13 - Senegal: Bamba and the Murids under French Colonial Rule

Summary

The Buganda of Chapter 11 was just coming under British rule at the end of the nineteenth century. The Mahdist forces of Chapter 12 resisted the colonial rule of the Turko-Egyptians and then confronted the hostility of their European conquerors in the twentieth century. Only over time did they find formulas for establishing their autonomy in religious, social, and economic matters. The Sufi order that we now examine faced similar challenges: conquest by the French, in this case, followed by colonial rule in the framework called French West Africa.

Here the leaders never took any military action against the invaders and never invoked the language of the end of times. Instead, under the designation Murids, “novices” or learners in faith, they sought to create an autonomous sphere, a new intellectual and social framework for the spread and practice of Sufi Islam. When they understood the determination of the French to dominate the area with a more pervasive government than the region had known before, they accommodated in the same ways as the Mahdiya.

In the process, their founder, Amadu Bamba Mbacke, suffered three periods of exile (1895–1912) at the hands of the French (see Figure 23). At the same time he forged a framework of Islamic practice that has given his descendants and followers cohesion for over a century, not just in Senegal but across many parts of the world.