Shi'i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa

Mara A. Leichtman

Description

Mara A. Leichtman offers an in-depth study of Shi'i Islam in two very different communities in Senegal: the well-established Lebanese diaspora and Senegalese "converts" from Sunni to Shi'i Islam of recent decades. Sharing a minority religious status in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, each group is cosmopolitan in its own way. Leichtman provides new insights into the everyday lives of Shi'i Muslims in Africa and the dynamics of local and global Islam. She explores the influence of Hizbullah and Islamic reformist movements, and offers a corrective to prevailing views of Sunni-Shi'i hostility, demonstrating that religious coexistence is possible in a context such as Senegal.

Preface: Islam and Politics
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Locating Cosmopolitan Shi'i Islamic Movements in Senegal
Part I. The Making of a Lebanese Community in Senegal
Introduction to Part I.
1. French Colonial Manipulation and Lebanese Survival
2. Senegalese Independence and the Question of Belonging
3. Shi'i Islam Comes to Town: A Biography of Shaykh al-Zayn
4. Bringing Lebanese "Back" to Shi'i Islam
Part II. Senegalese Conversion to Shi'i Islam
5. The Vernacularization of Shi'i Islam: Competition and Conflict
6. Migrating from One's Parents' Traditions: Narrating Conversion Experiences
Interlude: 'Umar: Converting to an "Intellectual Islam"
7. The Creation of a Senegalese Shi'i Islam
Coda: On Shi'i Islam, Anthropology, and Cosmopolitanism
Glossary
Notes
References

Sujets

• Shi'a
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Chiismo
• África
• Senegal
• Shia Islam
• Muslim
• Middle East
• History of Africa
• Anthropology
• West
• Islam
• Lebanon
• Africa
• France

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 27 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016058
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

SHI I COSMOPOLITANISMS IN AFRICA
PUBLIC CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors
SHI I COSMOPOLITANISMS IN AFRICA
Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal
Mara A. Leichtman
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Mara A. Leichtman
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leichtman, Mara, author.
Shi i cosmopolitanisms in Africa : Lebanese migration and religious conversion in Senegal / Mara A. Leichtman.
pages cm. - (Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01599-0 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01601-0 (pb : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01605-8 (eb) 1. Shi ah-Senegal. 2. Shiites-Senegal. 3. Lebanese-Senegal-Religion. 4. Lebanon-Emigration and immigration. 5. Conversion-Shi ah. 6. Shi ah-Relations-Sunnites. 7. Sunnites-Relations-Shi ah. I. Title. II. Series: Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa.
BP192.7.S38L45 2015
297.8209663-dc23
2014048975
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
For Samir, whose love for Senegal has touched me deeply. In memory of my Uncle Zell, with whom I enjoyed many Lebanese meals .
Contents
Preface: Islam and Politics
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Locating Cosmopolitan Shi i Islamic Movements in Senegal
Part 1. The Making of a Lebanese Community in Senegal
Introduction to Part 1
1 French Colonial Manipulation and Lebanese Survival
2 Senegalese Independence and the Question of Belonging
3 Shi i Islam Comes to Town: A Biography of Shaykh al-Zayn
4 Bringing Lebanese Back to Shi i Islam
Part 2. Senegalese Conversion to Shi i Islam
5 The Vernacularization of Shi i Islam: Competition and Conflict
6 Migrating from One s Parents Traditions: Narrating Conversion Experiences
Interlude: Umar: Converting to an Intellectual Islam
7 The Creation of a Senegalese Shi i Islam
Coda: On Shi i Islam, Anthropology, and Cosmopolitanism
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
Preface
Islam and Politics
A FRICA IS INCREASINGLY playing a role in U.S. foreign policy and the Western fight against terrorism. The 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, 2008 coup in Mauritania (where attacks against European tourists led to the canceling of the Paris-to-Dakar rally), 2012 coups in Mali and Guinea Bissau, piracy off the coast of Somalia, Invisible Children s viral Kony 2012 video campaign, and growing visibility of Nigeria s Boko Haram movement brought Africa into America s immediate agenda. Journalists and diplomats focus on al-Qa ida s role in Africa, seeing extremists or terrorists everywhere, yet sometimes lacking concrete proof of their activities.
Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post correspondent who described himself as covering largely poor and obscure West African countries (2004:9), published a book entitled Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror . The back cover reads, in an exaggerated manner: After 9/11, at a great risk to his own life, Farah hung out with drugged out killers and arms traffickers in West Africa to trace the links between the underground diamond trade and international terrorism. What surprised me was not his accusation that Lebanese Shi a were using Liberian blood diamonds to finance Hizbullah, but his use, interchangeably, of Hizbullah and al-Qa ida, linking these two organizations in the same sentences as if they were one and the same. In 2011, the New York Times ran a series of articles vaguely outlining similarly unproven accusations. 1 Does this connection really exist?
Knowledge is often produced through less-than-objective media coverage, and for many in the West, Africa is a land of poverty, starvation, war, and fundamentalism. French celebrity journalist Pierre P an wrote his own sensationalist account entitled Manipulations Africaines (2001), linking the 1989 Libyan bombing of UTA flight 772 to Hizbullah s 1987 taking of French hostages (freed by Senegal s Shaykh al-Zayn). Both P an and Farah claim to uncover networks of Arab terrorists on the African continent, blaming Africa s chaos for allowing such men to run loose and conduct illicit, unmonitored activities. Farah s reporting in particular was widely quoted and formed the basis for U.S. military and policy reports on Lebanese involvement in conflict diamonds, concluding with the need for those prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism to carefully monitor West Africa (Laremont and Gregorian 2006:34; see also Gberie 2002; Levitt 2004; Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 2004). Laremont and Gregorian go so far as to state (citing Farah) that emerging research suggests that Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, and AMAL have occasionally merged their terrorist-financing initiatives (2006:30), although they admit difficulty in determining whether al-Qa ida continues to engage in illicit diamond trading in West Africa. Gberie leaps to conclusions with the following statement: Lebanese involvement with the RUF [Sierra Leone s guerilla movement Revolutionary United Front] is also largely anecdotal, but in both cases the stories are supported by generations of shady business practice, and by the strong interest of some Lebanese in the virulent politics of the Middle East (2002:16). Nevertheless, the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin (2004) acknowledges that although al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are usually mentioned in the same breath when terrorist links to the diamond trade are discussed, the two organizations have been involved in very different capacities. Whereas Senegal is not cited in the reports about diamonds, Levitt (2004) does suggest, citing Israeli intelligence reports, that Senegal is the secondary centre for Hizbullah s fundraising activity in Africa after Ivory Coast. On June 11, 2013, the U.S. Treasury blacklisted four Lebanese Shi a in West Africa, including a restaurant owner in Dakar, for allegedly fundraising for Hizbullah. 2
Despite the focus of these journalists and policy analysts on Hizbullah s influence in Africa, many scholars of Islam in Senegal and Senegalese religious leaders had little, if any, knowledge of the existence of Shi i Islam in Dakar. When I described my project to them, responses ranged from denial, to disbelief, to confusing a reformist Sunni movement with Shi i Islam. A Senegalese graduate student, upon hearing me present my research on Senegalese converts to Shi i Islam, questioned why I would research a community that was obviously so insignificant he had never heard of them. How could Western journalists and government officials be so sure these terrorists existed when Senegalese scholars were equally certain they did not?
This study documents the beginnings of a Shi i movement in Senegal. It does not uncover additional terrorist networks in Africa, reveal the money trail from Senegal to Lebanon, or disclose Hizbullah s West African headquarters, real or imaginary. My focus is not on Shi i Islam as a fundamentalist Islam, but on Shi i Islam as a religious identity and way of being. Religion is part of Lebanese and Senegalese lives, and is crucial in the formation of subjects within the national Senegalese state and transnational Muslim community, yet it is not a static force. Both local and global influences help shape religious identities: French colonialism, Senegalese politics of Africanization, the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, and the 2006 Lebanon War, to name only a few historical events. Lebanese and Senegalese are torn between North and South and between Islam and the West (Gellar 1982), all the while struggling to create their own Arab and/or African identity. Is Islam religious or political? Can Islam be Westernized, Arabized, or Africanized? Must one choose among these influences, or can one live a cosmopolitan life betwixt and between these different worlds? Are these worlds, indeed, so very different? This book provides an account of the everyday lives of the predominantly Shi i Lebanese community in Senegal, focusing on their changing religious, ethnic, and national identities. These subjectivities are placed in the context of the politics of globalization and cosmopolitanism, postcolonialism in Africa, and conflict in the Middle East.
Senegal s Lebanese community is only one part of the story of Shi i cosmopolitanism in West Africa. Levitt (2004) writes (citing Israeli intelligence reports) that in recent years, many foreign students, including from Uganda and other African countries, are sent to study theology in Iranian universities as a means of recruiting and training them as Hizbullah operatives or Iranian intelligence agents. Over the past few decades, Senegalese have begun to convert from Sunni to Shi i Islam, but this book demonstrates that their Shi i identity is linked to an intellectual and textual tradition of an aut