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The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-Religious Dialogue By John Alembillah Azumah Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001
At a time of growing interest in the global dominance of Islam, the Islamic tradition in Africa deserves attention and interest. The legacy of Islam in Africa is an enduring one. When the early followers of the Prophet Muhammad were facing persecution in Mecca, he advised many of them to seek refuge across the Red Sea in Axum (which is in modern day Ethiopia). In the Muslim tradition, this remarkable event is known as the first hijrah, or migration. Imam Bukhari reported in his Sahib Bukhari that these Muslim refugees later went back to Arabia after Islam was fully consolidated. Islam would quickly return to Africa. In 639, just seven years after Muhammad's death, an Arab army invaded Egypt. Within two generations, an Arab hegemony extended across the entire Maghrib to the Atlantic Ocean. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in West Africa, the consolidation of Muslim trading networks connected by lineage, trade, and Sufi brotherhoods had reached a crescendo and this enabled Muslims...