Islam and Masculinities in Africa

This short chapter seeks to trace out certain patterns of how masculinity has been conceived of among Muslims living in Africa, focusing on positively valued, normative expressions of masculinity that have recurred in different contexts (Miescher 2005; Schulz and Janson 2016). It draws on published literature on Islam in Africa and masculinity in Africa, and on research materials from my own area of expertise, Swahili-speaking East Africa. As many readers will be aware, a discussion of Islamic-influenced masculinities in Africa takes an already-problematic term (masculinity) and combines it with terms (African, Islamic) that add greatly to its complications. Any discussion of masculinity is difficult, since use of the term veers constantly between descriptive or analytic and prescriptive, judgement-laden ones (Tosh 2011). Further, no observer can be neutral towards the values underlying the prescriptive uses. This is even more so since ‘masculinity’ is typically taken as a positive thing in itself (certainly much more clearly so than its antinome, femininity), but has had its positive valuations challenged recently, for instance by feminists critiquing ‘toxic masculinity’ (Flood 2022).