Africa’s diverse cultures:



GPS: Africa’s diverse cultures: Explain the differences between an ethnic group and a religious group.

Explain the diversity of religions among Africa’s ethnic groups: Arab, Ashanti, Bantu, and Swahili

Assignment: Design a four-column chart titled “Africa’s Ethnic Groups and Their Religions.”

GPS: Africa’s diverse cultures: Explain the differences between an ethnic group and a religious group and explain the diversity of religions in Africa.

Name: _____________________________________________________ Date: ______________________

|TOPIC |ARAB |ASHANTI |BANTU |SWAHILI |

|FOUND IN WHAT | | | | |

|REGION/COUNTRY (IES) | | | | |

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|PREDOMINANT RELIGION | | | | |

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|OTHER RELIGIONS | | | | |

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|RELIGIOUS/OTHER ATTIRE(S)| | | | |

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|BELIEF SYSTEM(S) | | | | |

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|OTHER | | | | |

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ARAB: The term Arab originally meant a member of the Semitic race of people of the Arabian Peninsula east of Palestine. They were the nomadic Bedouins of the desert. Today, Arabs live throughout the world, including parts or all of Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Some Arabs hold Israeli citizenship. (Note that Iran is not an Arab country. Its roots go back to ancient Persia, with a totally different history and culture.) Although not all Arabs speak Arabic, the language is one of the great unifying and distinguishing characteristics of the people, even though dialects differ from place to place.

It is a common misconception that Islam is a unifying force in the Arab world. Not all Arab traditions are Islamic, and Islam does not unite Arabs. Muhammad once commented, "The desert Arabians are most confirmed in unbelief and hypocrisy." There are more Muslims in Indonesia alone than in all Arab countries combined. Some thirty million Chinese are Muslim. In many countries, Muslim and Christian Arabs live side by side, although it is true that in most Arab countries, Islam is the predominate religion. In the Middle East it is not uncommon to meet Arab Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Jews all living within a few blocks of each other.

During the time of the Crusades in the Middle Ages, it became the custom of Christians to use the terms "Muslim," "Pagan," "Turk," "Infidel," and "Arab" almost interchangeably. Today, the Western "man on the street" usually thinks "Muslim" when he hears the word "Arab." This misapprehension is the result of mistaking religion for culture.

ASHANTI: The Ashanti live in central Ghana in western Africa approximately 300km. away from the coast. The Ashanti are a major ethnic group of the Akans in Ghana, a fairly new nation, barely more than 50 years old. Ghana, previously the Gold Coast, was a British colony until 1957. It is now politically separated into four main parts. Ashanti is in the center and Kumasi is the capital.

The Ashanti religion is a mixture of spiritual and supernatural powers. They believe that plants, animals, and trees have souls. They also believe in fairies, witches, and forest monsters. There are a variety of religious beliefs involving ancestors, higher gods, or abosom, and ‘Nyame’, the Supreme Being of Ashanti. The Ashanti also practice many rites for marriage, death, puberty, and birth. The golden stool is sacred to the Ashanti. There is an elaborate legend surrounding it that is told by the old men of Ashanti. The golden stool is very carefully protected. No one has ever sat on it and since its arrival, it has not touched the ground. As an Ashanti symbol, the golden stool represents the worship of ancestors, well-being, and the nation of Ashanti.

BANTU: South of the rain forests, however, in central and western Africa, Bantu religion remained dominant. In the Kalahari desert, the San people retained their own faith, which was very similar to the Bantu faith in its emphasis on ancestor ghosts. The large majority of peoples in central and southern Africa can be classified, on a linguistic basis (use of the ntu root in the word for person), as Bantu; see Ganda, Lovedu, Shona and Zulu religions. While Bantu religion has many diversities, as these different entries show, its most widespread features are the following: a great concern for ancestral spirits, who constitute the principal guardians of morality (so that some would describe its predominant characteristic as ‘ancestralism’), a fear of witchcraft and a belief in one supreme God who, while seldom fairly described as otiose, is hardly ever the recipient of much public worship (see Iruva; Katonda; Leza; Modimo; Mulungu; Nzambi). The extensive sharing of religious beliefs and practices between different Bantu peoples is evidenced not only by the intertribal use of such god-names as Nzambi and Leza, but by the still wider spread of other basic religious terms such as Nganga and Mizimu.

BANTU is now the generally accepted name for those natives of South Africa (the great majority) who are neither Hottentots nor Bushmen-that is to say, mainly, the Zulus, Xosas (Kafirs), Basuto, and Bechuana -to whom may be added the Thongas (Shangaans) of the Delagoa Bay region and the people of Southern Rhodesia, commonly, though incorrectly, called Mashona.

Abantu is the Zulu word for 'people' (in Sesuto batho, and in Herero ovandu) which was adopted by Bleek, at the suggestion of Sir George Grey, as the name for the great family of languages now known to cover practically the whole southern half of Africa. It had already been ascertained, by more than one scholar, that there was a remarkable resemblance between the speech of these South African peoples and that of the Congo natives on the one hand and of the Mozambique natives on the other. It was left for Bleek-who spent the last twenty years of his life at the Cape-to study these languages from a scientific point of view and systematize what was already known about them. His Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, though left unfinished when he died, in 1875, is the foundation of all later work done in this subject.

SWAHILI: The Swahili are a people and culture found on the coast of East Africa, mainly the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya and Tanzania, and north Mozambique. According to JoshuaProject, the Swahili number in at around 1,328,000.[2] The number of Swahili speakers, on the other hand, numbers at around 90 million people. The name Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil, meaning "coastal dwellers", and they speak the Swahili language. Tanzania's official language is Swahili. Thus those who live in this country need not learn an additional language. However, those who live elsewhere in East Africa also speak the official languages of their respective countries: English in Kenya, Portuguese in Mozambique, and French in Comoros. Note that only a small fraction of those who use Swahili are first language speakers and even fewer are ethnic Swahilis. This point is often obscured by the Swahili linguistic tradition in which those who speak the language are often called Swahili (Waswahili) regardless of their actual ethnic origins. In other words, the term 'Swahili' can mean 'those who speak Swahili' or it can mean 'ethnic Swahili people.

The Swahili people are a coastal tribe who have a very rich historical and cultural heritage. Some of the earliest inhabitants of the East African coast were the Cushitic herdsmen. These were then joined by Bantu speaking tribes including the Mijikenda, with whom they freely inter-married. Other people groups later migrated to this coastline including Arab, Hindi, Portuguese, and Indonesian traders. They too intermarried with the indigenous people, giving rise to a new culture, people and language, the Swahili tribe.

With time, groups of the Swahili people spread along the entire East African Coast, forming different cultural variations and dialects of the Swahili language. Today, the Swahili people reside in most of the coastal towns in Kenya and Tanzania, including Mombasa, Malindi, the Indian Ocean islands of Lamu, Pemba, and Zanzibar.

Culture & Religion

The Arabic culture has had the greatest influence in shaping Swahili traditions. One major legacy of this Arab culture is the dominance of Islamic religion among the Swahili people. Islamic traditions govern almost every cultural aspect of the Swahili tribe including food, way of dressing and lifestyle. Swahili children for example, must attend Madrassa, religious classes in which they study the Koran and learn the Arabic language from an early age. Unlike other Kenya tribes, there are no specific rites of passage for young swahili men and women.

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