Africa and Islamic Revival

In 7th century Arabia, Islam has been a faith with an activist tradition, both in theory and in practice. Paying taxes and owing allegiance to an acknowledged political head are integral to the faith of Islam. Independent dynasties became the rule in the African territories of Islam and Islamic Spain, but only two of these came to power with essentially reformist claims: the Almoravids, a Saharan dynasty that ruled Morocco and Spain between the mid-11th and the mid-12th century and their successors, the Atlas mountain Berber dynasty of the Almohads who united much of north-west Africa under their banner from the mid-12th to the mid-13th century.
During the 19th century of the Common Era, only two major revivalist figures in Africa. The first, Usuman dan Fodio, came close to being proclaimed Mahdi but opted instead for establishing an Islamic state in what is now Nigeria. The other, Muhammad Ahmad, proclaimed himself Mahdi in the Sudan, but died before carrying out his grand plans and left it to his successor, the Khalifa 'Abdullahi, to grapple with the day-to-day problems of establishing an Islamic state.
Shehu Usumanu preached against narrow condemnation of the ordinary Moslem on doctrinal grounds, while fostering a movement of wider education and community solidarity among Moslem populations both Fulani and Hausa.
In the political struggles of the late 1950s and early 1960s the Northern Peoples Congress, the dominant party in northern Nigeria, essentially presented itself as the party that embodied the ideals of the Sokoto Caliphate, and its leader: Sir Ahmadu Bello was a descendent of Shehu Usuman. Numerically, Moslems are at least half of the Nigerian population. In particular, in common with revivalists in the Sudan, Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere, they argue that their faith is incomplete if they do not live within a system of Islamic law-shar'ia. For them, it seemed part of an agenda to create an Islamic state.
In Islam, politics and religion are inseparable. This statement highlights the gulf that separates Moslem revivalists from their Christian compatriots, and it points to one of the reasons for Islam's success in Africa and the growing appeal of Islamic revivalism elsewhere.
Although the Mahdi's mission to conquer the world in the name of Islam had failed, his supporters seem not to have given up hope even as they settled for the more modest goal of maintaining a state guided by the laws and precepts of Islam-as they understood them-within the area of the Sudan.
In political terms the Umma party was pro-British and anti-Egyptian and stood for a completely independent Sudan. When the Sudan became independent in 1956, it had renounced any thought of union with Egypt, and the two main political parties ruled in coalition. Turabi officially holds no position in this government-it is, after all, a military government. Needless to say, it has endorsed the present regime in the Sudan.
In the case of Nigeria, Moslems and Christians as well as adherents of African religions were precipitously thrown together in political union by colonialism, were presented with the nation-state as their only political model and, initially, parliamentary democracy as their chosen method of self-government. It showed that the political consciousness of the Moslem community had reached an important point; its members defined themselves as a community separate from all others.