Everyday Faith in Sufi Senegal

Laura Cochrane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351817974
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Everyday Faith in Sufi Senegal explores the historical, religious, cultural and economic contexts of Islam in Senegal through the narrative first-hand accounts of people's everyday lives. Drawing on rich ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author over a period of seven years, the result is a critical look at Senegal's religious diversity within Islamic beliefs and practices. Containing interviews from men and women in both rural and urban locations, this book is an important contribution to the literature on Islamic practices, providing a much-needed perspective from ordinary practitioners of the faith. It is essential reading for scholars of the anthropology of religion, Islamic studies, mysticism, African studies, and development studies.

1
Introduction

Ismaïla’s neighborhood is in Thiès, but far enough removed from the city center to feel like its own urban village. Once past the paved streets that lead from Thiès, walking across the hot sand into his neighborhood, residents greet friends, notice strangers, and remember repeat visitors. Neighbors gather under the trees that grow adjacent to their houses. Women bring their sewing or other household work outside to take advantage of stray breezes during the hot season. Children and young adults migrate to each other’s houses, under the watchful eyes of parents and other adults. On Fridays, the neighborhood men perform their ablutions, put on their best robes, and go to the nearby mosque to pray. Each day, though, both men and women take time to pray in busy courtyards, their ability to pray amid chaos a testament to their focus. Ismaïla lives with his extended family; several generations move fluidly throughout the house with two courtyards: a front, visiting courtyard and a back courtyard reserved for household chores and family affairs. His mother watches all the activities from either a divan in the shade of the courtyard or in the adjacent sewing room. Ismaïla’s weaving workshop is in one of the rooms lining the front courtyard. While children and adults move in and out of his workspace, they respect it enough to let him work. He keeps an ear out for activities in the courtyard, though, greeting visitors and breaking up scuffles between children. Other than these short forays outside his workroom, he rarely breaks for work during the day, other than for the midday meal and, of course, the requisite afternoon tea.

These neighborhood and household scenes are common in Senegal: the close-knit family and neighborhood, the constant visiting and exchange of information, the public and private religious life, and the hot sand surrounding everything. People rely on family and community for their social and economic life. They work to maintain relationships in a conscious and deliberate way. Local and national definitions of community cut across Senegal’s religious diversity and also across the nation’s ethnic diversity. Senegal is home to over 50 different ethnicities (shared group heritages) and languages. Many of these ethnicities overlap kingdoms that governed territories until the mid-nineteenth century and national boundaries drawn by European colonial administrators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These ethnicities share migration histories from elsewhere in West Africa, as well as political pasts with each other. Certain ethnicities predominate in specific regions, such as Wolof in the western coastal regions north of Dakar and the central Senegal agricultural regions and Sereer in the coastal and delta regions south of Dakar and inland areas surrounding Thiès. Urban cities such as Senegal’s capital Dakar and Thiès, 80 kilometers inland from Dakar, bring people of diverse ethnicities together, often in the same neighborhoods.

Figure 1.1 Ismaïla Cissé in his home weaving workshop

Photograph by author, used with permission.

Both rural and urban areas are home to religious diversity. Senegal’s population is predominantly Muslim (94%), with a small, but visible, Christian minority (4%). Practitioners of indigenous religions are a smaller minority, yet their beliefs permeate both religious and cultural beliefs throughout Senegal. I use the term “indigenous” to mean anything that is from the region, as opposed to globally practiced Islam, which originated in the Arabian Peninsula. Indigenous beliefs are not static and not necessarily ancient, as people create and shape them just as people create and shape Islam and Christianity. “Indigenous” can also be applied to Islam, though, when placing Islam within a cultural context. The Murid and the Layeen Sufi orders, for example, are indigenous (from the area) orders, created in Senegal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Across ethnic, religious, and other social affiliations, people have a deep respect for the practices and discourses that define faith. Growing up surrounded by this diversity in urban Thiès, Ismaïla said he didn’t learn the ethnicity-based traditions of either his mother’s or his father’s ethnicities. Through his tapestry weaving work, however, he has become fascinated with portraying cultural and religious traditions of Senegal’s ethnicities. He works with a painter of Diola ethnicity, for example, who creates images of women talking or of spirits in the forest. He has developed a deep respect for indigenous beliefs about spirits while developing his own Islamic identity. Open religious discourse and mutual respect also strengthen community ties. While conflicts, disagreements, and tensions based on religious identities do exist, Senegal’s environment of open religious dialogue has been consciously created and maintained at both the state and local levels. This makes interpersonal and interfaith respect visible where it might not be as visible or public in a different political context. Constant visiting and sharing everyday conversations reinforces these connections, making the ties strong enough that neighbors often become each other’s safety nets in difficult times.

This book is an exploration of individual and shared faith within communities and within a predominantly Muslim nation. Faith and belief can be contentious concepts, as they have historical baggage linked to Western psychology and European traditions of Christianity. While acknowledging that baggage, I have chosen to use both of these concepts in ethnographically grounded ways, and equally as important, in practice-specific ways. People used the terms “faith” and “belief” in several ways in their narratives and used both Wolof and French to define them conversationally. I also use both concepts, described more in Chapter Three. Faith is a shared system of beliefs, practices, and traditions, such as Islamic faith. Beliefs contain culturally specific logic and are shaped and reinforced by practices, teachings, and experiences. Faith describes a chosen commitment to those beliefs and practices; faith also includes embodied expressions and internalized understandings of these beliefs and practices. I talked with people about their beliefs and their practices and the ways they have committed to both in their everyday lives. Because faith is not always best expressed verbally, these conversations contained silences, gestures, and actions as well as verbalized explanations; sometimes, being with the person over time was more explanatory than words.

Senegal’s religious diversity includes varied cultural ideologies about faith: different forms of Islam, including, most predominantly, Sufiorders, yet also other Sunni and Shi’i groups, and religious minorities, including Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) and those who practice indigenous beliefs. It is difficult to separate “culture” and “shared religious beliefs” and even “religion” as categories in this environment. Through personal narratives, this book argues that people creatively define and shape their selves through everyday experiences and practices, all within shared belief systems and political contexts. How do people engage with shared beliefs and familial and cultural traditions to create their identities as believers? To what extent can religious practices be individual creative expressions? How does Senegal’s political and social context create a space that makes those faith-based conversations and practices visible?

In these narratives, cultural beliefs about the importance of family, indigenous beliefs about spirits, and tolerance combine with theological teachings of Islam and religious teachings within specific Sufi orders.¹ People describe how they study these teachings, exchange ideas about shared beliefs, and choose how to apply them in their daily lives. While Senegal’s open religious dialogue allows me to have such conversations with people of all religious traditions in Senegal, I focus here on people affiliated with three Sufi orders – the Layeen, Murid, and Tijani orders – and the Baay Fall suborder of the Muridiyya. I do not pretend that the people selected for this book are representative of the Senegalese public or even of the Sufi orders highlighted here. Instead, I hope to show how a handful of people practice their faith (their commitments to beliefs and practices) on a daily basis, showing the diversity in those practices and the ways they both create their own identities as people of faith and influence their communities. I place their narratives in their larger context of both cultural and religious beliefs and the current and historical events that they feel have influenced them.

Cities and villages

I carried out interviews that make up this book over multiple research trips to Senegal between 2009 and 2016, talking with people who have varying perspectives on Sufism and faith in Senegal. The differing locations of the interviews in both cities and rural areas brought several contexts into the conversations: urban residents would talk about political meetings or religious study circles they attended, while rural residents might talk about politics and spirituality, but also environmental changes that affect the growing season. Common concerns of environmental and economic difficulties, political changes during this time, and global events also played a part in the interviews and are thus part of this book. These narratives, in other words, do not exist apart from their social contexts.

Senegal is in the Sahel, a semi-arid region on the shifting southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Sahara to the north, and the forested zones of West Africa to the south, Senegal’s diverse environments (arid interior, coastal areas, forested regions) have faced increased environmental challenges in recent decades. The humidity of the coastal areas seasonally clashes with dust and sand storms. Coastal towns enjoy fishing and tourism industries, though increased water pollution and the receding coastline because of rising ocean levels have curtailed these industries in recent decades. With a short, three-month rainy season, agricultural areas on the coast and inland benefit from groundwater – reserves from wetter past millennia supplemented over time – yet these regions have faced repeated droughts over the past century. These difficulties have affected agricultural, fishing, and tourism livelihoods, creating financial strains on families, towns, and entire regions. To highlight people from varying communities, I selected interviewees from both rural and urban locations in the Dakar, Thiès, and Diourbel Regions: specifically, the towns of Yoff, Thiès, Poponguine, and Ndem.

Figure 1.2 Senegal is the westernmost country in West Africa

Illustration by author.

Yoff encompasses multiple urban villages on the north end of the Dakar Peninsula. Senegal is the westernmost country on the African continent, and the Dakar Peninsula is the westernmost point in Senegal. Yoff was once a forested region on the peninsula but is now a crowded urban arc of villages divided by a highway, lined with concrete, and bordered by beaches. Traffic in Yoff is thus constant. It’s often faster and more pleasant to walk to get from one place to another, weaving through the traffic on foot, motorbike, horse cart, decrepit taxi, and expensive SUV. Its weekly market is several blocks long and is packed with vendors selling everything one can imagine and customers expertly bargaining with them for the best prices. Its proximity to Dakar means that local and national politics sometimes overlap. Ndeye Samb Lo, a community health organizer in Yoff, talks about the support her projects have received from different Senegalese presidents, in the form of in-kind resources. One example is the support for temporary clinics set up in Yoff during an annual Layeen pilgrimage to make sure the crowds of pilgrims from across Senegal stay healthy and hydrated in the heat. Home to a strong fishing heritage, the Lébu ethnicity, and the Layeen Sufi order, Yoff maintains its tight communities and religious identity even as it becomes more and more overcrowded.

Figure 1.3 The western-central regions of Senegal, with selected towns and cities shown

Illustration by author.

Thiès is a smaller city than Dakar, 80 kilometers inland from Dakar, in the Thiès Region.² It retains traces of French colonialism: some colonial architecture remains, and the old French fort stands at the edge of the central market. Thiès is the City of the Rail, proud of its railway and also its rail worker strikes in the 1930s and 40s against French colonial impositions (Ministère de la Culture 1999, 14–15).³ Thiès continues to be a political town. Visits with families mean catching up on family news as well as local and national political happenings. The downtown area, the public square bordered by governmental buildings for the city and region, and the central market are the city’s economic centers. These areas are connected by walkable tree-lined streets and sidewalks. Even though I lived in Thiès for a year (in 2004–2005), each time I visit the city I have to learn new places, as new neighborhoods continue to sprawl out of its former borders. Residents of the city tell me the same: they can get lost in the newer areas. While urban, Thiès is surrounded by rural villages that depend on agriculture, pastoralism, and artisanal trades. The city’s central market is thus full of agricultural products from the surrounding areas when the seasons and the annual rain cooperate with farmers. Vegetables and fruit are thus usually fresher and less expensive in Thiès than in Dakar, which is geographically separate from rural areas. Trade, familial relationships, and job opportunities have historically created strong connections between Thiès and the surrounding areas.

Poponguine, also in the Thiès Region, is a large village of about 3,000 residents south of the cities of Thiès and Dakar, on the Atlantic Coast. It is known throughout Senegal as a Catholic town, as its population is half Muslim, half Catholic. The Catholic basilica dominates the city center, though it shares the space with the mosque a short walk away. The annual Marial pilgrimage brings Catholic pilgrims from across Senegal to Poponguine. Some residents leave their homes during this time to escape the crowds, while others take advantage of the crowds as a boon to their small businesses: Rougie Diallo depends on this event for her business, selling handmade jewelry, bags, and textiles. Poponguine’s residents have historically relied on fishing and beach tourism, yet pollution washing south from Dakar has limited fishing, and rising ocean levels are erasing its beaches, hurting tourism. This affects not only hotel and restaurant workers, but also associated industries, such as Rougie’s business, that rely on tourists as clients. With these challenges, Poponguine’s residents seek ways to reshape their own sources of income and their village’s economy.

Ndem is a small rural village seven kilometers north of Bambey, a small city within the Diourbel Region, east of Thiès. In this book, Ndem refers to the 300-person daara, a spiritual community, within Ndem the village. The daara runs an artisanal center, schools, a health clinic, and agricultural projects, all connected to faith-based ideas about economic development. Ndem’s daara is led by Sëriñ Babacar Mbow, a Baay Fall shaykh, also called a marabout, a religious leader. The titles of shaykh and marabout can sometimes be used interchangeably. Shaykh is an Arabic title of earned respect for a religious leader. Marabout is a North and West African term for a religious leader that can have multiple meanings: a teacher, spiritual guide, or healer. Sëriñ and Soxna are Wolof titles of respect for religious leaders or elders. While this book focuses on disciples, not religious leaders, Sëriñ Babacar and his wife, Soxna Aïssa Cissé, both contributed important explanations of spirituality to this book. A number of Sëriñ Babacar’s disciples also took part in the conversations that make up this book.

I met people and conducted interviews in several other towns over the years I conducted these interviews, including Mbakke Kajoor, where Sëriñ Babacar and a number of his disciples started a new spiritual community and educational center; Louga, where the same group held an event to publicize the new settlement in Mbakke Kajoor; Dakar, where many people travel for business; and Touba, the holy city of the Muridiyya. All of these locations are located within the central-western regions of Senegal.

Interviews and relationships

These informal and conversational visits and interviews were made possible by relationships built with people and communities over time and during diverse research projects in Senegal carried out since 2003, when I started visiting Senegal for my doctoral research. Throughout all of these research projects, I have had the privilege of getting to know families, attending birth and wedding celebrations, visiting over a meal or tea, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on translations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sufism in Senegal
• 3 Faith, beliefs, and agency
• 4 Respect, tolerance, and political contexts
• 5 Everyday prayer
• 6 Work as a practice of faith
• 7 Spiritual guidance
• 8 A Baay Fall way of life
• 9 Total commitment to faith
• 10 Everyday mysticism
• Glossary
• Index