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For over twenty years, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of black-ness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash. Rather than viewing religion as a subset of ethnicity, this study shows how African Murids interrogate the meanings of religion, race and ethnicity as intersecting constructs. National flags from Senegal, Islamic chants, and banners advocating Black solidarity all indicate a negotiation of terms. Clothes worn during the parade act as symbols and afford them another opportunity to work out these borderlands, especially in contradistinction to African American converts who follow a slightly different course. This article examines how their religious procession creates a Murid cosmopolitanism, allowing them a space in which to reconcile multiple belongings

JULY 28TH SUMMONS THOUSANDS to “Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Day” in New York City. David Dinkins, as Borough of Manhattan President, issued the decree in 1988 for the “people of Harlem” to “honor” Bamba’s “outstanding achievement.”

1 A Muslim cleric and mystic from Senegal, West Africa, Amadou Bamba Mbacké (1853–1927) founded the Murid Sufi Brotherhood in the late-nineteenth century. The Murids grew to over 400,000 by 1958 (Cruise O’Brien 1971: 76–77) and now boasts over three million in Senegal Babou 2002: 153), a place where their holy city of Touba has been dubbed a Muslim “Vatican” (Onishi 2002). In New York, their presence is quickly growing among the 100,000 arrivals from West Africa
(Waldman 1999), and most claim Murids number in the thousands.

2 While the proclamation designated a single day for the celebration, the annual event lasts just over two weeks and includes a series of rallies, prayers, Breakfast gatherings, exhibitions, theatrical performances, and lectures at several locations including the United Nations. The corner-stone of these activities, however, is the Bamba Day parade, a long procession of African men, women, and children marching up 7th Avenue from Central Park North (110th Street) to 125th Street. What makes this display so compelling is not the pomp and circumstance typically associated with these spectacles. There are no brass bands or sparkling floats; even the djembe or African Drum is missing. Girls dressed in bathing suits twirling batons are conspicuously absent. Celebrities and hand-waving beauty queens riding in convertibles are nowhere to be seen, and major elected officials are likewise not in attendance. Even observers in the audience could not explain the reason for it. Most speculated it was “something African” but were unable to figure it out. Why, then, would the Murids continue to plan and organize a police- escorted parade for over twenty years that no spectator understood?

To be continued...

By Zain Abdullah

Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA