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  1. Home
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  3. Islam and Social Change in French West Africa
  • Cited by 40
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2009
Print publication year:
2009
Online ISBN:
9780511576157
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511576157
Subjects:
Area Studies, African Studies, History, African History
Series:
African Studies (110)
Information

Book description

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.

Reviews

'… this book is a valuable contribution both to African colonial and postcolonial history and also to the sociology of religion. In addition to providing a history of a movement about which little is known, it raises a number of important questions pertaining to African historiography.'

Source: The Journal of African History

'[A] rich and intellectually ambitious work.'

Gregory Mann Source: Islamic Africa

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