The Crown and the Turban Muslim and West African Pluralism by Lamin Sanneh. Boulder, Colorado, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1997, xiii+ 290 pp.

Abstract

The Crown and the Turban is a new, valuable, and controversial contribution
to two debates. First, it is a part of the debate on Africa's triple heritage: African
tradition, Islam, and Christianity. Second, it contributes to the debate on "secular"
versus "religious" governance.
For the first debate, the author argues that Muslims in West Africa are part of
two encounters. First, they encounter the indigenous people and societies and
particularly their traditional religions and political institutions. Second, they
encounter Europeans who colonized and still indirectJy dominate West Africa.
The reason for tension, the author claims, is what he calls "Islamic politicalism"
and Muslim militancy on one hand and African tolerance and European secularism
on the other.
However, African Muslims are in an advantaged position compared to
African Christians. African Muslims are indigenous and Islam is considered an
African religion. Moreover, African Muslims demonstrate a political confidence based on an authentic tradition and long experience of Muslim rule in precolonial
West Africa (p. 1).
Nevertheless, the author argues that Africa offers a fresh opportunity to the
adherents of the two missionary faiths, i.e., Islam and Christianity, vis-his the
pluralist challenge of indigenous societies. Muslim and Christian Africans are
already favored relatives in the African household but without the prodigal right
or presumption to dispossess it or each other (p. 181).
For the second debate, the author argues that Africa offers the promise, and
the attendant hazards, of formulating and resolving the most crucial of debates
for religious modernization: the debate on secular versus religious governance
(p. 182). In the fmal analysis, the author approves and defends the secular governance
as opposed to the religious one ...