This timely collection offers new perspectives on Muslim-Christian encounters in Africa. Working against political and scholarly traditions that keep Muslims and Christians apart, the essays in this multidisciplinary volume locate African Muslims and Christians within a common analytical frame. In a series of historical and ethnographic case studies from across the African continent, the authors consider the multiple ways Muslims and Christians have encountered each other, borrowed or appropriated from one another, and sometimes also clashed. Contributors recast assumptions about the making and transgressing of religious boundaries, Christian-Muslim relations, and conversion. This engaging collection is a long overdue attempt to grapple with the multi-faceted and changing encounters of Muslims and Christians in Africa.
Benjamin F. Soares is a researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. He is the author of Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town (Edinburgh/Ann Arbor: Edinburgh University Press/University of Michigan Press, 2005).
'The changing nature of Muslim-Christian encounters in Africa requires the type of fresh, informed perspectives available in this work. This diverse set of authors also exhibits the necessary historical depth, contemporary research, and critical reflection for balanced treatment of such a critical topic.'
Rosalind I.J. Hackett, President, International Association for the History of Religions, Distinguished Professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
'[Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa] stellt eine abwechslungsreiche und empfehlenswerte Zusammenstellung wissenschaftlich relevanter Artikel zu christlich-muslimischen Begegnungen in Afrika dar.' Bjorn Zimprich, DAVO-Nachrichten
Note on Transliteration
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa
African Muslims and Christians in World
Flesh Soaked in Faith: Meat as a Marker of the Boundary between Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia
Missionary Legacies: Muslim-Christian Encounters in Egypt and Sudan during the Colonial and Postcolonial Periods
A Fifty-Year Muslim Conversion to Christianity: Religious Ambiguities and Colonial Boundaries in Northern Nigeria, c. 1906–1963
The Time of Conversion: Christians and Muslims among the Sereer-Safèn of Senegal, 1914–1950s
Christianity as Seen by an African Muslim Intellectual: Amadou Hampâté Bâ
Fundamentalism and Outreach Strategies in East Africa: Christian Evangelism and Muslim Da'wa
In My End Is My Beginning: Muslim and Christian Traditions at Cross-Purposes in Contemporary Nigeria
An Opportunity Missed by Nigeria’s Christians: The 1976–78 Sharia Debate Revisited
The “Sharia Factor” in Nigeria’s 2003 Elections
From Resistance to Reconstruction: Challenges Facing Muslim-Christian Relations in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Contributors
Index
All those interested in African history, African politics, Islamic studies, Christian history, Christian-Muslim relations, and colonial/postcolonial studies.