Berkley Center

As I sat in a canoe two days ago heading for a small island off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, my life flashed before my eyes for a moment. West Africa is not known for safety in the realm of public transportation, and colossal waves were crashing into rows of jagged rocks, right in the path of our small pirogue. As I whimpered and shielded my eyes, our guide laughed and told me I didn't need to be afraid. "Don't worry," he said, "We know what we're doing. And don't forget: we are riding with Serigne Touba."

That name seems to have a magical effect here. I see the same light come into the eyes of my host brother when he mentions Cheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké, the founder of Mouridism, a branch of Islam that is organic to Senegal. He can't talk about the man without swelling with pride. He has told me also that as long as I am in his house, I am close to Cheikh Bamba and under his protection against everything from scorpions to sickness to the malicious actions of djinns, Senegalese spirits who can see the future and use that power to hurt humans who unintentionally disturb them.

Cheikh Amadou Bamba was an important spiritual leader who fought for the development of Islam in Senegal free from the influence of French colonial powers. He did not, as some other marabouts, preach violent resistance against the French, but instead encouraged a jihad al-'akbar, or greater struggle, against one's own ignorance of God. His life and deeds were certainly impressive, but more interesting are the layers of legend that have slowly grown around the man like layers of nacre coating and perfecting a pearl. His periods of exile in Gabon and Mauritania fueled the development of these stories. "Once," my host brother tells me, "Cheikh Amadou Bamba was thrown into a furnace, but the flames couldn't touch him. The French put a starved lion into his jail cell to kill him, but a guard sent in afterward was devoured by the lion who had been peacefully asleep at Bamba's side. Once he laid his prayer mat on the ocean and prayed on top of the water."

It all makes me wonder what makes a man into a saint. I can understand a charismatic man having followers during his life and after his death; I can understand his practices being followed and the traditions he started becoming widespread. But what makes my host brother, who never saw or knew Amadou Bamba and who lives his own life in modern, urban Dakar, passionately love the man? What makes him and a group of his fellow Mourides sing zikr three times a week, belting praises to Cheikh Bamba at the top of their lungs until their throats are sore and their voices are completely gone? Merriam-Webster's definition of a saint as an "illustrious predecessor," or "one eminent for piety or virtue," does not explain it. Mourides love their founder in the way Christians love Jesus as the one who saved them and brought them close to God. Perhaps it is a universal need among people of faith to have some kind of personal link. Maybe this explains the adoration in the eyes of Mourides who speak the name of their saint.

What I still fail to explain or understand is the growing effect of his name on myself. A group of men may understandably gather to worship the man who brought Islam home to them, but what explains why a non-Muslim American girl follows them week after week, sits off to the side in the darkness for two hours of singing with chills the entire time? Why does the la ilaha il Allah captivate me? Why was the mention of Serigne Touba enough to dissipate my fear of capsizing on the rocks? I have no more of a personal connection to Cheikh Amadou Bamba than my host brother has to the Prophet Muhammad, and yet his residual charisma has an effect on me. Is it simply an infatuation of circumstance, an absorption of the excitement of others, or is it something more? Only time will tell.