samiha rahman.
i came to get you
I Came to Get You is a documentary short film that examines what it takes for Black Americans and West Africans to repair the ruptures of history and write a new chapter in their shared story as Muslims of African descent. It chronicles the journeys and dreams of a Senegalese Sufi sage named Shaykh Hassan Aliou Cisse (1945-2008) and his community of Black American disciples. Told through the memories of mothers, doctors, community organizers, and other ordinary spiritual seekers who joined in its earliest years, the film traces the origins and evolution of what has become the largest Black Sufi movement in the United States. These elders recall the unexpected turns of events and profound experiences that inspired them to build an international school, a medical clinic, and an enduring partnership that reshaped the lives of Black Muslims in the United States and Senegal. They reflect upon the cultural differences, immense joys, and historic milestones they experienced as they worked together to create institutions that were rooted in their shared commitments to faith, service, and liberation. Ultimately, the film reveals how Black Muslims from different countries turn to Sufism to collectively heal from the legacies of slavery and colonialism and chart a just future for generations to come.
origin stories.
In 1976, a young Islamic scholar and Sufi sage from Senegal named Shaykh Hassan Aliou Cisse took his first trip to the United States of America. He landed in New York City, where he was welcomed by a few Muslim families from Ghana who had migrated to the city some years prior. Shaykh Hassan and his hosts knew each other because they were all Muslims who were drawn to Sufism, the spiritual or mystical tradition of Islam.[1] They had joined the same Sufi community – the Tijani tariqa (order). As members of the Tijani tariqa, these women and men had pledged themselves to a routine of additional practices beyond those obligated upon all Muslims, with the goal of purifying themselves, gaining experiential knowledge of Allah, and transforming their character to resemble the most excellent example set by Prophet Muhammad. Their guide on this journey of spiritual transformation was Shaykh Hassan’s maternal grandfather, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (1900-1975).
Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse was a world-renowned Islamic scholar and leader of the most prominent branch of the Tijani tariqa globally. The Tijani tariqa originated in Morocco in the eighteenth century and had grown under Shaykh Ibrahim’s leadership to become the largest religious movement on the African continent during the twentieth century, with disciples in countries including Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritania, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Benin, Togo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Sudan. In addition to being a prominent scholar of Islam and Sufism, Shaykh Ibrahim was also a revolutionary pan-Africanist, which meant that he was committed to the liberation and unification of oppressed peoples in Africa and beyond.[2]
Shaykh Hassan arrived in New York City with a plan. He had come to spread his grandfather’s pan-African Sufi movement, which had already unified tens of millions of spiritual seekers on the continent, to Muslims of African descent in the United States. During the transatlantic slave trade, hundreds of thousands of Muslims were kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved in the Americas.[3] As new generations of enslaved people were born in the United States, they struggled to preserve their faith in a hostile climate that was set on crushing their memories of Islam.[4] Yet in the twentieth century, thousands of Black Americans found their way back to Islam. They saw it as a liberatory way of life that offered them affirming understandings of themselves, their place in the world, and their purpose on this earth. Shaykh Hassan was eager to connect with this growing community of Black Muslims, who were his sisters and brothers not only in faith but perhaps also in blood. They were, after all, the descendants of people who had likely been ripped away from the very religion and lands that he called his own.
Shaykh Hassan’s Ghanaian hosts helped put his plan into action. They arranged for him to meet with some of their Black American Muslim friends. This would be the first of countless gatherings that Shaykh Hassan’s murids (Sufi disciples) organized over the next three decades as he regularly returned from Senegal to the United States. Shaykh Hassan visited not just New York, but ventured by cars, trains, and planes out to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Memphis, and many other cities. During these trips, Shaykh Hassan interacted with hundreds of Black Americans. Many of them had already been Muslim for years or decades but yearned to go deeper in their faith. Sensing that Shaykh Hassan was a formidable religious scholar, these women and men took the opportunity to ask him questions about Islam, Sufism, and other matters that lingered in their minds and troubled their hearts. Many were so compelled by his answers that they decided to embrace the Tijani tariqa, which not only spoke to their desires for spiritual enlightenment but also built upon their investments in Black empowerment and pan-African unity. They joined their African sisters and brothers in faith as they embarked upon a shared Sufi path to spiritual purification. Together with Shaykh Hassan, these Black American and West Africans spread the teachings of the Tijani tariqa across the United States, fueling the community’s growth into the largest Sufi movement among Black American Muslims in the country.
As Shaykh Hassan formed relationships with Black Muslims in the United States, he also encouraged them to visit his hometown of Medina Baye, a city in Senegal that his grandfather established in 1930 as a spiritual refuge for Muslims in the Tijani tariqa. For most Black Americans who accepted Shaykh Hassan’s invitation, this marked their first trip to Africa, a continent that they had long dreamed of going to. They arrived in Senegal not as tourists, but as spiritual seekers who were personally hosted and cared for by their Sufi guide. In Medina Baye, they lived, learned, and worshiped in community with Tijanis from throughout Africa and the world. In 1983, Shaykh Hassan and his Black American disciples opened the African American Islamic Institute, an international boarding school in Medina Baye that has educated hundreds of Black American students, alongside thousands of students from throughout Africa. In 1997, after operating for more than five years as a pop-up, Shaykh Hassan and his Black American disciples opened Shifa al-Asqam Socio Medical Center, a full-time clinic in Medina Baye that served residents and nearby rural communities. Both institutions remain in operation today.
behind the scenes.
This film was inspired by my own relationship to and ethnographic research with Shaykh Hassan’s Tijani murids in the United States and Medina Baye. In the process of writing an academic book on this community, I became interested in amplifying their stories by using a creative medium that would bring them to life in ways beyond what was possible through the words on a page.
I never had the opportunity to meet Shaykh Hassan, but for more than 15 years, I have had the immense honor of listening to and learning from so many Black Americans and West Africans who personally knew him. These women and men shared stories of how they worked closely with their Shaykh, volunteering their time, energy, and money to support his work of guiding, unifying, and empowering Muslims in Africa and the diaspora. So much of Black and Muslim American histories focus on well-known, mostly male figures, yet these elders’ stories bear testament to the reality that seemingly ordinary people – and women in particular – are at the heart of the efforts that have resulted in extraordinary things. They are, as Su’ad Abdul Khabeer describes in her Umi’s Archive project, everyday Black Muslim women and men who are neither academically trained scholars, nor prominent public leaders, but are nonetheless “people who know things we all need to know.” Indeed, among many long-standing members of the Tijani community in the United States, these elders are recognized, beloved, and celebrated as such.
As a Crossroads Community Stories Fellow, I interviewed several of these elders about their lives and experiences as Black Muslims in the Tijani tariqa. My initial intention was to compile their life histories into a digital archive. As these elders sat in front of my camera, they took me on a journey across time and space, from the 1970s all the way to the present day, from urban centers in the United States to a sacred city across the Atlantic Ocean. For hours on end, they narrated their own stories, conveying honesty, humor, and humility as reflected upon hard-learned lessons and imparted wisdom. Speaking to me from the U.S. cities they called home, several elders recalled memories of their travels to their spiritual home of Medina Baye, Senegal. Some reflected candidly on how their time there made them grapple with the cultural similarities and differences between Black American and West African Muslims. Others casually described the unexpected experiences that prompted them to help Shaykh Hassan open an international school and medical clinic in Medina Baye. They spoke frankly about how they tried their best to collaborate in ways that would not reproduce a “savior” narrative that often dominates international humanitarian projects that take place on the African continent.
As I listened to their vivid memories, I realized that they were describing an entire Black Muslim Sufi world that many viewers might be unfamiliar with but curious to learn about. It became clear to me that these elders’ life stories could be the foundation of a rich, textured documentary short film. And so the idea of I Came to Get You emerged. The film weaves their life histories together with footage I recorded over the years of the sights and sounds of the sacred communities these elders contributed to. It also includes archival interviews with Shaykh Hassan, photographs from community members’ personal archives, and paper-cut animations.
Over the course of writing my book and working on this film, several of the beloved elders whose stories I share have already returned to Allah. This includes Hajjah Ayisha Jeffries (1951–2026), Dr. Karimah Joseph (1949–2024), and Hajjah Tauhidah Abedeen (1940–2022). Their passings are yet another reminder of the importance of documenting and preserving the community’s history for all those who come after us.
I Came to Get You is an act of gratitude and commemoration to those who worked, prayed, and sacrificed to create a beautiful community. May Allah be pleased with them all.
Follow the project on YouTube and Instagram for updates about the film’s release and screenings.
notes.
[1] Sufism is a dimension of Islamic learning focused on tazkiyat an-nafs (purification of the soul). For more on Sufism, see William Chittick’s Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld Publications, 2000).
[2] “Déclaration Générale / General Declaration.” 1974. Présence Africaine, no. pp. 91, 204–19; Rahman, Samiha. “The Prophetic and the Political: Islam, Sufism, and Revolutionary Pan-Africanism.” In Black Muslim Freedom Dreams, pp. 33–52. NYU Press, 2026.
[3] Diouf, Sylviane A. 1998. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. NYU Press; Gomez, Michael. 1994. “Muslims in Early America.” The Journal of Southern History 60 (4): 671.
[4] Austin, Allan. 1984. African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. Routledge; Lo, Mbaye, and Carl W. Ernst. I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and slavery in Omar ibn Said's America. UNC Press, 2023.
further reading.
Samiha Rahman, Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care, New York: New York University Press, 2026.
Zachary Valentine Wright. Living Knowledge in West African Islam: The Sufi Community of Ibrahim Niasse, Leiden: Brill, 2015.
cite this project.
Projects featured on this site are the intellectual property of the Fellows who created them and may not be reproduced without their permission.
Please cite the creator if you use their work in support of your own.
Citation: Rahman, Samiha. "I Came to Get You." SPIRIT HOUSE: A Crossroads Project. July 2026. Date Accessed. https://www.crossroads-spirithouse.org/rahman.
Dr. Samiha Rahman is Assistant Professor of Human Development at California State University Long Beach. She holds a Ph.D. in Africana Studies and Education from the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship examines how young people and their families engage race, religion, and education to achieve justice and liberation. Her research has garnered supported from the Mellon Foundation, the Institute of Citizens and Scholars, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Spencer Foundation, the National Academy of Education, and the Fulbright-Hayes. She is currently finishing her first book, Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Diasporic Exchange, and Collective Care, which tells the stories of a multi-generational community of Black Muslims in the Tijani Sufi tariqa who live, learn, and strive for liberation between the U.S. and Senegal. Her scholarship has been published in Africa, The Journal of Negro Education, and Curriculum Inquiry, among others.
_edited.jpg)