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Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently seen as the periphery of the Muslim world, in terms of both geography and religious influence. This chapter shows that Islam has had a presence in Sub-Saharan Africa since the earliest days of its history. Scholars studying Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa have long written about an ‘African Islam’, reflecting the Sufi bias typical of scholarship on Islam in the region. Janson demonstrates that this approach hampers a better understanding of the emergence of reformist-oriented movements. She concludes by pointing out new approaches to the study of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, which capture the fluidity of the different ways of ‘being Muslim’ in everyday living, thereby challenging ingrained analytical concepts such as an ‘African Islam’ versus ‘Arab Islam’, and an accommodating Sufi Islam versus an orthodox reformist Islam.

Every morning my host Bachir,1 a Gambian Muslim in his late twenties, solemnly removed the lace doily protecting his cassette recorder against dust. In his small livingroom, decorated with Islamic wall hangings, posters of Mecca, and plastic flowers, we listened to tape-recorded sermons. That morning he selected an audiocassette of Ahmed Khatani, a South African preacher who visited The Gambia several times to deliver sermons in the mosque where Bachir and his comrades pray. On the tape Khatani preached in English with a strong Indian accent, alternated with words and Quranic verses in Arabic, about the purpose of human beings on earth, that is, worshipping God. When he raised his voice, Bachir’s one-year-old daughter, believing that the preacher was singing, started to dance. Bachir exclaimed, “Astaghfirullah (I seek forgiveness from Allah), this must be my mother’s influence.”2