Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam ISBN: 9780199351640 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Religion;
Over the course of the last 1400 years, Islam has grown from a small band of followers on the Arabian peninsula into a global religion of over a billion believers. How did this happen? The usual answer is that Islam spread by the sword-believers waged jihad against rival tribes and kingdoms and forced them to convert. Lamin Sanneh argues that this is far from the whole story. Beyond Jihad examines the origin and evolution of the African pacifist tradition in Islam, beginning with an inquiry into the faith's origins and expansion in North Africa and its transmission across trans-Saharan trade routes to West Africa. The book focuses on the ways in which, without jihad, the religion spread and took hold, and what that tells us about the nature of religious and social change.
At the heart of this process were clerics who used religious and legal scholarship to promote Islam. Once this clerical class emerged, it offered continuity and stability in the midst of political changes and cultural shifts, helping to inhibit the spread of radicalism, and subduing the urge to wage jihad. With its policy of religious and inter-ethnic accommodation, this pacifist tradition took Islam beyond traditional trade routes and kingdoms into remote districts of the Mali Empire, instilling a patient, Sufi-inspired, and jihad-negating impulse into religious life and practice. Islam was successful in Africa, Sanneh argues, not because of military might but because it was made African by Africans who adapted it to a variety of contexts.
Lamin Sanneh was born in a tiny river town in Gambia on May 24, 1942. He was born a Muslim but converted to Christianity as a teenager and became a practicing Roman Catholic. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Union College, a master's degree from the University of Birmingham, and a doctorate in Islamic history from the University of London. He held teaching posts at the University of Ghana, the University of Aberdeen, and Harvard Divinity School. He taught at Yale Divinity School and Yale University for 30 years. He was a naturalized United States citizen.
He became a scholar of Christianity and Islam. He was the author or editor of more than 20 books including Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa, Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African, and Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam. He died from complications of a stroke on January 6, 2019 at the age of 76.
