Lausanne World Pulse – Anthropological Insights for Gospel Communicators in African-Muslim Contexts

July 2006

By Caleb Kim

A Swahili Muslim woman goes into the state of spirit possession trance, immediately after which a powerful jinni speaks through her voice to people in that séance.

Islamization and Islamic Expressions in Africa
Anthropological efforts have uncovered a significant, historical fact that Islam was the result of indigenous inhabitants on the eastern coast of Africa rather than a dogmatic implantation by outsiders.¹ What is characteristic of the history of the spread of Islam in East Africa is that the process of Islamization was an Africanization of Islam in an anthropological sense. It was principally a mutual accommodation (or acculturation) between two religio-cultural entities, that is, between indigenous African traditions and the Islamic ideology. Such a culturally localizing process in the expansion of Islam is also palpable when we look into the history of other Muslim societies in Africa. In the acculturating process Islam had naturally affected the deep level of African traditional worldviews to the great extent that it eventually became their own religion. In other words, Islamic beliefs and values were gradually incorporated into the extant structure of African traditions.²  This is how Islam had been welcomed, nurtured and expanded in sub-Saharan Africa. For this reason, we often observe that most Muslim societies in Africa still maintain their local traditions while also keeping official Islamic beliefs and practices.

Often times we differentiate between “official Islam” and “folk Islam” for our convenience. Official Islam refers to the ideological dimension of Islamic faith, focusing on Islamic theology (tawhid meaning “the unity of God”) and traditions (sunna referring to the Prophet Muhammad’s deeds and words),³ while folk Islam (or “popular Islam”) designates the Muslim beliefs and practices that are apart from the official aspect of Islam. Folk Islam deals with everyday human problems that are seldom touched or resolved by official Islam.⁴ However, these two categories do not mean that there are two different kinds of Islam in the Muslim world. Rather, these two terms should be understood as referring to two dynamic, religio-cultural dimensions of the Muslim faith.

Throughout the history of Islamic expansion in Africa, Islam as a religion has been embraced by local people without them losing their ethnic identity, traditional beliefs and cultural values. This is not to say that puritanical attempts to remove idolatrous elements from their umma (Muslim community) have been absent. Therefore, it should be noted that both folk-religious and “orthodox” elements are always present in most Muslim societies. In other words, Islam has been expressed not only through its universal tenets but also through diverse local cultures that host the Islamic faith.

An Illustration of Local Islamic Features
Islam that has been accommodated into a particular locality can be labeled a “local Islam;” this is differentiated from the Islamic faith that is universally observed by all Muslims. On the eastern coast of Africa, Islam was accepted by the local population as the fulfillment of their old religions and traditions; thus, it was fundamentally restructured within old African worldviews. East African Muslims express their faith in a way that integrates both official Islam and their African traditions. Let me give an illustration on this type of synthetic feature of Islam.

Caleb Kim is a fulltime professor at a graduate school in Africa.