Cheikh Amadou Bamba

One of the reasons I came to Senegal was to find out more about the Mouridya Sufi movement which is very prevelant there and in fact is most probably the majority of muslims in Senegal. Many people don't get to hear about these groups because often times...and this is unfortuanatly the case here...People in mainstream Islam have a hared time dealing with the revernce of saints. The Mouridya is particularly interesting because their figure head, Chieikh Amadou Bamba, is daid to have contacted Muhammed personnaly as well as in recieve miricales from God. This is not so strange among the saints of Islam. However the Cheikh went through some very tough times with the French who were colonizing at the time and he was put into exile several times as well as circumstanses of sure death. He was accused of leading an armed rebellion against the French but this was the complete oppisite. The man embodied non violence. So much so that now the schools that have came in his footsteps teach not only nonviolence but the importance of one humanity through the examples of peacemakers all throught time and the world. (MLK, Ghandi, etc.) He eventually built a holy city in Senegal that was to be entirely devoted to the worship of God in order to be not in same rank of but the perfect servant of Muhammad (PBUH). There are many attacks on the Cheikh and the movement and Im not writing to say right or wrong, but I got a chance to tour these areas and see what is being done now in his vein of teaching and I have to say I have been waiting to see this within Islam for as Long as I have known it to be a religion.
I fisrt went to Dourjbell where the Cheikh lived and prayed and was taken into Exile...visions from the prophet etc. I love a beatiful mosque but I have a hang up on physical beauty over taking the meaning of the person but this case was different for me. The mosque where he prayed is beautiful and it is kept that way but we wnt to the room where he made his prayers ...and it is a specical place. The beauty only inhances this.
We then went to Touba...the holy city. Many things mirror Mecca and Madina which some people have problems with. But once again the place is very fancy and beautiful but I could not help but to feel a bit of specialness there. Phsycological maybye. For me the point was to fully embrace the concepts of non violence through the practice of Islam and have this man be an example of this and to see into what holds a nation of people together. These phenomanon are brilliant to me. Africa needed this man. Black Africans needed this man. Islam needed this man to show that race is truely unimportant. Other wise we are humans and we fall back into the same thinking patterns as we always do. Beyond prophetic examples are other human exapmples in the ways of these prophetic figures, it seems to me, to revive certain aspects of teaching that may have been pushed aside intentionally or unintentionally. There are fakes and frauds but it was beautifull seeing a unifing element for not just for Senegal but for others as well.