Thoughtful and challenging, this book argues for a reassessment of the role historically played by Islam in Africa, and offers new hope for in creased mutual understanding between African people of different faiths. Drawing on a wealth of sources, from the colonial period to the most up-to-date scholarship, the author challenges the widely held perception th at, while Christianity oppressed and subjugated the African people, Islam fitted comfortably into the indigenous landscape. Instead, this penetrating account reveals Muslim settlers to be as guilty of enforcing slavery and conversion as those of their more maligned sister tradition. Only with an acknowledgement of the true roles of both faiths in African history, suggests Azumah, can the people of both traditions move themselves and their continent towards a new future of tolerance and self-awareness.

“My Christian faith taught me always to fight hard but only to fight back with the truth. Sadly, I learned that the opposition to Judeo-Christian faith and family values has never had truth as a requirement.” —Ken Mercer Mercer describes slavery as Evil. Slavery existed in the world for thousands of years before the founding of our thirteen colonies and before the signing of our 1776 Declaration of Independence. Then came ”The Great Awakening” of the Christian faith in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe. The movement to abolish world-wide slavery was born. Article 1 (Section 9) of the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the three post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments, are just a few examples of historical events championed by Christian men and women standing firm against powerful and evil forces. This book, Slavery 101, is the first in a series of “Mercer Moments in American History.” Future projects planned include Constitution 101—Separation of Church and State, and In God We Still Trust. Ken Mercer believes: “We will never fully comprehend our Founding Father’s challenge to continuously strive to become a ‘more perfect Union’ unless we understand what makes our United States of America so exceptional. It is the profound impact and unbroken revival of Judeo-Christian values throughout our history.”

Slavery remains rampant worldwide. At least 27 million men, women, and children are enslaved today, ranging from prostitutes in London to indentured workers in Burma. This book tells some of their stories. -The statistics of modern day slavery are shocking,- writes Baroness Cox. -Behind each statistic is a human being ' a man, woman, or child; and behind each human being is a family and a community which have been devastated or destroyed. As real-life experiences often speak louder than words, we introduce some of the hundreds of former slaves we have met personally.- The picture is changing rapidly: there are grounds for optimism, but also fresh concern. This popularly written but carefully researched volume has been fully updated for this new edition. It includes chapters on the causes of slavery, on the history of the practice, on different forms of contemporary slavery and truly shocking case studies from Sudan, Burma, Uganda, Indonesia, and the UK. Dr Lydia Tanner contributes a new chapter on human trafficking, and Mal Egner provides a chapter on the conditions endured by the Dalits of India. Former slave and South Sudanese Olympic athlete, Guor Marial, writes the foreword.

This handbook generates new insights that enrich our understanding of the history of Islam in Africa and the diverse experiences and expressions of the faith on the continent. The chapters in the volume cover key themes that reflect the preoccupations and realities of many African Muslims. They provide readers access to a comprehensive treatment of the past and current traditions of Muslims in Africa, offering insights on different forms of Islamization that have taken place in several regions, local responses to Islamization, Islam in colonial and post-colonial Africa, and the varied forms of Jihād movements that have occurred on the continent. The handbook provides updated knowledge on various social, cultural, linguistic, political, artistic, educational, and intellectual aspects of the encounter between Islam and African societies reflected in the lived experiences of African Muslims and the corpus of African Islamic texts.

Islam and Christianity are often presented as violent rivals facing each other across a gulf of insurmountable differences. Yet if Christians are to effectively engage Muslims with the gospel, they must learn to build bridges across this divide. This study explores the Muslim presence in Ghana, a nation once believed to be resistant to Islam, and analyses the missiological implications for Pentecostals, the fastest growing group of Christians in the country. Dr. Dieudonne Komla Nuekpe examines the shared spiritual heritage of Ghanaian Pentecostals and folk Muslims within the broader context of African traditional religion. He proposes that this shared heritage – with its emphasis on supernatural encounters and the spiritual realm – can provide common ground for Pentecostals seeking to peacefully and respectfully engage Muslims with the gospel. Identifying the existential, experiential, and theological needs at the heart of folk Islam, this book offers a practical guide for constructive Muslim-Christian engagement in Ghana and beyond. This study also challenges missiologists – both scholars and practitioners – to engage in critical contextualization that considers a culture’s indigenous religious practices when seeking to build bridges to the gospel.

Bilad al-Sudan is a companion volume to Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam. A collection of distinct essays written since the publication of Black Arabia, Bilad al-Sudan offers:Further evidence that the Arabs of the first Muslim community of 7th century Arabia were an Africoid people.A correction to the mistaken belief that the pre-Islamic Arabs were white and racist, as seen by their alleged treatment of Bilal, Companion of the Prophet Muhammad.A refutation of recent Muslim attempts to defend the White Supremacist paradigm in Islam.A critical analysis of Afrocentric discourse on Islam.An introduction to a new paradigm: Ma'atic Islam.Dr. Wesley Muhammad is an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and author of several books. He holds a Bachelors Degree in Religious Studies from Morehouse College as well as a Masters Degree and PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan. Dr. Muhammad is currently a scholarly aide to The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Nowhere else in the world have both Islam and Christianity been more instrumental in shaping the history of a people and their way of life than in Africa. African Muslims and Christians have a lot in common, including kinship ties, shared languages and citizenship. Yet, despite the centuries of deep historical links and harmonious existence between the two religions, new challenges threaten this harmony. Conflicts involving Christians and Muslims in places like Sudan, Nigeria and Ivory Coast are common. These conflicts are fueled primarily by ignorance, stereotyping and prejudice, which in turn breed fear, suspicion and even hatred, in some cases leading to violence. My Neighbour's Faith sheds light on the beliefs and teaching of Islam by addressing matters of contemporary importance to Christians and the wider non-Muslim audience. It presents the human face of Islam--the face of a close relative, a neighbour, a teacher and even a head of state--in a balanced and critical way that gives a credible view of Islam.

Is Ali Mazrui a visionary or a vacuous' intellectual? Is he reactionary, revolutionary or essentially a radical pragmatist? These questions were the focus of a forum intended to interrogate Ali Mazrui's contributions over the last forty years or so of his career as an academic. The questions themselves capture the magnitude of the polarisation among different sections of Mazrui's audiences generated by his often provocative propositions and prescriptions on a wide range of issues - from the condition of the black woman to the destiny of the black race.'

"This third edition of Ira M. Lapidus's classic A History of Islamic Societies has been substantially revised to incorporate the insights of new scholarship and updated to include historical developments in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Lapidus's history explores the beginnings and transformations of Islamic civilizations in the Middle East and details Islam's worldwide diffusion to Africa, Spain, Turkey and the Balkans, Central, South and Southeast Asia, and North America, situating Islamic societies within their global, political, and economic contexts. It accounts for the impact of European imperialism on Islamic societies and traces the development of the modern national state system and the simultaneous Islamic revival from the early nineteenth century to the present. This book is essential for readers seeking to understand Muslim peoples."--Publisher information.

While in the Ottoman Regency of Tunis after returning from pilgrimage around 1809 C.E., the Timbuktu cleric and religious puritanist, Aḥmad b. al-Qādī b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm al-Fulānī al-Timbuktāwī wrote Hatk al-Sitr ʿammā ʿalayhi sūdān Tūnis min al-kufr (Piercing the Veil: Being an Account of the Infidel Religion of the Blacks of Tunis), which he dedicated to the ruler of the Beylic, Ḥammūda Pāsha (r. 1782-1814 C.E.) In this treatise, al-Timbuktāwī provided a vivid account of the Hausa Bori cult and entreated Tunisian authorities to imprison or even re-enslave its practitioners whom he distinguished from the heterogeneous Black population in the Regency. This critical edition and complete translation of Hatk al-Sitr places the story of al-Timbuktāwī’s encounter with the Bori practitioners not just in their Maghribi and Sudanic African contexts, but also in the environment of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jihad and Islamic revivalism. The result is an insight into a discourse on Bori, jihad, and race and enslavement in the context of the African Diaspora to the Islamic World.