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He left the morning after Fadjri (Dawn), especially after the "night has passed". Thus, Sidy Lamine respected his oath to the end. All his life has been a struggle for the night of ignorance and intolerance to pass, so that at last the dawn of freedom and knowledge awakens. Senegal owes a lot to Sidy Lamine Niasse, who will have a place of choice on the languages of posterity. He has fulfilled his oath. In the 70s, armed with his own will, he went on a crusade for freedom of the press. Today, it has become a reality. In the 90s, the radio Walf Fm where we made our first steps with Mamoudou Ibra Kane, Alassane Samba Diop, under the wing of Grand Less, allowed our country to pass from the "democracy of the literati" to a democracy global, with the key, the first political alternation. Walf was a great school that produced so many great journalists, thanks to the intellectual generosity of Sidy and especially this great freedom that allowed talents to hatch, because the "Mullah" as it was called, was also a talent detector.
Sidy Lamine was an intellectual but not just a "thinker". By his physical courage and his temerity, he opened several breaches and dropped several walls in our long march towards more freedom and democracy. In the 90s, Sidy Lamine was like a Jehovah witness saying to the Senegalese, "Wake up", facing the shambles of what was then the case Sheikhou Sharifou. This is how he asked me to follow in the footsteps of the "child prodigy", which turned out to be a religious sham and a real scam. I left in the footsteps of Sharifou in Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar in Tanzania, to investigate and finish, deconstruct a scam. The investigation marked the "end of the night," the title of Sidy Lamine's book on the subject.
Sidy Lamine was an eclectic intellectual. How many times have I spent hours in his office, revisiting with him Islamic thought, Greek antiquity, the Romans, the German thinkers he adored, not to mention contemporaries like Francis Fukuyama and "his end of the 'history', and Samuel Huntington and his 'Shock of Civilizations'. He has always done me the honor of having me read his manuscripts, the most important of which for him was undoubtedly the writings of his father. When the State of Senegal, for demagogic reasons, banned the book of the Tunisian Hela Ouardi, The last days of the Prophet (Psl), Sidy Lamine Niasse, by his intellectual courage and his religious legitimacy, saved the honor of intellectuals and the country by showing on TV that it was necessary to read the book and show the flaws and unmask the sponsors. By this gesture, he showed that one can not fight the pen by the sword or the prohibitions. At the time, I told him that he had behaved like Spinoza denouncing intolerance and ultimi barbari (the latest barbarians in date) in Amsterdam. This posture of intellectual courage and especially openness to the other was his conception of Islam symbolized by the fruitful dialogue he had on the radio with Abbé Jacques Seck in the late 90s. Sidy did not only been an "Arabian between press and power" but an intellectual in the full sense of the term, who has always been a bridge between the worlds of Hegel and Ibn Arabi, between the thought of Huntington and Ibn Taqmiya, between Persia and Arabia, between the banks of the Senegal River, between Al Ahzar and the Sorbonne.
Young journalist at Walf Fm, Sidy Lamine was my boss for two years, but remained a friend and brother forever. I was very touched when he sent me his son at the end of his studies in Paris, to ask me to advise him on his career. Same honor when he called from Paris to tell me that his son had just succeeded at the bar. I left Walf, but the fraternal ties with Sidy have been permanent. He told me of Walf's difficulties and I was always appreciative of his determination never to give up, which he explained in the verse "In reality God is with the enduring ones". I will never forget his words to my father's mortal prayer.
Sidy is gone, his ideas and writings remain; his immense work, his battles continue. "Life that resembles a dream is fleeting but glory is eternal." Sidy's glory will remain forever in our hearts and in the history of Senegal. Farewell dear Friend, dear Brother. May God wrap you with his mercy.
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