New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAM IN SENEGAL

CONVERSION, MIGRATION, WEALTH, POWER, AND FEMININITY

Edited by Mamadou Dioufand Mara A. Leichtman

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

Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

New perspectives on Islam in Senegal: conversion, migration, wealth, power, and femininity / editors, Mamadou Dioufand Mara Leichtman. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index.

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 ofthe book is available from the British Library.

Design by Scribe Inc.

First edition: January 2009

109 8 76 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

Contributors IX

Glossary xiii

Acronyms ofMuslim Movements and Political Parties xvii

Introduction: New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity 1 Mamadou Diouf(Columbia University in the City ofNew York) and Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University)

Part 1: Histories, Ethnographies, and Pedagogies ofIslam

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

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

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

Part 2: Conversion and Spiritual Translations

4 The Greater Jihad and Conversion: Sereer Interpretations ofSufi Islam in Senegal 91 James Searing (Un iversity ofIllinois at Chicago)

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

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

Part 3: Gender, Marriage, and Sexuality

7 Migration, Marriage, and Ethnicity: The Early Development ofIslam in Precolonial Middle Casamance 169 Aly Drame (Dominican Uni versity)

8 Beyond Brotherhood : Gender, Religious Authority, and the Global Circuits ofSenegalese Muridiyya 189 Beth A. Buggenhagen (Indiana Univ ersity, Bloomington )

9 Iambaar or Iumbax-out] How Sunnite Women Negotiate Power and Belief in Orthodox Islamic Femininity 211 Erin Augis (R amapo College ofN ewJersey)

Part 4: Modernity, Politics, and Dialectics 10 Dialectics of Religion and Politics in Senegal 237 Roman Loimeier (Center for African Studies, University ofFlorida, Gainesville)

11 Islam, Protest, and Citizen Mobilization: New Sufi Movements 257 Pabienne Samson (L'Ecole deshautes etudes en sciences sociales, Centre d Jetudes Africaines, Paris)

Index 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 ofDakar 56

2.4 The Ihsan Mosque, Saint Louis 59

2.5 The Mosque ofSoprim 63

3.1 Mechanized Well ofDarou Mousty 73

3.2 Grand Mosque ofDarou 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 .I /. ~ -;;; I r- Z... !-

1.:::::======J;~~======::::::::=====aJ i~ i:ii: CONTRIBUTORS

Erin Augis is an associate professor ofsociology at Ramapo College ofNew Jersey, where she teaches courses on gender, race relations, social movements, and the devel oping world . A recipient ofFulbright 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 ofSaharan Tuaregs to sub-Saharan tourist cities. Augis is currently a board member ofthe West African Research Association.

Beth A. Buggenhagen is an assistant professor ofsociocultural anthropology at Indi ana University, Bloomington. Her research interests include circulation and value, diaspora and transnationalism, neoliberal global capital, gender, and Islam and visual ity. Buggenhagen is currently working on a book manuscript, Prophets and Profits: Gender and Islam in Global Senegal, on the global circuits ofSenegalese Muslims and the politics ofsocial 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 Rus sian, 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 ofworship. 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 ofAfrican Studies at Columbia University in New York. His primary research has focused on the colonial, postcolonial, urban, and cultural history ofSenegal and Francophone West Africa. He is the author ofmany articles, book chapters, and books including, Le Kajoor au lveme siecle. Pouvoir Ceddo et Conquete Coloniale (Paris: Kar thala, 1990), Histoire du Senegal: Le Modele Islamo- Wolofet sesPeripheries (Paris: Mai sonneuve & 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 ofIllinois at Chi cago. His current research focuses on processes of ethnic identity transformation in Southern Senegambia before colonial rule, through interfaith marriage, Islamic edu cation, and military jihad. He is currently an assistant professor at Dominican Univer sity, 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 andJihad in Modern Senegal: The Murid Order (Roch ester: University of Rochester Press, 2007). His research concerns the production, meaning, and use ofhistorical narratives by the Sufi orders ofSenegal as they relate to notions of modernity. His current research project concerns the Lebu fisherfolk and the Layenne Sufi order ofthe 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 offemale youth in particular, in the Tabligh Iama'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 [ama(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 visit ing 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 manu script entitled, Becoming Shi'a in Africa: LebaneseMigrants and SenegaleseConverts.

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 ofAfrican Mus lim societies, Sufi brotherhoods, and movements ofreform, 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'erudes Africaines, Paris (France). She is an anthropologist and researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour Ie Developpement (lRD). Her current work is on new Christian and Muslim movements among urban youth in West Africa, Her publica tions include articles on Islam in Senegal and Les Marabouts de l'islam Politique. Le Dahiratoul Moustarcbidina Wal Moustarchidaty, un movement neo-confrerique seneg alais (Paris: Karthala, 2005). CONTRIBUTORS xi

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 WestAfrican 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 WolofKingdoms ofKajoor and Bawol (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001). His current research examines ethnicity and conversion through a fieldwork based study ofthe Sereer Safen, an ethnic minor ity in the Thies region who converted to Islam in the colonial period.

Rudolph (Butch) Ware holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is assistant professor ofhistory at the University ofMichigan. He researches knowledge transmission in Islamic West Africa. His first book manuscript, "A Walking Qur'an: Embodied Knowledge, Qur'an Schooling, and H istory in Senegambia," interrogates the role oftraditional 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 Senegal et en Cote 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 ofSlavery Volume III (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2008); and "Njangaan: The Daily Regime ofQur'anic Students in 20th Century Senegal," InternationalJournal ofAfrican Historical Stud ies, 37, no. 3 (2004): 515-38. GLOSSARY

adat: Tradition, customs. addiya: Religious offerings. adhan : Call to prayer. alai: Wealth. amal (pI. a'amal ): Work, religious tasks. arabisant(s): Those educated in the Arabic language. ashura: The tenth day ofthe month ofMuharram on which Shi'a commemorate the martyrdom ofImam Hussein, the grandson ofthe 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 (pI. bida): Innovation in religion . Caliphate: A series ofSunni Caliphs who were the selected or elected successor of the 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 ofthe 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. xiv GLOSSARY griot: Poet, praise singer, bard; an expert on oral tradition. gris-gris: Amulets. hadith (pI. ahadith): Collections oforal traditions relating to the words and deeds of the prophet Mohammad. hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca, one ofthe 5 pillars ofIslam. hawza: Seminary ofShi'i Islamic training. hijab (pI. hijabat) : Veil, headscarf. hijra: Migration ofthe prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CEo ijtima' (pI. ijtima'at): Conference (religious) . imam: Head ofa 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 ofreligious war or a personal struggle within oneselfor 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 ofa Sufi order in Senegal. khums : Shi'a Islamic tax ofone-fifth ofall income. khutba: Friday prayer sermon. madhhab: Islamic school ofthought. There are four main madhahib (pI.) in Sunni Islam: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools, while the Shi'a follow the Ia'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 xv mawlud: The celebration ofthe birthday ofthe prophet Mohammad. medina : Old city. mihrab: Niche in a wall ofa mosque indicating qibla. muezzin: The chosen person at a mosque who leads the call to prayer. muqaddam: Representative ofan 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 ofMecca toward which a Muslim should pray. qutb al-alam: Pole ofthe world . qutb aI-zaman: Pole ofthe age. sahabah : The companions ofthe prophet. salat: Prayer. shahada : The profession offaith, "there is no God but God and Mohammad is the Messenger of God," the first pillar ofIslam. shari'a: Islamic law. sherif: One who claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad. Shi'a : From sbi'a; Ali, the partisans ofAli. 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 ofthe prophet. silsila: Genealogies . sokhna: Female spiritual leaders, often the daughters or wives ofmarabouts. sunnah: The body ofIslamic law based on the words and deeds ofMohammad 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 (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'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 AI-Wahhab (1703-1792). This name is rarely used by members ofthe 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 offaith and religious practice . wakil: Authorized representative ofa marja, a Shi'a leader who is a reference for emulation. wali: Holy man, friend ofGod . wazifa: Sufi repetition ofsacred phrases. wird : Prayer formula . zawiya: Headquarters ofa Sufi order. ziyara: Visit to a Muslim holy place or spiritual leader. ACRONYMS OF MUSLIM MOVEMENTS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

AEEMS Association desBleveset Etudiants Musulmans du Senegal AEMUD Association desEtudiants Musulmans de l'Universite de Dakar AMEA Association Musulmane des Etudiants Africains BFM Brigade de la Fraternite Musulmane CIRCOFS Comite Islamique pour la Reforme du Code de la Famille au Senegal DEM Dabira des Etudiants Mourides de Dakar DMM Dahirat al-Mustarshidin wal-Mustarsbidat FAIS Federation desAssociations Islamiques du Senegal. FAL Frontpourl'Alternance HF Harakat al-Falah (lil-thaqafat al-Islamiyya) HT Hizb al-Tarqiyya IID Institut Islamique de Dakar JIR [ama'at Ibadu Rahman MF Matlab al-Fawzayni MMUD Mouvemcnt Mondial pour l'Unicite de Dieu (Arabic: Diwan Silk al-fawahirft-Akhbar Sagharir) PUR Parti de l'Unite et du Russemblement PVD Parti de la Verite pour le Diveloppement TJ Tabligh[ama(at UCM Union Culturelle Musulmane (Arabic: ITI, Ittihad al-Thaqafi al-Islami)