18th–19th Centuries: (Africa and Islam — Revival and Reform as a Continent-Wide Framework: Islam as the Most Significant External Influence Before European C…

18th–19th Centuries: (Africa and Islam — Revival and Reform as a Continent-Wide Framework: Islam as the Most Significant External Influence Before European Colonialism, the Fusion of Faith and State, Sufi Brotherhoods as Agents of Spread, the Hajj as a Vehicle of Political Consciousness, and Three Interrelated Themes of the Era — European Challenge, Islamic Revivalism, and Secular Modernization): Islam had been of immense importance in Africa’s history — in terms of external influences shaping the continent, Islam was by far the most significant, at least until the nineteenth century and increasing European intervention. Islam had long provided a framework for dramatic sociopolitical change and unified action across northern Africa, the Sahara, and the Red Sea region. Large areas of Africa had always been more Muslim than Christian: North Africa for over a thousand years, West Africa predominantly Muslim through the trans-Saharan commercial network that expanded from the eighth and ninth centuries. African Muslims belonged to a global civilization encompassing the Ottoman empire, Persia, and India, and the hajj generated political consciousness. A crucial difference between Islam and Christianity was that within Islam, faith and state were identified as one — Islamic law, government, and taxation were indivisible from spiritual matters. Sufi brotherhoods were vital in the spread of Islam and its adaptation to local circumstances. Islamic history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was characterized by three interrelated themes: first, industrializing Christian Europe posed a serious challenge through growing technological and military power; second, Islamic revivalism swept the Muslim world seeking restoration of pure Islam and rigorous enforcement of sharia; and third, a number of Muslim societies attempted to modernize and secularize, usually emulating European models. The fundamental contradiction for many Muslims was that between Europe as the model of modernity and Europe as the colonizer.