The Republic of Senegal is a small but influential country at the extreme west of Africa. It has a population of six million people, of whom almost 90 percent are Muslim. The balance is made up of either Christians or animists. Islam in Senegal has a special character in that it is overwhelmingly represented by Sufi orders, to which the vast majority of the Muslim population owe allegiance.
Individual adherents to these orders become members by inheritance and by paying allegiance to a sheikh or marabout. In some cases adherents learn a supplementary prayer formula peculiar to the order. Male members usually meet regularly, and devotion to the order and its sheikhs is often the primary loyalty of its members, although feelings of Senegalese nationalism and identity are also strong today.
In Senegal, hierarchies within the order take the place of the learned "orthodox" Islamic leaders, or ulama, who are important in Middle Eastern Islam. Recently though, with a growing Middle Eastern Muslim influence in Senegal, more orthodox type of Islamic education and intellectual is appearing. To date, however, there is neither a Middle Eastern type of ulama nor a significant demand for the enforcement of Islamic law. To many Senegalese Islam is what the orders say it is, although the orders themselves are becoming increasingly learned in Islamic orthodoxy. The orders also have a major political and economic influence.
Islam had been gradually introduced to Senegal by traders and missionaries since the eleventh century, and the three major orders developed during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Islam gained power more rapidly with the social changes and disruptions brought on by the slave trade, initially, and later by French colonialism.
Senegal's location made it one of the earliest ports for European traders and an early source of large numbers of slaves. The island of Goree, which after several vicissitudes became a French possession, was the main port for the holding and shipment of slaves from West Africa. Today it has been restored, and, in addition to the former slave quarters, where local guides tell of the horrors of the past, it contains beautiful houses, plants, and beaches. It is a popular residence for some of the elite of the capital, Dakar.
The slave trade was highly disruptive to the economy and society of Senegal's kingdoms and local structures. Many men and women were lost to the economy, while a few others became rich through trade and the ownership of slaves. However, the slave trade reinforced the hierarchical structure characteristic of northern and central Senegal, which were dominated by the Peul-speaking and Wolof-speaking peoples.
In these societies there were three basic social categories: free persons, who were either aristocrats or cultivators; the caste groups of artisans and griots (historian-praise-singers); and slave. The groups married within themselves, and there are still some remnants of disdain by descendants of the free for other groups, despite the importance of artisans to the economy. In the context of the social disruption and change caused by the slave trade, Islam's development was a form of popular protest.
Coming in from North Africa, Islam spread first among the
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