Academic literature on the topic 'Islam and politics – Nigeria'

The global spread of Salafism, though it began in the 1960s and 1970s, only started to attract significant attention from scholars and analysts outside of Islamic studies as well as journalists, politicians, and the general public following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Al-Qaeda Central. After the attacks, Salafism—or, as it was pejoratively labeled by its critics inside and outside of the Islamic tradition, “Wahhabism”—was accused of being the ideological basis of all expressions of Sunni militancy from North America and Europe to West and East Africa, the Arab world, and into Asia. According to this narrative, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Za- wahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other Sunni jihadis were merely putting into action the commands of medieval ‘ulama such as Ibn Taymiyya, the eighteenth century Najdi Hanbali Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and modern revolutionary ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam. To eradicate terrorism, you must eliminate or neuter Salafism, say its critics. The reality, of course, is far more complex than this simplistic nar- rative purports. Salafism, though its adherents share the same core set of creedal beliefs and methodological approaches toward the interpretation of the Qur’an and hadith and Sunni legal canon, comes in many forms, from the scholastic and hierarchical Salafism of the ‘ulama in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim majority countries to the decentralized, self-described Salafi groups in Europe and North America who cluster around a single char- ismatic preacher who often has limited formal religious education. What unifies these different expressions of Salafism is a core canon of religious and legal texts and set of scholars who are widely respected and referenced in Salafi circles. Thurston grounds his fieldwork and text-based analysis of Salafism in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and home to one of the world’s largest single Muslim national populations, through the lens of this canon, which he defines as a “communally negotiated set of texts that is governed by rules of interpretation and appropriation” (1). He argues fur- ther that in the history of Nigerian Salafism, one can trace the major stages that the global Salafi movement has navigated as it spread from the Arab Middle East to what are erroneously often seen as “peripheral” areas of the Islamic world, Africa and parts of Asia. The book is based on extensive fieldwork in Nigeria including interviews with key Nigerian Salafi scholars and other leading figures as well as a wide range of textual primary sourc- es including British and Nigerian archival documents, international and national news media reports, leaked US embassy cables, and a significant number of religious lectures and sermons and writings by Nigerian Salafis in Arabic and Hausa. In Chapter One, Thurston argues that the Salafi canon gives individ- ual and groups of Salafis a sense of identity and membership in a unique and, to them, superior religious community that is linked closely to their understanding and reading of sacred history and the revered figures of the Prophet Muhammad and the Ṣaḥāba. Salafism as an intellectual current, theology, and methodological approach is transmitted through this can- on which serves not only as a vehicle for proselytization but also a rule- book through which the boundaries of what is and is not “Salafism” are determined by its adherents and leading authorities. The book’s analytical framework and approach toward understanding Salafism, which rests on seeing it as a textual tradition, runs counter to the popular but problematic tendency in much of the existing discussion and even scholarly literature on Salafism that defines it as a literalist, one-dimensional, and puritani- cal creed with a singular focus on the Qur’an and hadith canon. Salafis, Thurston argues, do not simply derive religious and legal rulings in linear fashion from the Qur’an and Prophetic Sunna but rather engage in a co- herent and uniform process of aligning today’s Salafi community with a set of normative practices and beliefs laid out by key Salafi scholars from the recent past. Thurston divides the emergence of a distinct “Salafi” current within Sunnis into two phases. The first stretches from 1880 to 1950, as Sun- ni scholars from around the Muslim-majority world whose approaches shared a common hadith-centered methodology came into closer contact. The second is from the 1960s through the present, as key Salafi institutions (such as the Islamic University of Medina and other Saudi Salafi bodies) were founded and began attracting and (perhaps most importantly) fund- ing and sponsoring Sunni students from countries such as Nigeria to come study in Saudi Arabia, where they were deeply embedded in the Salafi tra- dition before returning to their home countries where, in turn, they spread Salafism among local Muslims. Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, as with other regions such as Yemen’s northern Sa‘ada governorate, proved to be a fertile ground for Salafism in large part because it enabled local Muslims from more humble social backgrounds to challenge the longtime domi- nance of hereditary ruling families and the established religious class. In northern Nigeria the latter was and continues to be dominated by Sufi or- ders and their shaykhs whose long-running claim to communal leadership faced new and substantive theological and resource challenges following the return of Nigerian seminary students from Saudi Arabia’s Salafi scho- lastic institutions in the 1990s and early 2000s. In Chapters Two and Three, Thurston traces the history of Nigerian and other African students in Saudi Arabia, which significantly expanded following the 1961 founding of the Islamic University of Medina (which remains the preeminent Salafi seminary and university in the world) and after active outreach across the Sunni Muslim world by the Saudi govern- ment and Salafi religious elite to attract students through lucrative funding and scholarship packages. The process of developing an African Salafism was not one-dimensional or imposed from the top-down by Saudi Salafi elites, but instead saw Nigerian and other African Salafi students partici- pate actively in shaping and theorizing Salafi da‘wa that took into account the specifics of each African country and Islamic religious and social envi- ronment. In Nigeria and other parts of West and East Africa, this included considering the historically dominant position of Sufi orders and popular practices such as devotion to saints and grave and shrine visitation. African and Saudi Salafis also forged relationships with local African partners, in- cluding powerful political figures such as Ahmadu Bello and his religious adviser Abubakar Gumi, by attracting them with the benefits of establishing ties with wealthy international Islamic organizations founded and backed by the Saudi state, including the Muslim World League. Nigerian Salafis returning from their studies in Saudi Arabia actively promoted their Salafi canon among local Muslims, waging an aggressive proselytization campaign that sought to chip away at the dominance of traditional political and religious elites, the Sufi shaykhs. This process is covered in Chapter Four. Drawing on key sets of legal and exegetical writ- ings by Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and other Salafi scholars, Nigerian Salafis sought to introduce a framework—represented by the canon—through which their students and adherents approach re- ligious interpretation and practice. By mastering one’s understanding and ability to correctly interpret scripture and the hadith, Salafis believe, one will also live a more ethical life based on a core set of “Salafi” principles that govern not only religious but also political, social, and economic life. Salaf- ism, Thurston argues, drawing on the work of Terje Østebø on Ethiopian Salafism, becomes localized within a specific environment.As part of their da‘wa campaigns, Nigerian Salafis have utilized media and new technology to debate their rivals and critics as well as to broad- en their own influence over Nigerian Muslims and national society more broadly, actions analyzed in Chapter Five. Using the Internet, video and audio recorded sermons and religious lectures, books and pamphlets, and oral proselytization and preaching, Nigerian Salafis, like other Muslim ac- tivists and groups, see in media and technology an extension of the phys- ical infrastructure provided by institutions such as mosques and religious schools. This media/cyber infrastructure is as, if not increasingly more, valuable as the control of physical space because it allows for the rapid spread of ideas beyond what would have historically been possible for local religious preachers and missionaries. Instead of preaching political revo- lution, Nigerian Salafi activists sought to win greater access to the media including radio airtime because they believed this would ultimately lead to the triumph of their religious message despite the power of skeptical to downright hostile local audiences among the Sufi orders and non-Salafis dedicated to the Maliki juridical canon.In the realm of politics, the subject of Chapter Six, Nigeria’s Salafis base their political ideology on the core tenets of the Salafi creed and canon, tenets which cast Salafism as being not only the purest but the only true version of Islam, and require of Salafis to establish moral reform of a way- ward Muslim society. Salafi scholars seek to bring about social, political, and religious reform, which collectively represent a “return” to the Prophet Muhammad’s Islam, by speaking truth to power and advising and repri- manding, as necessary, Muslim political rulers. In navigating the multi-po- lar and complex realm of national and regional politics, Thurston argues, Nigerian Salafi scholars educated in Saudi Arabia unwittingly opened the door to cruder and more extreme, militant voices of figures lacking the same level of study of the Salafi canon or Sunni Islam generally. The most infamous of the latter is “Boko Haram,” the jihadi-insurgent group today based around Lake Chad in Nigeria, Chad, and Niger, which calls itself Jama‘at Ahl al-Sunna li-l-Da‘wa wa-l-Jihad and is led by the bombastic Abubakar Shekau. Boko Haram, under the leadership first of the revivalist preacher Mu- hammad Yusuf and then Shekau, is covered at length in the book’s third and final part, which is composed of two chapters. Yusuf, unlike mainstream Nigerian Salafis, sought to weaponize the Salafi canon against the state in- stead of using it as a tool to bring about desired reforms. Drawing on the writings of influential Arab jihadi ideologues including Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and the apocalyptic revolutionary Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the lat- ter of whom participated in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Yusuf cited key Salafi concepts such as al-walā’ min al-mu’minīn wa-l-bara’ ‘an al-kāfirīn (loyalty to the Believers and disavowal of the Disbelievers) and beliefs about absolute monotheism (tawḥīd) as the basis of his revival- ist preaching. Based on these principle, he claimed, Muslims must not only fulfill their ritual duties such as prayer and fasting during Ramadan but also actively fight “unbelief” (kufr) and “apostasy” (ridda) and bring about God’s rule on earth, following the correct path of the community of the Prophet Abraham (Millat Ibrāhīm) referenced in multiple Qur’anic verses and outlined as a theological project for action by al-Maqdisi in a lengthy book of that name that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Sunni jihadism. Instead of seeing Boko Haram, particularly under Shekau’s leadership, as a “Salafi” or “jihadi-Salafi” group, Thurston argues it is a case study of how a group that at one point in its history adhered to Salafism can move away from and beyond it. In the case of Shekau and his “post-Salafism,” he writes, the group, like Islamic State, has shifted away from the Salafi canon and toward a jihadism that uses only stripped-down elements from the canon and does so solely to propagate a militaristic form of jihad. Even when referencing historical religious authorities such as Ibn Taymiyya, Thurston points out, Boko Haram and Islamic State leaders and members often do so through the lens of modern Sunni jihadi ideologues like Juhay- man al-‘Utaybi, al-Maqdisi, and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, figures who have come to form a Sunni jihadi canon of texts, intellectuals, and ideologues. Shekau, in short, has given up canonical Salafism and moved toward a more bombastic and scholastically more heterodox and less-Salafi-than- jihadi creed of political violence. Thurston also pushes back against the often crude stereotyping of Af- rican Islamic traditions and movements that sees African Muslims as being defined by their “syncretic” mix of traditional African religious traditions and “orthodox” Islam, the latter usually a stand-in for “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” Islam. Islam and Islamic movements in Africa have developed in social and political environments that are not mirrors to the dominant models of the Arab world (in particular, Egypt). He convincingly points out that analysis of all forms of African Islamic social and political mobi- lization through a Middle East and Egypt-heavy lens obscures much more than it elucidates. The book includes useful glossaries of key individuals and Arabic terms referenced in the text as well as a translation of a sermon by the late, revered Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani that is part of the mainstream Salafi canon. Extensive in its coverage of the his- tory, evolution, and sociopolitical and religious development of Salafism in Nigeria as well as the key role played by Saudi Salafi universities and religious institutions and quasi-state NGOs, the book expands the schol- arly literature on Salafism, Islam in Africa, and political Islam and Islamic social movements. It also contributing to ongoing debates and discussions on approaches to the study of the role of texts and textual traditions in the formation of individual and communal religious identity. Christopher AnzaloneResearch Fellow, International Security ProgramBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University& PhD candidate, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

<p>Throughout the political history of Islam, women played significant political roles in the affairs of muslim states. This, however, has not been the situation in Nigeria where muslim women are skeptical about their involvement in politics, seeing it as an exclusively male domain. This has been so probably because of the voice of ulama against women’s participation in politics or the general belief that politics is a dirty game which is not meant for women. The big question then is why do Nigerian ulama resist women’s involvement in politics? Further, would muslims not stand the risk of losing their political potentiality should they remain indifferent to political participation by women? And, how do female muslim elites who have a flair for politics feel about their lack of political voice: would this not affect their spiritual or religious interests in the long run? This paper explores Islamic political history for the purpose of discovering the extent of muslim women’s involvement in politics, and the reasons for the non-involvement of muslim women in the nation’s politics from the viewpoint of the traditional ulama in the country. <br />[Sepanjang sejarah Islam, wanita memainkan peran penting dalam politik di banyak negara muslim. Namun, hal ini tidak terjadi di Nigeria, karena wanitanya ragu terhadap peran mereka di kancah politik yang memang didominasi oleh para lelaki. Ini terjadi karena ulama menentang keterlibatan wanita di politik serta pandangan bahwa politik itu kotor dan tidak sesuai untuk wanita. Pertanyaannya kenapa para ulama menentang wanita berpolitik? Lalu, apakah mereka tidak rugi secara politis jika tidak peduli dengan partisipasi wanita? Bagaimana juga para wanita muslim itu tidak merasa kurang bersuara dalam politik: apakah ini tidak mempengaruhi spiritualitas dan kepentingan jangka panjang? Paper ini meneliti sejarah politik Islam terkait dengan peran wanita di politik, juga alasan kenapa mereka tidak terlibat menurut kaum ulama tradisional di Nigeria.]</p>

This paper examines the role of Muslim religious organisations in northern Nigeria as religious interest groups in relation to government decision-making, including their role as ‘superior Muslim influence’ in the introduction and dissemination of Sharia law in 12 northern states in Nigeria. Two of the most prominent Muslim organisations in Nigeria, the J’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI) and Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), are examined in this regard to compare and highlight their lobbying strategies in their attempt to justify claims to representing over 80 million Muslims in Nigeria. This paper suggest that Islam and the support from Muslim organisations were significant influences on government policy-makers involved in the process of adopting Sharia law in the northern states. Overall, this paper concludes that Muslim organisations have superior influence, have significantly marginalised non-Muslims and have focused on Sharia law policy, thus enabling an analysis of the relationship between religion and politics in Nigeria.

This book contains thirteen well-researched case studies on social movements in North Africa, India, the Middle East, and Iran. Each movement differs,as the issues and concerns vary according to area. This diversity is mademanageable by a neat categorization taking into account geography, periodization,and problematics, for example, and by the editors' clear explanation,in the first part of the book, of how the articles are arranged. In the second partare articles by Von Sivers, Clancy-Smith, Colonna, and Voll. Each authoranalyzes resistance and millenarian movements in precolonial (i.e., nineteenthandearly twentieth-century) North Africa. Part three, with articles by Frietag,Gilmartin and Swdenburg, deals with more contemporary issues, such asIslam and nationalism in India and Palestine. Part four discusses labor movements in Egypt and northern Nigeria (Beinin, Goldberg, Lubeck), while partfive looks at the Iranian revolution and the mles of Imam Khomeini and AliShari'ati in defining and inspiring it (Algar, Abrahamian, Keddie).One of the main issues that must be addressed when dealing with socialmovements in Islamic societies is whether they are really "Islamic" or whetherthey just happen to be taking place in Muslim Societies. Lapidus, in his introductoryessay, brings out the main issues when he says that the movements arestudied "in order to explore their self-conception and symbols, the econofnicand political conditions under which they developed, and their relation toagrarian and capitalist economic structum and to established state regimes andelites" (p. 3). The authors look at social, structural, and ideological featureswithout giving exclusive primacy to one or the other. Burke stresses this point.In his article, he discusses methodological issues and places the studies in thecontext of contemporary modes of analyses such as the "new cultural" and the"new social history" methods inspired by E. P. Thompson and others. Thisessay is an invaluable introduction to the case studies. Placing the movementsin the context of changes occurring in the Islamic world as well as in the contextof wider political and social events, the essay allows one to make comparisonsacmss the different areas covered in terms of popular culture, patternsof collective action, the problem of Islam and secularism, and other aspects.The articles range from the role of Islamic symbols (i.e., the mosque inIndia) in articulating new political organizations designed to deal with the ...

Abstract:The recent (2000) reenactment of the Shari'a legal code in twelve states of Northern Nigeria and the other expressions of Islam in public affairs in the region have been preceded by a long history that should also be understood as determined by the social and political conditions of specific stages in the evolution of the Nigerian social formation. This article attempts to explain Islamism in the region through such factors as Islamic identity for many Muslims, the competition over interpretation and representation of Islam, the nature of the Nigerian state and society, Muslim organizations and leadership, as well as the activities of other religious organizations (especially Christian evangelicals). In this regard, Islamism is driven essentially by internal (Nigerian) forces, even though external forces may have had an effect. The article argues that while Islamism poses major challenges to the Nigerian state and society, it has also exposed itself to challenges from both Muslims and Nigerian society as a whole.

Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has grappled with the ominous challenge of building a sustainable bridge between its ever increasing populations divided not only along distinct multi-ethnic groups but also between two major diametrically opposed faiths [in content, structure, and tactics]- Christianity and Islam. The study was exploratory in nature, which adopted descriptive adequacy in articulating and examining the underlying alternatives factors that propel national politics and religious violence in Nigeria, thus producing a more comprehensive and total picture of the dynamics of the phenomena under investigation- the understanding of religious violence in Nigeria with minimum distortion. Furthermore, the study adopted a survey method based on the perception of Government officials and Religious leaders regarding religious violence, with a corresponding sample size of 100. The study found that the seeming overwhelming implications of persistent religious violence for Nigeria are three folds; they include; sustained threat to national peace, unity, and security, undermines national political/economic development, as well as socio-cultural and religious harmony and cooperation. In addition, the study found that the present state of religious violence in Nigeria exacerbates bitterness, hatred, and mistrust among the federating units of Nigeria resulting to violent reactions and heightened intra-ethnic and religious clashes, with a volcanic potential to explode into secession by aggrieved groups, internecine civil war, pogroms and/or jihads. Finally, the study recommended that the Nigerian civil society must step up organized and peaceful agitations for fundamental changes in the structure and character of the Nigeria state through a Sovereign National Conference or credible constitution review effort. Also, the Nigerian government and the international community must seize the opportunity of current fragile peace in Nigeria, to implement a number of credible measures aimed at preventing a recurrence of widespread religious conflicts threatening to spill over to a civil war.

The kidnapping of the Chibok girls by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria generated widespread national and international attention, but a year later that attention has faded and the girls’s fate remains unknown. This essay is an effort to analyze and explain what happened, both to the initial global and Nigerian outrage about the Chibok girls and with regard to Boko Haram more generally. I focus on four issues: 1) the initial outburst of attention after the girls’ abduction—both in Nigeria and globally—and its subsequent waning; 2) what we can learn from the intersecting narratives about gender and Islam that dominated global discourse after the abductions; 3) how to understand the politics around Boko Haram within Nigeria, and particularly the failure of the Nigerian government to rescue the girls or reign in the militant group; and 4) what events so far suggest might happen going forward.

Until the second half of the twentieth century, the role of religion in Africa was profoundly neglected. There were no university centers devoted to the study of religion in Africa; there was only a handful of scholars who focused primarily on religious studies and most of them were not historians; and there were relatively few serious empirical studies on Christianity, Islam, and African traditional religions. This paucity of rigorous research began to be remedied in the 1960s and by the last decade of the twentieth century, the body of literature on religion in Africa had expanded significantly. The burgeoning research and serious coverage of the role of religion in African societies has initially drawn great impetus from university centers located in the West and in various parts of Africa that were committed to demonstrating that Africa has a rich history even before European contact. Accordingly scholars associated with such university centers have since the 1960s acquired and systematically catalogued private religious manuscripts and written numerous pan-African, regional, national, and local studies on diverse topics including spirit mediumship, witchcraft, African systems of thought, African evangelists and catechists, Mahdism, Pentecostalism, slavery, conversion, African religious diasporas and their impact on host societies, and religion and politics. Although the three works under review here deal with the role of religion in an African context, they mainly contribute to addressing three major questions in the study of religion and politics: How do Islam and other religious orientations shape public support for democracy? What is the primary cause of conflict or religious violence? What strategies should be employed to resolve such conflicts and violence?

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This thesis investigates the conditions under which a society endorses or is compliant with extremist ideology. Using social movement theory and literature on drivers of violent extremism, the thesis focuses specifically on the potential for religious extremism in Nigeria. Nigeria is particularly important because it is the most populated country in sub-Saharan Africa and it is where both Christianity and Islam, the world's two largest religions, converge. Nigeria also illustrates one of the clearest examples of religion being used politically and the potential for extremism that this presents. Examining Nigeria will test the specific conditions that make a state vulnerable to extremist ideology and offer insights into reducing the expansion of extremist religious groups within similar societies.

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In the last two decades, the federal government of Nigeria has employed several strategies in an effort to resolve the ongoing crisis in its Niger Delta Region. Two main approaches were adopted concurrently by both military and civilian regimes within the period of study, diplomatic and non-diplomatic. Unfortunately, both strategies failed to resolve the crisis. This thesis explains why the strategies failed, arguing that combination of an overly high military with low civil counterinsurgency strategies during the military regimes of 1990-1999 allowed an excessively repressive approach that did not only fail to end the crisis but eventually fuelled it to transform agitation into insurgency. In addition, the civilian regimes of 1999-2009, which engaged low military and relatively high civil counterinsurgency strategies, have also not been able to resolve the crisis. The study hence suggests a moderate approach comprising of both strategies; a professional military approach with moderate civil counterinsurgency strategies, and adopting measures that would assist the government to isolate its counterinsurgency strategies from political groups' interference, and resist responding to all pressures and complaints likely to sabotage its strategies.

This dissertation provides an explanation for the workings of clientelism and some preliminary insights on the conditions under which it can recede.

First, I provide evidence from Nigeria on the “loyal-voter anomaly” (Stokes et al. 2013, 66): I show that political parties tend to target clientelistic transfers to partisans, whose votes should already be secure, rather than to swing voters, whose votes are up for grabs. Second, I develop a theory of strategic safe-betting to explain the disproportionate targeting of partisans. This theory puts the emphasis on risk mitigation, an aspect of clientelistic relations that existing explanations tend to overlook. I argue that clientelistic transfers are risky and expensive endeavors, and that loyal voters represent a safer bet for political parties: their voting behavior is indeed easier to influence, predict or, in a best-case scenario, monitor. This is due to their close ties to the operatives of the party machine, as well as their deeper embeddedness in networks of control through which parties exert influence and gather information on voters before and during elections. Third, I provide preliminary insights on the demise of clientelism. I show that macro developments—in particular urbanization and economic development—that increase the weight of swing voters make clientelistic transfers riskier and provide incentives for parties to develop programmatic promises during elections.

The dissertation builds on original quantitative and qualitative empirical evidence from the most populous sub-Saharan African country, Nigeria. It draws on observational and experimental survey data to provide a quantitative analysis of the determinants and workings of clientelism at the individual level. It also builds on selected archival documents and in-depth key informant interviews to develop a qualitative narrative of the historical roots of clientelistic partisan pacts in Nigeria and the mechanisms that sustain and break them in contemporary politics.

This thesis argues among other things, That the concept of jihad, which represents a form of striving and endeavour-often misinterpreted in the literature as 'holy war'- is rooted in the Qur'anic ideals and interpretations (ijtihad). However it can be extremely variable when 'applied' to Muslim societies in the course of history. Thus for example, the Greater and Lesser Jihads might be subject to a number of different interpretations when applied to Muslim societies deriving from a (a) historical experiences and/or circumstances; (b) theological or philosophical debates; (c) differing religio-political elite formations; and (d)strategic assesments of threats and/or dangers to Islam. We demonstrate the multifaceted and variable characteristics of jihad through the use of a 'Jihadist Wheel'. In the case of modern jihadist organizations, which we examine, reference to the Qur'an as a source of ideological guidance and inspiration has sometimes given way to what is referred to in the literature as a 'strategic' assesment of the realities confronting Islam. Often, as the case of Iraq, this might lead to excessive violence and accusations of Islamic terrorism. From an analytical standpoint this thesis argues that 'jihadism' and 'terrorism' are two differnt construct in terms of motivation and goals. However the variability of the jihadist concept when applied by Muslims under varying conflictual circumstances (i.e. threats and/or response) can sometimes add to confusion surrounding the meaning of the term and of course its identification with 'holy war' or 'terrorism'. It is hoped that this thesis will at least add some light to the current debate in the literature over the anatomy of jihadism, whils seeking to provide an analytical framework for the identification and application of different forms of jihad based on the Qur'anic exegesis.

This paper aims to test the efficient market hypothesis, in its weak form, in the stock markets of BOTSWANA, EGYPT, KENYA, MOROCCO, NIGERIA and SOUTH AFRICA, in the period from September 2, 2019 to September 2, 2020. In order to achieve this analysis, we intend to find out if: the global pandemic (Covid-19) has decreased the efficiency, in its weak form, of African stock markets? The results therefore support the evidence that the random walk hypothesis is not supported by the financial markets analyzed in this period of global pandemic. The values of variance ratios are lower than the unit, which implies that the yields are autocorrelated in time and, there is reversal to the mean, and no differences were identified between the stock markets analyzed. The authors consider that the results achieved are of interest to investors looking for opportunities for portfolio diversification in these regional stock markets.

Muqtedar Khan’s Islam and Good Governance: A Political Philosophy of Ihsan is, above all, an expression of faith.[1] This does not mean that we should engage it as a confessional text — although it certainly is one at some level — or that it necessitates or assumes a particular faith positionality on the part of its reader. Rather, Khan seeks here to build a vision and conception of Islamic governance that does not depend on compliance with or fidelity to some outward standard — whether that be European political liberalism or madhhabi requirements. Instead, he draws on concepts, values, and virtues commonly associated with Islam’s more inward dimensions to propose a strikingly original political philosophy: one that makes worldly that which has traditionally been kept apart from the world. More specifically, Khan locates the basis of a new kind of Islamic politics within the Qur’anic and Prophetic injunction of ihsan, which implies beautification, excellence, or perfection — conventionally understood as primarily spiritual in nature. However, this is not a politics that concerns itself with domination (the pursuit, retention, and maximization of power); it is neither narrowly focused on building governmental structures that supposedly correspond with divine diktat nor understood as contestation or competition. This is, as the book’s subtitle suggests, a pathway to a philosophy of the political which defines the latter in terms of searching for the Good.

Ours is an age of pervasive political turbulence, and the scale of the challenge requires new thinking on politics as well as public ethics for our world. In Western countries, the specter of Islamophobia, alt-right populism, along with racialized violence has shaken public confidence in long-secure assumptions rooted in democracy, diversity, and citizenship. The tragic denouement of so many of the Arab uprisings together with the ascendance of apocalyptic extremists like Daesh and Boko Haram have caused an even greater sense of alarm in large parts of the Muslim-majority world. It is against this backdrop that M.A. Muqtedar Khan has written a book of breathtaking range and ethical beauty. The author explores the history and sociology of the Muslim world, both classic and contemporary. He does so, however, not merely to chronicle the phases of its development, but to explore just why the message of compassion, mercy, and ethical beauty so prominent in the Quran and Sunna of the Prophet came over time to be displaced by a narrow legalism that emphasized jurisprudence, punishment, and social control. In the modern era, Western Orientalists and Islamists alike have pushed the juridification and interpretive reification of Islamic ethical traditions even further. Each group has asserted that the essence of Islam lies in jurisprudence (fiqh), and both have tended to imagine this legal heritage on the model of Western positive law, according to which law is authorized, codified, and enforced by a leviathan state. “Reification of Shariah and equating of Islam and Shariah has a rather emaciating effect on Islam,” Khan rightly argues. It leads its proponents to overlook “the depth and heights of Islamic faith, mysticism, philosophy or even emotions such as divine love (Muhabba)” (13). As the sociologist of Islamic law, Sami Zubaida, has similarly observed, in all these developments one sees evidence, not of a traditionalist reassertion of Muslim values, but a “triumph of Western models” of religion and state (Zubaida 2003:135). To counteract these impoverishing trends, Khan presents a far-reaching analysis that “seeks to move away from the now failed vision of Islamic states without demanding radical secularization” (2). He does so by positioning himself squarely within the ethical and mystical legacy of the Qur’an and traditions of the Prophet. As the book’s title makes clear, the key to this effort of religious recovery is “the cosmology of Ihsan and the worldview of Al-Tasawwuf, the science of Islamic mysticism” (1-2). For Islamist activists whose models of Islam have more to do with contemporary identity politics than a deep reading of Islamic traditions, Khan’s foregrounding of Ihsan may seem unfamiliar or baffling. But one of the many achievements of this book is the skill with which it plumbs the depth of scripture, classical commentaries, and tasawwuf practices to recover and confirm the ethic that lies at their heart. “The Quran promises that God is with those who do beautiful things,” the author reminds us (Khan 2019:1). The concept of Ihsan appears 191 times in 175 verses in the Quran (110). The concept is given its richest elaboration, Khan explains, in the famous hadith of the Angel Gabriel. This tradition recounts that when Gabriel appeared before the Prophet he asked, “What is Ihsan?” Both Gabriel’s question and the Prophet’s response make clear that Ihsan is an ideal at the center of the Qur’an and Sunna of the Prophet, and that it enjoins “perfection, goodness, to better, to do beautiful things and to do righteous deeds” (3). It is this cosmological ethic that Khan argues must be restored and implemented “to develop a political philosophy … that emphasizes love over law” (2). In its expansive exploration of Islamic ethics and civilization, Khan’s Islam and Good Governance will remind some readers of the late Shahab Ahmed’s remarkable book, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Ahmed 2016). Both are works of impressive range and spiritual depth. But whereas Ahmed stood in the humanities wing of Islamic studies, Khan is an intellectual polymath who moves easily across the Islamic sciences, social theory, and comparative politics. He brings the full weight of his effort to conclusion with policy recommendations for how “to combine Sufism with political theory” (6), and to do so in a way that recommends specific “Islamic principles that encourage good governance, and politics in pursuit of goodness” (8).

Why do some fuel protests in Nigeria lead to a response from government, but others are barely noticed? What are the politics behind government response and who are the winners and losers? Using a multi-method approach, this study focuses on the period between 2007 and 2017 to investigate the dynamics of fuel protest in Nigeria to ask how, and under which conditions, struggles over energy access in Nigeria produce accountability and empowerment. The findings suggest that accountability and empowerment outcomes of the struggles over fuel access in Nigeria are severely limited by the very conditions that define the state as fragile: weak institutions, elite capture, widespread corruption, and a citizenry that is protest-fatigued and disempowered. This could be true of other fragile and conflict-affected settings. Therefore, frameworks that open up the civic space for dialogues between the government and citizens may produce better outcomes than protests.

Violent conflicts and crime have reached new heights in Nigeria, as cases of kidnapping, armed banditry, and communal unrests continue to tear at the core of the ethnoreligious divides in the country. Southern Kaduna has witnessed a virulent spree of communal unrest in northern Nigeria over the last decade due to its polarized politics and power differentials between the various groups in the area, particularly the Christians and Muslims, who are almost evenly split. In response to their experiences of violence, the people of that region have also shown incredible resilience and grit in transforming their stress and suffering. This policy note focuses on the transformative practices of the Fulani and other ethnic communities in southern Kaduna in terms of how they problem-solve deep-seated socio-political rivalries and violent relations by working through their shared identity, history, and cultures of peace. The note explores how peace practitioners and donor agencies could consolidate local practices of sustaining peace as complementary or alternative resources to the state’s liberal system.