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10 Hermeneutics of trees
in an African context
Enriching the understanding of the
environment ‘for the common
heritage of humankind’1
Angela Roothaan
Introduction
In this chapter, I will look into case studies of the relations of human communities
to trees, especially in West-African traditions, and ask how these contribute to a
richer understanding of the environment. In traditional cultures all over the world,
trees have been important to humans as ‘natural symbols’ of the central values of
communal life, as sources of food and medicine, and as signs of spiritual realities.
African traditional relations to trees are of special interest as they are contested
in present-day clashes between modernisation movements, religious conversion
movements, secular conservationalist movements, and traditionalist movements.
Looking into the content of the contested – a rich hermeneutics of trees – is not
only of historical interest. It can also contribute to an understanding of the envi-
ronment that can help create more sustainable relations of humans to their envi-
ronment for the future.
In the rst section, I will outline which different frameworks determine the
human relationship to the environment, especially in the West-African context.
The frameworks described are those of secularisation, of monotheistic theology,
and of traditionalism. Whilst conservationalists might work together with Chris-
tians, Muslims, or those practicing traditional religions, their basic presupposi-
tions will be scientic and secular. All the same, Muslims and Christians have
their own spiritual understanding of the relation of humans to nature, in the frame
of a theology of creation, religious morality and the afterlife, which can conict
with secular as well as traditionalist outlooks. All parties mentioned will also try
to negotiate their interests within the framework of the global economy, ‘selling’
sacred forests as places of touristic interest or of rare plant life, for instance, or
using religious fervor to promote economic progress.
After presenting the intersections of frameworks for understanding the mean-
ing of trees, I will discuss, in the second section, two examples of cases of the
cutting of trees which show conicting meanings attributed to trees. Here I will
show how the frameworks clash into each other and make a shared discourse on
what is of common human interest a complex issue. To view trees as a place of
contested meaning, it is important to understand them as bearers of symbolism
136 Angela Roothaan
and signication – something which has been described in the work on trees in
public and religious discourse in Senegal by geographer and Islamologist Eric
Ross. In the third section, I will go deeper into his work on the holy city of Touba,
the capital of Mouride Susm, which represents tûbâ, the tree of paradise. This
work shows us how neoplatonic understandings of (spiritual) reality play their
role in Su theology, and how an ontology can be seen to be at work in it (as it is
in Christian traditions that value worship of holy places, moments, and persons),
which I will call ‘shamanistic.’2 Ross has thus shown that religious ascription of
meaning to trees is not to be understood in a simple, one-dimensional manner, but
that, here, as in other frameworks, complex historico-cultural developments have
shaped understandings and practices.
In the nal section, I will then return to a more general discussion of how dif-
ferent contexts and discourses lead to contested meanings of trees. I will present
here also a more specic philosophical account of African views of nature, as it
is given in an article by Michael Onyebuchi Eze on eco-humanism. In the tradi-
tion of writers such as Tempels and Mbiti, he proposes to adopt a holistic view
of nature understood as life force, which leads to viewing human beings as an
element in the whole of nature. As much as such an account helps to explain
the spiritual meaning of trees, it suppresses the difculties described in my ear-
lier sections, arising from the clashing of frameworks. Therefore, I make a plea
for a multidimensional approach, which brings the varying positions and views
into dialogue after rst having disentangled and understood their differences and
conicts.
Intersecting frameworks
When we study the subject of trees in an African context, several frameworks of
action have to be taken into account. There is, rst, the framework of modernisa-
tion, with its separate streams of secularisation, the growth of an autonomous
economic sphere and technological development. These streams are often taken
to be identical, but although they have been going hand in hand for the most
part of European history since the 17th century, they never have been simple,
and their relations are certainly more complex in other regions and times. In the
United States, for instance, for a long time one of the world’s driving nations
with respect to economic and technological developments, society and politics
remained largely determined by the Christian religion.
On the African continent, things have been still more complex, and historiogra-
phies which are not biased by the colonial outlook are still in the process of being
written. Although secularisation is a force in present developments, the processes
of Christianisation and Islamisation are also an important force, although in a
different manner in different parts of the continent. Economic and technologi-
cal developments often also are driven by these religious developments, as well
through migrant worker networks as in transformations on local levels. Further,
the potential of different religious groups to impact society again depends on eco-
nomic and political factualities that in themselves are not religious. The rise of
Hermeneutics of trees in an African context 137
societal inuence of the Su-Islamic Mouride brotherhood in Senegal, e.g., could
take place only in the political voids left by colonialism in their destruction of tra-
ditional kingdoms and nobility, as well as in the frame of economic opportunities
created by the colonial trading system, and the new global trading networks that
came after decolonisation (cf. Barry, 1988; Ross, 2006).
Taken from their own perspective, movements which focus on the purica-
tion of monotheistic religion, and/or the conversion of people, may coincide with
the modern secular outlook which values technological and economic progress,
overruling traditional practices based on the belief in the sacredness of nature. An
example can be seen in how the Mouride brotherhood in Senegal, valuing prayer
and work as central values, has played a pivotal role in cutting down several
forests (which are traditionally seen as sacred places) in Senegal for purposes of
peanut production.3 All the same, whereas the Islamic theology in principle robs
trees from the protection by guarding spirits (because the might of God/Allah will
always be greater than that of any spiritual being), it still lends a spiritual meaning
to nature in general, and to trees in particular, as the symbol of heavenly paradise
that Allah holds for his believers4 (Ross, 2006).
A framework that is also of importance for understanding the plural meanings
of trees is the modern-secular framework that drives the work of many interna-
tional environmentalist and conservationalist organisations working on the Afri-
can continent. Such a framework will make us see religious movements, as well
as traditional beliefs and practices, only as having a positive or negative effect
on the thriving of the environment, without valuing their normative viewpoints
in their own right. The environmentalist/conservationalist framework has its own
normative views, of course, of which sustainability is a key one. Our ways to
live in the world should be sustainable, that is, the human race should not use
up resources, looking only for short-term prot, and creating long-term death
and destruction. All the same, propagators of this framework never ask about
the perspective expressed in the word ‘environment.’ Environment for whom?
For the human race, in the end. Allthough striving for a sustainable environment
for humans will probably have the effect that animals and trees and other living
beings also have better chances than if we strive only for prot and domination of
nature, the perspective of secularism can not ask about the meaning of nature, or
of trees, for that matter, in a wider frame than that of humanity. Humanity cannot
be understood, by secularists, from an angle in which non-human or supra-human
values count.
Finally, there are also traditionalist movements, which, in an attempt to counter
the negative inuences of the colonial era, aim for a return to old religious beliefs
and traditional social customs. An example is to be found in Benin, where Vodun
religion has been reinstalled on a national level. Traditionalist movements have for
their aim to preserve (or, if necessary, to reconstruct or reinvent) traditional knowl-
edges and practices in which the relation of humans to their environment is con-
sidered from a perspective in which the spiritual aspect of all beings is taken into
account. Humans in that perspective can live healthy and prosperous lives only if
they know how to address the spiritual world that transcends their strictly human
138 Angela Roothaan
aims. In the present situation, where the forces of global economies and nation-
based politics reign, traditionalism will have to negotiate its values with those of,
most notably, international tourism and national culture (cf. Juhé- Beaulaton and
Roussel, 2003) and, through these, also with conservationalism. We see this hap-
pening where the traditionalists’ view of certain forests as sacred has now been
taken up by the international conservation efforts of the UN by declaring those
forests cultural heritage, naming them ICCAs: Indigenous Peoples’ and Com-
munity Conserved Territories and Areas (www.cbd.int/pa/doc/ts64-case-studies/
senegal-en.pdf). These negotiations, however, may have the effect that the return
to traditional spirituality will transform into a matter of cultural folklore.
When we zoom in on the subject of trees as bearers of meaning in an African
context, the different frameworks mentioned above overlap, interact and come
into conict. For my purposes, I want to question not only how these different
frameworks prestructure any possible hermeneutics of trees, but also how the dif-
ferent meanings given to trees can enter into dialogue with each other. The mean-
ing of trees should not be understood one-dimensionally, but we should carefully
disentangle the different meanings bestowed by different groups in societies, and
thus take their frameworks of reference into account.
Religion and the symbolism of trees
A rst example of trees’ contested meaning is provided in the case of the cutting
of the Mbegué forest (Khelkom in Senegal), described by Schoonmaker Freuden-
berger (1991), where deforestation was carried out for economic and religious
reasons (to provide opportunities for the agricultural labour through which salva-
tion is supposed to be reached). In this case, we see how monotheistic religion can
suspend possible cultural or spiritual inhibitions against felling old trees whilst at
the same time stressing their symbolic religious meaning (i.e., the ‘right’ religious
meaning). Schoonmaker Freudenberger has described in a passionate tone how in
1991 Mouride faithful, following a call of their religious leadership on the radio,
cleared a whole forest in just a few weeks:
From village and city, the faithful ocked to Mbegué, bringing axes and saws
to clearcut 173 square miles of one of the last remaining forests in Senegal’s
degraded heartland. In three weekends, they felled more than ve million
Sahelian trees and shrubs. [. . .] For his part, the Khalifa-General (supreme
head) of the powerful Mouride Islamic brotherhood was well on the way to
meeting his goal: 45,000 hectares of newly cleared and fertile land would
soon be put into peanut production.
(Schoonmaker Freudenberger, 1991, p. 1)
In this example, we see a conict of meaning given to trees by the secular envi-
ronmentalist author (who wants to ward off desertication and uphold a livable
human habitat) and the religious Mourides, who negotiated economic opportuni-
ties and a theology of the good religious life, resulting in the ending the life of
Hermeneutics of trees in an African context 139
the forest. Underneath these conicting views there is also a conict between two
peoples/cultures: the Wolof Mouride faithful and the Fulbe herders who tradition-
ally lived in the forest, and who were displaced by the (legal) cutting of the trees.
The Fulbe possibly also hold more traditionalist views of the spiritual meaning of
trees, although they just as well consider themselves Muslims.
A second example of the contested meaning of trees is from a story narrated to
me by Michael Onyebuchi Eze on the tree called Uvuru, which was dominating
the central square of his native village in the present day Enugu state of Nigeria.
Ukwu Uvuru may have been more than 1,000 years old, according to reports, and
had served from time immemorial as a place for public assemblies, as a source of
fruits for children sitting in its shade, and it was ascribed a status of sacredness. It
was cut down in 2002 by young Christians, who had been motivated to do so by
their pastor. The motivation given was that the tree not just symbolised, but actu-
ally embodied, evil forces which would explain the social and economic problems
of the locals. It supposedly held the people chained to the past and would hinder
progress – so chopping it down was expected to solve that.
Although I don’t know more details of the case, it seems a clear example of
what happens when Christianity claims its ground by opposing traditional (folk)
beliefs and practices. The idea is that ancient sacred places (or the opposite –
places of evil), be they a watersource, a magnicent tree or a crossing of roads,
should either be Christianised or be removed. In many places in Europe, you see
images of the Christian cross, or road altars for certain saints, where there used
to be places of ancient taboos, or of worship – like under an oak, at a well, or at a
crossing.5 Surveying the literature makes clear that traditional spirituality, which
often survives in folk beliefs and practices, is seen as a problem in the eyes of
many Christian leaders. In the example of Ukwu Uvuru, the loyalty of people
towards anything traditional, even if there might not be an attitude involved that
would contradict Christianity, is seen as a sign of lack of religious trust.
In religious studies, a sociological and anthropological point of view is
predominant – leading to the explanation of the resurgence of traditional beliefs
as a consequence of problems of modernisation (cf. Juhé-Beaulaton, 2008, p. 8,
and Ter Haar, 1992, p. 111). Economic difculties, or the alienation resulting from
urbanisation, would be the main factor in seeking help in the spiritual realm of
traditional deities. Christian theological discussions of the matter sometimes har-
monise with these views in describing traditional spiritual practices as disturbing
the order in society. We nd an example of this approach in a recent thesis on the
tensions between belief in deities and Christianity in contemporary Igbo culture.
The author, Christopher Okwor, writes as a recommendation that
The church should as a matter of necessity adopt a holistic approach to evan-
gelisation. Christianity must be ready to feed the deep spiritual and material
quests of the Igbo in order to control them and be able to divert their atten-
tion from deities (italics are mine). [. . .] Shrines are valuable heritage of our
past. [. . .] Burning of shrines should be treated as a very serious offence.
[. . .] Shrines should be developed into tourist centres. They are homes for
140 Angela Roothaan
endangered species of plants and animals and some have beautiful caves and
springs.
(Okwor, 2012, pp. 134–135)
The central problem with traditional practices of worship of deities seems to
be that they escape the dominant morality and legality and are therefore ‘beyond
control.’ Here we see the secularist framework, with its two main interests, tour-
ism and sustainability, join hands with a Christianising interest: the striving for a
moral life according to biblical prescriptions for the good life. We see the same
effect in the work of Juhé-Beaulaton, a historian, who directs attention to issues
concerning law and order surrounding sacred forests and shrines. Like Okwor, she
sees a harmonisation between conservationalist, traditionalist and the legal and
economic interests of the state as a solution to preserve the ‘beautiful’ places of
worship whilst pacifying the spiritual needs of the people (Juhé-Beaulaton, 2008).
In these approaches, however, the inherent value of the spiritual meaning of
these shrines, often part of small forests, and therefore of the trees that mark and
localise them, is lost, thus excluding the other mentioned framework which claims
certain meanings for the environment in general, and trees in particular, namely
the framework of a more spiritual outlook on things, in monotheist as well as in
traditional religions. More apprehension for this aspect is found in the work of
geographer and Islamologist Eric Ross, who has studied the symbolic meanings
and usage of trees in West Africa, especially in Senegal, in their own right. While
in non-African contexts the central tree in an African community has become
known as “palaver tree” (from the Portuguese word for speech or discussion),
Ross indicates that this name is too narrow:
[it] designates what is in reality a number of different phenomena which make
political, social or religious use of individualized trees. [. . .] Rather than a
single ‘palaver tree’ serving as locus of public debate, polities were marked
by a number of different trees, of various species, which served a variety of
public and collective functions, only one of which was the ‘palaver’ process.
(Ross, 2008, p. 136)
Through eld research, Ross has located and described many ancient trees in
Senegal, which often have survived the royal palaces or the villages of which they
at one time were the centre. He has opened up a new branch of research, combin-
ing the locating on google maps of the individual trees, photographing them, and
describing the oral histories that are told by the people living there. Thus he has
made a beginning to make local knowledge accessible to the wider world: the
knowledge that distinguishes between the public, social, political, and religious
functions of trees. The ancient, hollow, baobabs are known to have been used as
shrines, altars, and tombs for the griots (court singers, like the medieval European
‘jesters’ or ‘troubadours’). Trees are also mentioned to localise where a battle
took place, or a boundary existed (Ross, 2008, pp. 136–137). In their function as
the embodiment of political legitimacy, they can be compared with the obelisks,
Hermeneutics of trees in an African context 141
triumphal arches, and other symbolic structures in Europe. In addition, trees could
be the places where justice was rendered. In these public functions, they were
and are seen as ‘places of power’ and places of memory (Ross, 2008, p. 139 and
p. 144). Trees thus function as
[. . .] markers, as memorials and as monuments. These functions are spatial
in that they contribute meaning to the landscape, but they are also social
and political, in that they ‘x’ identities while also articulating a spiritual
worldview.
(Ross, 2008, p. 146)
Trees as archetype
In his work on the sacred city of Touba (an elaborated and reworked version of
his dissertation), the urban place which is the centre of worship in Senegalese
mouride Islam, Ross explains the mystical and symbolic understanding of trees.
Mouride mysticism is a modern branch (defying the conict between modern and
traditional) of neoplatonic Su understanding of the world in relation to God as
creator and provider of grace for human beings. The city of Touba, in the inner
land of Senegal, was founded in 1887 by Shaykh Ahmandou Bamba Mbacké
(1853–1927), on the authority of a revelation from God about the locality of this
sacred place. According to a local legend:
After a patient search his (of the Shaykh, AR) attention was drawn, one day,
to a tree which stood out clearly from the others by its size, its importance and
its peculiar location. The tree [. . .] stood on a plateau on the spot where the
dome of Touba Mosque now stands. Ahmadou Bamba prayed in the shade of
the tree, and that is where he had his long awaited revelation.
(cited from Ross, 2006, p. 28)
The sacredness of Touba is experienced and reinforced in the yearly pilgrimage
believers make to the city, where they offer prayers in its grandiose mosque, long-
ing to be buried within the city when they die, which for them symbolises the
closest connection to heavenly paradise. Touba, the name of the city, originally
comes from the word tûbâ, which means the Tree of Paradise in Islamic tradition.
It stands for the bliss of the heavenly state of the righteous after death.
As trees often play a critical role in foundation legends of places of human
habitation, as well as of religious movements (think of Buddha, who also received
a revelation under a tree, and the symbolic ‘tree’ of the Christian cross), Ross
explores the specics of this role in the case of Touba within the context of Su
neoplatonic understanding. Here Touba is seen as “a qutb, a ‘pole’ or axis mundi.
[. . .] The concept of qutb is primarily an astronomical one. It designates the
‘celestial pole,’ a hypothetical spot in the sky around which the heavens revolve”
(Ross, 2006, p. 18). In neoplatonism, the cosmos is understood as an unfolding
142 Angela Roothaan
of reality in layers of being, emanating from God, which are closer or farther
removed from his, so to speak, ontological and spiritual gravity centre. According
to Ross,
Susm has invested this astronomical term with several related spiritual
meanings. The term qutb is used to describe transcendence. It can be applied
to any being, moment, event, or place which connects various layers of real-
ity to each other.
(Ross, 2006, p. 18)
It can be a moment, which thus should be remembered with reverence – like the
moment of revelation of an individual. It can also be a special, rare and beautiful
place, such as a river, a grove, a high mountain, or a city (cf. Jerusalem, which is
understood as a place where the divine can be almost ‘touched’ by Jews, Chris-
tians, and Muslims). It can also be, according to Susm, a person – which then
leads to taking, for instance, the grave of this person as a place for pilgrimage.
Touching the grave or some other act of dedication can then help the believer on
his/her spiritual path. Ross further explains this in more philosophical language
by citing Mircea Eliade:
A sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; this break
is symbolised by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to
another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to
the underworld); communication with heaven is expressed by one or another
of certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi, pillar [. . .], ladder
(cf. Jacob’s ladder), mountain, tree, vine, etc; around this cosmic axis lies the
world (= our world), hence the axis is located ‘in the middle’, at the ‘navel of
the earth’; it is the Center of the World.
(cited from Ross, 2006, p. 20)
The qutb, the axis, can therefore also be a tree, and it often is. To make things
more clear for modern readers, Ross introduces the term ‘archetype,’ coined by
Carl-Gustav Jung in his psychology of the collective subconscious. He makes
clear that one does not have to accept Jungian drive-psychology to use this con-
cept, which just indicates what Su theosophism means by xed essences, the
forms which ‘hold,’ or refer to, the divine presence of God. Although, as is clear
from the above, designating trees as archetype of the relation of humanity to the
spiritual realm is in no way restricted to an African context, trees play an impor-
tant role in African spiritual symbolism (next to all kinds of other signs, of course,
such as water, certain animals, re, etc.).
As Ross’s research into the ‘palaver’ trees has made clear, the central tree of a
village or royal courtyard often survives the mud-structures of the human habitats
themselves. The trees thus serve as memorials of human deeds and experiences in
the past. In the specic instance of Touba, the belief in the spiritual tree, symbolis-
ing the entrance of paradise, is considered as the “celestial register upon which the
Hermeneutics of trees in an African context 143
names and deeds of individuals are recorded” (Ross, 2006, p. 31). The symbolism
of the tree is even more elaborate, as the words of Cheickh Tidiane Sy make clear:
In Islamic tradition, Touba also designates a tree of Paradise on whose leaves
are inscribed each human’s good and evil acts. Each leaf, as it falls, inexora-
bly provokes the death of the individual whose acts have been recorded. The
leaf is then preserved for the Day of Judgment.
(cited in Ross, 2006, p. 32)
To inscribe themselves on this divine spiritual record, Mouride believers scratch
their names and those of their loved ones on an actual Baobab tree in the city of
Touba. In this religious practice, there is thus no sharp distinction between a mate-
rial act (taking out a knife and carving letters into the bark of a tree, like lovers do
in modern Europe, and perhaps all over the world, to pledge the eternity of their
bond) and a spiritual act of faith (believing in or hoping for the saving grace of
paradise, which is just another metaphor for the nearness of God).
This ‘mixing’ of matter and mind, of belief and practice, shows how ‘shaman-
istic’6 spiritual ontologies are present in monotheistic religion, even if full sha-
manistic ontologies do not focus so much on unity, as in the unity of God, but
see all phenomena as potential manifestations of spirit, or as vehicles to reach
the spiritual realm. Moving in the spaces of such ‘hybrid’ (to borrow a concept of
Bruno Latour) realities is contrary to the protestant (modern Christian) idea that
only belief can save souls, for which reason much of traditional ritual behaviour
then should be considered irrational, and even banned. In this respect radical Prot-
estantism reects the same spirit as secular modernism (although I would not want
to make a historical claim as to one inspiring the other). And since this secularism
forms the actual (although not the necessary) framework of most modern philoso-
phy, it has become hard in philosophy to understand archetypal relations of humans
to trees as something more than irrationality.
The relation to ancient mysticism, which is so central in Mouride Susm, can
be put in a wider framework, as Ross has done in an article from 1994. He there
tries to understand present day Islam from an Afrocentric perspective. In Afrocen-
tric research into the origins of African civilisations (originating in the work of
Cheikh Anta Diop, and leading up to present day writers such as Sarwat Anis Al-
Assiouty), the link with ancient Egyptian cosmology is more and more researched,
as well as its inuencing role in Greek, Semitic, and, in the end, European and
modern African science and religion. From a more philosophical perspective, this
relation resonates in the seminal work by V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa,
which, in a productive dialogue with the philosophy of the French philosopher
Foucault, develops the understanding of African philosophy as gnosis, the neopla-
tonic word for higher wisdom, which can be sought by means of the secret train-
ing of the initiated. This concept of gnosis, then, according to Mudimbe, is also a
vehicle to transcend the cultural-anthropological concept of ‘Africa’ as a special
place, or to transcend the localising concept without leaving the place. Even to
transcend the discipline and overcoming its colonialist preconditions by making
144 Angela Roothaan
it into “a more credible anthropou-logos, that is a discourse on a human being”
(Mudimbe, 1988, p. 186).
Trees – contested meanings
After outlining the attitude towards the meanings of trees in the crossroads of
conversion movements, traditionalism and modernisation, we still have to take a
closer look at the secularist point of view before we can try to show how the dif-
ferent frameworks might be brought into dialogue with each other.
The secular perspective, which is central to most environmentalism as well as
to the investigation undergirding it, shows very clearly in the reports of Schoon-
maker Freudenberger cited above, in the second section. In her account of the
cutting of the Mbegué forest we see a shrill contrast with the tree-friendly mys-
ticism of the Mouride brotherhood described by Ross. Schoonmaker Freuden-
berger shows that she has a more positive idea about the Fulbe pastoralists, who
were displaced by the cutting of the forest, and who have been in conict with
agriculturalists in West-Africa several times. This choice is based, not on a more
favourable view on one group’s spiritual outlook or way of life, but on insights
from environmental science and prospective expectations of which lifestyle in the
Sahelian landscape might be more sustainable.
It is of importance here to underline the positive aim of secularist environ-
mentalism – to preserve the earth for future generations of human beings, as
a beautiful and healthy place to live, among a wealth of other species – plants
and animals. From this aim for the future, environmentalism lends its legitimacy
to critically question the behaviour of human groups, peoples, but also govern-
ments and the corporate world. Its voice is an important one in the shared human
efforts to live a good life, and its adherence to planning on the basis of scientic
research (objective data) provides an indispensable complementary discourse to
the religious conversion movements described above. All the same, one has to
be critical towards its accounts too – rstly, because of the provisionality of all
scientic results, which often rest on researching a limited amount of factors,
leaving others in the dark, and, secondly, because it fails to grasp the role sym-
bolism and spiritual meanings may play in motivating human behaviour. If we
put this second point to work with respect to the double-edged sword of Mouride
theology – respecting individual trees as representative of the spiritual tree of
paradise, whilst also stimulating agriculture as a good way of life for believers,
even though it kills actual trees – we might be able to not just criticise the role
of the Mouride leadership, as Schoonmaker Freudenberger does, for having too
much power in a relatively weak state, but we might criticise it on a theological
level itself.
What would such a theological criticism look like? It should direct itself at the
level of understanding the relationship between the visible/material world and the
religiously understood spiritual world (the paradise of God, the afterworld). In
Senegalese Mouridism, there might be a conict at work between a ‘shamanistic’
ontology, which considers matter and spirit as potentially interacting, and a dualist
Hermeneutics of trees in an African context 145
ontology of heaven and earth being separate places. This kind of conict is not
specic to this branch of Islam, but can be seen in monotheistic traditions in gen-
eral, and even in modern secularist worldviews where they deal with the relation-
ships of human beings to things. Whereas shamanistic ontologies recognise each
(living) being as an expression of (divine) spirit, monotheist ontologies attribute
a unique meaning to the human being as the servant of God, playing a role in his
plans with the cosmos. The role the human being plays in monotheism is under-
stood to take place in two realms simultaneously: s/he can live a moral life in the
visible/material world, actually helping others or making the world a better place
to live in, but the real meaning of these actions lies in the ‘other’ world, the world
of eschatological issues concerning the spiritual salvation of the human and/or of
everything created.
We nd an example of this monotheistic approach in the Mouride felling of
the Mbegué forest, as it lets the aims of spreading the faith and the striving of
humans to deserve heavenly bliss in the afterlife prevail over the life of the trees
concerned. All the same we saw the meaning of trees not to be absent in Mouride
theology – as it is preserved symbolically in the reverence for certain exemplary
individuals in specic holy places.7 Here we see a reminder of how shamanis-
tic ontology can live in monotheistic religions, not as a strange element to be
rooted out (like reformation movements such as radical protestantism or salasm
aim to do), but providing ways for religiosity to be experienced and acted out in
human lives. Would this shamanistic element be more explicitly acknowledged,
it might be used to criticise and correct violent acts of religions against our natu-
ral surroundings, harmonising traditionalism and modern religiosity. In such an
acknowledgement, we can see an alternative to the strictly secularist discourse of
environmentalism, while creating the terms for a dialogue on the religious inter-
pretation of our environment.
Conclusion
To conclude I will discuss a philosophical attempt to take the spiritual and the
material wellbeing of human beings in relation to trees simultaneously into
account, as presented in an article by Michael Onyebuchi Eze,8 which aims to pro-
vide an Africanist theory of environmental ethics. His holistic viewpoint aligns
with descriptions of ‘African’ ontologies as given by the Belgian Franciscan
Tempels and Kenyan theologian/philosopher John Mbiti. Both authors worked
to present a view of African religion, ontology, and ethics in general, in reac-
tion to ethnographic work from the colonial age that provided descriptions of so
many different African cultures as local and exotic – over and against (Western)
universal religion and ontology. (cf. Ellis and Ter Haar, 2009, p. 404) In Tempels’
work, the concept of life force is especially important. Tempels summarises the
‘Bantu’ metaphysics as an ontology that encompasses all being and understands
it as interdependent. Whereas Bantu Philosophy claims to reconstruct reality as
it is, it admits this reality to be accessible through different cultural frames in
different ways. Following Tempels, Eze coins an understanding of ontology as
