The authentication of a discursive islam: Shi’a alternatives to sufi orders

Abstract

Since the 1980s some Sénégalese Sunni Muslims have been "converting"1 to Shi’a Islam. This small but growing community is not well-known. In fact most scholars of Sénégal and Sénégalese Sunni religious leaders and their followers are surprised to hear that Shi’a Islam is spreading among West Africans. The discovery of this branch of Islam is one of the responses of the Sénégalese search for an authentic Islam. Throughout the Muslim world there is a tendency to return to earlier practices of Islam perceived as a solution to the failures attributed to Western influence and the innovations (bida) in recent Islamic practice. It is this desire for "true" knowledge about Islam in a return to the scriptural sources that drove some Sénégalese Muslims to read various religious and legal books, visit Islamic scholars and clerics seeking the truth about their religion, and learn about other ways of being Muslim.2 This chapter explores how a collectivity of converts works to establish Shi’a Islam as not only authentic Islam but also as authentically Sénégalese.3 Adapting Shi’a Islamic practice to the culture of Senegalese Sufi orders is one way of distancing religious ritual from the perception that Shi’a Islam is Iranian or revolutionary.