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The Arab Slave Trade and the Diffusion of Islam in Africa, joint with Giulia Buccione (CEMFI) and Kian Williams (LSE) Abstract: This paper investigates the role of the Arab slave trade in the diffusion of Islam in Africa. Islamic law prohibited the enslavement of free Muslims, making conversion a collective strategy to reduce raiding risk. We show that groups with greater exposure to Arab slaving routes exhibit a higher historical and contemporary prevalence of Islam, approximately one additional historical mosque per ethnic territory, and 9-11 percentage points higher Muslim share today, with corresponding decreases in Christian and animist shares consistent with conversion rather than differential population growth. Results are robust to rich geographic and ethnographic controls, neighboring-group fixed effects, and an instrumental variables strategy based on distance to the nearest Arab slave port. We do not find any effect on Muslim adherence when analyzing the Atlantic route, run by Europeans, where conversion offered no legal protection. Three additional patterns support the hypothesis of preventive conversion: effects are driven by early-period exposure (15th-16th centuries), consistent with conversion reducing subsequent raiding; effects are weaker in rugged terrain, where geography provided natural protection against raids and conversion incentives were therefore lower; and even non-raided groups show higher Muslim adherence when their neighbors were exposed, especially where historical cross-boundary mobility was easy. Beyond higher Muslim shares, Muslims in raided groups report stronger religiosity, more conservative gender norms, and lower adherence to traditional African beliefs, consistent with a more complete adoption of Islam required to signal Muslim identity to raiders. We corroborate these findings using folklore narratives and Joshua Project missionary ethnographies. Finally, raided groups display stronger white-bias motifs in their oral traditions, reflecting positive associations with whiteness and Arab identity, consistent with an internalized status hierarchy in which Arab Muslim identity became associated with greater religious prestige and authenticity.

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