the distribution of water and electricity to the area. Tierno Ba expresses his gratitude. The state television shoots the highlights. The five prayers structure the days; the men pray together in the mosque and complete this with the recital of the wird in the morning and at sunset.61 The morning is also the time for the hafiz to recite the Qur’an and for lectures on religion and the religious instructions done by him or his compeers. Modern technology makes it possible to hear this further away than just the mosque. Around sunset on Friday the mosque and all the area around it is crammed with men. It is time for the hadra. This daaka is much bigger than the one in France, with some 500,000 attendees. Video shows the masses under cover of the tarpaulin gathered around Tierno Ba and the other important sheikhs around the white cover on the ground. From there, the crowd of men spills out into the surroundings and the video shows them still arriving to join in under the trees gathered in the light of the setting sun while many apparently turn meditatively inwards at the vast number of rhythmic repetitive recitals of the hadra.62 By Monday morning it is all over. After the morning prayer, everybody present is blessed. The state television shoots. The video from the daaka in 2003 shows that descendants of the Sheikh Ahmad Tidiane, the founder of the Tijaniyya, and Tierno Mansour Barro who till his death played a significant role at this daaka, as did the imam of Medina Gounass said their du’a for everybody.

59 Sow, Contribution, 82. In 2009, Tierno Cheikh Barro said that daaka was not for women. 60 Participant observation by author in 2003, followed by interviews with a son of the Tierno. 61 In rural areas this is no problem in Senegal whereas it might be a problem in Dakar and other large towns to have this communal prayer, if they worked far away. However, for the migrants visiting this was special and a part of the religious culture that they were able to follow here, but not in France or elsewhere. 62 Mamadou Wane (video-producer), Le daaka de Medina Gounass 2003 (Dakar, 2003).

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 46 Smith

The youngest—in his sixties—was Tierno Ahmad Tidiane Ba, the son of Tierno Mouhammadou Ba; he now has the title of caliph. Everybody is there. As in Mantes-la-Jolie, it is of crucial importance to be part of the blessing, even for more critical migrants visiting from France. Now it is the end and everybody runs for the waiting minibuses.63 ∵ During daaka, the participants re-collect and re-create their diachronic cultural memory. It is a mnemonic ‘institution’ that claims its roots to be religious retreats, but the idea to gather a large number of people under primitive conditions in the bush is relatively new, as the first ‘prototype’ of the daaka only took place in 1942 and it was only in 1960 that the structure was laid-down.64 It gathers large numbers of people around a sheikh and thus refers to another mnemonic ‘institution’, the ziyara. The Haalpulaar travel as migrants and pilgrims. Together with the local mayor and his administration, they organize the daaka in France. They are ‘travelling carriers of memory’ in a French context where work in big cities makes it very difficult to be true to religious obligations such as prayer and wird. The daaka’s daily communitarian practice combined with the presence of the Tierno contributes to the Baraka permeating the daaka. The tiernos are poles of the retreats, and together with the structure of the days filled with the ‘memory practice’ such as wird, the five prayers, the recitals of the Qur’an and of the individual prayers using Fatiha and prayer beads, they are part of the ‘memory content’ of both daakas. There is a degree of fluidity in the content, which is not only religious but on the island in the Seine River, also a remembering and re-enactment of Haalpulaar savoir-vivre, language and social structure. The fluidity is in accordance with Islamic and Haalpulaar culture as well as with modernity, according to Danièle Hervieu-Léger. As such, daaka is a respite from everyday life in the French cultural and political context. The flat in the Cité has become a space where the women have a chance to get such a respite at the same time as performing their communal and individual prayers. The women here are close to the Tierno and his wife, whereas the women in the daaka Medina Gounass are isolated from all men, except family, and concentrate on religious practice. The men on the island are also close to the sheikh, who stresses that the daaka is for men; this gender division is part of the Haalpulaar social structure. In France, some 6-8% of the population are

63 Smith, Medina Gounass, p. 57. 64 Sow, Contributions, p. 81.

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Muslim, but the West African Muslims are ‘invisible’, registered as noirs or sans- papiers and with an uneasy relationship with the Musulmans that in France are mostly of North African origin. The travel or pilgrimage to Fez links the migrants with a Moroccan cultural memory in a way that is pertinent to their lives in France. Since there is no public coverage and no written announce- ments, it is perfectly possible to live in and visit Mantes-la-Jolie without real- izing that there is a major religious reunion going on, whereas in Senegal, state television carries programming on the start and the closing of the daaka. The migrant carriers have rarely become literate in French, and as a media used in the ‘travelling memory’, memorization, embodiment and oral transmission are more important than writing. Today, cassette recordings and amateur videos on the internet have de-territorialized or rather de-personalised the embodiment. Finally, words such as daaka, ziyara, Fatiha, pilgrimage, ‘les principes républicains’ are ‘mnemonic forms’, carriers of meaning that are easily repeated. As ‘shorthands’ they might be transported and given another sense. The daaka has to some extent been detached from the contextual meaning it originally referred to and contains many of the facets that Danièle Hervieu- Léger links with the pilgrimage to Taize: the ascetic settings, the interim sites for the religious practice, the fluidity of the content and the fact that some religious institution has established it. It was the Tierno in Medina Gounass, who sent Tierno Mansour Barro on a mission.

Conclusion and Perspectives

In France, migrants have succeeded in creating a forum for the re-creation of a religious retreat in Senegal. It is a case of ’travelling memory’ as proposed by Astrid Erll. The sheikh is a ‘mnemonic form’ that is revitalised through narratives implying their esoteric knowledge and the importance of their Baraka. The daaka has become a ‘mnemonic form’ but in the French context it is trans- formed while still re-enacting central religious mnemonic content and practice. To this has been added a French identity as a Haalpulaar Tijani migrant. The migrants take a greater part in the arrangement and the revitalisation of their identity as Muslims with a diachronic cultural memory, and the connec- tion to Morocco helps to define Haalpulaar Islamic culture in a context without much understanding or respect for it. The sheikh, Tierno Barro, is the pole and as such, he is far more accessible than the Tierno is in Senegal. It is a very tentative theory that a number of the participants function both as carriers of ‘travelling memory’ and as a media of this. The esoteric knowledge of batin together with Baraka is embodied in the Tierno and his blessings,

Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014) 26-48 48 Smith and the Message is present when the hafiz recites his memorization of the Qur’an. Haalpulaar savoir-vivre and Tijani Islam are displayed by the participants’ behaviour and their native language, Pulaar, is uncontested as the media of communication. The daaka is a space of affective communicative memory as described by Assmann but also of the pilgrimage situation as analysed by Danièle Hervieu- Léger. A tentative conclusion is that the important axis is the one between the emotional and the cultural dimensions. The Haalpulaar have established a space for identification, for remembering and for acknowledging their religious and ethnic belonging. They have done this under the pressure of life in the suburbs, les banlieues, of the much larger group of North African Muslims and ‘les principes républicains’ and they have accepted “the common rules of the game” and done it in cooperation with the local politicians.65 It is difficult to conclude on the future of the daaka. The data mentioned in the article on the younger generation are too dispersed and too few. The younger generation in France (and in Senegal) only attends the daaka in limited numbers, but the children of the migrants of the 1970s and 1980s are still young. It is not yet time for a generational shift. Haalpulaar try to provide their children with Qur’anic education, using Pulaar and French as teaching media and at a certain period in their lives, involving them in the daaka. This way they do not resemble those French parents in ultra-modern France described by Hervieu-Léger. When asked, the young persons from the families carrying the daaka were self-identifying as French and Haalpulaar and Muslims. Thus, they adhere to their cultural and symbolic ‘capital’ as being part of their ‘belonging’, of their being French.

65 Roy quoted in Laurence, Jonathan and Justin Vaisse, Integrating Islam. Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (Washington D.C.: Brooking Institutions Press, 2006) p. xiii.

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