What is it about?
This article shows how Senegal’s main Sufi orders—Tijaniyya and Muridiyya—promote tolerance, mediate political crises, and help keep the country stable and resistant to religious extremism, even as the Sahel becomes more unstable.
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Why is it important?
Timely: With rising coups and jihadist violence across the Sahel, Senegal stands out for avoiding large‑scale extremist attacks and maintaining competitive elections. Unique angle: Instead of treating “religion vs. democracy” as a zero‑sum game, the article explains how Sufi brotherhoods function as a form of religious civil society that supports peace, restraint, and interfaith coexistence. Practical difference: It gives policymakers and researchers a concrete African case showing how negotiated state–religion relations and embedded religious authority can strengthen civic responsibility and reduce the appeal of extremism—without claiming Senegal is a ready‑made export model.
Perspectives
As a researcher focused on security and politics in Africa and the Red Sea region, I see Senegal as a crucial counter‑example to the dominant narrative that religion inevitably undermines democracy or fuels extremism. My interest is not to idealize Senegal, but to show how specific historical arrangements—between Sufi leaders, the state, and ordinary “citizen‑disciples”—have produced habits of negotiation, moral restraint, and tolerance that matter for everyday security. I hope this piece encourages scholars and practitioners to look beyond generic “countering violent extremism” toolkits and pay closer attention to how local religious institutions actually operate on the ground, where they help, and where they might be under pressure from economic stress, political competition, and new Islamist currents
Professor Hamdy A. Hassan
Zayed University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sufi exceptionalism in Senegal: the role of brotherhood in preventing religious extremism, Cogent Social Sciences, August 2026, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/23311886.2026.2712656.
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