Islam and Christianity
Battle For Africa's Soul
Historians say Islam first came to Africa by way of Egypt around AD640. By the end of that century it had spread, through armed conquest and commercial activity, to north and west Africa. In the north, Christians were reduced to pockets in Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia.
Today, the Islamic faith permeates Arab north Africa -- in Mauritania, Christianity is banned -- and sizeable areas of sub-Saharan black Africa.
Although it has been around for more than 13 centuries, Islam continues to make inroads the length of Africa from north to south. In Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, this has seen 12 northern states declare strict Islamic Sharia law over the past two years, leading to huge tensions between the huge country's major Christian and Muslim populations.
Of Africa's 770 million people, about 310 million are Muslims, with the rest split between roughly the same number of Christians and a dwindling number of followers of traditional animist religions.
In countries where there are major religious divides -- such as Sudan, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast -- the rise of both Islam and Christianity has created huge potential for destabilisation.
In the case of Sudan, the biggest country by area in Africa, the disruption has been catastrophic. A civil war between Muslim north and Christian south has now raged, on and off, for 47 years, claiming an estimated two million lives. The black African south has failed to secede despite a prolonged guerrilla war, while the Arab-dominated government of the north, home for many years to Osama bin Laden, has blindly tried to impose Sharia law on the non-Muslims of the south. It is hard to see any sane rationale for continuing the war, but nevertheless no peace seems possible.
In the Ivory Coast, forces of the largely Christian government in the south are at war this week with largely Muslim rebels in the north.
In Nigeria, riots that pitched Muslims against Christians this month in the northern city of Kaduna left some 250 people dead. Three years ago 3000 died in inter-communal fighting in the same city.
Islam in its early years in black Africa was a modernising influence, imposing a consistent order among different societies, strengthening powers of government and breaking down ethnic loyalties. Unlike Christianity, Islam tolerated traditional African values, allowing a man to have more than one wife. For many, this made conversion to Islam easier and less upsetting than conversion to Christianity.
Many historians, such as Ali Mazrui, Professor of African History and Politics at the State University of New York, contend that the most rapid Islamisation of black Africa took place in the 20th century when European colonialism was at its peak. They say European political occupation led Africans to seek alternative world views, and Islam provided one of them.
The Islamic tradition in Africa has been changed in the post-cold war era by the rise of fundamentalist groups seeking to use Islam as a means of political empowerment -- either through the ballot box or by resorting to violence. Many people were looking for a new ideology that was neither 'East' nor 'West', and Islamic fundamentalism filled the vacuum. Many fundamentalists view Islam against what they see as the encroachment of Western decay.
'Islamic fundamentalism has a special appeal, because it is anti-West, because it has a level of authenticity, and because it speaks a language all people can understand,' says Professor Asad Abukalil, a political scientist whose speciality is Islamic fundamentalism. 'It is not a language of the elite. It is not a language that is spoken by those African graduates of the Sorbonne in the caf?s of Paris.'
ever. Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity is also growing, with tens of thousands packing giant new churches from Nigeria to South Africa. God thrives in Africa as on no other continent on earth, even though He divides the people.
Kenya was an innocent victim of last week's horrific attack on the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, but nevertheless it has not escaped the Muslim-Christian tensions of states such as Nigeria and Sudan.
Even as far south as South Africa, which has a Muslim minority of about one million people in a population of 42 million, Islamic fundamentalist groups have arisen. One, Pagad (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs), was responsible for nearly 200 bombings around Cape Town between 1996 and 2000 which killed three people and maimed some 130. Another group, Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders, last year claimed to have sent a thousand men to Afghanistan to help the Taliban against US attacks, but it was largely disowned by majority Muslim groups.
Despite dramatic clashes in many parts of Africa, many millions of Muslim and Christian Africans defy the stereotype and rub along together perfectly well.
But on a continent plagued by poverty, mass unemployment, widespread illiteracy and burgeoning HIV and Aids, surpassing by far the Plague of 14th- century Europe, ordinary people are prey to charismatic preachers of both persuasions. The battle between Islam and Christianity for the soul of Africa is destined to continue in unpredictable ways for a long time yet.
