Portal:Traditional African religions
 The beliefs and practices of African people are highly diverse, and include various ethnic religions. Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and are passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs, and festivals, and include beliefs in spirits and higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme being, as well as the veneration of the dead, and use of magic and traditional African medicine. Most religions can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. The role of humanity is generally seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural. Unlike Abrahamic religions, African traditional religions are not idealisations, and they seek to come to terms with reality as it is. They generally seek to explain the reality of personal experience by spiritual forces which underpin orderly group life, contrasted by those that threaten it. (Full article...) The Battle of Fandane-Thiouthioune also known as the Battle of Somb occurred on 18 July 1867. It was a religious war between the Serer people who adhered to the tenets of Serer religion and the Muslim Marabouts of 19th century Senegambia who came to convert them through jihad. Although religious, it also had a political and economic dimension to it: vendetta and empire-building. Fandane, Thiouthioune and Somb were part of the pre-colonial Serer Kingdom of Sine now part of independent Senegal. The Serer people defeated the Muslims and killed their leader.
There are several religious festivals found in the various Traditional African religions. Some of these are listed below next to their corresponding religion :
Marguerite Dupire (born in Roubaix - 12 October 1920) is a French ethnologist who specialises on African people, and had worked extensively on the Fulani of Niger, Cameroon, Guinea, Senegal, and then after a mission in Ivory Coast, on the Serer people of Sine (in Senegal) since 1965.
Source: "The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions", (Editor: Department of Global and International Studies University of California Mark Juergensmeyer Professor of Sociology and Director, Santa Barbara), p. 537, Oxford University Press, USA (2006), ISBN 9780199727612 [1]
For more Traditional African religion topics, see Category:Traditional African religions.
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