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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies

11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands


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Rethinking Religious Conversion: The Creation of a Senegalese Shi’ism

Panel 14. New Modes of Sociality in Muslim Africa
Paper ID101
Author(s) Leichtman, Mara Alyse
Paper No paper submitted
AbstractIn the 1970s, Robin Horton’s “Intellectualist Theory” sparked a debate on religious conversion in Africa, which continues today. Does converting from one branch of Islam to another entail different processes and motivations than converting from a “traditional religion” to a “world religion”? Whereas the Lebanese community has been present in Senegal as early as the 1880s, a small Senegalese minority began to convert only recently to Shi’ite Islam as a result of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Incorporating West African cases into discussions about Shi’ism and global Islam highlights social, political and cultural change in relation to migration, ethnicity, proselytizing and Muslim networking. This paper will build on theories of conversion through examining life history narratives of Senegalese converts to Shi’ite Islam and contextualizing their individual experiences within the political economy of Senegal. Decisions to convert reveal the political climate of the time, converts’ hopes for change, and religious influences of others upon them through social networks and the dissemination of Islamic literature. Senegalese are converting to an Eastern modernity of Islam where the reworking of history and tradition enables converts to negotiate new economic linkages with Iran and Lebanon. Choosing to establish a Shi’ite Islamic movement in Senegal is also seen as an alternative to following the dominant Sufi brotherhood system.