West Africa Review (2000)
ISSN: 1525-4488

The Islamic Simulacrum in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Into Africa

Thomas E.R. Maguire


Into Africa, the BBC/PBS six-part series hosted by Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., displays the rich heritage of African society at every corner of the
continent. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many, Gates failed to enhance
popular culture with a revised and radical view of Africa. Instead, he
reinforced many of the negative stereotypes of Africa and its diverse
culture. This paper deals with the way that Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
portrays Islam negatively in a manner similar to the traditional and
modern manifestations of Orientalism. Using the concept of simulacrum, as
introduced by Jean Baudrillard, I will identify the existence of an
“Islamic simulacrum” that functions to vilify the Islamic world through
Western media. By “Western media” I refer to the English language media
in the United States and the United Kingdom where Into Africa was
broadcast. In addition, I will examine the deeply intertwined “postmodern
simulacrum” that maintains Orientalism and Western domination through
rhetoric of pluralism and tolerance. Due to the obscure and endlessly
shifting meaning of “postmodern,” it is necessary to specify that I use
the concept as Ahmed S. Akbar defined it in Postmodernism and Islam. I
will show the ways that the postmodern simulacrum appropriates marginal
discourses within Western society to replace traditional figures of
domination in the ongoing process of Orientalism. The body of the paper
will systematically identify the ways in which Into Africa functions in
the postmodern simulacrum as Afrocentric Orientalism. In a separate
critique of Into Africa, Ali Mazrui accused Gates of “Black Orientalism”.
I prefer the paradoxical term, “Afrocentric Orientalism”, because it
specifically refers to the appropriation of Afrocentricism as a marginal
discourse. On that note, the use of this term should not be mistaken as
an indictment of that discourse, or viewed as a suggestion that Into
Africa is an Afrocentric text. Molefi Kete Asante, a pioneer of
Afrocentrism, actually referred to the film series as “a Eurocentric
enterprise”. In conclusion, I will briefly address the broader issues
regarding the relationship between Islamic and African civilisations that
Henry Louis Gates avoids through his negative portrayals of Islam.
However, this paper is primarily about Into Africa’s complicity with the
representation of Islam in Western media, and not the diverse history of
Islamic expansion into Africa.

The Islamic Simulacrum

Jean Baudrillard identified an epistemological crisis in contemporary
media- drenched society with the concept of the simulacrum, the
accelerated circulation of images without referents, a hyperreality
operating independently of truth value. In spite of the disputed and
ill-measured depth to which the simulacrum immerses members of society,
its deceptive tides fail to breech the shores of representation--it deals
primarily with the circulation of images and not other epistemological
sources. As the majority of Western people wade through its currents,
some are apprehensive, heeding the warning, and some are careless,
occasionally being swept away. Perhaps Baudrillard is a Noah without an
ark, proclaiming an invisible flood without a means for salvation, or an
academic charlatan, swimming through the air, pitying the drowned.
Despite the occasionally messianic tone of Baudrillard’s philosophy, and
his disputable claims that simulacrum envelops society, the concept of
simulacrum does identify a concrete process through which the media can
deceive by projecting signs and images which distort the reality to which
any given representation corresponds. In cases of radical alterity, where
individuals acquire knowledge of a given subject primarily, or entirely,
through the media, simulacrum becomes the sole epistemological force.

Media representations of the Islamic world provide a convincing example
of this phenomenon. In Covering Islam, Edward Said explores the American
news coverage of Islam in the late seventies and early eighties. Within a
matrix of military dictatorships and fundamentalist coups, Said examines
the underlying geopolitical strategies at work in the representations of
the Islamic world. The portrayal of Islam as a monolithic mass of
“barbarism.medieval theocracy.[and] distasteful exoticism” weaves itself
neatly into a social panic regarding the Middle Eastern control of the
United States’ oil supplies (Said, 1981: xv) Though the increasing
“coverage” of Islam in 1970s marked a new wave of representational
attacks, the history of ethnocentric and xenophobic Western attitudes
toward Islam can be traced deep into the roots of modernity. In his
landmark work, Orientalism, Said traces the history of Western approaches
to studying, describing, and engaging the Muslim world. For hundreds of
years, the principal dichotomy established between West and East was the
true religion of Christianity versus the false religion of Islam. Europe
viewed Islam as a religion with an identical structure to Christianity
except Christ had been replaced by the impostor, Mohammed. The very term
which designated the religion of Islam in Western discourse bursts with
misunderstanding. Islam was externally titled, “Mohammedanism,” a
misnomer that would stay in common use well into the twentieth century.
Two very basic and ubiquitous teachings throughout the Muslim world are
the prohibition against the worship of any man, including the prophet
Mohammed, and the reverence of Jesus as one of the greatest prophets of
God. Such self-representations of Islam were either ignored or
consciously considered irrelevant by Orientalists in the West. Though the
religious character of Orientalism has subsided with the secularisation
of Christendom, its orientation toward Islam as a monolithic object for
study has remained. Regarding the opposed abstractions of “Aryan” and
“Semitic” that appeared in late nineteenth-century Orientalist
scholarship, Said notes,

“.what has not been sufficiently stressed in histories of modern
anti-Semitism has been the legitimation of such atavistic designations by
Orientalism, and.the way this academic and intellectual legitimation has
persisted right through the modern age in discussions of Islam, the
Arabs, or the Near Orient. For whereas it is no longer possible to write
learned (or even popular) disquisitions on either “the Negro mind” or
“the Jewish personality,” it is perfectly possible to engage in such
research as “the Islamic mind,” or “the Arab character”.” (1978; 262)
As the underlying racism and ethnocentrism of Orientalism has come to
inform the media representations of Islam through the late twentieth
century, new oppositions have developed to replace the religious
dichotomy of past centuries. The secular, rational, democratic, and
modern self-image of the West sees its opposite in Islam, the great and
dangerous impostor of a benevolent global civilization.

The image of Western society as the bastion of democracy, tolerance, and
secular pluralism can be easily challenged with any number of incidents
demonstrating the enduring racism and viciousness of neo-imperialism.
However, in the media, the images of Western benevolence dominate,
constituting what might be termed the postmodern simulacrum, with the
Islamic simulacrum in contemporary media currently standing as its major
opposition.. In Postmodernism and Islam, Akbar S. Ahmed identifies the
qualities of postmodernism that compose this simulacrum. Included in his
definition of postmodernism are the following criteria:

“.a questioning of, a loss of faith in, the project of modernity; a
spirit of pluralism; a heightened scepticism of traditional orthodoxies.a
rejection of a view of the world as a universal totality.in many profound
ways the media are the central dynamic, the Zeitgeist, the defining
feature, of postmodernism.[it] allows, indeed encourages, the
juxtaposition of discourses, and exuberant eclecticism, the mixing of
diverse images.” (Ahmed, 1992; 10-11, 25)
Ahmed also asserts an explicit connection between postmodernism and
“ethno- religious revivalism--or fundamentalism” (1992; 13). The
development of fundamentalist assertions of identity deeply intertwine
with the transnational unification of postmodernism. Though the
fundamentalist phenomenon has occurred worldwide irrespective of
religion, economy, or political system, the media focus on fundamentalism
has unfairly centred on religious movements within the Islamic world.
Indeed, fundamentalism has become a code word for Islam that can be
broadly applied to any one of the world’s one billion Muslims. Thus,
within the rhetoric of pluralism and tolerance of postmodernity, there is
a major exception in the representations of Islam.

The Islamic simulacrum marks a modern extension of an ongoing strategy of
Western cultural domination. Neither Said nor Ahmed attempt a blanket
defence of the charges put forth against Islam in the mass media.
Instead, they demonstrate the inaccuracy of the monolithic structure
imposed over Islam by the various organs of Western power. When the
practices and effects of traditional Orientalism are juxtaposed with
those of the Islamic simulacrum, there is very little difference besides
the ability for postmodernism to shift from icons of eurocentrism to
those of pluralism and humanism in its tactics of vilification. For
instance, instead of Islam being attacked as an impostor religion of
Christianity, Islam may now be frequently attacked for its “negative
treatment of women”. The Muslim woman’s hijab, or veil, has become a
symbol of oppression in the West. However, the diversity of opinions and
practices within Islam regarding the veil receive little attention, nor
does the hijab’s relatively marginal position within the faith. Islam has
also been charged with the elimination of indigenous ethnic identities in
various regions. Even though such criticisms have appeared within the
postmodern simulacrum, it would be highly disputable to assert that
postmodern Western society has done anything significant for the
liberation of women or the protection of indigenous cultures from the
negative effects of global civilization. The ideals of Islam can make as
many claims to the protection of women and ethnic identities as can
Western humanism. When marginal voices speak after centuries of imposed
silence, they can easily be regarded as indicators of an absolute change.
However, within the postmodern simulacrum, they can simply transplant a
progressive face onto an ongoing process of domination. Many aggressive
criticisms of Islam in the media derive their social impact from such a
process.

Though the Islamic simulacrum functions in a unique way in the
propagation of ethnocentrism, it exists as one of the many heads of a
polycephalous monster. The enduring racism against peoples of the African
diaspora continues through different simulacra. In the United States, the
demonisation of black people operates much as it always has in Western
culture, but only in distinct realms of transgression which can be
officially sanctioned by rhetoric of legal equanimity; overt racism is
unacceptable. The paranoia inspired by the O.J. Simpson trial contained
every possible invocation of savagery, but only within a rational logic
of crime and punishment. Outside these realms of transgression, a
simulacrum of equality exists which asserts the passing of racism and the
full integration of African Americans into American prosperity. Despite
unemployment and poverty rates in the black community that often equal or
surpass those of the entire nation during the Great Depression, a belief
in the disappearance of racism continues to grow in the U.S. Though the
latter simulacrum represents a distinctly postmodern phenomenon, the
prior originates in the centuries-old practice of dehumanisation that
rationalised and justified the slave trade. In Into Africa, the six-part
series produced for BBC in the United Kingdom, and PBS in the United
States, Henry Louis Gates travels through various parts of Africa in an
attempt to shatter the depictions of the continent as a land void of
civilization and culture. He explains that, “it’s important to debunk the
myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilised only when white
people arrived. Africans have been creators of culture for thousands of
years.”(BBC online, 2000) During his journey, however, Henry Louis Gates
travels to many parts of Africa which have interacted with both European
and Islamic civilization. In his attempt to extract a history of “Black
Africa” from these diverse cultures, he reinforces many of the elements
of the Islamic simulacrum, thereby adding Into Africa to the arsenal of
postmodern strategies to discredit Islam.

Into Africa

Into Africa is divided into six one-hour episodes with the following
titles and content 1) The Swahili Coast: exploring the East African
Swahili trading civilization 2) The Road to Timbuktu: travelling along
the Niger River toward the fabled Islamic university at Timbuktu 3) The
Black Kingdoms of the Nile: venture down the Nile River into the lands of
ancient Nubia 4) The Slave Kingdoms: examining West African roles in the
slave trade 5) The Holy Land: a pilgrimage through the great sites of
Ethiopian Christianity 6) The Lost Cities of the South: reassessing the
ancient history of South Africa and Zimbabwe. The first three episodes
deal with Islamic Africa.

The Swahili Coast begins with Henry Louis Gates arriving in Lamu, a
Swahili coastal town, quoting one of the first European mariners to
arrive in East Africa, commenting on the wealth and sophistication of the
Swahili, most likely a great contrast to his expectations of a land
populated with savages. Gates declares his intention to determine the
“roots of the Swahili people”, who still have a “distinctive Muslim
culture.” The camera films several veiled women walking down the street
as Gates mentions that, “for 2,000 years Arab merchants have settled on
this coast. You can see their influence everywhere. There seems to be a
mosque on every street corner.” This generalisation of Islam, which will
continue throughout this episode, utterly ignores that Islam arose in
Arabia just over 1400 years ago. Soon after, he goes to meet with Sheikh
Bedawi, “one of Lamu’s most venerable Islamic scholars.” During the
conversation, Sheikh Bedawi, somewhat light-skinned but clearly African,
claims that he is of pure Arab descent, tracing his ancestry to the
prophet Mohammed. He also explains that he tries not to look badly upon
those with African blood. His translator adds that Arab men used to take
African women as concubines, which led to African people being considered
inferior. Leaving Lamu by boat, Gates says, “whatever Sheikh Bedowi says,
that supposedly pure Arabic blood has long been mixed with the blood of
Black Africans.” In this first encounter with Islamic Africa, the image
of Islam progresses from veiled women, mosques, and a Qu’ranic school to
bigotry, concubines, and confused identity, neatly reaffirming the
Islamic simulacrum.

Gates continues his journey along the Swahili coast by visiting a town
that specialises in the construction of dhals. Gates visits a local
architect, Ahmed Sigoff, who also traces his ancestry to the prophet
Mohammed. He describes the way that Arab men frequently married African
women, with the reverse, African men marrying Arab women, only occurring
occasionally. He affirms the higher social standing accorded to those
members of the community with Arabian descent. In conclusion to this
conversation, Gates states that the situation in Lamu “reminds me how
black Americans used to claim descent from some distant Cherokee or Sioux
ancestor, anything but pure Negro.” With this statement, Gates draws a
parallel between Swahili and African-American cultures. The justification
for such a parallel is dubious within the evidence provided in the
episode. Beyond the possibility for highly divergent interpretations of
what “pure Negro” might mean in each culture, Gates oversimplifies the
complexity of ethnic friction in the United States and Kenya under a
common banner of “blackness”. Gates makes a legitimate claim that the
Swahili culture should not be entirely credited to Arabs. However, he
inappropriately uses “Islam” and “Arab” as interchangeable signifiers.
When Gates next travels to Shanga, the remains of the oldest city in
coastal East Africa, his guide explains that the lowest strata of the
town resembles archaeological remains of inland settlements, proving that
the first inhabitants of the city were black Africans. One of his guides,
Mohammed Badi, explains that, 2,000 years ago, the Arabs arrived and
gained power gradually through intermarriage. However, Gates never
addresses the fact that the arrival of Islam in Arabia arises six hundred
years after the initial contact. The significant ways in which Islam
transformed Arab culture, including a strong emphasis on equality
irrespective of ethnicity, never enter his discussion of Swahili culture.
The elision of these conflicts within the Muslim world itself allows the
monolithic model of Islam to stand unchallenged. Later, when he’s leaving
the island of Lamu, he notes that “the Arabs weren’t the only ones who
came to exploit the coast. The British were here from the late nineteenth
century up to 1960. They gave special privileges to those who claimed
Arab descent, deepening racial divisions.” The extent to which
colonialism may have contributed to the ethnic tension previously
described at Lamu receives no critical attention.

While the issues of ethnic identity directly relate to the project of
Into Africa, Gates makes a clear effort to include images that reinforce
the Islamic simulacrum in other ways. After returning from the
archaeological remains at Shanga, Gates plays a board game with his other
guide, Abus Shakoona. After discussing Abus’ perspective on his ethnic
identity as a mix of Arab and African, the conversation turns to the
subject of Abus’ marriage to two women. Abus explains that Islam allows a
man to marry up to four wives. Gates explains, “I would rather [my
daughters] have two husbands than them to be one wife to a husband with
two wives.I’d rather them be in control.” So far, Islamic gender
relations have been described as a combination of polygamy and
concubinage, and Gates clearly asserts his opinion that Islam disempowers
women with the statement about his daughters. The next stop for Gates is
Mombassa, a large port city and a major destination for European
tourists. Walking along the beach, Gates comments on the disturbing
racial polarity between the white tourists and the African servants. A
moment later, he states, “it’s no accident that the people from Oman and
the Saudi-Arabians would move here.leaving all that desert and heat, but
this is spectacular.this is so beautiful.” Not only does this statement
make an untenable connection between Arab traders and European tourists,
it reeks of the malicious depiction of a foreign land that Into Africa
attempts to destroy. When Gates travels to the archaeological remains of
the Swahili city of Getti, he reinvokes the notion of female oppression
in Islam. Standing in an arched inlet of the remains of Getti’s
fifteenth- century mosque, Abdullah Alailsi, the curator, recites the
fatiha, the first verse of the Qu’ran and an oft-repeated element of
salaat, Muslim prayer. After finishing, they continue a conversation as
follows:

Abdullah: So with the help of the echo, as you realized, the message will
be conveyed and received very simultaneously. And for that, those women
at that time had no complaints at all. Right, they could hear him very
vividly.

Gates: They couldn’t see him as well.

Abdullah: They couldn’t see him but they could hear him. The front part
of it was entirely meant for men and the hind part was specifically kept
for the ladies.

When Gates veers from his stated mission of reconstituting a stolen
African past and swerves into unrelated representations of Muslim
culture, he continually reinforces the Islamic simulacrum. After
Abdullah’s statement that men and women are separated in Muslim prayer
services, there is no treatment of this issue beyond Gates’ insinuated
disapproval. After his tour of Getti, Gates comments that “unlike the
British archaeologists, Abdullah says Getti was an African city built by
Africans. This grand city was built by the Swahili. And here, on the
mainland of Kenya, the Swahili are seen as Africans.” This glides over
the fact that the Swahili in Mombassa, and those who built Getti, are
Muslims. Gates is only interested in the colour of the builders, and not
a revised picture of the African/Arab cooperation that Getti might
demonstrate.

The final destination in The Swahili Coast is the island of Zanzibar,
which grew rich during the eighteenth and nineteenth century by trading
spices and slaves. The conflicts of ethnic identity are at their ugliest
in Zanzibar. The island has witnessed great civil unrest in recent
decades as the phantoms of its history have risen violently. Gates
returns to many of the ethnic identity issues previously addressed, only
this time linking them to the slave trade. Gates travels to the village
of Kizimkazi where he talks to two black men who consider themselves
Persian. Unlike the residents of Lamu, they possess no family trees and
offer a rather poor verification of their Persian identity. However, a
twelfth- century mosque with Khoufic inscriptions remains in the village
that testifies to an ancient Persian presence on the island. Gates once
again parallels the experience of Swahili Muslims to African Americans by
stating,

“so it’s true that the Persians really did settle in Zanzibar -- just as
the Arabs, and later the Indians did. But why do so many people here
claim to be the descendants of a handful of medieval Persian mariners?
It’s a bit like me claiming to be white because my great-great-
grandfather was an Irishman named Brady.I think the answer lies in the
shadow of Zanzibar’s history, as the centre of the East African slave
trade.”
Despite the historical links and similarities between Zanzibar and the
black Atlantic, the conflation of the two histories in such a matter
again oversimplifies the ethnic identity issues at work in East Africa.
In passing, as evidence of the island’s prosperity in the nineteenth
century, Gates explains that the sultan of Oman moved to Zanzibar in 1940
with his court and his 99 concubines—another icon of the Islamic
simulacrum, the harem, coming into play. He concludes by talking to a
descendent of Tiputip, a famed Swahili slave trader, about the island’s
sad history. Her unconvincing defence of the Arab role in slavery only
emphasises the Arab participation in the institution, though Gates
attempts no sweeping indictment of Muslims as slavers. In conclusion to
The Swahilil Coast, Gates says, “it’s taken my people 50 years to move
from ‘Negro,’ to ‘Black,’ to ‘African-American.’ I wonder how long it
will take the Swahili to call themselves ‘African.’” With this statement,
the Swahili no longer have the right to identify themselves as Muslims.
According to Gates, they must purify themselves from Arab influence and
redefine themselves within the domain of “Africa.” In the end, Gates
comes very close to affirming one of the great Orientalist maxims, the
oft-quoted position of Karl Marx that, “they cannot represent themselves;
they must be represented.”(Said, 1978; xiii)

The Swahili Coast presents a version of East African history that could
be classified as Afrocentric Orientalism. In The Road to Timbuktu, and
The Black Kingdoms of the Nile, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. affirms the
Islamic simulacrum in more subtle ways than the obvious
misrepresentations of Swahili culture. He begins his sojourn to Timbuktu
by explaining the reverence felt by African-Americans for the fabled
city. The very existence of Timubuktu as a major centre of learning in
West Africa disproves the myths of savagery imposed on black people
throughout the period of European expansion. Recounting the old tales of
Timbuktu he heard back in his neighbourhood barber shop, he quoted some
men as saying, “there’s shit in these books that the white man don’t want
us to know about.” The quest for that knowledge drives Gates on his trip
to Timbuktu. Though the great Mali empire which Gates describes, and its
university at Timbuktu, were Muslim, he pays minimal attention to the
Islamic identity of either. Unlike The Swahili Coast, there are few
representations of Islam or ethnic difference as he travels along the
River Niger. Even when he encounters modern slavery by Tuareg nomads, who
are very likely Muslim, he makes no mention of religion. The first
explicit Islamic reference comes in his description of the fourteenth
century king Monsamoosa’s hajj , or pilgrimage to Mecca, with 500 slaves,
each carrying a staff of pure gold. He makes no criticism of Monsamoosa
or his practice of slavery. Gates visits the twelfth century mosque at
Djenne, a giant and impressive building made entirely of mud. The Imam of
Djenne agrees to speak with Gates in front of the mosque. When Gates asks
permission to enter the grand building, he is told that the only way he
may enter is by becoming Muslim. His responds, “if I become Muslim, I
want four wives.” Though this is clearly meant as a joke, and taken as
such by his company, Gates again invokes polygamy as a symbol of Islam.
Gates acknowledges the development of literacy in Mali with the arrival
of Arabs and Islam, but also displays evidence of much older
civilisations. There is validity in his goal of disproving a European
claim that civilization only came with the Arabs, but again he focuses on
negating Western racism by appropriating “Africa” in toto. When he
finally reaches Timbuktu, he finds, as expected, a city centuries in
decline from its peak. His guide, Ali Seedie, a Muslim scholar, shows him
several of the centuries-old books from his family’s personal collection
that remain as a legacy to the great university. Gates concludes the
episode, saying, “the mind of the black world locked into the pages of
these priceless books. Evidence of a grand civilization, untranslated and
unknown.” The final remark again resonates with Orientalist tones. These
books certainly testify to the greatness of the old Mali empire, but also
to Muslim civilization, which endures to this day, despite the
implication that the books are “unknown” because they have not been
translated from Arabic. It is important to note however, that Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. obtained a grant from the Mellon Foundation to catalogue and
translate the books from Timbuktu. In a response to Ali Mazrui’s
criticism of Into Africa, Gates argues that “the film series would have
been justified, in my opinion, if this accomplishment had been the sole
benefit that generated.”(West Africa Review, 2000) Though this claim has
validity in regard to this significant benefit, it is still important to
assess the harms of the film series. Even though The Road to Timbuktu
lacks explicitly malicious representations of Islam, Gates assumes the
posture of traditional Western academic scholars in dealing with the
“otherness” of Muslim society.

In The Black Kingdoms of the Nile, Gates again encounters the Islamic
world, continuing many of the Afrocentric Orientalist themes from the
previous episodes. Gates delves into the history of Nile civilisations in
an attempt to show the major role that Black pharaohs played in ancient
Egypt. This episode presents convincing evidence for the major role of
black Africans in ancient civilization and the racism that has prevented
Western archaeologists from acknowledging it. However, the ethnographic
elements of the travelogue address Islam in predictable ways. Gates
explains that the Egyptian construction of the Aswan damn buried much of
ancient Nubia under water. He notes that many African- Americans objected
to the damn at the time of its construction because they considered it
racist. His guide, Esra Dahab, a Nubian, expresses her anger at the loss
of the geographic source of Nubian civilization, but she fails to confirm
or deny the charge of racism. She takes Gates to a village that was
specifically built for the flood refugees, where he notes that “Islamic
terrorists” had killed 68 tourists several weeks beforehand. Esra
introduces him to a woman who experienced the move when she was a child.
Initially, she explains that the benefits of the damn outweigh the costs,
and that she has no pain from moving. However, she expresses some
nervousness because an Egyptian police officer is standing nearby. After
he leaves, she affirms that people were sad when they left the land and
that she misses it. Gates suggests that she has been “programmed.” Later,
when Gates is in the Sudan, where a proposed damn could wash away more
ancient Nubian lands, he makes similar inquiries to Sheikh Ashi, who,
with his brother, runs a Qu’ranic school that would face devastation if
the damn is built. The man expresses some regret, but again suggests that
the damn would bring many benefits to the area. Gates asserts that Sheikh
Ashi is also afraid to speak his mind, a questionable psychological
assessment considering the actual line of questioning. When Gates enters
the Sudan for the first time, he says, “all we ever hear about the Sudan
is that it’s in a state of civil war, it has a fundamentalist Islamic
government and it hates Americans. So I’m kind of nervous.” In one
breath, Gates affirms the existence of the Islamic simulacrum; with the
next, he justifies it. Toward the end of the episode, explaining the
position of a Nubian politician, he says, “she believes that because the
Nubian people are so fiercely independent, they’re a threat to the
fundamentalist government.” His portrayal of the Islamic societies of the
Nile region as racist and oppressive is consistent with the images of
fundamentalism in the Islamic simulacrum.

Afrocentric Orientalism

The concept of Afrocentric Orientalism could only arise amidst the
shifting cultural icons of postmodernity. Besides the continual
reinforcement of the Islamic simulacrum, Gates’ sympathy towards
Christianity throughout the series offers a stunning contrast to his
depiction of Muslims and the West African cultures he explores in The
Slave Kingdoms. In the United States, where the series aired under a
different title, Wonders of the African World, Gates has been attacked
repeatedly for his uneven leveling of blame on Africans for the slave
trade, with very little attention given to European involvement. While in
Zanzibar, Gates expresses disillusionment with the Anglican attempts at
atonement for slavery. In his discussions with Canon Garda, a Christian
leader in Zanzibar, he only speaks of his inability to forgive the
slavers. He refuses to address any of the ethnic identity conflicts
embedded in Christianity. In The Holy Land, Gates almost performs a total
elision of the Muslim presence in Ethiopia. He states, “after surviving
nearly 2,000 years the Christian kingdom was overthrown in the 1974
Marxist revolution. Today, Ethiopia is secular and is a democracy, with
almost as many Muslims as Christians.” Though the Muslim presence in
Ethiopia dates back fourteen centuries to the time of the prophet
Mohammed, when a Christian Ethopian king offered sanctuary to the early
Muslims who were persecuted in Mecca, this statement suggests that the
arrival of Muslims to the country is relatively recent and insignificant.
He also refers to “Muslim invaders” and to Ethiopia being “protected from
Islamic neighbours by formidable mountain ranges.” While travelling
through the Sudan, Gates comments that “the Nubians were Christians for
1200 years before they became Muslims in the sixteenth century. Some even
took part in the Crusades.” The transcription of this statement does not
capture Gates’ deepened voice at the grave pronunciation of “Muslims”, or
the celebratory way in which he refers to the Crusades. Edward Said
exposes the deepest roots of Orientalism as a paranoia stemming from the
conflict between European Christianity and Islam. Henry Louis Gates
upholds these fundamental elements of Orientalism within an Afrocentric
framework.

The paradoxical nature of Gates’ Afrocentric Orientalism stems from the
very mission of Into Africa, the reclaiming of African history from the
racist framework imposed by European colonialism. Though the series
succeeds in reinventing the image of Africa without some of its
traditional stereotypes, Gates succumbs to the same illness that
afflicted other Africanist movements of the twentieth century. Biodin
Jeyifo suggests that Into Africa engages in the “reconfiguration of
Senghorian negritude”, explaining,

“.every single claim or assertion that can be made about Africa is
premised on the obsessive need to refute the doubts already established
by the Western world about those claims and assertions.this was the
animating spirit, the motive force of Senghorian Negritude: whatever
Africa is, or is not, can be established only with reference to the
doubts and phobias about Africa established in the minds of Africans
themselves and the rest of the world by Western racism and
ethnocentrism.The point of the objections to negritude of course was that
in becoming locked into that dialectic of discourse and counter-discourse
with Western racism and ethnocentrism, negritude gave too much ground to
the West, it allowed Western frames of ideas and discourse to dictate the
terms of discussions of the African past and present, and worst of all,
sometimes negritude even became no more than an inversion or caricature
of Western ideas of what it is to be human or ’civilized.’“ (West Africa
Review, 2000)
V.Y. Mudimbe tracks the rupture in discourses of colonialism and
domination that attempted to define Africa on its own terms. (Mudimbe,
1988) African scholars who attempted the counter-discourse with the West
often found themselves in an uncomfortable intermediate position between
Western academic systems and their respective African cultures. The use
of Western thought and languages by African scholars still remains a
difficult issue for the self-representation of Africa within global
contexts. Gates comes from a very traditional Western academic background
(Yale, Cambridge, Harvard) and he maintains its general structures with
the exception of its generally demeaning depiction of Africa. Gates
continually makes comparisons between Africa and Europe through the six
episodes of Into Africa, as if the two regions are distinct poles of a
radical dichotomy which he intends to equalise. In Getti, he shows that
the Swahili possessed toilets which rival those he has seen in Europe.
When arriving at the mosque of Djenne, he says, “it looks like something
from outer space, but for me, it’s as sublime as the cathedral at Notre-
Dame.” The latter statement confirms not only the positioning of Africa
and Europe as dichotomous opposites, but also the cultural distance from
which Henry Louis Gates views Muslim West Africa. Gates appropriates
every culture, person, and artefact that he encounters for his
reconstituted vision of Africa within a Eurocentric definition of
civilization.

Conclusion

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. allows the anti-Islamic structures of Orientalist
academia and postmodern media to rest unchallenged in his documentary of
Africa. During his voyage, he often resembles the very European
travelling scholars whose legacy he wishes to dispel. He presents Islamic
Africa as a monolithic mass with a confused self-identity. He ignores the
deep variations and practices of African Muslims and their relationship
to a global Islamic civilization. Though Into Africa may help resuscitate
the self-image and historical pride of people scattered throughout the
African diaspora, it also suggests that Islam stands as a threat to any
healthy reconstituted image of Africa or an African future. However, from
E.W. Blyden, to Franz Fanon, to Kwame Nkrumah, Islam has always been
considered a necessary partner in the development of pan-African unity
and liberation. In addition, Islam has played a major role in
African-American history, from the Muslim slaves who made up an estimated
ten percent of all those who were brutally imported to America, to the
steady rise of converts among black Americans in the twentieth century.
(Gardell, 1996, p. 32, 214-215) These elisions reduce the potency of Into
Africa as a treatise against the Eurocentric positions. Instead, the
series adds another marginal discourse to the vilification of Islam,
enhancing the power of the postmodern simulacrum to retrofit Western
imperialism.


Bibliography

Abdullahi Osman El-Tom, “Drinking the Koran: The Meaning of Koranic
Verses in Berti Erasure,” in Peel, J.D.Y. and Stewart, C.C. (eds.),
Popular Islam South of the Sahara, Manchester University Press, 1985

Ahmed, Akbar S., Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise,
Routledge, London, 1992

Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan
Press, Ann Arbor, 1994

Gardell, Mattias, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the
Nation of Islam, Duke University Press, Durham, 1996

Harrow, Kenneth W. (eds.) Faces of Islam in African Literature, James
Currey Ltd., London, 1991

Lewis, Bernard, “The Crows of the Arabs,” in Gates Jr., Henry Louis
(ed.), “Race,” Writing, and Difference, University of Chicago Press,
London, 1986

Mudimbe, V.Y., The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order
of Knowledge, James Currey, London, 1988

Said, Edward W., Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Penguin
Books, London, 1978.

_________ Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We
See the Rest of the World, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1981

Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Influence of Islam Upon Africa, Longmans,
Green, and Co Ltd, London 1968

Filmography
Into Africa with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., BBC, 1999

Webography
Official BBC Into Africa website, including transcripts of the six
episodes. www.bbc.co.uk/educati on/history/africa/africa.shtml

Official PBS Wonders of the African World website. www.pbs.org/wonders

West Africa Review, 1:2, January, 2000 Special Issue Dedicated to Wonders
of the African World. www.westafricareview.com/war/vol1.2/index1.2.htm

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