Miami Student

Issue date: 9/7/07 Section: Campus

Ali Mazrui kicked off the Grayson Kirk Lecture series with a speech on cultural diversity. -Alex Hancock/The Miami Student

The differentiation between Arabs and Muslims and prominence of ethnic wars over religious wars were key topics in Kenyan native Ali Mazrui's speech titled, "Islam and the Black Experience" Thursday.

Mazrui, the kickoff speaker for the Grayson Kirk Lecture Series, is currently the director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Binghamton University, but he has also co-authored more than 30 books, and created the television series, "The Africans: A Triple Heritage," jointly produced by the Public Broadcasting Service and the BBC.

"He is highly regarded as a very illustrious scholar and an expert on this area," said Cyril Daddieh, director of Black World Studies Program and professor in the department of political science. "The lecture series is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence but because we are also sponsored by the ITS (department of international studies), the speech had to deal with more than Ghana."

According to Daddieh, Mazrui gave a speech just last week in Ghana in honor of their anniversary.

"Ghana's independence has many links to those who are politically aware here," Daddieh said. "Ghana led the way in African independence and also had close links to the civil rights movement in America."

He added that this lecture series is celebrating not only half a century of independence in Ghana but also the bicentennial of American civil rights.

"I hope the students learn something about Islam experiences and how in some places its been revived," Daddieh said.

According to Mazrui, though Islam is a minority religion in Ghana, it is still one of the major religions in Africa on the whole.

"Islam arrived in Africa in two ways," Mazrui said. "One was through Muslims seeking asylum and the other was through Muslims as conquerors."

According to Mazrui, there are two types of Islamic expansion in the post-colonial period and those are through radicalization, which is a result of pressure from an external force, and revivalism, an attempt to reactivate the Muslim laws in the face of competition from other religions.

He maintained throughout his speech that contrary to the media's portrayal, Africans rarely wage religious wars.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools