The traditional press conference which, each year, augurs the organizational and communication system that the Organizing Committee and the Zawiya Tijaniyya Cell share with everyone, in the name and under the authority of the General Khalifa of Tidianes, was the occasion to deliver the message of Serigne Babacar SY Mansour, intended for the Muslim community of Senegal, to the disciples of the Tijaniyya, from here and elsewhere, to the highest authorities of the State of Senegal.

For this reason, and faithful to the heritage of which he is the most irreducible guarantor and the continuator of the legacy transmitted by his illustrious predecessors, the Caliph, through the voice of Serigne Habib Sy Mansour, Sérigne Moustapha Sy Al Amine, moral leader of Coskas, and the Coordinator of the communication cell, Serigne Abdoul Hamid Sy Al Amine, Coordinator of the Zawiya Tijaniyya cell (Cezat), instructed the organizing committee to choose as the theme of this edition: "Celebrating the Mawlid for a more cohesive society." The choice of this theme, according to its representatives, is dictated by the alarming observation of a "fractured human society, where living together and the peaceful coexistence of communities have become ways of the cross."

Everywhere, the Caliph is offended, from Gaza to Jerusalem, from Moscow to kyiv, from Islamabad to Bombay, in Sudan, in the DRC, "men and women sharing the same origins and the same values and sometimes the same spaces grapple or tear each other apart, ignoring the ocean of what unites them to see only the small vein, sometimes artificial, which separates them. At the same time trampling underfoot the sacrosanct principles of human fraternity." And yet, the marabout reminds us, the Koran exhorts us to go beyond our differences and to learn from one another.

In our country, the Caliph of the Tidianes bitterly notes, "the situation, even if it is not more catastrophic than elsewhere, is not more brilliant. Intolerance, insults and invectives, animosity and violence are becoming commonplace. The fundamental values that have always been our pride have become anachronisms: the famous "kersa", the "wek", kinship, mutual respect have disappeared from our social relations." He considers that "the advent of social networks - we should have called them: "anti-social networks" - which exploit the bad fortune of the later generations lost in the limbo of despair, because poorly guided, poorly educated, morally and spiritually ill-equipped to face the vicissitudes of our troubled times, has ended up transforming our old good will to live together into an inextricable instinct for revenge and humiliation of one's opposite."

How, the religious leader asks, can we save this generation if not by attracting them to the teachings of the Prophet-guide (Peace and salvation be upon him), bringing them back to the source, rooting them in the founding values and virtues of true humanity as he embodied it and will continue to embody it until the end of time. The General Caliph of Tidianes, Serigne Babacar Sy Mansour, according to Abdoul Hamid SY, President of the Zawiya Tijaniyya Cell, President of the Communication Commission of Coskas, wants to place this current edition of the Mawlid which coincides with the 1500th ^anniversary of the Best of men, Seyyiduna Muhammad (PSL) under the seal of social cohesion and the rediscovered unity of the Senegalese nation.

He thus calls for the benevolence, vigilance and exhortation of religious leaders towards their faithful. He calls for the sense of responsibility and temperance of politicians to further pacify the political field. He calls for the reconciliation of the hearts and minds of citizens, of whatever persuasion they may be, to make this country what it should never have ceased to be: a tolerant nation resolutely committed to the unity of all its sons and daughters to build a better future, by resolutely clinging to the rope of God.

But, notes the son of Al Amine, it is also important for us to focus on the first assertion of this theme: "how should we celebrate the Mawlid?" Should we celebrate it by summoning everything abhorred by the one through whom this commemoration became an institution here in Senegal, Mawlana Cheikh Al'Hadji Malick Sy who in one of his famous verses, warns against the pitfalls of blame in the commemoration of the Nativity of the Prophet.

The marabouts of Tivaouane remind us that there is indeed a way to reproduce the prophetic model. And it is towards this, they say, that Sérigne Babacar Sy Mansour calls all the faithful who will head to Tivaouane in the coming days: by purifying their intentions, by returning to God and by multiplying acts of worship and prayers for the Prophet (PBUH). According to them, coming to Tivaouane for this occasion is an act of pilgrimage. Nothing should be required that takes us away from the path of grace, the one we take to hope for his intercession: therefore no excess, no extravagance, no worldliness, no parade of goods. None of this resembles the Prophet PBUH, nothing of this resembles Mawlaya Cheikh Al Hadj Malick.

 

A way for the capital of Tidianiyya to say that it is around the reproduction of the prophetic model that the entire scientific and cultural programming of the Mawlid will be articulated, thus following the teachings of Sheikh Àl Hadj Malick Sy but also of his muqaddams, accomplished models of wisdom and holiness, all cut in the cord and intellectual rigor of his popular university, his mythical seminary of Njarndé, which saw hundreds of students pass through for seven years (from 1895 to 1902) driven by the sole quest for knowledge, the desire for a healthy spiritual orientation and the will for social transformation through shared work (jang-julli bay: ja-ju-ba).