The Tijaniyya has witnessed a lively debate concerning the classic Sufi requirement of a living guide to give spiritual training (tarbiya) to aspirants. Prominent Tijani scholars across the Sahara—modern-day Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal—have apparently staked different positions on this issue from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The discourse has...
Ideas of African cultural or racial distinction, most notably Négritude, largely have been dismissed as marginal to “ordinary” Africans, or the vast majority who did not have the opportunity to study in Paris or London and meet with ideologues of Black nationalism from the diaspora. Sub-Saharan African Muslims earlier responded...