Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently seen as the periphery of the Muslim world, in terms of both geography and religious influence. This chapter shows that Islam has had a presence in Sub-Saharan Africa since the earliest days of its history. Scholars studying Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa have long written about an ‘African Islam’, reflecting the Sufi bias typical of scholarship on Islam in the region. Janson demonstrates that this approach hampers a better understanding of the emergence of reformist-oriented movements. She concludes by pointing out new approaches to the study of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, which capture the fluidity of the different ways of ‘being Muslim’ in everyday living, thereby challenging ingrained analytical concepts such as an ‘African Islam’ versus ‘Arab Islam’, and an accommodating Sufi Islam versus an orthodox reformist Islam

Unity Through Diversity: A Case Study of Chrislam in Lagos

This article presents an ethnographic case study of Chrislam, a series of religious movements that fuse Christian and Muslim beliefs and practices, in its socio-cultural and political-economic setting in Nigeria’s former capital Lagos. Against conventional approaches to study religious movements in Africa as syncretic forms of ‘African Christianity’ or ‘African Islam’, I suggest that ‘syncretism’ is a misleading appellation for Chrislam. In fact, Chrislam provides a rationale for scrutinizing the very concept of syncretism and offers an alternative analytical case for understanding its mode of religious pluralism. To account for the religious plurality in Chrislam, I employ assemblage theory as it proposes novel ways for looking at Chrislam’s religious mixing that are in line with how its worshippers perceive their religiosity. The underlying idea in Chrislam’s assemblage of Christianity and Islam is that to be a Christian or Muslim alone is not enough to guarantee success in this world and the hereafter and therefore Chrislam worshippers partake in Christian as well as Muslim practices, appropriating the perceived powers of both

‘How, for God’s sake, can I be a good Muslim?' Gambian Youth in Search of a Moral Lifestyle

By analysing the case study of a young Muslim man's conversion within and between different expressions of Islam in the Gambia, this article challenges common understandings of conversion that see it as a transition from one form of religious belief or identity to another, as well as theories of Islam's place in Africa that distinguish between ‘local’ traditions and ‘world’ religions. The ethnographic case study illustrates that, for Gambian youth, conversion is not a unilinear path but entails the continuous making of moral negotiations and a preparedness to reflect on the ambiguity of selfhood – an inevitable result of the making of these negotiations

Binding of Human Milk to Pathogen Receptor DC-SIGN Varies with Bile Salt-Stimulated Lipase (BSSL) Gene Polymorphism

OBJECTIVE: Dendritic cells bind an array of antigens and DC-SIGN has been postulated to act as a receptor for mucosal pathogen transmission. Bile salt-stimulated lipase (BSSL) from human milk potently binds DC-SIGN and blocks DC-SIGN mediated trans-infection of CD4(+) T-lymphocytes with HIV-1. Objective was to study variation in DC-SIGN binding properties and the relation between DC-SIGN binding capacity of milk and BSSL gene polymorphisms. STUDY DESIGN: ELISA and PCR were used to study DC-SIGN binding properties and BSSL exon 11 size variation for human milk derived from 269 different mothers distributed over 4 geographical regions. RESULTS: DC-SIGN binding properties were highly variable for milks derived from different mothers and between samplings from different geographical regions. Differences in DC-SIGN binding were correlated with a genetic polymorphism in BSSL which is related to the number of 11 amino acid repeats at the C-terminus of the protein. CONCLUSION: The observed variation in DC-SIGN binding properties among milk samples may have implications for the risk of mucosal transmission of pathogens during breastfeeding

Anthropology and Religion: 'Religious Shoppers' and the emergence of Chrislam in Lagos

In this episode of The Know Show Podcast, we meet Marloes Janson, a Professor of West African Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, and Associate Director of Research at SOAS University of London. Marloes tells us how her interest in anthropology and religion developed, discussing her truly fascinating work that looks at Chrislam in Lagos, Nigeria. Chrislam is a religious movement that fuses Christian and Muslim beliefs and practices. Listen to and watch Marloes explain how the term ‘religious shoppers’ emerged from her participants, exploring what this looks like as people navigate their everyday lives