The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (108 page)

 
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(Yoruba, ‘praying people’). The general name for a wide range of prophet-healing independent churches that have developed in W. Nigeria since about 1918, spread as far as the Cameroon and Sierra Leone, and established branches in Britain.

 
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(1838–97 (AH 1254–1314)).
A Muslim modernist and reformer, and strong anti-colonialist. He was born in Iran, but his formative years were spent in Afghanistan. From 1871, he taught in Cairo, but subsequently travelled widely, following political opportunity. Freedom and liberation from foreign rule were to be followed by the establishment of a pan-Islamic state, the union of the Muslim people under one
khal
fa.
Al-Afgh
n
argued that Islam was not incompatible with Western reason or science (he contested, in particular, E. Renan's lecture
‘Islam and Science’
), but as a Muslim rationalist, he repudiated blind faith and conjecture, and instead believed that true happiness sprang from wisdom and clear-sightedness.

 
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al-A
s
’
(Muslim founder of the Shaykh
s)
: