Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts OUSMAN E OUMAR KAN E, ED., James Currey/Boydell & Brewer Ltd: 2021, 489 pages.

Abstract

Ousmane Oumar Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, has edited a brilliant book entitled Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts. Professor Kane’s genealogy and scholarship can be traced back to early Qur’anic and Arabic instruction from his mother. His grandfather is the famous Sufi Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, founder of a Tijaniyya Tariqa in Senegal, West Africa, with a global following of millions. The central thesis of Professor Kane’s book is this: Islamic scholarship in Bilad al-Sudan (Land of the Blacks) was equal to that in other regions of the Ummah of Prophet (pbuh) such as Al-Azhar in Kemet (Egypt) and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The University of Sankore in Timbuktu, Mali, is an excellent example of universities in Bilad al-Sudan that were competitive
with the aforementioned universities. As a matter of historical record, there was always a robust exchange of commodities, gold, salt, and ideas along the trade routes between the Maghreb (North Africa from Kemet to Morocco) and Bilad al-Sudan. The book rejects the false notion of an Islam noir of divinations, libation, and ancestral veneration in sub-Saharan Africa and authentic Al-Qur’an wa Sunnah Islam in centers of learning in other parts of the Muslim Ummah (p. 19).