The roots of Islam in Africa
24-10-2007
The history of Islam in Africa is long and rich. The famous
historian Ibn Khaldun says that the name Ifriqiya was given after Ifriqos bin
Qais bin Saifi, one of the Kings of Yemen. To Al-Bakri, the boundaries of
Ifriqiya were Barga on the East and Tangier on the West, which means that in
addition to the Africa proper of the Romans, it included Tripolitania, Numidia
and Mauritania. Today, by the use of the word Ifiriqiya or Africa, the Arabs as
well as non-Arabs mean the entire continent of Africa.
Islam entered Africa in the 7th century AD. After the death of Muhammad (saw),
in 632, Khaleefah Abu Bakr as Siddiq (ra) embarked upon spreading Islam outside
the Arabian Peninsula. Although he died two years later Khaleefah Umar ibn al-Khattab
continued with this mission. In 636, Islam had entered Jerusalem, Damascus, and
Antioch; in 651, all of Persia was under the Khilafah. But Islam also moved west
into Africa. In 646, the Khilafah expanded to Egypt and quickly spread across
northern Africa.
The largest African cities and kingdoms were located in the Sahel, a desert and
savannah region south of the Sahara. After 750 AD, these cities and kingdoms
arose because they served as hubs for the trade routes across northern Africa.
By the 1300’s, these large Sahelian kingdoms became Islamic and, more
importantly, centers of Islamic learning.
There are several important cultural practices that Islam gave to Africa. The
first is literacy. Egypt and the Nilotic kingdoms of the Kushites and the
Nubians had long traditions of writing, and the Ethiopians had acquired it
through their ties to the Semitic peoples of southern Arabia. But these writing
systems did not spread throughout Africa. Islam, however, as a religion of the
book, spread writing and literacy everywhere it went. Many Africans dealt with
two languages: their native language and Arabic, which was the language of
texts. However, this gradually changed as Africans began using the Arabic
alphabet to write their own languages. To this date, Arabic script is one of the
most common scripts for writing African languages.
With literacy, the Islam brought formal educational systems. In North Africa and
the Sahel, these systems and institutions would produce a great flowering of
African thought and science. In fact, the city of Timbuktu had perhaps the
greatest university in the world. Thus Islam’s influence on Northern and Eastern
Africa continued only to be challenged and eventually ended at the hands of
European colonialism and the collapse of the Uthmani Khilafah in 1924. However,
the disease of war and poverty which grips Africa today started before the
collapse of the Uthmani Khilafah, as its power was on waning long before 1924.
The first “scramble for Africa” began when Henry Stanley claimed the Congo River
Valley for Belgium. France then invaded Algeria and built the Suez Canal.
Britain invaded Egypt in order to have control of the canal, which was crucial
to their shipping routes. Britain and Egypt then took control of Sudan. France
began to colonize Tunisia and Morocco. Italy took Libya. Britain fought a war
with and defeated the Boers in order to gain control of the resource rich
Southern Africa. Cecil Rhodes became rich from the Kimberly diamond fields,
which produced 90% of the world’s diamonds at the time. By the early 1900’s most
of Africa was taken by European colonialists. Today, political power has been
reordered, America is now the leading world power replacing the European nations
influence, but while the control over the world’s resources has passed into
different hands the objectives have not changed.
As long as Capitalism is the dominant ideology in the world, the relationship
between nations will continue to be based on the ruthless pursuit of wealth.
This has been the story of the world ever since the world power of the Islamic
Khilafah state declined and disappeared from the international arena, leaving
the world to be reshaped in the image of Capitalism.
While the western Capitalist nations traditional interest in Africa has been
‘cash crops’, diamonds and other minerals, it has gained significant attention
in recent times due to oil discoveries and increased oil production in existing
fields. This has happened as the realization has dawned of the instability of
the Middle East oil supply in the future, due to the rise of political Islam.
This has caused the continued supply of resources, most significantly oil lying
in the balance of political Islam. A military subcommand for the Gulf of Guinea
has already been recommended, including the recently authorised creation of
Africa Command (AfriCom) by the US military. These important events have not
gone unnoticed. The Times of London acknowledged these developments in a July
29, 2002, story headlined, “U.S. Presses Africa to turn on the tap of crude
oil.” Quoting Walter Kansteiner, U.S. Under Secretary of State for African
Affairs, the Times reported, “African oil is of national strategic interest to
us, and it will increase and become more important as we go forward.”
35 years of petroleum exports in Nigeria have not helped raise living standards;
despite its oil wealth, per capita income in Nigeria is less than $1 a day and
living standards are below the average in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria is perhaps
the most prominent example of where countries rich in natural resources suffer
from lower living standards, slower growth rates and higher incidence of
conflict than their resource-poor counterparts.
The inverse relationship between growth and oil and mineral abundance has come
to be known as the “resource curse”. From 1970-1993, resource-poor countries
(without petroleum) grew four times more rapidly than resource-rich countries
(with petroleum) – despite the fact that they had half of the savings. The
greater the dependence on oil and mineral resources the worse the growth
performance appears to be.
Africa represents a highly significant portion of the world’s oil resources.
Capitalist nations are preparing the grounds in Africa through explorations on
land and under the sea, oil companies issuing significant bribes to African
government officials, increased military expenditure for US ‘Peace Keeping’
forces in Africa and several presidential visits to secure political allegiance
to oil exports. Western oil companies and African governments come from the same
style of Capitalism and therefore the wealth generated from oil exports tends to
circulate amongst themselves, leaving the average man to become even poorer, a
fact documented by several organizations. Therefore, whatever the resource finds
in Africa, poverty will continue to be the lot of the African continent.
In contrast, the Islamic Khilafah system fully integrated the peoples and lands
it governed over with statesmen from the Khilafah marrying from and
intermingling with the indigenous people. The spread of Islam to Africa was not
driven by material gains rather the aim was the furthering of the message of
Islam and its noble values. The Islamic economic system facilitated the well
being of Africa via the distribution of wealth. The strong injunctions to ensure
that wealth does not remain in the hands of the wealthy led to wealth flowing
throughout society. The current international competition between the US, EU and
China on Africa’s immense oil and mineral resources highlights the need for the
return of the rightly guided Khilafah Rashidah.