Abstract
This paper reconsiders the framework for religious study which I call "fundamentalist." The meaning of Islamic studies in Sub-Sahara Africa appears to be lost between two kinds of "fundamentalist" frameworks : the African one excludes Islam and Christianity from African religions, and the other Islamic one which claims that true Islam is not found in Africa. "Fundamentalist" theory pre-supposes that the essence of a religion is unique and not changeable, and that religious contacts are accidental. I propose, on the contrary, that the essential aspect of religions (especially world religions) consists in their dynamic movement in expansion, syncretism, reformation, and separation. This means also that religion is a movement in space and participates in forming "civilizations, " which are also in movement. Four world civilizations formed essentially independently from each other, that is, European Christian, Islamic, Indian Buddhist-Hindu, and Chinese Buddhist-Confucian. Each one has his own movement. African Islamization was therefore a process of the expansion of Islamic civilization. If "progress" existed, it was in the interior of each civilization. The new religious comparative framework proposed here consists therefore in comparing religions as movements connected with civilizations in formation with each other. In this framework many productive meanings can be found in the studies of African Islam manifesting essential aspects of Islam as movement. Thus comparing the process of Islamization in Africa to that of the expansion of Buddhism in Asia as well as to that of Christianity in Western Europe, we can study why world religions became as they are.
