Samuel Huntington's The clash of civilizations (1998) has contributed to the view of Islam as a monolithic entity, in political and cultural opposition to the West, and hostile to western concepts of democracy and human rights. The rise of Islamic terrorist movements and events since September 11, 2001 has reinforced western public opinion's image of Islam as an intolerant religion and Muslims as religious extremists hostile to democracy. The long civil war in Sudan, recent events in Darfur and rioting between Christian and Muslim communities in northern and central Nigeria have extended the image of Muslim intolerance to sub-Saharan Africa. The reality is quite different. First of all, one finds a wide diversity and range of manifestations of political behavior and relationships to the state carried out in the name of Islam in Africa. Historically, African Islam has been generally tolerant of traditional African religious customs, non-Islamic political regimes, and the establishment of Christianity in non-Muslim territories under colonial rule. In sub-Saharan Africa, clerics and Muslim traders propagated the faith peacefully. The jihads of the 18th and 19th centuries in West Africa and the Sudan were exceptions to this rule.

Much of the literature concerning Islam in Africa looks at what has been called African Islam (for instance, Sufism and the Sufi brotherhoods) and Islam in Africa (for instance, the rise of political Islam/Islamism), and the interaction between these different forms of Islam.

African Islam has frequently been described as culturally and religiously flexible and tolerant towards diverse tendencies within Islam. In Senegal, Mali, and Tanzania, the Sufi brotherhoods have demonstrated a high degree of tolerance towards other religions and contributed to maintaining social peace and building the foundation for a more democratic culture in those countries.

Political Islam and Islamism as concepts refer to Islam primarily as political ideology rather than a religious or theological construct. Their adherents use Islam as an instrument for pursuing political objectives that provide political responses to societal challenges by reappropriating concepts based on Islamic traditions. Political Islamism and Islamism are more recent phenomena and have been considered to be part of reformist and modernizing movements within Islam that place greater emphasis on Islamic law (Shari’a) and returning to the purity of the earliest forms of Islam.