Editorial

Mazrui: Man, Mission, Movement

In the checkered history of Africology, from early colonial endeavors
to the brave new world of postcolonialist dissections, few scholars
elicited the excitement and adoration that Professor Ali Al-Amin Mazrui
(1933-2014) did. On the very continent that he studied so intensely, li-
braries, educational centers, and roads have been named for him posthu-
mously in recognition of his manifold contributions. And yet, although
rare by the standards of academic aloofness, the adulation of his de-
fenders was matched by the abrasive disdain and aberrant hostility of
his detractors, some of whom were undoubtedly driven by intellectual
or political opposition to his underlying project of reviving non-western
consciousness during an era so marked by the supposed universalism
of western finance, culture, and militarism. 

To be certain, though, Mazrui was not fazed by such criticism or
challenge; instead, it would appear that he rather thrived on controversy,
relishing each emergent opportunity to provide correctives to the re-
ceived wisdom. Indeed, when writing, Mazrui was often schooling.  His
deliberately provocative pronouncements, in prose and speech, would
question and rattle, but always make, in demonstrative (rather than di-
dactic) terms, poignant points about errors perceptual and praxeologi-
cal. In so doing, Mazrui – clearly inspired by the finesse of his Oxford
doctoral training – was not shy to adopt riveting rhetorical devices:
irony, hyperbole, and simile abounded. Such devices, however, did not
obscure the structured ways, even if implicit, through which his analysis
unfolded. When he took the time, he would reason as well as argue in
clear schemata by employing binaries, triads, dichotomies, and juxta-
positions. His eye for detail was as pronounced as his mastery of his-
tory: microhistory could give way to longue durée in a paragraph, the
local and the global would intertwine, and the ideational and the mate-
rial would interact dialectically. 



A comparativist par excellence, Mazrui would leap from case to
point and vice versa, often in such passionate pursuit of an overarching
argument that pauses for clarifications, problematizations, definitions,
and disclaimers would amount to mere obstacles on the rhetorical race-
course. Stylistically and in terms of ratiocination, he was indeed an
enemy of commas. 

To bracket Mazrui, in terms of epistemology, as either
Durkheimian, Weberian, or Hegelian is probably not pertinent to any
attempt to understand his method. Not only was Mazrui a non-con-
formist, he was an iconoclast and thus unbound by precedent or con-
vention. This was true both in regards to western epistemic techniques
and in relation to the Islamicate traditions, where he also did not see
ijmā‘ (scholastic consensus) as necessarily binding for posterior schol-
arship. Although cognizant of methodological interparadigm debates in
the North American social sciences, as well as in western literature and
in global area studies, Mazrui sought subscriber status to no established
methodological school. Presumably, the deep-seated intramural sectar-
ianism among adherents to rival meta-theories would, to Mazrui, be a
distraction rather than a condition of practice, even as for him the li-
brary was a second home and critique a life-long vocation.

Within the purview of the Islamic sciences, in which the late Mazrui
took a keener interest, the insistent lack of subscription to a canon and
established precedent could not elicit the same gravitas as when exer-
cised within those fields in which he had been trained. His father, the
shaykh or mwalimu al-Amin bin Ali Mazrui (1891-1947) had, of course,
initially hoped that his son would be able to add the honorific al-Azhari
to his name, but the educational path of this scion of the Mazrui family
took him to western seats of learning instead. Thus Mazrui did not have
the opportunity to seek or obtain advanced accreditations (ijāza) in the
classical sciences. In the end, therefore, Mazruian ijtihād was strictly
opinion (ra’y) only, rather than a rigorous engagement with the text or
the interpretative tools of the fuqahā’. One could reasonably assume
that public benefit (maṣlaḥah) would be Mazrui’s guiding concern, al-
though he never pretended to be constrained by the deductive principles
of the ancestors. Nevertheless, the point remains that the professor’s
eclecticism and originality were persistent across disciplinary divides,
even in areas that were outside the remit of his original expertise. His
ideas did not amount to a “school,” but they did provide for an “ap-

vi The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



proach” that was meticulously anchored in incessant interrogation and
critical rethinking. 

Unaffiliated with novel epistemological trends in the discipline of
international relations (IR), as well as in the emergent fields of post-
colonial and subaltern studies, Mazrui thus avoided the jargon in order
to speak to the concerns. He was motivated, indeed moved, by the big
questions of the day: colonialism, racialism, sexism, deprivation, civi-
lization, coexistence, and security. He was concerned with the individ-
ual, the community, the nation, the tribe, gender, and humanity at large,
but, in a departure from the dominant political science approach of the
global Cold War, his motif was never the preservation or imposition of
order. He understood, I suspect, order to be hegemonic and against the
creative flow of history itself. Hence, uproar and “shaking up” were
manifestations of progress (or simply social life), whereas imposed in-
ertia and structured stagnation were anomalous and elite-serving. To
Mazrui, the systemic preoccupations of positivist political science and
“realist” IR – often predicated on law-like regularities, immutable con-
stants, and persistent universals – were both unhelpful and counterin-
tuitive: human beings were not mechanical entities but living, sentient,
and also sometimes irrational actors. The analyst’s job was not to im-
pose situational or ideational constrains on social forces or to serve
those who attempted to do so, but to raise awareness of intellectual and
institutional biases. 

None of this is to say that Mazrui was uninterested in drawing uni-
versal lessons and, deeper still, devoted no time to the generic – over
genetic – complexity of the human condition. Amid the mountains of
pages, even if unexplicated, the persistent ethico-moral edifice of his
work remained pluralism: that human beings were continuously shaped
by, and allowed themselves to continue to be shaped by, a plurality of
social, cultural, and ideological thought complexes. To sterilize plurality
was not only unnatural but, as sterilization goes, unfertile. Mazrui’s an-
imosity to western power projection was thus strategic only: It was not
a negation of liberal norms or Enlightenment values, but rather a demur
to the naked, or even embellished, aggression carried out in the name
of those norms. Orientalism, whether in ivory towers or on Capitol Hill,
was erroneous not because it took ideas seriously, but because of the
exclusionary and impositionist aims to which it subjected those ideas.
Of course, Orientalism was errant also in its irretrievable linearity, in

Editorial vii



its assumption that actions follow maxims absent contexts. In this sense,
Mazrui was preoccupied with culture but was no culturalist, for culture
was neither self-referential nor, in the academic vernacular, an inde-
pendent variable. 

In the course of his octogenarian lifespan, Mazrui shook the foun-
dations of African studies, while making important contributions to po-
litical science and Islamic studies. A figure so imposing, yet so humble,
Mazrui began as an intellectual and ended as an institution. 

This Issue
The present issue constitutes what the Germans call a Gedenkscrift: an
anthology, crafted in gratitude, in memoriam of a recently departed
figure of authority, in this case Professor Ali Mazrui. Leaving behind
an extraordinarily rich and diverse legacy, he engaged with a plethora
of themes, methods, and formats, some of which are discussed in this
thematic issue. The majority of papers derive from a seminar in his
honor of hosted by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
in October 2015, coinciding with Mazrui’s first death anniversary. The
seminar brought together scholars from Africa, Europe, North America,
and the Middle East to reflect on the life and legacy of this towering
figure. 

This issue opens with a revised version of the keynote address, de-
livered by Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, entitled “Ali Mazrui: Beacon
at the Intersection of Islam and Africa.” Possibly Mazrui would, with a
twinkle in his eye, demur at the idea of this proposed “intersection,”
for Islam, as opposed to Africa, is not cartographically defined. Indeed,
the purport of the “triple heritage” is that Africa is itself only with ref-
erence to Islam. But this is, perhaps, a mere academic indulgence, for
Mazrui’s legacy is certainly more complex. In his testimony to Mazrui’s
motivational impact on the post-Apartheid political constellation in
South Africa, Rasool depicts Mazrui as a tireless agent for change,
somebody who embodied the possibility of combining progress, plural-
ism, and ethnic pride. Rasool’s reflections at once capture the erudition
of an intellect pierced by monism – resisting any ephemeral fascination
with postmodern anti-foundationalism – and the principled and com-
passionate striving of a man not content with mere accolades. Until his
last breath, Mazrui was a man on a mission, a scholar who could be nei-
ther bought nor bullied.

viii The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



In a second piece of reflective writing, Seifudein Adem’s brief med-
itation on the life and works of Mazrui provides an insightful discussion
of a scholar who was not only the academic equivalent to an agent
provocateur, but also a bridge builder. He sought to condemn western
transgressions only to rectify western consciousness (much akin to the
peace-building method of “truth and reconciliation”). Adem, a long-
standing colleague of Mazrui, suggests that Mazrui would self-con-
sciously seek to synthesize in his works activism and academia, western
scholarly credentials with an eastern heritage, and a positivist method
with normative commitments. In all of these ways, and more, Mazrui
was indeed a “master synthesizer.” 

In the first research paper of this thematic issue, Muhammad Haron
painstakingly charts Mazrui’s awe-inspiring publishing career in a bib-
liometric study of Mazrui’s scholarship (colloquially known as
Mazruiana). The total output spans over half a century (1963-2014) and
amounts to a staggering figure in excess of 500 items – journal articles,
book chapters, monographs, and edited volumes – a feat that is probably
unparalleled  in western humanities and social sciences. Haron demon-
strates not only the exceptional productivity of Mazrui and his incom-
mensurable contribution to knowledge, but also, by means of citation
statistics, suggests the continued impact of this scholarship upon later
generations of Africanists. Indeed, since the last two decades of the pre-
vious millennium, any young scholar of Africa could agree or disagree
with Mazrui, but none of them could ignore him. 

Although Mazrui was published in the most prestigious journals of
his field even in the emergent phase of his decades-long career, a cur-
sory view interestingly suggests that over time he became rather un-
concerned with the rank of the publication house, the seniority of the
editorial boards, and the circulation and citation figures. It is possible
that Mazrui saw in the increasingly interventionist peer-review
processes an obstruction to expeditious production: his turbo-driven
creative flow allowed for no month-long negotiations of revisions in
the face of often fairly conservative editorial practices. It also appears
to me that he may have seen in the hyper-selectivist publication houses
of Oxbridge and research-intensive universities in North America (R1s),
an elitist and exclusionary circle of constraint in relation to the produc-
tion and circulation of knowledge beyond institutional boundaries. In
this sense, Mazrui’s utilitarian and globalist inclusivism went hand in
hand with his passion-filled productivity.

Editorial ix



In his contribution, Ahmed Ali Salem, who served as co-editor for
parts of this collection, dissects Mazrui’s transition from the study of
Africa to the study of Islam, primarily qua cultural and political force.
In my reading, Mazrui saw Islam as both particular and universal: It
had an import on identity formation, but not to the exclusion of other
identities, and its impulses were political without necessarily being
politicizing. Mazrui had no patience with the various western secular-
ization theses that invariably linked social progress to the retreat of re-
ligion. Nor did he have patience with the specific ostracism of Islam
from public life, and its depiction as, in western contexts, an alien reli-
gion – demography, theology, and intellectual history notwithstanding.
Of course Mazrui was always adamant about the fallacy of the Lewis-
Huntington “clash-of-civilizations” prism, and yet he simultaneously
posited that while Islam could be liberal (viz., freedom-enhancing), it
should not aim to be moderate (understood as subservient to western
foreign-policy designs). One may detect, therefore, a tension between
Islam as a force of resistance and Islam as (to use a concept that Mazrui
does not invoke) “social capital.” But this tension is, yet again, a creative
one. Nevertheless, Mazrui was one to recognize that there were, in a
tangible sense, “sharp edges” that had to be softened in order to admit
Islam as part of the cultural and political repertoire of contemporary
West-centric civilization. Much of his career was devoted to softening
these edges.

Caitlyn Bolton’s article, “Making Africa Legible: Kiswahili Arabic
and Orthographic Romanization in Colonial Zanzibar,” engages a theme
that was close to Mazrui’s concerns, namely, how orthographic and lin-
guistic practices are not value-neutral, but are instead the consequences
of particular constellations of power. Drawing upon archival material in
English, Arabic, and Swahili from the Zanzibar National Archives, she
shows how European  colonialism quite literally sought to rewrite Africa
by decoupling it from its Arabic heritage. Her case study displays how
Kiswahili’s Arabic letters were forcibly converted into Roman orthogra-
phy by means of the missionaries’ language standardization reforms and
imposition of new orthographic standards in public schools in colonial-
period Zanzibar. This “purification” of Kiswahili from “foreign influences”
and, without any hint of irony, the “improvement” of the “illiterate” na-
tives’ written language sought, by design, to decouple Africa from Islam.
Expressing, perhaps, an attempt to remake Africa, imperial-era ortho-
graphic initiatives came to signify also an estrangement of Africa from

x The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



Editorial xi

itself. The resultant rootlessness and generational anomie is one that
Mazrui not only diagnosed, but also sought to treat.

In a befitting final contribution, entitled “Values and Gender Equal-
ity between Islam and the West: Mazrui’s Struggle for a System of
Universal Values,” Moulay Raschid Mrani offers a tribute to Mazrui’s
efforts to “normalize” Islam in global political ethics. Writing against
the backdrop of increased intercivilizational militancy and the public
equation of Islamic politics with radical violence, Mrani sees in
Mazrui’s distinct approach an attempt to redeem Islamic politics by
anchoring it in a profound engagement with, and revival of, the ethico-
moral compass of religion itself. The author shows that according to
Mazrui, religious injunctions must be understood in the light of un-
derlying religious values and that any tajdīd (revival) must be premised
precisely on such valuational bases. The traditional understanding of
tajdīd, Mazrui lamented, did not distinguish between cultural mores
and scriptural imperatives, an oversight that eventually caused schol-
ars to lose sight of the undergirding as well as axial values that reli-
gion seeks to preserve or enhance. On the other hand, when religion
does become grounded in values over rule-following and actors in the
public domain internalize such values, their adherence to a politics of
ideals will usher in a display of confidence within their civic engage-
ments, even within minority contexts. Thus the normative has prag-
matic effects. 

It should be emphasized, of course, that Mazrui sought no universal
valuational isomorphism but simply, in my words, valuational “ac-
cords” that would effectuate mutual respect, acceptance, and tolerance
among faith traditions. In this reading, the spiritual is thus not anathe-
matic to the political, but rather is integral to it because it allows ad-
versarial participants in any political contest to transcend the calculus
of immediate gains and move beyond the baser desires of revenge and
(dis)empowerment. Nevertheless, in an intellectual move that closes the
possibility of misusing religious identity in politics, Mazrui applauded
secularism for its protective effects. Secularism, when understood as
the spatial and functional division between religious and political in-
stitutions, safeguards religion against its opportunistic corruption at the
hand of power-seeking political entrepreneurs. Secularism, in other
words, is beneficial not only because religion can corrupt politics, but
also because politics can corrupt religion. 



Overall, the present special issue testifies to the extraordinary vol-
ume, breadth, and depth of the scholarship produced by the towering
figure who was Professor Ali Al-Amin Mazrui. His determined chal-
lenge to the presumed teleology and hegemony of western ideas from
Plato to NATO, while refusing to succumb to any inferiority complex
associated with the subaltern, was as original as it was profound. Global
in outlook and gentle in demeanor, his words spoke of liberty, his ac-
tions of dignity, and his dreams of equity. 

Naveed S. Sheikh
School of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy

Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, United Kingdom

xii The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3