The Murid Ethic and the Spirit of Entrepreneurship

The Muridiyya order, founded by the Senegalese Muslim cleric Ahmadu Bamba Mbacke at the turn of the twentieth century, has a strong ethos of mobility and entrepreneurship. Their history breaks free from more typical economic explanations of migration: the journey of Bamba led his followers to pursue paths to regions that on the surface appear to have little economic reasoning. Murids also exhibit a strong entrepreneurial spirit based on Bamba's teachings that is alive and well in the Murid identity more than a century later. Cheikh Anta Babou of the University of Pennsylvania talks with us on this episode to dig more into the story of the Murids, how their faith shapes their economic and cultural lives, and how their story can enrich our understanding of how development happens on smaller levels.