Limamou Laye, an Islamic leader from present-day Senegal, has proclaimed himself the reincarnation of Muhammad, with his son later proclaiming himself to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Limamou Laye established a tariqa, or Sufi organization, based upon his claims and the miracles attributed to him. This study analyzes Limamou Laye's goals for his community, his theology; as well as the various elements --- both local and global - that created him and helped him to emerge as a religious leader of significance. This book also explores how the growth of Islamic communities in Senegambia stems from an evolving conflict between the traditional governments and the emerging Islamic communities. Douglas H. Thomas demonstrates that Sufism was the obvious vehicle for the growth of Islam among West Africans, striking a chord with indigenous cultures through an engagement with the spirit world which pre-Islamic Senegambian religions were primarily concerned with.

ELSIE is a riveting story told with gut-wrenching reality of a woman's courage set against a torrid period in South African and world history. Growing up in a small diamond-mining village near Pretoria, South Africa, her secure, sheltered environment is shaken with the return of the two men in her life from fighting in German East Africa during the first World War ...a changed shell-shocked boyfriend who commits suicide and an unemployed brother who becomes involved in illicit diamond dealing with dire consequences. Rather than indulge in self-pity she puts her strong pacifist feelings to work by volunteering as a nurse at a military field hospital in Belgium where she meets her husband to be and where exposure to the horrors and futility of industrial warfare changes her worldview and she joins with other women calling for universal suffrage. After the war she is thrown into further conflict when her husband is involved in the bloody confrontations of the 1922 miners' strike in South Africa and she opens a care centre for abused women and single pregnant mothers, giving them protection and hope of a better future.