The History of Jihad in Africa - XVII Century and on

  History of Jihad against Nigeria, Mauritania, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Central Africa (1784 - Ongoing)

This site brings you the history of the Islamic Jihad from its beginnings at Mecca in 620 C.E. up to 9/11, and the lessons it has for us in today's challenging times. If we are to understand Islam, we need to understand the temperament of its founder Mohammed (PBUH*), the way victorious Muslims have treated the subject people, and above all the reasons for the victory of Islam. This site is dedicated to frank and fearless reporting and commenting on the Islamic Jihad NEW Movie script on Mohammed - the founder of Islam Tuesday, February 2, 2010 6:48:17 AM The History of Jihad site is brought to you by a panel of contributors. This site is co-ordinated by Robin MacArthur with Mahomet Mostapha and Naim al Khoury, New Jersey. Other contributors to this site include professors and members of the faculty from the Universities of Stanford and Michigan (Ann Arbor), Kansas State University, Ohio State University, and the London School of Economics. We strongly suggest that this site be recommended as additional reading for students of Islamic History. We also invite students and professors of this subject to mirror this site on your University or private servers, link it up from your sites, to print it as a non-profit publication and refer it to students, journalists, cinematographers, military personnel, members of both houses of Congress, and Parliamentarians from your countries, members of the judiciary and most importantly to officers of the FBI, CIA, Scotland Yard, MI5, Mossad, FSB (Russian Secret Police) Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE) and to all other stakeholders in the subjects of the Islam and the Jihad. ________________________ How the animistic tribes of Central Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Mauritania and Nigeria fell prey to the Jihadis. And how their struggle continues even today in the conflicts of the Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Eretria, Somalia and between the Arabized Northern Sudanese with the Christian Dinka tribesmen of Southern Sudan and the Muslim but non-Arabized, darker-skinned tribesmen of Darfur who were forcibly converted to Islam late in the 18th century Areadi Gaya, the non-Muslim ruler of Futa Bandu State in West Sudan was forced to embrace Islam after he was defeated by the Mamelukes of Egypt.

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At the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research held in Cairo, in 1968, Shaikh Abdullah Ghoshah, Chief Judge of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan declared: "Jihad is legislated in order to be one of the means of propagating Islam. Consequently Non-Muslims ought to embrace Islam either willingly or through wisdom and good advice or unwillingly through fight and Jihad - It is unlawful to give up Jihad and adopt peace and weakness instead of it, unless the purpose of giving up Jihad is for preparation for future war, whenever the Muslims are weak, and their opponents are strong- Otherwise war is the basis of the relationship between Muslims and their opponents."

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After overrunning Byzantine ruled Egypt and giving the Coptic Christian population the choice Islam, death or Jizya, the Muslim armies attempted to penetrate deeper into Africa from the 7th century onwards.

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Central Africa was a poor semi-arid land with scrub vegetation, and there was nothing therein worth fighting for and holding the land and population under Muslim tyranny. As there were no major cities worth the name, and most of the population lived in migratory groups as hunter, food gatherers and cattle herders, there was precious little to tempt the invading Muslims by way of booty. Hence there was no sustained Muslim invasion of Africa proper. Muslim raids were confined to the Mediterranean coastline in the North and along the Nile Valley in Egypt. This also speaks the mind of the Muslims to raid non-Muslim lands not only for spreading Islam but to loot, plunder, rape. In the absence of any significant wealth, the lands were not subject to occupation, although there were continuing raids through the millennium from the 7th up to the 18th centuries. But during these raids the aggressors did use force to compel the African (Bantu, Bushmen, Masai and other Negro clans), to join the Muslim Ummah, by embracing Islam at the point of the sword as commanded by the Quran.

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Then as now, Central Africa was a poor semi-arid land with scrub vegetation, and there was nothing therein worth fighting for and holding the land and population under Muslims tyranny. As there were no major cities worth the name, except like those of Benin and Ashanti. But most of the population lived in migratory groups as hunters, food gatherers and cattle herders, there was precious little to tempt the invading Muslims by way of booty. Hence there was no sustained Muslim invasion of Africa proper. Muslim raids were confined to the Mediterranean coastline in the North and along the Nile Valley in Egypt. This also speaks the mind of the Muslims to raid non-Muslim lands not only for spreading Islam but to loot, plunder, rape. In the absence of any significant wealth, the lands were not subject to occupation, although there were continuing raids through the millennium from the 7th up to the 18th centuries. But during these raids the aggressors did use force to compel the African (Bantu, Bushmen, Masai and other Negro clans), to join the Muslim Ummah, by embracing Islam at the point of the sword.

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When the Jihadis attacked Central Africa, South Central Africa, up to the Atlantic shore in Ghana, the people of that region were divided in to independent tribes. Each tribe worshipped its own tribal god. Witchcraft and Shamanism were prevalent. Many of the tribes were engaged in internecine warfare for cattle, control over grazing pastures and hunting grounds. There was no unity among the tribes. And till the Mameluke led Muslim invasion, no invader had ever penetrated in to the heartland of Africa.

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 This difference was because the Muslims could not hold the converted African tribal populations to Islam, due to the victims being migratory in their utterly frugal and substance based lifestyle Migratory Tribal populations living at sustenance levels dissuaded the Muslims from concentrating on Africa up to the 18th century When the Jihadis attacked Central Africa, South Central Africa, up to the Atlantic shore in Ghana, the people of that region were divided in to independent tribes. Each tribe worshipped its own tribal god. Witchcraft and Shamanism were prevalent. Many of the tribes were engaged in internecine warfare for cattle, control over grazing pastures and hunting grounds. There was no unity among the tribes. And till the Mameluke led Muslim invasion, no invader had ever penetrated in to the heartland of Africa.

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Before Islam destroyed them, there were developed black african civilizations like those of Benin, Ashanti, Zulu, Nubia, Axum and many others. These Black african kingdoms that existed in africa prior to the islamic invasion were culturally spiritually and technologically more advanced than the arab barbarians that invaded them as is evident from the pictures of the kings of Benin. Seen here is the Head of a courtier in the court of Benin Nigeria circa 1550. So one should not form any generalized impression of all black africans as primitive bushmen. Before the coming of Islam destroyed or marginalized these kingdoms, there were many kingdoms like those at Benin and Ashanti. The Zulu kingdom, although more to the south also represents the independent development of civilization in ancient Africa.

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But in spite of these divisions among the people of Central Africa, they fiercely resisted Islam for a long time, often converting nominally to Islam and immediately reverting to their pre-islamic animistic tribal beliefs. The first recorded Muslim invasions were as early as the 8th century, but these invasions could not make significant inroads in to the deeply forested tribal fastness of Central Africa. Many of the raids were limited to the seizure of black African slaves, who were referred to as "Abeed" which in Arabic means "Black". It was the Arab slave traders who first garnered the slave contingents bound for the Muslim Middle East It was these Arab slave traders who garnered the slave contingents bound for the Muslim Middle East who have been first mentioned by the Crusaders. The presence of significant numbers of black African Slaves many of and whom had their tongues cut off and were castrated, took the Crusaders by surprise and in the initial Crusades many of these slaves were also slaughtered by the Holy Warriors believing them to be Muslims. In fact these slaves had nominally been converted to Islam, but had no rights as Muslims under the Caliphate and in later times during the Crusades. Many of the black African women were also used as sex slaves and due to their presence in the harem, the Negroid black African strains found its way in to the Semitic Arab Middle East.

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 Islamic forays in to Central and West Africa were carried out between the 8th and the 15th centuries with the aim of capturing black African slaves and not primarily with the aim of converting the population to Islam. In any case, the Arab raiders could not subdue and hold any significant parts of the heavily forested territories of Central and Western Africa for long. It was also these slave traders who contributed a bulk of the Slaves to the European Slave traders from the 16th up to the 19th centuries.

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Islamic forays in to Central and West Africa were carried out between the 8th and the 15th centuries with the aim of capturing black African slaves and not primarily with the aim of converting the population to Islam The point is that most of these Islamic forays in to Central and West Africa were carried out between the 8th and the 15th centuries with the aim of capturing black African slaves and not primarily with the aim of converting the population to Islam. In any case, the Arab raiders could not subdue and hold any significant parts of the heavily forested territories of Central and Western Africa for long. It was also these slave traders who contributed a bulk of the Slaves to the European Slave traders from the 16th up to the 19th centuries. These African slaves were nominally Muslims, and the Arab slave traders had no qualms in capturing their Muslim (albeit nominally so) co-religionists and transporting them bound and chained to the clutches of the European slave traders to be pushed on to the slave ships that lay in anchor at the ports of Accra and Abidjan along the coast of West Africa. Incidentally the name for the town Abidjan is derived from the Arabic term "Abeed" which means black.

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In his autobiography Alex Haley, who was the descendant of the African slaves, mentions that his forefather who was brought to the British American possessions (that later became the United States) as a slave. Kunta Kinte whom Alex refers to his forefather in the award winning novel "Roots", was a Muslim. In spite of his being a Muslim, the Arab slave traders had transported him for de-humanizing usage as a commodity to the European slave traders in the 17th century. This is one proof that the African slaves bound for the New World were Muslims, and the Arab slave traders had no qualms in capturing their Muslim (albeit nominally so) co-religionists and transporting them bound and chained to the clutches of the European slave traders to be pushed on to the slave ships that lay in anchor at the ports of Accra and Abidjan along the coast of West Africa. Incidentally the name for the town Abidjan is derived from the Arabic term "Abeed" which means black.

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 The autobiography of Alex Haley throws light on the Muslim origin of many African slaves We can recall the autobiography of Alex Haley who was the descendant of the African slaves. His forefather who was brought to the British American possessions (that later became the United States) as a slave. Kunta Kinte whom Alex refers to his forefather in the award winning novel "Roots", was a Muslim. In spite of his being a Muslim, the Arab slave traders had transported him for de-humanizing usage as a commodity to the European slave traders in the 17th century. The first sustained Arab invasion of Central Africa began in the 18th century to prevent Christian Missionaries from making in roads in to Tribal Africa. The first sustained Arab invasion of Central Africa began in the 18th century. In fact this invasion itself was a result of the European incursions on the coast of Western and South Eastern Africa and the subsequent conversion of many of the African tribes of these areas to Christianity.

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Muslim Arab slave traders who from the 7th up to the 18th century had not bothered to carry out any thorough conversion of the tribal folk of Central Africa, decided to move in after 1784 and establish a permanent rule over the tribal regions to prevent their conversion to Christianity. This fact is lost sight of by many historians. In fact the competing proselytization activities of the Muslim raiders and of Christian missionaries led to the drawing of fault-lines of civilization in Central Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Southern Sudan, Northern Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and others parts of Africa, where populations of the Muslim and Christian converts faced-off each other. There were many cases where one tribe would have adherents of both Christianity and Islam.

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Why did the Muslims not convert the Central and Southern African population to Islam when they overran North Africa in 650 to 700 C.E.? After Islam spread across North Africa in the 600’s, Muslim entrepreneurs in the 8th century charted routes from oasis to oasis and realized that if large numbers of slaves were brought from below the Sahara, they could start a profitable slave trade. Slaver caravans from Muslim regions now known as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt struck out on dire southward journeys. For practical reasons Muslim slavers themselves did not raid for slaves among the northernmost black tribes such as the Hausa and the Fulani. Instead they coerced the Hausa, Fulani and others to be the ones who actually dirtied their hands as slave raiders. Muslims needed only to supply the most northerly black tribes with the chains, manacles and swords they needed to efficiently kidnap people from tribes living further south. Muslim slave traders paid the northernmost black tribes a wholesale price for those seized. Slaves surviving the long march to North African cities were sold there at retail prices. Other Muslim slavers from Arabia and Egypt sailed down the East African cost and formed a slave-gathering base on an island called Zanzibar. Equipping mainland black tribes adjacent to Zanzibar as slave raiders, they too saw their profits grow.

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The people of Central Africa too, fiercely resisted Islam for a long time, often converting nominally to Islam and immediately reverting to their pre-Islamic animistic tribal beliefs. The first recorded Muslim invasions were as early as the 8th century, but these invasions could not make significant inroads in to the deeply forested tribal fastness of Central Africa. Many of the raids were limited to the seizure of black African slaves, who were referred to as "Abeed" which in Arabic means "Black". It was the Arab slave traders who garnered the slave contingents bound for the Muslim Middle East These black slaves in the Middle East have been mentioned by the Crusaders. The presence of significant numbers of black African Slaves many of and whom had their tongues cut off and were castrated, took the Crusaders by surprise.

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To secure the loyalty of these black african intermediaries, the Muslim slavers brought teachers of the Koran to convert, not just any subSaharan black tribe, but only those that agreed to kidnap and sell their neighbors to the south. Islam thus established itself along the 4,000-mile southern edge of the Sahara form Senegal to Somalia, and among coastal tribes near Zanzibar. Question! Why did Islam not spread much, much further across subSaharan Africa? Alas, this is where the many historical accounts of slavery falter. Conventional history fails to even ask, let alone answer, such an intriguing question. Understandably, Islamic missionaries brought to subSaharan Africa by Muslim slavers could not convert more southerly African tribes. People harried by Muslim-induced slave raids were far from eager to convert to the religion of the raiders. In fact, those enterprising Muslim missionaries who ventured to convert the victimized tribes, even during times of intermittent peace, would meet vengeance. Further, Islamic law forbids Muslims to enslave Muslims, hence converting tribes which were the source of slaves would interfere with slave-trading profits. Christians in Europe thus unwittingly granted Islam a 1000-year head start in altering the destiny of subSaharan Africans. Yet Muslim missionaries, by siding with Muslim slavers instead of opposing them, forfeited the enviable advantage that 1000-year head start afforded. Had they opposed slavery instead of condoning it, Muslim missionaries could have spread Islam all the way from the Sahara to Africa’s southern tip. But history had willed otherwise.Teaching the Koran, building Mosques and founding Islamic schools with not a hint of contest from Christians, they could have Islamicized an entire continent. Christian missionaries, arriving belatedly in the early 1800’s, would have had to struggle to win even a tiny beachhead anywhere in black Africa. Planting churches in Zimbabwe and Zululand would have been as difficult as planting churches in Algeria and Libya. Muslims in those days little dreamed that a later century would bring scores of woefully late but zealous Christian missionaries from Europe and America to the very tribes Muslim missionaries had consigned as prey for Muslim slavers. Had such a premonition crossed Muslim minds, Islam might have ended its complicity with the slave trade industry. All of black Africa as far as Cape Good Hope would then have been Islamicized with relative ease centuries before the first Christian incursion. Instead, though they arrived ruefully late in black African history, a relative handful of Christian missionaries have caused 250 million black Africans in subSaharan Africa to be categorized today as Christian! Yes, Christian missionaries consistently opposed slavery everywhere they encountered it. In Uganda, David Livingstone often found himself looking into the muskets of Muslim slavers who were incensed at a Christian who urged them to end something they had been doing with impunity for a millennium. The Muslim Arab slave traders who from the 7th up to the 18th century had not bothered to carry out any thorough conversion of the tribal folk of Central Africa, decided to move in belatedly after 1784 and establish a permanent rule over the tribal regions to prevent their conversion to Christianity. This fact is lost sight of by many historians. In fact the competing proselytization activities of the Muslim raiders and of Christian missionaries led to the drawing of fault-lines of civilization in Central Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Southern Sudan, Northern Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and others parts of Africa, where populations of the Muslim and Christian converts faced-off each other. There were many cases where one tribe would have adherents of both Christianity and Islam.

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The competing proselytization activities of the Muslim raiders and of Christian missionaries led to the drawing of fault-lines of civilization in Africa For instance, many in the Cape Malay tribe, have embraced the Islamic faith, but some of them have embraced Christianity. But the unifying factors for both the Muslims Malay and Christian Malay tribal folk is that they have preserved their pre-conversion Malay heritage. There are many such instances across Africa. The Muslim-Christian conflict in Nigerian cities like Kano that sometimes spills over to Ibadan, Lagos and to the capital city of Abuja is also due to differences in religion among the Nigerians all of whom are from related Negro stock. The city of Kano is first mentioned by traders in the 10th century and was ruled by a non-Islamic clan viz., the Hausa. The Hausa who were able to emerge as the new power in the region were closely linked with the Kanuri people of Kanem-Bornu (Lake Chad), the Hausa aristocracy was forced to adopt Islam by the first wave of Arabized Muslim invaders who ravaged Kano in the 11th century. But the Hausa converts remained only nominally Muslims, in fact so very nominally, that the city was attacked once again by the Arabized Muslims who were this time led by the ethnic Fulanis in a jihad, or Holy War. The population of Kano was once again forcibly re-converted to Islam in the 15th century 400 years after it had been initially converted to Islam. Its Hausa leaders were accused of having lapsed from Islam. This was typical of the conversion of the African clans to Islam. They never whole-heartedly embraced Islam, but looked upon conversion as a tactic to buy peace from their warlike Muslim tormentors.

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For instance, most of the Cape Malay tribe, have embraced the Islamic faith, while some of them have embraced Christianity. But the unifying factors for both the Muslims Malay and Christian Malay tribal folk is that they have preserved their pre-conversion Malay heritage. As against this, among the Griqua tribe most of them are Christian, predominantly converted by the Dutch missionaries, but there are Muslim pockets among the Griqua tribe too. There are many such instances across Africa. The pre-Islamic history of Nigeria The Muslim-Christian conflict in Nigerian cities like Kano that sometimes spills over to Ibadan, Lagos and to the capital city of Abuja is also due to differences in religion among the Nigerians all of whom are from related Negro stock. The city of Kano is first mentioned by traders in the 10th century and was ruled by a non-Islamic clan viz., the Hausa. The pre-Islamic roots of the Hausa go to more than two hundred years before the origin of Islam Islam, i.e. between 500 C.E. and 700 C.E. In that period the Hausa people, who had been slowly moving west from Nubia and mixing in with the local Northern and Central Nigerian population, established a number of strong states in what is now Northern and Central Nigeria and Eastern Niger. The Hausa were able to emerge as the new power in the region in around the 500 C.E. after the decline of the Nok and Sokoto (other pre-islamic ruling clans in today's Niger and Nigeria), who had previously controlled Central and Northern Nigeria between 800 B.C.E. and 200 C.E. The Hausa were closely linked with the Kanuri people of Kanem-Bornu (Lake Chad), the Hausa aristocracy was forced to adopt Islam by the first wave of Arabized Muslim invaders who ravaged Kano in the 11th century. But the Hausa converts remained only nominally Muslims, in fact so very nominally, that the city was attacked once again by the Arabized Muslims who were this time led by the ethnic Fulanis in a jihad, or Holy War. Much like the way the Janjweed are today attacking the Fur Muslims of Darfur in Sudan and consider them to be infidels in spite of their being Muslims. The population was once again forcibly re-converted to Islam in the 15th century 400 years after it had been initially converted to Islam. Its Hausa leaders were accused of having lapsed from Islam. This was typical of the conversion of the African clans to Islam. They never whole-heartedly embraced Islam, but looked upon conversion as a tactic to buy peace from their warlike Muslim tormentors. The continuing Jihad against the Nigerians in our times Ever since the Muslim invaders first came to Nigeria in the 11th century, the non-Muslim (animist and Christian) population has not been spared the Islamic sword. In the 19th century, Uthman Dan Fodio launched a Jihad on this country after which Muslim have had the upper hand in victimizing Christians. Since then, the Christians have been continually living at the mercy of their Muslim neighbors.