Steve Howard departed for the Sudan in the early 1980s as an American graduate student beginning a three-year journey in which he would join and live with the Republican Brotherhood, the Sufi Muslim group led by the visionary Mahmoud Mohamed Taha.
Steve Howard is a professor of media studies and African studies and the director of the Ohio University Center for International Studies. A sociologist by training, he has studied and worked all over the African continent. He directed Ohio University’s African Studies Program for twenty-five years and has published several scholarly articles about the Republican Brotherhood Movement.
“It was amazing timing then for this insightful American-trained
social scientist to observe a modernist nonviolent Islamic movement
at the peak of its dynamic campaign. It is even more amazing timing
now for this rigorous and incisive study of Islamic modernity to be
available to scholars, students, and the public at large. This
profound assessment of a fascinating expression of Islam as
experienced by African Muslims can contribute to defusing the
current global crisis of Islam and modernity. The book is also a
pleasure to read.”
“There is much to learn in this memoir, especially given the
normalization of extreme Islamophobia in the Western world. The
answer to Islamic extremism does not lie in Western belligerence
and fear, but within Islam itself. Howard reminds us all of the
importance of re-centering these conversations within the
communities of people who live this diverse and complex faith.”
*Focus on the Horn*
“Howard’s account (Modern Muslims) is an excellent tool for
undergraduate teaching. It goes a long way in detaching
mid-twentieth-century Islamic revival movements … from their
characterization as inherently violent. Instead, Howard
demonstrates the intellectual vigour exposed by dedicated Muslims
trying to argue for the intellectual coherence and applicability of
their faith in a world they believed to be epistemologically
dominated by Western rationalism.”
*Africa*
“Steve Howard has produced an ethnography of a modern Muslim
movement in the contemporary Sudan that is original, informative,
and beautifully conceived. It is a unique (and uniquely
informative), accessible, and moving journey of discovery that
makes a major contribution to our understanding of Islam in the
Sudan and in the contemporary world.”
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