Globalization and Missionary Ambition in West African Islam. The Fayda after Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse

Abstract

For more than 10 years, we have been observing the Fayda Tijaniyya and its ramifications around the world. Starting in 2006 we have been conducting observations in Nigeria, Niger, Senegal and Mauritania. Between 2015 and 2017, we closely followed some developments of the Fayda in the French capital and in other European cities. In parallel to these field investigations, we have been interested in the new religious arrangements that are gradually emerging in the United Kingdom. More recently, in 2020, we benefited from a stay in the USA which allowed us to widen our observation framework. From there, we were able to collect empirical material consisting of several dozen interviews, direct observation notes, private and public documents (reports, administrative documents, correspondences, letters of recommendation, press articles, travel chronicles and private videos, among others). In the Fayda Ibrahimiyya, the global culture suggests an update of the mode of inheritance, but in addition it makes emerge a new framework of activity essentially composed of a device of formation with global character, of a hybrid diplomatic-religious space, finally of a humanitarian action which appears as a missionary presenza. We first show that the conjunction of these three registers of action has as a condition, a process of articulation and appropriation through which the actors of the Fayda manage to convince of the link of identity that prevails between their own history and that of the founder. The conclusion of the article is devoted to a critical discussion in which we postulate that the imagination of a homogeneous global community comes up against a form of local resistance that is a counterpoint and probably an anti-globalizing replica. The historical socio-anthropology of comprehensive inspiration that we favour allows us to finely approach the interdependencies between these three registers and the narrative elaborated locally by the supporters of this community. The paradigm of mobility in which we place the Fayda, allows us to grasp the scope of the globalization of practices and uses, as well as the tension that operates between a dynamic of continuity and a dynamic of rupture that crosses for some decades this religious community.