Mamadou Diouf - Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal

Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal

Religion, Culture, and Public Life

Religion, Culture, and Public Life

Series Editors: Alfred Stepan and Mark C. Taylor

The resurgence of religion calls for careful analysis and constructive criticism of new forms of intolerance, as well as new approaches to tolerance, respect, mutual understanding, and accommodation. In order to promote serious scholarship and informed debate, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life and Columbia University Press are sponsoring a book series devoted to the investigation of the role of religion in society and culture today. This series includes works by scholars in religious studies, political science, history, cultural anthropology, economics, social psychology, and other allied fields whose work sustains multidisciplinary and comparative as well as transnational analyses of historical and contemporary issues. The series focuses on issues related to questions of difference, identity, and practice within local, national, and international contexts. Special attention is paid to the ways in which religious traditions encourage conflict, violence, and intolerance and also support human rights, ecumenical values, and mutual understanding. By mediating alternative methodologies and different religious, social, and cultural traditions, books published in this series will open channels of communication that facilitate critical analysis.

After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement, edited by Courtney Bender and Pamela E. Klassen

Religion and International Relations Theory, edited by Jack Snyder

Religion in America: A Political History, Denis Lacorne

Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan

Refiguring the Spiritual: Beuys, Barney, Turrell, Goldsworthy, Mark C. Taylor

Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal

EDITED BY

MAMADOU DIOUF

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2013 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-53089-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tolerance, democracy, and sufis in Senegal / edited by Mamadou Diouf.

p. cm.(Religion, culture, and public life)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-16262-3 (cloth: alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-16263-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-53089-7 (e-book)

1. IslamSenegal. 2. SufismSenegal. 3. SenegalSocial conditions. 4. SenegalReligion. I. Diouf, Mamadou.

BP64.S4T65 2013

297.409663dc23

2012035168

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References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

This volume has its origin in a 2008 conference held at Columbia University to celebrate the reopening of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at Columbia. A Sufi recital with the great Senegalese Sufi singer Musa Dieng Kala, and an art exhibition Saint in the City, Senegalese Sufi urban art curated by Allen Roberts and Polly Nooters Roberts at the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, accompanied the conference. The IAS reopening celebration benefited from the generous support and sponsorship of several institutions: the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; the Committee on Global Thought; the Institute of African Studies; the School of International and Public Administration; the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion; and the Henry R. Luce Initiative on International Affairs and Religion. I would like to thank these institutions for their support.

I would like to thank the participants for writing and editing their texts for this book and the audience for their engagement and contribution to the discussion. Although Mansour Sy Djamils contribution to the conference is not included herein, the presentation and the debate it provoked nevertheless shaped this volume.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Musa Dieng Kala, Allen Roberts, Polly Nooters Roberts, and Howard Dodson to the success of the conference. They added to the discussion a much needed aesthetic and cultural dimension. I would like to especially thank Sarah Walsworth, then at the Institute of African Studies, and Emily Brenner at the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life for efficiently handling the complex administrative tasks associated with organizing an international conference, recital, and art exhibit.

It is a pleasure to express my indebtedness to many colleagues for their constructive criticism and very useful feedback on many versions of the introduction to the volume, in particular Jinny K. Prais and Trica D. Keaton. The reviewers for Columbia University Press offered thoughtful and useful commentaries on the introduction and the individual chapters, for which I am also extremely grateful.

At different stages of the production of this volume, three of my graduate and undergraduate students, Katie Hickerson, Mary McDonald, and Alioune Badara Dia, played a crucial role in helping me with the detailsformatting, proofreading, and checking endnotes and bibliographiesof getting the volume ready for publication. I am indebted to them for their assistance.

Finally, I am most grateful for the support and enthusiasm of Anne Routon, my editor at Columbia University, who expedited production of the book and made it an enjoyable experience.