How Did The Spread Of Islam Radically Change The Future Of Christianity?

The opening statement of a landmark document issued in 2009 and signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars and Christian scholars, titled "A Common Word between United states of america and You," states: "Muslims and Christians together make upward well over half of the world's population. Without peace and justice between these 2 religious communities, at that place tin can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians." Hans Küng, the renowned Swiss theologian, is convinced that there is

"No peace among the nations without peace among the religions; No peace amongst the religions without dialogue between the religions; No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundations of the religions"¹

In a recent survey, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life notes that "Africa is clearly among the almost religious places in the earth. In many countries across the continent, roughly nine-in-ten people or more say religion is very of import in their lives." The survey found that more than than 95% of Africans claim adherence to the Islamic or Christian faith. Subsequently highlighting the favorable views Muslims and Christians hold of each other in Africa, the Pew survey also notes:

On the other hand, the survey likewise reveals clear signs of tension and division. Overall, Christians are less positive in their views of Muslims than Muslims are of Christians; substantial numbers of Christians (ranging from 20% in Guinea-Bissau to 70% in Chad) say they think of Muslims every bit violent. In a scattering of countries, a third or more of Christians say many or most Muslims are hostile toward Christians, and in a few countries a third or more of Muslims say many or most Christians are hostile toward Muslims.²

In The Side by side Christendom, Philip Jenkins examines population growth of key Christian- and Muslim-majority countries confronting the groundwork of prevailing sociopolitical, indigenous, and religious tensions, economical, and political challenges, so ominously talks of the "Adjacent Crusade," singling out Nigeria as a ticking time bomb.^three If peace betwixt Muslims and Christians is crucial for world peace, information technology goes without saying that peace between Christians and Muslims in Africa is something the remainder of the earth cannot afford to ignore. Indeed, the get-go al-Qaida bombs ever against United States targets exploded on African soil in 1998 in Republic of kenya and Tanzania.

Consequently, when talking virtually Christian-Muslim relations and globe peace, Africa is critical— not only because of the potential for disharmonize, but likewise the prospects for peaceful coexistence between the ii faith communities. As the first church to have been in contact with Islam, the African church experience in this run across should exist of involvement to the global church. In this commodity, I will beginning outline the unlike phases of the spread of Islam in Africa and how these contributed in shaping the nature of the relations between the two faiths. To help the church building reexamine its engagement with Islam over the years, I will outline the different faces or configurations of Islam in contemporary Africa and propose ways the church has engaged and can engage with Muslims.

Phases of Islamization in Sub-Saharan Africa

A common stereotypical perception is that Islam spread by dint of arms or through violence. To counter this perception, others have tried to testify that Islam spread mainly by persuasion through peaceful means. As we shall demonstrate in the outset part of this paper, the history of the spread of Islam in Africa does not fit into whatsoever one single mold. The spread of Islam in Africa can exist divided into phases; different Muslim groups used different methods, both intentionally and by default, to spread the faith in different parts of the continent.

Muslims as Immigrants, Merchants, and Clerics

In 615 C.E., most eighty male followers were advised by Muhammad to seek aviary in Abyssinia with their families to escape Meccan persecution. This is described every bit the starting time hijra. Upon their return, they reported, "When we reached Abyssinia the Negus [the rex] gave us a kind reception. We safely good our religion, and we worshipped God, and suffered no wrong in word or deed."^iv The African church provided refuge to nascent Islam by extending hospitality to vulnerable converts facing severe persecution in Mecca. William Muir (and others) has speculated, "If an Arab asylum had not at terminal offered itself at Medina, the Prophet might happily himself accept emigrated to Abyssinia."^five

Even though Islam made niggling to no bear upon on Abyssinian society during the first contact, in the ensuing centuries (7th to 19th), migrant and migrating Muslims became the principal bearers of Islam throughout sub-Saharan Africa. During this period, Muslims were generally afoot groups who spread out into sub-Saharan Africa as traders and clerics. They sought patronage from the traditional courts, formed special relationships, and were accorded special privileges by the rulers. Some of the chiefs flirted with Islam, employed Muslim clerics in their courts, adopted Arabic names, and incorporated Islamic rituals into traditional ones. These Muslims were not missionaries; rather, the saving of souls was a by-product of the quest for gold, ivory, and slaves. During this menstruum, Muslim settlements represented "islands of Islam in a sea of paganism."

The top-downwards approach ensured that Islam had greater affect on communities with more than structured political systems, that is, chiefly societies, than on the less stratified and loosely knit ones (i.e. those without chiefs). Up until the sixteenth century, Muslim groups posed no direct threat to traditional political institutions from which they sought patronage. On the contrary, in West Africa, the well-nigh influential clerical tradition during this menses was the Jakhanke, which is known for its suspicion of political power, avowed pacifism, and aversion to militancy every bit a means of religious and political modify. Notwithstanding, Muslims exerted much influence upon African societies, some ascension to become kingmakers and to concord very powerful positions. During this flow, Islam spread mainly by appeal every bit a college civilization through trading networks. The art of literacy on the function of the clerics, the production of charms and amulets for blessings, healing, and war purposes, all contributed to the entreatment and spread of Islam. Islam nevertheless remained a largely urban phenomenon, a stranger faith, and a cult for the ruling class, with little affect on wider club. From this peaceful encounter developed what some scholars take derogatorily referred to as "African Islam" or "Islam Noir," i.e., the appropriation and blending of Islamic rituals with African traditional religious elements. Sufi orders champion this form of Islam in which the five pillars are observed and Islamic police haphazardly applied in family and personal matters. The vast majority of Muslims who subscribe to this face of Islam are confronting ideological and militant Islam. This form of Islam is inclusivist (syncretistic) and tolerant and is still widespread in much of sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegal in Westward Africa to much of Due east Africa.

The storage of Islamic rituals in African wineskins goes back to the very beginning of the adoption of the faith. From the very beginning, Africans adopted Islam from a position of authorisation and power, adapting the religion to suit their context. The ruling grade adopted and adapted Islamic practices and ritual and divested the religion of its political and legal content, or then they tried to. Through this process, Islam was thoroughly Africanized.

During this phase, Islam in Africa developed a non-ideological, apolitical, and pacifist tradition. Consequently, Muslims in Africa accept a longstanding history of living and even flourishing equally minorities under not-Islamic political systems. In many parts of Africa where this tradition persists, there are cordial relations between Muslims and not-Muslims, specially Christians, at the family, regional, and national levels. This remains the tendency in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa with the exception of places like northern Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Today, Islam is no longer a strange religion in many parts of Africa. Together with African traditional religions and Christianity, Islam is an integral office of the African heritage and reality.⁶ This is not merely a heritage with adherents who live adjacent, but an authentic African worldview that in many places forms the basic identity markers of private Africans! Negotiating these identities continues to be a challenge in Africa today.

Muslims as Invaders, Slave Raiders, and Rulers

During the caliphate of Umar (634–644 C.E.), Muslims invaded and captured Egypt (640 C.E.). Muslim conquests spread westward to the rest of North Africa as far every bit Mauritania. With Muslim rule firmly established in Egypt, Muslim rulers signed a treaty known as the baqt with Christian Nubia. This allowed Nubia to retain its sovereignty in return for allowing free passage and settlement for Muslim traders. The treaty also included the payment of an annual tribute in the form of 360 slaves to their Muslim overlords in Egypt. This system lasted for centuries until Nubia was attacked and overrun in 1275 by the might of Mamluk Egypt, thus introducing the start directly Muslim rule into black Africa.

In 1493, Askiya Muhammad Ture, of the hitherto immigrant Muslim groups, took up arms against the ruling class of the Songhay Empire, overthrew Sonni Ali, and took over the reins of power. In 1529, Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, which had experienced sporadic attacks from Muslim groups, came under a total-scale jihad led by Ahmad Granj. His motion was defeated with the help of the Portuguese in 1543. These were followed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by a series of jihad movements around nowadays-day West Africa—the most historic being led by Uthman Dan Fodio, which covered present-twenty-four hour period northern Nigeria.

When Uthman Dan Fodio unleashed his jihad on Gobir in 1804, the ruler, or Sarkin Gobir, sent messages to other Hausa chiefs telling them that he had neglected "a small burn in his country until information technology had spread beyond his ability to control. Having failed to extinguish information technology, it had at present burnt him." The chief's letter of the alphabet ended with a dire warning: "Let each beware lest a like cataclysm befall his boondocks too."^vii The boxing cry of the jihadists was "the religion of the ruler is the religion of the land." In other words, if the ruler is "Muslim" as the jihadist defines Muslim, then that land is dar al-Islam and cannot be subjected to jihad. However, if the ruler of a particular land is non a Muslim, that state is dar al-harb and therefore a legitimate target for jihad.

The Sokoto Caliphate was established and Islamization was accompanied by aggressive Arabization, which included the implementation of Islamic law and the banishment of traditional African customs and practices. The jihad movements degenerated into slave raiding on a massive scale, outset by the Fulani on the Hausa, and subsequently by the Hausa-Fulani on other tribes in the middle chugalug of present-day Nigeria. Islamization during this period had much to practise with the destruction of traditional structures, dislocation of communities, and the conversion of slaves to Islam in massive numbers. The slave trade escalated during this period through the trans-Saharan routes, across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean into Due north Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and Muslim India.⁸

Many leading Muslim clerics of the time opposed the jihads and paid with their lives. Ordinary Muslims across the western Sudan were therefore just as pleased and relieved as their traditional counterparts with the emergence of European colonial powers, primarily the French and British, during the concluding quarter of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century. They brought an end to much of the jihadist mayhem and devastating slave raiding and trading. Information technology is worth pointing out at this juncture that mail service-colonial mainstream Western scholarly works on Islam in Africa branded the militant Islamic tradition of the jihadists every bit "normative", "official", "orthodox" Islam while the Islam consort by Muslims who argued for co-existence with traditional believers was branded as "mixed" and "corrupt".

The jihadists version of Islam, made attainable largely through the works of Western scholars, continues to inspire an ideological, political, and militant Islam that is at present championed by graduates from Islamic North Africa and the Eye E as well as the wind of global Islamic resurgence. This revivalist, reformist face of Islam comes with a clamor for the implementation of Islamic criminal code. The objectives include, in the words of Ali al-Khatim of Cameroon, "to Islamize the political authority." Proponents of this face of Islam harbor and limited strong anti-Sufi sentiments, are very combative towards non-Muslims in general and Christians in particular, and more often than not associate the West with immorality. The militant manifestation of ideological Islam is represented by the Boko Haram of Nigeria, who are responsible for fierce attacks in northern Nigeria. The legacy of this ideological and militant phase of Islamization accounts in large part for frosty relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims in places where the jihad met with success. Such relationships include present-24-hour interval northern Nigeria where the Hausa- Fulani look back to the jihad menstruum as the golden age of Islam. The vast majority of other tribes, who were victims of Muslim raids and are at present largely Christian, look back to it as a flow of barbarism and wanton destruction of their manner of life. Chritians in Nigeria generally perceive Muslim calls for the implementation of Islamic Law equally signs of Muslims trying to re-enact the jihadist dominion.

Islamization under Colonial Rule

Direct colonial rule started in Africa from the 1880s. European military interventions, the abolition of the slave merchandise, and attempts at controlling the powerful marabouts all contributed to increased social dislocation. Sufi orders provided alternative secure social networks for the dislocated and displaced. Islamic civilization was viewed past the colonial rulers equally having a college standard as compared with indigenous traditions, and consequently Muslims were given preferential treatment during colonial rule. In places like s Sudan, northern Nigeria, and northern Republic of ghana, the British, under the policy of indirect dominion, extended Muslim rule over non-Muslim communities. Missionaries were barred from operating in predominantly Muslim regions. These colonial policies were predicated on the philosophical premises that Islam, while too low a civilisation for European minds, was more suited to the "untutored" native Africans.

During the colonial period from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Islam fabricated dramatic gains in Africa. In 1900, Muslims fabricated up about 32% (34.five million) of the total African population, while Christians constituted near ix% (8.7 million). By 1962 when Africa had slipped out of colonial command, the Muslim population had risen to 145 meg, while the Christian population had grown to 60 meg. In effect the Muslim population in Africa more quadrupled during the hundred years of colonial dominion. Since then, the number of Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa has increased more than twentyfold, rising from an estimated eleven meg in 1900 to approximately 234 1000000 in 2010. The exponential growth of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa, soaring to 470 million in 2010, took place during the postcolonial era.

This point is made to establish the fact that despite popular notions that Western colonial powers deliberately impeded the spread of Islam in Africa the testify on the basis shows that Islam spread more during the ane century of European intervention in Africa than information technology did in more than than a millennium.

Other Manifestations or Faces of Islam in Africa

"Islam means PEACE" is the often-heard mantra. Nosotros also often hear people say or write things like "Islam teaches 10, Y, Z" or "Islam does not permit X, Y, Z." These kinds of statements are often made past Muslims and not-Muslims, advocates and opponents of Islam alike, especially fundamentalists on both sides for their item agendas. In such situations, Islam is often talked well-nigh as one unified monolithic organization. For Muslims who use these clichés, Islam is presented in totalitarian terms with no room for differences. Those who cartel to be different are either deviants at best or heretics and unbelievers at worst. For opponents and critics of Islam, these clichés are used to tar Islam with one big brush to justify such statements as, "Islam is a tearing religion," the "Qur'an inspires violence (jihad)," and therefore explain suicide bombings, and so on.

There is no denying the fact that in that location is indeed some consensus among Muslims in the profession of their faith. Broadly, Muslims agree on and share one Qur'an, belief that Muhammad is a prophet from God, the five articles of religion and the five pillars of Islam, the qibla or prayer direction (i.east., towards Mecca or the ka'bah), the exercise of proverb liturgical prayers in Arabic, and others. At these basic levels there tends to be agreement.

At the aforementioned fourth dimension, at that place are deep and profound differences or different faces of Islam that must be recognized. The obvious differences include the various groups and sects inside Islam: Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya, Nation of Islam, etc. There are four schools of police force in Sunni Islam: Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi, and Hanbali. Even more than importantly, there are regional and cultural configurations of Islam: West and East Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani, etc. And finally, in that location are the different orientations of Muslims even within the same school of law and aforementioned region or even same family unit (e.1000., fundamentalists, traditionalists, cultural Muslims, secular Muslims, and those who will call themselves progressive Muslims).

Therefore, Islam in Africa is not merely made up of different colors of the African soil; African Islam is made up of dissimilar threads, new and old, woven together into an African fabric. Taking it apart will not only mar its beauty, but will tear the textile into pieces. Merely understanding the tapestry of the Islamic component of the African heritage is crucial for the church building'south response to Islam and appointment with Muslims.

Ane such face of Islam is the missionary and polemical Islam that seeks to propagate Islam past employing Christian missionary tactics such equally public preaching and debates; establishment of Muslim educational, health, and agricultural institutions; translation of parts of the Qur'an into vernacular languages; use of Islamic songs; formation of Muslim youth and women's organizations, and fake of Western-Christian wedding styles. In east and southern Africa, the use of polemics is their hallmark. Polemics have acquired problems within Muslim communities and with Christian communities.

The progressive face up of Islam is the to the lowest degree known. Nosotros tin safely credit Mahmud Taha of Sudan who was executed in 1985 for "blasphemy" equally the godfather of progressive Islam in Africa. Amid other things Taha argued for the reversal of the theory of absconding, that is, for the more peaceful face of Meccan Islam to abrogate the more belligerent face of Medinan Islam. The progressive face of Islam in Africa is now championed by a new generation of Western-educated South African Muslim scholars like Ebrahim Moosa and Farid Esack. They undertake a critical reading of the Qur'an, are openly opposed to all forms of discrimination and injustices inherent in Islamic police force confronting non-Muslims and women, and support democratic principles of governance.

Information technology is simply in light of the different phases of Islamization and its resultant configurations and colorations in contemporary Africa that the post-obit various Christian responses can be understood.

Various Church Responses to Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa

Church responses to Islam in Africa are no different from those in other parts of the world. African Christian appointment with Islam has tended to be reactive more than proactive. There is a consequential lack of organisationatic or coherent church building responses to Islam in Africa, mainly also because, just similar Islam itself, the church is very diverse. On the whole the responses seem to be determined and driven by the type of Islam or Muslims Christians encounter.

Hospitality and Hostility

Muslim tradition claims that the very first meeting between Islam and the African church building in 615 C.E. was more than merely a hospitable reception and provision of asylum for a vulnerable minority religious group—information technology was a meeting of minds. The traditions recount that upon further questioning past the Ethiopian Christian monarch on what they believed almost Jesus Christ, the leader of the Muslim asylum seekers proceeded to quote some passages from the Qur'an: "Verily Christ Jesus, son of Mary, is the campaigner of God and his word which he conveyed into Mary and a spirit proceeding from him." And when the emperor asked him about Mary, he recited the Qur'an 19:xvi–34. When the emperor heard this, in the words of the Muslim chroniclers, "he wept and so that his beard was moisture with his tears" and and so exclaimed with joyful astonishment, "Verily this and that which Moses brought emanate from one Lamp, get, for by Allah I will not suffer them to get at you lot, or even contemplate this."⁹

In a reciprocal gesture, a tradition attributed to Muhammad states: "leave the Abyssinians alone equally long as they leave yous alone," which came to represent the Muslim mental attitude towards Christian Abyssinia during the early Islamic period. Abyssinia was granted the special status of "Territory of Neutrality" (dar al hiyad) in the classical Muslim division of the world into dar al Islam and dar al-harb.

The sixteenth-century jihad past Ahmad Granj purposed to alter attitudes on the part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Kingdom. By the belatedly seventeenth century, a royal decree of religious discrimination forced Ethiopian Muslims to live in ghettoes in gild to contain the "Muslim threat." This policy continued and an fifty-fifty harsher edict was issued in 1878, requiring all Muslim subjects to catechumen to Christianity or exist killed. Militant Islam seems to have radicalized big sections of the Ethiopian lodge, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, of which big sections had go very schizophrenic in its relations to Muslims.

The same can exist said of sections of the Nigerian and Sudanese churches that accept encountered various forms of militant Islam. Some Nigerian Christians now strongly believe in what some term "speaking the language the Muslims all-time understand" (i.e., use of violence). Some accept fifty-fifty gone further to propound what is called the "Third Cheek Theology," which argues that Jesus' pedagogy of turning the other cheek no longer applies in their context, since they accept been slapped on both cheeks and have no third cheek to turn! Radical and militant Islam, therefore, has the potential of radicalizing non only young Muslims, just Christians as well, a fact Christians everywhere demand to be mindful of.

Old Missionary Model: Confrontational Approach

Muslim-Christian encounters in sub-Saharan Africa from the fifteenth to the mid twentieth century were basically the encounters between European Christians and African Muslims. This encounter pitted Islam and Christianity against 1 another in contest for political dominance, commercial interests, and converts. The Edinburgh 1910 Mission Conference study is littered with competitive zeal and a combative mood. The Commission I Report declares in function:

If nosotros do not counteract the accelerate of Islam with all our energy and along the whole line, we shall lose not only the big parts of the now Heathen Africa but even the territories already Christianised. The main battle against Mohammedanism in the immediate futurity will exist fought on East African soil. Here the enemy is already before our doors.^ten

Missionaries made information technology their duty to undermine the Islamic religious arrangement and sought to testify past statement and controversy that Christianity was superior to Islam. This confrontational and polemical approach was roundly rejected by leading African mission workers at the time such as Edward Blyden (1832–1912) and Samuel Adjaye Crowther (1806–1891). Blyden argued that Islam was an integral part of the African reality and should be engaged with as a partner and an marry rather than demonized as an enemy. Crowther on his part started by using polemics and debates in his engagement with Muslims. The outcome of one debate, in Crowther'southward own words, "sobered me downwardly a peachy bargain in my zeal." He and then went on to develop what Andrew Walls calls "an African Christian approach to Islam in an African setting. . . . there was no denunciation, no allegation of imposture or imitation prophecy. . . . For the futurity he looked to an African Christian community with an effective noesis of the Bible."^eleven In recent times, however, the competitive and confrontational encounter has resurfaced in many parts of Africa, further stoked by recent Muslim clamor for the implementation of the Sharia in Nigeria and the Khadi Courts in Kenya. This come across takes two forms: the missionary polemics and debate (mihadra in East Africa) and political activism on the function of mainly Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians in West Africa, Nigeria, since the 1990s.

In Nigeria, based on an interpretation of Galatians four:22–31, Islam is often referred to as the "usurper," the "religion of the bondwoman," "the religion of the slave," "the religion of force and violence," "the slaves," and "the spirit of anti-Christ." This biblical vision has become a potent symbol for depicting Islam as the "unwanted" and "trigger-happy" religion. Islam is presented mainly as a claiming, a threat, and an enemy to Christians and Christianity.

Ambitious evangelism of Muslims is pursued, led mainly (just not exclusively) past organizations, churches, and ministries founded by Muslim converts to Christianity. In Baronial 2010, a female police force student is reported to have disguised herself and joined a Muslim assembly in prayer in Ibadan, Nigeria. In the heart of the prayer, she started shouting out that all must accept Jesus in order to be saved and that Allah is not God but Jesus is God. She was saved from lynching past the Imam, but her action sparked violence in the city.

Negative views of Islam and Muslims are presented in sermons, pamphlets, and magazines and taught at seminaries. The activities of Christian anti-Muslim polemicists are promoted and funded by Western anti- Islamic organizations based in Southward Africa, Deutschland, Britain, and the United States. The Pew Forum (2010) constitute that overall 43% of Christians hold negative views of Muslims as compared to the twenty% of Muslims who concur negative views of Christians. In Republic of chad seventy% of Christians hold negative views, as compared to 40% of Muslims' negative views in Djibouti. Among Nigerian Christians, 38% accept negative views of Muslims equally compared to 13% of Nigerian Muslims holding negative views of their Christian counterparts, and 61% of Republic of ghana's Christians accept negative views compared to 11% of negative views from Muslims. In the overwhelmingly Christian state of Republic of zambia, 47% of Christians hold negative views of Muslims as compared to 2% of Muslims property negative views of Christians in the largely Muslim Senegal.¹²

Institutional and Official Dialogue

At the institutional (continental, regional, and national) levels, mainline Protestant Churches founded the Islam in Africa project in 1959 (renamed in 1987 as Project for Christian Muslim Relations in Africa, and in 2003 every bit Programme for Christian Muslim Relations in Africa [PROCMURA]), which works closely with but is not function of the All Africa Briefing of Churches (AACC). PROCMURA operates in 24 African countries through the diverse arms of the National Council of Churches. Information technology organizes diverse training programs, seminars, and academic programs to requite Christians a better undercontinuing of Islam, engages constructively with Muslims, and develops appropriate forms of Christian witness in Muslim contexts.

The Roman Catholic Church, through the diverse Episcopal conferences, has invested in Christian-Muslim relations through publications, the training of personnel, and active participation in dialogue and other interfaith programs with Muslims at regional and national levels. Interfaith resource centers are set up for the employ of both communities. Local churches also accept dissimilar levels of engagement with Muslim leadership.

At that place is active engagement at the institutional and official level betwixt mainline Protestants/Roman Catholic councils and organizations and dissimilar local, national, and regional Muslim bodies. African Christians, almost without exception, agree on the need to share their faith with Muslims and, unlike their Western co-religionists, are neither apologetic nor secretive about that. PROCMURA and the Cosmic Bishops Conferences all telephone call for dialogue while at the aforementioned time insist on the need and liberty for Christians (and Muslims) to share their witness.

A Call for a New Hermeneutic and Theological Framework

In many ways, Africa all the same serves as a theater for proxy wars and a laboratory for theological and ideological theories from other parts of the earth. When a Danish cartoonist draws an offensive depiction of Muhammad, Christians in Nigeria and Pakistan who may never take heard of Denmark—permit alone the cartoonist—had to pay with their lives! In other words, African Christians and Muslims still view themselves and each other every bit extensions of the West and the Middle East.

Africa is therefore at the cutting edge of Christian- Muslim encounters and, in places like Nigeria, at the crossroads! This is especially so because the vast majority of African Christians and Muslims share a lot in mutual, ranging from citizens with equal rights, ethnic bonds, family ties, through relationships forged over the years every bit form and school mates, and as members of the aforementioned professional bodies and political parties, and so on. In their encounters, in contemporary Africa, Islam and Christianity assume the face of a neighbor, relative, an MP, president, instructor, or friend. African Christians can neither beget the Western hermeneutic of guilt which tends to romanticize Islam nor the hermeneutic of hate which seeks to demonize information technology. African Christians and Muslims have to face the dangers and threats of ideological, political, and militant faith with, non against, each other.

Only more importantly, the African church building needs to develop a new hermeneutical and theological framework in its run into with Islam and engagement with Muslims. We have inherited from Byzantium a Christ who is on the side of the ruler, the powerful, the victorious, and the Christ of empire, exclusivity, triumphalism, and intolerance. A God who is "with united states of america, against others." A message such every bit this one has zippo new or radical to offer in an Islamic context. The theological import is that God is aligned with the majority worldview. What is needed in the bulk world in general and Africa in detail is the announcement of a God who is "with united states"—not against—just "for the sake of others." We need a Christ who is on the side of the weak, the marginal, and who is most powerful in self-giving decease.

Constantinian Christianity and its creeds were developed in the context of power and expressed through Greek philosophical mediums. Hitherto, African theologians take taken a very critical view of the dismissive and negative attitudes towards ethnic religious heritage. A similar critical arroyo is needed in developing a new hermeneutic and theological framework for Christian engagement with Islam in Africa. I am by no means suggesting a wholesale jettisoning of the creeds as having little value in the African church! I am only echoing the view that all theology, is by default, contextual. The creeds and dogmas adult in the 4th and fifth centuries were answers to pertinent questions at the time. The creeds and traditions could serve as crucial sign-posts to the African Church in her quest for answers but shouldn't be the normative touch on-stones they are currently held to be in all respects.

For example, Christology is a theological edifice synthetic on the title of Jesus, Christus or Messiah. In African and Semitic contexts, however, the true identity of persons lie in their proper names rather than their titles. Information technology makes sense therefore for the African church to consider developing a theology based on the proper name of Jesus: Immanuel. There is a need to develop an Immanuelogy, that is, a "theology of Immanuel," a theology that takes on flesh, a confront, a name of a Muslim relative and neighbour. And we need a hermeneutic of relationship—a hermeneutic that takes seriously and wrestles with the African reality of religious pluralism. For as an African proverb puts it, if you cannot leave each other behind on a journeying, then you better acquire to wait for one another.

Endnotes

¹Hans Küng, Islam: Past, Present and Time to come , trans. John Bowden (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), xii.

²Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Study on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population (October 7, 2009), http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=450.

ⁱⁱⁱPhilip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, rev. and expanded ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 201–four.

^fourAlfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 148.

⁵Quoted in J. S. Trimingham, Islam in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965), p. 45.

⁶Ali Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (London: BBC, 1988).

⁷J. S. Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 199.

⁸John Azumah, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-Religious Dialogue (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001), 63–107.

^ixGuillaume, Life of Muhammad , 146–fifty.

¹⁰Earth Missionary Briefing 1910, Study of Commission I: Carrying the Gospel to all the non- Christian World , on openlibrary.org, http://www.archive.org/stream/reportofcommissi01worluoft#page/243/style/1up (accessed October 1, 2011).

^xiA. F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Manual and Appropriation of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 146.

¹²2010 study from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (Apr 2010), http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Belief_and_Practices/sub-saharan-africa-total-study.pdf.