“We must know that everyone is free”: Wahhabi practices, social emancipation and legacies of slavery in Fouta-Djallon

The purpose of this article is to analyse the spread of so-called Wahhabi practices in Guinea through a micro-sociological and biographical lens, focusing on the debates over the opening of a reformist mosque on Fridays in the city of Labé. Through the trajectories of the two main actors in this controversy, we understand how Wahhabi Islam in Fouta-Djallon (Moyenne-Guinée) is challenging the social dominance of the great Sufi aristocratic families. These Peul elites have enjoyed ties to power since the eighteenth century, and historically based their prestige on the enslavement of the non-Muslim populations, whose descendants now seem to be finding a language that might reassert their social legitimacy in reformist Islam.