ISLAMISATION AND ARABISATION OF AFRICA

SIMILIARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ISLAMISATION AND ARABISATION OF AFRICA BY NNADI FORTUNATUS CHISOM MATRIC NUMBER: DI/575 Being a term paper submitted to the Department of Philosophy, Dominican Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Samonda Ibadan, in Affiliation to the University of Ibadan, in Partial fulfillment of the Requirement for COURSE CODE: RES 313 COURSE NAME: ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA NAME OF LECTURER: DR MRS HABEEBAH OLADOSU-UTHMAN JUNE 2015. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ii ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION 1 CLARIFICARION OF CONCEPTS 3 What is Islam? 3 Who are the Arabs? 4 THE AFRICAN CONTINENT 5 WHAT IS ISLAMIZATION? 6 WHAT IS ARABISATION? 8 SIMILIARITIES BETWEEN ISLAMISATION AND ARABISATION 11 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ISLAMISATION AND ARABISATION 11 CONCLUSION 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY 12  ABSTRACT Understanding of ‘the Muslin World’ is usually predicated on two assumptions: that Muslim communities are homogeneous; and, that the terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘Arab’ are more-or-less synonymous, because the majority of Muslims are Arab. Both of these are misconceptions. There is wide variation in Muslin discourses (the belief systems, legal systems and practices of those communities which claim adherence to Islam). And in fact, there are more non-Arab Muslims than there are Arab. This is evident in Asia (Indonesia is after all the largest Muslim country with a population of nearly two million). Islam, Islamisation and Women in Africa: A General Introductory Bibliography. Women and Islam In Africa Series: No 1 INTRODUCTION Islam and Arabic are two distinct words but many Africans do confuse them or take one for the other. This confusion is also carried over to the concepts Islamization and Arabization. Islamization was or is a gradual transmission of the Islamic religion as more and more conquered peoples embraced Islamic faith. Many Africans, from North to South and from West to East, accepted the religion renewed by Prophet Muhammad. Thus, we can say that they are Islamized. However, Arabization was or is the transmission of not only Arabic language but some essentials of Arab culture. These two processes happened in North Africa where Islamization and Arabization took place jointly. North Africans embraced Arabic culture and as time went on they became Arabised; arab culture became ipso facto their identity. Though they are not Arabs but they have been Arabized. However, we notice that Arabization of North Africa slowed down during the last five decades because of the influence of Western civilization. Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia are the major countries which fall into this case. Frederic Ntedika Mvumbi, O.P, Islam in Africa Today:Some observations, Nairobi Ghana, October 10 -16, 2004 In this essay, the researcher intends to dig deeper into the discussions that hinge on Arabisation and Islamization of Africa as a continent. To avoid the danger of ambiguities and confusions, the researcher shall try to clarify some terms used in the essay like Islam, Arabs and the African continent. After that, the gaze of this intellectual hunt shall be directed at the Islamization and Arabisation of the African Continent. When that is done, the speed of the work will accelerate as it dives headlong into the crux of this write-up namely; trying to decipher the similarities and differences between Islamization and Arabisation. At this juncture, by way of recapitulation of this compendium of research done by the researcher, the work will be concluded. It is pertinent to note however, after the above intro into the work, that in the 7th and 8th centuries the religion of Islam spread through conversion and military conquest throughout the Middle East and North Africa. By 733, just 100 years after the death of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, an ordered Islamic state stretched from India in the east to Spain in the west. Dallal, Ahmad S. "Islam." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Within two centuries after its rise in the 7th century, Islam spread from its original home in Arabia into Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain to the west, and into Persia, India, and, by the end of the 10th century, beyond to the east. In the following centuries, Islam also spread into Anatolia and the Balkans to the north, and sub-Saharan Africa to the south. The Muslim community comprises about 1 billion followers on all five continents, and Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world. The most populous Muslim country is Indonesia, followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh. Beyond the Middle East, large numbers of Muslims live in India, Nigeria, the former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and China. Dallal, Ahmad S. "Islam." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. CLARIFICARION OF CONCEPTS What is Islam? In the Arabic language, the word Islam means “surrender” or “submission”- submission to the will of God. A follower of Islam is called a Muslim, which in Arabic means “one who surrenders to God.” The Arabic name for God, Allah, refers to the God worshiped by Jews and Christians. Islam’s central teaching is that there is only one all-powerful, all-knowing God, and this God created the universe. This rigorous monotheism, as well as the Islamic teaching that all Muslims are equal before God, provides the basis for a collective sense of loyalty to God that transcends class, race, nationality, and even differences in religious practice. Thus, all Muslims belong to one community, the umma, irrespective of their ethnic or national background. Dallal, Ahmad S. "Islam." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Islam was a singlehanded enterprise at the very beginning but right after the death of Muhammad up-todate,Islam contains multiple expressions. Islam remains one maybe with the authority of the Qur’an but diverse due to what goes into it and what comes from it. This is the type of Islam that came to Africa. I prefer to talk about Islams in plural than Islam in singular. Frederic Ntedika Mvumbi, O.P, Islam in Africa Today:Some observations, Nairobi Ghana, October 10 -16, 2004 Who are the Arabs? Arabs, name given to the ancient and present-day inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and often applied to the peoples closely allied to them in ancestry, language, religion, and culture. Presently more than 200 million Arabs are living mainly in 21 countries; they constitute the overwhelming majority of the population in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the nations of North Africa. The Arabic language is the main symbol of cultural unity among these people, but the religion of Islam provides another common bond for the majority of Arabs. Language and religion are united in the Qur'an (Koran), the sacred scripture of Islam. "Arabs." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Arabia was the site of a flourishing civilization long before the Christian era (see Arabia: Ancient Kingdoms). In the centuries following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in ad632, Arab influence spread throughout the Middle East, to parts of Europe, particularly Sicily and Spain, to sub-Saharan Africa, to the subcontinent of India, and to Madagascar and the Malay Archipelago. The cultural and scientific contributions of the Arabs to Western civilization during the Middle Ages was highly significant, especially in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. "Arabs." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. The Islamic religion, which originated in the western Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, predominates in most Arab nations. Forms of both major divisions of Islam—the Sunni and the various Shia sects—can be found in the Arab countries. Almost everywhere, nationalism, which emerged in the late 19th century, is an important force. Nationalists sometimes use the Islamic religious tradition as an ideological tool to justify the power of the ruling class. "Arabs." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. THE AFRICAN CONTINENT Africa is the second largest of Earth’s seven continents, covering 23 percent of the world’s total land area and containing 13 percent of the world’s population. Africa straddles the equator and most of its area lies within the tropics. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Indian Ocean and Red Sea on the east, and the Mediterranean Sea on the north. In the northeastern corner of the continent, Africa is connected with Asia by the Sinai Peninsula. Newman, James L., et al. "Africa." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. In 639 Islam began its march across North Africa (see Spread of Islam). For the most part, even though Islam was brought by conquering armies, conversion was mostly voluntary. Converts were quickly won in northwestern Africa, where many people saw Islam as a vibrant spiritual and material alternative to a decaying Christian world. Scattered Catholic communities did, however, manage to survive in North Africa into the 15th century. Conversion to Islam moved more slowly in Nubia and in Egypt, where the Coptic Church is still strong. Newman, James L., et al. "Africa." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. WHAT IS ISLAMIZATION? Islamization as a term, has dual connotations. First, it has to do with ‘to convert to Islam: i.e to convert people or countries to Islam. On a second note, it points at ‘to make subject to Islamic law: i.e to cause people, institutions, or countries to follow Islamic law.’ “Islamization” Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. The religion of Islam, founded in Arabia in the early 7th century, quickly united Arabs and inspired the expansion of a great Islamic empire across the Middle East and North Africa. By 641 Muslims had conquered Egypt, where they established a new ruling class of administrators and merchants. Over the ensuing centuries, and following further Arab immigration, most of the Egyptian population converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language, leaving the Egyptian Coptic Church as a small Christian sect. In Nubia, the Christian kingdom of Makuria managed to maintain its independence, establishing important trade connections with its newly Islamic northern neighbors. Arab penetration south and conversion of Christian Nubia to Islam did not occur until the early 14th century. The Arabs referred to North Africa west of Egypt as al-Maghreb (“the West” in Arabic). Muslims conquered Byzantine Carthage in about 700, and by 711 they overcame Berber resistance, extended their empire to Morocco, and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to southern Spain. In the Maghreb, the Arabs were initially confined to coastal regions. Here, captured Berbers were conscripted into the Arab army and converted to Islam. Inland, among the Berbers of the mountains and desert, conversion proceeded at a slower pace. In addition, many Berber groups asserted their independence from the caliphs (the rulers of the Islamic empire) soon after being converted. Over the ensuing centuries, a number of independent Islamic Berber states rose and fell, until, in the 10th century, the Fatimid dynasty united the central Maghreb. In 969 the Fatimids conquered Egypt and declared their independence from the caliphate. Newman, James L., et al. "Africa." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. WHAT IS ARABISATION? Taking a leaf from the root verb ‘arabize’ one is immediately aware that it has to do with conformity to arab Culture; i.e to conform or to make something conform, to arab customs and culture. "Arabise" Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Technically, Arabization refers more adequately to Arabs, i.e., the people and their behaviours. This term has been explained through many definitions based on varying views of authors. Even though it refers to two broadly definable concepts, it is a ubiquitous term. Therefore, Arabisation can be explained in two senses; In one of its senses, Arabization is the extensive use of Arabic in all domains of life: political, social, and cultural i.e. it refers to the promotion of Arabic as a medium of interaction in public and private sectors. G. Grandguillaume, La Francophonie en Algérie, Francophonie et mondialisation, no. 40, 2004, 75-97 In another sense, Sayadi defines Arabization as lexical expansion which includes the coinage of new terms, either from existing words, or through translation of foreign terms. M. Sayadi, Arabization in the Arab World, in Arabization and its Role in Supporting the Arab Existence and Unity, (Beirut, Center of Arab Unity Studies, 1982) Added to this second sense, and according to Al-Abed Al-Haq, Arabicization is a more adequate term that has been coined to refer to the second sense, because it is morphologically derived from the language which is Arabic and therefore refers to the idea of Arabic language planning. F. Al-Abed Al-Haq, Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Arabicization Planning, The first International conference on Literature, Linguistics, and Translation, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan, 1994, 4-7. With the ongoing spread of Islam, from the 8th century the communities of the East African coast became more directly connected to the long-distance trading network of the Indian Ocean. Muslim Arabic-speaking traders settled along the coast and married into local ruling families. The language and culture that developed remained distinctly African, but with Arabic and Islamic borrowings and influences. This language and culture, and the people in general, are referred to as Swahili. By 1000 Swahili trading settlements stretched from Mogadishu in the north to Mozambique, the Comoros archipelago, and northern Madagascar in the south. (By this time, Madagascar had been settled by Polynesian peoples from the eastern Indian Ocean.) Other major Swahili towns included Mombasa, Kilwa, Dar es Salaam, and Zanzibar. The more prosperous Swahili towns minted their own copper and silver coins. Gold from the southern African interior became a significant export in southern Swahili towns, while northern towns sold captives for slave labor. Most of these slaves were sent to the Middle East, many to work in southern Iraq collecting salt from coastal flats. Newman, James L., et al. "Africa." Microsoft Encarta. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. It is also the case in Africa, where it is less obviously evident for a number of reasons. First, there is the habit of referring to much of North and East Central Africa, (all the way from Morocco on the far north west coast of the continent, to Sydan and Somalia on the east on the continent down as far as the equator) as part of “the Middle East”. Second, there has in these countries been a series of processes of Arabisation. These began with the early Muslim expansions in the first two centuries of Islam (i.e the seventh and eighth centuries of the Gregorian calendar – AD), during which time, for example, the indigenous languages of lower Egypt disappeared. They move on, more recently, to the periods of nationalist independence in the 1960s – as in Algeria, where state policy deliberately ignored Algerian languages, like Berber in favour of Arabic. They also include the increasing influence of fundamentalist movements in the 1990s, as in contemporary Sudan. This Arabisation needs to be recognized not only as increasing the influence of speakers of Arabic and Arab culture, but also as the refusal to recognize the existence of other African languages and cultures within their borders. Islam, Islamisation and Women in Africa: A General Introductory Bibliography. Women and Islam In Africa Series: No 1 The skills of literacy and record-keeping that Muslim scholars brought with them were responsible in large part for this. But, unlike North Africa, in West Africa the Arab alphabet was used to write, not only Arabic, but majorly in the indigenous languages like Fulfulde, Hausa, and Kanuri. And, in East Africa, the contact (with started prior to Islam) between Arab traders and East Africans (grouped as Bantu-speaking peoples), eventually led to the development of a language, Swahili, a mixture of Bantu languages and Arabic, and an African culture in which strong Muslim influences can be discerned. Clearly, islamisation in Africa (as in Arabia or Asia) has taken different trajectories and had different sorts of consequences. A common body of texts – the Qur’an, the hadith, various sources of shari’ah (jurisprudence and law) – are selectively drawn upon, diversely interpreted, and not all discourses are equally successful in achieving authority. Hence the bibliofraphy’s entries on Islam and Islamisation point to the historical, social and political contexts in which particular forms of Muslim discourses and communities have developed. Islam, Islamisation and Women in Africa: A General Introductory Bibliography. Women and Islam In Africa Series: No 1 SIMILIARITIES BETWEEN ISLAMISATION AND ARABISATION Both are processes. Both involve integration. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ISLAMISATION AND ARABISATION Arab is the place while islam is the religion. While arabisation is imposition or integration of Arabic culture, islamisation can be seen as the influence of the peaceful religion founded by Mohammad who was born in Arabic land. CONCLUSION In this essay, the researcher has been able to establish that the concepts of Islamization and Arabisation are two distinctly different ones. It is clear also, from the bulk of the findings exposed herein that duo are not without some links. To say the least, they both involve a process that is integral by nature.  BIBLIOGRAPHY Islam, Islamisation and Women in Africa: A General Introductory Bibliography. Women and Islam In Africa Series: No 1 Frederic Ntedika Mvumbi, O.P, Islam in Africa Today:Some observations, Nairobi Ghana, October 10 -16, 2004 Dallal, Ahmad S. "Islam." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. "Arabs." Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Newman, James L., et al. "Africa." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. “Islamization” Microsoft Encarta, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. G. Grandguillaume, La Francophonie en Algérie, Francophonie et mondialisation, no. 40, 2004, 75-97 M. Sayadi, Arabization in the Arab World, in Arabization and its Role in Supporting the Arab Existence and Unity, (Beirut, Center of Arab Unity Studies, 1982) F. Al-Abed Al-Haq, Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Arabicization Planning, The first International conference on Literature, Linguistics, and Translation, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan, 1994, 4-7. 2