African History_Lecture 3_Islam

What are the different viewpoints on whether Islam is an African religion?

• Only religions originating from Africa can be labelled as African religions, indigenous religions are the only African religions

• Religions practiced in Africa are all African religions, half of African population practices Islam

Where is Islam practiced in Africa?

• Mainly in North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeriam, Morocco)

Where in Africa can we find as many Muslims as Christians?

• Nigeria

What role did Africa play in the emergence of Islam and what was the nature of the first encounter between Christianity and Islam in Africa?

• Arab Muslim converts fleeing persecution by non-Muslim Meccan elites in Arabia during the time of Prophet Mohammed (615-16) took refuge in the Christian Kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia) and their practice of Islam was tolerated

How did Islam spread through North Africa?

• Arab-Muslim forces conquered Egypt in 639 and brought it under Muslim dominion

• Arab-Muslim forces conquered Tunisia in 670 and Morocco in 711

• Migration and settlement of Arab muslims

What process were used during the Arab-Muslim conquest of North Africa?

• Islamization: Spread of islam

• Arabization: Spread of Arabic language and culture

How did trans-Saharan trade facilitate the spread of Islam through West Africa?

• Phase 1: Minority Islam = North African traders settling in West Africa

• Phase 2: Court Islam = Ruling classes in West Africa convert to Islam

• Phase 3: Majority Islam = Most people convert to Islam

Which state was a major centre of Islam in West Africa and why?

• Mali Kingdom’s Keita Dynasty between the 13th and 16th centuries

• Mansa Musa completed his pilgrimage to Mecca and brought back Arab and Berber muslims to serve in his administration

• Timbuktu became a city of Islamic scholarship

How was East Africa affected by Islam?

• Muslim traders settled in the Swahili Coast during the 8th century

• Ethiopian town Harar became the most important centre for trade and Islamic learning

• Most people living on the coast converted to Islam between 1200 and 1500

• East African coast was a muslim civilization by the 19th century

• Tanzanian archipelago Zanzibar was an Islamic center

• King of Buganda and group of wealthy muslims increased number of mosques

How did the islamization and arabization of East Africa affect languages spoken on the Swahili coast?

• Trade and Muslims marrying indigenous people helped develop Kiswahili as a trade language

• Islamic Swahili civilization had an indigenous basis, it wasn’t just assimilated into Arab culture

What are the different views about the problem of slavery in Islam?

• Slavery as a systemic institution as a part of Islamic theology

• Slavery as just an economic institution, rather than religious

How did Arabs view black people during their early conquests in Africa?

• Blacks seen as inferior

What are some sub-Saharan muslim communities?

• West Africa: Fulani, Hausa and Wolof

• East Africa: Swahili-speaking communities

Is Islam an African religion? Who were the three Africans that were arguably mentioned by Prophet Mohammed?

• Pre-Islamic African “sage” Luqman mentioned in the Qu’ran

• Muslims took refuge in the Kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia) before the beginning of the Islamic calendar in 622, King of Aksum was mentioned by Mohammed for the help he provided

• Muezzin Bilal was freed by Prophet when he was a slave to become the first Muezzin due to his powerful voice

Why was Muezzin Bilal a significant figure for African muslims?

• Spread the idea that black people lead humanity to God with their voices

Why is Islam stronger in West Africa then Eastern and Southern Africa?

• West African Islam became indigenized via African leadership earlier than Eastern Africa, where it was led by Arabs for a long time

What is an example of the Africanization of Islam?

• Spirit possession in Sudan and the Swahili coast

What is the difference between “African Islam” and “Islam in Africa”?

• “African Islam”: Syncretism, mixing African traditions with Islamic traditions (ex: integration of Sufism, Swahili Islam as local and traditional)

• “Islam in Africa”: Salafiyya-Wahabi (ex: Arab customs and traditions are prioritized over African ones, desires return to original interpretations of Islam by early practitioners)

How is the Africanization of Islam perceived by European and Mediterranean muslims?

• They think that Arab Islam is the rightful form of Islam

• They think that the “Africanization of Islam” is against the “Islamization of Africa”

What are counter arguments to the binary distinction between the “Africanization of Islam” and the “Islamization of Africa”?

• Critique of teleology: Islam doesn’t follow a linear path, there isn’t a single interpretation of Islam

• African Islam is glocal: Global Islamic identity is mixed within local expressions of it, local expressions do not come at the expense of a loss of the global identity

What is “black Islam”?

• idea that Black African Islam is different from Islam

• Used by French administrators in colonial governments who associated Islam with backwardness and primitiveness

• French administrators wanted to separate black Islam to deprive it of agency and a global significance

How do African muslims influence Islam and is Islam an African religion?

• African muslims are scholars and reformers

• Islam has remained within hybrid and syncretic practices since the end of the 18th century

Why have Islamic reform movements emerged in Africa?

• Modernity

• Globalization

What were Islamic reform movements in Africa like?

• Diverse (ex: Long tradition of movements in Senegal and Zanzibar, minimal reform in Ethiopia and Ivory Coast)

• Imitate Mohammed’s ideal practice “sunna”

• Tajdid and Islah used to return to fundementals

What is the message-human relationship model in Islamic reform movements?

• Existence of the message

• Implementation of the message

What are the two kinds of reform movements that Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced?

• Both message and human oriented during the pre-colonial era

• Ex: Jihad in Nigeria (declared jihad against Hausa states in 1804 due to their practice of traditional customs such as dancing at burial feasts) and Mahdi movement in Sudan (focus on charismatic leadership)

What are the different interpretations of Islam in Africa?

• Students of Arab Islamic Unis reject the magic of Sufi orders and witchcraft, divination and spirit possession, since the 1970s

What were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida’s Islamic modernism advocate for?

• Returning to Islamic fundementals while embracing scientific and technological progress at the same time

What is the major Wahabbist group in Africa and how does it practice Wahabbism?

• Return to fundementals of Islam, following the teachings of the Qu’ran as closely as possible

• Ex: Yan Izala in Nigeria

What is the Salafiyya reform movement in Africa?

• Flexible, progressive reform to balance Western science and technology with Islam

• Ex: Sheikh al-Amin’s reforms in Kenya in the late 19th century, argued that salvation can be found in real life as much as the after life

What is the most controversial Islamic reform group in Africa?

• Salafi-Jihad reform groups, militant Sufism

• Ex: Boko-Haram in North Africa

What did neo-reformist movements advocate for in 20th century Africa?

• Denounce Western secularism and materialism, rely solely on Islam

• Islam as timeless and rational

• Ex: Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (1929)

What was the intellectualist islamic reform movement in Ethiopia like?

• Muslim student movement beginning in the early 1990s

• Elite organization: Uni graduates and urban intellectuals

• Ideological attachement to Muslim Brotherhood, but advocated for ethnic plurality and supported Sufism

What do all Islamic reform movements have in common?

• Opposition against blind imitation of Western assimilation and modernization

• Living in a society organized by the teachings of the Qu’ran

• Islam marginalized because it has lost its original identity