INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM ENCOUNTERS IN AFRICA

Abstract

For Johnsharp and inspiring friend and mentorIn research on religion in Africa, the study of both Christianity and Islam is thriving.Alas, these fields exist more or less independently from each other.Scholars with expertise regarding either Christianity or Islam barely engage in conversations with each other.And yet, the long history of encounters between Muslims and Christiansinvolving a complex dynamic of becoming similar and asserting difference, of approach and detachmentcalls for an encompassing conceptual framework that is devoted to drawing out similarities, differences and entanglements.It is the central aim of this special section of Africa to explore the possibilities and impossibilities of a comparative study of Christianity and Islam.Such a comparative approach requires that we study Christians and Muslims within one analytical frame.While there is a growing consensus to move beyond the bifurcation of the study of religion in Africa, scholars are just beginning to develop and debate productive analytical perspectives that enable a better understanding of the ways in which Christians and Muslims engage with each other in various configurations and modalities.The call to devise better ways of understanding interactions between Christians and Muslims in Africaand beyondis not new.In his edited volume on Muslim-Christian encounters in Africa, Benjamin Soares stated that the dynamics of 'their interactions in Africa are still not properly understood' (2006: 1).Around the same time, Brian Larkin and one of us, Birgit Meyer, proposed to look at evangelical Pentecostalism and reformist Islam in West Africa as doppelgängers -'enemies whose actions mirror each other and whose fates are largely intertwined ' (2006: 287). 1 This proposition raised a critical response from J. D. Y. Peel, who presented his position in an IAI-sponsored panel entitled 'Studying Islam and Christianity in Africa: Comparisons and Interactions', convened by Meyer and Peel at the Fifth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in Lisbon in 2013.This special section of Africa is based on this panel, where earlier versions of the contributions by Peel, Larkin and Janson were first presented; the contributions by Meyer, Obadare and Soares were written for this special section.2 We are filled with sorrow that J. D. Y. Peel died while we were preparing this section for publication.