One curious but much overlooked development is the growth of Islamic revivalism among Diaspora Gambians in the West. Though there are no reliable statistics on the numbers, geographic spread and other related statistics on modern Gambian migration, it would perhaps not be too much off course to estimate that half of overseas Gambians live in Western countries like Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Holland and the Scandinavian countries. What is increasingly being realized is that their periodic remittances are playing an increasingly important role in the country’s economy, now contributing more than half of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The transfer also constitutes a lot in the growth registered recently within the construction sector. Not too long ago, Gambian émigré communities in Western Europe were notorious for their over representation in the drug peddling trade in cities from Paris, Birmingham, Düsseldorf and Hamburg to Vienna, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo.
Over the past decade or so however, there has been a strong and remarkable Islamic revival movement among Gambians residing in cities across the whole western world. Secular immigrant organizations have been replaced by religious groups or dairas, discos and club-houses to mosques and preaching halls as both behavioral patterns, modes of social interactions and even dress codes are adjusted to conform to this new strange wave of Islamic revival sweeping Gambian communities in the Diaspora. Though the matter is too remarkable to go unnoticed, it is still to attract the studies and comprehension it deserves.
It is obvious that the development cannot be separated from the influences of the greater global Islamic revivalism that many scholars have ascribed to the worldwide Islamic reaction to Western capitalism and the globalization it is spearheading but many whom have cared to observe the phenomenon among Diaspora Gambians, disagree that this alone could explain the magnitude of the impact. While the impact of the so-called global civilizational clash between militant Islam and the Christian West has been worldwide, stretching from Kaduna to the Philippines, the causes and processes of its local resonance elsewhere have been clearly identified and expounded upon profusely by various scholars and other commentators. In the Philippines, Muslim minorities have been pit against a largely Catholic population. In Indonesia, a long spell of secular dictatorship has provoked a backlash that was superimposed on the all-Islamist clamor for Jerusalem by the world’s largest Muslim nation. In the Northern Nigerian cities of Kano and Kaduna, ethnic rivalries with flames fanned by opportunistic politicians have brought in fundamentalist Sharia Law, etc, etc. Our argument is that while the current worldwide Islamic revival and the growth of the religion’s fundamentalist currents are on the rise that alone may not suffice to comprehend and explain the dramatic increase in the numbers and frequencies of gamos, or revival meetings within the Gambian émigré communities in Western Europe and North America. Some former professional drug peddlers and addicts among the Gambian émigré communities in Europe and North America have transformed from jailbirds to become regular worshipers in communal mosques. We thank God for the fact that our religion does allow U-Turns.
Quite often now a days, Gambian marabouts, Muslim scholars and spiritual leaders are on endless lecture-tours organized and funded by members of the émigré communities. The question is how has this transformation suddenly happened? What possible opportunities or threats does this new development pose to The Gambia’s peace, stability and its secular polity? Are we likely to see our colorful “semesters”, with their sub-culture of Rasta and hip-hop, ear-rings, flashy cars and get-rich-quick mentality, turn to jihadist and terrorists?
This development in the Diaspora cannot be entirely placed on current trends and tendencies in the practice of Islam at home in The Gambia. In fact many of the born-again overseas Gambian Muslims dismiss many of the aspects of Gambian version of Islam practiced at home as not “pure” enough, full of the remnants of pre-Islamic and cultural beliefs and our religious leaders too accommodating to President Jammeh’s hypocrisy and his politically motivated claims of ascending to the spiritual level of being mandated by Allah to save mankind, as a result enabling Jammeh to perpetuate the injustices, corruption and suffering of the Gambian people.
This overly tolerating and enabling religious leadership is a rising concern to the majority of the born-again overseas Gambian Muslims who despised it when these touring leaders open up their prayers praying for the longevity of President Jammeh who is seen as the epitome of oppression, corruption, injustice and witchcraft, traits that our holy Prophet (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon Him) spent a life time fighting against and distancing himself and the Islamic Umma from.
It is very hard for many of the overseas Gambian Muslims to reconcile this kowtowing hypocrisy with the direct and uncompromising messages of our holy book; The Quoran. Our religious leaders are seen to be compromising to the point of surrendering the principles of Islam to Jammeh and avoiding the truth to the point of lying. So what we see there is more of dissonance than synergy between the two parallel currents of revivalism.
There are some who have put the blame of the resurgence of Islamic revivalism to the effects of the Sahelian drought of the1970s, the neo-liberal economic reforms of the eighties impose on the African economies or the Americanization of the globalization that has accelerated over the past decade or so. But such analyses are yet to convincingly and tangibly link these with the massive resort to Islam among Gambians both at home and abroad. Their argument is that African Muslims in general have turned to Islamic spiritualism for some form of consolation and its worldview and moral code for sense of direction and hope of salvation. The Sene-Gambian sub-region has experienced successive waves of Islamic revival over the past seven or so centuries from the time of Almoravid invasions to the Sheikh Bamba’s Mouride movement. The rise of the later was in the middle of the Great Depression when the colonial governments introduced harsh taxes and levies, and starvation and famine ravaged the populations. This seems to strengthen the economy-related theories of explanation, but the Mouride movement was fairly isolated, limited only to the areas of Saloum and Walo, and was not really a revivalist one as much as the initiation of a new current. Can the racism that non-White immigrant communities have to growingly confront explain the case?
