Islamic Education in Africa

Description

Writing boards and blackboards are emblematic of two radically different styles of education in Islam. The essays in this lively volume address various aspects of the expanding and evolving range of educational choices available to Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors from the United States, Europe, and Africa evaluate classical Islamic education in Africa from colonial times to the present, including changes in pedagogical methods—from sitting to standing, from individual to collective learning, from recitation to analysis. Also discussed are the differences between British, French, Belgian, and Portuguese education in Africa and between mission schools and Qur'anic schools; changes to the classical Islamic curriculum; the changing intent of Islamic education; the modernization of pedagogical styles and tools; hybrid forms of religious and secular education; the inclusion of women in Qur'anic schools; and the changing notion of what it means to be an educated person in Africa. A new view of the role of Islamic education, especially its politics and controversies in today's age of terrorism, emerges from this broadly comparative volume.

Preface
1. Introduction
Robert Launay

The Classical Paradigm
2. Styles of Islamic Education: Perspectives from Mali, Guinea, and The Gambia
Tal Tamari
3 Orality and the Transmission of Qur'anic knowledge in Mauritania
Corinne Fortier
4. Islamic Education and the Intellectual Pedigree of Al-Hajj Umar Falke
Muhammad Sani Umar

Institutional Transformations
5. Divergent Patterns of Islamic Education in Northern Mozambique: Qur'anic Schools in Angoche
Liazzate Bonate
6. Colonial Control, Nigerian Agency, Arab Outreach, and Islamic Education in Northern Nigeria, 1900-1966
Alex Thurston
7. Muslim scholars, Organic Intellectuals and the Development of Islamic Education in Zanzibar in the 20th Century
Roman Loimeier
8. The New Muslim Public School in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Ashley Leinweber

Innovations and Experiments
9. The al-Azhar School Network: A Murid Experiment in Islamic Modernism
Cheikh Anta Babou
10. Mwalim Bi Swafiya Muhashamy-Said: A Pioneer of the Integrated (Madrasa) Curriculum in Kenya and Beyond
Ousseina D. Alidou
11. Changes in Islamic Knowledge Practices in 20th-Century Kenya
Rüdiger Seesemann
12. Walking to the Makaranta: Production, Circulation, and Transmission of Islamic Learning in Urban Niger
Abdoulaye Sounaye

Plural Possibilities?
13. How (Not) to Read the Quran? Logics of Islamic Education in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire
Robert Launay and Rudolph T. Ware III
14. New Muslim Public Figures in West Africa
Benjamin F. Soares
15. Collapsed Pluralities: Islamic Education, Learning, and Creativity in Niger
Noah Butler

Sujets

• African Studies
• Islamic Studies
• Philosophie et théologie
• General officer
• Religion
• General
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253023186
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN AFRICA
ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN AFRICA
Writing Boards and Blackboards
Edited by ROBERT LAUNAY
Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
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2016 by Indiana University Press
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Launay, Robert, 1949- editor.
Title: Islamic education in Africa : writing boards and blackboards / edited by Robert Launay.
Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016030077 (print) | LCCN 2016030765 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253022707 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253023025 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253023186 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic religious education-Africa, Sub-Saharan-History. | Islamic education-Africa, Sub-Saharan-History. | Muslims-Education-Africa, Sub-Saharan-History. | Education-Africa, Sub-Saharan. | Africa, Sub-Saharan-Colonial influence.
Classification: LCC BP43.A357 I85 2016 (print) | LCC BP43.A357 (ebook) | DDC 297.770967-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030077
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
In memory of my mentors
Ivor Wilks (1928-2014)
John Hunwick (1936-2015)
Jack Goody (1919-2015)
I have attempted to follow timidly in their footsteps
CONTENTS
Preface
1 Introduction: Writing Boards and Blackboards
Robert Launay
The Classical Paradigm
2 Styles of Islamic Education: Perspectives from Mali, Guinea, and The Gambia
Tal Tamari
3 Orality and the Transmission of Qur anic Knowledge in Mauritania
Corinne Fortier
4 Islamic Education and the Intellectual Pedigree of Al-Hajj Umar Falke
Muhammad Sani Umar
Institutional Transformations
5 Divergent Patterns of Islamic Education in Northern Mozambique: Qur anic Schools of Angoche
Liazzat J. K. Bonate
6 Colonial Control, Nigerian Agency, Arab Outreach, and Islamic Education in Northern Nigeria, 1900-1966
Alex Thurston
7 Muslim Scholars, Organic Intellectuals, and the Development of Islamic Education in Zanzibar in the Twentieth Century
Roman Loimeier
8 The New Muslim Public School in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Ashley E. Leinweber
Innovations and Experiments
9 The al-Azhar School Network: A Murid Experiment in Islamic Modernism
Cheikh Anta Babou
10 Mwalim Bi Swafiya Muhashamy-Said: A Pioneer of the Integrated (Madrasa) Curriculum in Kenya and Beyond
Ousseina D. Alidou
11 Changes in Islamic Knowledge Practices in Twentieth-Century Kenya
R diger Seesemann
12 Walking to the Makaranta : Production, Circulation, and Transmission of Islamic Learning in Urban Niger
Abdoulaye Sounaye
Plural Possibilities?
13 How (Not) to Read the Qur an? Logics of Islamic Education in Senegal and C te d Ivoire
Robert Launay and Rudolph T. Ware III
14 New Muslim Public Figures in West Africa
Benjamin F. Soares
15 Collapsed Pluralities: Islamic Education, Learning, and Creativity in Niger
Noah Butler
Contributors
Index
PREFACE
I N 2009, AT the annual meetings of the African Studies Association in New Orleans, there were no fewer than three panels devoted to discussions of Islamic education in Africa, past and present: One was chaired by Leonardo Villalon, one by Cheikh Anta Babou Mbacke, and one by me. Until relatively recently, despite pioneering studies by Renaud Santerre, Stefan Reichmuth, and Louis Brenner, the subject had suffered relative neglect. Louis Brenner s work, in particular, has been a constant source of inspiration. The coincidence of these three panels, separately organized at the same time, conclusively demonstrates that this neglect is at an end and that at last Islamic education in Africa is receiving the serious scholarly attention it always deserved. Participants in these three panels, as well as various members of the audience, were invited to submit chapters to this volume, and fortunately many of them accepted with alacrity. I would like to thank all the participants in these various panels as well as their audience for their assistance and invaluable comments.
I have attempted, admittedly with only limited success, to cover the terrain as broadly as possible, with chapters discussing different forms of Islamic education as well as situated in countries with differing colonial histories. Even so, I am aware that francophone West Africa, not coincidentally the site of my own research, is overrepresented. This overrepresentation partly reflects biases in the scholarly literature, although I must accept much of the responsibility.
My colleagues at Northwestern, especially in the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa, have been a continual source of support and inspiration. Jessica Winegar s comments have been especially helpful. Without them, this book would never have been possible. I would like to thank Christy Simonian Bean, who helped me edit the text. I am deeply indebted to Dee Mortenson s support and above all her patience, not to mention the patience of the contributors, for waiting for me to finish a project long overdue. I am grateful to ditions Karthala in Paris for allowing me to publish a translation of Rudolph Ware III and my article, Comment (Ne Pas) Lire le Coran: Logiques de l Enseignement Religieux au S n gal et en C te d Ivoire. The suggestions of the two anonymous readers of the first version of this book were immensely helpful.
Last but not least, I offer this volume as a tribute to my mentors: Jack Goody, Ivor Wilks, and John Hunwick. I have tried, as best as I can, to follow in the footsteps of giants in the field.
ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN AFRICA
1.
INTRODUCTION: WRITING BOARDS AND BLACKBOARDS
Robert Launay

W RITING BOARDS AND blackboards are emblematic of two radically different styles of education. Writing boards typify the centuries-old classical system of Qur anic education. They are rectangular wooden planks on which a teacher or student writes a text, usually a passage from the Qur an, in homemade black ink. The student then learns to recite, and sometimes memorize, the text in question. Blackboards, a nineteenth-century invention that marked the expansion of mass education in Europe and the United States, came to embody colonial institutions of education: state secular schools, of course, but also mission schools that proliferated in British, but also in Belgian and Portuguese, colonies. More recently, they have also been taken up by Muslim reformers who actively seek to modernize Islamic education.
The essays in this volume represent an attempt to take these different systems of education on their own terms and in historical context and to present a wide coverage of the continent-East, West, and, if to a lesser extent, Central and Southern; anglophone, francophone, and lusophone-to highlight critical similarities as well as differences. Indeed, the comparative dimensions of the subject have received relatively little attention. Bringing together the chapters in this volume constitutes a first step toward delineating the contours of the problem and of suggesting avenues for a more comprehensively comparative treatment. One of the aims of this volume is to call for a reevaluation of classical Islamic education in Africa in an attempt to understand it in its own right and on its own terms. 1
Three important theoretical considerations underpin the collection of essays and can help to place them in a broader context. The rest of this introduction will develop these considerations in greater detail. First, writing boards and blackboards do not simply symbolize two different systems of education, but in a deeper sense literally embody them materially. Each of these supports called for different postures, different attitudes, and different behaviors, which served to inscribe different disciplinary projects on the bodies of pupils. These projects, in turn, correspond to different epistemic regimes, taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world and the word. Most if not all readers of this text take the episteme of the modern school system for granted. For this very reason, understanding the episteme of classical Islamic education on its own terms requires an effort of the theoretical imagination.
Second, as Comaroff and Comaroff (1991) and Mitchell (1988) among others have noted, the modern school system epitomized by blackboards was an intrinsic component of the colonization of Africa, in some cases even before or in the absence of direct imperial domination. This assertion comes as no surprise. However, analyses of colonial education, to the extent that they have tended to focus on one regime or another, have curiously underemphasized the very real differences between British, French, and indeed Belgian and Portuguese