Overlapping solidarities: The politics of ethnicity and sufi turuq in Mauritania

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 35, 1-2, 2010 © The Maghreb Review 2010 This publication is printed on longlife paper OVERLAPPING SOLIDARITIES: THE POLITICS OF ETHNICITY AND SUFI TURUQ IN MAURITANIA BY CÉDRIC JOURDE∗ In contemporary Mauritania, ethnicity and Islam constitute two major political repertoires, among others of course, through which political battles are played out. Less often analysed, however, but no less important is the interplay between ethnicity and Islam in the political arena. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of this nexus of ethnicity, Islam and politics, by examining the participation of a Süfı tarıqa (plur. turuq, path or order) in political dynamics that were, and still are, practised and expressed through the idioms of ethnicity. More specifically, it will analyse primarily the role of the Tij�niyya Umariyya (related to the descendants and disciples of Al ˘�jj Umar Tall) in three different events that constituted, with others, the ethnic narrative of Mauritanian politics. These cases will help to demonstrate that Süfı turuq can act as major actors on the field of ethnic politics, being considered by many as legitimate political actors, as much as, if not more than, official political actors of the likes of elected deputies or government ministers. In most accounts of ethnic politics in Mauritania, scholars have rightfully discussed the roles of such political actors as the Forces de libération des Africains de Mauritanie (FLAM), El Hor, the informal but influential groups such as the Nasserists and Ba’athists, and of course the various governments themselves.1 Undoubtedly, these actors did play a critical role in the narrative of politicized ethnicity; much less known, however, is the role played by Süfı turuq. This article will examine three cases during which one of the turuq at present in Mauritania, the Tij�niyya Umariyya, has invested the terrain of politics and ethnicity: first, the events surrounding the participation of the Umariyya in the electoral politics of the 1940s–1950s, when ethnic discourses gained a leverage in Mauritanian politics; second, the 1988–91 period of state-led ethnic repression; and third, the zy�ra of the Tall family in the town of Boghé in 1994–5, in the context of the Mauritanian regime’s consolidating grip over the Fuuta Tooro. I treat them as three vignettes, not as three links of a causal or constitutive chain; though one could certainly examine this possibility. ∗ University of Ottawa Data for this article were collected through fieldwork research in Nouakchott, Boghé, Kaédi, in 1997, 1999–2000 and 2006, where I held informal and open discussions with informants; through archival research in the National Archives of Mauritania (coupled with archival research in France in 1999, 2000 and 2002); and by collecting Mauritanian newspapers and governmental reports. 1 See Marchesin 1992 for a general overview. OVERLAPPING SOLIDARITIES 223 The next section sets up the theoretical framework upon which this article is founded. It draws on a body of research that has been looking at cases across the Muslim world where the historical constitution of ethnic identities and the construction of Süfı turuq overlap, leading to what Verkaaik (2004a) calls the ‘ethnicization’ of Islam. The second section of this article will examine the three empirical cases upon which it builds its main argument. SÜFI TURUQ, POLITICS AND ETHNICITY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE The complex relationship between Süfı orders, or turuq and state power in a number of contemporary Muslim countries has attracted a respectable degree of attention from social scientists. In Senegal, the country where the power of Sûfi leaders is perhaps the most visible, scholars agree that state representatives and Sûfi leaders have developed a deeply profound relationship. Of course, they have changed over time and space, and were (and are) multifarious, ranging from direct confrontation to cooptation, from reciprocal assimilation to polite but distant acknowledgement, from domination to resistance, as nicely demonstrated by such authors as Robinson (2000), Searing (2002), Cruise O’Brien (2003), Villalón (1995) or Beck (1996). For instance, in the postcolonial period Senegalese Süfi leaders have guaranteed electoral support to the incumbent president and ruling party in exchange for favourable policies or economic...

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