i Beyond Jihad ii iii Beyond Jihad The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam LAMIN SANNEH 1 iv 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978– 0– 19– 935161– 9 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America v In tribute to the Jakhanke clerics who follow the pathways of tolerance and commitment with learning and humor vi vii CONTENTS Author’s Note ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Issues and Directions 1 PART ONE HISTORICAL GENESIS 21 1. Beyond North Africa: Synthesis and Transmission 42 2. Beyond the Veil: The Almoravids and Ghana 55 3. Beyond Desert Trails: Religion and Social Change 4. Beyond Routes and Kingdoms: New Frontiers, Old Hinterlands 65 PART TWO CLERICAL EMERGENCE 75 5. Beyond Trade and Markets: Community and Vocation 103 6. Beyond Homeland: Religious Formation and Expansion 7. Beyond Tribe and Tongue in Futa Jallon: Religion and Ethnicity 119 131 8. Beyond Consolidation: Rejuvenating the Heritage 9. Beyond Confrontation and Crisis: Colonial Denouement 167 vii viii viii Contents 193 10. Beyond Confinement: Mobile Cells and the Clerical Web 11. Beyond Consensus: A House Divided 201 PART THREE WIDER HORIZONS 217 12. Beyond Jihad: Champions and Opponents 238 13. Beyond Politics: Comparative Perspectives 259 14. End of Jihad? Tradition and Continuity Timeline 271 Glossary 275 Notes 281 Bibliography 319 Index 339 ix AUTHOR’S NOTE Studies of Islam and of Africa form a divided picture. Studies of Islam tend to view the religion as an intellectual, Arab civilization remote from Africa— a view that oversimplifies the complex, layered nature of Arab religion. Studies of Africa cast Islam as foreign and marginal, relegating it to its local function (or dysfunction) on the grounds that Islam’s intellectual heritage has no place in Africa’s unwritten past. A distinction, however, between Islamic Africa and Black Africa is nowhere found in Islamic teaching, and there are some notable exceptions to the prevalent dichotomous approach, such as Jamil Abun Nasr’s Muslim Communities of Grace. Yet an academic gulf has been created between the history of Islam and the history of Africa. This book presents Islam as part of the history of Africa as well as a religious heritage in its own right. I use the framework of religious discourse and teach- ings to explore the historical impact of Islam on society in terms of its ortho- dox creed as well as its local appropriation. Despite the dominant focus on jihad, and the syncretism condemned by that focus, many scholars have observed Islam’s peaceful development in so- cieties throughout Africa. In answer to the current climate of political tension and cultural stereotypes, this book offers an explicit examination of Islam’s pacifist achievement in Africa in the larger framework of Islam’s centuries- long intellectual tradition. Where they might be illuminating, I have introduced historical and thematic comparisons with the Western tradition. As everywhere else, Islam was introduced in Africa with demarcations that properly distinguished it from other religions, but that still left a significant margin of overlap and parallels with local religions. Indeed, the history of Islam is at heart the process of negotiation and adjustment with other tradi- tions and cultures, including the modern West. Islam was not insulated from that historical process, however particular and distinct the African phase was. ix x x Author’s Note This is another reason why it is important not to treat Islam in Africa or any- where else as an exotic exception. The use of the term “pagan” has been maintained in this book largely for reasons of historical consistency but also for religious considerations. Islamic and Western historical sources use the term widely, and in Islamic sources it is used in several senses to describe unbelievers, idolaters, polytheists, and so on. Academic religious writing employs other terms, such as animist, fetichist, traditional religion, primal religion, and, in an earlier era, heathen. Because of the Islamic context of this book, I have adopted the word “pagan” without the theological stigma of Muslim or Western authors. I apply the term to indicate the religious tradition that Islam encountered in Africa, one it recognized as worthy of challenge and often as a necessary critical phase of Islam’s local ap- propriation. Even when Muslims and others use the term pejoratively, I try to draw attention to the strength and influence it is able to exercise on society and persons, including the serious attention and respect it receives from antago- nists. This is quite different, though, from setting out to defend or to criticize the tradition associated with the term, for that is not the role of the historian. Religion and religious encounter matter in the history of human societies; with the tools of critical investigation it is the task of the historian to make that as plausible as is consistent with the evidence. The term “non- Muslim” sometimes used for this pagan tradition gives it a negative marker, saying what it is not in relation to Muslims. It does not seem to indicate any more neutral a view of pagans to see them as non- Muslims whose religion is shown to fall short of Islam, its notional destination. I have used the term here in a limited way rather than as a general classification. The historian need not be tied to one prescriptive position to the neglect of context, detail, and circumstances, but should be guided by events on the ground and by rules of evidence. As long as scholars are not contenders in issues between and among religions, a justification exists for using terms that contribute to historical understanding. The work of the Muslim groups of this study has long been overshadowed by militant efforts to spread the religion. When we consider the steadying ef- fects of clerical work in running Qur’an schools, managing the pilgrimage, maintaining mosques, providing services for disciples and clients seeking pro- fessional religious service, and generally overseeing observances of the reli- gious calendar, we can see the vital part these groups have played in promoting a quietist, tolerant form of Islam. Rather than a splinter group, pacifist cler- ics are revealed to be the flying buttress of the structure of sustained Muslim self- expansion. Without the drama of battle, religious practices offer assurance and solidarity, giving solid expression to belonging and identity. Pacifist teach- ing about the equality of believers in the eyes of God takes a concrete form in xi Author’s Note xi religious settlements. Pacifist religious teaching helped Muslim society to rise and flourish despite historical setbacks. There is much about the pacifist heri- tage to justify claiming it as an important but long- neglected aspect of Islam’s religious heritage. On a return visit to one of these centers in Kombo-Brufut in the Gambia in 2013, I was able to update information on clerical succession in places as far apart as Marssasoum in Casamance and Macca- Kolibantang in Senegal Orientale. I circulated that information to other clerical centers in Senegal and Gambia and received additional details that brought the story to 2015. In response to the challenge of community representatives at field sessions at several centers, I committed to give as faithful an account of the subject as is consistent with the rules of impartial inquiry— to general approbation, I am relieved to report. An incident at a field session at Bakadaji illustrates how field inquiry can change the scholarly perspective. Noticing my unspoken reluc- tance to record information the audience was giving about the clerics’ involve- ment in acquiring slaves for their settlements, witnesses asked how scholarship can be reliable when scholars omit writing about objectionable matters. How tenable is the idea of impartial scholarship when my personal scruples about slavery decide what to include and what to exclude? How is a scholar to be believed and his work respected in that case? Is that how the university trains students to prosecute scholarship? How can inquiry expand the frontiers of knowledge when it coyly conceals and evades the truth? That embarrassing episode concluded with my apology and promise to report as accurately as possible local views about slavery. I report the incident here to keep faith with the field informants. This does not exonerate from taking personal responsibility for evaluating and interpreting the significance of the evidence. Where appropriate, I have tried to respect the distinction be- tween clerical self- understanding and outsiders’ view of Muslim religious life. The clerics were not always aware of the range of historical and religious schol- arship available on particular subjects, such as developments in scholarship on hisbah, understood as commanding right and forbidding wrong; maslahah with respect to the common good; and discussions on takhayyur (legal hy- bridization), which is pertinent to issues of pluralism and accommodation.