SENEGAL. Possessed of a strong regional cohesion and distinct Islamic identity for many centuries, Senegal lies just below the westernmost part of the Sahara, which constitutes today the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Senegal is circumscribed by the arc of the Senegal River, which begins in the mountains of Futa Jalon in today’s Guinea; it flows
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`UMAR TAL (c.1794-1864), more fully al-Hajj ‘Umar ibn Sa’id, Senegalese Islamic militant leader and thinker. Al-Hajj ‘Umar ibn Said deserves recognition as one of the towering figures of West African history in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is to his efforts that we can ascribe the success of the Tijaniyah brotherhood which,
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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. Muslims make up only 8 percent of the population of Trinidad and Tobago, yet their influence in this twin-island Caribbean nation extends far beyond their numbers. The country’s ceremonial president, Noor Mohammed Hassanali, is Muslim, as are many members of parliament and other officials. Many businesses are Muslim-owned. In 1990 Trinidad was
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The Tijaniyah movement was reared out of controversy. From its very inception (c.1782), its members brought challenge to the accepted notions of monastic order. Abu al-`Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Mukhtar al-Tijani (born AH I150/1737 CE) at Ayn Madi, southern Algeria), the founder of the brotherhood, proclaimed himself the “pole of poles” (qutb alaqtab) and
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SUFISM AND POLITICS. Traditional Sufism is an interiorization of Sunni quietism, articulating the pre-Islamic Pahlavi vision of monarchic government by religious principles, as echoed by al-Ghazali (d. 1111) in his Nasihat al-muluk. A more systematic order found expression in the thirteenth century in the form of the “inner government” (hukumah batiniyah), which envisaged the temporal
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Sufi orders represent one of the most important forms of personal piety and social organization in the Islamic world. In most areas, an order is called a tariqah (pl., turuq), which is the Arabic word for “path” or “way.” The term tariqah is used for both the social organization and the special devotional exercises that
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QADIRIYAH. Among the better-known names in Islamic mysticism is that of `Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani (or Jilani or Jili), who is associated with the beginnings of the Qadri brotherhood or tariqah either as founder or as patron and sponsor. `Abd al-Qadir’s birthdate is usually given as All 470/1077-1078 CE and his date of death as 561/1165-1166.
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Popular Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa During the nineteenth century, and to an even greater extent under colonial domination in the twentieth century, rapid and widespread islamization touched hundreds of African ethnic groups in West Africa, extending well into the forest zone, and in the interior of East Africa as far as Zaire and Malawi and
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NIGERIA. A federal republic, Nigeria comprises thirty states plus a Federal Capital Territory at Abuja. The most recent census, in 1991, did not ask questions of religious or ethnic identity, but put the total population at about 90 million; however, several international organizations use population estimates for Nigeria ranging from 100 to 115 million. Religious
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NIGER. More than 90 percent of the 7,469,000 people of the Republic of Niger are Muslim (national census, 1988). Niger is situated in the Sahel region of Africa; its northern half is Sahara desert. Agriculture, including livestock rearing, is the primary economic activity of 85 percent of Niger’s population. The two major droughts of 1973-1974
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