Islam in Africa

Paper Summary:

This paper analyses five local hermeneutics from the Sudan and their relationship with Islam. It argues that to understand Islamic practice in North East Africa, it must be understood as a way of life (or rather, as a series of ways of life, the practice(s) drawn from a cultural heteroglossia), not as a religion. It looks at how in the Sudan, the relationship of communities to Islam is intricately entangled with a change in material culture and it examines the changes that Arabicisation brings. It also explores how this relationship to the outsider brings up a whole set of considerations about exteriority: interiority in these communities that helps one to see one of the characterising features of Islamic practice in the Sudan in the 20th century.

From the Paper:

"The contours of the centre have often been thought to be hegemonic in Islam. Indeed, Islam may be said to be hegemonic in the sense that the sacred quality of the central texts and the necessity or correctness of reciting them in critical contexts are unquestioned. However, these enunciations, as noted in the introduction, are situated in social practice. That said, Islam does have a tendency to encapsulate or explicitly devalue other forms of thought and practice so they will be legitimated by reference to Islam. In the case studies we will analyse we will observe a tension between the necessity for other forms of thought to be legitimated by Islam, and the equally compelling need for them to remain apart."

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