Brotherhoods and Gender Relations in Mauritania

Abstract

The expansion of Islam in northwest Africa has been very much associated with the spread of brotherhood movements (turuq). Religious and educational practices as well as collective rules of conduct carry the imprints of these movements, the political and economic influence of which has been - and remains - decisive in vast regions from Mauritania to Nigeria, from the Sudan to Senegal. Recent developments, however, indicate an increase in power of a neo-fundamentalist inspirational Islam originating in the Middle East, which presents itself as a rival to the ideas and practices developed by the local versions of asawwuf (Muslim mysticism) organized as brotherhoods.