Mara A. Leichtman

The legacy of transnational lives: Beyond the first generation of Lebanese in Senegal

Definitions of transnationalism are modelled after first generation migrant communities in the west. Through presenting ethnographic detail on the Lebanese community in Senegal, this article applies the concept of transnationalism to the case of a historic South-South migrant community. Second and later generation ethnic groups maintain transnational ties through notions of self-identity and definitions by others, the importance given to the homeland, and political and religious ideologies. Race, geographic location, and changes in the structure of labour markets are factors that encourage continued ties with the country of origin. Furthermore, transnationalism cannot be limited only to sending and receiving countries. Colonial and former colonial powers can determine the destination of migrants, establish economic hierarchies, and offer a tertiary citizenship to transnational migrants in addition to the dual citizenship of country of origin and destination.

Transforming brain drain into capital gain: Morocco's changing relationship with migration and remittances

Morocco has depended on migration and remittances for much of its economic survival, but recent migration restrictions and decreasing remittance transfers have questioned such a strategy. This article divides Moroccos relationship with remittances into three stages: high hopes for developing Morocco through their investment; a lack of positive results; and a new solution in the free trade agreement with the EU. By examining past Moroccan migration and development policies, this paper addresses agricultural development, changing family structure, return migration and the brain drain, concluding with policy implications for Morocco.

New perspectives on islam in senegal: Conversion, migration, wealth, power, and femininity

The literature on Islam in Mrica has been dominated by two main tracks: the making of Muslim societies and the “Africanization of Islam.”1 It has tended to reproduce a reductive binary in which the processes of “Africanization” provide content, selecting the local factors that constitute the key drivers in determining the character of Islam in Africa, while the “Islamization of African societies” lays out the structures from which the faith deploys itself. The issues with which scholars engaged were constructed around additional binaries such as universal and local manifestations and appropriations of Islam, literate (doctrinal modes) and magical (imagistic modes) discourses and practices,2 individual religious responsibility and submission to religious leaders, and spirituality and economic and political functions of the brotherhoods.3

MIGRATION, WAR, AND THE MAKING OF A TRANSNATIONAL LEBANESE SHI'I COMMUNITY IN SENEGAL.

The July 2006 Lebanon war was an important turning point for West African Lebanese. For the first time since their formation as a community, the Lebanese in Senegal organized a demonstration in Dakar displaying solidarity with Lebanon.1 This protest illuminates the dynamics between global forces and local responses. Hizbullah’s effectiveness in winning the international public opinion of both Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims in the war against Israel led to a surge in Lebanese diaspora identification, even among communities who had not been similarly affected by previous Lebanese wars. By analyzing the role of a Lebanese shaykh in bringing religious rituals and a Lebanese national identity to the community in Senegal, this article explores how members of the community maintain political ties to Lebanon even when they have never visited the “homeland” and sheds new light on the relationship among religion, migration, and (trans)nationalism. On 20 July 2006, eight days after the start of the Lebanon war, 3,000 Lebanese demonstrated in the area between Senegal’s national television station and Dakar’s Grand Mosque.2 A token representation of those from outside the Lebanese community joined in the demonstration, including Karim Wade, the president’s son; Mustafa Niass, the former prime minister and leader of the opposition; and other Senegalese politicians, professors, religious leaders, and members of nongovernmental organizations. Those in attendance waved Lebanese and Hizbullah flags as well as signs in French, English, and Arabic supporting Lebanon and protesting the Israeli attacks. Lebanese community leaders in Dakar, who had formed the committee Solidarite Liban 2006, gave public speeches denouncing the war and comparing it to the Nazi destruction of the French village Oradoursur-Glane in Normandy on 10 June 1944. They also cited as an example of their “hope and courage” the eventual victory of Nelson Mandela’s struggles against apartheid in South Africa.3 Such comparisons place the Lebanese struggle alongside other well-known cases of tragedy and human-rights violations while providing examples familiar to a French-educated African audience. The demonstration was followed by a march, led by Shaykh ʿAbdul Munʿam al-Zayn. Senegal’s Lebanese Shiʿi leader was born in 1945 in the south of Lebanon and was trained by Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khuʾi, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and other prominent Shiʿi scholars in a ḥawza (religious seminary) in Najaf, Iraq. He currently serves as wakīl (representative) for Ayatollah ʿAli al-Sistani. Sent to Dakar in 1969 by Musa al-Sadr, the legendary leader of Lebanon’s Shiʿa and founder of the political party Amal (Afwaj al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyya), Shaykh al-Zayn was fundamental in bringing Lebanese Shiʿa in Senegal “back to Islam” as well as (spiritually if not physically) back to Lebanon. Clerics, through their Islamic institutions, are particularly important in organizing minority or immigrant communities whose members live in close proximity to one another and who face challenges and discrimination from the dominant society. Shaykhs in the diaspora serve not only as religious models for the community to emulate but also as representatives of the country of origin. How do religious leaders link their congregations to their country of origin and Islam to nationalism? Protesters marched with Shaykh al-Zayn past the Senegalese presidential palace and the U.S. embassy. They ended at the Lebanese Islamic Institute, where there was a well-attended service that included the Syrian and Iranian ambassadors and other dignitaries. Although it is not unusual for heads of state to attend religious ceremonies, it was a clear political statement for two countries with their own goals in Lebanon to be present at such a public event showing solidarity with the Lebanese people.4 I was told that the shaykh spoke more about politics at this occasion than usual and that he was full of praise for sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, whereas previously he had always been careful not to demonstrate any attachments to Lebanese political parties.5 What is even more remarkable is that many of the protesters who had been living in West Africa for two, three, or even four generations, and had never before marched in the streets of Dakar for a political agenda, had also never visited Lebanon. Although there were many demonstrations against Israel’s actions in 2006, with the largest protests taking place in cities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, I argue that something different was manifesting among Lebanese in Senegal. Taking a public stance against the war broke with the community’s previously cautious public profile as a minority not fully accepted in Senegal and can be analyzed as a culmination of their emerging Lebanese identity. National identity in the diaspora is not only linked to home country solidarity. During the protest, Lebanese also carried the Senegalese flag and signs saying “Merci Senegal,” thanking Senegal for its hospitality for over a century. They hung a banner with the image of the Lebanese national cedar tree on a car rapide, one of Dakar’s primary vehicles for public transportation, characteristically blue and yellow, proclaiming in bold, black letters on the front of the large Renault van “Al-ḥamdu lillāh” (praise God). The car rapide is a symbol of Senegal, reproduced in children’s toys and tourist souvenirs. Times of tension in Lebanon underscore for the Lebanese community the insecurity of their situation elsewhere, and they use these periods of political instability in their “homeland” to reaffirm commitment to their “host countries” and express gratitude for having been given the opportunity, now long ago, to settle in West Africa.6 Stressing loyalty to Senegal as well as to Lebanon was therefore necessary, and speakers exclaimed: “Long live Senegal! Long live Lebanon! Long live Senegalese–Lebanese solidarity!” This article will explore how Lebanese national identity exhibited by those in the diaspora can sometimes be a response to their exclusion from national belonging in their country of residence. Religious rituals are one way of reinforcing belonging to the homeland while unintentionally representing the host society as not home.7 Louer has reasoned that “any inquiry about the transnational practices of [Shiʿi Islamic] movements implies an examination of their relation to religious authority.”8 Through focusing on the work of Shaykh al-Zayn in Senegal, this article thus contributes to a newly emerging scholarship on transnational Shiʿi linkages.9 While much of this literature focuses on relationships between Iran and the Levant, I will concentrate on ties between Lebanese in West Africa and Lebanon. Through presenting a detailed ethnography of the transformation of Lebanese Shiʿi identity in Senegal from the French colonial period to the present day, I insist on the importance of the African example in adding another dimension to our understanding of the relationship between religion and nationalism in the Middle East. Area studies scholars often examine events in the region at the exclusion of related processes taking place in the diaspora. This article highlights the place of the Lebanese diaspora in Senegal within transnational (Shiʿi) Islam, where I define transnational Islam as being anchored within two or more nation–states. I focus my investigation of Lebanese diaspora Shiʿi Islam around the question Peter Mandaville has asked: “What happens to Islam when it travels, migrates or becomes otherwise ‘transplanted?’”10 I understand traveling Islam not only to be the movement of Muslims across borders but also the global circulation of religious knowledge through books or cassettes and the transmission of new ideas about Islam over the radio, television, or Internet. Furthermore, I am using a broader conception of religion than one focused solely on the sacred, religious rituals, individual piety, or religious authorities and institutions. I concentrate my analysis on interactions of all of these components of religion, suggesting a new way to think about the globalization of religion through a more in-depth understanding of migration and politics. I first examine different theoretical understandings of nationalism and then provide a brief history of Lebanese immigration to Senegal. In highlighting the importance of Islamic institutions and authority in the diaspora, the remainder of the article evaluates Shaykh al-Zayn’s success in heightening religious and national awareness among the Lebanese community. I explore his efforts to institute formal religious education through a Friday sermon, encourage public expressions of piety, and introduce new religious rituals in commemorations of ʿAshuraʾ and Ramadan. Finally, I describe other ties Lebanese in Senegal have with Lebanon. This enables me to emphasize the links between religious and political transnationalisms and how Lebanese Shiʿa have an understanding of the relationship between Shiʿi Islam and Lebanese nationalism that is different from that of Shiʿa in Lebanon.

From the Cross (and Crescent) to the Cedar and Back Again: Transnational Religion and Politics Among Lebanese Christians in Senegal

This article examines the changing relationship between religion, secularism, national politics, and identity formation among Lebanese Christians in Senegal. Notre Dame du Liban, the first Lebanese religious institution in West Africa, draws on its Lebanese “national” character to accommodate Lebanese Maronite Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians in Dakar, remaining an icon of “Lebanese” religion, yet departing from religious sectarianism in Lebanon. As such, transnational religion can vary from national religion, gaining new resonances and reinforcing a wider “secular” ethno-national identity.

The Authentication Of A Discursive Islam

Since the 1980s some Senegalese Sunni Muslims have been “converting”1 to Shi’a Islam. This small but growing community is not well—known. In fact most scholars of Senegal and Senegalese Sunni religious leaders and their followers are surprised to hear that Shi’a Islam is spreading among West Africans. The discovery of this branch of Islam is one of the responses of the Senegalese search for an authentic Islam. Throughout the Muslim world there is a tendency to return to earlier practices of Islam perceived as a solution to the failures attributed to Western influence and the innovations (bida) in recent Islamic practice. It is this desire for “true” knowledge about Islam in a return to the scriptural sources that drove some Senegalese Muslims to read various religious and legal books, visit Islamic scholars and clerics seeking the truth about their religion, and learn about other ways of being Muslim.2 This chapter explores how a collectivity of converts works to establish Shi’a Islam as not only authentic Islam but also as authentically Senegalese.3 Adapting Shi’a Islamic practice to the culture of Senegalese Sufi orders is one way of distancing religious ritual from the perception that Shi’a Islam is Iranian or revolutionary.

The Intricacies of Being Senegal’s Lebanese Shi‘ite Sheikh (Lebanese Religious Leader in West Africa)

Sheikh Abdul Monem El-Zein is an imposing figure in his long gray robes, white turban, and gray beard. He is a charismatic man, and when he speaks, people listen. He demands respect not only because he is the first Shi‘ite sheikh (Islamic leader) in Senegal, but also because he is one of the few highly educated men among the Lebanese community in Dakar. Here, knowledge is something to be shared, and Sheikh El-Zein is certainly not a man short of words. He lectures at more than four hundred occasions a year—weekly at Friday prayer, every evening during the month of Ramadan, and twice a day during the ten days of the Shi‘ite holiday of ‘Ashura. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he teaches religious classes for men, on Saturdays he teaches Qur’an classes for women, and he speaks at memorial ceremonies and various other community events. He lectures about religion, politics, history, moral issues, and the daily struggles the community might face. For example, his theme for Ramadan 2002 compared the Qur’an, the Torah, and the Gospels. He has encouraged the community to live life to the fullest, to be unafraid of death, to seek knowledge and education, and to quit smoking. He has used such occasions to talk about the dangers of the Internet, which contains good sites about religion, but also has bad sites about sex, which children should be forbidden from accessing.

Is Senegal still the African exception? Sufism and democracy revisited

Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal is the edited volume resulting from a 2008 conference held at Columbia University to celebrate the reopening of the Institute of African Studies, directed by Mamadou Diouf. The 10 chapters, including an introduction, reinterpret Senegal’s history and politics in terms of the so-called “Senegalese exception” of a stable African democracy among neighbors plagued by military coups, civil wars, and ethnic conflicts. Senegal managed to have a peaceful and democratic transition of power, making the West African country a positive example of good African leadership. First put forward by Donal Cruise O’Brien, the “social contract” theory between marabout (Sufi Islamic leader) and talibe (disciple), as well as between the marabouts and the state, is the foundation of Senegalese stability. The volume revisits this theory with fresh interdisciplinary analysis and an acknowledgement of the agency of talibes (often undermined in the earlier scholarship). The Introduction highlights Sufi Islam as an “antidote to political Islam,” in particular the Senegalese model of pluralism, cooperation, coexistence, and tolerance. This volume offers a “longue durée perspective” that traces the development of what Diouf refers to as Senegal’s “Islamo-Wolof model”, the “political, social, and cultural arrangements (infrastructures and ideologies) that have been supporting the operations of the colonial and the postcolonial states and providing the sources and resources for the legitimacy of their power” (ch. 1, n 27). This began in the French colonial period with the marabouts becoming vital intermediaries, religiously and administratively, between the colonial state and rural masses. Chapters deliver a variety of approaches grounded in different disciplines and methodologies and ranging from Senegal’s past to the present day. Chapter 2 presents Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s philosophical contribution on the assumed challenges presented to Muslim societies by secularization, which emerged as a criticism of Islam by nineteenth-century thinkers such as Ernest Renan who regarded Islam as incompatible with science. Diagne traces the foundations of the “spiritual socialism” of Senegal’s first president Leopold Sedar Senghor and his prime minister Mamadou Dia. Senegal’s founding fathers played a crucial role in defining the Senegalese state’s laïcité (a specific French-inspired brand of secularism), which Catholic Senghor modeled after the intellectual discourse of Muslim elites such as Al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, and Muhammad Iqbal. Diagne concludes with a quote from Senegal’s second president, Abdou

Shiʿi preaching in West Africa: the Dakar sermons of Lebanese Shaykh al-Zayn

Abstract While there has been much emphasis on new types of media for the dissemination of Islamic ideas, this article focuses on the conventional Friday khuṭba. Lebanese Shaykh al-Zayn was trained in Najaf, Iraq and was sent by Musa al-Sadr to serve the Lebanese diasporic business community in Senegal. Estranged from the religious politics of the homeland and traditional centres of Shiʿi learning, Lebanese in Senegal depended on Shaykh al-Zayn to teach them about Shiʿi Islam. The Islamic Social Institute he built was the first Shiʿi institution in all of West Africa. Shaykh al-Zayn quickly gained a following of both Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims, Arabs as well as Africans. This article focuses on the shaykh’s discursive strategies for addressing his unique following. At times his Friday sermons stressed the particularities of Shiʿi Islamic practice, but more often he highlighted a universal Islam in an effort to appeal to Senegal’s Sunni Muslim majority. In analysing khutbas given in 2003 during the beginning of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, we pay particular attention to the Lebanese shaykh’s engagement with global politics and how his messages were translated for a community in West Africa detached from the Middle East.