African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, Eva Evers Rosander and David Westerlund, eds. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 1997. 347pp $39.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.^©

African Islam and Islam in Africa is another in a growing number of edited volumes devoted to the dynamics of contemporary Muslim communities in Africa. Its sub-title, "Encounters between Sufis and Islamists," refers to the volume's focus on points of conflict involving Muslims who emphasize different aspects of Islamic religiosity and often seem to be irreconcilably opposed on crucial matters of the faith. The authors understand "African Islam" to refer to Muslim beliefs and practices that Africans have contextualized over the years, often under the guidance of Sufis, and "Islam in Africa" to refer to the ideology of religious reform, usually articulated in the Islamist call for greater implementation of the sharia.

The contributors approach these encounters from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, religious studies, international relations, law, and history. Most of the examples are drawn from Muslim communities in the northern third of Africa, including Egypt, the Maghrib, and the "sudanic" belt to the south (stretching from Senegal to the Sudan). Some of the essays are case studies rooted in field research or textual analysis, and others are syntheses devoted to thematic or regional developments.

Several case studies examine the lives of prominent African Muslims. Rose Lake, in her fascinating study of an important Senegalese Mouride leader, Serigne Abdoulaye Yakhine Diop, focuses on a lengthy interview with an elderly disciple. This informant's intimate portrait of Diop highlights the ambiguities of Mouride memories, and adds an additional layer of complexity to the Senegalese past. Abubakar Gumi, the influential Islamist figure associated with the Yan Izala movement in northern Nigeria, is the focus of Roman Loimeier's contribution. In addition to biographical details, Loimeier offers insightful comments that help illuminate the complex politics associated with the Yan Izala's different approaches to Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya Sufi movements in Nigeria. Lisbet Holtedahl and Mahmoudou Djingui use the biography of al-hajji Ibrahim Goni of northern Cameroon to reveal how Fulbe families associated with the military movements of the nineteenth century still utilize Islamic credentials to bolster their social status.

The translation of the Qur'an and Muslim ritual life are the topics of two additional case studies. Justo Lacunza-Balda offers a richly documented analysis of three ki-Swahili translations of Islam's scripture that situates them into the vibrant politics of translation in Tanzania. Sossie Andezian begins her contribution with a wonderfully thick description of an Algerian women's pilgrimage ritual and then raises a cluster of issues associated with gender relations and the representation of authority. Her essay, a translation of an article she previously published in French, is a provocative engagement of the anthropological literature on ritual that complements some of the themes raised in Modernity and its Malcontents, the volume recently edited by Jean and John Comaroff.

Other contributions are thematic essays or explorations of intra-Muslim relations in particular countries. John Hunwick situates the "sudanic" belt into the context of the wider Muslim world of the twentieth century, focusing on a broad range of individual and institutional contacts. He suggests, with the historian's sense of the past as prelude, that the trend toward the globalization of Islamic contacts and knowledge will not lead to a homogenization of Muslim beliefs and practices in the region. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im also focuses on the societies on the vast southern edge of the Sahara in an essay concerned with human rights. An-Na'im reminds us that the sheer diversity of the Muslim cultural systems in the region create a complex context in which the struggle for human rights occurs locally. Muhammad Mahmoud, Tomas Gerholm, and George Joffe provide overviews of the activities of Muslim groups in the Sudan, Egypt, and the Maghrib, respectively. The most instructive comment appears in Gerholm's essay, in which he reminds us that the majority of Muslims, "the mainstreamers" as he calls them, are not directly engaged by the arguments of any of the diverse Muslim movements currently competing for their loyalties in contemporary Egypt.

The volume includes a thematic introductory essay by Eva Evers Rosander and a concluding analysis focused on the rise of Islamism by David Westerlund. Both stress the activism and creativity of the Islamists, noting that "reformers" are constructing new types of Muslim society in their invocation of divine mandates from the Qur'an and sunna. Westerlund probes the possible causes for the emergence of Islamism, and quite convincingly moves beyond presumptions of economic and political discontent to underline the efforts taken by Islamists to attract followers to their cause. Rosander focuses on contemporary Muslim discourse and the construction of authority in which groups strive to root themselves in a "legitimate" Muslim "center" and castigate their opponents as occupying a "morally inferior" "margin." Her essay powerfully underlines the implications of Islamism for Africa. Even if, as Gerholm notes for Egypt, most African Muslims are mainstreamers, encounters between Islamists and other Muslim leaders are producing new configurations that will shape relations of domination/subordination in specific contexts.

This volume enhances our understanding of intra-Muslim relations in contemporary Africa. Occasionally, the focus on two currents, Sufism and Islamism, belies the evidence presented in the essays that Sufism is not the only alternative to Islamism in contemporary discourse. While Rosander and Westerlund, following the lead of Andezian, acknowledge that gender relations are significant, this theme is not as fully elaborated as it deserves. Finally, except for the analysis of the Qur'an translation by Lacunza-Balda and occasional references in other essays, the writings of the Muslim protagonists are not engaged. Nevertheless, this volume deserves a wide readership. Specialists will find worthwhile contributions in their particular fields and generalists may read this volume with confidence that the authors are discussing important issues pertaining to the emergence of Islamism in Africa.

John Hanson
History Department
Indiana University