Most works dealing with Islam and Africa trace the roots of their connection to the first Hijra when two groups totaling more than 100 Muslims fled persecution in Mecca and arrived in the Kingdom of Axiom (modern-day Ethiopia) in 614 and 615 AD, respectively. A few works would begin with the story of Bilal ibn...Read More

With the introduction of new educational systems in the Muslim world duringthe late-eighteenth through the early-twentieth century, many Muslims andnon-Muslims became critical of traditional pedagogical methods. In particular,the image of Qur’an schools in West Africa are often criticized for their“backward” forms of education and commonly perceived as places wherechildren simply parrot Qur’anic verses without much...Read More

Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century focusedon this question in its report to the premier United Nations agencyin education: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization (UNESCO). In its report, “Learning: The TreasureWithin,” the commission stated that life-long education is basedupon four pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to livetogether, and learning...Read More

Educating Muslim Women is a unique study of Muslim women told through the story of Nana Asma’u, a nineteenth-century Fulani woman from Northern Nigeria who became a renowned scholar and greatly impacted Muslim women in Nigeria and beyond. Drawing on history, literary analysis, and ethnography the volume’s slimness belies a wealth of material that will...Read More