Islam has a long history in Africa. According to Arab tradition, the religion first arrived in Northern Africa when Muslims fled persecution in Arabian Peninsula. Scholars believe it took centuries for Islam to take root in the region, but it gives an example of how adaptive Islam can be.
Though Islam’s expansion in North Africa was gradual, it was even slower in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s not the only difference. Sub-Saharan Muslims tended to keep their traditional culture, incorporating Islam into their practices.
This kind of synthesis is not uncommon for upcoming religions, as Indiana University’s John Hanson explains, “Any religion that is going to become a world religion is going to have this kind of accommodation.” When Christianity spread over the African continent it went through a similar transformation process.
The Mind Of The Reformer
Elites were the earliest adopters of Islam in the sub-Saharan countries, long before the population’s vast majority, farmers and herders, got in touch with the religion. It was most likely from the elites’ interaction with merchants who came across the Sahara desert to the capital cities, explains Hanson. “Elites had more obvious contact with the merchants than the rest of the population.” They most likely did not only trade goods but religious ideas as well.
The alignment of Islam and its penetration by local traditions perhaps demanded the open-mindedness towards reform by the religious leaders. “There is an important tradition within Muslim heritage of reform,” explains Hanson. There is the sense within the Muslim faith that every hundred years there are reformers that come to bring the faith into close alignment with God’s or the prophet Muhammad’s probable will. But who knows what that looks like exactly? “I would agree that there are variations of what it means to be a reformer,” Hanson says, admitting, “Reform is in the mind of the reformer.”
Understanding From Outside
Hanson mentions the Ahmadiyya movement. It has its origins in South Asia and has expanded throughout the world. “Their understanding of reform emphasizes certain aspects of a progressive engagement with the western tradition,” Hanson explains. But he is aware that to conservatives in the Muslim world this would go too far. In his opinion it should be left to the Muslims to define for themselves what reform is. After that, he says, “we can dispassionately disagree or understand that this is a certain kind of reform.”
Another common mistake is the misleading assumption that Islam in general could be put on a level with radicalization. “I am reluctant to say that there are radicals all over Sub-Saharan Africa,” states Hanson. He does not deny that parts of the Islamic movement were and still are allied with groups like al Qaeda. “I think that there are some people who are making a radical claim but often times they tend to be a very small group,” he says. “Often looking in from the outside we can see radicals when they really are not radicals.”