West African Sufi

West African Sufi PDF Author: Louis Brenner
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520050082
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description

West African Sufi

West African Sufi PDF Author: Louis Brenner
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520050082
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description


Deep Knowledge

Deep Knowledge PDF Author: Oludamini Ogunnaike
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271087617
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
This book is an in-depth, comparative study of two of the most popular and influential intellectual and spiritual traditions of West Africa: Tijani Sufism and Ifa. Employing a unique methodological approach that thinks with and from—rather than merely about—these traditions, Oludamini Ogunnaike argues that they contain sophisticated epistemologies that provide practitioners with a comprehensive worldview and a way of crafting a meaningful life. Using theories belonging to the traditions themselves as well as contemporary oral and textual sources, Ogunnaike examines how both Sufism and Ifa answer the questions of what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and how it is verified. Or, more simply: What do you know? How did you come to know it? How do you know that you know? After analyzing Ifa and Sufism separately and on their own terms, the book compares them to each other and to certain features of academic theories of knowledge. By analyzing Sufism from the perspective of Ifa, Ifa from the perspective of Sufism, and the contemporary academy from the perspective of both, this book invites scholars to inhabit these seemingly “foreign” intellectual traditions as valid and viable perspectives on knowledge, metaphysics, psychology, and ritual practice. Unprecedented and innovative, Deep Knowledge makes a significant contribution to cross-cultural philosophy, African philosophy, religious studies, and Islamic studies. Its singular approach advances our understanding of the philosophical bases underlying these two African traditions and lays the groundwork for future study.

Jihad of the Pen

Jihad of the Pen PDF Author: Rudolph Ware
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617978728
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Outsiders have long observed the contours of the flourishing scholarly traditions of African Muslim societies, but the most renowned voices of West African Sufism have rarely been heard outside of their respective constituencies. This volume brings together writings by Uthman b. Fudi (d. 1817, Nigeria), Umar Tal (d. 1864, Mali), Ahmad Bamba (d. 1927, Senegal), and Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal), who, between them, founded the largest Muslim communities in African history. Jihad of the Pen offers translations of Arabic source material that proved formative to the constitution of a veritable Islamic revival sweeping West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recurring themes shared by these scholars—etiquette on the spiritual path, love for the Prophet Muhammad, and divine knowledge—demonstrate a shared, vibrant scholarly heritage in West Africa that drew on the classics of global Islamic learning, but also made its own contributions to Islamic intellectual history. The authors have selected enduringly relevant primary sources and richly contextualized them within broader currents of Islamic scholarship on the African continent. Students of Islam or Africa, especially those interesting in learning more of the profound contributions of African Muslim scholars, will find this work an essential reference for the university classroom or personal library.

Sorcery or Science?

Sorcery or Science? PDF Author: Ariela Marcus-Sells
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271093064
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Sorcery or Science? examines how two Sufi Muslim theologians who rose to prominence in the western Sahara Desert in the late eighteenth century, Sīdi al-Mukhtār al-Kuntī (d. 1811) and his son and successor, Sīdi Muḥammad al-Kuntī (d. 1826), decisively influenced the development of Sufi Muslim thought in West Africa. Known as the Kunta scholars, Mukhtār al-Kuntī and Muḥammad al-Kuntī were influential teachers who developed a pedagogical network of students across the Sahara. In exploring their understanding of “the realm of the unseen”—a vast, invisible world that is both surrounded and interpenetrated by the visible world—Ariela Marcus-Sells reveals how these theologians developed a set of practices that depended on knowledge of this unseen world and that allowed practitioners to manipulate the visible and invisible realms. They called these practices “the sciences of the unseen.” While they acknowledged that some Muslims—particularly self-identified “white” Muslim elites—might consider these practices to be “sorcery,” the Kunta scholars argued that these were legitimate Islamic practices. Marcus-Sells situates their ideas and beliefs within the historical and cultural context of the Sahara Desert, surveying the cosmology and metaphysics of the realm of the unseen and the history of magical discourses within the Hellenistic and Arabo-Islamic worlds. Erudite and innovative, this volume connects the Islamic sciences of the unseen with the reception of Hellenistic discourses of magic and proposes a new methodology for reading written devotional aids in historical context. It will be welcomed by scholars of magic and specialists in Africana religious studies, Islamic occultism, and Islamic manuscript culture.

Living Knowledge in West African Islam

Living Knowledge in West African Islam PDF Author: Zachary Valentine Wright
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004289461
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Living Knowledge in West African Islam examines the actualization of religious identity in the Muslim community of Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal). The realization of Islam was achieved through the enduring West African practice of learning in the physical presence of exemplary masters.

Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town

Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town PDF Author: Adeline Masquelier
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253003466
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In the small town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, Malam Awal, a charismatic Sufi preacher, was recruited by local Muslim leaders to denounce the practices of reformist Muslims. Malam Awal's message has been viewed as a mixed blessing by Muslim women who have seen new definitions of Islam and Muslim practice impact their place and role in society. This study follows the career of Malam Awal and documents the engagement of women in the religious debates that are refashioning their everyday lives. Adeline Masquelier reveals how these women have had to define Islam on their own terms, especially as a practice that governs education, participation in prayer, domestic activities, wedding customs, and who wears the veil and how. Masquelier's richly detailed narrative presents new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim woman in Africa today.

Islam and Social Change in French West Africa

Islam and Social Change in French West Africa PDF Author: Sean Hanretta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521899710
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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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.

West African ʿulamāʾ and Salafism in Mecca and Medina

West African ʿulamāʾ and Salafism in Mecca and Medina PDF Author: Chanfi Ahmed
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004291946
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book brings a new perspective on the history of the spread of the Salafῑ-Wahhābῑ doctrine since the conquest of the Ḥijāz by Ibn Saʿūd in 1926. It also shows the contribution of a network of ʿulamāʾ from West Africa, South Asia and Egypt in the spread of the Salafῑ-Wahhābῑ doctrine inside and outside Saudi Arabia since 1926.

Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal

Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal PDF Author: John Glover
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580462686
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Examines through the use of Murid oral and written sources the creation of an "alternative modernity" as an understanding of historical change by Sufi notables and disciples. The Murid order, founded in Senegal in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, grew into a major Sufi order during the colonial period and is now among the most recognizable of the Sufi orders in Africa. Murids have spread the voice of Islam and Africa in concert halls and on the airwaves through pop singers -- especially Youssou N'Dour -- and the image of Shaykh Amadu Bamba M'Backé, the founding saint of the order, often used to grace the covers ofworks concerning Islam, African culture, abolition, and European colonization. In this insightful and revealing study, John Glover explores the manner in which a Muslim society in West Africa actively created a conception ofmodernity that reflects its own historical awareness and identity. Drawing from Murid written and oral historical sources, Glover carefully considers how the Murid order at the collective and individual levels has navigated the intersection of two major historical forces -- Islam, specifically in the contexts of reform and mysticism, and European colonization -- and achieved in the process an understanding of modernity not as an unwilling witness but as anactive participant. Ultimately, Sufism and Jihad in Modern Senegal presents the reader with a new portrait of a society that has used its notion of modernity to adapt and incorporate further historical changes into its identity as an African Sufi order. John Glover is Associate Professor of History at the University of Redlands in southern California.

Muslims Beyond the Arab World

Muslims Beyond the Arab World PDF Author: Fallou Ngom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190279869
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Muslims beyond the Arab World explores the tradition of writing African languages using the Arabic script 'Ajami and the rise of the Muridiyya order of Islamic Sufi in Senegal. The book demonstrates how the development of 'Ajami and the flourishing of the Muridiyya are entwined.