The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a global movement with more than half a million Ghanaian members, runs an extensive network of English-language schools and medical facilities in Ghana today. Founded in South Asia in 1889, the Ahmadiyya arrived in Ghana when a small coastal community invited an Ahmadiyya missionary to visit in 1921. Why did this invitation arise and how did the Ahmadiyya become such a vibrant religious community? John H. Hanson places the early history of the Ahmadiyya into the religious and cultural transformations of the British Gold Coast (colonial Ghana). Beginning with accounts of the visions of the African Methodist Binyameen Sam, Hanson reveals how Sam established a Muslim community in a coastal context dominated by indigenous expressions and Christian missions. Hanson also illuminates the Islamic networks that connected this small Muslim community through London to British India. African Ahmadi Muslims, working with a few South Asian Ahmadiyya missionaries, spread the Ahmadiyya's theological message and educational ethos with zeal and effectiveness. This is a global story of religious engagement, modernity, and cultural transformations arising at the dawn of independence.

Auteur

John H. Hanson is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, where he is also Director of the Africa Studies Program. He is author of Migration, Jihad, and Muslim Authority in West Africa: The Futanke Colonies in Karta and coeditor (with Maria Grosz-Ngaté and Patrick O'Meara) of Africa. He is also an editor of History in Africa: A Journal of Method.

Contenu

Preface and Acknowledgements
Note on Terminology and Spelling
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Section 1: Preparing the Way in the Gold Coast

1. The Hausa Force and the Religious Marketplace in the Fante States
2. Binyameen Sam's Fante Muslim Community
   Section 2: Ahmadiyya Genesis and Expansion to London and Lagos
3. The Genesis of the Ahmadiyya in British India
4. Ahmadiyya Expansion to London and Lagos
   Section 3: Ahmadiyya Arrival and Consolidation in the Gold Coast
5. Ahmadiyya Arrival in the Gold Coast
6. Ahmadiyya Consolidation in the Gold Coast
7. Ahmadiyya Expansion to Asante
8. Ahmadiyya Expansion to Wa
   Conclusion
   Glossary
   Bibliography
   Index