Home » History » African History » Islam in Africa: A Brief Introduction

Islam in Africa: A Brief Introduction

© Jessica Powers

The history of northern Africa is incomprehensible without understanding the spread of Islam.

Islam in Africa is almost as old as the faith itself. Muhammad died in 632; less than ten years after his death, Arabs conquered Egypt, though it was not until the 14th century that the majority of Egyptians were Arabic-speaking Muslims (Hallett, 92). By the end of the 7th century, Islam had spread across North Africa to the northern border of present day Mauritania.

Today, North Africa above the Sahara and significant portions of West Africa and the East African coast are Islamic. The following website displays a map showing predominantly Islamic regions of modern Africa: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_c...

Many people associate Islam's spread with conquest or jihads. The importance of conquest, however, was that it established an Arab presence, inviting Muslim settlement and trade. Settlement and trade, ultimately, were more important than conquest in establishing Islam as the dominant religion of the region. Still, the historical process seems circular because without the unity religion brings, and thus the "righteousness" behind invasions and conquest, the vast trade routes and settlements might never have happened.

Still, though Islam's fundamentalism is often cited as the reason why Islam spread historically, wealth -- the possibilities of trade and business -- were just as important for establishing an Arab presence in North Africa as proselytization (see Hallett).

In this, at least, Islam and Christianity differed little in their invasions of Africa. Europeans and Arabs had similar reasons for Africa's conquest. For Europeans, spreading Christianity and culture (the idea of "civilization") were ostensibly two of the most important reasons for their presence in Africa; but commerce rarely took second place to religion or culture.

For Arabs, Northwest Africa held the same allure that Western America held for the Europeans who emigrated there in the 19th Century. They pioneered it the way Americans pioneered the West; as more and more Arabs settled in North Africa, it became the land of hope and opportunity where they could be free from persecution and make a fortune (Hallet, 121).

While the distinction between religion, culture, and trade/commerce is fuzzier for Muslims than for Western Christians, historian Hallett argues that few Muslims would have moved without the lure of wealth. Unlike Europeans, however, the Arabs who emigrated to Northwest Africa assimilated the indigenous cultures they encountered. Both cultures -- and the religion Islam -- changed and deepened in the process. (Of course, Christianity changed in the hands of Africans as well; the question remains if and how much western Christians allowed Africa to influence and enrich their culture.)