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Week Seven Notes: Religion, Politics, and Society
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Reading Notes
Reading One: Religion
SOURCE: Heather Deegan, Africa Today: Culture, Economics, Religion, Security (Routledge, 2009),
chapter 2 “Religion”.
SUMMARY: Summarizes 40 pages to ~11. NOT MY BEST SUMMARY. EXAM RELEVANCE → tbh
large sections of these readings do not seem relevant, or important exam content and were v boring to read.
Overview of this chapter
A. This chapter considers these two monotheistic religions → Christianity and Islam, and the way
in which they have interacted with the continent.
B. A case study focuses on the conflict between Muslim and Christian groups in Kano, northern
Nigeria, based on research in the area,
C. A separate analysis on Islam, law, and society aims to provide a preliminary understanding of
Islam
Islam and Christianity
The origins of present-day African-Arab relations are rooted in
the early history of mankind and civilization.
Arabs had settled in East and Northeast Africa, establishing strong
trading links with Yemen and Oman, before the emergence of
Islam as a religion.
The Islamic presence in North Africa appeared when the Arab
empire extended its conquests in AD 656
Exposure to Islam varied according to region and accessibility to
trade routes, with early Muslim settlements in East Africa
developing into small dynasties along the coast.
The connection between Middle Eastern Arabs and indigenous
Africans has been seen as not entirely harmonious: the Arabs
infiltrated Africa, enslaved its peoples and imposed Islam on them.
- These views, however, have been refuted by others who seek to establish a much closer linkage
between Arabs and Africans ; not just the North nor linguistically speaking.
Doubts on the existence of wider commonalities between Africans and Arabs:
● One view: there is a separate identity, it is not accurate to view African cultures as identical with
Arab culture.
● Major point of contact in the evolution of the African Islamic heritage were ‘trade, war, and
proselytism’ Proselytism: policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs
● Nigerians critical of “the alien influences via Muslim trans-Saharan trade” which left “indelible
marks on local transitions and cultures” and tried to “make Nigerians Black Arabs”.
○ 19th cen. trans-Saharan influences successfully conquered and displaced kings of
Hausaland and in their places had set up a theocratic empire.
● Studies suggest that the people of Burundi participated in a regional trade system that was much
older and broader in scale than was previously thought and such practices were well established
before the arrival of the Arabs.
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○ When the Arab arrived their trading practices were superimposed on existing
procedures.
○ Sometimes traders complemented each other, sometimes competed.
■ I.e the garment trade, to the disadvantage of the indigenous Burundians
The connection between Islam and Africa raises interesting points and poses difficult questions.
1. Islam challenges the pan-African view of a secular, politically unified Africa forged in the
post-independence era
2. Undermines the Afrocentrist school of thought, which asserts a Black cultural identity and history
not associated with either the West or indeed Islam
3. Attacks the political/economic imperatives of African development rooted in Marxist tradition
Certainly, Africa's history is complex, multi-dimensional, and cannot be under narrow interpretation
- The view that accuses European self-glorification and colonialism attempts to sever the links
between Arabs and Africans by all means necessary.
- Ie. Portuguese in the 15th cen → comparison between the Portuguese settlements on the west
coast, and those of the Arab traders on the east coast whereby towns and intermarriages occurred.
Regions of the continents all experienced a range of influences.
- The colonial experience was carried out through policies and practices of many European powers
with different approaches to gov and administration, missionaries each represented various
denominations, Catholic, methodist, …
Christianity was introduced at Benin in Nigeria in the 15th cen by a Portuguese roman catholic priest
who accompanies traders and officials. Several churches were built to serve the Portuguese community
and a small number of African converts.
● When the Portuguese withdrew the influence of the Catholic missionaries waned.
● Some Nigerians regarded Christian missions in much the same way they viewed Islam → alien
forces set to transform Nigerians into Black Europeans.
The Kingdom of Kongo became a Christian kingdom in the 1490s still by the beginning of the 19th cen,
few Africans were practicing Christians apart from Ethiopians, Coptic Egyptians, and people living in the
remnants of the Kongolese Empire.
During 1800s, missionary work increased significantly.
Two factors were significant:
➔ The abolition of slave-owning (1807)
➔ The abolition of slave trading (1834)
● Outlawing the slave trader + conversion of freed slaves were significant factors as some early
protestant missionaries were former slaves who had been liberated from slaving ships along the
west coast of Africa.
● 1840s: a resurgence of Catholic activity → missionary groups of priests and sisters were
spreading the faith.
● Played a major part in establishing the Church in Africa
First half of the 10th cen saw an increased growth of Christianity in Africa outstripping Isalm.
● To change in the latter part of the cen
● # of Christians increased from ~10million in 1900 to > 250 million in the early 2000s
● African Muslims 34million in 1900 to 300 million by 2000
● The political scramble for Africa was echoed in the Catholic Church
● Education was key for the success of Christian missions.
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○ Missionaries used Africans need of material as well as spiritual assistance.
○ With colonialism literacy, education, and reading the bible → social, political, and
economic importance.
● The Annual Reports of the Society of African Missions during the 1950s pinpoint three
fundamental reasons why children were increasingly being sent to school instead of primarily
working on farms:
1. Children sent to school took up jobs and brought them money and a higher social status
2. Government offices and firms needed trained clerks and staff → required educated people
to speak, read, and write in English. Interpreter jobs.
3. A gov job created a sense of responsibility, respectability, and enhanced a person's
position in the home village.
● Many African Catholics were converted by Black African catechists (untrained and unordained
but able to preach the gospel) especially in Igboland, southern Nigeria.
● Ali Mazrui maintains that a large majority of the first generation of African leaders were educated
in mission schools.
The political institutions of colonialism and the structures of indirect rule were thoroughly secular in
that the ultimate source of legitimacy was not the church but the colonial authority.
● In northern Nigeria, for example, under the control of the British, missionaries of any persuasion
were not viewed in a favorable light - a man close to the poorer classes, was likely to be the
tribune of the oppressed.
● France cut diplomatic ties with the Vatican and ended all subsidies to missionaries in the colonies.
The missionaries were permitted to remain in the colonies and found their distance from the
colonial administration helpful.
Although the progress of Islam, tended to follow pre-existing trade routes sometimes conversions were
made via jihad (holy war).
There are various ‘versions’ of Islam within Africa:
1. Islam in the emirates of northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon and the sheikdoms of northern
Chad.
2. Sufi brotherhoods in West and East Africa: Senegal, The Gambia, Niger, Mali, Guinea, Kenya
and Tanzania.
3. Muslims fragmented by ethnic and regional concerns, and politically marginalized: Ghana, Togo,
Benin and Côte d'Ivoire.
● Sufi orders have received considerable attention since the 1960s with a view developing that
they are the ‘most important form for the practice of Islam in Africa’
● However, the diversity of historically specific Islamic discourses and practices within Muslim
societies in sub-Saharan Africa' should not be overlooked.
Independence
● The difficulties were essentially twofold: how to construct national unity and thus integrate
peoples within a sovereign state, whilst simultaneously undermining ethnic and religious
divisions.
● Some efforts aimed to be understaning of such divisions: Nkrumah of Ghana (CPP) “in our
country with its tradition of religious tolerance and respect for all faiths, it is highly undesirable
that a religious association or denomination should take on itself the character of a political party”
● The situation in northern Nigeria, home to the Hausas and Fulanis, was rather different. These
peoples were judged to be anti-western and ‘extremely fanatical about Islamism’
○ Certainly, the concept of nation-state building through a national consensus was not the
priority of the Northern People’s Congress, who spoke of ‘One North, One people’
