Introduction to Islam in Africa
Participating Campuses: Host – Michigan State University | Receiving – Indiana University
Term: Fall 2022
Semester Dates: August 31 to December 9, 2022
Course Days and Times: Wednesdays, 3-5:50 pm
Course Number and Title: Michigan State University: ANP 417 “Introduction to Islam in Africa”
Instructor: Dr. Mara Leichtman, Michigan State University, maral@msu.edu
This course provides an overview of “African Islam” through examining the work of scholars from Anthropology, History, Islamic Studies, and other related disciplines. We will cover the basic principles of Islam before turning to diverse accounts of the historical spread of Islam to Africa, the religious implications of the African slave trade and European colonialism, the making of Islamic states in Africa, and Islamic education in various countries and contexts. Themes of religious conversion and Islamic reform, dynamics of gender and sexuality, migration and urbanization, minorities and ethnic-racial-religious tensions, and the relationship of Islam to human rights will also be explored. We will discuss current events, including regional conflicts and the recent wave of military coups in Africa (Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso). A further goal of this course is to provide students with the conceptual tools necessary to evaluate news about the region, and to understand the subjectivity and bias that sometimes permeates these reports. We will watch films and hear from guest speakers. Seminar participants will create, through research papers and class presentations, their own accounts of African Islamic worlds. This course is open to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline.
About the Instructor: Mara Leichtman is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Muslim Studies at Michigan State University. Her research highlights interconnections among religion, migration, politics, and economic development through examining Muslim institutions and the communities they serve. Her specialty is Arab-African relations and Shi‘i Islam in Senegal, although her recent scholarship also examines Tanzania as well as Sunni reformist movements. As a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar at American University of Kuwait, she launched a project on Gulf Islamic charity and humanitarianism in East and West Africa.
Dr. Leichtman is the author of Shi‘i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal (Indiana University Press 2015) and co-editor of New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). She also co-edited the special journal issue Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Movement, Identity, and Contemporary Reconfigurations in City and Society (2012). Her work has appeared in Journal of Religion in Africa, The Muslim World, Contemporary Islam, Die Welt des Islams, Journal of Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society, and International Journal of Middle East Studies, among other publications. She also serves on the International Editorial Advisory Committee of the journal Islamic Africa.