Rituals of Respect: Sufis and Secularists in Senegal in Comparative Perspective

“Rituals of respect” are recurrent, public, and reciprocal political practices. In Sufi-majority Senegal, such practices first facilitated accommodation among a variety of groups in potential conflict, and later facilitated tolerance, then respect, and eventually democracy. The social construction of horizontal rituals of respect between religious groups, especially Sufis and Catholics, and reciprocal vertical rituals of respect between the secular state and virtually all religious groups, have created this “twin tolerations”- friendly environment. Is the Senegalese pattern generalizable? Three of the major dimensions of this pattern—a “co-celebratory” dimension of diverse religions, a consensual state-religion “policy cooperation” dimension, and a “principled distance” dimension of support for human rights and democracy—are also prominent in several countries which have large Muslim populations and are widely seen as having been democracies for the last ten years, namely, Indonesia, India, and Albania.