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Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa:
Creating Online Resources of Peaceful Muslim Practice
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 a broad range of international, historical and area studies. Resources and interactive galleries produced by this project will present the tolerance and diversity of religious practice in Senegal and Ghana, for students, teachers, and the general public throughout the US, as well as West Africa and the world. The project will bring to light 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.
The overarching project goals are to:
- Increase availability of information about diversity of Muslim practices generally and Ghanaian and Senegalese societies in particular
- Increase knowledge about Ghanaian and Senegalese religious, political, and cultural history
- Increase research in Ghanaian and Senegalese religious, political and cultural history
This will be accomplished in part through a team of experts in the study of West Africa working together to identify the critical materials unavailable in the US, copy them, preserve them in the AODL repository, and make them available and accessible to the public through curated and framed "galleries" of materials focused on important selected themes for Senegal and Ghana. 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.
Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa will make a unique contribution to providing access to information from West Africa to address our nation's teaching and research needs. 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 preserve and provide access to over 100 hours of audio interviews, nearly 1000 pages of interview transcripts, over 200 items from local West African newspapers, over 400 photographs, approximately 20 hours of videotape and more than 100 other archival text or image documents.
Funding Tolerance and Diversity in the Islam of West Africa digital library project is funded by a four year grant from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI, Section 606 "Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) program."
