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Powerful Mouride caliph dies
29/12/2007 19:42 - (SA)
Dakar - The leader of Senegal's powerful Mouride Muslim brotherhood has died, followers said on Saturday, throwing into mourning a movement that holds huge influence and whose trade networks span the globe.
The brotherhood is the biggest centre of religious, economic and political influence in the mainly Muslim country, and counts octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade among its followers.
Caliph Serigne Saliou Mbacke died on Friday in Senegal's holiest city Touba - known to some as "little Mecca" - and was buried overnight, Senegalese Mines Minister Madicke Niang said.
"Serigne Saliou's calling back to God is a huge loss for me, for Senegal and for the entire Muslim community," said Niang, a close associate and himself a "talibe" or disciple.
Wade travelled the 200km from the West African country's capital Dakar in the middle of the night to pay his respects, national television reported.
Popular music star Cheikh Lo brought a late-night concert in Dakar an abrupt halt when news of Saliou's death arrived.
Thousands of people crowded bus stations or set off in private vehicles overnight to travel to Touba.
National television replaced regular programming with Koranic chants recorded in Touba and tributes to Saliou.
At 92, Saliou was the last surviving son of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, who founded the Sufi Islamic brotherhood in 1883.
Mouride followers tipped Bamba's eldest grandson, Serigne Bara Falilou Mbacke, to become the movement's sixth caliph.
Bamba's doctrine of hard work as a route to paradise and unique brand of moderate Sufi Islam helped forge his followers into a global network of small traders whose donations funded the building of Touba's Grand Mosque with its lavish colonnades.
Shops in the city boast the latest electronic gadgets while Mouride traders tout everything from household goods to bootleg designer gear on the streets of Paris and New York. Others run import/export businesses in Dubai and Hong Kong.
From being a tiny village at the time of Bamba's birth, Touba and adjoining Mbacke have mushroomed into Senegal's second biggest conurbation after the Atlantic coast capital Dakar.
Photographs and tributes to Saliou and other leading Mouride marabouts, or religious teachers, adorn many of Senegal's ubiquitous rickety, brightly painted minibuses.
Touba's annual pilgrimage attracts one million people from around Senegal and further afield, marshalled by dreadlocked disciples called Baye Fall armed with wooden clubs and silver begging bowls to collect alms for their religious teachers.
Bamba's teachings, such as "Pray as if you will die tomorrow and work as if you will live forever", induce thousands of Senegalese to work for free in the fields around Touba, sometimes for weeks on end, during the annual peanut harvest.
Saliou's death comes barely three months before Islamic leaders from around the world are due to convene in Senegal for an Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in March.
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