For some of you who don’t know him, he just published a book entitled: "Fighting the Greater Jihad, Sheikh Amadu Bamba and the Founding of Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913", published recently by Ohio University Press. He has written many articles about Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba, the Muridiyya, Sufi Islam (which is his field of specialization) in Africa in general and in Senegal in particular, the Senegalese diaspora etc...Most of these articles are featured in american scientific journals that are reviewing articles written by , researchers, academics, scholars,etc... in their research field..
This book is an attempt to shed the light on some shadowy aspects on the persona of the founder of Muridiyya, Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba, and the movement he founded; his intellectual itinerary and education trajectory which were influenced by a family tradition of scholarship and quest of knowledge,deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition, which would later be perpetuated by the Shaykh and through the legacy of the movement he founded.
Another important aspect that he explores in this book is the innovative pedagogy (Tarbiyya), in teaching the Quran and related Islamic sciences, introduced by the Shaykh, in the early difficult years of the founding of the Muridiyya, to prepare his disciples and shield them, in a Wolof society dominated by royal families and later on by French colonial administration, against eventual local and foreign elements that would be hindrances to their spiritual formation and offer them alternative learning methods.
This historical work on Muridiya is of paramount importance in the depiction of the history of Muridiya and Islam in Senegal at a time where Islam is being viewed differently in the West. In his research on the topic, the author confronted colonial archival sources and Murid oral sources, in the perspective of writing about the Muridiyya from within. He tapped in the unexplored oral Murid sources, unlike previous authors researching about the subject of Muridiya, and critically analyzed them in order to offer to the reader a different interpretation of the founding of the Muridiyya and to dispel misconceptions and unfounded biases about the movement and its founder.
Thus the author is opening new paths of explorations for future researchers, and eager scholars who are looking forward to writing seriously about the true causes of Muridiyya foundation, which was not an answer to adapt to French colonial rule or a means to contribute to the expansion of the colonial cash crop as argued by some authors.