Roman Loimeier opens Muslim Societies in Africa: A Historical Anthropology with a quotation from Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam, ‘Europeans have tended to read the rest of the world history as function of European history.’ (p. ix) Drawing on this quote, the heart of Loimeier's argument rests on his attempts to debunk the peripherization of Muslim societies in Africa and to offer a balanced perspective on the complex history of Muslim Africa and its connections to the rest of the Islamic and European worlds and beyond.
During the first half of the twentieth century, research on African history shaped by Eurocentricism had led several well-intended colonial administrators and academically trained scholars to depict Islam in Africa in a racialized anthropological discourse. In the early 1960s, Vincent Monteil, for instance, coined the expression islam noir, or ‘black Islam’ to describe Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, and ascribed to this religious form unorthodoxy, accommodation, and non-militancy.
While many scholars may prefer to think of this perspective and its anglicized expressions of ‘African Islam’ as a bygone product of colonial racism, in Muslim Societies in Africa, Loimeier reminds his readers that ‘sometimes, old patterns of thought die hard’. The need to debunk this perspective has led scholars to affirm Africa's place in history and historical studies. In the case of Islamic Africa, several historians have rejected the peculiar and inauthentic discourse about Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. The ensuing criticism has culminated in an outburst of rigorous academic literature that aspires to place African Muslim history in its broader historical milieu. Yet while most of these studies mark a clear point of departure from the earlier divide and rule discourse, the peripherization of the bilad al-Sudan (Africa south of the Sahara), from its larger historical context remain to be fully addressed.
In Muslim Societies in African History, Loimeier examines the history of African Muslim societies in the broader African context in order to redress this continued bias. Though Loimeier is quick to acknowledge the inspiration he drew from the extant scholarship, he criticizes it for privileging particular themes or regions over others and for discounting the broader patterns that connect African Muslim societies to the globalized Muslim world. Keenly attentive to broader patterns in the study of Muslim societies in Africa, he recognizes the need to account for Muslim societies' complex interaction with Christianity, Judaism, and multitudes of indigenous African religious traditions.
Drawing on his incredible wealth of knowledge about Islamic Africa, extensive archival research, and knowledge of several languages of Islamic Africa (including French, German, Arabic, Hausa, and Swahili), Loimeier boldly crafts a methodological framework that enables him to identify broader patterns and peculiarities in the historical, social, economic, and political development of Africa and to address the impact of Islam over the longue durée. Such an approach, Loimeier asserts, is better suited for offering a balanced perspectives of the complexity of the history of Muslim Africa. Instead of peculiarities, he emphasizes the unity and diversity of Muslim societies in Africa regardless of the manner in which Islam is practiced in specific geographical settings.
Loimeier organized the book regionally with a detailed discussion of religious and social issues, and with a concluding chapter on European colonial rule and its aftermath. After the introduction, in which he examines the process of Islamization across the variegated African continent, he demonstrates the diverse ecology, local settings, and historical processes shaping Islamic practice in each part of the continent. He then discusses the complexity of Muslim societies in eight chapters across various times and places, and ends with a final chapter on Muslim societies under colonial rule.
The book clearly debunks the notion of the peculiarity of Muslim societies in Africa and provides a nuanced analysis that places their history in that of a much more globalized world. This is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the history of Islam in Africa. Loimieir admits that the book is not comprehensive. Indeed, Muslim Societies in Africa is silent about key issues such as gender and women's voices. Overall this is a masterful contribution to the growing literature on Islam in Africa, suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate classes about the history of Muslim societies in Africa.
