Islam and decolonization in Africa: the political engagement of a West African Muslim community

Received wisdom portrays African nationalism as a discourse driven by Western-educated elites, in which the religious identity of Africans was largely marginal. More recent research has demonstrated the role of Christianity and/or "African Traditional Religion" in anti-colonial resistance and the formation of national consciousness. Spirit mediums in Zimbabwe played important roles in generating popular support for anti-colonial guerilla fighters.1 Despite the earlier associations of Christianity with European missionaries, Yoruba Christian converts were core formulators of a Yoruba "cultural nationalism."2 There is of course theoretical space for Islam playing a similar role in the articulation of African nationalism. According to Crawford Young, "Islam represented the most comprehensive ideological challenge to hegemony available to Africa at the moment of subjugation ... it offered a transcendental justification for resistance and a religious imperative for politico-military organization on a scale beyond ethnos and polity as these then existed."3 Unfortunately, academic literature contains few actual examples of the participation of African Muslim intellectuals in the discourses of African nationalism.4This paper concerns a large community of Muslims in West Africa, the followers of the Senegalese Sufi Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975), who articulated an Islamic vision of African liberation and political engagement at the time of decolonization. They were not isolated from the discourse of the Western-educated elite, nor did they owe their inspiration to them. They drew heavily on inherited Islamic traditions in West Africa, and then attempted to transcend the confines of the colonial and postcolonial state rather than being reduced to clients. As nationalism can be defined as a project of liberation and anti1 colonial resistance separately from the project of the postcolonial state,5 the community fashioned itself as an important player in the story of African nationalism. But the community was largely excluded from the crafting of the Senegalese state, and its involvement in post-independence politics was mostly restricted to the re-articulation of Islamic religious identity and communal autonomy. This nonetheless represented a significant political engagement of West African Muslims.The community of Shaykh Ibrâhim Niasse offered Islamic identity, as it had evolved in West Africa, as the true vehicle of anti-colonial liberation and trans-local solidarity. Cultural and political resistance did not require Fanon's purgative violence, but anti-colonial rhetoric became widespread within the community. In the postcolonial moment, this version of "maraboutic" Islam thus offered itself as a source for political liberation and renewed cultural meaning: both the ship and the anchor needed to navigate African societies through rough seas stirred by the colonial encounter. The ability to make political interjections in the context of decolonization, even if members often shied (or were excluded) from taking political power themselves, became an essential component of this internal narrative of liberation and, perhaps, the continued ability to attract followers throughout the African continent. While this engagement cannot be identified as a specific African Muslim political ideology, it nonetheless reflects a centuries-old concern of Islamic scholars to make political power responsive to the vision and holistic needs of African Muslims. African Islam, as represented by the community here considered, was thus self-consciously politicized through decolonization, but it transcended the fleeting popularity of specific political ideologies.The series of political interjections presented here fill two gaps in current literature: one on the political engagement of the community of Shaykh Ibrâhim Niasse and the other on Islam and decolonization more broadly. The story of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse's community of followers has begun to emerge in academic literature. …