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Despite pervasive rumors in Dakar that the upcoming Senegalese presidential elections may be delayed, electoral campaigns by the candidates kicked off Sunday.
The complexity of Islam’s relationship with Senegalese democracy has been the subject of numerous books and articles. There is one point, however, that I wish to reinforce here.
To quote the authors of a recent and fascinating book about the Muslim minority in France, Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, negative stereotypes about Islam can often be reduced to a “shorthand equation of negative views: Arab=Muslim=religious zealot=terrorist.”
The case of Senegal reveals the many blatant errors in the above equation. For one, not all Arabs are Muslim, nor are all Muslims Arab - a simple fact that everyone would of course swear to you they understand, but one that people often seem to forget. Would it surprise you to learn that there are more Muslims in Nigeria than in Saudi Arabia? Or that Indonesia is the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world? When such basic facts are overlooked, stereotypes gain ground.
The rest of the formula also falls apart under examination. Clearly - and despite the disproportionate media attention given to radical Muslims - very few Muslims are “religious zealots.” And even among those who are, very few become terrorists.
In Senegal there are radical Muslims of all stripes: Islamist, fundamentalist, hard-line reformist - but in Senegal’s contemporary history there have been no significant acts of terrorism. Most of Senegal’s Muslim population, indeed, are Sufis; they belong to Sufi brotherhoods like the Tijaniyya or the homegrown Mouridiyya and have little interest in radical, contestatory forms of Islam, let alone terrorism.
And yet, Islam inevitably plays a political role here - sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, but rarely violently. The state itself is secular, and most Senegalese Muslims are interested in keeping it that way. Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, was himself a Christian, but enjoyed close relationships with major Muslim religious leaders during much of his twenty-year tenure as chief of state.
Contemporary Senegalese politicians play a complicated political game, a careful balancing act between tradition and modernity, religion and secularity. President Wade, for example, is a cultured, diplomatic leader with impeccable French and a French wife - but he is also a disciple of the current Mouride Khalifa, Serigne Saliou Mbacke, and has been known to prostrate himself in front of the shaykh, raising questions among the Senegalese similar to those posed by Americans who were concerned about JFK’s Catholicism in 1960.
Ignoring the diversity of the Islamic world promotes stereotypes, and renders us easy prey for ideologues who want to portray an entire religion, and not just certain people within that religion, as America’s enemy. The reason I urge Americans to pay attention to Senegal is that I hope they will discover a different form of Islam functioning, one whose mechanisms are a far cry from those of Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Iran, the countries who are often presented as the “mainstream” of Islamic thought, culture, and practice.
In early November of 2006, soon after arriving in Dakar, I was able to attend a conference that brought together specialists of African and Asian Islam. Experts on Senegal, Nigeria, and other West African Muslim nations swapped insights and information with their colleagues who worked on Pakistan and India, finding interesting parallels and comparisons. To a man (and woman), they all said that they were dismayed by the lack of attention that is paid by the general public to Islam outside of the Middle East. If the public paid more attention to the “peripheries” of the Muslim world, they said, we might grasp more of Islam’s complexity and variety.
The many areas of the Muslim world that are often considered “peripheral” are home to millions of believers with all kinds of different points of view - ones that Americans desperately need to hear, especially before we alienate all of these Muslims by telling them that they are all fanatics and terrorists.
So for those Americans who want to learn about Islam, I advise you to study Islamic history, and to learn about the Middle East - but I also advise you to pick a “peripheral” Muslim country, be it in West Africa, southeast Asia, Europe or elsewhere, and learn about it too. In this way we shed our stereotypes, and prepare the groundwork for truly understanding the world we live in, and the people who live in it with us.
