Historical Foundations of Islam:
What bought the Islamic religion to the Senegambia basin
including The Gambia were the Berber Arab traders who
had regularly crossed the Sahara desert since 1000 BC.
After the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD Islam
had reached North Africa. In the 11th century Futa Toro,
in Senegal, was converted to Islam. In the same century
the puritanical Almoravid movement made an appearance
among the Berber tribes of Southern Mauritania and made
a strong religious impact there. It was these converted
people who laid the introduced and laid the foundations
of the religion in The Gambia and Senegal.
Before the arrival of Islam traditional religion was
part and parcel of everyday life for the people of The
Gambia and was well entrenched in people's existing
belief system. This took on the form of animism, ancestor
worship and a pantheon of gods representing elements
of their environment such as a god of the earth, a god
of the animal kingdom and so on. And yet the majority
of Gambians embraced Islam until today 90% of the population
are Muslims and only 1% admit to adhering to animists
beliefs.
Reasons For Acceptance:
The early spread of the religion was due to several
factors which were social, economic and political. The
fact that early conversion took place at the terminus
of the routes of the Trans-Saharan Trade is significant.
In these trading cities lived different peoples, removed
from their own closed village societies where the success
of the harvest was held to depend on fertility rites
and sacrifices made to the local gods. In their non-traditional
setting, these city dwellers were de-tribalised in a
religious sense and thus more open to the influence
of a new religion which seemed adapted to their urban
way of life. Perhaps in their own mindset, Islam might
have appeared very much like the religion of wealthy
traders and Allah being their God.
The acceptance of Islam was also facilitated by the
nature of traditional religions of the people. New cults
were founded for newly identified gods. Although they
were people who believed in many gods, all of them acknowledged
the existence of a supreme God. This must have made
the Islamic introduction of the worship of one God unobjectionable.
As long as the new religion did not attempt to destroy
indigenous cults, there was strong objection to it.
Indeed studies of modern Islamisation of West African
peoples have shown that Muslim clerics did not try to
discredit existing customs and traditional religious
institutions but infiltrated them and changed their
nature.
There were also a number of other factors that contributed
to the acceptance of Islam by the peoples of The Gambia
area. These factors are of a non-religious nature. As
was said before because Islam was associated with wealthy
traders who brought goods essential to the local economies
and contributed in the increase of military power. Early
Trans-Saharan traders told impressive stories of their
civilisations in their own home countries which undoubtedly
gave practical expression to the Islamic God. The mode
of dress of these early Muslims, their new architecture
with impressive mosques and their possession of luxury
goods added to the prestige of the religion. Their literacy
in Arabic greatly enhanced this prestige because the
non-literate peoples assigned important supernatural
qualities to the written word.
Opportunism:
The spread of Islam in Gambia was also facilitated because
of its appeal to traditional rulers. Once a ruler accepted
the religion, his influence and authority were usually
sufficient to impose it upon at least the ruling classes
of his state. This bought them the political support
of the urban Muslim communities who were influential
for their role in commerce and for their literacy.
This allowed the rulers to form a bond between
himself and all his Muslim subjects and this was further
re-enforced by the Islamic teaching which imposed obedience
to a just Muslim ruler. For this reason rulers were
quick to see the advantage of adopting this widespread
religion rather than just a local one.
The effect of this new religion on the Gambian people
was that it exposed them to theology, law, politics,
geography and the natural sciences. The effect was to
introduce academic criticism.
Adaptation & Incorporation:
Early travellers had commented favourably on the piety,
scholarship and features of government in the important
trading cities. On the other hand these they also noted
the continuance of traditional customs and ceremonies
which were unacceptable to Islam. It appears that Islam
in The Gambia valley before 1800 was little more than
an imperial belief of great prestige which existed side
by side with cults to other gods. Few rulers could escape
the need to draw their power and legitimacy from traditional
religions. Many people must have both worshipped in
the mosque and sacrificed to local deities.
Theological Clash:
It was mainly for this reason that in the latter part
of the 19th century Gambian Jihadists like Maba Diakhou
and Foday Kabba Dumbuya castigated nominally Muslim
rulers for their lax religious practices in their states
and thus waged the Soninke-Marabout Wars that raged
in The Gambia throughout the 19th century placing Islam
on a new foundation.
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