AcknowledgmentsAbbreviations1. Introduction: The Public Role of the "Good Islam": Sufi Islam and the Administration of Pluralism. A Senegalese Story (Mamadou Diouf)2. A Secular Age and the World of Islam (Souleymane Bachir Diagne)3. Islam's New Visibility and the Secular Public (Beth A. Buggenhagen)
4. Dakar's Sunnite Women: The Dialectic of Submission and Defiance in a Globalizing City (Erin Augis)5. Sovereign Islam in a Secular State: Hidden Knowledge and Sufi Governance
Among "Taalibe Baay" (Joseph Hill)6. The Senegalese 'Social Contract' Revisited: the Muridiyya Muslim Order and State Politics (Cheikh ANta Babou)7. Religion, Ethnicity and the State: the Triadic Configuration of Tolerance (Etienne Smith)
8. Islam, the Originaires and the Making of the Public Space in a Colonial City: Saint Louis of Senegal (Mamadou Diouf)9. Stateness, Democracy, and Respect: Senegal in Comparative Perspective (Alfred Stepan)10. Negotiating Islam in the Era of Democracy: Senegal in Comparative Regional Perspective (Leonardo A. Villalón)GlossaryContributors
This collection critically examines "tolerance," "secularism," and respect for religious "diversity" within a social and political system dominated by Sufi brotherhoods. Through a detailed analysis of Senegal's political economy, essays trace the genealogy and dynamic exchange among these concepts while investigating public spaces and political processes and their reciprocal engagement with the state, Sunni reformist and radical groups, and non-religious organizations. The anthology provides a rich and nuanced historical ethnography of the formation of Senegalese democracy, illuminating the complex trajectory of the Senegalese state and reflecting on similar postcolonial societies. Offering rare perspectives on the country's "successes" since liberation, the volume identifies the role of religion, gender, culture, ethnicity, globalization, politics, and migration in the reconfiguration of the state and society, and it makes an important contribution to democratization theory, Islamic studies, and African studies.