Religion and Conversion in Islamic North and West Africa

Misconceptions

In order to understand religion and how to affect religious change in this area, it is important to understand what religion means to the people themselves. From a Western perspective it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that religion is merely a set of beliefs and rules. This is especially true for those from a Protestant background.

In many ways the current view of religion in the West can be linked to the Protestant Reformation. One of the common phrases from the Reformation was called the Five Solas: Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Sola Dei Gloria [6]. The importance of this is that it lacks any reference to the community of believers (i.e. the church).

The merits of Protestant or Roman Catholic theology are not to be discussed here. What is important is that if Christian workers are to have any chance in effecting change among the hearts of these people, it must come to the people on their own terms. As Smith outlined in his book, change requires several things. Agents of change must reinforce the group's traditions and change must fit within he existing cultural patterns. [DS1984]

Religion as Part of a Cultural Identity

Among North and West Africa, the people’s religious identity is influenced strongly by their cultural identity and their cultural history. In addition, the people there have a significant colonial history as well [MN2007]. During the 15th and 19th centuries, the countries there where all colonized by the Europeans, most of whom called themselves Christian. As a result, many Africans perceive Christianity as a foreign, European religion, and Islam as their own religion.

“[The taxi cab driver] nodded for a while and then whispered, as if talking only to himself, “God is greater! But he does not speak French!” Dominated by the Christian French for decades, and having no native Christians, many of the Moroccans thought that every Christian was French, much as some people thing that every Muslim is Arab.” [SK2007]

The Importance of Language

The significance of the Arabic language to the Muslim people is another thing that may be difficult for those from a Western background to understand. No one in these days would think about speaking about the “Christian Language.” [3] Arabic, on the other hand, is very much the language of Islam, and in many ways it is an important part of the religion. In some cases it even goes so far as to be used as the identifying mark for a Muslim. Sonia Khūrī lived as a Christian among Muslims in West Africa, but was considered by many to be a Muslim because he spoke Arabic as his mother tongue. [SK2007]

Again, the power of language, or at least, the perception of language, is a force that is foreign to most in the West. In the case of Islam, it is not merely an issue of language, but of written language. Indeed, the name People of the Book is no accident. A Muslim prophet is someone who brings a written message from God (e.g. Moses brought the Tawrat; Jesus, the Injil; and Mohammed, the Qu’ran). To the illiterate tribes of Africa during the time of the Muslim conquests, the written language would have been a powerful thing.

Like any language, Arabic carries with it a unique style, [MN2007] and because it is used for all religious aspects, the speakers develop certain expectations of what religious language is like. When presented with religious text in another language, they seem weird or awkward.

Al-Amin bin Ali al-Mazrui, a Muslim Swahili scholar, spoke up on the importance of Arabic to Islam. According to him, the study of Arabic is a necessity for every Muslim. His belief was that Arabic is “the language of Islam because Allah choose it to reveal the Qu’ran. There is no other way to understand the Qu’ran but through the understanding of Arabic.” [GC1991] [4]

Diversion from Orthodox Islam

In the end, the requirements to becoming a Muslim are few and small. In general, new comers are required to recite the creed: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is His prophet,” but that is about as far as it goes. Calasso notes this phenomenon:

In all the other cases recorded by Ibn Sa’d, the learning of rituals, proper behavior, and the Qu’ran, always happens during the time following conversion, or better yet, following the “entrance into Islam.” [GC2001] [5]

In contrast, the Christian approach implies a confession to a certain set of beliefs and implies that a believer already has the foundational knowledge for his or her faith. Because of this, Islam has been much more vulnerable to syncretism.

The original Arabic missionaries (usually either invaders or merchants), brought the message of Islam to groups of people who were largely animistic. The new religious systems did not so much replace the old one as it added a second layer of religion on top. Calasso cites Fisher, saying:

I do not think that conversion ... has occurred very often in the Islamic history of sub-Saharan Africa ... What has been much more common, in the early stages of Islamic development in any particular area, has been adhesion, as local people, still primary loyal to their ancestors, begin to add a little from Muslim faith and practice, “useful supplements” and “valuable safeguards”. [GC2001]

As a result, the beliefs of these African Muslims are not always in line with the orthodox Muslim beliefs in the Middle East. To this end, missionaries from more orthodox Arabic nations have sometimes been sent out to “reform” the natives. However, the Islamic missionaries seem to have as much difficulty as the Christians ones when it comes to Muslims.

Sonia Khūrī, a Lebanese Christian and anthropologist once noted this while he was living in Magburaka in Sierra Leone. In his book An Invitation to Laughter, he describes the result of some Egyptian Muslim scholars who come there as missionaries. In this text Alimami Suri is a native Temne trying to explain the their local customs and beliefs to the Egyptians.

None of the Alimami Suri’s emphatic assertions about Temne Islam met the approval of the head of the Egyptian mission. Christians or Muslims, missionaries shared similar attitudes towards the natives: “We know better.” I later learned that the mission stayed for nine months in Magburaka and then returned to Egypt. They were replaced by another team of four, who stayed for two more years, and then the whole program was scrapped. It proved to be counterproductive, creating more apathy than empathy. [SK2007]

Problem as a Western Idea

Part of the difficulty when talking about converting others to Christianity is that the idea of “conversion” involves a rather uniquely Western view of religion. When we think of prototypical examples of conversion, cases like Paul and his “Damascus experience” (Acts 9) come to mind. A long with conversion is the implication that there is a giving up of certain beliefs in favor of other ones.

Becoming a Muslim

As it was mentioned earlier, the process of becoming a Muslim was in some ways more of a “submission” than a “conversion”. In Arabic, the two words are not actually distinguished. Calasso cites Bulliet to explain this.

The language (Arabic) does not allow the reader to disentangle the meaning « surrender » and « convert ». This raises the question as to whether these meanings were actually separated in the minds of the actors. After all the notion of religious conversion as a moral or spiritual act that could be taken independently of other political or social action may not have been widespread in seventh-century Arabia. [GC2001]

Later on, he continues, highlighting the why it is problematic to look at “becoming muslim” as the same as converting religions.

“In a sense, a convert first became a member of the Muslim community and later discovered, or tried to discover what it meant to be a Muslim. This is why the personal conversion stories that have been preserved say so little about preaching, studying, or intellectual or moral transformation.” [GC2001]