Islam and West African Indigenous Religion

Abstract

Many studies have been published on the indigenous religions of various parts of West Africa, and a considerable literature exists of Christian missionary enterprise there, though on both subjects there are many gaps in our knowledge that need be filled in. Much less scholarship has been expended upon the study of Islam in West Africa. Probably more has been written in French than in English, and there is a notable series of studies by Paul Marty on Islam in each of the French West African territories, though some of these are rather superficial. Fewer works still have attempted estimate the relationships between Islam and the indigenous African religions, the effects of culture-contact or acculturation. A few notable books have appeared in Nigeria over the years, from A. J. N. Tremearne's The Ban of the Bori (1914), a study of the Hausa, J. Greenberg's The Influence of Islam upon a Sudanese Religion (New York 1946), and Mary Smith's outstanding biography of Baba of Karo (I954). Now the last year has seen the publication of the most comprehensive piece of research so far undertaken in J. S. Trimingham's Islam in West Africa (O.U.P. 1959). J. S. Trimingham is already well known for his authoritative works on Islam in the Sudan and Ethiopia, and for his re-assessment of the Christian approach Islam; and now he has set out to try assess what has been the result of the impact of Islam, the way it influences African society, and, conversely, the way the African community moulds the Islam it receives. Other research workers still or recently in the field will add their quota in due course. The importance of the study of this contact between the faith and church of Islam and the old beliefs and institutions of West Africa is considerable and topical, for it is part of the pattern of social change that is sweeping across Africa and rushing it through material and spiritual revolutions in a very short space of time.