Shi.Ai cosmopolitanisms in Africa : Lebanese migration and religious conversion in Senegal /
Mara A. Leichtman.
- Bloomington : Indiana University Press, (c)2015.
- 1 online resource (xvii, 294 pages)
- Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Preface: Islam and politics -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: locating cosmopolitan Shi.Ai Islamic movements in Senegal. -- The making of a Lebanese community in Senegal -- Introduction to Part 1 -- French colonial manipulation and Lebanese survival -- Senegalese independence and the question of belonging -- Shi.Ai Islam comes to town: a biography of Shaykh al-Zayn -- Bringing Lebanese "back" to Shi.Ai Islam -- Senegalese conversion to Shi.Ai Islam -- The vernacularization of Shi.Ai Islam: competition and conflict -- Migrating from one's parents' traditions: narrating conversion experiences -- Interlude: .AUmar: converting to an "intellectual Islam" -- The creation of a Senegalese Shi.Ai Islam -- Coda: on Shi.Ai Islam, anthropology, and cosmopolitanism.
Mara A. Leichtman offers an in-depth study of Shi'i Islam in two very different communities in Senegal: the well-established Lebanese diaspora and Senegalese "converts" from Sunni to Shi'i Islam of recent decades. Sharing a minority religious status in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, each group is cosmopolitan in its own way. Leichtman provides new insights into the everyday lives of Shi'i Muslims in Africa and the dynamics of local and global Islam. She explores the influence of Hizbullah and Islamic reformist movements, and offers a corrective to prevailing views of Sunni-Shi'i hostility, demonstrating that religious coexistence is possible in a context such as Senegal.