http://www.aodl.org/ticfia/
Michigan State University
310 Auditorium Building
East Lansing, MI 48824-1120
Phone: (517) 355-9300
Project Co-Director:
Mark Kornbluh
mark@mail.matrix.msu.edu
Project Co-Director:
David W. Robinson
robins22@msu.edu
Project Co-director:
Emmanuel K. Akyeampong
akyeamp@fas.harvard.edu
Director African Studies Center (MSU):
David Wiley
wiley@msu.edu
Project Coordinator:
Catherine Foley
catherine.foley@matrix.msu.edu
Technical Administrator:
Scott Pennington
scottpen@msu.edu
Dollar Allocation Year 1: $168,000
Project Overview:
Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa will make accessible a wide array of currently unavailable materials from and about the countries of Senegal and Ghana, their Muslim communities, and the relations of those communities with the practitioners of other faiths. Building on the innovative, cutting-edge technology of the African Online Digital Library (AODL) developed through National Science Foundation funding, this project will create digital copies of unavailable or hard-to-access materials from archives and Africanist researchers in Senegal and Ghana, preserve them in a digital repository in the US, and develop web-based public and educational resources in thematic galleries geared towards international, historical and area studies. Resources and interactive galleries produced by this project will present for students, teachers, and the general public throughout the US, as well as West Africa and the world, the tolerance and diversity of religious practice in Senegal and Ghana, and highlight the dominant tradition of incorporation, pragmatism, and mutual respect that has marked many Islamic societies, from Cordoba in Spain to Baghdad at the time of the Abbasid Caliphate to Ghazna in the heart of today's Afghanistan.
Harvard and Michigan State Universities, operating under the umbrella of the West African Research Association, will direct the project. The project will be implemented in concert with Title VI centers at the University of Florida and Indiana University, and with additional faculty contributions from Boston University, James Madison University and Western Washington University. Faculty at each of the latter institutions will contribute materials to the digital repository and consult on development and use of electronic galleries featuring those materials.
The project is unique in its focus on Islamic culture and tolerance, an urgent international topic too often presented with political or religious agendas. It will also be unique in the nature of the partnership between US-based Africanist researchers and Title VI centers around the country collaborating through an online repository and management system. The project will implement four of the seven purposes of the TICFIA program: (a) To support collaborative projects of indexing, cataloging, and other means of bibliographic access for scholars to important research materials published or distributed outside the U.S.; (b) To facilitate access to or preserve foreign information resources in print or electronic form; (c) To promote collaborative technology based projects in foreign languages, area studies, and international studies among grant recipients; (d) To assist teachers of less commonly taught languages in acquiring, via electronic and other means, materials suitable for classroom use.
Need for Project:
The most critical educational need for national security and world peace in this era is almost unquestionably the need for cross-cultural co-existence, understanding, and democracy. We stand at a juncture of increasing polarization between some Muslim communities and "the West." Acts of violence led by radical groups claiming to speak for all of Islam have magnified the worldwide perception of the size and following of these groups and their ideas, a phenomenon often exacerbated in the western media by a tendency toward the vilification of Islam. Models of religious co-existence, diversity, tolerance and non-violence in the world are essential to breaching this chasm.
Educational resources must go beyond the conflict of Middle East politics to examine "the lived experiences of Muslim communities around the world." The Islam of West Africa is one of the essential experiences to study and teach. Africa is home to about 1/5 of the Muslim population of the world, while the presence of Islam in West Africa goes back at least 1000 years.
We have chosen Senegal and Ghana, two West African countries that embody these traditions of dialogue. They demonstrate the dominant pattern of Islam in world history, expressed in 9th century Baghdad, 10th century Cordoba and so many other places, namely learning how to accept religious difference and create productive interaction among Jews, Christians, Muslims and practitioners of other faiths. This positive interaction is characteristic of the Muslims and non-Muslims of Senegal and Ghana today, and contrasts sharply with the dominant images of the media since September 11. Senegal and Ghana provide ideal settings for such an effort. While Ivory Coast and northern Nigeria have been torn by conflict between Muslims and Christians in recent years, Senegal and Ghana have sustained their traditions of mutual respect. Senegal and Ghana are roughly comparable in size and population, but have very different histories of religious and social practice. Senegal, the "model" French colony in West Africa, is predominantly Muslim. Ghana, the "model" British colony in its incarnation as the Gold Coast, has a significant Muslim minority of long-standing that has lived in relations of mutual respect with Christians and traditional practitioners.
Project Design:
The project will utilize digital preservation, a state-of-the-art digital repository, and a combination of interfaces for online access through the World Wide Web. Materials preserved and made accessible from Senegal and Ghana will be preserved in a greater repository; and selected materials will be contextualized and framed in thematic galleries focusing on specific aspects of religion, tolerance, and history. The project proposes to develop a rich and easily searched set of multimedia and primary source materials, including over 200 hours of recorded interviews, over 500 photographs, over 200 items from locally published West African newspapers, approximately 1,000 pages of interview transcripts in multiple languages, and nearly 20 hours of videotape. It will fuse text, image and sound materials and disseminate them worldwide over the Internet, through curated and framed "galleries" of materials focused on important selected themes for Senegal and Ghana.
Galleries of framed materials from the repository will be:
Senegal1. Islamic practice in the Murid Sufi order
2. Qadiriyya spiritual center of Njaassaan
3. Town of Saint-Louis
4. Development of Christianity in Senegal in the last 200 years
5. Ajami writings and history
Ghana
6. Archives of the King of Asante
7. Interactions of Christians, Muslims and Traditionalists on the Gold Coast
8. Trade and Markets – history and current religious interactions
9. Private secondary and tertiary education through Christian and Muslim missions
Together these nine galleries and the multitude of newly accessible repository materials used to create them will provide a broad and rich view of religious toleration and diversity in West Africa, making an important contribution to US teaching, learning, scholarship, and access to vital resources.