Although there is an extensive historical literature on Islam in Africa, certain Islamic groups such as Ahmadi Muslims have not appeared consistently in academic studies. Apart from a few earlier studies, the Ahmadiyya movement seldom takes centre stage in discussions about Islam's enduring presence in Africa. And this dearth draws attention to John Hanson's The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast, which marks a significant departure from previous studies as it ‘places Africans at the center of its analysis of the Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast’ (p. 3). Of course, Hanson acknowledges the crucial role of South Asian Muslim missionaries in transporting the Ahmadiyya movement beyond its place of origin in Punjab, British India. Nonetheless, he argues that ‘the arrival and consolidation of the movement [in the Gold Coast] was a culmination of African efforts to found and sustain a local Muslim community’ (p. 3). Despite a growing Christian presence in the Gold Coast during the colonial period, the focus of Hanson's study, the Ahmadiyya survived and continued to expand. In present-day Ghana, the former Gold Coast, Ahmadi Muslims have not only increased to about half a million members but have also continued to oversee more than a hundred educational institutions – primary, secondary and tertiary schools.
While historians have portrayed the Ahmadiyya in West Africa as a foreign movement, Hanson's study emphasizes African influences in shaping its history in the Gold Coast. In doing so he draws inspiration from British-born Ghanaian-American philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah's conception of cosmopolitanism, understood as ‘an ethical practice that responds eloquently to absolutists by advocating respectful conversations about shared principles across cultural boundaries’ (p. 5). Within this framework, Hanson traces cultural exchanges between Ahmadi Muslims and Christians in the Gold Coast. Cosmopolitans, Hanson states, are ‘those parties conversing about universal religious values across cultural boundaries’ in view of ‘the pragmatic ethics associated with cross-cultural exchanges’ (p. 3). Among the key players in such interactions of cosmopolitans were Fante Muslims, Ahmadi missionaries in residence, Afro-Brazilian Muslims, Hausa Force Muslims from Lagos, Fante Methodists and other West African Christians, among them Samuel Adjai Crowther (1809–1891), the first African Anglican bishop.
Significantly, Hanson observes, Ahmadi missionaries invoked the Bible to facilitate the spread of their religious beliefs. Yet, he is not primarily concerned about the ‘depth of conversion’, a debate in which Robin Horton, Humphrey Fisher and other scholars engaged during the 1970s while studying religious change in sub-Saharan Africa. Rather, Hanson focuses on the religious context in which ‘religious borrowings, adaptations, and transformation’ occurred (p. 14). Moreover, in analysing the complexities of religious change, Hanson employs ‘religious economy’ as a conceptual tool. This approach allows him to deal with not only the competitive nature of religious movements but also the exchange of strategies and techniques that underscores shared aims among different religions.
In The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast, the term ‘religious marketplace’ signifies a site of religious competition in the Gold Coast and British Punjab, where British imperialism set the stage for indigenous and imported cultural influences to coalesce. Indeed, Hanson's notion of an arena of exchange illuminates the historical dynamics of religious transformation that transpired in ‘pluralist British contexts’ (p. 15). This offers a window through which we see some historical moments unfold in the Gold Coast from the 1870s to the 1940s, when the study ends.
Hanson's monograph comprises eight chapters that are arranged in three parts: ‘Preparing the way in the Gold Coast’; ‘Ahmadiyya genesis and expansion to London and Lagos’; and ‘Ahmadiyya arrival and consolidation in the Gold Coast’. The chapters cover, among other topics, the growth of the Fante Muslim community, the origins of the Ahmadiyya in British India in 1889, its expansion to London and Lagos, the activities of Ahmadi Muslims in the wider black Atlantic, the consolidation of the Ahmadiyya among the Fante and Asante, opposition to the movement in Wa and Kumasi, and Ahmadi educational activities and transformations by the mid-1940s.
An eye-catching aspect of the book is the diverse range of internal and external sources Hanson employed to write it. He meticulously weaved both oral accounts and written documents to craft a historical reconstruction of the Ahmadiyya in an African setting in which an enthralling narrative and incisive analysis complement each other. Although important Ahmadi figures and African Ahmadi Muslims rarely left written records for posterity, Hanson tapped the records of British officials and Christian missionaries that referenced statements made by the Ahmadiyya leadership to give the reader a glimpse of their thinking. Furthermore, between 1996 and 2005, the author himself conducted over fifty interviews among Ahmadi Muslims and others linked to the history of the Ahmadiyya in Ghana to enrich the fragments of memories about the past in written sources. These interviews add to the private reminiscences about prominent Ahmadi Muslim predecessors passed on in families and public memories concerning the activities and visionary experiences of Ahmadi leaders Hanson collected in Ghana. The written documents consulted include newspapers of the colonial period from London, Lagos and the Gold Coast, British Colonial Office records, and Methodist accounts. In all, despite the challenges posed by the confluence of history and memory in reconstructing the past, Hanson demonstrates how to navigate this rough terrain with a significant degree of success, a cue that emerging historians, especially those studying Africa, could take to contribute meaningfully to this dynamic field.
