Att tolka kulten kring Mame Diarra Bousso. Kvinnlig religiositet i mouridernas Senegal

Abstract

The intention with this artide is to spread knowledge about the Mam Diarra Bousso cult, centered around the pilgrimage to Porokhane, as an important though not particularly well known part of Mouridism in Senegal. Generally, the attention is paid to the founder, Shaykh Amadou Bamba. The pilgrimage to his tomb and the visit to his impressive mosque in Touba is by far the greatest yearly event of the Mourids. Here I concentrate on his mother, Mam Diarra, in an effort to accomplish a gender balance by giving voice to her female devotees. This Sufi movement is strictly hierarchical, dominated by a male Mourid elite, but simultanously open for female-inspired and populär rituals. The literature about female Morids is scarce, both in Senegal and abroad. By providing space in my text for Mourid women's histories about Mam Diarra Bousso as a saint with magic potentials and as an ideal wife and mother, I want to capture women's expressions of religiosity and their religious practice as described in their oral traditions and individual conversations. This tums out to be a somewhat ambiguous feminist enterprise, as the Mam Diarra ideal, based on patience, submission and tolerance towards the husband and a stainless moral behaviour, contradicts modern models of women as emancipated and liberated from male authority. Still, interpreted within the Sufi tradition of which Mouridism is a part, the cult in Porokhane has its own very distinct meaning. The women believe that Mam Diarra's characteristics as a mother predestined her to "give endlessly" and thereby help them towards a better life on earth and thereafter. In this perspective my interpretation is that the Mam Diarra cult provides Mourid women with both strength and self confidence.