The History of Islamic Identity in West Africa

Description

West African Muslims boast more than a millennium of Islamic intellectual history. However, the
region’s Islamic identity is usually explained in terms of recent political, economic, and social
changes, with little recourse to the religious preoccupations of Muslims themselves. This article
situates contemporary West African Muslim identity in, and sometimes in conscious opposition to,
traditional Islamic sciences such as jurisprudence (fiqh) and Sufism (taṣawwuf) continuously
transmitted for centuries.