Social Science Research Council

"Contesting Islam: Wahhabism, Education and Muslim Identity in Northern Ghana, 1950-2005"

My study explores the dispersion of transnational Islamic forms of knowledge into a West African country, Ghana, between 1950 and 2005, and argues that the “returnee” Wahhabi Ulama (scholars) should not only be considered an aspect of a transnational demographic movement of scholars, but also a diasporic consciousness, a return migration with crucial impact on Islamic education and the construction of Muslim identity. The project focuses on the educational initiatives of the “returnee” Wahhabi scholars—Ghanaian students who studied in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Islamic countries and continue to nurture social networks with the global Muslim Umma (community). Throughout West Africa, their initiatives have improved upon Islamic education, established Islamic NGOs, and built mosques. Yet, the discourses of the Wahhabi scholars on aspects of the Qur’an, the Sunnah (practices of the Holy Prophet) and general religious practices, as well as their insistence on the proper processes for constructing Muslim identity, many of which run counter to ideas held by the established Ulama and the Sufi orders, have been blamed by well-meaning citizens for the long history of tension in the Muslim Umma. However, the local population views the Ulama differently. My project also interrogates the question: What impacts have external influences, both from the Muslim and western worlds, had on Muslim identity in Ghana?

The project is multidisciplinary and the analysis will be based on sources from archives in Ghana, the National Archives in London and oral interviews. The project has practical relevance, for it historicizes the “returnee” Wahhabi scholars as an aspect of a diasporic form of consciousness. In addition, it charts avenues for fashioning their varied initiatives into a vehicle for higher quality instruction and greater social cohesion, especially within the Muslim communities and between Muslims and non-Muslims, rather than simply seeing them as mechanism for enhancing the social status and geopolitical and religious power of individual Ulama.