Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA)

The Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) is the first research center in the United States devoted entirely to the study of Islam and Africa. Its mission is to stimulate interest in the Islamic tradition of learning in Africa and encourage further research so that new African knowledge can be incorporated into existing patterns of understanding of Africa and Islam..  ISITA was founded in 2000 by John O. Hunwick of Northwestern University and R. Séan O’Fahey of the University of Bergen, under sponsorship of the Ford Foundation.  Since then, ISITA has secured funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  ISITA is housed at the Program of African Studies (PAS) at Northwestern University and is currently directed by Dr. Muhammad Sani Umar, an Islamic studies scholar who specializes in Nigeria.

ISITA has sponsored a wide variety of activities including publications, residential fellowships for African scholars, field research in Africa, and conferences, in Africa as well as Evanston, on both historical and contemporary themes.  Through these activities, ISITA has successfully linked research on contemporary cultural life in Islamic Africa to the centuries-old scholarly, literary and creative energy found in Africa’s Muslim communities.  In doing this, ISITA has challenged long-held stereotypes of an isolated and peripheral ‘African Islam.’  Today’s dynamic, expanding Muslim communities in Africa can be appreciated as contemporary expressions of an age-old tradition that both derived inspiration from and contributed heavily to the Arab Islamic world.  ISITA now connects a vibrant international network of scholars with shared interests in Islam and Africa.

Upcoming Events

Sudan after the 2005 North-South Peace Agreement
A talk by Einas Ahmed

Thursday, April 23, 4:00 pm

Dr. Ahmed is a political scientist and researcher affiliated with the Centre d'Etudes de Documentation Economiques, Juridiques, et Sociales (CEDEJ), Khartoum.  Her talk will address key issues facing contemporary Sudan, such as the North-South peace process, the upcoming elections, and the ongoing crisis in Darfur.   Click here for a copy of the flyer.

ISITA Workshop: Islam and Muslim Youth in Africa

Friday, April 24, 9:30 am - 5:30 pm

Click here for a copy of the flyer
Click here for a copy of the program

"Something of kafir": reversible conversions to Christianity within a  Muslim power group in 19th c. Ethiopia
A paper by Eloi Ficquet, presented as part of the Chicago Area Islam and Africa Seminar

Tuesday, April 28, 4:00-5:30 pm

Éloi Ficquet, a social anthropologist, is/ mâitre de conférences/ and a member of the presidential board at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.  His research interests include Amharic and Oromo-speaking groups in Ethiopia, with a particular focus on Christian-Muslim encounters.  Ficquet is visiting Northwestern from April 19 - May 3 as  part of a new faculty exchange program between  Northwestern and EHESS.     * Paper to be read in advance.* * Paper will be distributed by email no later than April 21.*

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All events will take place at the Program of African Studies seminar room
620 Library Place
Northwestern University's Evanston Campus
For more information or directions, call 847-491-2598 or email r-shereikis@northwestern.edu.

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

Projects

Arabic Manuscripts from West Africa:  A Catalog of the Herskovits Library Collection

The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies [link to http://www.library.northwestern.edu/africana/index.html] at Northwestern University houses an important collection of Arabic script materials from West Africa. It contains over 5,000 items collected from Africa and donated to the library by several Northwestern professors. Original, hand-written manuscripts make up more than 60 percent of the content, which also includes “market” editions (photocopies of handwritten works that are often sold in African marketplaces), printed editions, and photocopies. Most are in Arabic, though some are in ajami—African languages such as Hausa and Fulfulde written in the Arabic script.
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ISITA, in conjunction with the Northwestern University Library and Academic Technologies, has created a web-based catalog where these materials can be searched.  The catalog website can be viewed at: http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/arbmss

Past Events

Workshop:  Constituting Bodies of Islamic Knowledge

Northwestern University Evanston, November 17-18, 2008

As the culmination of three years of academic activities funded by the Ford Foundation, the ISITA held a conference on the theme of the grant, “Constituting Bodies of Islamic Knowledge.”   It consisted of four panels comprised of scholars from different academic disciplines who explored how Muslims—particularly but not exclusively in Africa—constitute bodies of religious knowledge. 

Click here for a printable conference program.

Workshop: Historical Constructions of “Race” and Social Hierarchy in Muslim West and North Africa

Co-sponsored by ISITA, the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples, York University (Canada), and Le Pôle d’Excellence Régional sur les Esclavages et les Traites - Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) de Dakar (Senegal).

Dakar, Senegal, 10-12 December 2008

The various systems of social hierarchy that have existed historically in Muslim West and North Africa have generated a distinct set of ideological justifications for inequality. The meanings ascribed to positions of social inferiority, including that of slaves, or to wider issues of difference more broadly, appear at times to be “racial” in nature. Ideas of social hierarchy and “racial” difference were often developed within a larger Muslim semantic framework. The region’s history of European colonial conquest has also shaped these concepts. In order to generate discussion of these understudied topics, the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA), the Harriet Tubman Institute and Le Pôle d’Excellence Régional sur les Esclavages et les Traites - Université Cheikh Anta Diop organized a workshop on historical constructions of “race” and social hierarchy in Muslim West and North Africa.

For more information, contact ISITA coordinator Rebecca Shereikis at r-shereikis@northwestern.edu

Conference:  Islam and the Public Sphere in Africa

ISITA sponsored a three–day international conference (May 17-19, 2007) on the theme of "Islam and the Public Sphere in Africa." The interaction of Islam and politics in the 2007 presidential elections in Senegal and Nigeria were a special focus of the conference, although it included presentations on other African countries such as Kenya, South Africa, and Morocco.  The conference opened with a keynote address on May 17 by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (Emory University), titled : "Islam, Politics and the State: Mediating Permament Paradox." The conference was made possible through the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Click here to read the Conference Report

ISITA has published selected proceedings from the conference as a special volume, co-edited by Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Muhammad Sani Umar.

Click here to download a copy of the volume as a PDF file

To request a feww copy of the volume by mail, send an email with your name and mailing address to isita@northwestern.edu

The papers are also available individually as part of the ISITA Working Papers published by the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies.

ISITA Launches Chicago-area Islam and Africa Seminar

From left to right: Rebecca Shereikis (PAS, Northwestern University), Aly Dramé (Dominican University) and Zachary Wright (Northwestern University)

This new seminar is designed to bring together students and faculty in the Chicago area with an interest in Islam and Africa. It meets on a quarterly basis at PAS to discuss a paper circulated in advance. It opened in the Fall of 2006 with a
presentation by Kim Searcy (history, Loyola University) entitled
“Ritual, Ceremony and the Articulation of Power During the Sudanese Mahdiyya” with Butch Ware (history, Northwestern) as a discussant.

In the winter 2007 quarter, presentations included Paulo Farias (see related story) and Zachary Wright (history, Northwestern) with a paper entitled ’Filled with God’: the Discourse on Embodied Knowledge within the Community of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse" with Aly Dramé (history, Dominican University) as a discussant. Contact ISITA Coordinator Rebecca Shereikis for more information on joining the seminar or to be added to the mailing list.

ISITA February Events Featured Historian Paulo Fernando Moraes de Farias

Prof. John Hunwick (Northwestern University) and Prof. Paulo Farias (University of Birmingham)

From February 5-10, ISITA hosted Visiting Scholar Paulo Fernando Moraes de Farias of the University of Birmingham. Moraes de Farias is a distinguished historian of the early precolonial history of Africa. On February 7 he delivered a lecture to the Chicago-area Islam and Africa Seminar (see related story) titled “Epigraphy as Discourse” based upon his 2003 book: Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali.

He discussed his extensive work with epigraphs in Arabic and Tifinagh dating from the 11th - 15th century from the area around Gao, explaining why the rich corpus of sources have been neglected in constructing historical accounts of this region. Farias argued that epigraphic evidence forces a reconsideration of the prevailing interpretations (based largely upon the Timbuktu chronicles) of the region’s history and the process of Islamization in West Africa.

On February 9, John Hunwick (emeritus, history and religion) organized a seminar on “Islam and Arabic in the Western Sahara” in conjunction with his preparation of volume VI of the Arabic Literature of Africa Series which will cover Arabic writings from the Western Sahara/Mauritania region. Presentations included: John Hunwick, “The Origin of Islam and its Entry into Africa"; Paulo Farias, "The 'Eccentric Regulations' of Ibn Yâsîn, the Almoravid (Western Sahara, 11th c.)"; and Ruediger Seesemann (Religion): "The Tijâniyya: Its Origin and Movement across the Western Sahara."

ISITA Co-Sponsors Workshop on “Islam and the Public Sphere in Senegal”

Prof. Thioub (AROA president) and Prof. Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Northwestern University)	Workshop participants

ISITA collaborated with the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar, Senegal to organize a one-day workshop on March 12 in Dakar on the theme of “Islam and the Public Sphere in Senegal.” The event is part of a larger ISITA project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which will culminate in an international conference on “Islam and the Public Sphere in Africa” to be held at Northwestern from May 17-19, 2007.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne (philosophy) organized and chaired the
conference, which took place at WARC. Forty-two people attended,
including academics, reporters, students, and specialists in politics
and religion. Topics addressed included: new paradigms for understanding politics and religion in Senegal, the constitutional principles of secularism, religious education and human rights, women and the public sphere, media and religious lobbies during the elections, and the phenomenon of militant Islam in Senegal. The six presenters will attend the May conference at Northwestern. The presentations were followed by lively discussion, and at the end of the workshop the participants requested that WARC organize more events of this kind, especially on issues related to Islam.

Interview of Prof. Diagne in Sud Quotidien " L' islam et la sphere politique au Senegal" (03/16/2007)

Conference Report Available

Report from the Fourth Annual International Colloquium, "Gender and Islam in Africa: Discourses, Practices, and Empowerment of Women," held May 20-22, 2004.