This study is a contribution to the social, political and intellectual history of one of the largest colonial states in Africa – the Federation of French West Africa (AOF). The Federation grouped together the present-day states of Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. Between them they straddle all the major bands of climate and vegetation that are to be found in West Africa, and the indigenous population is correspondingly varied. Yet this vast and varied area was treated for over fifty years (1904–56) as a single administrative unit presided over by an alien government based in the Federation's capital in Dakar. Muslims were to be found in all the colonies of the group – though the proportions varied from the exclusively Muslim society of Mauritania to the mainly animist and Christian societies of the southern coastal colonies of Dahomey and Ivory Coast. By examining French attitudes and policies towards Islam, it is possible to gain insight into both the political nature and the ideological underpinning of the colonial state of AOF.

A study of French relations with Islam can, it must be said, make little claim to originality. Scarcely had Africa been partitioned before French ‘experts’ were sent to investigate and report on Islam. By 1915 two doctoral dissertations on the subject had been submitted to French universities.