Berkley Center

Saliou Diouf says that the United States will begin a third world war. As we crawled down one of Dakar’s main roads in Saliou’s sputtering taxi, he made me promise him that I’d put his prediction into writing.

“Chinois?”

No, I’m American.

"Oh. I prefer Chinese people."

Why?

"America causes the world’s problems."

So began our argument about America’s role in the world. Saliou cited Iraq and Afghanistan as proof that a country should never intervene militarily in another’s affairs—how many lives had been lost in the pursuit of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? I asked how America and the international community could remain idle during the slaughter of people en masse, such as in Syria. Saliou hadn't heard of that conflict and maintained that such issues, if indeed they existed, should be resolved by democratic processes. And he continued to assert that America’s fecklessness would ignite World War Three.

With one hand Saliou slapped his palm on the wheel and with the other he wagged a finger at me to punctuate his points, even as he turned onto a side road. I was growing frustrated as it became clear that he had little information on global affairs and how, despite this asymmetry, I was having difficulty refuting his core argument: America’s history of foreign interventions is riddled with human tragedy. While this issue deserved a much more nuanced examination than what Saliou and I provided, here my studies of the global arena had wrestled with Saliou’s unshakable faith in the power of peace and (or rather, through) Islam.

Seeing no way forward on this topic, I tried to change directions: I told Saliou that Americans’ limited exposure to Islam—other than news coverage of radicalized, fundamentalist Muslims—is a huge problem. Saliou seized on this opportunity to extoll the peacefulness that Islam exhorts. Large swathes of Dakar had been without running water for two weeks; work was nowhere to be found for many of the country’s youth; and the clunking sound of Saliou’s car navigating the horribly uneven road underscored the weak public infrastructure of the country. Yet Senegal remained remarkably peaceful, and Saliou attributed this to the teachings of Islam. He extended his analysis to America, claiming that Islam would never permit such marauding behavior.

Saliou and I said our goodbyes as I climbed out of his taxi and onto a bus to travel across Senegal, but I received yet another lesson on Islam as practiced in Senegal four days later, on my return trip to Dakar. I stepped down from the suffocating bus for one of several stops. A boy who looked to be my age approached me and asked me for a cadeau. I politely refused but he persisted with a wide and friendly smile. He then revealed that he was Baye Fall, and I’d be making donations in the name of God. In broken French and broad strokes, he explained that the Baye Fall collect money and other gifts for their marabout, who lives in the city of Touba and serves as the messenger of God. Baye Fall is a branch of Mouridism, which in turn falls under Sufism, whose mysticism is often signaled by its deviation in practices from other Islamic traditions.

This brother of Baye Fall had relocated from northern Senegal to the country’s southeastern region to serve a marabout whom he’ll probably never meet, and he has dedicated his life to putting money into the pocket of this near-deity figure. Many tahlibes (students) are brought from rural areas to work for marabouts at a very young age. Their parents often resort to sending their children away because they cannot provide for them and because the marabouts promise a religious education and prosperity. But when the marabouts enrich themselves on the backs of young children who extend forlorn hands for sustenance, the marabout-talibe relationship assumes a more sinister and exploitative appearance. Islam in Senegal has many faces: in a taxi in Dakar, one can hear about the peace with which Islam has blessed Senegal; on a street in Touba, one can find a religious structure that has been manipulated to the worldly benefit of a few.