Saturday December 24, 2005
Senegalese all set to celebrate holiday with Christian minority
DAKAR: Hundreds of young men decked with tinsel wander before mostly Muslim Senegal's mosques, hawking plastic Christmas trees. Women pray to Allah beneath an inflatable Santa Claus suspended under a bakery's eaves.
While Muslims recognise Jesus Christ as a prophet, they do not generally celebrate the date of his birth.
But in this country, Christmas is a national holiday and Muslims are preparing to celebrate it tomorrow.
Muslims who constitute upwards of 95% of Senegal's 12 million people say they have a long history of tolerance and coexistence with Christians, most of whom live in the south, far from Dakar.
“Officially, we Muslims don't celebrate Christmas. But the Catholics are our neighbours. So, we all celebrate all the religious holidays,” said El Hadj Diop, 60, sitting in front of his African antique store.
“We share the same houses, even graveyards,” Diop said. “It has been the same for years.”
Islam arrived in Senegal hundreds of years ago, borne across the Sahara Desert by slave and spice traders from the north.
French colonialists with Bibles came afterwards.
Now, many practitioners of both faiths have adapted their religions to local mores.
Few Muslim women in Senegal wear headscarves and fewer still cover up in all-encompassing robes, with one newspaper editorialist opining the practice was un-African.
Some hip-wagging Senegalese traditional dances would make a Westerner blush and a Muslim fundamentalist wild.
Nightclubs are full on the weekend until dawn, although the drink of choice is more likely juice than booze.
So, celebrating the holidays of Christian neighbours, however few, isn't a stretch.
Christians say they welcome the solidarity and repay it in kind by partaking in Islamic holidays, including the year's main feast days, one of which is arriving within weeks.
“People here believe in God, it's what nourishes us and binds us,” said Eric Midahuen, a Christian who works in an eyeglass shop next door to Diop's. – AP
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