During World War II, the Senussis provided support to the British Eighth Army in North Africa against Nazi and Fascist Italian forces.

Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi (1787–1859), the founder of the order,[1] was born in Algeria near Mostaganem and was named al-Senussi after a venerated Muslim teacher.

[3] On the death of ibn Idris, Senussi became head of one of the two branches into which the Qadiriyya divided, and in 1835 he founded his first monastery or Zawiya, at Abu Qubays near Mecca.

[1] In 1890, the Ansar forces of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi advancing from Darfur were stopped on the frontier of the Wadai Empire, Sultan Yusuf proving firm in his adherence to the Senussi teachings.

[1] This event showed the sheik the possibility of danger and led him to move his headquarters to Jof in the oases of Kufra in 1894, a place sufficiently remote to secure him from a sudden attack.

[1] However, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Mohammed al-Mahdi al Senussi twice, once to Jaghbub in 1886 and once to Kufra in 1895.

[1] The new head of the Senussi maintained the friendly relations of his predecessors with Sultan Dud Murra of Wadai,[1] governing the order as regent for his young cousin, Muhammad Idris II, the future King Idris of Libya, who signed the 1917 Treaty of Acroma that ceded control of Libya from the Kingdom of Italy[8] and was later recognized by them as Emir of Cyrenaica[9] on October 25, 1920.

The Senussi, encouraged by the German and Ottoman Empires, played a minor part in the World War I, during the Senussi campaign, utilising guerrilla warfare against the Italian colonization of Libya and the British in Egypt from November 1915 until February 1917, led by Sayyid Ahmed, and in the Sudan from March to December 1916, led by Ali Dinar, the Sultan of Darfur.

In 1922, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini launched his infamous Riconquista of Libya — the Roman Empire having done the original conquering 2000 years before.

[17] Idris established a tacit alliance with the British, which led to two agreements with the Italian rulers, one of which brought most of inland Cyrenaica under the de facto control of the Senussis.

[18] The resulting Accord of al-Rajma, consolidated through further negotiations with the Italians, earned Idris the title of Emir of Cyrenaica, albeit new tensions which compromised that delicate balance emerged shortly after.

During the Second World War, Senussi groups led by Idris formally allied themselves with the British Eighth Army in North Africa against the German and Italian forces.

As historian Ali Abdullah Ahmida remarked, the Senussi order was able to transcend "ethnic and local tribal identification", and therefore had a unifying influence on the Libyans fighting the Italian occupiers.

A well-known hero of the Libyan resistance and an ally of Idris, Omar Mukhtar, was a prominent member of the Senussi order and a Sufi teacher whom the Italians executed in 1931.

"[22] Resistance towards Idris' rule began to build in 1965 due to a combination of factors: the discovery of oil in the region, government corruption and ineptness, and Arab nationalism.

In May 2013, Idris and Omar Mukhtar were commemorated for their role as Senussi leaders and key players in Libya's independence in a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the African Union in Addis Ababa.

[29] Ironically, Omar Mukhtar became one of Gaddafi's most inspiring figures, whose speeches he frequently quoted, and whose image he often exhibited in official occasions.

[33][verification needed] The Sufi heritage and spirit remains prominent today, and its sentiment and symbols have inspired many during the 2011 Libyan revolution.

The image of Omar Mukhtar and his popular quote "We win or we die" resonated in Tripoli and in the country as Libyans rose up to oust Gaddafi.

[34] Stephen Schwarz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, reflected on the "Sufi foundation" of Libya's revolution in his August 2011 piece for the Huffington Post.

[35] Schwarz observed that Libya continued to stand "as one of the distinguished centers of a Sufism opposed both to unquestioning acceptance of Islamic law and to scriptural absolutism, and dedicated to freedom and progress."

The sustained attacks were consistently denounced by Sufi scholars as well as by the League of Libyan Ulema, a group of leading Libyan religious scholars, calling the population to protect the religious and historical sites by force and urging the authorities to intervene in order to avoid further escalations of violence and new attacks by Salafi groups.