On the occasion of the publication of the book by Marialuisa Lucia Sergio “How the Church Under Pius XII Addressed Decolonization. The Issue of Algerian Independence” (New York-London: Routledge 2023), the author will take part in the African Futures: ECAS Conference 2023 presenting her research on the relationship between Islam and Catholicism in the African colonial context.

ECAS9 2023, 31 MAY – 3 JUNE 2023
University of Cologne “African Futures” aims to explore the continent’s critical engagements with the past, present, and future of Africa’s global entanglements. ECAS2023 consists of 250 panels addressing the theme of African Futures representing all disciplines and methodological approaches of the social sciences and humanities.

Thursday 1 June, 9:00-10:45, Thursday 1 June, 15:00-16:45
PANEL: Islam in Africa in global context: African engagements at the intersection of the local, the transregional, and the global

Convenors:
Benjamin Soares (University of Florida)
Mara Leichtman (Michigan State University)
Shobana Shankar (Stony Brook University (SUNY))

This panel centers around understanding Islam in Africa at the intersection of the local, the transregional, and the global. It focuses on African engagements with Islam at these different scales and how such engagements help to shape imagination of the past, present, and future. Such cultural and political imagination can have important implications for African Muslims’ writing of history, their modes of belonging, shifting affiliations, and aspirations for the future.

Session 1 Thursday 1 June, 2023, 9:00-10:45

Jörg Haustein (University of Cambridge)
Islamic Studies and Muslim Connectivity: Deconstructing Colonial Misreadings in German East Africa

Marialuisa Lucia Sergio (Roma Tre University)
The image of Islam in Africa according of the unpublished correspondence from the Vatican archives (1939-1958)

Musa Ibrahim (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and technology, Kumasi)
Global Dynamics, Local Approaches: The ‘ambiguous pluralism” in the Iran-inspired Shia movement in Nigeria

Kai Kresse (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) Freie Universität Berlin)
A Swahili poem in global context: ‚Wasiya wa mabanati’ (Advice to the girls, 1974) by Mahmoud Mau, inspired by ‘Ya binti!’ (Oh daughter!, 1950s) by Sheikh Ali al-Tantawi

Karen Lauterbach (University of Copenhagen)
The writing of Zongo history: Muslim identities and the contestation of local, transregional, and transnational histories in a Kumasi (Ghana) Zongo

Session 2 Thursday 1 June, 2023, 15:00-16:45
Terje Ostebo (University of Florida)
Re-localizing Salafism: Ongoing Discourses within Ethiopian Salafism

Augustin Sawadogo (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Islamic Education between two worldviews? The French Arabic schools in Burkina Faso.

Mara Leichtman (Michigan State University)
Transnational Networks Between Kuwait and East Africa: The Case of a Shi‘i Islamic NGO in Tanzania

Abdoulaye Ibrahim Bachir (University of Bayreuth)
Turkish Islam in Africa: A politico-religious mission?