No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Touching scenes: African–Indian intimacy imagined in the contested Ahmadiyya Muslim mission
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2025
Abstract
The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, founded in British India in 1889, has many followers in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other West African countries, and has fostered cultural transformations that have rarely been discussed in scholarship on African–South Asian interactions. Through a history of media produced by and about the Ahmadiyya, this article shows how black and white photographs shaped a vibrant visual economy that constructed West African–South Asian interconnectedness in the midst of difference and discord. While Indian Ahmadiyya missionaries first deployed images as evidence for their controversial beliefs and to prove their success at conversion, the absorption of these personnel and their productions into emerging West African media infrastructures – educational publishing and journalism among them – created a wider visual repertoire that evoked complex emotional registers, including fear and mistrust as well as familiarity and fondness. West African and South Asian media makers interwove dreams, religious and journalistic communications, and digital archives of photographs to reveal religious, racial and gendered differences that played out in print and circulated well beyond any single audience. Visual and print media worked to diminish the Ahmadiyya’s foreignness and accommodate their differences as familiar, and thus played a critical role in cultivating cultural pluralism in new postcolonial West African nations.
Résumé
Le Mouvement Ahmadiyya en Islam, fondé en Inde britannique en 1889, compte de nombreux adeptes au Ghana, au Nigeria, en Sierra Leone et dans d’autres pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Il a favorisé des transformations culturelles rarement abordées dans les études sur les interactions entre l’Afrique et l’Asie du Sud. À travers une histoire des supports produits par et sur l’Ahmadiyya, cet article montre comment les photographies en noir et blanc ont façonné une économie visuelle dynamique qui a construit l’interconnexion entre l’Afrique de l’Ouest et l’Asie du Sud sur fond de différence et de discorde. Alors que les missionnaires Ahmadiyya indiens ont d’abord utilisé l’image comme preuve de leurs croyances controversées et de leur succès en matière de conversion, l’intégration de ces acteurs et de leurs productions dans les infrastructures médiatiques émergentes d’Afrique de l’Ouest (notamment l’édition d’ouvrages pédagogiques et le journalisme) a créé un répertoire visuel plus large qui évoquait des registres émotionnels complexes, y compris la peur, la méfiance, la familiarité et l’affection. Les créateurs de médias d’Afrique de l’Ouest et d’Asie du Sud ont entremêlé des rêves, des communications religieuses et journalistiques, et des archives numériques de photographies pour révéler les différences religieuses, raciales et genrées qui se sont manifestées dans des écrits diffusés bien au-delà d’un public spécifique. Les supports visuels et imprimés ont oeuvré à atténuer le caractère étranger de l’Ahmadiyya et à considérer les différences comme familières, et ont ainsi joué un rôle essentiel pour cultiver le pluralisme culturel dans les nouvelles nations postcoloniales d’Afrique de l’Ouest.
Resumo
O Movimento Ahmadiyya no Islão, fundado na Índia Britânica em 1889, tem muitos seguidores no Gana, na Nigéria, na Serra Leoa e noutros países da África Ocidental, e promoveu transformações culturais que raramente têm sido discutidas nos estudos sobre as interações entre a África e a Ásia do Sul. Através de uma história dos meios de comunicação social produzidos por e sobre os Ahmadiyya, este artigo mostra como as fotografias a preto e branco deram forma a uma economia visual vibrante que construiu a interligação entre a África Ocidental e o Sul da Ásia no meio da diferença e da discórdia. Enquanto os missionários Ahmadiyya indianos começaram por utilizar imagens como prova das suas crenças controversas e para provar o seu sucesso na conversão, a absorção deste pessoal e das suas produções pelas infraestruturas emergentes dos meios de comunicação social da África Ocidental – entre elas, a publicação educativa e o jornalismo – criou um repertório visual mais vasto que evocava registos emocionais complexos, incluindo o medo e a desconfiança, bem como a familiaridade e o afeto. Os criadores de meios de comunicação social da África Ocidental e do Sul da Ásia entrelaçaram sonhos, comunicações religiosas e jornalísticas e arquivos digitais de fotografias para revelar diferenças religiosas, raciais e de género que se reflectiram na impressão que circulou muito para além de um único público. Os meios de comunicação visuais e impressos trabalharam no sentido de diminuir a estranheza dos Ahmadiyya e de acomodar as suas diferenças como familiaridade, desempenhando assim um papel fundamental no cultivo do pluralismo cultural nas novas nações pós-coloniais da África Ocidental.
Information
- Type
- Media and world making between West Africa and India
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The International African Institute
References
Ahmad, H. M. B. M. (2007) Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam. Surrey: Islam International Publications.Google Scholar
Ahmad, H. M. N. (2006) ‘Message of love and brotherhood to Africa’. Tilford, Surrey: Islam International Publications.Google Scholar
Ahmad, M. B. (1962) Islam in Africa. Rabwah: Ahmadiyya Muslim Foreign Missions Department.Google Scholar
Aydin, C. (2017) The Idea of the Muslim World: a global intellectual history. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Balzani, M. (2010) ‘Dreaming, Islam and the Ahmadiyya Muslims in the UK’, History and Anthropology 21 (3): 293–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balzani, M. (2020) Ahmadiyya Islam and the Muslim Diaspora: living at the end of days. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlet, O. (2010) ‘Bollywood/Africa: a divorce?’, Black Camera: An International Film Journal NS 2 (1): 126–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayoumi, M. (2006) ‘Racing religion’, CR: The New Centennial Review 6 (2): 267–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertz, N. (2019) ‘Bollywood in Africa’ in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History [online] <https://oxfordre.com/asianhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277727-e-333>.Google Scholar
Buckley, L. (2014) ‘Photography and photo-elicitation after colonialism’, Cultural Anthropology 29 (4): 720–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chande, A. (2021) ‘Shaykh Ali Hemed al-Buhriy’s Mrima Swahili translation of the Quran and its place in Islamic scholarship in East Africa’, Australian Journal of Islamic Studies 6 (4): 111–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan-Malik, S. (2016) ‘Profile: Black American women in the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam’, Sapelo [blog], 24 February <https://sapelosquare.com/2016/02/24/profile-black-american-women-in-the-ahmadiyya-movement-of-islam/>..>Google Scholar
Danmole, H. O. (2005) ‘A visionary of the Lagos Muslim community: Mustapha Adamu Animashaun, 1885–1968’, Lagos Historical Review 5: 22–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Z. (2024) ‘The history of the Ahmadiyya and its religious infrastructure in Nigeria: a global Islamic movement in Islamic context’. PhD thesis, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Dovlo, E. and Asante, A. O. (2003) ‘Reinterpreting the straight path: Ghanaian Muslim converts in mission to Muslims’, Exchange 32 (3): 214–38.Google Scholar
Evans, N. (2017) ‘Beyond cultural intimacy: the tensions that make truth for India’s Ahmadi Muslims’, American Ethnologist 44 (3): 490–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, N. H. (2020) Far from the Caliph’s Gaze: being Ahmadi Muslim in the holy city of Qadian. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. J. (2021) ‘Modernisation of Islamic education in Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Liberia: religion and language’ in Brown, G. N. and Hiskett, M. (eds), Conflict and Harmony in Education in Tropical Africa. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gershoni, Y. (2001) ‘Common goals, different ways: the UNIA and the NCBWA in West Africa, 1920–1930’, Journal of Third World Studies 18 (2): 171–85.Google Scholar
Green, N. (2003) ‘The religious and cultural roles of dreams and visions in Islam’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13 (3): 287–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, N. (2013) ‘Spacetime and the Muslim journey west: industrial communications in the making of the “Muslim world”’, American Historical Review 118 (2): 401–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, N. (2015) Terrains of Exchange: religious economies of global Islam. New York NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Güner, E. (2023) ‘Transnational Muslim crossings and race in Africa: introduction’, Africa 93 (2): 189–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, J. (2017) The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast: Muslim cosmopolitans in the British Empire. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassan, I. H. (2015) ‘An introduction to Islamic movements and modes of thought in Nigeria’, ed. by Denzer, L. and Shereikis, R.. PAS/ISITA Working Paper 1. Evanston IL: Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Hayes, P. and Minkley, G. (eds) (2019) Ambivalent: photography and visibility in African history. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hydal, M. M. K. (1981) Tayo Lies: a refutation of facts about the Ahmadiyya movement. Trinidad and Tobago: Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isa’at al-Islam.Google Scholar
James, L. (2016) ‘Transatlantic passages’ in Peterson, D., Newell, S. and Hunter, E. (eds), African Print Cultures: newspapers and their publics in the twentieth century. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Jonker, G. (2016) The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress: missionizing Europe 1900–1965. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khan, A. A. (2016) ‘Perspective: Muhammad Ali emulated many Ahmadiyya values’, Times of Ahmad, 7 June <https://timesofahmad.blogspot.com/2016/06/perspective-muhammad-ali-emulated-many.html>..>Google Scholar
Khan, M. H. (1987) ‘Translations of the Holy Quran in African languages’, Muslim World 77 (3–4): 250–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, K. and Venkatachalam, M. (2021) India’s Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Langewiesche, K. (2020a) ‘Ahmadiyya and development aid in West Africa’ in Heuser, A. and Koehrsen, J. (eds), Does Religion Make a Difference? Religious NGOs in international development collaboration. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.Google Scholar
Langewiesche, K. (2020b) ‘Politics of humanitarianism: the Ahmadiyya and the provision of social welfare’ in Weiss, H. (ed.), Muslim Faith-Based Organizations and Social Welfare in Africa. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Langewiesche, K. (2021) ‘A Muslim minority and the use of media: charismatic aesthetics of the Ahmadiyya in West Africa’, Islamic Africa 12 (2): 211–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lanzillo, A. (2019) ‘The life and times of a British journal of Islam’, The Light and Islamic Review January–June: 3–7.Google Scholar
Larkin, B. (1997) ‘Indian films and Nigerian lovers: media and the creation of parallel modernities’, Africa 67 (3): 406–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lathan, A. (2008) ‘The relativity of categorizing in the context of the Ahmadiyya’, Die Welt des Islams 48 (3): 372–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mawdsley, E. and McCann, G. (eds) (2011) India in Africa: changing geographies of power. Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford: Fahamu and Pambazuka.Google Scholar
Mensah, T. (2023) ‘Nkrumah’s “industrial middlemen”: Sindhis and Ghana’s postcolonial industrial drive, 1951–1966’, African Economic History 51 (2): 52–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, B. (2015) ‘Picturing the invisible: visual culture and the study of religion’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 27: 333–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nasir, Ata-ul-Haye (2022) ‘Nusrat Jehan scheme: Khilafat’s impetus for “Africa to leap forward” – a glimpse into the early years (1970–1982)’, Al Hakam, 27 May <https://www.alhakam.org/nusrat-jehan-scheme-1970-to-1982/>..>Google Scholar
Ogunnaike, O. (2024) ‘Dreaming Sufism in the Sokoto caliphate: dreams and knowledge in the works of Shaykh dan Tafa’, Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 12 (3): 179–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olusanya, G. O. (1968) ‘The Lagos branch of the National Congress of British West Africa’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4 (2): 321–33.Google Scholar
Omotayo, Y. al-Hafiz (2022) ‘70 years of Nigeria’s first and longest-running Muslim newspaper, “The Truth”’, Al Hakam, 7 January <https://www.alhakam.org/70-years-of-nigerias-first-and-longest-running-muslim-newspaper-the-truth/>..>Google Scholar
Paoletti, G. (2018) ‘Searching for the origin(al) on the photographic portrait of the Mouride Sufi Saint Amadou Bamba’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 58 (2): 323–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paoletti, G. (2022) ‘On Islam and portraiture: lithography, glass painting, and photography in Senegal’, Art History 45 (4): 774–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, D. R., Vokes, R., Abiti, N. and Taylor, E. C. (2021) ‘The unseen archive of Idi Amin: making history in a tight corner’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 63 (1): 5–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, D. (2005) ‘An excess of description: ethnography, race, and visual technologies’, Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 159–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qasmi, A. U. (2014) The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan. London: Anthem Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renne, E. P. (2015) ‘Photography, hajj things, and spatial connections between Mecca and Northern Nigeria’, Photography and Culture 8 (3): 269–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, A. F. (2010) ‘Recolonization of an African visual economy’, African Arts 43 (1): 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, A. F. and Roberts, M. N. (2002) ‘A saint in the city: Sufi arts of urban Senegal’, African Arts 35 (4): 52–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sevea, I. S. (2009) ‘The Ahmadiyya print jihad in South and Southeast Asia’ in Feener, R. M. and Sevea, T. (eds), Islamic Connections: Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing.Google Scholar
Shankar, S. (2021) An Uneasy Embrace: Africa, India and the spectre of race. London: Hurst.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shankar, S. (2024) ‘The Indian question in Afrocentric politics: a continent’s reckoning with the Ugandan expulsion’, Public Culture 36 (3): 377–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheikh-Miller, N. (2015) ‘From the studio to the front-line: the emergence, development, and impact of Asian photographers in colonial and independent East Africa’, African Arts 48 (3): 38–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soske, J. (2017) Internal Frontiers: African nationalism and the Indian diaspora in twentieth-century South Africa. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilks, I. (2002) Wa and the Wala: Islam and polity in northwestern Ghana. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar