WHITHER SENEGALESE ISLAM?: AESTHETICS, HARMONY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DAKAR 001017

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, AF/PDPA, DRL/IRF AND INR/AA
PARIS FOR POL - D,ELIA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/09/2017
TAGS: SOCI KISL PGOV PINR SG
SUBJECT: WHITHER SENEGALESE ISLAM?: AESTHETICS, HARMONY
AND DOWN-DIRTY POLITICS

REF: A. DAKAR 0833

B. 06 DAKAR 2940

C. 06 DAKAR 1721

D. 05 DAKAR 3108

E. 05 DAKAR 2999

F. 05 DAKAR 0643

G. 04 DAKAR 2915

H. 04 DAKAR 2201

I. 04 DAKAR 1468

J. 04 DAKAR 0797

Classified By: POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROY L. WHITAKER FOR REASONS 1.4 (B)
AND (D).

SUMMARY
--------------

1. (C) Sufi Brotherhood intellectuals inspired by Middle
Eastern ideas are building institutions to reconsider
traditional values, but they insist Senegalese common sense
will sort out doctrinal trash. This is an opportune time for
ideological innovation: the once narrowly nationalist and
farm-bound Mourides are stressing education and research on
their founder,s beliefs, and Tidjanes are resurging with
region-wide proselytizing. Within each Brotherhood, would-be
successors are positioning to replace octogenarian Khalifs;
there could be challenges to accepted methods of succession.
The state might even intervene. END SUMMARY.

BEAUTY, BEHEADINGS AND BOMBS
--------------

2. (C) We have reported on middle eastern Islamic ideas
crossing the Sahara and Sahel (Refs G-H and J). One of our
political officers, having read a few pages on Afghanistan,
picked up the notion that a defense of Islamic aesthetics
could be a sensitive religious issue, and asked several key
religious scholars about it. Recent International Visitor
(IV) and former University Imam Mamadou Niang guessed the
term must refer to ethics and morality, and specifically to
women's place in Islam, whether it was proper, appropriate
and beautiful in God's eyes that women should play a public
or strictly private role. The Mouride Hizbut Tarquiah's Atou
Diagne just snorted, "Ah, mais ces Afghans...sont tous des
dingues (They're all nuts)!" Then, though, and with great
hesitation since he had just fallen in love with America and
especially Washington State during an IV visit, Atou
suggested that Islamic aesthetics might refer as well to the
morality of war and the ethics of proportionality. "The U.S.
was right to go after al Qaida, but Osama Bin Laden was the
enemy, and the massive bombing of Taliban, of Afghans in
their own country, especially of civilians in their homes, is
hard to justify morally." We could not press him to go
further.


3. (C) We posed the question to former Islamic Institute
Director Elhadj Rawane MBaye, who said he had dealt with
Afghans in the past and always found them at "the far borders
of Islam and... frankly, a bit extreme." MBaye added that
Islamic aesthetics, "assuming there is such a thing," was not
an issue for tolerant Senegalese. We recall him telling us
two years ago (Ref F) that Senegal's Sufis had successfully
synthesized Islam with rites of an animist past. Mourides
carried marabouts' pictures about their neck with no thought
of restrictions on depicting the human form, and another
small brotherhood kept libations and incantation urns, but
not even Salafist reformers objected. Adding a Western
artistic or musical overlay was just another act of
synthesis, and Senegalese were open to anything pleasing as
long as it was not in direct disharmony with the Koran or
disrespectful of the Prophet.

THE PICKAXE AND THE NEATLY PRESSED GOWN
--------------

4. (C) The hard-work-as-faith Mourides and more numerous
Tidjanes are in direct competition to influence and perhaps
eventually dominate Senegal,s politics and economy. Tidjane
spokesman Abdoul Aziz Sy al Ibn (Junior) told us recently he
was appalled by President Wade's use of Mouride militia
leader Bethio Thioune to counter the Tidjanes' own
presidential candidate in the key city of Thies (Ref B).
"Just because Wade is a Mouride," Junior fumed, "the Mourides
think they can walk all over us. But I've warned the
Mourides, if you think you can do what you want with us, I'll
mobilize my Tidjanes and we'll occupy your giant mosque in
Touba before the end of the day!"


5. (C) Tidjanes see Mourides as dung-booted, unwashed and
illiterate millet farmers who worship the work ethic but

DAKAR 00001017 002 OF 003


don't understand the subtleties of Islam. Mourides, in turn,
see Tidjanes as effete tea-sippers who favor exhausted
doctrinal truisms to hard labor of either the physical or
mental kind. Or at least, so it seems to us. We asked Imam
Niang, who has a reputation as a very moderate Salafist
reformer, about the future of Senegalese Islam. That future,
he insisted, would be in Mouride hands. As the decades have
gone by, Mourides have sent their young acolytes abroad,
first for street-corner sales, then for technical and
high-tech training, and now, as their wealth allowed them the
luxury, they were sending intellectuals for Arab higher
education in Islamic jurisprudence or philosophy, and
bringing them back. They will man the university being built
in Touba, and provide research assistants to what Niang calls
the increasingly influential Khalifal Library. What Niang
did not mention was Atou Diagne's Hizbut Tarquiah Center for
Research on Mouridism, a well-funded and state-of-the-art
center modeled on what Diagne saw at U.S. universities.


6. (C) And yet while Niang is right about Mourides' growing
intellectual thrust, he may be wrong in assuming Tidjane
passivity. It may be only our impression, but the Libyan
Islamic Call-sponsored university in Pir (Ref I),the
Saudi-backed Franco-Islamic school in Louga, and perhaps
above all the Sahel and Nigeria-directed missionary work of
the Kaolack Tidjanes and the Association of Moroccan and
Senegalese Imams and Oulemas (Ref C),all point to a
renaissance of Tidjane activism in the face of Mouride
intellectual, spiritual and political challenges.

BELLES LETTRES AND COURTLY PALACE COUPS
--------------

7. (C) It is a safe bet that the Tidjane and Mouride
Khalifates currently run by 80-year olds will soon be under
new proprietorship. The Mourides are highly centralized and
supposedly monolithic, and Tidjane authority is widely
dispersed; so the succession contests may play out quite
differently.


8. (C) Tidjane spokesman Junior suggests his Khalif has
authority to leave a letter posthumously naming his
successor, and since Junior runs the khalifal household
including presumably its epistolary coordination, this would
give him a competitive advantage. Other Tidjane marabouts,
though, argue that consensus is needed, and could vote for
Junior, his older brother Cheikh Tidjane Sy, or, just within
the realm of possibility, for a third candidate. The result
could be significant for Tidjane ties to the state and degree
of closeness to the U.S. Junior, despite the truculence
reflected in paragraph 4, has proved a force for social peace
and the youth movement run by son Moustapha Sy ("the Good,"
in Embassy shorthand),is pro-U.S. In contrast, Cheikh
Tidjane has allowed the radical Moustarchidines run by son
Moustapha Sy ("the Bad") to commit violence in the name of
Islam, and would almost surely be outspoken in criticism of
the U.S.


9. (C) The Mouride founder and his sons possessed divine
spark and mystical purity. His last son will die soon, and
the next Khalif will come from the 100s of grandsons whose
ranks include lie-abouts, womanizers, money-grubbers and
assorted other blackguards who show up before parishioners
only annually to collect tithes. Since the line of
successors includes 80-year olds as far as the eye can see,
Mourides have to do one of three things: accept decline in
the quality of khalifal leadership; accept that future
khalifs will be figureheads, which would lead to Tidjane-like
organizational fragmentation; or, a radical alternative,
choose a Khalif from outside the founder's bloodline (Ref E).
This is where the Hizbut Tarquiah's Atou Diagne and
President Wade's Mouride militia ally Bethio Thioune come in,
since each, more or less explicitly, has staked a claim to
take over the Brotherhood. Any of these things could happen,
or the Mourides could simply begin to break apart like the
Tidjanes before them.


10. (C) In the last Mouride leadership contest in 1945, the
French colonial power, joined by independence leader and
future founding President Leopold Senghor, intervened to
block a Khalifal contender they saw as nationalist and
favorable to pan-Arabism. If khalifal selection breaks down
again and threatens internal Brotherhood crisis, President
Wade or a successor could likewise be tempted to intercede,
with whatever ramifications for state-mosque relations that
might have.

COMMENT

DAKAR 00001017 003 OF 003


--------------

11. (C) We posed a question that turned out to have no
significance for Senegal's Muslims -- on Islamic aesthetics
-- and received an unexpected critique from a good friend on
U.S. use of military force in Afghanistan. We have written
often that there is a formula to Senegalese religious opinion
of U.S. policy: firm opposition to our policy on Palestine
and Israeli interventions in Lebanon; conviction that
occupation of Iraq was a strategic and moral error; but,
except for a Mouride/Salafist imam at the radical airport
mosque, sympathy for 9/11 and full agreement with our
counterstrike against al Qaida. Now, though, we have heard
criticism on Afghanistan from the heart of a brotherhood that
emphasizes placing its economic emigrants in the U.S and
which, furthermore, cultivates discretion and reticence on
sensitive topics. We wonder, therefore, how deep and
widespread Senegalese religious disfavor with our Middle East
policy and South Asia policies might be.


12. (C) The next few years will see considerable leadership
flux within both major brotherhoods and openings for new
ideas. Each is expanding educational or research
institutions or proselytizing associations, and more actively
comparing traditional Sufi ideas with more rigorous ideas
from the Arab east. Mouride Atou Diagne once called this
"Salafism of method," which, as we interpret it, means
replacement of Sufi mysticism with a more analytical and
intellectual approach. At the same time, the two
brotherhoods are competing for dominance, and there may be a
temptation to recruit and hold converts with a
more-attractive-to-youth militancy. END COMMENT.


13. (U) Visit Embassy Dakar's SIPRNet site at
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/af/dakar.
JACOBS