ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on everyday Islamic practice in established and emergent African fiction as a topology – the configuration or relationship of different constituents. In examining women’s experiences and conditions, gender and sexuality, African feminists frequently grapple with the challenge of inclusion and exclusion, especially in geopolitical and global conceptualizations of gender. As a formidable challenge facing African feminist theorizations, Naomi Nkealah pinpoints the tensions of balancing inclusivity and exclusivity. Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure was one of the first post-colonial African novels to highlight the tension between local spiritual practice and a lifestyle under threat by a different system of beliefs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It presents Islam in Africa as a topological relationship in that the foreign, invading influence of the colonizer met with uneven responses and reactions from the Diallobe community. The initiation to the Qur’anic school at the start of the novel, in fact, sets the tone for a number of social facts about Muslims.
