Islam’s New Visibility and the Secular Public in Senegal

Bush Bound

“…Amselle 1976: 19;Jónsson 2007: 9). 6 Although anthropologists have since disputed essentialist representations of Soninke ethnicity and migration, mobility has remained at the heart of scholarly research on the Soninke (but cf. Adams 1977Adams , 1985.…”

“…The Sumbunu (leatherworkers), the Kante (blacksmiths) and the Kaba (noble clerics) followed suit from Darsilami, helping to reconstruct Sabi Xase's social structure in the new Sabi. 6 The village grew rapidly, and within a generation reached the size of almost one thousand inhabitants, among whom were relatives and fellow Soninke from the east, as well as clerics and, especially, farmers from other communities in the interior. A small Jakhanke neighbourhood was eventually established in the village around the household of a Quranic teacher.…”

Mobile Sunna: Islam, small media and community in Niger

“…In recent decades, however, it has taken sophisticated forms and has permeated new spaces, a process that has greatly affected not only the flow of ideas but also the modes of interaction within and among religious communities. In Muslim contexts, the possibilities provided by this complex are often translated into authoritative constructions of religious discourse and action, to the point that the power of the religious comes to rely on its mediation (Buggenhagen, 2013;Shavit, 2009;Larkin, 2008b).…”

“…Regularly invested in a reform project that promotes and seeks to transmit norms and values, they stress the importance of self-representation and the role mediation plays in the maintenance of the community. For example, videocassettes produced during Sufi festivals (re)connect members of the same religious community despite the distance that separates them (Soares, 2005;Diouf, 2013;Buggenhagen, 2013). In fact, for many Sufi brotherhoods in West Africa, audio-visual small media become religious 'things' (Houtman and Meyer, 2012) through which they reiterate a sense of belonging, construct memories and keep the community together.…”

“…Similar processes are described for Islamic organizations in Nigeria, but also for the Sufi brotherhoods in Mali and Senegal. As Soares (2005) and Buggenhagen (2013) show, the maintenance of the community of the faithful relies heavily on small media distributed at both the local and the global level.…”