Hidden in the Household: Gender and Class in the Study of Islam in Africa (original) (raw)

The Past and Present of African Islam

Religion Compass, 2008

Among Muslims across the African continent, there is a noticeable turn towards greater compliance with globalizing norms of Islamic behaviour. Beginning from this widespread observation, this article interrogates the changes that lie concealed under the veil of homogeneity. It identifies a complex pattern of identity formation and power politics, cultural conservativism, marginalized syncretism and symbolic exchange. The emergence of a public sphere has propelled the production of Muslim identity formation in the service of established elites and youth searching for an authentic approach towards Islam. But a turn to Islam also takes a conservative and isolationist turn that thrives in the context of the failure of modern schooling and economy, and provides a haven of dignified marginalization around the great cultures of the past. A syncretist approach to Islam and African cultures is pushed to the background. But there is reason to believe that such an approach thrives on the margins of the society. A global politics of identity and globalization provide the context for a continued exchange of Islamic symbols among Africans in general. The politics of resistance is accompanied by the politics of identity and global conflicts.

Islam in Africa/Africans and Islam, Journal of African History v. 55 no.1

This essay discusses some of the recent trends in the scholarship on Islam and Africa that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the historical relationship between African Muslims and the global ecumene of believers. Rather than looking at the faith as an insular African phenomenon, this piece examines the links between Africans and the wider community of believers across space and time. Such an approach has important ramifications for our understanding of the dynamics of Islam. However, it also challenges many of the assumptions underpinning the geographic area studies paradigm that has dominated the academy since the Second World War. This essay suggests the adoption of a more fluid approach to scholarly inquiry that reimagines our largely continental attachment to regions in favor of a more intellectually agile methodology where the scope of inquiry is determined less by geographic boundaries and more by the questions we seek to answer.

Introduction: Islam and Muslim Life in West Africa – Practices, Trajectories and Influences

De Gruyter eBooks, 2022

Islam has become one of the main themes of research in African studies in the last two decades. In academic engagement with West Africa, in particular, only a few topics have attracted more interest and contributions. Consequently, the literature has grown diverse, multidisciplinary and engaging, while examining topics such as pietism, gender relations, authority, activism and, increasingly, violence and security. On the ground, Islam is highly visible in the media and at the centre of public life because of so-called jihadi attacks on state institutions, widespread religious entrepreneurship, the emergence of new authoritative figures and a dynamic challenge to traditional power structures that shape the experiences of being Muslim. What can we learn from these developments? What dynamics do they draw attention to? What new and local research perspectives are they inspiring? What do these perspectives add? This volume is informed by these questions and adds to a history of academic engagement with Islam in West Africa. Inspired by a locally framed agenda, it offers the floor to scholars from the region, providing them with visibility and urging them to elaborate on their insights. As the initiators of major political entities (e.g. Ghana, Mali, Macina, Songhay, Sokoto), Muslim communities in West Africa have been shaped by their encounters with European imperialism, which organized their lands into possessions, protectorates, territories and then colonies. Imperialism was a process of social subjugation that led to the establishment of the modern state: an institution that subordinated political logic to its regulatory power. Prior to European imperialism, however, Muslim traders and scholars developed ties and connections across and beyond West Africa, illustrating the fact that Muslims have regularly engaged in educational networks, economic exchanges and cooperation beyond the confines of their polities. While historic ties with the Maghreb, Egypt and the Hijaz contributed to the making of Muslim West Africa, connections with modern

Islam and Traditions in Africa: Friends or Foes

Abibisem: Journal of African Culture and Civilization, 2015

This paper examines the interplay of Islam and traditional African ideas, institutions and cultural practices. It reviews some cultural aspects of Islam and African traditions aiming to find-out how African cultural, i.e. religious, political, social and even linguistic values have either been accommodated by or have accommodated Islam. The framework involves the theories of inculturation, acculturation and enculturation. The method used was a critical analysis of some values of Africans and Muslims. Islam has accommodated and has been accommodated by some African traditions. Although, the two traditions have had some frictions such as the Muslim jihad which took away political power from some of the indigenous people, yet, they have generally coexisted peacefully as some African chiefs either became Muslims or African Muslims have become chiefs and sometimes even made Islam a state religion. The paper, therefore, concludes that Islam and African traditions have been friends and not foes.

Islam (Oxford handbook of Modern African History)

The chapter delves into the plural ways in which colonial encounters transformed the course of Islam and Muslim societies both north and south of the Sahara. Though it focuses specifically on the imperial age set forth by the French conquest of Algiers in 1830, it also favours a long duration approach — making incursions into both pre- and post-colonial periods — to better delineate the dialectic of continuity and change brought about by the colonial situation. The chapter analyses the changing perceptions and policies that the various colonial powers, most importantly the French and the British, developed vis-à-vis Islam and Muslims, and how colonial actors and Muslim leaders eventually worked out subtle patterns of accommodation. But it calls for even more attention to how Islamic thought and Muslim societies were transformed from within in the course of the twentieth century, with emphasis on Sufism, Salafism, the challenge of Islam vs. Western modernity, and the colonial phenomenon of conversion to Islam. The chapter combines historiography, historical analysis, and an Islamic-studies approach to present key themes and debates of relevance to those subjects.

Islam in Africa/Africans and Islam

The Journal of African History, 2014

This essay discusses some of the recent trends in the scholarship on Islam and Africa that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the historical relationship between African Muslims and the globalecumeneof believers. Rather than looking at the faith as an insular African phenomenon, this piece examines the links between Africans and the wider community of believers across space and time. Such an approach has important ramifications for our understanding of the dynamics of Islam. However, it also challenges many of the assumptions underpinning the geographic area studies paradigm that has dominated the academy since the Second World War. This essay suggests the adoption of a more fluid approach to scholarly inquiry that reimagines our largely continental attachment to regions in favor of a more intellectually agile methodology where the scope of inquiry is determined less by geographic boundaries and more by the questions we seek to answer.

The African Roots and Transnational Nature of Islam

Journal of Islamic Studies and Culture, 2015

Most works dealing with Islam and Africa trace the roots of their connection to the first Hijra when two groups totaling more than 100 Muslims fled persecution in Mecca and arrived in the Kingdom of Axiom (modern-day Ethiopia) in 614 and 615 AD, respectively. A few works would begin with the story of Bilal ibn Rabah or Bilal al-Habashi, the former enslaved Ethiopian born in Mecca during the late 6 th Century (sometime between 578 and 583 AD) and chosen by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as the first Muezzin (High Priest, or Caller of the Faithful to prayer) of the Islamic faith. More recent sources would add the fact that the African/Black Saudi Arabian Sheikh Adil Kalbani is now the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca. This chronology misses the African roots of Islam: i.e. the story of the Egyptian Hagar or Hājar (in Arabic), the second wife of Abraham or Ibrahim (in Arabic). It also misses the fact that Luqman The Wise, who wrote the 31 st Sura of the Qur'an, was an African. Today, Islam is practiced everywhere and has emerged as the fastest growing din (meaning in Arabic "way of life," as Islam is more than just a religion) in the world. The African flavor to Islamic practices is evident in the Americas, the Caribbean, and many European countries with significant concentrations of African Muslims. Using Transnational Theory, this paper analyzes the challenges African-centered Muslims face in these majority-Christian states in terms of the concept of the sovereign state and the difficulties that this poses. Thus, the following aspects are examined: (a) defining new Africancentered Muslim actors, (b) modes of change African-centered Muslims encounter, (c) factors impacting success of African-centered Muslims, and (d) challenges for the role of the state in dealing with African-centered Muslims. Before doing all this, however, it makes sense to begin with a brief discussion of Transnational Theory, with its attendant concept transnationalism, and Africancentrism for the theoretical grounding of this essay. As I state in my essay titled "A Time Series Analysis of the African Growth and Opportunity Act: Testing the Efficacy of Transnationalism" (Bangura, 2009), transnationalism is defined as the heightened interconnectivity between people around the world and the loosening of boundaries between countries. The concept of transnationalism is credited to Randolph Bourne, an early 20 th Century writer, who used it to describe a new way of thinking about intercultural relationships. Scholars of transnationalism seek to show how the flow of people, ideas, and goods between regions has increased the relevance of globalization. They argue that it makes no sense to link specific nation state boundaries with, for instance, migratory labor forces, transnational corporations, international