Other Ways of Reading the Qur'an and the Bible in Africa
Isaiah Shembe and 'Shaykh' Ahmadu Bamba
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i1.47Keywords:
Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba, Isaiah Shembe, African Christianity, Islam in Africa, Qur'anic hermeneuticsAbstract
This article explores how religion possesses and is possessed by Africans. It does this by recognising both the power of religion to configure and of Africans as agents who reconfigure what they encounter in their African contexts. The central question of this article is how placing African agency and context in the forefront reconfigures talk of Islam and Christianity in Africa. The question is taken up through an analysis of two African religious leaders, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba from West Africa and Isaiah Shembe from South Africa.
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Gellar, Sheldon, Senegal: An African Nation between Islam and the West (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982).
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Gomez, Michael A., Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Pre-colonial State of Bundu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Gunner, Elizabeth, The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God: Writings from Ibandla Lamanazaretha, a South African Church (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002).
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Ranger, Terence O., ‘Religious Movements and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa’, African Studies Review 29 (1986): 1-69.
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Ranger, Terence O., and John Weller (eds.), Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa (London: Heinemann, 1975).
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Sanneh, Lamin O., The Crown and the Turban: Muslims in Western African Pluralism (Oxford: Westview Press, 1997).
—Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989)
—Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (New York: Orbis Books, 1990).
Searing, James, ‘God Alone is King’: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal—The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914 (Oxford: James Currey, 2002).
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Sundkler, Bengt G.M., Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London: Lutterworth Press, 1948).
Trimingham, Spencer, The Influence of Islam upon Africa (London: Longman, 1968).
—Islam in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
Tshehla, Maarman Sam, ‘Translation and the Vernacular Bible in the Debate between My “Traditional” and Academic Worldviews’, in Draper (ed.), Orality, Literacy and Colonialism, 171-87.
—Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Vilakazi, Absalom, with Mthethwa Bongani and Mthembeni Mpanza, Shembe: The Revitalization of African Society (Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1986).
Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Souther Africa until 1945 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990).
Webster, J.B., and A.A. Boahen, History of West Africa: The Revolutionary Years— 1815 to Independence (New York: Praeger Publisher, 1967).
West, Gerald O., The Academy of the Poor Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003).
Westerlund, David, and Eva Evers Rosander (eds.), African Islam and Islam in Africa Encounters between Sufis and Islamists (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997).
Arberry, A.J., The Doctrine of the Sufis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
Brown, Duncan, Voicing the Text: South African Oral Poetry and Performance (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Chidester, David, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville/London: University of Virginia, 1996).
Clarke, Peter B., West Africa and Islam: A Study of Religious Development (London: Edward Arnold, 1982).
Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution Christianity: Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
Cruise O’Brien, Donal B., Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organization of a Senegalese Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Deveneaux, Gustav H.K., ‘Christianity and National Development in West Africa Dilemmas and Possibilities’, in James Cox (ed.), Uniquely African? African Christian Identity from Cultural and Historical Perspective (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003), 157-79.
Draper, Jonathan A., ‘ “Less Literate are Safer”: The Politics of Orality and Literacy in Biblical Interpretation’, Anglican Theological Review 84.2 (2002): 303-18.
Draper, Jonathan A. (ed.), Orality, Literacy and Colonialism in Southern Africa (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003).
Draper, Jonathan A., and Gerald O. West, ‘Anglicans and Scripture in South Africa’, in F. England and T.J.M. Paterson (eds.), Bounty in Bondage (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1989), 30-52.
Etherington, Norman, ‘Christianity and African Society in Nineteenth Century Natal’, in Andrew Duminy and Bill Guest (eds.), Natal and Zululand from Early Times to 1910: A New History (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/ Shuter & Shooter, 1989).
Dube, J.L., Ushembe (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1936).
Gellar, Sheldon, Senegal: An African Nation between Islam and the West (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982).
Frei, Hans W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
Gaitsgill, Deborah, ‘Devout Domesticity? A Century of African Women’s Christianity in South Africa’, in Walker (ed.), Women and Gender, 251-72.
Gomez, Michael A., Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Pre-colonial State of Bundu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Gunner, Elizabeth, The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God: Writings from Ibandla Lamanazaretha, a South African Church (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002).
—‘The Word, the Book and the Zulu Church of Nazareth’, in Richard A. Whitaker and Edgard R. Sienaert (eds.), Oral Tradition and Literacy Changing Visions of the World (Durban: Natal University Oral Documentation and Research Centre, 1986), 179-88.
Guy, Jeff, ‘Gender Oppression in Southern Africa’s Precapitalist Societies’, in Walker (ed.), Women and Gender, 33-47.
Horton, Robin, ‘African Conversion’, Africa 41 (1971): 85-108.
—‘On the Rationality of Conversion’, Africa 45 (1975): 219-35, 373-99.
Ibaible Eli Ingcwele (Cape Town: Bible Society of South Africa, 1893; repr. 1974).
‘The Life of Shaykh Ahmad Bamba’, <http://freespace.virgin.net/ismael.essop/bamba.htm>, accessed September 2005.
Mazrui, Ali, ‘Introduction: In Search of Pax Africana’, in Robert L. Ostergard, Jr, et al. (eds.), Power, Politics, and the African Condition Collected Essays of Ali Mazrui (3 vols.; Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004), III, 1-26.
Meintjes, Sheila, ‘Family and Gender in the Christian Community at Edendale, Natal, in Colonial Times’, in Walker (ed.), Women and Gender, 275-301.
Mortimer, Edward, France and the Africans 1944—1960: A Political History (New York: Walker & Company, 1969).
Mosala, Itumeleng J., ‘Race, Class, and Gender as Hermeneutical Factors in the African Independent Churches’ Appropriation of the Bible’, Semeia 73 (1996): 43-57.
Mudimbe, V.Y., The Invention of Africa Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
Muller, Carol Ann, ‘Making the Book, Performing the Words of Izihlabelelo Zamanazaretha’, in Draper (ed.), Orality, Literacy and Colonialism, 91-110.
—‘Nazarite Song, Dance and Dreams: The Sacralization of Time, Space and the Female Body in South Africa’ (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1994).
Mumiya, Mikael, Towards an African Qur’anic Hermeneutic (unpublished).
Papini, Robert, ‘Carl Faye’s Transcript of Isaiah Shembe’s Testimony of his Early Life and Calling’, Journal of Religion in Africa 29.3 (1999): 243-84.
Papini, Robert, and Irving Hexham (eds.), The Catechism of the Nazarites and Related Writings, IV (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).
Peel, J.D.Y., Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).
Ranger, Terence O., ‘Religious Movements and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa’, African Studies Review 29 (1986): 1-69.
Ranger, Terence O., and I.N. Kimambo (eds.), The Historical Study of African Religion (London: Heinemann, 1972).
Ranger, Terence O., and John Weller (eds.), Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa (London: Heinemann, 1975).
Roberts, Esther, ‘Shembe The Man and his Work’ (MA Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1936).
Sanneh, Lamin O., The Crown and the Turban: Muslims in Western African Pluralism (Oxford: Westview Press, 1997).
—Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989)
—Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (New York: Orbis Books, 1990).
Searing, James, ‘God Alone is King’: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal—The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914 (Oxford: James Currey, 2002).
‘Shaykh Ahmad Bamba—Servant of the Prophet’, <http://freespace.virgin.net/ismael.essop/bamba.htm>, accessed September 2005.
Sundkler, Bengt G.M., Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London: Lutterworth Press, 1948).
Trimingham, Spencer, The Influence of Islam upon Africa (London: Longman, 1968).
—Islam in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
Tshehla, Maarman Sam, ‘Translation and the Vernacular Bible in the Debate between My “Traditional” and Academic Worldviews’, in Draper (ed.), Orality, Literacy and Colonialism, 171-87.
—Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Vilakazi, Absalom, with Mthethwa Bongani and Mthembeni Mpanza, Shembe: The Revitalization of African Society (Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1986).
Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Souther Africa until 1945 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990).
Webster, J.B., and A.A. Boahen, History of West Africa: The Revolutionary Years— 1815 to Independence (New York: Praeger Publisher, 1967).
West, Gerald O., The Academy of the Poor Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003).
Westerlund, David, and Eva Evers Rosander (eds.), African Islam and Islam in Africa Encounters between Sufis and Islamists (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997).
Published
2005-04-28
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
West, G. O., & Sitoto, T. F. (2005). Other Ways of Reading the Qur’an and the Bible in Africa: Isaiah Shembe and ’Shaykh’ Ahmadu Bamba. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 1(1), 47-76. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i1.47
