African Affairs 101:151-170 (2002)
© 2002 The Royal African Society
Article |
Brotherhood solidarity, education and migration: The role of the Dahiras among the Murid muslim community of New York
Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, Michigan State University, USA
The recent history of the Muridiyya is marked by an increasing urbanization of the brotherhood. Mostly confined to the Peanut Basin of Senegal until the end of the Second World War, the brotherhood experienced an important migratory movement that sent Murid disciples first to the cities of Senegal and Africa, and then to Europe and the United States in the early 1980s. While scholars have noted and described the changes in the economy and constitution of the brotherhood, no attempt has been made to provide an alternative analysis of its development that integrates these transformations. A major contention of this article is that the recent evolution of the Muridiyya is best explained by characteristics internal to the brotherhood. Taking the Murid community of New York as a case study, it puts forward a framework for understanding the source of the cohesion and development of Murid migrant communities in an urban setting. This study has revealed that education, through the mediation of the dahiras, constitutes an important source of social capital among Murid migrants. The exploitation of networks of solidarity and brotherhood through dahira membership is critical to the survival of the Murids as a group and to their relative economic success in the urban context.