DATE=2/23/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=AFRICA /ISLAM / WEST
NUMBER=5-45500
BYLINE=WILLIAM EAGLE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
NOT VOICED:
[Editors' note: please see related items: Africa /
Islam (5-45215); Africa/Christianity (5-45193); Africa
/ Mainstream Churches (5-45215)]
INTRO: In sub-Saharan Africa, Islam has had a long
and sometimes ambiguous relationship with the Western
world. Some Muslims have adapted to political systems
inherited from colonialism, while others fight to
establish a new order separate from the colonial
legacy. Either way, Western values remain a center of
debate in Africa. /// OPT /// This week violence
broke out in northern Nigeria over the question of
whether the Kaduna state government should apply
secular law or Islamic law to criminal matters. ///
END OPT ///
From Washington, William Eagle takes a look at the
relationship in sub-Saharan Africa between Western
ideals and Islamic values.
TEXT: The term "cooperation" - or at least "peaceful
co-existence" - might describe the relationship
between the West and Islam in colonial Africa.
For the British, it was less costly to cooperate with
the leaders of Muslim communities than it was to crush
them. As a result, the British kept Christian
missionaries out of much of northern Nigeria - which
is still primarily Muslim. /// OPT /// Even today
many see the north as generally not supporting
Western political values, like freedom of the press
and the separation of church and state. /// END OPT
/// And in Sudan, Great Britain left a country divided
between the largely Muslim and Arab-influenced north
and the Christian and traditional religions of the
south.
[Mr.] Lamin Sanneh [pron. la-MEEN SAH-neh] is
professor of religion at Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut.
/// SANNEH ACT ///
In northern Nigeria, the colonial government had
a deliberate policy of encouraging Islamic
institutions. They created schools in Katsina
for the Muslim elites [that] were closed to non-
Muslims. In Kano, they created a school of
Arabic studies to teach Islamic law and allowed
Muslim magistrates to preside over Muslim
marriages, property, inheritance and divorce.
So there was a deliberate policy on the part of
the colonial administration to cooperate with
the Muslim elites and to defend Islam against
encroachment from Christian missions. And most
of these schools were reserved for Muslim
elites. I went to one of these schools created
by the colonial administration in the Gambia.
/// END ACT ///
/// OPT /// Professor Sanneh recalls one colonial
administrator saying that Britain had more to gain
from supporting Islam than Christian mission schools.
He said Christian schools gave Africans the idea that
they could become the equals of white people.
/// OPT: SANNEH ACT ///
In his view, Christianity was being propagated
in the language and culture of the white man: so
Africans who did well by Christianity would see
no reason why they should accept a subordinate
role under white rule. Islam, on the other
hand, by-passed that issue altogether. It has a
[sacred] language of Arabic - so Islam [already]
has an identity - this is what [this particular
administrator] believed. The emirs of northern
Nigeria could relate very well to the colonial
administrators because they saw them as their
equals - and [so the British administrators]
would take the side of the emirs against the
vast non-Muslim African populations of
[northern] Nigeria.
/// END SANNEH ACT /// /// END OPT ///
/// OPT /// Scholars say Islam in Africa may have even
spread under Western colonialism - although that was
not the plan of the colonial powers.
John Hanson is a historian and director of African
studies at Indiana University at Bloomington. He says
colonization led to economic changes that brought
Africans into greater contact with Islam.
/// HANSON ACT ///
By and large, Islam spread in the colonial
period because of the social changes going on.
For example, you had labor migration into cities
or into areas of cash crop production. [This
included] people who were not necessarily
Muslims coming into new areas and realizing they
had shared cultural affinity, and Islam may be
part of that. You had conversions because of
that. You had the expansion of Islam because of
[Muslim] leaders who began moving about and
going into urban areas [to spread their
message]. So the colonial period indirectly
spread Islam by changing society in certain ways
[that forced] people reflect upon their
[religious] traditions.
/// END ACT /// /// END OPT ///
Outside West Africa, Islam spread more slowly. In
southern Africa, white settlers kept Islam from
spreading as widely as in West Africa, though it still
gained a foothold among blacks and Asian immigrants.
In South Africa, for example, many Muslim traders and
workers came from Pakistan and India. They brought
with them their own brand of Islam.
East Africa was a different story: the European
colonizers there were more successful at discouraging
the faith.
Ali Mazrui is the director of the Institute of Global
Cultural Studies in Binghamton, New York. /// OPT ///
He's also the chair of the Center for the Study of
Islam and Democracy in Washington, D-C. /// END OPT
///
/// MAZRUI ACT ///
It was much easier in East Africa to present
Islam as an Arab religion linked to the Arab
slave trade than it was in West Africa.
Attempts to do that in West Africa carried the
risk of [backfiring] because of the trans-
Atlantic slave trade, which was larger in scale
and carried out by Christians. But in East
Africa, schools funded by the state could
continue the propaganda of Islam as the religion
of the slave trader with impunity -- because the
East African slave trade was associated with the
Arabs. [In East Africa] there was no cloud of
trans-Atlantic slave trade to shame and disgrace
the West and the Christian traders.
/// END ACT ///
By the middle of the 20th century, independence
movements were in full swing in sub-Saharan Africa.
Scholars say although in some cases Muslims took part,
the movements were largely led by African leaders
schooled by Christian missionaries or by the colonial
governments.
Historian John Hanson of the University of Indiana at
Bloomington.
/// HANSON ACT ///
The nationalist movements by and large were
products of elites educated in European
languages. Muslims had not participated in
these institutions because there were not a lot
of public schools, so a lot of the elites had
been in missionary schools for education. So
there was a bias that those nationalist
movements were led by people in Christians
schools - and were cultural Christians.
/// OPT /// By and large most Muslims would
participate in nationalist movements. In
Tanzania, [there were] Muslims that participated
in [the party of founding father Julius
Nyerere]. [He] came to power as a Catholic, a
non-Muslim. But by and large you could say
[nationalist movements in Africa] were dominated
by West educated elites educated in missionary
schools.
/// END ACT /// /// END OPT ///
Today, the issues facing Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa
resemble those facing Muslims in other parts of the
non-Islamic world. One is how to adapt religion to
the modern state - and how to determine to what extent
Western - and in particular, secular influences--
should penetrate society.
Professor Lamin Sanneh of Yale University says Muslims
living in the West may set the standards that others
will follow:
/// OPT: SANNEH ACT ///
I do not think you can keep the West out
anymore. You have to make your peace with the
West. There are growing groups of Muslim
immigrants in the West. Some of them are going
back for periodic visits to their home
countries. They take back them Western habits
and modern expectations. When it is clear that
Muslims in the West, in America, are
flourishing, with more and more mosques being
built and children going to the mosque schools,
that seems to weaken resistance to Western
exposure. So that's why I can not really
believe that Muslim community can keep out
Western values.
/// End Act /// /// END OPT ///
That doesn't mean friction will end between Islam and
the more secular values of the West.
Nor does it mean that Muslims who live in the West
would like to see Western values adopted in their home
countries. It is well known that Iran's late leader -
the Ayatollah Khomeini - planned his own country's
Islamic revolution from Paris. But when he came to
power, he did not embrace France or its values. In
the streets of Tehran, the country that had sheltered
the ayatollah was dubbed one of the "lesser Satans" -
just below the United States. (Signed)
NEB/WE/KL/africa
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23-Feb-2000 13:13 PM EDT (23-Feb-2000 1813 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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