Islam in the African-American Experience

Islam in the African-American Experience

Author: Richard Brent Turner

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780253343239

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The involvement of African Americans with Islam reaches back to the earliest days of the African presence in North America. This book explores these roots in the Middle East, West Africa and antebellum America.


Living Knowledge in West African Islam

Living Knowledge in West African Islam

Author: Zachary Valentine Wright

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-02-04

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 9004289461

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Living Knowledge in West African Islam examines the actualization of religious identity in the community of Ibrāhīm Niasse (d.1975, Senegal). With millions of followers throughout Africa and the world, the community arguably represents one of the twentieth century’s most successful Islamic revivals. Niasse’s followers, members of the Tijāniyya Sufi order, gave particular attention to the widespread transmission of the experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of God. They also worked to articulate a global Islamic identity in the crucible of African decolonization. The central argument of this book is that West African Sufism is legible only with an appreciation of centuries of Islamic knowledge specialization in the region. Sufi masters and disciples reenacted and deepened preexisting teacher-student relationships surrounding the learning of core Islamic disciplines, such as the Qurʾān and jurisprudence. Learning Islam meant the transformative inscription of sacred knowledge in the student’s very being, a disposition acquired in the master’s exemplary physical presence. Sufism did not undermine traditional Islamic orthodoxy: the continued transmission of Sufi knowledge has in fact preserved and revived traditional Islamic learning in West Africa.


Nuwaubian Pan-Africanism

Nuwaubian Pan-Africanism

Author: Emeka C. Anaedozie

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1498598595

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This book examines the contemporary operational and theoretical parameters of Pan-Africanism and black nationalism in the post-civil rights era. It uses the Nuwaubian movement as a case study to explore this essential strand in African Diasporan history, culture, and tradition. The author argues that the Nuwaubian Nation, like their contemporaries such as the Nation of Islam, represents contemporary efforts of African descendants to dialectically and culturally fight oppression. He argues that unlike the classical Back to Africa movements, the contemporary ones do not seek to primarily relocate to Africa, but to go to Africa culturally and bring back Africa to the diaspora. This effort can be seen in the Nuwaubian attempts at unearthing and importing classical African traditions, mores, and values in their in their various communities across the United States, especially in Eatonton, Georgia. Their aim was to chart an identity for their adherents and inspire racial pride for people of African descent.


Edward W. Blyden's Intellectual Transformations

Edward W. Blyden's Intellectual Transformations

Author: Harry N. K. Odamtten

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1628953659

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Distinguished by its multidisciplinary dexterity, this book is a masterfully woven reinterpretation of the life, travels, and scholarship of Edward W. Blyden, arguably the most influential Black intellectual of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces Blyden’s various moments of intellectual transformation through the multiple lenses of ethnicity, race, religion, and identity in the historical context of Atlantic exchanges, the Back-to-Africa movement, colonialism, and the global Black intellectual movement. In this book Blyden is shown as an African public intellectual who sought to reshape ideas about Africa circulating in the Atlantic world. The author also highlights Blyden’s contributions to different public spheres in Europe, in the Jewish Diaspora, in the Muslim and Christian world of West Africa, and among Blacks in the United States. Additionally, this book places Blyden at the pinnacle of Afropublicanism in order to emphasize his public intellectualism, his rootedness in the African historical experience, and the scholarship he produced about Africa and the African Diaspora. As Blyden is an important contributor to African studies, among other disciplines, this volume makes for critical scholarly reading.


Pan-Africanism in Modern Times

Pan-Africanism in Modern Times

Author: Olayiwola Abegunrin

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2016-06-15

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1498535100

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For about one hundred years, Pan-Africanism—as a social, cultural, economic, political, and philosophical idea—thrived. Towards the tail-end of the twentieth century, however, it waned. But in more recent times, there has been noticeable resurgence. And as we approach the second decade of the twenty-first century, there are indications of significant transformations vis-à-vis the role and place of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Africanists. Consequently, this book offers a new, further, and better understanding of Pan-Africanism—not just from the traditional, African, and African American points of view, but also from a global perspective. It does so by offering an analysis of its early years in terms of the personalities, ideas, and conferences that shaped it; it also examines many of the factors that brought about its decline—and its eventual rebirth. Contributing to this seminal work are scholars of different but complementary styles and intellect, who deviate from the more traditional or obvious approaches. For instance, one of the chapters explores Pan-Africanism from the geographic perspective, while another examines the role and place of women in the Pan-African movement. There are also voices that advance the conversation from the regional and continental viewpoint—hence chapters that investigate the status of Pan-Africanism in Latin America, in the Caribbean, and Islam and Pan-Africanism in the modern world. Ethnonationalism and xenophobia are also part of the treatise because, increasingly, these injurious phenomena are reemerging in Africa’s landscape and consciousness. In an increasingly interdependent and interrelated world, this book also suggests that Pan-Africanism will undergo a metamorphosis: problems and challenges will be seen and tackled from the globalization and global common perspective. Pan-Africanism in Modern Times goes beyond the historicity of Pan-Africanism and examines the challenges, concerns, and constraints it faces; and also examines it from an inclusive perspective to have a broader understanding of this phenomenon and its future trajectory.


African Islam and Islam in Africa

African Islam and Islam in Africa

Author: Eva Evers Rosander

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13:

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This interdisciplinary book focuses primarily on Sufism ("African Islam"), Islamism ("Islam in Africa") and, in particular, on the interaction between these different forms of Islam. Previously, much interest has been concentrated on the critical Islamist views of Western or Western-influenced ideas and patterns of life, while the intra-Muslim relationship between Sufis and Islamists has attracted less attention. Some of the contributions concentrate mainly on Sufism, to which the majority of African Muslims belong, others focus essentially on the increasingly important impact of Islamism; yet others deal more intensively with the encounter between sufis and Islamists. The regional focus is on areas where Muslims form the majority of the population, mainly in North and West Africa. In some of the essays special attention is paid to gender issues. The book will be a valuable addition to earlier studies of Muslims in Africa. Conflicts between adherents of locally contextualized forms of Sufi Islam and more universally-oriented reformist Muslims are not new. However intra-Muslim tensions in North and West Africa have increased in recent decades, largely because of the rise of radical Islamist movements in countries such as Egypt, Algeria and the Sudan. Modernizing Islamists are critical of 'African Islam' and aim to 'purify' if of pre-Islamic African beliefs and practices. However, there is a revival within Sufism too, and a concomitant tendency among Sufi Muslims to adhere more closely to Islamic law. This intriguing example of intra-Islamic debate is the principal theme addressed in the book.


Islam in Black America

Islam in Black America

Author: Edward E. Curtis IV

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0791488594

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Many of the most prominent figures in African-American Islam have been dismissed as Muslim heretics and cultists. Focusing on the works of five of these notable figures—Edward W. Blyden, Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Wallace D. Muhammad—author Edward E. Curtis IV examines the origin and development of modern African-American Islamic thought. Curtis notes that intellectual tensions in African-American Islam parallel those of Islam throughout its history—most notably, whether Islam is a religion for a particular group of people or whether it is a religion for all people. In the African-American context, such tensions reflect the struggle for black liberation and the continuing reconstruction of black identity. Ultimately, Curtis argues, the interplay of particular and universal interpretations of the faith can allow African-American Islam a vision that embraces both a specific group of people and all people.