Mustafa Briggs speaks to Professor Rudolph Ware, author of the ‘Walking Quran’, about models of liberation in West Africa. They talk about the West African approach towards power and religion, and consider the diverse response of the ulama to the challenges presented by the transatlantic slave trade and European colonialism. They also discuss how racist colonial policies had the unintended effect of preserving sufism and traditional Islam in the region.
What We Talk About In This Episode
- How Islam spread in peacefully in West Africa and the implications of this; the role of merchants and the emergence of clerical families
- The level of scholarship in the region and how it became a global centre
- Documented instances of individuals leaving the holy cities to go study in West Africa
- Mansa Musa’s patronage of scholarship
- The foundational texts of the Jahanke people in Senegambia
- The relationship between the ulama (religious scholars) and the political authorities in the region during various periods; preserving clerical autonomy and pious distance from power
- The difference between the North African and West African approach to power and the spread of religion; ‘jihad of the pen’ over ‘jihad of the sword’
- The transatlantic (Euro-American) slave trade and the myth of the ”Arab slave trade’
- How the 19th century serves as the model for race relations in Muslim societies today
- The response of religious scholars to slavery and the anti-slavery abolition movement
- Resistance led by Abdul Qadir Kan
- The spread of Islam during colonisation
- The diverse responses of various religious scholars towards colonialism and the colonists
- Female scholarship and leadership in the West African tradition
- The effect of colonisation on gender roles
- How the racist policies of the colonisers had the unintended effect of allowing the preservation of traditional Islam in West Africa
- The manifestation of sufism / tassawuf in West Africa as a mass social movement (that reached all parts of society)
- Why is any of this relevant? What can Muslims in the West and elsewhere, living in a global mono-culture learn from West Africa?
Things / People Mentioned in this Episode
- Mansa Musa
- Moddibo Muhammad Kabari
- al-Umari
- The Jahanke
- The Ghana Empire
- The Mali Empire
- Salim Suwari
- Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba
- Abdul Qadir Kan
- Usman dan Fodio
- Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse
- Shaykh Umar Futi Tall
- El-Hadj Abdallah Niasse
- El-Hadj Malick Sy
- Podcast episode 3: Islam in West Africa: empires, scholarships and the empowerment of women
- Insta Live with Dr Ware and The Village Auntie
- Walter Rodney, ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’
- Ahmadu Bamba ‘Pathways of Paradise’
Rudolph T. Ware III is an historian of West Africa, at the University of California Santa Barbara. He formerly taught at the University of Michigan and before that at Northwestern University. His work aims to confront and dispel Western misconceptions about Islam. He received his Ph.D. in history in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of ‘The Walking Quran’. Connect with him on Instagram @butchware.
Mustafa Briggs is a Sacred Footsteps writer. He is a graduate of Arabic & International Relations from the University of Westminster and currently a student at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. He rose to international acclaim for his ‘Beyond Bilal: Black History in Islam’ lecture series which saw him explore & uncover the deep rooted relationship between Islam and Black history, followed by ‘Before Malcolm X‘, exploring the history of Islam in the Americas. Find him on Instagram @mustafabriggs.
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