History Of Muslims in Africa

 Muslims in Africa

The precise number of Muslims in Africa is unknown, as statistics regarding religious demography on the continent are incomplete. According to the World Book Encyclopedia, Islam is the largest religion in Africa. with 37% of the population being Christian, 48% Muslim and 15% being non-religious or having African traditional religions.

The presence of Islam in Africa can be traced to the seventh century when the prophet Muhammad advised a number of his early disciples, who were facing persecution by the pre-Islamic inhabitants of the region, to seek refuge across the Red Sea in the Christian Kingdom of Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia). In the Muslim tradition, this event is known as the first Hijrah, or migration. These first Muslim migrants provided Islam with its first major triumph, and Africa became the first safe haven for Muslims and the first place Islam would be practiced outside of the Arabian Peninsula.

Seven years after the death of Muhammad (in 639 AD), an Arab army invaded Egypt, and within two generations, Islam had expanded by fear of death by the sword across North Africa and all of the Central Maghreb.

Abu-Abdullah Adelabu

Although North Africa fell to the Islamic armies very quickly, the Christian Kingdom of Nubia was strong enough to halt the southern expansion of the Arab forces for a considerable time. After several failed invasions the new Muslim rulers of Egypt agreed to a treaty with Nubian Dongola allowing for peaceful coexistence and trade. This treaty held for six hundred years. Over time however, the influx of Arab traders introduced Islam to Nubia and it gradually supplanted the indigenous Tewahedo Christianity of Dongola. The African Muslim scholar Sheikh Dr. Abu-Abdulfattah Adelabu known as Ash-Shaykh Al-Afriqi, founder of Awqaf Africa London, whose students are behind several Islamic publications including EsinIslam.com and IslamAfrica.com claimed in his works such as Islam in Africa - West African in Particular, and Missionary and Colonization in Africa[3] that Islam had reached Sub-Sahara Africa, including West Africa, as early as the first century of Hijrah through Muslim traders and expeditions during the reign of the Arab conqueror, Uqba ibn al Nafia (622–683) whose Islamic conquests under the Umayyad dynasty, in Amir Muavia and Yazid periods, spread all Northern Africa or the Maghrib Al-Arabi, including present-day Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the consolidation of Muslim trading networks, connected by lineage, trade, and Sufi brotherhoods, had reached a crescendo in West Africa, enabling Muslims to wield tremendous political influence and power. Similarly, from the East African coast, Islam made its way inland - spreading at the expense of traditional African religions and Tewahedo Christianity. This expansion of Islam in Africa not only led to the formation of new communities in Africa, but it also reconfigured existing African communities and empires to be based on Islamic models.