Mauritania

The globalization of West African religion likely began nearly a millennium ago in the nation of Mauritania. Berber traders brought Islam from across the Sahara to coexist with African rituals in ancient Ghana. This coexistence is still evident in the talismans that Muslim occult experts (marabouts) prepare. But in the 11th century, Ibn Yasin spawned the al-murabitun movement—meaning “ready for battle”—and thus, the word marabout made its way into Europe, where Muslims became known as the Almoravids, or Moors. Their expansion into Algeria and Spain coincided with Ghana's fragmentation. From the 1200s to 1500s, Mali (then Songhay) encompassed Ghana, spreading Islam through its Mande-speaking juula trade diaspora. The Bedouins arrived between 1300 and 1500, Arabizing Berbers and introducing the Qadiriyya Sufi order. In the early 1800s, the Tijaniyya brotherhood arrived, finding few followers but spreading from Mauritania across West Africa.

A lasting Bedouin legacy was Mauritania's castelike hierarchy. The Hassan oversaw war and politics, and Zwaya held religious authority. Each of these White Moor groups (bidan) held slaves: whether Black Moors (haratin) or Black “Afro-Mauritanians” (Fulbe, Toucouleur, Soninke, Wolof, Bamana/Bambara). Muslim reformists criticized slavery but mostly condemned the enslavement of Muslims as opposed to non-Muslims. The colonial French banned slavery but did little to eradicate it. They considered themselves a Muslim power, defending Islam and the social order by allying with certain Zwaya leaders while provoking resentment and resistance among others. The enslaved, meanwhile, reputedly used sorcery against their Mauritanian and French overlords. Today, Mauritania has the highest proportion of enslaved persons of any country despite slavery's illegality. In 2010, it outlawed female genital cutting, locally associated with Islam, but whether this ban will be enforced remains to be seen.

Mauritania is an Islamic Republic and the only West African country where virtually the entire population practices Islam, but it has repressed Islamism since its global emergence in the 1970s. The state fears Islamism's appeal among the haratin, while the non-bidan deplore its anti-Sufi attitudes. Many Islamists have left for the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, the Gulf states and Morocco finance Mauritanian mosques and nongovernmental organizations; international students study Mālikī jurisprudence in the country's Islamic schools (mahadir); and some Mauritanians have assumed prominent positions in violent international Islamist networks. Global connections are as crucial to Mauritanian Islam today as a millennium ago.