The Prophet Muhammad reincarnated and his son, Jesus: re-centering Islam among the Layenne of Senegal

Abstract

This article explores how the Layenne of Senegal have employed the historical geography of the Cap Vert peninsula as an archive to effectively re-center the Islamic world away from Arabia to the coast of West Africa. Annual pilgrimages to Layenne religious sites and shrines that serve as lieux de mémoire provide ‘foyers’ on which contemporary collective and individual identities are contemplated with regard to Layenne perceptions of the past. The Layenne historical imagination is tied to the geographic space that constitutes Cap Vert in a symbiotic relationship by which history gives meaning to place and vice versa. While the rituals practiced at the Layenne places of memory revolve around the hagiography of their founder, Seydina Limamou Laye, who claimed to be the Mahdi and the reincarnation of the Prophet Muhammad, the Layenne have also appropriated sites and symbols associated with French colonization and a post-colonial Senegal into a vibrant and fluid conception of modernity that is simultaneously indigenous and global.