Religion, Politics, and the Islamic Response in Africa

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics, between church and state, has been a well rehearsed issue in Muslim thought and practice, because Islam emerged fully into history as a dual tradition of church and state, and because as such Muslims have been less sanguine than Europeans about making a rigid separation between the secular and the sacred, or between the public and private domain. By virtue of such history and by reason of the subsequent Western secular expansion in the Muslim world, there is widespread reaction to the legitimacy of national secular governments among contemporary Muslims. Some of that reaction goes back to the effects of colonial rule.