The Imam against the insurgents
The potential return of exiled cleric Mahmoud Dicko to Mali could challenge jihadist movements by reopening political space and contesting their claim to religious authority.
Islam
Calling Trump’s bluff
As the White House hypes “Christian genocide” and floats military action, northern Nigerians are responding with satire.
Heritage on horseback
A photo essay on Nigeria’s Durbars and the power of royal pageantry.
When Brazil’s African Muslims scared the world
Taking place 190 years ago, the Malê Revolt in Bahia, led by African Muslim slaves, shook Brazil's foundations and echoed global fears of a new Haiti.
Shadowy interventions
The EU’s military involvement in West Africa, the Gulf of Guinea, South Sudan, and East Africa is well-known. But one mission on the continent has gone relatively unnoticed.
Intervenções sombrias
Todos sabem do envolvimento militar da União Europeia (EU) na África Ocidental, no Golfo da Guiné, no Sudão do Sul e na África Oriental. No entanto, uma missão no continente passou relativamente despercebida.
From Cairo to Cornell
The Malcolm X effect of Gambian-British activist Momodou Taal.
Who are the Olympics for?
Beneath the image of togetherness, the world’s biggest athletic spectacle is still beset by discrimination and exclusion.
Mosque diplomacy
In North Africa, religion is being used to spread political and cultural influence.
Between woman and nation
The government of the youngest president in Senegal’s history already seems to embody retrograde views about women.
More than meets the eye
The personal archives of Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman, a Nigerian pro-democracy activist, suggests that same-faith presidential tickets are not necessarily about religious domination.
How knowledge makes a discourse true
Mainstream discourses about Aamajiranci, northern Nigeria’s Qur'anic schooling system, expose the power politics of knowledge in postcolonial societies.
Under the surface of modern economies
We need to rethink how people seek sustenance and wealth, but not divorced from their moral values, convictions, and expectations.
Constructing minorities
The legal politics of religious difference in late colonial northern Nigeria still resonate more than 60 years post-independence.
Soft Salafization in the Sahel
Many see Salafism as rigid and unbending, but in the Sahel, political conditions force its proponents to be smart and savvy.
Crossing the Red Sea
Salafism is across Ethiopia. While Saudi Arabia has played a role, Ethiopian Muslims themselves are playing a bigger one.
Reading List: Patrice Nganang
The novelist on 3 books he returns to: by Wole Soyinka, Ibn Khaldun, and a third on the history and the system of writing of an early 20th-century Cameroonian king.
The skeleton in the closet
The novelist Nadifa Mohamed complicates Britain’s troubled, racist legal history through the personal tale of one otherwise insignificant person, a Somali immigrant to Cardiff in Wales.
Keeping a displaced group closely knit together
A photo essay on Masjid Tajul Huda, a mostly West African mosque in the Bronx, New York.
The ultimate end of decolonization
Islamic scholarship in Africa and the meaning and end of decolonization in the work of religious studies scholar, Ousmane Kane.