Talk:History of West Africa
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[edit] DYK
It would be very nice to have an interesting fact from this detailed and good-looking article on template:Did you know. I don't have time to read the whole article right now, but perhaps you as the author might find it easier. If not, I'll have another look tomorrow. Thanks — Pekinensis 06:16, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
- Done--thanks! Dvyost 21:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Jihad??
I'm thinking that the use of the word "jihad", especially in the first paragraph and in the paragraph discussing the incursion of the Almoravids into the Empire of Ghana, is a serious misinterpretation of the word. Jihads are fought to *protect* the faith, not expand it (it is contrary to Qur'anic law to force someone to accept Islam). I would like to change all the inappropriate uses of it, but wanted to sound the idea off someone first.
Thanks,
MMT (not yet a registered Wikipede)
- Thanks for posting this concern here for discussion, as I think it's very worth bringing up. My own thinking in writing those sections went like this: as you can see from our own jihad article, a lot of folks interpret that word a lot of ways. I'm not as sure about the Almoravid line, but I do know that secondary sources consistently use the word "jihad" to describe the conquests of Usman dan Fodio and Umar Tall; I'm fairly certain dan Fodio and Umar Tall used the word themselves, though I don't know enough Arabic to prove it. As a tertiary reference source we really can't try to impose our own interpretation of jihad (see the policy on no original research), but rather we need to fairly represent the work of scholars in the field. That being said, I've in no way done an exhaustive study of the sources--if you can cite some articles showing that the consensus is against describing these Muslim conquerors in such a way, I'd be happy to help you change it.
