If the Ummah Was Growing

Not Indonesia, India, or Pakistan though

“African Muslims,” Professor Alexander Thurston told me, “will likely make up an even greater proportion of the world’s Muslims in the future. Already, … there are more Muslims in Nigeria, for example, than there are in any Arab country, including Egypt.” World population growth is slowing, though markedly less so in Africa.

Dr. Thurston underscored that Nigeria may soon become the world’s third most populous nation.

Which might soon make Indonesia Pakistan Nigeria the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. It’s hard to deny that shifts like these will influence the place and priorities of the world’s Muslims, including us in the West. We should explore these developments. Because that’s the world our kids will be living in.

So ask yourself: Do our Sunday schools teach history? If they do teach history, does that curriculum include the long period between the time of our beloved Prophet (S) and teacher, and now? And if they do, is that approach thoughtful, critical, and conscientious?

Imagine that our institutions made up for the gaps in knowledge contemporary policies can’t address—or contemporary culture doesn’t know how to meet.

We have plenty of people in our community capable of educating us and informing us.

A few weeks back, for example, The New York Times cited University of Cincinnati Professor Thurston in an essay surveying the legacy of America’s war on terror as it unfolded in West Africa. I immediately wondered: Do our students understand the choices our country made after the September 11th attacks? And shouldn’t Sunday Schooled help parents and educators make that kind of awareness more accessible?

I’m so grateful to Dr. Thurston for taking the time to share his scholarship, insights, and expertise with us here.

An Assistant Professor of Political Science and previously an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Thurston is also the author of books like Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement, one of Foreign Affairs’ Best Books in 2018 and a finalist for the African Studies Association’s 2019 Book Prize. He’s the kind of expert we should be learning from!

We should all pay close attention to the costs and consequences of our nation’s policies, the realities of the world outside our horizons, and what the planet might look like when our kids will be raising families and growing communities.

The Bush Administration—and Beyond

Sunday Schooled: In a recent New York Times piece, “US Confronts Failures as Terrorism Spreads in West Africa,” you draw attention to a serious contradiction at the heart of American policy in West Africa.

But for a lot of Americans, that we’re even implicated in West Africa might come as a surprise. What has America’s role been in this region since 9/11?

I would say that after 9/11, the Sahel and West Africa became third- or fourth-tier priorities in the “Global War on Terror.” The Bush administration was obviously very fixated on Afghanistan and Iraq, and then to a lesser extent places such as Yemen and Somalia. The Sahel, Nigeria, etc., were lower priorities - but were still on the radar.

The Bush administration had a simplistic reading of the world and thought that any poor area with a hint of militancy was a potential “safe haven” for al-Qaida - so places such as Nigeria and Mali were on the radar for that reason, and because of developments such as the passage of “sharia penal codes” in northern Nigerian states starting in 1999.

In the early 2000s the Bush administration created a program called the Pan-Sahel Initiative (2002-2004), which expanded into the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership (2005-present), and AFRICOM (Africa Command) was created in 2007. Then the rise of “Boko Haram” in Nigeria (especially starting in 2009) and the 2012 war in Mali all brought West Africa to the attention of the Obama administration.

In former French colonies, Washington largely deferred to France, and in Nigeria, the U.S. was relatively circumspect about its training activities and deployments but, to make a long story short, there have been various forms of military and intelligence involvement in the region as part of the “Global War on Terror.” One country where Washington was particularly present, at least until a 2023 coup, was Niger.

This is a huge question, I know, but I hope we can spark some curiosity! While West Africa might be a blind spot for a lot of Americans, it’s also a blind spot for a lot of American Muslims, unfortunately.

What should American Muslims know about West African Muslims? 

I would say three things to start with.

First, many of the first Muslims in the Americas came from West Africa. Your readers might be interested in the life of Omar bin Said, for example.

Second, West Africa has a tremendous scholarly tradition, like other parts of the Muslim world. Major scholars from West Africa include Uthman dan Fodio (d. 1817), Ahmad Baba (d. 1627), and many others. In our own time, one of the most famous Muslim scholars is Muhammad al-Hasan Ould al-Dedew (b. 1963) of Mauritania.

Third, West Africa is also famous for its Islamic architecture. For example, the mosque of Djenné in Mali is particularly well known.

West Africa and Africa more generally are growing while other populations in the world shrink. What does that mean for the future of the Muslim world?

As the question suggests, African Muslims will likely make up an even greater proportion of the world’s Muslims in the future. Already, African Muslims count for a lot: there are more Muslims in Nigeria, for example (likely 100 million+), than there are in any Arab country, including Egypt. In fact, Nigeria could be the third most populous country in the world before too long, surpassing even the United States, and Nigeria is roughly half Muslim or even slightly majority Muslim. 

How did you decide to focus on West Africa and North Africa?

I had a mentor as an undergraduate, Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne (now at Columbia University), whose classes on Islamic thought and Sufism changed my life. He is from Senegal and so I became interested to travel to West Africa. After graduating, I spent 2006-2007 in Senegal on a Fulbright Scholarship.

For someone who’s looking to learn more about this region of the world, what resources would you recommend?

I think Professor Ousmane Kane’s book Beyond Timbuktu and Professor Roman Loimeier’s book Muslim Societies in Africa are great places to start.

The University of Cincinnati hosts some remarkable scholars, thinkers, and resources, including on Islam and the Muslim world. What do you think makes the University so special and so strong in this regard?

Thanks for saying that. We’re a major public university, of course, and we’re fortunate to have several strong departments and units with faculty working on the Muslim world - my own unit (the School of Public and International Affairs), but also History, Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures, and more. The University also has a robust Judaic Studies Department.

In the New York Times piece cited above, you point out the grave contradiction at the heart of America’s West Africa policy: we lean on governments to fight extremism, governments we simultaneously believe are creating fertile conditions for extremism (through corruption, for example). If you got a call from the US government today to advise them, what would you tell our government?

I would tell them first not to repeat their past mistakes: with the military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger now unfriendly to the U.S., that doesn’t mean it’s time to just duplicate past failed strategies, except this time in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, etc. Second, I would tell them to expand life-saving humanitarian aid and long-term infrastructural development programs while cutting military training exercises and amorphous “CVE” and “governance” programming.

It's important to note our country’s role in West Africa. But I’m keen that my readers appreciate West Africa, and Africa more broadly, beyond the immediate priorities of certain governments. What do you find most exciting and interesting about the parts of the world you study?

Aside from what I mentioned in response to the second question, I would add that West Africa is home to some very dynamic movements and traditions. Are readers interested in Sufism? West Africa is home to thriving Sufi communities in Senegal, Nigeria, etc. Are readers interested in Salafism?

West Africa, too, is home to influential Salafi movements such as Izala in Nigeria.

I think it’s also very interesting to think about how West African Muslims approach politics in a region where politics is often more fluid than in the Arab world or Central Asia or other Muslim-majority zones; West African politics can include highly competitive elections, military coups, etc.

There’s a huge range of political systems, in fact, within the region at any given time and within each individual country over time. 

And last but not least, what do you think American Muslims—and maybe Muslims around the world—would be wise to borrow from the West African Muslim communities you focus on?

That’s a great question. One thing that comes to mind is memorization of texts— obviously memorization of the Qur’an is important to Muslims around the world, but memorization of other texts can bring real mastery as well. The Mauritanians are particularly famous for that, although certainly they’re not the only memorizers out there! But when you see a highly trained memory in action, it’s really astonishing.

OK But What Does Have To Do With A Halaqa?

When I initially reached out to Dr. Thurston, I didn’t realize he and I shared a mentor in Professor Souleymane Diagne. Professor Diagne was immensely impactful on me during my time at Columbia University, decisively shaping my understanding of ‘Allama Iqbal, the poet and philosopher I focused on for my master’s thesis.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Professor Diagne, raised in Senegal, had an early interest in Iqbal, an originally Kashmiri thinker. That comes out clear in his public scholarship (English translation forthcoming, alhamd). And if that surprises you, it shouldn’t! A faith meant for all times and places should cultivate people keen to learn from all places and times.

A faith that preaches the common origins and shared priorities of all people, no matter where they’re from, should encourage people to live and learn in truly global ways. That’s why Sunday Schooled will continue featuring a range of scholars, thinkers, and leaders making vital contributions to our world and our faith.

To empower you in your teaching. And to empower me in mine: Those who love to teach must love to learn.

Last fall, in the high school halaqa, we read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. While in the spring I’d originally intended to cover Imam al-Ghazali, with a vision for how these two Muslims giants might be put into conversation, for understandable reasons we pivoted to Palestine and our moral responsibilities as American Muslims. Does that mean I go back to Imam al-Ghazali this fall?

That’s a question I’m asking myself right now. Because the next semester of the high school halaqa is just about two months away.

For fall 2024, I am keen to dive into an idea I’ve touched on here—“surviving is thriving.” I believe our Creator deliberately embeds in our ritual practices certain connections to nature, to each other, and to ourselves, that our modern world might proclaim unnecessary. These aren’t just good for us, but vital for us. Islam asks us to pray together, in other words, because humans need to be together.

When virtual worlds and digital connectivity provoke us to think of ourselves as atomized fragments, barely in the world, more interested in screens than ourselves, Islam makes sure we have no choice but to come together, again and again, in ways that weave physicality, spirituality, geography, and even astronomy. That’s something I’d like to engage with my students.

And for the spring 2025 semester, I’m thinking about exploring an observation (which I’ll further unpack in posts to come.) Far too many Muslims are busy chasing superficial developments in the contemporary world, in the process abandoning the richness of our faith tradition for shadows that will ultimately let us down (if not lead us astray). This conversation with Dr. Thurston has encouraged me to stick with this.

Our faith makes it feel not just natural but necessary we learn from the world around us and beyond us. That we see in people we’ve never met, and will never meet, a sense of family, and fraternity, is something we should be keen to invest in. For ourselves, yeah. But also for the world we live in, including our country. Sometimes I am down on Muslims for our timid approach to the world.

That’s hardly exclusive to Muslims, though. Too many in America, and other Western countries, are giving in to damaging, dangerous, and ultimately self-defeating xenophobia. The way to cope with change isn’t to try to reverse it—but to ethically frame it and guide it. To make it work for us, instead of against us. That places on people of faith a vital obligation.

We have to rise to meet this moment. If people are pushing in crude directions, whether vapid consumerism or vicious jingoism, that doesn’t mean we should.

Our young men and women should feel called to offer the world better even as we struggle with ourselves to be better. At a time when the forces of the world are moving towards fragmentation, ennui, and exhaustion, we should be pushing in the Divine’s direction.

A faith that finds common threads from Dakar to Dhaka and pushes us to weave from these and with these.

That’s action and commitment. Discipline and direction. But none of that can happen without knowledge.