Islam, Slavery and Jihad in West Africa

Abstract

AbstractModernist readings of Islam exist in different forms, from the Orientalist to the Islamist, but they agree in defining Islam by looking back to the founding period of the Prophet and his immediate successors. Muslim reformers undertook this step to cut out centuries of commentary and precedent that they blamed for the stagnation of the Muslim world, but their influence is now so pervasive that it distorts historical interpretations of Muslim thought by imposing modernist interpretations that erase past debates about contentious issues such as jihad and slavery. This article challenges the assumptions of this modernist consensus by exploring past debates about slavery and jihad in West Africa from 1600 to 1900, and exploring the diversity of positions defended by West African Muslims. For heuristic purposes, these are defined as those of the revolutionary, the jurist, and the mystic.