Renowned Sect, Sunnism and Socio-sectarian bickering in Traditional Western Urban Sierra Leone

Abstract

The renowned sect, Sunnism and sectarian bickering, are part of the same triangle, unavoidable in any analysis of the sectarian life of Traditional Western Urban Sierra Leone. A conceptual social frame has not yet been established, however, to explain, from the point of view of the nation’s own sectarian experience, the specific forms taken by this sectarian life and how they relate to other similar expressions worldwide, as well as to holistic processes such as secularisation. The paradigm of novelty; The paradigm of novelty seems to resist as long as it follows the guidelines of the gestation of a secularisation process which translates into the strengthening of individual social conscience, the debilitation of Dawah (Islamic preaching) control and the formation of freedom spaces for those who do not think like a group of Islamic believers. However, the social paradigm does not find its parallel in the Arabian Model of Shiism in the consolidation of a class or social group that feeds and explains this bickering sectarian social thought. Consequently, it is imperative; from a sociological standpoint, to question the centrality or pertinence of the modern social paradigm. Most of all, because the modernity social paradigm results in an Irancentric social paradigm, too oriented towards a set concept of socio-economic development and, therefore, of sectarian ‘evolution’.