ABSTRACT
Islam is one of the major religions of Africa. Islamic issues in society are prominent in some contemporary African fiction, and often these issues are in conflict with social, economic and political forces. This thesis studies the conflict between Islam and the socio-economic and political forces in Ahmadou Kourouma (2000) and Mohammed Naseehu Ali (2005). One observation coming from the study is that Islam succumbs to material realities. Muslim characters often adulterate or renege on their faith in ways that contradict the dictates of the religion. The next observation is that Muslim characters often find no protection in Islam when they are confronted with material realities. How these writers portray Islam as it confronts socio-economic, political, and other religious forces, is what this thesis examines. It makes a comparison between the two works set in different socio-economic and political spaces –Kourouma‟s in war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone on the one hand and Ali‟s in the relatively peaceful Ghana on the other.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS PAGES
Title Page i
- CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
2. CHAPTER TWO : LITERATURE REVIEW
Review 19
- CHAPTER THREE: ISLAM IN ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED
- Introduction 41
- Islam, Wealth and Marxist Aesthetics 43
- Islam and Violence: the Nexus and Paradox 48
- Islam and the Elderly Characters: the Parody of Morals 55
- Islam and the Child Character 59
- Islam and Women Characters 63
- The Portrayal of Allah in the World of Allah Is Not Obliged 69
- How Islam Relates with other Religions in Allah Is Not Obliged 77
- Islam and Politics: the Marxist Underpinnings 79
- CHAPTER FOUR: ISLAM IN THE PROPHET OF ZONGO STREET
- Introduction 90
- Islam and other Religions and Traditions 91
- Of Socio-economic Realities and Islamic [Religious] Issues and 102
the Portrayal of Allah in the World of the Text with Particular Reference to „Live-In‟
- Islam, Gender, Marriage, Sex and Related Issues in 105
„The Manhood Test‟: the Humour Displayed
- Of Socio-economic Realities, Marriage, Peace, and Violence: 111
an Islamic Response in „Mallam Sile‟
- The Tension between Creed and Morals; Theism and Atheism 118
in „Faith‟
5. CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION
Conclusion 127
BIBLIOGRAPHY 142
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
- Study
Religion is one of the most emotive of human phenomena. It turns some people into fanatics while others do not follow it with much passion. It seems that religion has become embedded in the lives of many Africans. John Mbiti (1969) observes that
„Africans are notoriously religious‟ (1), and that „…where the individual is, there is his religion‟ (3). But we discover that even as they are caught in its grip, they find it difficult to maintain a fidelity to its ethical demands in the face of inescapable social pressures. This is to say that the religious person is often faced with adjustment difficulties –whether to satisfy the spiritual or the material needs.
The African continent has three main religions – indigenous African Traditional Religion, Islam and Christianity. This thesis however focuses on the representation of Islam in Ahmadou Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged (2000) and Mohammed Naseehu Ali‟s The Prophet Of Zongo Street (2005) to expose the conflicts and contradictions that occur as Islam confronts other religions and social reality.
Some African writers view Islamic characters as faithful to their religion but that is not the case with other writers. Islam in some works is portrayed as being adulterated and subordinated to social context to satisfy the survival needs of its followers. The followers are largely „notoriously religious‟ often when the faith serves their basic needs; their hearts do not really follow the commandments of the religion. It can be observed that where the commandments impede their need to survive, the Islamic
faith is often compromised. This tendency in some African fiction which features Islamic issues will be examined.
The study looks at how these Muslim writers present Islam in relation to African social problems. Ali addresses Islamic and other religious issues as they confront socio-economic and political issues in Ghana. Kourouma also addresses Islamic and other religious issues along with those dealing with society, politics and economics during the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Apart from important issues like politics, violence, children‟s and women‟s issues, language and culture, Ahmadou Kourouma‟s Allah Is Not Obliged and Mohammed Naseehu Ali‟s The Prophet Of Zongo Street feature the problems that result from Islam‟s contact with other religions. The religion the children in Allah Is Not Obliged, inherited, for example, is powerless in stopping them from becoming child soldiers and thereby committing the most heinous of war crimes. This therefore necessitates a discussion, via these two West African literary works, of ethical questions in Islam and the conflicts and contradictions that socially beset and often undermine Islamic ethics. The study examines how the choice of settings by the two writers affects their representation of Islam in their works. Whereas Kourouma‟s novel is set in an environment of turbulence in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the period of their civil wars, Ali‟s work is set in a relatively peaceful environment largely in Ghana in the fourth republic.
The writers also portray the role Allah plays in the world of their works. The question which is repeatedly asked in Kourouma‟s novel is, „Is Allah obliged to be fair about the things he does here on earth?‟ In Ali‟s short story the question on Islam, though not explicitly stated, is whether Allah is fair only to his followers for the Islamic creed
they observe or the moral values they follow. I will assess the authors‟ suggested responses to this question. Also in this discussion is the question of theodicy: if there is a good and perfect God why does he allow evil to exist for people to suffer battling it? Why then should people be blamed when they do all manner of things to escape suffering since suffering is distasteful? These are pertinent questions since it will be found in the discussion that exposure to suffering causes many characters in the texts to act in contradiction to their faiths. That however is not to suggest that suffering is the only reason for the characters‟ deviation from their faiths. For, it will be found that some characters betray their faith because they are hypocrites and such characters the writers mock and expose.
Islam in African Fiction
Mbye B. Cham (1985) looks at Islam in some West African literature. He identifies two main opposing critical approaches to writers‟ views about Islam. He notes that:
on the right pole is that ensemble of attitudes shaped by a zealous embrace and vigorous advocacy of Islam as the best, indeed the only, legitimate and effective vehicle for integration of the individual and society while the left pole posits a fundamentally materialist ideology and artistic creed which portrays Islam as colonial in nature and therefore, an impediment to secular, individual and social fulfillment (Cham 1985: 447).
Given these conflicting groups above Cham cites Chaikh Hamidou Kane (1962) and Aminata Sow Fall (1976) as products of Arab-Islamic, African and Euro-Christian education. He notes that they have embraced the option of combining Islam and tradition and rejecting Euro-Christianity as an intruder into Arab-Islam Africa. According to Cham, Kane‟s work Ambiguous Adventure explicitly represents the rejectionist trend. The conflict between the Euro-Christian and Arab Diallobe results in the death of the central character, the young Samba Diallo. In Cham‟s view Kane‟s
novel „vindicates the view of the ephemerality of mortal existence and primacy of the spiritual‟ (Cham, 1985: 451). For Samba Diallo, „Islam is Diallobe and Diallobe is Islam.‟ For him, furthermore, the West and its materialistic credo is the antithesis of Diallobe spiritualism and communalism (ibid).
Kane therefore elevates and glorifies the spiritual and plays down the mundane, earthly, and physical which in the framework of this thesis are the social, political and economic. By contrast, Kourouma and Ali appear to turn Kane‟s view of Islam on its head. In Allah Is Not Obliged, Kourouma would therefore be found at the left polar end where, to quote Cham, his „artistic resolution of the conflicting opposites invariably projects the triumph of the material over the spiritual in different ways.‟ Cham notes this as characteristic of Sembene Ousmane‟s declared atheism and Marxism (Cham, 1985: 458,459).
To Cham, religion is rendered more or less powerless when it is confronted with practical problems of hunger, poverty and the law of the state which appears to favour the educated and the wealthy. He adds that „the opposition between the spiritual and the material laid out in Ceddo (1977), Ousmane‟s first film, becomes one of the main building blocks of each of his subsequent works. The artist systematically undermines the reign of the religious while at the same time glorifying the virtues and practice of practical human action, individual as well as collective‟ (Cham, 1985: 459,460). And, Kourouma is no less on the materialist side. Ali also elevates the mundane, earthly and physical above the spiritual, though the ethical dimension of Islam is more of a concern to him.
On the left pole, Cham notes a range of African literary works that he describes as
„the irreverents‟ citing Ousmane‟s aforementioned Ceddo as an outstanding example.
The image of Islam, he notes, is not a good one, because in this work Muslims are presented as scheming fanatics. In the group of irreverent works he also includes Yambo Ouologuem‟s Bound to Violence (1968) and Ayi Kwei Armah‟s Two Thousand Seasons (1973) and the nonliterary work of Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization (1974).
Reading Allah Is Not Obliged, it is evident that the spiritual is in no way elevated and that when Islam confronts individual and societal problems, Kourouma gives existential priority to individual and societal needs which are secular and not spiritual. Ali adopts a similar style except that he praises his few spiritually inclined characters especially when they show high ethical standards.
In his categorization Cham notes another group that comes midway between the two mentioned above. „Between the extremes‟, he writes,
is a range of artistic responses which are an acceptance of the basic details of Islam, yet are separated here by less zeal and didacticism, thereby a constant alternation between reverence and mockery of Islamic holy men, and again a strident iconoclasm which indicts religious charlatans and distorters of Islam and its institutions (Cham, 1985: 447).
This is the case for certain writers who think that both the positive and the negative elements of Islam should be discussed. These writers render praise where it is due the religion and criticism where they find that some untoward behaviour of some Islamic holy men dents the image of Islam. It can be argued that Ali, unlike Kourouma, falls into this group. Cham suggests that these trends of irreverent attitude toward Islam show a growing current of thought in African literature that brings up Islam as a subject of discussion.
My work therefore seeks to expose the problems that emanate from the literature as the Islamic religion is put to the test by other religions and secular society.
Statement of the Problem
Ali Al Amin Mazrui (2002), talking about Edward Wilmot Blyden who was the Director of Muslim Education in Sierra Leone in 1902, says that although Blyden himself was a Presbyterian Minister he argued that „there was an enriching marriage between Africa and Islam‟ (190) and that „Blyden came close to saying that Islam was the right religion for Africa‟ (ibid). Mazrui adds that „Blyden‟s is what we may call “Islamophilia” (ibid)‟.
Mazrui notes though that:
over a century later, however, the scene in Africa is virtually dominated by the opposite orientation towards “Islamophobia”. This is the central thesis that the author [Ahmed S. Bangoura] seeks to elucidate with particular reference to African literature and its critics. He traces this tradition of hostility toward and distortion of Islam to the Orientalist construction of the religion that has been so well documented by Edward Said. This influence of Orientalism is supposedly rooted in the European colonial legacy that has continued to determine the politics of (re) presentation in Africa to this day (190, 191).
Mazrui has thus noted two opposing views of Islam –one positive which he terms
„Islamophilia‟ and the other negative term, „Islamophobia‟.
Cham (1985) also notes that there are two main opposing attitudes to Islam among writers that take up the religion in their works. One attitude is positive while the other is negative. To writers that represent Islam in a positive way, Islam is the best means for the good of the individual and society. However, to those that represent the religion negatively, Islam is an impediment to the realities of life.
The thesis posits that unlike the African writers who look at Islam in a positive way, Kourouma adopts a radically negative attitude while Ali „vacillates between the
positive and negative‟ but he portrays a more negative orientation than the positive. They play down the spirituality of the religion while elevating the matter of its contradictory implication in socio-economic and political realities. Therefore, they represent Islam as an impediment to the material desires of its followers.
Objectives of the Study
The objectives of this essay are to:
- Examine the common portrayal of Islam in the two works.
- Show how the works present the conflicts and contradictions that beset Islam as it comes face to face with social, political and economic difficulties.
- Investigate the way in which Allah is conceived, the role he plays in the world of the texts and how this conception is different from or similar to the presentation of Allah in works by other writers, Muslim and non-Muslim.
- Explore how the writers use literary devices to portray the problems that occur as Islam confronts social realities. How these devises are deployed will help to settle the question of whether or not the Islamic outlook is promoted or criticized.
- Explore the points of convergence of Islam with and divergence from other religions and how they expose doctrinal conflicts and contradictions.
