Samson, Fabienne
Islamic Identities in Dakar
- 2006.
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The Dahiratoul Moustarchidina Wal Moustarchidaty and the Mouvement Mondial pour l’Unicité de Dieu are two Senegalese Islamic movements intentionally set up in cities in order to stand out in a highly competitive religious field. They are new-brotherhood type movements, inspired by a reformist Islam. They address exclusively young people, offering them new places for contact and socializing in a much-decried urban environment. They are closed communities that nevertheless ostentatiously seek to make their presence felt in cities. In this way they offer the faithful some points of reference thanks to which they can now believe in a new society based on their religious precepts. These are educative movements, with as principal objective the re-Islamization of Senegalese society by means of mass education. Their conversion methods are modern and essentially involve social and citizen-based actions. However, they are involving themselves more and more directly in politics, becoming centres of militant socialization. They are also spaces where young people can make their claims heard and instrumentalize them as a way of contesting society, while often preferring paradoxically to keep their distance from the political causes of their spiritual leaders.