Religion as Politics: A critical approach to 'the role of Islam' in the Sokoto jihad

In discussing the role of religion in African and other non-Western
societies, it is important to recognize that the conception of religion as having a distinct 'role' derives from Europe's secularizing experience of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Prior to that time, Christian doctrine permeated European scholarship to an extent that made impossible the discrete identification of one or several 'roles' for religion in European society. With the rise of humanism, European scholars began to see religion as a human institution amenable to critical study on a level with other human institutions, such as literature, philosophy and history. As a way of treating post-Enlightenment European and other Western societies, then, a humanistic approach to 'the role of religion' poses relatively few problems. However, when dealing with other societies, Western scholars (including non-Westerners writing in a Western academic tradition) need to keep in mind that their practice of construi...