Translation Work by Misbaah Olagunju on Shaykh Al-Jaami's Work
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And what emanated from this conviction and utmost attestation is the natives of the provinces admitting everything brought to them in the name of religion by Arab merchants without examination or debate.
Therefore, owing to the feable insight on the part of the merchants who conveyed to African provinces everything in the name of Islam and the good thoughts of the natives towards them, they accepted everything from them, Islam circulated in the continent with inadequacies, interpolated and patched as we have previously mentioned, and this was what they possessed then (and the one who lacks a thing can not give it).
The distinguished feature of these callers was that they were merchants who delighted in the love of Islam and the love of goodness for Africans. And they were avaricious towards teaching people everything they knew whether right or wrong but they weren’t exploiters or profiteers, so we beseech Allah to reward them with the best of reward for their good intention and efforts.
Thus we move on from this class of callers who were just merchants. Expectant for them reward from Allah _ to proceed to discussion about the other category of callers —according their claims— and they were the people of Sufism.
These people had conducted an exercise in the name of Islam in West, East and North Africa.
But before we delve into discussion about them, I was reminded of their position and practice by the title of one of the contemporary books “Al-Islaamul muftariyah alayhi – The Slandered Islamâ€, then (owing to that) I say it is possible to summarize the activities of the Suufi masters in Africa and say: they called to everything else except Islaam upon its correct conception.
As for the pure Islam brought by the messenger of Islam and the leader of mankind, their call has no connection to it and if not for not make things difficult for you or to overwhelm anyone, I would have digressed a bit to a brief discussion so as to acquaint you with something of the dawah of Suufism, because it has frequented upon the tongues of some people to say that the suufi masters played an outstanding and important role in the ambit of calling to Islam. And they normally claim that Islam entered some parts of Africa and some other places by way of their hands.
