Question

Why didn't Islam spread to Africa?

Answer 1

Explanation:

Islam didn’t prosper in Central Africa because Islam was meant for regions with radical geographical inequalities.

That is, Islam is a desert religion… and Central Africa is a wet tropical region without the geographic inequalities of the desertic lands. Islam simply was not needed there.

So, let’s ellaborate: the main argument of the article is that Islam was born as a desert religion in a region characterized for very wealthy and productive “pockets” of arable land located amidst large regions of un-arable desert (this is, radical geographic inequality). This meant that the inhabitants of the poor lands had little incentive to invest in any kind of capital acumulation and, instead, every incentive to raid and take what the rich pockets produced. The resulting equilibrium meant a state of perpetual unstability and conflict between these two parts of the population.

Islam solved this through an economic doctrine of both static and dynamic redistribution. In essence, the “rich” regions were obligated to pay a religious tax given then to the “poor” regions and capital accumulation was prevented. In the words of the authors: