Bringing together cutting-edge research from a range of disciplines, this handbook argues that despite often being overlooked or treated as marginal, the study of Islam from an African context is integral to the broader Muslim world.
Challenging the portrayal of African Muslims as passive recipients of religious impetuses arriving from the outside, this book shows how the continent has been a site for the development of rich Islamic scholarship and religious discourses. Over the course of the book, the contributors reflect on:
- The history and infrastructure of Islam in Africa
- Politics and Islamic reform
- Gender, youth, and everyday life for African Muslims
- New technologies, media, and popular culture.
Written by leading scholars in the field, the contributions examine the connections between Islam and broader sociopolitical developments across the continent, demonstrating the important role of religion in the everyday lives of Africans.
This book is an important and timely contribution to a subject that is often diffusely studied, and will be of interest to researchers across religious studies, African studies, politics, and sociology.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Terje Østebø
Part I: Formation of Islam in Africa: Islamic Scholarship, Literature, and Sufism
Chapter 2: The "Traveling Scholar" in African Islamic Traditions: Local, Regional, and Global Worlds
Anne K. Bang
Chapter 3: An Overview of Islamic Literature in Africa: Local and Global Interactions
Scott Reese
Chapter 4: Pathways and Formations of ‘African Sufism’
Knut S. Vikør
Part II: Dynamics of Religious Infrastructure
Chapter 5: A Historiography of Sub-Saharan African Mosques: From Colonialism to Modernity
Cleo Cantone
Chapter 6: Sufi Shrines as Material Space
Eric Ross
Chapter 7: The Qur’an School and Trajectories of Islamic Education
Robert Launay
Part III: Islam and African Intersections
Chapter 8: Muslim Christian Relations in Africa: Tracing Transformations on the Ground and in a Growing Field of Study
Shobana Shankar
Chapter 9: Islam and the Question of Gender
Joseph Hill
Part IV: Islam, Politics, and Reform
Chapter 10: Islam and Politics in Africa: Politics Within and Without the State
Ahmed Ibrahim
Chapter 11: Jihadism in Africa
Alex Thurston
Chapter 12: African Salafism
Terje Østebø
Part V: Patterns of Islamic Reform in Africa
Chapter 13: Dynamics of Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa
Roman Loimeier
Chapter 14: Fayda-Tijaniyya and Islamic Reform in Twentieth and Twenty-first Africa
Ousman Murzik Kobo
Chapter 15: Reform in the Discourse of Islam and the Making of Muslim Subjects
Abdulkader Tayob
Part VI: Everyday Muslim Life – Practice of Piety and New Muslim Subjects
Chapter 16: People’s Quest for Well-Being: Tracing Islamic Healing Practices in Africa
Benedikt Pontzen
Chapter 17: Islam, Muslim Life-worlds, and Matters of the Everyday
Kjersti Larsen
Chapter 18: Muslim Youth and Lived Experiences of Islam
Louis Audet Gosselin
Part VII: New Technologies and New Connectiveness
Chapter 19: Popular Culture in Muslim Africa
Abdalla Uba Adamu
Chapter 20: Media, the Digital, and New Connections
Dorothea Schulz
Chapter 21: Beyond the Invisible Muslims Label: The Building of African Muslim Diasporic Communities in the West
Abdoulaye Kane
Biography
Terje Østebø is Chair of the Department of Religion and Professor of Religion at the University of Florida, USA. He has joint appointments in the Department of Religion and the Center for African Studies and is also Founding Director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Florida.
"The Routledge Handbook of Islam in Africa provides a fresh synthesis of a field that has grown rapidly over the past four decades. Assembling the insights from first-hand research by twenty leading academics from three continents, the expertise on display here will benefit students and scholars alike, not least through the division of the book into thematic chapters that, each in its own way, open up new windows on the Islamic experience in Africa."
Rüdiger Seesemann, Chair of Islamic Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany
"Featuring rich, well-researched contributions by leading scholars in the field, this handbook offers an excellent synthesis of Islam and Muslim societies in Africa. The essays challenge assumptions that Islam in Africa sits on the fringe of the Muslim world and provide much needed insights on Africa’s role in the production of Islam as a global religion. This will be a great resource for students and scholars alike."
Adeline Masquelier, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, USA