One recent Sunday morning, as soon as the choir in this island town’s Catholic church sings its last “Hallelujah,” a stream of parishioners spills out through the doors in a blur of marigold and violet head wraps and boubou gowns. Friends Louise Niaroum Sarr and Marie-Philomene Lette stop to chat, fanning themselves under a glaring sun.
Soon, the Islamic call to prayer will echo through town, sending devotees into quiet corners outside shops and cafés to kneel on velvet rugs and pray. But that doesn’t ruffle any feathers here in Fadiouth.
“I raised my kids Catholic, but some have converted to Islam,” says Ms. Niaroum Sarr, squinting in the morning light. “There’s only one God.”
Why We Wrote This
When it comes to religious tolerance, this town in Senegal goes beyond “live and let live.” Here, people of different faiths find strength in their diversity.
Two hours from Senegal’s capital, Dakar, Fadiouth is a religious outlier. In a country that is more than 95% Muslim, its population is almost 90% Catholic.
More than a Christian stronghold, Fadiouth has long been held up as an example of Senegal’s striking religious tolerance. Interfaith marriages are commonplace, and the town’s priest and imam are good friends.
“In Fadiouth, we say it’s not a question of religion – it’s a question of blood,” says Paul Diogoye, a neighborhood elder. “Because we are linked by blood, any problem big or small is manageable.”
But residents say they cannot take their peaceful coexistence for granted, especially at a time when Senegal at large is reconsidering the place of religion in public life.
Now, Fadiouth finds itself trying to strike a delicate balance: to protect its unique identity as a historically Christian town, while remaining the bastion of tolerance it has always been.
An intertwined community
Connected to mainland Senegal by a half-mile-long footbridge, Fadiouth has the peaceful air of a small town, where woodcocks chirp in the nearby mangroves and seashells carpet the narrow streets.
“Our religious cohabitation, as a community as well as within individual families, is what makes us unique,” says Pierre Dioh, the Fadiouth town chief, attending to his buzzing cellphone in a local restaurant. Still, “there isn’t a town in the world that doesn’t have its problems.”
Here, those problems are rarely based on religion. Many of Fadiouth’s approximately 5,000 residents were either born into interfaith families or watched their own children convert. The town is also home to an interfaith cemetery, an exceptional rarity in Senegal.
When Hurricane Cindy swept through Fadiouth in 1999, severely damaging the town church, Muslim residents led a drive to collect donations and helped clear debris. In 2016, when the new mosque was under construction, residents of all faiths ferried cement across the bridge to the island. Community groups, regardless of their members’ faith, organize regular fundraisers for Lent and Ramadan.
“The local imam and I talk about religion often, but we don’t try to convince each other of our ideas,” says the Rev. René Mbagnick Ngom, after Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church. “It’s all about respecting one another’s opinions.”
That imam, Moussa Sarr, says the town doesn’t need to create special events in order to promote solidarity. “We already do it naturally,” he says.
An uncertain future
That harmony is being tested.
Last year, after Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko announced that schools would no longer be allowed, in the name of secularism, to turn away students wearing a headscarf, Fadiouth’s Christians found themselves swept up in a national debate about the Muslim veil.
Senegal has long credited its national stability to secularism, and many Christians say it felt as though the government was trying to sow divisions where none existed.
“Up until now, there haven’t been things that one side does that the other dislikes,” says Mr. Diogoye, the neighborhood elder.
Even if Fadiouth prides itself on its interfaith coexistence, there is an unspoken anxiety among residents that the town could one day lose its Christian majority. The town boasts some of the highest literacy rates in the country, but a dearth of jobs beyond farming means that many young, educated Christians are leaving for bigger cities.
While Fadiouth was 100% Christian in the mid-20th century, Muslims now represent between 10 and 15% of the population, according to researchers. In neighboring Joal, Christians once made up the entirety of the population – now, they account for only 30%.
Religious conversions do not shock Fadiouth residents, but according to field research in Joal-Fadiouth by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Muslims are more likely to insist that Christian partners convert to Islam within interfaith marriages than the reverse.
“These are issues that people are aware of,” says Ato Kwamena Onoma, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the CODESRIA report. “But they don’t want to talk about it publicly.”
Together in life and death
Still, tolerance runs deep here.
Down a path heading out of Fadiouth’s central square is a footbridge leading to the town cemetery. Spreading outward from the roots of a giant baobab tree, white stone Catholic crosses nestle in the long grass next to mosaic tiles in Quranic script.
Moussa Mané often ends up here after giving tourists punting tours of the mangroves in his pirogue canoe. He doesn’t like to think about such things, but it’s comforting to know that one day, he and his wife can be buried together.
As an interfaith couple, that is one less thing to worry about. Already, they’ve had to navigate where their kids go to school, which holidays to observe, and how to pray. But those discussions have been key in making their family stronger, says Mr. Mané.
“When we had kids, we decided that my son would be Muslim like me, and our daughter would be Christian like my wife,” he says, looking out over the vast hillside of the Fadiouth cemetery. “That was the law we created between us. We found a way to make it work.”
