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MIGRATION, WAR, AND THE MAKING OF A TRANSNATIONAL LEBANESE SHIʿI COMMUNITY IN SENEGAL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Extract

The July 2006 Lebanon war was an important turning point for West African Lebanese. For the first time since their formation as a community, the Lebanese in Senegal organized a demonstration in Dakar displaying solidarity with Lebanon. This protest illuminates the dynamics between global forces and local responses. Hizbullah's effectiveness in winning the international public opinion of both Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims in the war against Israel led to a surge in Lebanese diaspora identification, even among communities who had not been similarly affected by previous Lebanese wars. By analyzing the role of a Lebanese shaykh in bringing religious rituals and a Lebanese national identity to the community in Senegal, this article explores how members of the community maintain political ties to Lebanon even when they have never visited the “homeland” and sheds new light on the relationship among religion, migration, and (trans)nationalism.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

NOTES

Author's note: Fieldwork in Senegal was funded by the J. William Fulbright Program, Population Council, the National Science Foundation, and Michigan State University. All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. The writing of this article took place during visiting fellowships at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin and the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in Leiden, made possible through grants from Michigan State University. I am grateful for the opportunity to present this research in its various stages at both institutions. A shorter version of this paper was also given at the November 2007 American Anthropological Association meetings at the invited panel “Addressing (In)Justice at the Margins: Transnational Perspectives on the Destruction, Reconstruction, and Re-Destruction of Lebanon,” where Augustus Richard Norton and Lara Deeb served as excellent discussants. Joost Beuving, Mamadou Diouf, Calvin Goldscheider, Frances Hasso, Zakia Salime, Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, and three anonymous IJMES reviewers helpfully critiqued this article. I greatly appreciate the careful editing of this manuscript by the IJMES editorial office. I am also much obliged to my informants in Lebanon and Senegal.

1 One difficulty in explaining ethnicity and identity is how to label different groups. It is obvious that today's “nations” of Lebanon and Senegal are not composed of homogenous populations. Furthermore, when members of a group compare themselves to another, the “other,” they assume an “us”/“them” system of categorization. Therefore, I adopt a macro perspective that regards “the Lebanese of Lebanon” and “the Senegalese” as single units, the “them.” I refer to the ethnic community as “the Lebanese of Senegal.”

2 I have been conducting research on the Lebanese community of Senegal and transnational Shiʿi Islam since 2000, and my fieldwork in Senegal has totaled nearly twenty months. I initially spent two months in Dakar in the summer of 2000, conducted extended fieldwork between September 2002 and January 2004, and have returned regularly to Senegal since then. I spent two weeks in Dakar in June 2006, one month before the start of the July 2006 war, and returned for six weeks the following summer. Although I was not present at the protest, the events were well documented on the website of the Lebanese embassy of Dakar, including the full text of speeches and photos. I also conducted research in Lebanon for one month each in the summers of 2000 and 2001 and returned for one week in May 2007.

3 The full text of this speech can be found online at http://www.solidariteliban.com (accessed 15 July 2008). This website also contains a timeline of the war's events, including disturbing images of death and destruction, and documentation from the protest in Dakar.

4 Syria, which has long dominated Lebanon's foreign policy and has supported Hizbullah, maintained troops in Lebanon from 1976 to 2005. For a historical perspective on Lebanon's ties to Syria see Salibi, Kamal, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar and Hanssen, Jens, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Iran has had a long history of relations with Lebanon and backs Hizbullah. See Chehabi, H. E., ed., Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006)Google Scholar and Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack, Shiʿite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The shaykh was thought to have Amal leanings, although he famously helped negotiate the release of French hostages taken by Hizbullah in the 1980s by traveling between Paris, Beirut, and Tehran. See Péan, Pierre, Manipulations Africaines (Paris: Plon, 2001)Google Scholar.

6 I am using the term “homeland” and “host country” loosely, as many Lebanese were born in Senegal and have never been to Lebanon.

7 See Tabar, Paul, “Ashura in Sydney: A Transformation of a Religious Ceremony in the Context of a Migrant Society,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 23 (2002): 285305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Chehabi, Distant Relations; Mervin, Sabrina, ed., Les mondes chiites et l'Iran (Paris: Karthala, 2007)Google Scholar; Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack, “Postrevolutionary Iran and Shiʿi Lebanon: Contested Histories of Shiʿi Transnationalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2007): 271–89Google Scholar; idem, Shiʿite Lebanon; Paulo G. Pinto, “Pilgrimage, Commodities, and Religious Objectification: The Making of Transnational Shiism between Iran and Syria,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27 (2007): 109–25.

10 Mandaville, Peter, Transnational Muslim Politics. Reimagining the Umma (New York: Routledge, 2001), 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shiʿite Lebanon.

13 Approximately four percent of Senegal's population is Christian, with around 1,200 Lebanese Christians.

14 Wimmer, Andreas and Schiller, Nina Glick, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation–State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences,” Global Networks 2 (2002): 301–34, 306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 Reinkowski, Maurus, “National Identity in Lebanon since 1990,” Orient 38 (1997): 493515Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 512.

18 Schiller, Nina Glick, “Long-Distance Nationalism,” in Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, ed. Ember, Melvin, Ember, Carol R., and Skoggard, Ian (New York: Springer, 2005), 570CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Skrbiš, Zlatko, Long-Distance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands and Identities (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1999), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

20 Glick Schiller, “Long-Distance Nationalism,” 570.

21 Humphrey, Michael, “Lebanese Identities: Between Cities, Nations and Trans-Nations,” Arab Studies Quarterly 26 (2004): 3150Google Scholar.

22 Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, Portes, Alejandro, and Haller, William, “Assimilation and Transnationalism: Determinants of Transnational Political Action among Contemporary Migrants,” American Journal of Sociology 108 (2003): 1211–248CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Bauböck, Rainer, “Towards a Political Theory of Migrants Transnationalism,” International Migration Review 37 (2003): 700–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levitt, Peggy, “Religion as a Path to Civic Engagement,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (2008): 766–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Østergaard-Nielsen, Eva, “The Politics of Migrants’ Transnational Political Practices,” International Migration Review 37 (2003): 760–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Leichtman, Mara A., “The Legacy of Transnational Lives: Beyond the First Generation of Lebanese in Senegal,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (2005): 663–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Humphrey, “Lebanese Identities,” 42.

26 Porta, Donnatella Della and Tarrow, Sidney, “Transnational Processes and Social Activism: An Introduction,” in Transnational Protest and Global Activism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 23Google Scholar.

27 See Humphrey, Michael, Islam, Multiculturalism and Transnationalism: From the Lebanese Diaspora (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998)Google Scholar and Walbridge, Linda S., Without Forgetting the Imam: Lebanese Shiʿism in an American Community (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

28 See Deeb, Lara, “Exhibiting the ‘Just-Lived Past’: Hizbullah's Nationalist Narratives in Transnational Political Context,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50 (2008): 369–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shiʿite Lebanon.

30 Bowen, John R., “Beyond Migration: Islam as a Transnational Public Space,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30 (2004): 879–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eickelman, Dale F. and Piscatori, James, eds., Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Grillo, Ralph, “Islam and Transnationalism,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30 (2004): 861–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levitt, Peggy, “‘You Know, Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant’: Religion and Transnational Migration,” International Migration Review 37 (2003): 847–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steven Vertovec, “Religion and Diaspora,” ESRC Transnational Communities Programme Working Paper WPTC-01-01 (2000), http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk (accessed 15 February 2005); idem, “Diaspora, Transnationalism and Islam: Sites of Change and Modes of Research,” in Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, ed. Stefano Allievi and Jørgen S. Nielsen (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 312–26; Peter van der Veer, “Transnational Religion,” ESRC Transnational Communities Programme Working Paper WPTC-01-18 (2001), www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk (accessed 15 February 2005).

31 Allievi, Stefano, “Islam in the Public Space: Social Networks, Media and Neo-Communities,” in Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, ed. Allievi, Stefano and Nielsen, Jørgen S. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 11Google Scholar.

32 Louër, Transnational Shia Politics.

33 See Leichtman, Mara A., “Revolution, Modernity and (Trans)National Shiʿi Islam: Rethinking Religious Conversion in Senegal,” Journal of Religion in Africa 39 (2009): 319–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Castells, Manuel, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997), 15Google Scholar.

35 Roy, Olivier, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

36 Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics.

37 Sayyid, S., “Beyond Westphalia: Nations and Diasporas—The Case of the Muslim Umma,” in Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions, ed. Hesse, Barnor (London: Zed Books, 2000), 3350, 36Google Scholar.

38 Khachig Tölölyan's “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 5 (1996): 3–36, considers only the Jewish, Armenian, and Greek cases to be paradigms of diasporas and regards other examples as representative of “all the multiplying dispersions that have been renamed as diasporas since 1968” (16). Cohen's, RobinGlobal Diasporas: An Introduction (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar does, however, consider the “great Lebanese emigration” to be an exemplary case of a trade diaspora. It is not the purpose of this article to engage with the growing and conflicting literature defining diaspora.

39 Migrant remittances from Africa have aided in the reconstruction of war-torn Lebanon, and there are even streets in southern Lebanon named “Senegal” and “Nigeria.” For accounts of other West African Lebanese communities, see Bierwirth, Chris, “The Lebanese Communities of Cote D'Ivoire,” African Affairs 98 (1999): 7999CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hourani, Albert and Shehadi, Nadim, eds., The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration (London: I. B. Tauris, 1992)Google Scholar; Peleikis, Anja, Lebanese in Motion: Gender and the Making of a Translocal Village (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van der Laan, H. L., The Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone (The Hague: Mouton, 1975)Google Scholar.

40 Said Boumedouha, The Lebanese in Senegal: A History of the Relationship Between an Immigrant Community and its French and African Rulers (PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1987), 45–46.

41 See O'Brien, Rita Cruise, White Society in Black Africa: The French of Senegal (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Harrison, Christopher, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diégane Sene, “Un journal à l'assaut des ‘Levantins.’Les Echos Africains’ et le ‘Problème Libanais’ en AOF (1947–1948),” Revue Africaine de Communication (Centre d'Etudes des Sciences et Techniques de l'Information, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Novembre–Décembre 1997).

42 See Mara A. Leichtman, A Tale of Two Shiʿisms: Lebanese Migrants and Senegalese Converts in Dakar (PhD dissertation, Brown University, 2006), chap. 3.

43 Some Lebanese were active party members; others gave financial help and lent party leaders their lorries to campaign in the Senegalese countryside.

44 Said Boumedouha, The Lebanese in Senegal.

45 Thibault, Jean, “Les Libanais en Afrique: Parasites ou Agents de Développement?Voix d'Afrique 24 (1976): 1314Google Scholar.

46 See Gellar, Sheldon, Charlick, Robert B., and Jones, Yvonne, Animation Rurale and Rural Development: The Experience of Senegal (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, Center for International Studies, Rural Development Committee, 1980)Google Scholar and Fatton, Robert Jr., The Making of a Liberal Democracy: Senegal's Passive Revolution, 1975–1985 (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1987)Google Scholar.

47 Boone, Catherine, Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 The Senegalese government was concerned that a few Lebanese with Senegalese citizenship had returned to Lebanon owing the state or local companies large sums of money. See Boumedouha, The Lebanese in Senegal.

49 See Leichtman, “The Legacy of Transnational Lives.”

50 See Mara A. Leichtman, “From the Cross (and Crescent) to the Cedar and Back Again: Transnational Religion and Politics among Lebanese Christians in Senegal.” Under journal review.

51 For more information on Musa al-Sadr see Ajami, Fouad, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar and Halawi, Majid, A Lebanon Defied: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia Community (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

52 Al-Zayn, Al-Shaykh Abdul Monem, L'Islam: Ma Doctrine et Ma Loi, 5th edition (Dakar, Senegal: l'Institution Islamique Sociale, 2001), 34Google Scholar.

53 For a more detailed discussion on the work of Shaykh Al-Zayn, see Leichtman, Mara A., “The Intricacies of Being Senegal's Lebanese Shiʿite Sheikh,” in Muslim Voices and Lives in the Contemporary World, ed. Trix, Frances, Walbridge, John, and Walbridge, Linda (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 85100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 See Chehabi, Distant Relations; Norton, Augustus Richard, Amal and the Shiʿa: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1987)Google Scholar; idem, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007); Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shiʿite Lebanon; Shanahan, Rodger, The Shiʿa of Lebanon: Clans, Parties and Clerics (London: I. B. Tauris Academic Studies, 2005)Google Scholar.

55 Hirschkind, Charles, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Schulz, Dorothea E., “Promises of (Im)mediate Salvation: Islam, Broadcast Media, and the Remaking of Religious Experience in Mali,” American Ethnologist 33 (2006): 210–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soares, Benjamin F., “Islam in Mali in the Neoliberal Era,” African Affairs 105 (2006): 7795CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Translations of the sermon are by Ebraima K. M. Saidy.

57 For a detailed account of al-Sadr's life and works see Mallat, Chibli, The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf and the Shiʿi International (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Deeb, Lara, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʿi Lebanon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 34Google Scholar; Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

59 See Deeb, An Enchanted Modern, 110–15, for a discussion of this literature.

60 Deeb, An Enchanted Modern, and Peleikis, Lebanese in Motion, have discussed different meanings of veiling for Lebanese women, where various styles carry associations with particular age groups and trends, protect against social pressure to conform to the increasing popularity of plastic surgery, and reflect political loyalties in Lebanon.

61 On Senegalese Shiʿa see Leichtman, Mara A., “The Authentication of a Discursive Islam: Shiʿa Alternatives to Sufi Orders,” in New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power and Femininity, ed. Diouf, Mamadou and Leichtman, Mara A. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 111–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, “Revolution, Modernity and (Trans)National Shiʿism.”

62 For a discussion of “the Karbala paradigm” and its use during the Iranian Revolution, see Fischer, Michael M. J., Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980)Google Scholar and Aghaie, Kamran S., The Martyrs of Karbala: Shiʿi Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

63 Khums is the Shiʿi tax of one-fifth of all wealth.

64 Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1969), 141Google Scholar.

65 See Leichtman, “From the Cross (and Crescent) to the Cedar.”

66 For an excellent discussion of the relationship of solidarity between Hizbullah and the Palestinians, see Khalili, Laleh, “‘Standing with My Brother’: Hizbullah, Palestinians, and the Limits of Solidarity,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 (2007): 276303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 It is also significant that Berri was born in Sierra Leone. Not only do Lebanese in Senegal have ties with other Lebanese communities throughout West Africa, in particular in Ivory Coast, but also Lebanese from Africa hold important political positions in Lebanon.

68 Franck Mermier and Elizabeth Picard, Liban, une guerre de 33 jours (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 2007). See also Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shiʿite Lebanon; Deeb, “Exhibiting the ‘Just-Lived Past'”; Sabrina Mervin, ed., Le Hezbollah état des lieux (Paris: Sindbad, 2008).

69 “Les Libanais ont manifesté jeudi à Dakar contres les raids israéliens,” Panapress, http://www.grioo.com/pinfo7373.html (accessed 15 July 2008). For other descriptions of the protests in Senegalese newspapers, see “La chaîne de solidarité libano-sénégalaise,” Le Quotidien, 21 July 2006, 4; Yakhya Massaly, “Les libanais du Sénégal manifestent contre les attaques,” Walfadjri, 21 July 2006, 2; Daouda Mané, “Marche de solidarité avec le peuple libanais,” Le Soleil, 21 July 2006, 3.

70 “La chaîne de solidarité libano-sénégalaise,” Le Quotidien, 21 July 2006, 4.

71 “Les Libanais du Sénégal veulent la fermeture de l'ambassade d'Israël,” Le Quotidien, 22–23 July 2006, 4.

72 “La communauté libanaise ne doit pas dicter la politique étrangère du Sénégal,” Le Quotidien, 25 July 2006, 8.

73 Qana was first shelled by Israeli artillery on 18 April 1996, resulting in a large number of civilian deaths and injuries. The second airstrike by Israel was on 30 July 2006, when an apartment building was hit, killing many civilians, especially children. On the Qana memorial see Volk, Lucia, “Re-Remembering the Dead: A Genealogy of a Martyrs Memorial in South Lebanon,” Arab Studies Journal 15 (2007): 4469Google Scholar.

74 For a summary of Shaykh al-Zayn's politics during the war and his linking the 2006 Lebanon War to the battle of Karbala, see Amadou Gaye, “Cheikh Abdel Monem El Zayn ‘Cette guerre fera tomber les régimes arabes non solidaires au Hezbollah,’” Le Soleil, 18 August 2006, 19.

75 I was told that approximately 3,000 Lebanese were in attendance in addition to one Senegalese representative of the government.

76 The Lebanese Maronite Church was founded in Dakar by Father Augustin Sarkis in 1952. See Leichtman, “From the Cross (and Crescent) to the Cedar.”

77 These victims included relatives of those in Senegal.

78 See Norton, Hezbollah and Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shiʿite Lebanon.

79 ʿAli, Husayn's father, was the first Shiʿi Imam.

80 Al-Manar is also watched by non-Shiʿi Arabs who appreciate its emphasis on the Palestinian struggle.

81 Although Shaykh al-Zayn follows Ayatollah al-Sistani, many Lebanese in Senegal are not aware of or are confused by the Shiʿi marjaʿiyya. Some consider Shaykh al-Zayn to be their marjaʿ, while others follow al-Sistani or Fadlallah or prefer the rulings of Ayatollah al-Khuʾi even though he is no longer alive.

82 Tsing, Anna L., In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

83 This is currently a topic of debate in Lebanon, and Notre Dame University's Lebanese Emigration Research Center is surveying the Lebanese diaspora on the question of absentee voting.

84 Levitt, Peggy and Schiller, Nina Glick, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society,” International Migration Review 38 (2004): 10021039CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics, 109.

86 Roy, Globalized Islam. He suggests that the ṭullāb (students) who have turned to the Internet dominate these debates instead.