Islam And Social Change In French West Africa

Exploring the history and religious community of a group of Muslim Sufi mystics who came largely from socially marginal backgrounds in colonial French West Africa, this study shows the relationship between religious, social, and economic change in the region. It highlights the role that intellectuals - including not only elite men, but also women, slaves, and the poor - played in shaping social and cultural change and illuminates the specific religious ideas on which Muslims drew and the political contexts that gave their efforts meaning. In contrast to depictions that emphasize the importance of international networks and anti-modern reaction in twentieth-century Islamic reform, this book claims that, in West Africa, such movements were driven by local forces and constituted only the most recent round in a set of centuries-old debates about the best way for pious people to confront social injustice. It argues that traditional historical methods prevent an appreciation of Muslim intellectual history in Africa by misunderstanding the nature of information gathering during colonial rule and misconstruing the relationship between documents and oral history. -- Description from http://www.amazon.com (April 24, 2012).

A major contribution to the social, political and intellectual history of the French West African Federation.

Exploring the history and religious community of a group of Muslim Sufi mystics in colonial French West Africa, this study shows the relationship between religious, social and economic change in the region. It highlights the role that intellectuals played in shaping social and cultural change and illuminates the specific religious ideas and political contexts that gave their efforts meaning. In contrast to depictions that emphasize the importance of international networks and anti-modern reaction in twentieth-century Islamic reform, this book claims that, in West Africa, such movements were driven by local forces and constituted only the most recent round in a set of centuries-old debates about the best way for pious people to confront social injustice. It argues that traditional historical methods prevent an appreciation of Muslim intellectual history in Africa by misunderstanding the nature of information gathering during colonial rule and misconstruing the relationship between documents and oral history.

"This volume is indispensable to anyone who wants to understand current trends in Islam in Africa." --MESA Bulletin "A must read for anyone interested in Muslim identity and social change in sub-Saharan Africa." --Religious Studies Review "The Brenner volume... develops a broader range of issues... [on] African Muslim communities than any existing study." --John Hanson These essays constitute a timely exploration of the dynamism of Islam as a force for shaping identity and for social and political change across Africa today.

"I know of no one who has taken such an ambitious swath of time and done such a good job of showing the continuity and change across those one hundred years. . . . a splendid achievement, the result of decades of research and reflection." —David Robinson Controlling Knowledge examines the history of West African Muslim society in the Republic of Mali, formerly the Soudan Français, in the 20th century. Focusing on the transformation of Muslim institutions—especially modernized Muslim schools (médersas) and voluntary organizations—over the past hundred years, Louis Brenner uncovers the social and political processes that have produced new forms, definitions, and expressions of Islam that are patently different from those that prevailed a century earlier. Brenner's study shows that Muslim society in Mali is religiously pluralistic and that it has developed different ways of relating religious obligations to prevailing social and political conditions. Although they were heavily influenced by French and Middle Eastern models, Brenner demonstrates that it was in opposition to French colonial authority that the first médersas and voluntary associations appeared. The complex array of power relations within which these institutions evolved, under French colonial rule and in the postcolonial secularist state, is revealed in this thoughtful book. Controlling Knowledge makes a major contribution to our understanding of Muslim history in Mali and West Africa, both in recent decades and over the long term.