Review of Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal: the Murid Order by John Glover

Abstract

The Senegalese Sufi way, Tariqa Murid, has been the subject of extensive scholarly research. Where historians of Islam in West Africa have conventionally used French conquest as their starting point, Glover focuses on continuity and transformation over a longer time period to understand the emergence of this Senegalese Sufi way as a reform and revival movement. Thus his study addresses the development of the Murid way in the context of the rise of reformist Islam, Wolof civil wars, and the impact of the transatlantic trade in slaves. Glover is interested in the multiple histories through which one can tell the story of Murid modernities. Neither an alternative to nor aligned with colonialism, in Glover's conception Murid modernities speak to the incorporation of the tariqa into local, regional, and global circulations through trade, labor, military service, cash crop production, and taxes.