Islamic Conversion and Social Change in a Senegalese Village

Abstract

Religious conversion is a highly varied phenomenon. In American culture one generally thinks of conversion as an awakened personal commitment to one's own (or a similar) religious tradition, as in the case of the rebirth of a nominal Christian. Conversion also may serve as the basis for recruitment to a movement which defines and constitutes one's tradition anew. The prophetic movement among the eighteenth century Seneca Iroquois so richly portrayed in the work of Wallace (I 969) is an example of this latter possibility. Conversion also may facilitate change across cultural boundaries as in the case of conversion from a traditional to a universal religion. At the symbolic level, conversion can be dehned as a change in one's mode of attachment to sacred symbols or a replacement of one set of sacred symbols by another. By change in mode of attachment I mean change in feelings, perception, and communication regarding one's sacred symbols. A nominal Christian does not convert to a new set of religious symbols but rather changes in his or her internal commitment to existing symbols. A West African converting from his ancestral religion to a universal religion such as Christianity or Islam may believe that he is worshipping the same deity before conversion as after, yet through conversion acquires a broader knowledge of this deity and access to new ritual methods for communicating with him. Conversion also may be discontinuous in the sense that traditional symbols are wholly rejected and replaced by new ones. One good example of this comparatively unusual pattern would be the conversion to Puritan Christianity by certain New England Indian groups in the seventeenth century (Salisbury I974; Segal and Stineback I977). Most historical examples of conversion, including the one analyzed in this article, involve a mixture cf symbolic continuity, and the introduction of new modes of attachment as well as new sacred symbols. Conversion does not occur at the symbolic level alone. The sym-