Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T13:48:17.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

West African Sufism and the matter of Black life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2023

Youssef Carter
Youssef Carter*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
*
Email: youssefcarter@unc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I consider how migration practices around the Black Atlantic and discourses of repatriation mobilize Black African diasporic Muslim identities in present-day Senegal and in a mosque in South Carolina that is situated on land that was formerly a slave plantation. I use the term ‘reversion’ as a vocabulary of ‘diasporic becoming’ to signal how notions of Islamic piety are coupled with a politics of Black Atlantic Muslimness in the context of a West African Sufi tariqa – or ‘Black Atlantic Sufism’. Moreover, I consider how identity formation and African Muslim ancestry are impacted by discourses of geographic return and repatriation that are linked to spiritual tourism.

Résumé

Résumé

Dans cet article, l’auteur étudie la manière dont les pratiques de migration autour de l’Atlantique noir et les discours de rapatriement mobilisent les identités musulmanes diasporiques africaines noires dans l’actuel Sénégal et dans une mosquée de Caroline du Sud située sur une ancienne plantation d’esclaves. Il utilise le terme « réversion » comme un vocabulaire de « devenir diasporique » pour indiquer comment les notions de piété islamique sont conjuguées à une politique de musulmanité atlantique noire dans le contexte d’une tariqa soufie ouest-africaine, ou « soufisme atlantique noir ». De plus, l’auteur étudie la manière dont la formation de l’identité et l’ascendance musulmane africaine sont impactées par des discours de retour géographique et de rapatriement qui sont liés au tourisme spirituel.

Resumo

Resumo

Neste artigo, considero como as práticas migratórias em torno do Atlântico Negro e os discursos de repatriação mobilizam identidades muçulmanas negras africanas diásporas no Senegal actual e numa mesquita na Carolina do Sul (South Carolina) que se situa numa terra que foi anteriormente uma plantação de escravos. Utilizo o termo ‘reversão’ como um vocabulário de ‘tornar-se da diáspora’ para assinalar como noções de piedade islâmica estão associadas a uma política de muçulmanidade negra atlântica no contexto de um sufi tariqa da África Ocidental – ou ‘Sufismo do Atlântico Negro’. Além disso, considero como a formação da identidade e a ascendência muçulmana africana são influenciadas pelos discursos de retorno geográfico e repatriação que estão ligados ao turismo espiritual.

Type
Race in Muslim Africa
Information
Africa , Volume 93 , Issue 2 , May 2023 , pp. 221 - 235
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdul Khabeer, S. (2017) ‘Africa as tradition in US African American Muslim identity’, Journal of Africana Religions 5 (1): 26–49.10.5325/jafrireli.5.1.0026CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abdullah, Z. (2009) ‘African “soul brothers” in the ‘hood: immigration, Islam, and the Black encounter’, Anthropological Quarterly 82 (1): 37–62.10.1353/anq.0.0054CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abdullah, Z. (2010) Black Mecca: the African Muslims of Harlem. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195314250.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen, R. A. (2001) ‘The slave trade as history and memory: confrontations of slaving voyage documents and communal traditions’, William and Mary Quarterly 58 (1): 229–44.10.2307/2674425CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babou, C. A. (2002) ‘Brotherhood solidarity, education and migration: the role of the dahiras among the Murid Muslim community of New York’, African Affairs 101 (403): 151–70.10.1093/afraf/101.403.151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beliso-De Jesús, A. (2015) Electric Santería: racial and sexual assemblages of transnational religion. New York NY: Columbia University Press.10.7312/beli17316CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benesch, K. and Fabre, G. (eds) (2004) African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds: consciousness and imagination. Amsterdam and New York NY: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Berriane, J. (2015) ‘Pilgrimage, spiritual tourism and the shaping of transnational “imagined communities”: the case of the Tidjani Ziyara to Fez’, International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage 3 (2): 4.Google Scholar
Brenner, L. (1984) West African Sufi: the religious heritage and spiritual search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bruner, E. M. (1996) ‘Tourism in Ghana: the representation of slavery and the return of the black diaspora’, American Anthropologist : 290–304.10.1525/aa.1996.98.2.02a00060CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buggenhagen, B. A. (2001) ‘Prophets and profits: gendered and generational visions of wealth and value in Senegalese Murid households’, Journal of Religion in Africa 31 (4): 373–401.Google Scholar
Butler, K. D. (2001) ‘Defining diaspora, refining a discourse’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10 (2): 189–219.10.1353/dsp.2011.0014CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castor, N. F. (2017) Spiritual Citizenship: transnational pathways from Black Power to Ifa in Trinidad. Durham NC: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822372585CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, K. M. (2004) Mapping Yorùbá Networks: power and agency in the making of transnational communities. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cruise O’Brien, D. B. (1971) The Mourides of Senegal: the political and economic organization of an Islamic brotherhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Curtin, P. D. (1969) Africa and the Slave Trade. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Curtis, E. E. IV (2006) Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/9780807877449_curtisCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtis, E. E. IV (2014) The Call of Bilal: Islam in the African diaspora. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Davis, O. I. (1997) ‘The Door of No Return: reclaiming the past through the rhetoric of pilgrimage’, Western Journal of Black Studies 21 (3): 156.Google Scholar
Diouf, M. (2000) ‘Senegalese Murid trade diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitanism’, Public Culture 12 (3): 679–702.10.1215/08992363-12-3-679CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diouf, S. A. (2013) Servants of Allah: African Muslims enslaved in the Americas. New York NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Ebin, V. (1995) ‘International networks of a trading diaspora: the Mourides of Senegal abroad’ in Philippe, A. and Diop, A. B. (eds), La Ville à guichets fermés?: Itinéraires, réseaux et insertion urbaine. Dakar and Paris: IFAN and ORSTOM.Google Scholar
Ebron, P. (1999) ‘Tourists as pilgrims: commercial fashioning of transatlantic politics’, American Ethnologist 26 (4): 910–32.10.1525/ae.1999.26.4.910CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eickelman, D. and Piscatori, J. (eds) (1990) Muslim Travelers: pilgrimage, migration, and the religious imagination. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Felber, G. (2020) Those Who Know Don’t Say: the Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the carceral state. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garbin, D. (2013) ‘The visibility and invisibility of migrant faith in the city: diaspora religion and the politics of emplacement of Afro-Christian churches’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (5): 677–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Gomez, M. (1998) Exchanging Our Country Marks: the transformation of African identities in the colonial and antebellum South. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Graburn, N. H. (1983) ‘The anthropology of tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research 10 (1): 9–33.10.1016/0160-7383(83)90113-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffith, R. M. and Savage, B. D. (2006) Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: knowledge, power, and performance. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harney, S. (1996) Nationalism and Identity: culture and the imagination in a Caribbean diaspora. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Hartman, S. (2002) ‘The time of slavery’, South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (4): 757–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, S. (2007) Lose Your Mother: a journey along the Atlantic slave route. New York NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.Google Scholar
Ho, E. (2006) The Graves of Tarim: genealogy and mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holsey, B. (2004) ‘Transatlantic dreaming: slavery, tourism, and diasporic encounters’ in Stefansson, A. H. and Markowitz, F. (eds), Homecomings: unsettling paths of return. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Irele, F. A. (2005) ‘“What is Africa to me?”: Africa in the Black diaspora imagination’, Souls 7 (3–4): 26–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kane, O. (2011) The Homeland Is the Arena: religion, transnationalism, and the integration of Senegalese immigrants in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732302.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelner, S. (2010) Tours that Bind: diaspora, pilgrimage, and Israeli birthright tourism. New York NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Launay, R. (1990) ‘Pedigrees and paradigms: scholarly credentials among the Dyula of the northern Ivory Coast’ in Eickelman, D. F. and Piscatori, J. (eds), Muslim Travellers: pilgrimage, migration and the religious imagination. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mack, D. L. (2011) ‘When the evidence changes: scholarship, memory and public culture at the Maison des Esclaves, Gorée Island’, Exhibitionist, Autumn, pp. 40–5.Google Scholar
Mandaville, P. (2003) Transnational Muslim Politics: reimagining the umma. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matory, J. L. (2005) Black Atlantic religion: tradition, transnationalism, and matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moghissi, H. (ed.) (2007) Muslim Diaspora: gender, culture and identity. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morales, H. D. (2018) Latino and Muslim in America: race, religion, and the making of a new minority. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nieuwkerk, K. van (2006) ‘“Islam is your birthright”: conversion, reversion and alternation. The case of new Muslimas in the West’ in Bremmer, J. N., van Bekkum, W. and Molendijk, A. L. (eds), Cultures of Conversions. Leuven: Peeters.Google Scholar
Oguibe, O. (2001) ‘Slavery and the diaspora imagination’ in Oostindie, G. (ed.), Facing Up to the Past: perspectives on the commemoration of slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.Google Scholar
Pierre, J. (2013) The Predicament of Blackness: postcolonial Ghana and the politics of race. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rai, R. and Reeves, P. (eds) (2008) The South Asian Diaspora: transnational networks and changing identities. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203892350CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, A. (2014) Pilgrimage Tourism of Diaspora Africans to Ghana. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reis, J. J. (1995) Slave Rebellion in Brazil: the Muslim uprising of 1835 in Bahia. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Routon, K. (2006) ‘Trance-nationalism: religious imaginaries of belonging in the Black Atlantic’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 13 (3): 483–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, O. (2004) Globalized Islam: the search for a new ummah. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Salzbrunn, M. (2004) ‘The occupation of public space through religious and political events: how Senegalese migrants became a part of Harlem, New York’, Journal of Religion in Africa 34 (4): 468–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarró, R. and Blanes, R. L. (2009) ‘Prophetic diasporas moving religion across the lusophone Atlantic’, African Diaspora 2 (1): 52–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skrbiš, Z. (2007) ‘From migrants to pilgrim tourists: diasporic imagining and visits to Medjugorje’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33 (2): 313–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoller, P. (2002) Money Has No Smell: the Africanization of New York City. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoller, P. (2003) ‘Marketing Afrocentricity: West African trade networks in North America’ in Koser, K. (ed.), New African Diasporas. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sun, W. (2005) ‘Media and the Chinese diaspora: community, consumption, and transnational imagination’, Journal of Chinese Overseas 1 (1): 65–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tillet, S. (2009) ‘In the shadow of the castle: (trans)nationalism, African American tourism, and Gorée Island’, Research in African Literatures 40 (4): 122–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timothy, D. J. and Iverson, T. (2006) ‘Tourism and Islam’ in Timothy, D. J. and Olsen, D. H. (eds), Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, A. (2003) ‘On the subject of kings and queens: “traditional” African leadership and the diasporal imagination’, African Studies Quarterly 7 (1): 59–67.Google Scholar