A study of the Niassene branch of the Tijani sufi brotherhood in Senegal

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In the 1930’s, Ibrahima Niass, a wolof savant, founded the Niassene order, one of the branches of the Tijani sufi brotherhood, in the region of Saloum in Senegal. The followers are not only the sereer ethnic group which is the majority of people in the region, but also foreigners of West African nations, including many Nigerians and Mauritanians.The branch, on the one hand, integrates the ethnicity of the sereer people with the senegalese musulman society and on the other hand introduces them to the cosmopolitan universality of islamic community which makes them cross the borders of race, ethnicity and national boundary. Enlightenment that all things in the world are God’s light and there is no distinction between one’s self and the other’s is received by the Niassene initiates in the unique method of educational task (‘tarbiya’). I think this n ew systematic religious method brings about their cosmopolitanism.