Let’s look at one of the most fascinating Senegalese Muslim sects, who helped partly to bring President elect Bassirou Diomaye Faye to power.
Have you ever heard of the dreadlocked Senegalese Muslims known as the Baye Fall, a movement within the powerful Mouridiyya Brotherhood?
The Mouridiyya Brotherhood is one of the two most powerful Islamic sects in Senegal.
It is not just a Sufi Islamic movement but a cultural and nationalist phenomenon.
The Baye Fall arm are known for their dreadlocks, distinctive patchwork multi coloured robes made from scrap fabric symbolising humility, giant prayer beads, talismans round their necks and waists.
All these cut them a stylish, even if sometimes slightly weird, presence.
While other Mourides adhere to the five pillars of Islam, the Baye Fall observe strictly only the first, the affirmation of faith.
They almost never pray in the conventional sense: if you see a Baye Fall in the mosque, he is invariably there to clean it or for other maintenance.
The Baye Fall also do not fast, obliged only to occupy themselves cooking for those who fast at the breaking of fast.
One of their most cherished ritual tasks is carrying the food from the central kitchen, in procession to a communal feeding center.
Baye Fall are never more excited than when they’re going to deliver food for charity, or just accomplishing a good work for the less privileged.
During Ramadan, they always seem to be processing somewhere at great pace to deliver food at various feeding centres.
For them, work especially the type involving physical effort, is prayer.
They believe physical labor and service to others is a form of worship; a higher level of devotion. You’d see them engaging in public works such as cleaning their holy city, civic & religious construction.
This attitude to work is vaguely reminiscent of Christian Calvinist, Opus Dei, and some early Protestant ideas.
The Baye Fall commitment to work and acts of charity is truly remarkable.
Their only ostensible act of religious devotion is their daily Zikr chants (more like screams!)
They spend roughly an hour daily swaying & shuffling to sometimes hypnotic, sometimes rousing & sometimes cacophonous repetitive chants -acapella or to drums- of La ilaha illallah.
They wear robes made of pieces of old clothes scavenged and repurposed to their patchwork robes.
This practice is reminiscent of a kind of materials recycling. It points to another of their beliefs; humility, self denial and an abhorrence of materialism.
Ironically fashion designers now produce Baye Fall type couture, patronised by affluents in Dakar, creating an urban secular Baye Fall look.
The urban lookalikes & nominal Falls don colourful robes, expensive wide belts, leather gloves, top dollar sneakers & designer sunglasses!
There’s also a band of marijuana smoking and alcohol drinking toughs who impersonate Baye Fall culture.
All these tend to sometimes bring the Baye Fall to disrepute. But a basic reading of their thought gives a lie to this.
They in fact expressly forbid alcohol and smoking.
Their only permitted stimulant is coffee which they drink almost ritually.
They spend a lot of time roasting and grinding coffee beans and brewing it, all the while chanting their Zikr.
Because they work so hard, the Baye Fall tend to indulge a lot in entertainment in leisure.
Even then, drumming, singing, dancing are not just forms of expression but seen as paths to spiritual elevation.
Though entirely unrelated to Rastafarianism, they tend to love reggae.
A number of famous Senegalese musicians are Baye Fall members.
They including A lister Cheikh Lo, and Superstar Yousou Ndor who is of the larger Mouridiyya sect.
Now what do all this have to do with the recent election?
One of the coalition partners in the election is the political party of former president Abdulahi Wade.
Wade is a member of the powerful, rich Mouridiyya Brotherhood, to which the Baye Fall belong.
Wade managed to secure the support of the sect leaders for president Faye.
Although leaders of all the brotherhoods don’t really get involved in politics President Faye is said to have won in their stronghold, according to a commentator, with margins of soviet type proportions.
The Mouridiyya Brotherhood & Baye Fall movement, have been in existence for almost 150 years now.
On account of migration, there are today Baye Fall all over the world; in Europe, America, especially NY, and Canada.
Remarkably religious sentiment don’t seem to play much of a role in Senegal’s politics.
They’ve had two Christian presidents in a country of almost 97% Muslims.
On an intellectual level, the Baye Fall movement is incredibly fascinating. Also on aesthetic, visceral level. Perhaps not for conservative Islamic theologians.
A reading of their founding thoughts & the economic cum political ideas undergirding them can be extremely rewarding.
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