Black Muslim Psychology Conference [BMPC]
About
BMPC2026
December 17–19, 2026
Dakar + Gorée Island, Senegal
The 2026 Black Muslim Psychology Conference [BMPC2026] is a milestone gathering rooted in history, faith, memory, healing, and the Black Atlantic. Guided by the theme Rasikh: What We Carry Forward, BMPC2026 invites scholars, clinicians, faith leaders, artists, organizers, educators, cultural workers, and community practitioners to ask: What has sustained us across generations of rupture, and what wisdom are we responsible for carrying forward?
Conference Pillars: Remembrance, Reconnection, Reclamation
The conference is grounded in the three pillars of the Omar ibn Said Institute: Remembrance, Reconnection, and Reclamation. Through these pillars, BMPC2026 explores how Black Muslim wellness on both sides of the Atlantic is shaped by collective history, spiritual inheritance, cultural disruption, and systems of racialized violence. BMPC2026 is also guided by the SelebeYoon paradigm, a Black Muslim healing-centered framework developed by MWF and rooted in the Wolof concept of the crossroads. SelebeYoon offers BMPC2026 both a conceptual framework and practical guide, supporting a conference experience that is intellectually rigorous, spiritually grounded, emotionally honest, and relationally responsible.
Remembrance
Remembrance is the work of telling the truth about the past and requires us to recover memory, preserve lineage, and acknowledge the psychological, spiritual, and structural weight of history. In this context, remembrance is a healing practice, a moral obligation, and a form of historical repair. Through remembrance, we ask: What histories must be named? What silences must be confronted? What have Black Muslims carried—across oceans, across time, and across generations?
Reconnection
Reconnection is the work of restoring what has been fractured. It invites us to rebuild relationships across families, communities, geographies, identities, disciplines, and spiritual traditions. It recognizes that healing is not only individual, but relational and communal. Through reconnection, we ask: What has been separated, and how do we return to one another with care? What does belonging mean across difference and distance? How do we cultivate relationships rooted in humility, reciprocity, and mutual recognition?
Reclamation
Reclamation is the work of defining and building on our own terms. It centers narrative sovereignty, institutional imagination, cultural continuity, and future-building. Reclamation asks us to move beyond survival toward the creation of frameworks, practices, archives, institutions, and relationships that reflect our dignity and responsibility. Through reclamation, we ask: What must we build so future generations inherit more than survival? What knowledge, practices, and commitments must be carried forward? What does thriving look like when Black Muslim communities define wellness for themselves?
A Black Muslim Atlantic Gathering
BMPC2026 gathers in Dakar and on Gorée Island because Black Muslim psychology cannot be fully understood apart from the longer histories of the Black Atlantic. This conference asks how Black Muslim wellness is shaped not only by contemporary social conditions, but also by ancestral memory, forced displacement, spiritual survival, archival erasure, and the ongoing work of return. Our goals include the following commitments:
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Center Black Muslim Wellness: Advance Black Muslim Psychology as a necessary field of study, practice, and community transformation.
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Deepen Historical Memory: Situate Black Muslim wellness within histories of enslavement, migration, faith, survival, resistance, rupture, and return.
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Build Transatlantic Relationship: Create meaningful dialogue between U.S.-based Black Muslims and Senegalese / West African collaborators across scholarship, culture, faith, healing, language, and public memory.
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Practice Healing-Centered Inquiry: Use the SelebeYoon paradigm to guide a gathering that is intellectually rigorous, spiritually grounded, emotionally honest, and relationally responsible.
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Carry the Work Forward: Identify post-conference pathways for public scholarship, archives, oral history, collaborative research, creative work, resource development, and future convenings.
Learn more about the vision, theme and purpose of this year's conference below.
Prepare
for the Journey
BMPC2026: Rasikh — What We Carry Forward
December 17–19, 2026
Dakar + Gorée Island, Senegal
BMPC2026 is an invitation to remember truthfully, reconnect responsibly, and reclaim futures rooted in dignity, faith, healing, and collective care. As we gather in Dakar and on Gorée Island, we do not come seeking symbolic return alone. We come to honor memory, build relationship, and deepen our shared responsibility to the past, present, and future of Black Muslim life.
