‘The Salafists came to Africa to destroy… Islam’ says
Chiekh Abbas Motaghedi, the Iranian director of Dakar’s branch of
Al-Mustafa.
NAN- In an upmarket suburb of Senegal’s seaside capital, a
branch of Iran’s Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students
Shi’ite Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is
Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
hangs on his office wall.
The teaching includes Iranian culture and history, Islamic
science and Iran’s mother tongue, Farsi; students receive free food and
financial help. The university is a Shi’ite outpost in a country where
Sufism, a more relaxed, mystical and apolitical form of Sunni Islam, is
the norm.
Two miles away, the Islamic Preaching Association for Youth
(APIJ) teaches the strand of Islam that predominates in Iran’s great
religious, political and military rival, Saudi Arabia.
The APIJ funnels cash from donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Dubai and Kuwait to mosques run by Salafists – conservative Sunni
Muslims who are sworn enemies of Iran. The APIJ’s shelves are stacked
with Salafist theology texts adorned with gold-leaf Arabic inscriptions –
texts its imams use to preach in some 200 mosques across Senegal.
The two institutions embody a contest for influence in
Senegal, and more widely in Africa, between Iran-backed Shi’ites and
Saudi-funded Sunnis. It’s one strand of a broad power struggle in which
each side is spending millions of dollars to win converts. At stake is
huge political influence, on a resource-rich continent that has often
served as the theatre for rivalries between world powers.
Interviews with teachers and converts on both sides shed
light on the depth of the divide and the ways both sides try to gain an
edge.
The Iranian director of Dakar’s branch of Al-Mustafa makes
no secret of his concerns over his Saudi rivals. “The Salafists came to
Africa to destroy … Islam,” said Chiekh Abbas Motaghedi in February.
Up the road, in the APIJ building, the Salafists show equal passion.
“We cannot accept the Iranian influence in Senegal, and
we’ll do everything to fight it,” said Chiekh Ibrahima Niang, the imam,
sitting legs crossed in a silky white robe. “We need to show the world
that Shi’ism is wrong.”
But for Senegal, either influence would be a disruption.
It’s a society that has always leaned towards political moderation,
thanks largely to a tradition of tolerance espoused by its Sufi orders
or “brotherhoods.”
“Where the brotherhoods are weak, as in eastern Senegal, is
where the threat of radicalisation is highest,” said Bakary Sambe,
director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute and a coordinator for the
Observatory on Religious Radicalism and Conflicts in Africa. Iran has
often been a destabilising influence: In 2010, an Iranian arms shipment
was intercepted in the Nigerian port of Lagos which Senegal suspected
were destined for rebels in its southern Casamance region. Dakar briefly
cut ties with Tehran over it.
Salafism is the more troubling strand, Sufis say: It is
largely free of political interference, but has shared cause with
violence that Senegal has so far escaped.
“Salafists in Senegal are cousins of those making jihad in
Mali,” Ahmed Khalifa Niasse, son of a deceased powerful Sufi Imam and
vocal critic of Gulf Arab religious influence, told Reuters at his
palace in Dakar.
“They see themselves as soldiers of God purifying Islam.”
Salafists vehemently deny that link. “Salafism has nothing
to do with terrorism,” says Niang. “Yes, there are people who want to
use force to impose the Salafist way, but we are very much against them.
We are against violence.”
TRAINING LOYALISTS
Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei supervises the activities of
Al-Mustafa, which is based in the Iranian city of Qom and has branches
in 50 countries. Thousands of students from across Africa receive enough
Iranian money to enable them and their families to visit Qom while
finishing their studies, said the son of a cleric based there who
declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Al-Mustafa in Dakar receives 150 students a year and gives
them free tuition, a stipend and breakfast, its director of studies
Chiekh Adrame Wane told Reuters. Graduates repay the generosity by
promoting Iran online or in books, said a professor based in Qom. In
countries like Somalia, Iran pays for weddings and home furniture,
including a TV and a fridge, if both couples are Shi’ite or newly
converted to Shi’ism.
Al-Mustafa is now Iran’s main tool for promoting Shi’ism,
said the professor, who also declined to be named. Its aim is “to train
people to be loyal to the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader.”
A top official at Al-Mustafa in Qom, also declining to be
named, gave a different view. “Our goal is purely cultural and
educational. We want to promote higher education in Africa,” he said.
“Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and many other countries have
built their religious schools in Africa. Alongside them, there are many
American and British Christian schools, and even Hindu schools. So there
is a rivalry in Africa and if we do not establish our presence there,
we would fall behind.”
Two senior Al-Mustafa officials said students and teachers
at Al-Mustafa are routinely vetted by the Ministry of Intelligence or
the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Reuters was unable to
independently verify this.
Motaghedi, the Al-Mustafa director in Dakar, said the
university had no involvement with the intelligence services or Iranian
politics. “We’re a private university … Our only mission is to teach,
nothing else,” he said, adding that Khameni was merely a patron and
adopting Shi’ism was not a requirement for study.
In the 2016 Iranian budget, Al-Mustafa received 2,390
billion rials ($74 million). But the university receives more funding
from the office of the Supreme Leader and other conglomerates under his
command, one official said. Neither Motaghedi nor Wane would comment on
financial flows to the Dakar branch.
“SIMPLE MESSAGE”
At the APIJ in Dakar, Imam Niang extolled the virtues of
Sunni Islam. “Salafism … has a simple message,” he said as he scanned an
ornate Koran through reading glasses. “To be a good Muslim, you must
follow the practices of the Prophet Mohammed.”
Niang went to Koranic schools from age 6 until 27 and later
studied in Saudi Arabia. Immediately after he returned in 1989, he and
fellow conservatives set up the APIJ in Senegal. Since then, hundreds of
modest mint-green and sky-blue mosques financed by the APIJ have sprung
up in suburbs of Dakar and fishing villages across the country.
A success for the Salafists was when they gradually took
over worship at the main mosque at Dakar’s Anta Diop University in the
1990s.
Imam Ismaila Ndiaye, coodinator of Senegal’s Salafist
movements and preacher at the university, said his strand of Sunni Islam
offered an alternative to Sufism, asserting that Senegal’s secular
state and liberal values were imposed on it by French colonisers. But he
said Salafist mosques were not turning Senegalese youth towards jihad.
“If the Catholics can finance projects in Senegal aimed at
evangelising at people, then why shouldn’t Saudi Arabia do the same
thing?” he said.
He said Gulf businessmen had committed only small sums to
Sunni movements in Senegal – $20 million in total over several decades –
but a steady stream of funds continues to what he identified as three
main pillars of Salafism: the APIJ, al Falah, which was founded in 1975,
and a movement on outskirts of Dakar led by firebrand cleric Ahmed Lo,
who spent 17 years in Saudi Arabia.
“THE RIGHT PATH”
Judging who is winning the contest for influence is tricky.
Imam Sherif Mballo, secretary general of the League of AhlulBayt, a
pan-African Shi’ite movement founded last August, says there are between
30,000 and 50,000 Shi’ites in Senegal, where the population is 15
million.
Mballo converted to Shi’ism after watching the Iranian
revolution on TV, then worked with the Iranian embassy for 25 years,
making several visits to Iran. But when it came to establishing his own
pro-Iran Shi’ite group, after an initial injection from an Iranian
businessman – he declined to say how much – he said he received nothing
more.
There are no reliable figures on the numbers of Salafists in
Senegal, said the Timbuktu Institute’s Sambe. However, he said
Salafists control several hugely popular mosques.
Peter Pham, Africa director of the Atlantic Council in
Washington, said traditional Senegalese Sufi brotherhoods have more in
common with the conservative Sunni strand prevalent in Saudi Arabia than
they do with Shi’ites, because Sufism is already part of the Sunni
religion.
Some Senegalese find the Sufi traditions of their ancestors
old hat and stifling. The opportunity to adopt other versions of Islam
is liberating.
Maths teacher Souleymane Sall, 38, converted to Salafism
while at school. He liked the pure focus on the prophet’s acts, and he
was weary with what he saw as the lack of intellectual rigour in the
Sufi faith he grew up with.
But after university, a friend lent him a book on Shi’ism
and, after doing more research, he started to suspect a lot of bad
things the Salafists were saying about it were false.
“Eventually, I concluded that Shi’ism was the right path for me,” he told Reuters. “At least for the moment.”
NAN
