The Mouride brotherhood is a large Islamic brotherhood organization in Senegal and The Gambia, with headquarters at the holy city of Touba, Senegal. The followers are called mourides and they have large mercantile communities in Paris, France and New York City, USA. The beliefs and practices constitute Mouridism.
The Mouride brotherhood was founded by Amadou Bamba (1850-1927) (Ahmed Ben Mohammed Ben Abib Allah, also called Khadimou Rassoul). He was born in the village of Mbacké in the Kingdom of Baol, the son of a marabout from the Xaadir (Qadriyya) brotherhood (the oldest in Senegal). Amadou Bamba was a Muslim mystic and ascetic marabout who wrote tracts on meditation, rituals and Koranic study, and made good-luck amulets for his followers. Although he did not support the French conquest, he did not wage outright war on them as several prominent Tijaan marabouts had done.
Bamba's followers call him a "messenger" of Al'lah, citing a passage in the Koran that implies that He will send messengers every 100 years. (The members of all the Senegalese brotherhoods claim that their founders were such messengers.) Bamba's fame spread through his followers, and people joined him to receive the salvation that he promised. Salvation, he said, comes through submission to the marabout and hard work, a departure from conventional Islamic teaching.
The French colonial rulers worried about Bamba's growing power and potential to wage war against them. He had converted various kings and their followers and probably could have raised an army if he had wanted. The French sentenced him to exile in Gabon (1895-1902) and later in Mauritania (1903-1907). However, these exiles fired wild legends about Bamba's miraculous survival of torture, deprivation, and attempted executions, and thousands more flocked to his organization. On the ship to Gabon, forbidden from praying, Bamba supposedly broke his leg-irons, leapt overboard into the ocean and prayed on a prayer rug that appeared on the surface of the water, so devout was he. Or, when the French put him in a furnace, he simply sat down in it and drank tea with Muhammad. In a den of hungry lions, the lions slept beside him, etc.
By 1910, the French realized that Bamba was not waging war against them, and was in fact quite cooperative. His doctrine of hard work served French interests. He won the Legion of Honor for help with World War I recruitment. His movement grew, and in 1926 he began work for the great mosque at Touba where he is buried. After his death, he has been succeeded by his descendants as hereditary leaders of the brotherhood with absolute authority over the followers.
One famous disciple of Bamba, Ibrahima Fall, started a group called the Baye Fall who substitute hard labor and dedication for the usual Muslim pieties like prayer and fasting. They dress in colorful ragged cloths, wear their hair in dreadlocks, carry clubs, and act as security guards in the annual Grand Magal pilgrimages to Touba. They are very noticeable, and somewhat pushy, features of Senegal society.
Many mainstream Muslims consider the Mourides' extreme adulation of Amadou Bamba, and his lineage of successors, to be blasphemous, since the latter gets more attention than the Prophet Muhammed, and Touba is ranked over Makkah.
Amadou Bamba had only one surviving photograph, in which he wears a flowing white robe and his face is mostly covered by a scarf. This picture is venerated and reproduced in paintings on walls, buses, taxis, etc. all over Senegal.
The Mouride brotherhood has attempted, with considerable success over the years, to dominate politics in Senegal. In Paris and New York, its followers are mostly small street merchants. Profit is deemed holy. They send large sums of money back to the brotherhood in Touba.
