The Muridiyya on the Move

Islam, Migration, and Place Making

Cheikh Anta Babou

• Editorial: Ohio University Press
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780821447291
• Categoría: Ciencias sociales
• Categoría: Emigración e inmigración

Highlights the role of transnational space making in the construction of diasporic Muridiyya identity.

The construction of collective identity among the Muridiyya abroad is a communal but contested endeavor. Differing conceptions of what should be the mission of Muridiyya institutions in the diaspora reveal disciples' conflicting politics and challenge the notion of the order's homogeneity. While some insist on the universal dimension of Ahmadu Bamba Mbakke's calling and emphasize dawa (proselytizing), others prioritize preserving Muridiyya identity abroad by consolidating the linkages with the leadership in Senegal. Diasporic reimaginings of the Muridiyya abroad, in turn, inspire cultural reconfigurations at home.

Drawing from a wide array of oral and archival sources in multiple languages collected in five countries, The Muridiyya on the Move reconstructs over half a century of the order's history, focusing on mobility and cultural transformations in urban settings. In this groundbreaking work, Babou highlights the importance of the dahira (urban prayer circle) as he charts the continuities and ruptures between Muridiyya migrations. Throughout, he delineates the economic, socio-political, and other forces that powered these population movements, including colonial rule, the economic crises of the postcolonial era, and natural disasters.

1

The Muridiyya in the Cities of Senegal

God has spoken. The statue has fallen. It should never stand again.¹

The three sentences in the epigraph capture the reactions of Murids in the city of Saint-Louis (Senegal) and around the world when on September 5, 2017, a storm knocked the statue of General Louis Faidherbe off its pedestal. The statue had been standing in the square of the same name since 1887 in this historic city that was once the capital of Senegal and French West Africa (AOF, French acronym).² The news of Faidherbe’s stumble went viral on the internet. YouTube videos circulated celebrating the fall of one of the most powerful French colonial administrators in the history of Senegal and perhaps the history of Africa itself.³ Faidherbe is a towering figure in Saint-Louis; in addition to the square, the city’s largest bridge bears his name (and until recently, so did the largest high school). Since the 1990s, Murids in Saint-Louis have been demanding the statue be removed and the square named after Ahmadu Bamba. The statue’s fall on the anniversary of Bamba’s prayer in the office of the French governor, where he stood trial in 1895, was for the Murid faithful an unmistakable sign of God’s wish. Murid demands for erasing Faidherbe from the city’s landscape and inscribing Ahmadu Bamba in his place reflect growing Murid economic and cultural assertiveness in Senegal’s cities, especially Saint-Louis and Dakar, where Murid disciples have recently initiated new pilgrimages and religious celebrations.

What is remarkable about Murid claims over space and commemorations in Saint-Louis and Dakar is how they are tied to the real or imagined physical presence of Ahmadu Bamba at specific places on specific dates. Specialists in hagiographic studies note the importance of combining temporal and topographical evidence of a saint’s identity.⁴ For the Murids, documenting the bodily imprint of Ahmadu Bamba in the urban landscape by tracing spatio-temporal proofs of his physical presence is essential to the claim for sacred Murid place. Sites of religious commemoration are not ordinary spaces but a product of the transforming power of hierophany (manifestation of the sacred): these are places where the divine world intersects with the profane world to infuse spiritual value to secular geometric space.⁵ For Murids, the painstaking reconstruction of Ahmadu Bamba’s footprints in Saint-Louis and Dakar and the reenactment of his activities (real or imagined) are important in the contest for space. These two cities are colonial creations that continue to embody traces of their colonial past, whereas Murid culture and history remain marginalized.

Occupied in 1659, Saint-Louis is the oldest French colony on the Atlantic coast of Africa. Its inhabitants began sending a representative to the French Parliament in 1848. Saint-Louis acquired the status of a French commune in 1872, conferring some constitutional rights to those born in the city.⁶ As descendants of French citizens who benefited, in theory, from the same rights as French citizens in metropolitan France, Saint-Louisiens do not always share the nationalist sentiments of their compatriots. This includes the Murids, whose ancestors from the inland protectorates were French subjects ruled by the harsh indigénat regime that deprived them of basic rights.⁷ Saint-Louisiens tend to consider the French soldiers and administrators who worked and fought alongside their ancestors as compatriots. They also recall the peaceful coexistence of Islam and colonial rule in the old city and do not see a contradiction between the Islamic identity of Saint-Louis and the presence of important vestiges of its colonial past.

Dakar, which is also the capital of Senegal, is more cosmopolitan than Saint-Louis and seems less insecure about its identity and future. The indigenous population, the Lébous, are now in the minority. Unlike the people of Saint-Louis, the Lébous have an identity strongly influenced by traditional African values.⁸ Although they, too, acquired French citizenship as inhabitants of a commune, the Lébous were not influenced by French culture and colonial history as much as the elite of Saint-Louis were. Their biggest concern was to maintain the cultural identity of some historic Lébou sites and to assert their control over the few ancestral lands that have thus far escaped the developers and real estate speculators of Dakar.

Murid religious commemorations in Saint-Louis and Dakar are important parts of a strategy to invest the Senegalese urban landscape with cultural and historical meaning. These commemorations deflect ingrained popular perceptions of Murids as interlopers who do not belong in the city and make the case for deeper urban connections. As Murids engage in this ritual mapping of the cities, they aim to provide a new sociological identity to the space that challenges entrenched local claims to spaces. Therefore, beyond the quarrel over the removal of the statue, the renaming of the square, or the legitimacy of Murid commemorations in Saint-Louis and Dakar, what is at stake is the reshaping of each city’s memory and the political and potential economic implications of that memory. The dispute has as much to do with the past as it does with the present and future: it represents the clash of two competing postcolonial identities. One of these identities is inscribed in historical continuity, recognizing the colonial origins of these cities and the value of maintaining their present traces for a variety of economic, political, and cultural reasons. Another contests and disrupts official history through revision, rehabilitating the actions and voices of silenced historical actors.

By claiming, rediscovering, and inventing sites of Murid memory in the two cities through religious celebrations, Murids seek to stretch their organization’s space beyond its heartland in western-central Senegal to include territory they have been excluded from (at least in cultural terms) but that has become their economic dominion.⁹ In trying to turn important symbolic places in Saint-Louis and Dakar into shrines for pilgrimages, Murid disciples met opposition from the state and other institutions intent on protecting official memory—that is, “institutions committed to enshrining moments that are deemed central for the construction of national ideology.”¹⁰

This chapter investigates the transformation of the Muridiyya from a marginalized rural religious order of migrant peanut farmers to a powerful economic, political, and social force in Senegalese cities. It focuses on Murid migration and on communities in Saint-Louis and Dakar, which both served as the capital of AOF and colonial Senegal at different times. I examine Murid efforts to enshrine their culture in the two cities’ spaces and the responses to their initiatives. Elsewhere I have demonstrated the centrality of place making in preserving Murid identity and in Murid accommodation to colonial rule.¹¹ In the postcolonial era, Murid efforts at place making have occurred in urban settings and played a different role. I suggest that the recent assertiveness by Murids in Saint-Louis and Dakar is part of an ongoing effort to translate their growing economic power into cultural and symbolic capital to further legitimize their standing in the cities. The legitimacy acquired could then serve as the basis for claiming power and having a greater say in the management of urban space and affairs. This effort is fraught with tensions and controversies because it requires reading a history of the two cities that inscribes Murid culture in urban space while challenging established histories. As Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hect remind us, “The phenomenon in which memory and identity are fused to place may be an important factor in generating resistance, conflict, and change.”¹²

DAHIRA AND THE URBANIZATION OF THE MURIDIYYA

Murids began to move to Senegalese cities in the early twentieth century as seasonal rural-urban migrants.¹³ They spent the dry season in urban areas working menial jobs as mattress makers, charcoal sellers, landscapers, porters, and bricklayers but returned to their farms in June, when the first rains fell. Permanent settlement in cities started in earnest after World War II, when Murids relocated to urban areas in larger numbers and worked as smiths, jewelers, tailors, butchers, leatherworkers, low-level civil servants, and traders.¹⁴

The development of the dahira paralleled the steady migration of Murids to Senegalese cities. The dahira has now become the most recognizable Murid institution in urban Senegal. The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic gives several definitions of the word dā’ira (daïra or dahira) that revolve around mathematical concepts (ring, circuit, circumference, etc.) and administrative notions (district, bureau, agency, etc.).¹⁵ The Sufi orders of Senegal offer what seems to be a unique example of the use of dahira in a religious context. The word “dahira” among Senegalese Sufis embodies both the mathematical and bureaucratic meanings of the word. “Dahira” originally referred to an organization regrouping a community of disciples living in a city, but it also describes their habit of sitting in circle when reciting the Wird, chanting devotional poems, or deliberating.¹⁶

In Senegal, the word “dahira” entered the Sufi lexicon in the late 1920s. It was first used by disciples of the Tijany shaykh, Ababakar Sy.¹⁷ Among the Murids, the dahira was first conceived as a sort of prayer circle where disciples from the same town or neighborhood would meet on a weekly basis to read the Qur’an, chant Ahmadu Bamba’s devotional poems, collect financial contributions, and socialize.¹⁸ In the city, the dahira played a role similar to that of the Murid daara (rural working school) at the forefront of Murid expansion to the forest of eastern-central Senegal after the relocation of Ahmadu Bamba in Diourbel in 1912. For many recent urban dwellers, it replaced the toolu larba (Wednesday farm) where once a week rural disciples donated their labor to the local Murid shaykh. Many of my Murid informants living in cities in Africa and abroad see the dahira as an institutionalization, in monetary form, of the labor they donated every Wednesday when living in the Senegalese countryside. Today, the tradition of collecting dahira dues on Wednesdays continues in the Senegalese markets and in the wider diaspora.

The development of the dahira in colonial urban Senegal was met with resistance and controversy. The colonial administration resisted the regulation of religious organizations that it deemed outside the mandate of the secular French republic.¹⁹ For example, the administration refused to officially license dahiras. But when religious activities spilled out in public space in defiance of their expected domestic confinement, they created confusion and anxiety among colonial administrators bereft of administrative tools to deal with these public displays of worship.

Murids held their dahira rituals and meetings in private houses. Loud chanting of Ahmadu Bamba’s qasidas (devotional poems) is a central part of Murid worship. For most Murids, the chanting of these poems is as important as reciting the Qur’an. The spiritual songs are believed to have the power to sanctify space and bring blessings to worshippers.²⁰ They also help consolidate the emotional bond between fellow disciples now living in a strange land away from the heartland of the Muridiyya. But the loud chanting was not welcome in the colonial cities where strict regulations were in place to control noise pollution, especially in residential areas. Moreover, in the tradition of French secularism with its insistence on strict separation between church and state, religion had no place in public space,²¹ let alone a religion that in the mind of colonizers represented “Islam noir” (Black Islam), a corrupted form of Islam invented by and for benighted Wolof farmers.²²

Murid leaders of dahiras in Dakar remember the harassment they suffered from the police when they met at Gumaalo Sekk’s house in the Medina neighborhood.²³ They recall that their meetings were often dispersed because of the worshippers’ loud chanting or because of the crowd that gathered in the street. Elhaaj Njaga Gey, echoing the memory of many fellow Murids in Dakar in the 1950s and 1960s, notes: “I remember that when we started to found dahira at Kër Gumaalo, the police would often come to disperse our meetings. They would ask us to apply for an authorization to meet and we knew that they would not grant us the authorization if we applied.”²⁴

Murids attempting to organize religious events in the houses of the Murid shaykh, Shaykh Mbakke, in the neighborhoods of Grand Dakar and downtown Dakar suffered the same fate. The applications they submitted to colonial officials to organize sacred music concerts were typically denied. Their neighbors, most of whom were middle-class French and Africans, signed petitions complaining about the noise, citing lack of consideration for sick people and pregnant women who were unable to sleep because of the noise. The colonial administration agreed. The police complained that these concerts, which they described as “screams” and “howls,” took place too frequently and constituted a danger to people’s mental health because they induced a state of hallucination and hypnosis.²⁵

The administration had strict regulations regarding the organization of “noisy events” in public or private space. While they were willing to make exemptions for movie theaters and for the Catholic Church, which was never refused authorization to hold p...