Historical Foundations of Islam:
What bought the religion to the Senegambia basin
including Gambia were the Berber Arab traders who had
regularly crossed the Sahara desert since 1000 BC.
After the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD
Islam had reached North Africa. In the 11th century
Futa Toro, in Senegal, was converted to Islam. In the
same century the puritanical Almoravid movement made
and appearance among the Berber tribes of Southern
Mauritania and made a strong religious impact there.
It was these converted people who laid the introduced
& laid the foundations of the religion in
Gambia and
Senegal.
Before the arrival of Islam traditional religion
was part and parcel of everyday life for the people
of The Gambia and was well entrenched in people's
existing belief system. This took on the form of animism, ancestor
worship and a pantheon of gods representing elements
of their environment such as a god of the earth, a
god of the animal kingdom and so on. And yet the
majority of Gambians embraced Islam until today 90%
of the population are Muslims and only 1% admit to
adhering to animists beliefs.
Reasons For Acceptance:
The early spread
of the religion was due to several factors which were
social, economic and political. The fact that early
conversion took place at the terminus of the routes
of the Trans-Saharan trade is significant. In these
trading cities lived different peoples, removed from
their own closed village societies where the success
of the harvest was held to depend on fertility rites
and sacrifices made to the local gods. In their
non-traditional setting, these city dwellers were
de-tribalised in a religious sense and thus more open
to the influence of a new religion which seemed
adapted to their urban way of life. Perhaps in their
own mindset, Islam might have appeared very much like
the religion of wealthy traders and Allah being their
God.
The acceptance of Islam was also
facilitated by the nature of traditional religions of
the people. New cults were founded for newly
identified gods. Although they were people who
believed in many gods, all of them acknowledged the
existence of a supreme God. This must have made the
Islamic introduction of the worship of one God
unobjectionable. As long as the new religion did not
attempt to destroy indigenous cults, there was strong
objection to it. Indeed studies of modern
Islamisation of West Africa van peoples have shown
that Muslim clerics did not try to discredit existing
customs and traditional religious institutions but
infiltrated them and changed their nature.
There were also a number of other factors that
contributed to the acceptance of Islam by the peoples
of The Gambia area. These factors are of a
non-religious nature. As was said before because
Islam was associated with wealthy traders who brought
goods essential to the local economies and
contributed in the increase of military power. Early
Trans-Saharan traders told impressive stories of
their civilisations in their own home countries which
undoubtedly gave practical expression to the Islamic
God. The mode of dress of these early Muslims, their
new architecture with impressive mosques and their
possession of luxury goods added to the prestige of
the religion. Their literacy in Arabic greatly
enhanced this prestige because the non-literate
peoples assigned important supernatural qualities to
the written word.
|
Opportunism:
The spread of Islam
in Gambia was also facilitated because of its appeal
to traditional rulers. Once a ruler accepted the
religion, his influence and authority were usually
sufficient to impose it upon at least the ruling
classes of his state. This bought them the political
support of the urban Muslim communities who were
influential for their role in commerce and for their
literacy. This allowed the rulers to form a bond
between himself and all his Muslim subjects and this
was further re-enforced by the Islamic teaching which
imposed obedience to a just Muslim ruler. For this
reason rulers were quick to see the advantage of
adopting this widespread religion rather than just a
local one.
The effect of this new religion on
the Gambian people was that it exposed them to
theology, law, politics, geography and the natural
sciences. The effect was to introduce academic
criticism.
Adaptation & Incorporation:
Early travellers had commented favourably on the
piety, scholarship and features of government in the
important trading cities. On the other hand these
they also noted the continuance of traditional
customs and ceremonies which were unacceptable to
Islam. It appears that Islam in The Gambia valley
before 1800 was little more than an imperial belief
of great prestige which existed side by side with
cults to other gods. Few rulers could escape the need
to draw their power and legitimacy from traditional
religions. Many people must have both worshipped in
the mosque and sacrificed to local deities.
Theological Clash:
It was mainly for this reason that in the latter part
of the 19th century
Gambian Jihadists like Maba Diakhou and Foday
Kabba Dumbuya castigated nominally Muslim rulers for
their lax religious practices in their states and thus waged the
Soninke-Marabout Wars that raged in The Gambia
throughout the 19th century placing Islam on a new
foundation.
|
|
