Islam and the Media of Devotion in and out of Senegal

Abstract

Few devotees of the Muridiyya, a Sufi congregation that emerged in colonial Senegal at the turn of the twentieth century, have the opportunity to glimpse or touch their spiritual masters. ExaltedMurid figures rarely leave their compounds in rural Tuba and access to them is restricted to highranking initiates such as Muslim scholars, government and business leaders. Ordinary disciples are more likely to view religious figures in the variety of media circulating in an out of Senegal.The desire for and appreciation of mediation to facilitate proper practice and proximity to the Divine distinguish Murid adepts from their Sunni counterparts. The electronic mediation of devotional practices produces feelings of nearness to spiritual leaders for disciples in Senegal and abroad. Through visual practices related to electronic media devotees receive religious merit and grace that lead to spiritual and material enrichment and create their spiritual community.[Key words: electronic media, circulation and value, Sufism, Senegal] Islam's New PublicityIn the evenings during my fieldwork in the Senegalese capital of Dakar in the late 1990s I would often listen to a call and answer show on Radio Dunyaa. Muslim men and women would

Mediating Disjunctures of Time: Ancestral Chronotopes in Ritual and Media Practices

“…Since the 1980s, listening to recordings of such performances (first circulated on audiocassettes, and now on audio-and video CDs, as well as through MP3 and video files on the Internet) has become very popular. These practices are very much in line with expanding uses of electronic religious media throughout the Muslim world (Buggenhagen 2010, Hirschkind 2006, Schulz 2006, Moll 2010, Jouilli and Moors 2014. one consequence of the circulation of such devotional genres through technologies of sound reproduction and audiovisual technologies is that they now regularly transcend their traditional ritual contexts.…”

A Snapshot of Happiness: Photo Albums, Respectability and Economic Uncertainty in Dakar

“…These images were appropriated and invested with new meanings by the disciples who used these images in their devotional practices. For example, the French only snapped one photograph of the founding figure of the Murid way, Amadou Bamba, and its singularity over time became the basis of its reproduction as a devotional image in wall murals, hanging photographs and necklaces (Buggenhagen 2010). These images ‘get things done … they are endowed with baraka … Mouride visuality is above all directed toward practice ’ (Roberts et al .…”

Media and Religious Diversity

“…But media practices can also constitute important markers of religious difference. For example, in contemporary Senegal, the production of videocassette and DVD recordings of pilgrimages and their collective viewing are visual practices that not only approach Murid adepts to the centers and personalities of authority of their Sufi tradition, but also distinguish them from their Sunni counterparts (Buggenhagen 2010). In some cases, the spread of a new medium has enabled the expansion of a particular religious tradition at the expense of other traditions, such as the conversion of Hmong in Vietnam from Shamanism to Evangelical Christianity through radio broadcasts (Ngo 2009).…”