Preamble
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Foreword

This treatise clarifies an issue that has confused some people concerning the spread of Islam and its arrival on the African continent: the belief held by many that the Sufis played a role in this, that this is one of the merits of Sufism and the Sufis, and that, had they not played this role, Islam would never have reached the heart of Africa.

However, the author, Professor Muhammad Amān ibn ‘Alī, who teaches at the Faculty of Sharia at the Islamic University of Madinah, exposes this error. He explains that what the Sufis spread was nothing but a form of paganism akin to that practised by Africans before the invasion of Sufism. If Sufi paganism differs in any respect from that earlier paganism, it is surely in its disguise beneath the mask of Islam, in name and outward form. In its actual nature, however, it is of the same kind as that earlier, undisguised paganism.

The esteemed professor presents this truth with supporting evidence and examples drawn from the very environment and actual circumstances of these Africans. As an African from Ethiopia who has visited the continent with Islamic University delegations, he has encountered this at close quarters and witnessed it firsthand. These delegations travel throughout the continent to call people to Islam and help Muslims understand it, as part of the University’s worldwide activities in the service of Islam and Muslims.

He saw that what these Muslims who had embraced Islam at the hands of Sufis were practising had nothing to do with Islam; it was nothing but Sufism. He found the individual’s personality absorbed into that of the master of the Sufi order, or the qutb or ghawth, so that the individual acts only as this shaykh acts or under that qutb’s influence. When we look for Allah in the beliefs of this African Sufi who has adopted Islam, we find no place for Him, for