Jihad of the Pen. Rudolph Ware

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СКАЧАТЬ with Timbuktu scholars on the legality of tobacco smoking,⁶² perhaps meant to signify the ascendant purity of Tal’s community over the polluted, venal clerics of the past. Ahmadu Bamba relied on his training in Islamic law to argue against the Wolof King Lat Dior’s enslavement of fellow Muslims in battle,⁶³ no doubt contributing to his appeal among constituencies marginalized by the perceived corruption of royal authorities. The otherwise friendly Senegalese Tijani scholars Malik Sy and ‘Abdallah Niasse had differing opinions of the legality of zakat collected from peanuts, the key cash crop that began to undergird the new Sufi communities as well as the colonial economy in Senegal.⁶⁴ The prospect of Sufi realization no doubt attracted followers to these new communities, but the lives of West African Sufis were no less regulated by Islamic law than those of Muslim purist communities elsewhere.

      Beyond the elaborate legal curriculum and different opinions surrounding Islamic law in West Africa, scholars evince significant methodological principles that justify further consideration. In Ibrahim Niasse’s argument for folding the arms on the chest in prayer (qabd) within the Maliki school, for example, the shaykh submits a tangential justification that offered a nuanced understanding of the ongoing dialogue between Prophetic custom (Sunna) and culture.⁶⁵ Even if some African Malikis understood leaving the hands at the side in prayer (sadl), as Sunna they could no doubt perceive that this practice had come to be associated with the sectarian Shi‘a (rafidiya) school in the minds of most Sunni Muslims outside of Africa. Some non-obligatory practices of the Sunna, Niasse argued, could be abandoned if they later became associated with something other than their original intention. For Niasse, a similar example was men growing long hair: a Sunna of the Prophet that had recently become associated with femininity or uncleanliness. The Prophetic Sunna should thus be transmitted in dialogue with local understandings so that an ideological fixation on particular practices did not undermine the ethical assumptions of those practices at their origin.

      The unofficial “Mufti of Nigeria,” Ibrahim Salih (b. 1939), also a shaykh of the Tijaniyya in the spiritual lineage of Niasse, similarly tempered legal rigidity with a broader understanding of Islamic ethics. During the hadd controversy surrounding the implementation of shari‘a in several Northern Nigerian states, Salih wrote a 108-page treatise reminding Muslims that Islamic criminal law was meant to exist in dialogue with social realities, not independent of them.⁶⁶ Salih argued that full implementation of the shari‘a depended on a given Muslim constituency’s preparedness through education. He castigated “Islamists” for demanding the immediate implementation of Islamic criminal law, for excommunicating Muslims who thought differently, and for taking matters violently into their own hands. Salih also criticized politicians who wielded the shari‘a for popularity, while failing to appreciate its complexities. Politicians and Islamists, according to Salih, cared more for the cosmetic implementation of rules than for the true purpose of the shari‘a: the reformation of people.⁶⁷ According to Gunnar Weimann, Salih’s work moves beyond discourses demanding the shari‘a’s politicization, and “presents an alternative concept of achieving compliance with the rules of Islamic criminal law.”⁶⁸

      Rather than obscure the weight of Islamic law in Africa, this volume on Sufi literature in West Africa should thus serve to remind readers of the complex and varied legal discourses in African Muslim societies. There is much work to be done in giving voice to these legal debates with more thematic external resonance. As the above examples indicate, Sufi communities are often, perhaps not surprisingly, an important lens through which to view the more contemporary implementation of Islamic law in African Muslim societies.

      Philosophy and Metaphysics

      Metaphysics, the branch of philosophy exploring the nature of ultimate reality, attempts to explain things like cosmology, the human soul or spirit, or bodily resurrection and the afterlife. The classical Muslim theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) argued against the situation of metaphysics within Hellenistic (rational) philosophy, suggesting instead that such matters were better known through divine inspiration to a Prophet or “unveiled” gnostic (al-‘arif al-mukashshaf).⁶⁹ Even if later Muslim scholars largely endorsed al-Ghazali’s epistemological intervention against philosophy (falsafa), metaphysical writing proliferated throughout the Muslim world, West Africa notwithstanding. If common parlance has come to (or should) recognize philosophy simply as elevated cognition, and metaphysics as the most profound and challenging branch of philosophy, then it is important to admit of a vibrant philosophical tradition in West African Muslim societies. The fact that many such “philosophers” considered themselves Sufis, mystics, or “sages” (hukuma) need not obscure the very vibrant presence of philosophy in Islamic Africa.

      Academic reference to African Muslim philosophy is still in its early stages. But already Souleymane Bachir Diagne has argued that the Arabic textual tradition of Sudanic Africa demonstrates “a new philosophy of time” and “a philosophy of becoming, a thought of time as creative movement.”⁷⁰ Oludamini Ogunnaike asserted that philosophy as a discipline, especially through the experience of colonialism, has increasingly internalized a Eurocentric bias that overlooks the more expansive definitions of ancient philosophy capable of considering the philosophical contributions of African Muslims.⁷¹ Elsewhere, building on Diagne’s work to outline a number of texts that could be read as African Muslim philosophy,⁷² Ogunnaike insisted that “African intellectual traditions should not be treated as mere objects of inquiry to be learned about . . . but should be approached as subjects of study to be learned or learned from.”⁷³ The interjection of African Muslim metaphysics into contemporary university philosophy curricula thus depends on the retrieval of source materials that would force further consideration.

      While certain of the writers in this volume do address metaphysics, these references are far outweighed by the exigencies of community formation. For example, ‘Umar Tal and Ibrahim Niasse, in writings not translated here, both reference the flow of divine flux (fayd) through a series of cosmological presences, and the nature of the human spirit/soul (ruh) as opposed to the soul/ego (nafs). But generally, such writings were not formal subjects of learning for students. The main source of metaphysical understanding in the community of Ibrahim Niasse, the Sirr al-akbar dictated by Niasse to his closest disciple, ‘Ali Cissé, was transmitted privately only in manuscript form. A defector from the community, Muhammad al-Maigari, published the work in 1981 as part of an attempt to discredit Niasse’s teachings—in this case, no doubt by linking Niasse to the metaphysical explorations of Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1240) in the minds of his “Salafi” detractors.

      Evidence of metaphysical inquiry sometimes emerged more publicly with intellectuals who did not bear the same weight of community organization and instruction. Coincidentally, two prominent examples of African Muslim philosophy actually come from the communities of ‘Uthman bin Fudi and Ibrahim Niasse. ‘Abd al-Qadir bin al-Mustafa (known as Dan Tafa, d. 1864) was the son of Shaykh ‘Uthman’s eldest daughter Khadija.⁷⁴ Among his numerous writings are a number of “philosophical” texts,⁷⁵ including a treatise on visionary knowledge that provides intriguing insight on the human soul:

      As for the state of sleep, the soul (ruh) continues to abide in its skeletal abode even when its gaze is raised to [look into] the angelic world (al-‘alam al-malakuti). With this, it procures understandings that otherwise would not be. This is because the accomplished soul does not see except through the spiritual gaze (al-nazar al-ruhani). You will realize this when you have come to know that the human soul is not lodged in the body, for it has not separated from its original spiritual center. If it were to be separated, it would be annihilated, just as this physical body would be destroyed were it to depart from its center and nature. The soul is received in this skeleton by virtue of its regard (nazar) towards the body, and the custom of spirits is to dwell in the place of their gaze. So by the soul’s gaze towards the body it comes to dwell therein, but it is not fixed in the body. This is a wondrous matter indeed! The intellect cannot understand this from its own perception. By God, it is only perceived СКАЧАТЬ