Introduction: En-gendering Islamic Authority in West Africa

Abstract

Islamic Africa, vol. 5, no. 2, 2014. issn 2154-0993. Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. www.islamicafricajournal.org Women and gender have very often been marginal or absent in the academic literature on Islam in West Africa. Where the literature has not itself marginalized or completely ignored women, it has often defined women as essentially marginal in relation to Islam. Contributors to this special issue of Islamic Africa seek not merely to bring more attention to Muslim women in West Africa but to examine the mutually constitutive relationships between Islamic authority and gendered discourses and practices. This introduction begins by reviewing the emergence of literature on women and gender in Muslim West Africa, pointing out some of the assumptions that have often limited this literature as well as recent attempts to remedy these assumptions. These include the assumption that women are categorically defined as marginal in relation to Islam; that men are to women as the public is to the private; and that “women” and “Islam” can be approached as monolithic objects of analysis. Then we outline several themes that we consider key to an engendered study of Islamic authority in West Africa. First, we propose performativity as an organizing concept for understanding how authority is exercised, recognized, reconfigured, and challenged in relation to gender and Islam. For instance, we ask how women present new leadership roles as “felicitous” in relation to gendered norms of piety. Second, we suggest reexamining Islamic knowledge, a key component of performances of Islamic authority, moving beyond binaries such as “scriptural” and “oral” knowledge and examining forms and practices of Islamic knowledge that Introduction: Engendering Islamic Authority in West Africa