ABSTRACT
The story of the coming of Islam to the western sector of Africa has been well told in the historical records. In the decades following the end of World War II when the new generation of Arab and African leaders strived to end colonial rule in their respective countries, they pointed to the historic contacts of the early Muslim trans-Saharan commerce that spread Islam to the region as evidence of a shared past. Again in the late 1970s and through the earlier years of the 1980s, interest in the Afro–Arab relations was revisited – this time, to call for an African–Arabian–Muslim solidarity in support of an Arab/OPEC oil embargo as an economic weapon in the confrontation against the West for its support of Israel in the conflict over the question of Palestine. It was in the spirit of exploring the extent of the Islamic world and for the specific purpose of delineating the nature of Arab–Africa relations that the Beirut Center for Arab Unity Studies and the Arab Thought Forum of Jordan sponsored a conference in Amman in April 1983. The intended purpose of the conference was the same as that of the diplomats: to place stress on, and to remind African leaders of, the historic connection between Africa and Arabia, cemented through the common experience of Islam. Proceedings of the conference were published in 1985 under the title The Arabs and Africa. The 717-page work, edited by Khair El-Din Haseeb, included thoughtful presentations on such contemporary topics as “African perspectives on the Arab–Israeli conflict” and “Afro–Arab cooperation.” Other contributors stressed the civilizing mission of Arabian culture on Africa.
