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Encountering Muslims and Christians in West Africa reveals the power and complexity of religion as an influence in the modern world. Africans take religion seriously, and both Islam and Christianity are growing in Africa. Religion in West Africa is also syncretistic and integrated into other areas of life. While the expansion of Islam and Christianity in Africa has led to conflict between Muslims and Christians, in some countries like Nigeria and the Sudan, in Sierra Leone and Guinea, where I visited in 2008 with a Fulbright group, relations are good between these two faiths.
While Islam came to West Africa centuries before Christianity and is the predominant religion throughout the region, the balance between Muslims and Christians varies considerably from country to country. Guinea, a former French colony, is about 85% Muslim and 8% Christian, while Sierra Leone, a former British colony, is about 60% Muslim. Estimates of the Christian population in Sierra Leone vary from 10-30%.
History
Although Islam spread to North Africa by the Arab conquests in the 7th century, Muslim merchants brought Islam to the coast of East Africa and the interior of West Africa in the 8th century, and, by the 10th century, the kings of Ghana had converted to Islam. With the expansion of the Mali empire in the 13th and 14th centuries, Islam spread throughout West Africa to the Atlantic coast. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Fulani initiated a series of religious conquests (jihads) from Nigeria to Guinea and Senegal that created Islamic states. Islam became a force both for Fulani political control and in the resistance to British and French colonialism.
Christianity took root in Egypt, North Africa, and Ethiopia between the 1st and 4th centuries, but it did not arrive in West Africa until Portuguese missionaries introduced Catholic Christianity in the 15th century. While the powerful Islamic Songhai Empire still ruled the interior, the Portuguese, French, and British began, in the 16th century, to establish footholds along the coast of West Africa. At the beginning of the 19th century, both Protestant and Catholic missionaries began a concerted effort to convert the peoples of West Africa to Christianity. Freed African slaves, who had converted to Christianity, played an important role in the establishment of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Long before the arrival of the Europeans, African Muslims promoted schools and centers of Islamic studies in West Africa. Likewise, Christian missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, made contributions in the field of education in the 19th and 20th centuries. Anglican missionaries established Fourah Bay College, the oldest Western-style college in West Africa, in 1827.
As the French and British exerted more direct imperial control over Africa in the late 19th century, Africans began a long struggle for independence from European domination. Religion played a role in this resistance, as it did in other aspects of African life. The Fulani jihads failed to stop the advance of European imperialism, but French and British colonial officials recognized the powerful influence that Islamic leaders had over the people. The Christian churches became associated with the colonial rulers and the African elites that collaborated with colonialism. Yet, many leaders of the independence movements in West Africa received their education in Christian schools and colleges. Christian missions trained indigenous clergy to take over leadership of the African churches, and African evangelists and catechists spread the faith far more effectively than European or American missionaries. African independent churches also competed with the missionary churches and experienced rapid growth in some parts of West Africa. Therefore, Christianity survived the retreat of European empires from Africa in the second half of the 20th century and, along with Islam and indigenous African religions, continues to play a significant part in the lives of the peoples of West Africa.
Observations of Muslims and Christians in West Africa 2008
As our Fulbright group traveled for five weeks in Guinea and Sierra Leone in the summer of 2008, we visited schools, universities, churches, and mosques. This gave me an opportunity to talk to Muslims and Christians about their faith and the role of religion in their societies. We attended worship services of various Protestant denominations, as well as in Catholic churches and one mosque. As we drove through the African countryside, we noticed that the newest buildings in the villages were usually mosques, churches, or schools. Signs along the road indicated that some of the churches and mosques were built with funds from co-religionists in Europe or the Middle East.
While the Christian services showed some influences of the foreign missionary legacy, distinctly African styles of music, singing, dress, and languages were prevalent in both Protestant and Catholic churches. The Roman Catholic Church is still evident in Guinea, as it was in French colonial days, while the Anglican Church remains a leading denomination in neighboring Sierra Leone; but alongside the Catholics and Anglicans, there are many other Protestant churches (Methodist, Baptist, AME, Apostolic, Pentecostal) and independent African churches. The American ambassador in Guinea indicated the on-going cooperation between the embassy staff and local Muslim and Christian religious leaders on initiatives to solve social problems and build institutions of civil society. Another remarkable feature of religion in both Guinea and Sierra Leone was the good relations that exist between Christian churches as well as between Muslims and Christians.
There were many reminders of Islam wherever we went, from the call to prayer in cities and towns to the ubiquitous mosques and Islamic dress. In villages, some Muslim women worked naked to the waist in the fields or caring for children, while in cities and towns a few women were shrouded in black from head to foot. Yet there was little evidence of an increase in conservative Islam found in other parts of the Muslim world. A Muslim shrine in Timbo, Guinea, revealed several aspects of Islam in West Africa. It was at the grave of Karamoko Alfa Barry, the founder of the Fouta Empire in 1725. While shrines are discouraged in Sunni Islam, the Sufi brotherhoods, which have had a strong influence in West Africa, honor great Muslim leaders with such shrines. Sufi Islam also tends to be more syncretistic than other forms of Islam and therefore more compatible with African traditions of honoring ancestors.
In Kankan, we visited the Grand Mosque, a center for Islamic studies in West Africa for centuries and the spiritual home of the Malinké people. The senior imam welcomed the men of our group to join him and the city elders in a space at the front of the mosque, while the women were segregated in another room. At the time for evening prayer, he invited the men in our group to join them in the prayers.
My overall impression was that both Islam and Christianity play an important role in the lives of people in West Africa. Though they take religion seriously, they are not inclined to interreligious conflict or extremism. While several West African countries, including Sierra Leone, have recently experienced political violence and civil war, religion did not play a significant part in the strife. African Islam and Christianity provide examples of toleration and mutual respect between religious communities in Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Resources
BBC: The Story of Africa – Religion www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1624_story_of_africa/page57.shtml
Piety and Power: Muslims and Christians in West Africa Lamin Sanneh (1996)
“African Christianity” www.bethel.edu/~letnie/AfricanChristianity/index.html
A History of Christianity in Africa, Elizabeth Isichei (1995)
The Church in Africa 1450-1950, Adrian Hastings (1994)
West Africa and Islam, Peter Clarke (1982)
A History of Islam in West Africa, J. Spencer Triningham (1962)
“Political Islam in West Africa and the Sahel,” Ricardo Laremont and Hrach Gregorian, Military Review January-February 2006
usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/JanFeb06/Laremont.pdf
“Islam in Africa” Hussein Hassan, Report for Congress 2008 www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22873.pdf |
