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Rudolph T. Ware III, Zachary V. Wright, and Amir Syed. 2018. Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of West Africa. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. 316 pp.
Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of West Africa is a nineteenth and twentieth century West African ethnographic study of Islāmic/Qur'ānic philosophy and Tasawwuf (Sufism) metaphysics. The Islāmic historians Rudolph T. Ware III, Zachery V. Wright, and Amir Syed incorporate into the book via classical Arabic-English manuscript translations four West African Islāmic philosopher-scholars-Sufi-Shaykh 'Uthmān bin Fūdī (d. 1817, Nigeria), Sufi-Shaykh 'Umar al-Futi Tal (d. 1864, Mali), Sufi-Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba Mbacké (d. 1927, Senegal) and Sufi-Shaykh Ibrahim bin 'Abdallah Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal)-who seek to enrich their devotion as Muslims to Allah and The Prophet Muhammad through teachings from The Holy Qur'an, the Sunnah and Hadith, and panegyric/prophetic praise poetry.
Wright's introduction develops a theoretical foundation and functional understanding for researchers of West African Islāmic mysticism, formally known as Tasawwuf and commonly as Sufism. The book delves into religious resistance to British and French colonialism, and provides insight into West African Islāmic culture and etiquette as mirrored from the perspective of Islāmic jurisprudence, the Sunnah and Hadith. The consistent theme within the book analyses how the four West African Sufi-Shaykhs applies Sufi/Islāmic beliefs combined with religious discipline and introspection as forward mobility for a Muslim's personal relationship with Allāh. Wright specifies: "These four saints represent four successive generations in which affiliation to a Sufi order became an integral component of most Muslim identities in West Africa. Certainly, each responded to different historical circumstances - particularly in relation to European colonial conquest. But their teachings collectively achieved a common goal: the further inscription and spread of Islamic learning despite the various historical challenges of enslavement, revolution, colonial occupation, and postcolonial balkanization. Each scholar considered...