African Sufi Research Articles

Sorcery or Science? Contested Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts, by Ariela Marcus Sells

Sorcery or Science? Contested Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts, by Ariela Marcus Sells

West African Sufism and the matter of Black life

AbstractIn this article, I consider how migration practices around the Black Atlantic and discourses of repatriation mobilize Black African diasporic Muslim identities in present-day Senegal and in a mosque in South Carolina that is situated on land that was formerly a slave plantation. I use the term ‘reversion’ as a vocabulary of ‘diasporic becoming’ to signal how notions of Islamic piety are coupled with a politics of Black Atlantic Muslimness in the context of a West African Sufi tariqa – or ‘Black Atlantic Sufism’. Moreover, I consider how identity formation and African Muslim ancestry are impacted by discourses of geographic return and repatriation that are linked to spiritual tourism.

Sufi Feminism

Abstract Men founded and have ruled over Sufi orders since their inception, and thus the position of Khalifa or shaykh has been traditionally held by men. However, this study argues that in some Islamic mystical traditions women have assumed a senior leadership role with all the power that such a prominent position entails. More research is needed to understand the challenges Sufi women have faced in legitimizing their power, their experiences in a patriarchal society, and the various methods they have used to establish and protect their religious authority. By adopting a qualitative approach, this study seeks to explain the shift in Sufi women’s leadership role in society, specifically within the African context, focusing on two women who were influential spiritual leaders, Nana Asmaʾu and Sharifa ʿAlawiyya al-Mīrghanī. The study concludes that African Sufi feminist traditions overcame the challenges posed by their complex societal contexts.

Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Mad?? Poetry and its Precedents (By Oludamini Ogunnaike)

Reviewed by: Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Madīḥ Poetry and its Precedents by Oludamini Ogunnaike Nicholas Boylston (bio) Poetry book Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Madīḥ Poetry and its Precedents Oludamini Ogunnaike Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2020. 166 Pages. In Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection, Ogunnaike notes that West African poets embarking on praising the Prophet Muhammad saw themselves facing an impossible task: how could they encompass his limitless and ineffable perfections [End Page 84] within the limitations of language? Perhaps in parallel fashion, Ogunnaike sets himself a daunting task in this book- to introduce a literary tradition that has no comparable modern popular genre, that is rooted in an aesthetics that seems remote from tastes prevalent in contemporary Europe and America, that is as much oral as it is written, and that is claimed by its own authors to be fully appreciated only by practitioners of Sufism (p. 13). Yet just as the poets of prophetic praise were spurred on by the immensity of their task to create remarkable works of great literary beauty and spiritual power, Ogunnaike also takes up the challenge he faces with both the ingenuity of an expert pedagogue and the precision of an accomplished scholar in the field, and I think he has achieved something remarkable in the process. The book is divided into two parts, in addition to an appendix that presents translations of eight complete poems by eminent representatives of the tradition. The first part deals with "The Form and Function of West African Sufi Madīḥ," and it is here that Ogunnaike lays the groundwork for understanding this genre. As he explains, to understand this poetry it is not sufficient to evaluate it using standards of more familiar genres, even from the Arabic literary tradition. We need to understand what the poems are supposed to do, the literary and spiritual functions that they perform. Ogunnaike thus clarifies that in addition to its literary and aesthetic qualities, West African Sufi madīḥ serves as du'ā (personal supplication), ḥilya (iconic representation of the Prophet) and dhikr/ṣalawāt (remembrance/invocation of blessings upon the Prophet, and thus as a ritual act of focusing one's attention on the sacred). Although these categories overlap, Ogunnaike skillfully draws out their nuances, providing examples throughout that demonstrate how this poetry is used to express the deepest yearnings of the poet, bestow blessing through its recitation and physical presence, and act as a support for contemplation. As he explains each of these functions, Ogunnaike presents numerous excerpts from the poems themselves, including both the Arabic originals and elegant translations. These selections build on each other in fascinating ways. Thus an example of praise poetry as du'ā might also include a prayer for assisting in the impossible task of praising the Prophet, or a ṣalawāt poem might act simultaneously as du'ā and ḥilya. Having explained these functions, Ogunnaike then turns to the ontological foundations that underlie the tradition he is expositing, which is rooted in Sufi metaphysics and particularly the thought of Ibn 'Arabī and his interpreters. Though he is now explaining subtle metaphysical points that rank among the most challenging issues in Islamic intellectual history, the presentation here is lucid and compelling. Thus, we read that praise of God is ultimately identical with the very existence of each thing, for as the Qur'anic metaphor has it, all that exists is "God's speech, manifesting and describing Himself" (p. 52). The Prophet Muhammad, viewed as the Muhammadan Light, the first thing created [End Page 85] by God, is thus the greatest praise of God (as well as being praiser and praised), through whom God praises Himself in the most complete manner. By praising the Prophet, the West African madīḥ poets enter into and participate in this reciprocal relationship of praise between lover and beloved, at first imitating God in praising the Prophet, and ultimately becoming annihilated in the Prophet and praising God. Ogunnaike's exposition here is nuanced and lucid, and these discussions bring to our attention a completely new dimension of the poetry he describes which would be extremely difficult to access without the...

Black Muslimness Mobilized

The Mustafawi Tariqa is a transnational Sufi Order that was initiated in 1966 by the late Cheikh Mustafa Gueye Haydara (d. 1989) in Thiès, Senegal. Yet, only since 1994 has this specific Sufi network reached westward across the water, bringing American Muslims—many of whom are converts—into the larger network. In the United States, the majority of students who have entered the Tariqa and have declared allegiance (bayah) to Shaykh Arona Rashid Faye Al-Faqir are African-Americans who have inserted themselves religiously, culturally, and pedagogically into a West African Sufi tradition which emphasizes religious study and the practice of dhikr (remembrance of God). Shaykh Arona Faye is a Senegalese religious leader who relocated to the southeastern region of the United States from West Africa to spread the religion of Islam and expose American Muslims to the rich West African tradition of spiritual purification and Islamic piety. At the same time, many of those who are African-American members of this tradition have made it a point to travel to Senegal themselves to strengthen transatlantic ties with West African compatriots and visit sacred burial sites in the small city of Thiès. I examine how two sites of pilgrimage for the Mustafawi—Moncks Corner, South Carolina and Thiès, Senegal—play a part in the infrastructure of Black Atlantic Sufi network. Moncks Corner is the central site in which access to the Tariqa’s most charismatic living shaykh, Shaykh Arona Faye, has worked for the past two decades teaching and mentoring those on the Path. On the other hand, Thiès is the location where the Tariqa’s founder is buried and travelers visit the town in order to pay homage to his memory. I show how these sites catalyze mobility and operate as spaces of spiritual refuge for visitors in both local and regional contexts by looking at how a local zawiyah produces movement in relation to a broader tariqa. By looking at pilgrimage and knowledge transmission, I argue that the manner in which esoteric approaches to spiritual care and the embodiment of higher Islamic ethics via the West African Sufi methodology of the Mustafawi informs the manner in which Muslims of varying African descent inhabit a broader diasporic identification of “Black Muslimness.”

Navigating African Sacred Geography: Shrines for African Sufi Saints and Spirits in India

Abstract African sacred spaces in India are carved and maintained by mortal beings mostly hailing from the Sidi African-Indian community and from other subaltern communities, and these spaces are perpetually protected by African spirit beings. Thriving as marginal spaces in the overcrowded Indian cities, coastal towns, and villages, these African sacred topographies are continuously reimagined and reinvented by invested stakeholders to suit contemporary purposes. While addressing the complex connections of some of these sacredscapes with the African Indian Ocean slave trade, this paper examines how shrines dedicated to African Sufi saints and spirits keep African memories alive as devotees continue to seek the intercessions of these saints and spectral deities. By studying the spiritual beliefs and practices at these shrines, I discuss how African sacred geography in India prevails as a relational space connected to the Indian Ocean littoral through the intercessory powers of the African saints and spirits.

Filling the Pot: The Remembrance of African Sufi Ancestor-Saints and the Reclamation of African Historical Heritage in Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Abstract This essay, based on ethnographic research conducted in 2017–2018, explores the ways in which the death-anniversary celebrations (‘urs) of the Sidi (African-Indian) Sufi ancestor-saints in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, demonstrate the pivotal role of the Sidi Sufi tradition in unifying the diversity of and temporal distinctions between the various waves of the African diaspora in western India.

The Law of Possession: Ritual, Healing, and the Secular State ed. by William S. Sax and Helene Basu

Reviewed by: The Law of Possession: Ritual, Healing, and the Secular State ed. by William S. Sax and Helene Basu Raquel Romberg Keywords William S. Sax, Helene Basu, Raquel Romberg, possession, healing, comparative possession, political magic, magic and law, exorcism william s. sax and helene basu, eds. The Law of Possession: Ritual, Healing, and the Secular State. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 272. This is an exciting, well organized and written volume about the controversial, unresolved, and often unexpected interconnection between possession, healing, and the law in contemporary India, Africa, and China. It shows that rationalization processes expected of "modern" states are seldom complete and thus might be of influence on some but not all sections of the population in contemporary societies. Contributors-editors William Sax and Helene Basu deftly tied together this collection of chapters with a clear, compelling argument that systematically questions the inevitable and all-encompassing disenchantment and secularization processes expected of modern societies. Social and cultural anthropology, mental health, history, and religion are represented in this interdisciplinary and crosscultural volume, which includes five chapters about India, two about East Africa, and one about China. These very choices turn the exploration of the main theme of this volume into a powerful exercise. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this volume from the very start. The introduction lays out the volume's main argument in clear, concise, and learned ways, framing its main themes within larger socio-historical questions that open up the usually more esoteric and isolated investigations of possession and ritual healing to broader discussions related to development, secularism, social justice, public policy, the modern self, and global nongovernmental organizations, among others. Political, social, and development theories as well as state practices sustained largely by the disenchantment thesis are questioned and tested by the richly compelling, empirical realities depicted in this collection; they poke, by and large, into the monolithic argumentation of classic modernity theories with the possibilities of "multiple," "alternative," and "non-modern" modernities suggested by Eisenstadt, Gaonkar, and Latour respectively. Against classic theories of modernity that have portrayed the so-called [End Page 135] "purification" processes of the state or the administrative separation between, religion, law, and medicine as inevitable, this volume points to current coeval situations in which such processes have been completed, others in which they are ongoing and contested, and still others in which they have not yet taken place. These options inform the three sections of the volume: Disintegration, Purification, and Integration. In the first section, the chapter by Helene Basu tells an amazing ethnographic and historical story about a counterworld ruled by African Sufi (Sidi) "jungle saints" who rule over transcendental law courts by means of trials by ordeal and lead healing and retribution processes via possession trance, providing alternative spaces of justice and morality for those poor communities who inhabit the periphery. Basu argues that the logic of these alternative spaces of judgment (the practices of which have been adapted in the 1980s in response to state intervention) should be understood as providing resources embedded in the morality and specific needs of marginalized communities that enable solutions to everyday problems against the "arbitrariness marking the developmental state" (34). The second chapter in this section, by Arne Steinforth, traces the contradictions and conundrums behind the convoluted relationships between the principles informing legal pluralism, the (colonial) Witchcraft Act, and spirit agency in Malawi over several decades, particularly the ways in which they have served the agendas of various groups. Most interestingly, Steinforth addresses the inherent contradiction in implementing anti-witchcraft laws that avow at the same time that witchcraft should be punished and that it doesn't exist, which is augmented by the unavailability of court appropriate forms of evidence against witchcraft at the national level. And yet, he points out, a large part of the population (of various social classes) claims that witchcraft is real and thus calls for new measures to eradicate it. Here is where the status of witchfinders becomes controversial: they are punishable by the Witchcraft Act that defines them as "witches," and non-punishable by traditional courts that define them as "healers." The last chapter in the Disintegration section is by Dominic Steavu...

The Presence of Poetry, the Poetry of Presence

The composition and performance of Arabic Sufi poetry is the most characteristic artistic tradition of West African Sufi communities, and yet this tradition has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. In this article, I sketch an outline of a theory of Sufi poetics, and then apply this theory to interpret a performance of a popular Arabic poem of the Senegalese Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975), founder of the most popular branch of the Tijāniyya in West Africa.

A West African Sufi Master on the Global Stage: Cheikh Abdoulaye Dièye and the Khidmatul Khadim International Sufi School in France and the United States

AbstractThe recent wave of West African Muslim migration to the West started after the Great War and gained momentum in the 1960s. Sub-Saharan Africans have been particularly successful in finding a niche in Europe and North America partly because of the connection between immigrants and centers of Islamic spirituality and knowledge in Africa provided by a dynamic leadership that straddles the three continents. Based on extensive interviews in the United States and in France and on the examination of Murid internal sources and scholarly secondary literature, this article investigates the efforts of the late Sufi sheikh, Abdoulaye Dièye, to expand the Muridiyya Muslim tariqa in France and North America. I am particularly interested in examining the foundations of Dièye’s appeal, his struggle to earn legitimacy and relevance on the global stage, and the response of diverse constituencies to his calling. I contend that the attraction of Dièye’s teachings to Europeans, Americans, and Africans in the diaspora, is rooted in his dual cultural outlook as a Western educated and traditionally trained Murid.

Sufism in West Africa

Sufism had a decisive influence on the development and spread of Islam in West Africa. Although it has been the subject of a considerable number of academic works, Sufism in West Africa remains understudied and often misunderstood. French and British colonial views of Islam had a lasting impact on the perception of Sufism in Africa, resulting in its depreciation as a kind of “popular” Islam of the ignorant masses. A closer look at eminent West African Sufi leaders and their movements, including the Qadiriyya, the Tijaniyya, and the Muridiyya, reveals that Sufism articulated itself in a variety of ways over the past three centuries, and that it continues to be a formidable spiritual, intellectual, and social force in many countries in the Western parts of the African continent.

Gender and Agency in the History of a West African Sufi Community: The Followers of Yacouba Sylla

In 1929, French colonial officials in Mauritania began monitoring a young man named Yacouba Sylla, the leader of a religious revival in the town of Kaédi. A Sufi teacher (shaykh), Yacouba Sylla had incurred the hostility of local administrators and the disdain of Kaédi's elite for preaching radical reforms of social and religious practice and for claiming authority out of proportion to his age and his rather minimal formal education. He claimed to derive his authority instead from a controversial shaykh named Ahmed Hamallah, then in exile from his home in Nioro, French Soudan (now Mali).

JONATHAN G. KATZ, Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muhammadal-Zawawi, Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996). Pp. 281. $120 cloth.

In this original and intriguing study, Jonathan Katz explores and analyzes the dream diary of a little-known 15th-century North African Sufi saint (wali¯), Muhammad al-Zawawi of Bijaya (modern Bougie, Algeria). Over a ten-year period (1447–57), al-Zawawi kept a nearly complete diary of his dream encounters with the Prophet Muhammad. Consisting of 109 entries, al-Zawawi's Tu[h dot under]fat al-na¯[z dot under]ir wa-nuzhat al-mana¯zir traces his visionary career across North Africa from Bijaya to Cairo and back.

West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal

West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal

West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal, by Louis Brenner, viii + 215 pages, illustrations, appendixes, glossary, bibliography, index. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles1984. $22.50.

West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal, by Louis Brenner, viii + 215 pages, illustrations, appendixes, glossary, bibliography, index. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles1984. $22.50. - Volume 19 Issue 1

West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal

West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal