(This is a first draft of an article wrote for our Dilatato Corde online journal, putting it out there for freinds and families, even longer than my usual entries.)
It is almost two weeks since my return, and I am finally ready to write about my experience in Senegal. For better or worse, I don’t think I can do so in a detached and objective way. It all meant so much to me and has continued to resonate.
I was very much looking forward to this trip and this event for several reasons. The primary, professional one was to be able to take part in the very successful ongoing monastic-Muslim dialogue that has been taking place now since the 1990s. I noted two different descriptions of it: our hosts for this particular meeting, the Benedictine monks and nuns of Keur Moussa and Keur Guilaye, referred to it as Dialogue entre le monachisme et le monde musulman–“the dialogue between monasticism and the Muslim world.” Professor Shomali, on the other hand, the main convenor of this gathering, kept describing it as “the dialogue between Shi’a Islam and Catholicism.” In other words, the monks made it about all of Islam, not just Shi’a, while the Muslims made it not just about Catholic monks but Catholicism in general. I appreciated both of those broadenings. That being said, historically it has been a dialogue specifically between Shi’a Islam and Catholic monasticism.
It was birthed in England with the fortuitous meeting of Mohammad Shomali, then a doctoral student in Manchester, and Timothy Wright, a monk and later abbot of Ampleforth Abbey in England, which developed into both a friendship and a collaboration. Abbot Timothy, of beloved memory, invited Mohammad to speak to his monastic community, and Professor Shomali, in turn, invited Wright to lecture at a research institute in Qum, Iran. From those initial events, the first specifically Monastic-Muslim dialogue was held in Rome in 2011. There have been seven subsequent gatherings in Rome, Assisi, the UK, Vienna, Nairobi, Iran, and South Africa, with this one in Senegal being the ninth. The topics for these dialogues have been such things as friendship, community, human dignity, unity of and in God, mission/conversion, death, and suffering and martyrdom. Our topic for this gathering was “Human Solidarity.”
The second reason I was looking forward to this trip was because it was to be my first time on the continent of Africa. I have dreamed of and hoped for an experience of the great continent one day. Morocco, Egypt, and Senegal have all been in my daydreams. I have said many times this past year that for my new mission I felt lacking in knowledge of both African cultures and Islam, both of which are important for the work of DIMMID, but I hoped to remedy that.
And the third reason is because I have been inspired by much of the music of Africa, that I have been exposed to, mostly West African: the percussion, of course, much of which I have picked up from my collaborator John Pennington, and the guitarists that I have listened to such as Ali Farka Touré, Habib Koté and the amazing group Tinariwen, all from Mali, Lucky Diop of Senegal, Ayub Ogada of Kenya. Along with that the music of the African harp called the kora, especially the albums of Ballakè Sissoko, also from Mali, and of course, Senegal’s own Youssou N’Dour, made better known among us Westerners for his work with Peter Gabriel, though I saw him perform in Santa Cruz, California with his group L’Etoiles d’Afrique. Another album, “A Wish” by the Nubian musician Hamza el-Din on the oud, drum (tar) and vocals, is one of my all-time favorites, especially the title track. And of course, the vocal tradition which seems to run through many of the African cultures, acapella, often harmonized, amazingly syncopated (at least to the Western ear)––the root of our own call-and-response spirituals and all subsequent American Gospel, jazz, pop, blues, R&B, and rock.
Putting those three together, I was especially looking forward to being with the Benedictine monks and nuns of Keur Moussa and Keur Guilaye, respectively. (The most prominent pre-colonial language in Senegal is Wolof––though nearly everyone speaks French––and the word keur is the Woolof word for ‘house’. So Keur Moussa is “the house of Moses”.) The women are usually overlooked because of their well-known brothers. The two abbeys are located about 50 kilometers east of Dakar. The men’s monastery is consecrated as the Abbaye du Cœur Immaculé de Marie and the women’s monastery 3 km away is officially the Monastère Saint-Jean-Baptiste.
Keur Moussa and Keur Guilaye are mainly famous for their extraordinary liturgical music which incorporates traditional Gregorian chant with Senegalese instruments, particularly the kora. Abbot Olivier was happy to inform me that the room I was staying in at the guesthouse was dedicated to Dominique Catta, one of the founding members of the community from the famous abbey of Solesmes who composed much of the music in the early 1960s as the Catholic Church was starting to shift away from the exclusive use of Latin and Gregorian chant to both the vernacular language and music that flowed from the native genius. As far as I am concerned their music is one of the highwater marks of the Vatican II liturgical reform, an example of brilliant inculturation and exactly what the architects of the novus ordo, the new order of the Mass, were calling for.
The kora is best known as the instrument that accompanied the West African tradition of griot singers who handed down genealogies, myths, and historical events through song, even functioning at times as counselors and mediators among the Mandingo people of Senegal, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire. Along the way the monks of Keur Moussa wound up developing a system for writing down kora music, which historically was only an oral tradition, and also started a workshop for building said koras.
We were actually being housed with the nuns at Keur Guilaye, where all of the sessions of our conference took place. I had no idea that the women used the same music as the monks. So after all these years of having heard recordings of the men, my first in-person exposure to this beautiful music was hearing it sung and played by women, which was an additional treat. Our first liturgy with them was on the feast of Saints Maurus and Placid, the two young monks who appear in St. Gregory the Great’s Life of Benedict, and, to my delight, the antiphons for the psalms at Lauds were Gregorian chants while the body of the psalms were sung to the gently rhythmic accompaniment of the kora and drums. Moving from one to the other felt as natural as breathing for me. It was also enjoyable to watch the sisters calmly get up from their place in choir and move to the kora, the tabala (a large camel-skin drum), or the balafon (a wooden mallet instrument like a xylophone).
I had arrived Wednesday evening and was met at the airport by two friendly women from the Senegalese Protocol for Foreign Affairs. Various personnel from the government were with us for much of the weekend, not as a ponderous looming security presence, but to aid our stay. It was my first taste of Senegalese teranga, a Wolof word that means basically “hospitality.” As I was driven by myself from the airport to the monastery with my driver, who did not speak English (and I was so sad that I did not speak French!), I was getting my first glimpses of a new country. I could not help but compare it to my first impressions of India riding a bus overnight from Chennai to Trichy. Once we got to the monastery, I found that several people had arrived already, particularly our Iranian friends who made up the heart of the Shi’a delegation. The nuns also had a staff of five or six other women who were working in the kitchen, and they could not have been more welcoming and accommodating. The food was abundant and delicious, lots of fresh fruit, salad and fish, besides the soups and other meats and rice. Lots of fresh bread including crispy baguettes which seem to be ubiquitous wherever the French have been.
In the morning after Mass, my first sight of our meeting room left me very impressed by how well Abbot Olivier Saar and his team had arranged everything. We were at a U-shaped configuration of tables, in a comfortable air-conditioned hall, all of us with our assigned seats and name plates. Each of us had a microphone and headphones because in the back of the room there was an isolation booth where two men did simultaneous translation for the entire time we were together (French/English; there were few of us who were adept in both languages as Fr. William and Abbot Olivier are). There were also two young men, again from the protocol, to aid however they could plus several others and one young monk who was the “gofer” for the whole weekend as well.
The Shi’a delegation, besides Professor Shomali himself, included two other clerics from Iran, Sheikhs Rastifar and Khoddami, who are students of Professor Shomali, dressed in their elegant grey capes and head pieces all week (Professor Shomali would have been as well but his luggage never showed up!), and two blood sisters from the US, Isaraa and Shahnaze, who are Lebanese by blood and very committed observant Muslims, along with another lovely lady, Aarifa, from the island of Zanzibar, all of whom are also very articulate students of Shomali as well, all them were clothed in beautiful black chadors. The Catholic delegation included two other monks and one nun from Senegal, Pere Thomas who acted as the MC throughout time together, Pere André and Sr. Marie Gabriel, besides Abbot Olivier, another monk, Frere Guy, from Côte d’Ivoire, Sr. Lusina from Kenya, and Fr. Victor from South Africa, besides Fr. William and myself.
Professor Shomali, who is the heart of this series of encounters, is very keen on the intellectual side of this exchange, a teacher through and through. We three monk-organizers––myself with Fr William and Abbot Olivier––were leaning more on the experiential side. In the end it seems to me that we found a good balance. For the most part we followed the pattern of presentation and response, alternating Catholic and Muslim, followed by open discussion. Our first presentation was by Pere André, who is a Biblicist and the novice master at Keur Moussa, on the joint 2019 “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” signed in Abu Dhabi by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb. Of course, even our printed schedule included the timetable for the three main Islamic salats of the day––early morning fajr, midday zuhr, and the evening maghrib. And I assure you, our Muslim friends did not miss one.
The next two days were mainly dedicated to excursions in a large luxurious air-conditioned bus. On Friday we made the over three-hour trip to the fascinating city of Touba. It is Senegal’s second largest city and is referred to as “the Mecca of Senegalese Islam.” The city was founded in 1887 by a revered Sufi master named Cheikh Amadou Bamba, who is buried there, and it is the spiritual center of the Mouride brotherhood, the prominent Sufi Islamic order (tariqa) that he founded, largely based there in Senegal and in Gambia.
Senegal has a predominantly Muslim population, estimated at approximately 95-97% of its 18 million people. (The remaining population is primarily Christian, concentrated in the west and south, alongside a small number who practice traditional African religion.) The vast majority of Senegalese Muslims are Sunni, and almost all belong to one of various Sufi tariqas. I think it is safe to say that this widespread influence of Sufism gives Islam in Senegal a distinctive flavor.
Touba is also renowned for its Great Mosque, a massive structure with five minarets located at the heart of the city, and for its annual Grand Magal pilgrimage which commemorates the exile of Cheikh Amadou by French colonialists and draws millions of followers. There is a specific, distinct movement within the Mouride brotherhood called Baye Fall, who are known for their unique clothing and their dedication to service. We were being hosted by several of them throughout our day there, many of them young men.
As we arrived, we were warmly officially welcomed by the great Cheikh’s grandson and immediately whisked off on a long tour of the extensive library and museum, and then walked through the compound of the Great Mosque itself. It happened to be a special feast day, so there were crowds of people there, reminding me again of India and being at some of the temples during the holy days. In the midst of it all, we were treated like visiting dignitaries the entire time. We were then driven across town to a sumptuous guest house which stood in stark contrast to the rather bleak and dry landscape and impoverished neighborhoods through which we had passed. I was told that it was decorated in the style of a Moroccan palace, and it is a sort of private club for high members of the tariqa who come to town. There were tables laid out with the remnants of a morning meal, but that was quickly replaced with other snacks followed by a full lunch, with several young men in their distinctive garb hovering around to provide whatever we needed.
The male Muslims were going to go back to the mosque for the Friday afternoon service, which of course is the main salat of the week, while the rest of us waited at the guesthouse. Fr. William and I were both offered bedrooms to take a nap––for which I was very grateful––and everyone else found couches or corners. When I got up from my nap it was entertaining to walk through the rooms and see monks and nuns in various supine positions in this sumptuous little palace. We ended up spending several hours there, and more food and drink was brought out before we headed across town again to their educational institute.
There we got another tour and attended a specially planned conference with speeches by four different representatives of the Mouride “on the Brotherhood’s contributions to Human Solidarity and Fraternity.” It almost goes without saying that the Sufi-tinged Islam of Senegal is, while very pious, not only moderate but inclusive. Each of the speakers emphasized much more that side of Islam as well as our common ground. We were listening again in translation (this time also from Arabic for one of the speakers), and we are hoping to get transcripts of the talks. Pere Thomas was on the dais with them along with Professor Shomali, and he got the final word, telling their Muslim friends that “We are proud of you!” That was a very moving thing for him to say and for us to hear.
Saturday was given to another excursion on the bus, this one a little closer to home. Just off the coast of the city of Dakar there is a little beautiful island that holds a horrific history, and those two contrasting elements––the beauty and the horror––stayed with me the whole time we were there. It’s called Gorée and for about four hundred years it was the largest slave-trading center on the African continent. Dakar is considered “the nose of Africa,” as it is the westernmost point of the entire continent, protruding into the great Atlantic Ocean, so a logical point from which to send ships east on their damned voyages filled with enslaved bodies.
We parked near a wharf and were immediately welcomed by a small team of uniformed men who graciously helped us board a boat. I assumed it was simply one of the ferries that make the short trip across to the island, only to find out later that it was actually the presidential yacht loaned to us for the occasion. Another example of the generosity of the Protocol for Foreign Affairs and the good relationship the monks have with the government.
When we first stepped onto the island you would have thought it was just a tourist site with bright colored signs and concessions greetings us. The narrow streets lined with brightly colored houses, and we learned that the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the English had all used this island during the years of the slave trade, leaving behind a beautiful paradise of an island. There were also many Western/European tourists wandering about. After a short walk, we came to the Presbytere de Gorée, next to the church of St. Charles Borromeo where we were greeted by the very articulate Abbé Alphonse Biram Ndour, the parish priest of St. Charles Borromeo Parish, a large Senegalese man wearing a full black soutane, with a sash around his waist. He was to serve as our guide for the next few hours. He took us to the main, shall we say, “attraction” of the island, the infamous House of Slaves.
There are several houses one next to the other on the same street, but this is the one that has been turned into a museum of sorts with an interactive exhibit recounting the shameful history of the slave trade. It was two stories high, as brightly colored as the other surrounding houses, but its significance was that this one contained what is called the “Door of No Return.” At the end of a short, tunnel-like corridor there is an opening that gives way to the wharf from which the captured people would board a ship, never to return to Mother Africa, usually separated forever from their families if they had all been captured together. One sign read:
Africans enslaved for sale in the Americas usually lived on Gorée very briefly, and so very little is known about them. We do know, however, that they were from the interior of Senegambia, were forced to leave their families and homes and squeezed into the hold of ships for the transatlantic journey to ports in North or South America. Perhaps as many as a million Africans died on the trip, so someone leaving here may never have made it across the sea.
Of course, the living situation in the holds of ship were infamously crowded and unspeakably subhuman, and there is more than one story of ships actually throwing captives overboard alive for situations such as running out of food, for instance. And since they were considered articles of commerce, not human beings with rights, at times the ships’ owners would try to collect insurance money on them as lost cargo. At one point a gentleman with an impressively loud voice like a town crier climbed onto the staircase that led to the mezzanine and offered a description of the treatment of slaves during that era, at times in horrific detail.
There was one touching spot on the ground floor of the House of Slaves, a sort of well and fountain at which we were invited to perform a rite of taking some water out and pour it on the ground. It was a very tranquil spot amidst the crowds of people and a very touching ritual. I threw a little of the water on my head instead in a kind of purification ritual as one would do at the Ganges and prayed for whatever souls were still not at rest in this horrible-beautiful place.
The upper rooms were given to a very impressive modern museum recounting the history of pre-colonial Africa as well as the slave trade. Abbé Ndour was eager for us to realize that there were also modern forms of slavery that continue to this day. The final room was given to an exhibition dedicated to that, which included, I was surprised to see, a short recap of the George Floyd murder in 2020. Much of the art was modern, and the placards were all in French and English. My companions teasingly urged me to come over and read one such placard which read something that the Trump-MAGA movement would surely take umbrage to, a sort of nod to “critical race theory”: “Slavery is included in the United States’ DNA.” It then continued:
Slavery was a shock for the continent, which suffered severely, on all levels: social, economic, environmental, psychological. It is the greatest crime against humanity. When the first settlers arrived, they immediately assimilated the Black man to ebony, an animal of nature, good to be hunted, tamed. Thus came the deportation of captives, from tribal wars in which they were the instigators. Slaves were snatched from all over Black Africa and transported to the Americas.
There was a place in the courtyard just in front of the corridor of “no return” where people could and usually do line up in a group and get a group picture taken with big smiles, as we were urged to and did just before we left. I found that strange and uncomfortable, to say the least, like taking a selfie at Auschwitz.
We then walked another short distance to the spacious compound of the Sovereign Knights of Malta (Ordre Souverain de Malte au Senegal; I was wondering how far this went back historically and what role the knights played in the history of the island) that now serves as the Centre Médico Social de l’Ile de Gorée where a congregation of Catholic sisters had a sumptuous lunch prepared for us of thieboudienne which we were told it the traditional national dish of Senegal. It’s a rich one-pot meal of fish, rice, and tomato sauce, typically with all kinds of vegetables, carrots, cabbage, and cassava.
We then made a visit to the highly decorated French colonial church of St. Charles where we sang midday prayer from the French breviary on mobile phones while our Muslim friends did their salat, and then crowded into a hall where we had a further talk by Abbé Ndour, on what we can do, separately and jointly, to oppose current social and political movements that threaten human solidarity and fraternity. At the end we were treated to a surprise visit by the local imam, a colorful jovial tall man named Issa Ba, who was obviously a good friend of the abbé. (Later he rode back across the bay with us on the yacht and very much wanted to engage me in conversation and give me his contact info because he has a brother living in Italy.) Another of the most touching and telling things I heard during that trip was Imam Issa telling us (through the translator, speaking in Wolof) that he doesn’t leave the island often, but when he does, he calls his friend Abbé Ndour and tells him, “I’m going away for a few days. You’re in charge of the flock.”
We concluded our excursion that day with a visit to an Islamic center in the middle of Dakar, which is the very elegant penthouse home and office of a very highly regarded teacher from Iran who has been living in Dakar for some time now. The Iranians were especially glad to meet him, and he gave us a summary of his life and work. He has written many books that have been translated into French (he spoke to us exclusively in Arabic) that he was handing out liberally. It was another full and very rich day, and we were glad to return to Keur Guilaye for a late generous dinner.
On Sunday morning we finally got our chance to visit Keur Moussa itself. We were driven over in four separate vehicles, and got a full tour of the orchards and the kora workshop. Then of course a beautiful Sunday liturgy and hearing the music in the place it was invented. At the end Mass both Dr. Shomali and I gave presentations to the crowd which included a sizable group of pilgrims from Italy. I was disappointed that we did not get any time to interact with the community outside of our tour guide and the few we met in the shop afterward. But it was encouraging to see so many young faces in choir among the seasoned veterans. Almost all of the monks are African by now; I saw only two what I assumed were French faces among the monks.
Back at Keur Guilaye our major presentation for the day was Brother Guy from Côte d’Ivoire on Pope Francis’ famous Encyclical Letter Fratelli tutti, “On Fraternity and Human Friendship” which was again followed by a good discussion. Then Sheikh Shomali offered us a presentation on his dream of founding what he calls the “School of God,” a joint undertaking with the Focolare movement. He proposed something that might sound controversial to conservative ears in both of our traditions: God has not sent different religions, really, just different “schools.” The idea is that students from any religion could come a study under teachers-masters of either tradition and learn what our respective traditions in the way of wisdom for ethics and way of life. He is certainly fully committed to the ideal of finding the unity between and sharing riches of our two traditions. Our last morning folks were starting to trickle away already, but we had one final session planning for our next meeting (May 2027) and the idea for the theme flowed right from our discussion of the “School of God”: formation and Rule of Life.
There is something special in Senegal. The peaceful coexistence of the majority Muslim population is famed and does not seem to be a myth. Maybe it is no wonder that it is considered to be the most stable democracy in Africa. As for our gathering, I kept writing down little aphorisms I was hearing all weekend:
“Maybe we can create a new ummah, not Muslim or Christian.”
“In a real family, brothers and sisters don’t get together to avoid war;
they get together because they love each other.”
“There’s always room in the house when there’s room in the heart.”
“Know that people are of two kinds:
either they are your brother or sister in faith or your equal in creation.”
“Like in a wheel, the closer you get to the center, the closer the spokes are to each other.”
The charming story of a Christian asking a Muslim,
“When we dig to the bottom of this well, is this Muslim water or Christian water?”
And the Muslim responding sadly, “How can you ask that? It is Allah’s water!”
And what Professor Shomali said during his presentation on the “School of God”:
“I cannot say to God that I did my best to do His will if I only read Muslim texts and discuss them only with my Muslim friends.”
(I could substitute Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, etc. etc.)
And my favorite, the monks told us that their Muslim friends say to them:
“You are a part of us; we are a part of you.”
And finally, this description of the Senegalese Teranga: “By being so giving to all, regardless of nationality, religion or class, a feeling grows that everyone is safe and welcome.” Maybe it touched me so deeply because it is the very opposite of what is going on in my own country of origin right now, I must sadly say. As a matter of fact, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire which the Trump Administration has decided to partially restrict and limit the entry of nationals, “to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks and other national security and public safety threats.” When we were talking about our next encounter, I at first mentioned how it would be nice to give witness of this friendship in the States, and then immediately withdrew that suggestion since getting visas for our African friends would be perhaps difficult if not impossible at that point.
And I am not sure if someone said this or if I gleaned it from what was being said, but I have this paragraph scratched in my notes and let me conclude my travelogue with this:
Whether we like it or not, we need to have the maximum unity and fraternity. Our duty (and honor) is to prepare for that unity and fraternity. It is the plan of God that we will someday have universal fraternity but in the meantime, we need to pray and work (and study) for it. Not only that, we can also have a small replica of it to witness to the world.
