Islam: A Solidarity Factor in West African History

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to refute the prevailing notion that Islam serves as a disunity factor in West African history. The concept of Islamic solidarity could be traced to the decision of the Prophet to send the first group of his Companions to the Negus, the King of Abyssinia and the receptive disposition of the Negus during the Islamic theological stage. Later, in the city of Medina Islam began to promote a triple ideological outlook with practical socio-economic and political solutions to the world. The paper has adopted a theoretical arm-chair research approach. The concept of Islam as a solidarity factor in West African history has been examined at two main levels: solidarity against Western secular ideology as a force of decolonization and as a force of de-neo-colonization. It focuses on the sufi experience in the Senegambia Region, critically looking into three main forms of resistance: The Umar al-Futio and Maba Jakhou’s militant, the Bamba’s Muridi confrontational servitude and the Tijaniyyah pacific intellectual approach. It concludes that even though a militant approach was used in promoting the Islamic beliefs, the mechanism later settled on three sufi basic principles of education, daarah, mosque, Jakkah, and farming, tool.