Journal articles 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?

This study examines the roles religion and politics play in the “boko haram” insurgency. In Nigeria, politics and religion occupy a central space. While the two individually generate a plethora of events of varying levels and implications for Nigeria, religion and politics often create a mixture of circumstances and occurrences. The boko haram insurgency is one of the many entities that represent the combustible nature of politics and religion in Nigeria. Its activities in the North-East have constituted a challenge to Nigeria’s security. The study adopts the human needs theory to explain boko haram insurgency and its effects on reli-gion and politics in Nigeria. The study employs the qualitative method and relies on sec-ondary sources of data. Specifically, the study draws data from books, book chapters, jour-nals, conference proceedings, newspapers, and online sources. These data are analysed with the use of thematic analysis, to structure the arrangement of the data retrieved by follow-ing the objectives of the study. The findings of the study reveal that corruption, radical islam, and poor governance played salient roles in the development of the boko haram sect. In line with these findings, the study recommends that the government must curtail and ultimately defeat the boko haram insurgency. The author recommends that the govern-ment intensifies its intelligence activities in order to fighting boko haram.

This article provides an ethnographic exploration of a new religious movement in Nigeria that often goes by the name ‘Chrislam’. With a particular focus on the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam, the article documents the group's origins and practices, as well as its public reception. Founded on a claimed vision from God in 2005, the group teaches that Christianity, Islam and African Indigenous Religions come from the same source and should be reunited into a single religious movement. Core to their understanding is what they call ‘a spirit of accommodation’, which provides a divine directive to exceed mere tolerance or coexistence and combine these religions under one roof. With their mission of pursuing unity and commonality while dispelling differences, the group manages to creatively embed multiple complex religious traditions into their belief structures, liturgical practices and ritual ceremonies, in what can be described as a religious bricolage. Despite the group's intention to promote peace and unity and act as a counterpoint to violent movements such as Boko Haram, the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam finds itself at the centre of an ongoing debate about the politics of religious bricolage and the resulting cultural limits of acceptable forms of religious entanglements.

Since 2009, the radical Muslim movement in northern Nigeria known as Boko Haram has become widely known in Western media for both its militant actions and its ultra-fundamentalist programme. This analysis examines Boko Haram from a historical perspective, viewing the movement as a result of social, political and generational dynamics within the larger field of northern Nigerian radical Islam. The contribution also considers some of the theological dimensions of the dispute between Boko Haram and its Muslim opponents and presents the different stages of militant activity through which this movement has gone so far. The article shows that movements such as Boko Haram are deeply rooted in northern Nigeria's specific economic, religious and political development and are thus likely to crop up again if basic frame conditions such as social injustice, corruption and economic mismanagement do not change.

Over the decades, Nigerian political elites have devised various constitutionaland administrative arrangements to cope with the country's complexethnic and religious pluralism. Yet, peace and stability have been elusive,as the country continues to experience severe religious and communal conflicts.These are reflected in the highly polemical book in which AdoKurawatries to trace the origin and nature of what he calls the hostility ofwestern Christian representatives towards Islam.In the book, Ado-Karuwa attempts to argue that the secular publicspace is too inflected with Christian values to make a claim to neutrality,and he uses Nigeria as a case study. He begins by noting that historically,Islam in Europe was tolerant and accommodative of the Christian religion,but this was not reciprocated when the Crusades were launched and"Muslims ... received the worst treatment imaginable." According to him,the failure of the armed campaign prompted Christian clerics to embark onan intellectual attack that entailed the negative representation of Islam inscholarly writings. What emerged, according to him, was a body of knowledgethat explained the superiority of the West over the Islamic world.Contemporary global dominance by the West has also opened the door foracademic institutions in Europe and America to strangulate Islam under theguise of promoting universal science.Ado-Karuwa relates the above to Nigeria by noting that, within thecountry, both Christian intellectuals and some British-trained Muslims actas agents of the West by promoting a secularism that marginalizes Islam.After a lengthy polemic about orientalism, colonialism, and Americanimperialism, the author returns to the issue of secularism, which he discussesgenerally without relating it concretely to Nigeria. He does not showhow secularism in Nigeria marginalizes Islam; neither does he make effortsto show that secularism is tainted by Christian doctrines, in the mannerdone by Louis Dumont. Instead, he undermines his project by arguing thatChristianity declined in Europe after secularism was enthroned by theReformation and the Renaissance, and that in Sweden attendance in theLutheran Church is only 5 percent. If it is true, as he argues, that the ...

IntroductionThis essay provides an explanation of the dynamics of the interactionbetween Islam and politics by placing emphasis on the role played byMuslims in the collision of traditionalism and British rule as colonialismtook root in Lagos. The focus is on the development of a political schismwithin the nascent Muslim community of metropolitan Lagos at the startof the twentieth century up until the end of the 1940s. It highlights therole of Islam in an emerging urban settlement experiencing rapid transformationfrom a purely rural and traditional center into a colonial urbancenter. The essay is located within the broader issues of urban change andtransition in twentieth-century tropical Africa. Three major developments(viz: the central mosque crisis, the Eleko affair, and the Oluwa land case)are used as the vehicles through which the objectives of the essay areachieved.The introduction of Islam into Lagos has been studied by T. G. O.Gbadamosi as part of the history of Islam in southwestern Nigeria. Thisepic study does not pay specific attention to Lagos, devoted as it is to thegrowth of Islam in a far-flung territory like the whole of modem southwesternNigeria. His contribution to a collection of essays on the historyof Lagos curiously leaves out Islam’s phenomenal impact on Lagosianpolitics during the first half of the twentieth century. In an attempt to fillthis gap, Hakeem Danmole’s essay also stops short of appreciating the fundamentallink between the process of urbanization, symbolized in this caseby colonial rule, and the vanguard role played by Muslims in the inevitableclash of tradition and colonial rule in Lagos between 1900 and 1950.

The inseparability of religion and politics is demonstrated in the involvement of prominent ulama (religious scholars) in politics directly or indirectly. Being an important stakeholder in politics, such scholars have been raising their voices on political matters and influencing political decisions in their respective countries. In some cases, such religious scholars performed oppositional role with a view to forcing the ruling government to check their actions which were contradictory to the dictate of their religion. The Islamic revolution in Iran is a living testimony to the fact that religious scholars are relevant to effect new sociological and religio-political paradigms for their countries. It is on this basis that this paper shall explore the political thought of a seasoned reforming Mogul whose thought is significant to democratic sustenance in Nigeria, Maulana Abul A’la Mawdudi (1903 -1979). This sage enunciated some political principles which if strictly studied and adhered to, will help in no small measure in ensuring sustainable democratic governance whose leadership will not regret leading its people and the populace will not eventually curse such a leader. [Agama dan politik dalam banyak hal tidak dapat dipisahkan. Hal ini ditunjukkan antara lain oleh keterlibatan ulama dalam politik, langsung atau tidak. Menjadi bagian dari sistem politik, ulama dapat menyuarakan pandangan mereka dan mempengaruhi keputusan politik di negara masing-masing. Dalam beberapa kasus, para ulama juga melakukan oposisi untuk memaksa pemerintah melihat kebijakan yang bertentangan dengan ajaran agama. Revolusi Islam di Iran adalah contoh nyata dengan fakta bahwa ulama memiliki peran yang erat terkait dengan paradigma sosiologis dan religio-politik baru bagi negara. Makalah ini akan mengeksplorasi pandangan Maulana Abul A’la Maududi (1903 -1979), tokoh reformist yang pemikirannya sangat penting untuk pengembangan demokrasi di Nigeria. Beberapa prinsip politik akan membantu dalam memastikan pemerintahan yang demokratis berkelanjutan, jika dipelajari dan diikuti dengan benar.]

The introduction of Arabic Education in Nigeria is long before the advent of modern education system in the area. It is a known fact that the first medium of formal education was Arabic language. Although, Arabic has since been replaced by English language right from the colonial period as a means of education and general communication, but it is given a special attention in the Nigerian education system because of its historical antecedents and its relationship with Islam. However, there are numerous challenges militating against the teaching of Arabic language in Nigeria. Some of these challenges could be social, economic, political etc. Recently, the Boko Haram insurgency has contributed negatively to the development of Arabic language in Nigeria because of its direct effects on the Nigeria Arabic Language Village (NALV) Ngala, Borno State; an institution responsible for the cultural and language immersion for Arabic students in Nigerian Higher institutions. Therefore, this paper aims at evaluating the impact of this insurgency on the development of Arabic education in Nigeria. Qualitative method of data collection was used as the basic research tools for this work. The paper relied mainly on interview to ascertain some of the facts mention therein. Focus is on the effects of Boko Haram on Nigeria Arabic village and the spillover effects on Arabic language in Nigerian Universities.

IntroductionThe Islamization of social sciences is part and parcel of developingand promoting knowledge that conforms to the norms of Islam. This canbe attained by motivating scholars to develop scholarship using an Islamicperspective through the introduction of new social science courses basedon Islam, Islamizing (i.e., rearticulating along Islamic lines) existing conventionalsocial science disciplines, and promoting the movement ofIslamic attitude to knowledge.The Islamization of Knowledge undertaking in Nigeria can be tracedto the period of the Sokoto Jihad leaders, whose scholarly writings coveredsuch aspects of life as politics, economics, and medicine. However, withthe passage of time and, more especially, with the coming of the Britishcolonialists and the concomitant infiltration of western scholarship, theIslamization of Knowledge pioneered by the Jihad leaders gradually beganto fade. At first, the North opposed vehemently the spread of the westernsystem of education, because it was linked with Christian missionary propaganda(Fapohunda 1982). As such, the emirs of the North and their subjectsstood fmly against this alien system, a stance that accounts for thedisparity in western education between the South, that had welcomed it,and the North.Unfortunately, like most other Muslim countries, Nigeria continues tosuffer from the colonial legacy of the West. In particular, its elites are theworst victims of colonization of mind by the West’s so-called secular ideology.Its education and other systems of life continue to be based largelyon the structure of that secular ideology.Education is the single most important instrument for grooming andchannelling a society in the desired direction. To rescue Muslim societiesfrom the yoke of western secular civilization and to reestablish Islamiccivilization requires the decolonization of the secularized minds and spiritsof the elites as well as of Muslim intellectuals (the ulama), professionals,and political leaders, on the one hand, and the training of youngpeople in Islamic knowledge and education, on the other. In order toreturn the society to the Islamic system of life, the first task is the Islamizationof the educational system (both formal and informal) for the Muslimsand the Islamization of the country’s ulama ...

The history of Islam in part of what is known today as Nigeria datesto about the loth Century. Christianity dates to the late 18th Century. Bythe middle of the 19th Century, when Nigerian newspapers began to appearon the streets of Nigeria, both religions had won so many followers and extendedto so many places in Nigeria that very few areas were untouched bytheir influence. The impact of both religions on their adherents not only determinedtheir spiritual life, but influenced their social and political lives aswell. It therefore became inevitable that both religions receive coverage frommost of the newspapers of the time. How the newspapers as media of informationand communication reported issues about the two religions is thetheme of this paper.Rationale for the StudyThe purpose of this study is to highlight the context in which such earlynewspapers operated and the factors that dictated their performance. Thisis because it is assumed that when a society faces external threat to its territory,culture, and independence, all hands (the press inclusive) ought tobe on deck to resist the threat with all might. Were newspapers used as verbalartillery and how did they present each religion? It is also assumed thatin a multireligious society a true press should be objective and serve as avanguard in the promotion of the interest of the people in general and notcreate or foster an atmosphere of religious conflict. The study also aims atfinding out whether the papers promoted intellectual honesty and fosteredthe spirit of unity particularly when the society was faced with the encroachmentof the British who posed a threat to their freedom, culture, economy ...

The jihad of Uthman dan Fodio in the early ninteenth century had by 1806 established Islamic cultural and religious hegemony over the Hausa territory of present-day Northern Nigeria. In the process, Islam had succeeded in pushing indigenous religious and cultural practices such as Bori to the margins or underground. However, while most of the other indigenous forms died or became inactive and ineffectual, Bori has managed to hold its own against the persecution and cultural war waged against it by Islam, mainly because the belief in the power and ability of the spirits to influence human life which is at the centre of Bori practice was never lost. In this article, Osita Okagbue argues that marginalization has made Bori attractive to groups and individuals in Hausa society who feel themselves similarly marginalized and oppressed for articulating alternative identities and viewpoints to those of the mainstream society. He also examines how the possession performances of the Bori cult enable members to subvert and occasionally to use moments of trance and possession to invert the power relationships between oppressed groups and their oppressors. Osita Okagbue teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is the author of African Theatres and Performances (Routledge, 2007). He is President of the African Theatre Association (AfTA) and editor of African Performance Review.

West African Islam is evolving politically and fast: This much these four rich case studies on Niger, Gambia, Nigeria, and Senegal assure us. How quaint now seems the early postcolonial notion that meaningful separation of mosque and state would remain a bedrock of the independent nation-state in a region of Africa marked by such a strong Muslim presence. Significant inroads into the superimposed European ideal of governance through secular institutions alone had already been made before the events of 9/11 recalibrated our focus on Islam in West Africa. As Mahmud and Villalón show us, partisan democratizing pressures in Nigeria and Senegal had put Shari'a and anti-Mouride Reformism on the the political table well before Osmana bin Laden became a household name. Similarly, the emergence of civil society associations in Niger and Wahhabi proselytizing in Gambia, according to Charlick and Darboe, elevated Islamist movements there prior to the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. After 9/11, the significance of Islamism in West Africa is of course inescapable: Mahmud's mere reference to a “Nigerian Taliban” inevitably whets curiosity. This response, however, is disproportionate to the group's real impact. It is crucial, in other words, that scholars of West African Islam not fall into the reductio ad al-Qaedum trap of neophyte Africanist students and intelligence analysts.

The article puts forwards the argument that there is a pervasiveanxiety among Muslims over their security, both physical and spiritual, in today's northern Nigeria. It is an anxiety partly millenarian, partly political, that seeks to recreate a stronger sense of the ‘core North’ as dar al-Islam, with notionally ‘closed’ boundaries – just as it was in the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate. This has led first to the re-establishment, within twelve of Nigeria's 36 states, of full shari‘a law and then to the formation of a sometimes large corps of hisba (wrongly called ‘vigilantes’) – this despite Nigeria having a constitution that both is secular and reserves to the federal government institutions like police and prisons. The article explores the various dimensions, past and present, of ‘security’ in Kano and ends with the problem of ‘dual citizenship’ where pious Muslims see themselves at the same time both as Nigerians and as members of the wider Islamic umma.

In December 2000 the government of Kano State in Muslim northern Nigeria reintroduced shari’a and established a new board for film and video censorship charged with the responsibility to “sanitize” the video industry and enforce the compliance of video films with moral standards of Islam. Stakeholders of the industry took up the challenge and responded by inserting religious issues into their narratives, and by adding a new feature genre focusing on conversion to Islam. This genre is characterized by violent Muslim/pagan encounters, usually set in a mythical past, culminating in the conversion of the pagans. This article will first outline northern Nigerian video culture and then go on to explore local debates about the religious legitimacy of film and video and their influence upon recent developments within the video industry. By taking a closer look at video films propagating Islam it will focus on three points: first, videomakers’ negotiation between the opposing notions of religious education and secular escapism; second, inter-textual relations with other (film)cultures; and third, political subtexts to the narratives, which relate such figures as Muslim martyrs and pagan vampires to the current project of cultural and religious revitalization.

In the decade since Al-Qaeda, led by the late Osama Bin Laden, attacked America, there has been a resurgence in the debate about the relationship between religion and politics. The global Islamic terrorist networks and their successful operations against various targets around the globe increasingly draw attention to what constitutes the core values of Islamic extremism: the logic of evangelistic strategy, the import and relevance of its spiritual message and consideration of the composite view of life that does not distinguish between sacred and temporal mandates. Suspicions have been fuelled that Islam is incompatible with modern democratic systems and pluralist outlooks. The real cause of Islamic militancy is at once universal and particular. The Nigerian experience of this radical Islamism–Boko Haram–brings home the once “distant” threat to global peaceful co-existence. While there exist arguments regarding the raison d’etre and means or methods of the operations of Boko Haram, the end has been normative; to achieve a purely religious nationalistic system on the basis of the sharia code of ethics. This paper, therefore, critically analyses the historical and philosophical interpretations of Islamic history constructed as an infallible corpus, and how it has been impacted by the democratic vision in Nigeria. It concludes with a consideration of the possibility and practicability of a liberal system at once free and religious in a pluralist and global society.

ABSTRACTNorth-east Nigeria is an area of great ethno-linguistic diversity and religious pluralism, with Islam and Christianity both having a strong presence. The majority of the population is Muslim but there is also a substantial indigenous Christian minority, who form a majority in some local government areas. This paper draws on fieldwork by the authors in two north-eastern states, Bauchi and Gombe, to explore why, despite comparable religious demographics, there are marked differences in the levels of collective violence experienced in the two states. Although ethno-religious violence has increased across northern Nigeria since the 1980s, some areas have been more affected than others. To understand why this is, it is necessary to place ethnic and religious differences in their local historical and political contexts. This paper compares Gombe and Bauchi and argues that, although there are complaints of marginalization among different groups in both cases, Gombe State has developed a more inclusive system of government and local conflict management than Bauchi State. We explore what accounts for this difference in the articulation and management of belonging and whether the contrast is significant enough to explain differential levels of violence. In doing so, we consider how inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations have been shaped historically in the two cases and compare current forms of collective mobilization, considering different social and political spaces within each state. The paper also briefly outlines the impacts of the radical insurgent group Jama'at ahl al-sunna li'l-da'wa wa'l-jihad, nicknamed Boko Haram, in Bauchi and Gombe states.

This paper shade light on the negative impact of religious extremism in leading Islamists to justify terrorism. Results show that the factors leading Islamists to justify terrorism contextually vary. Where Muslims dominants are educated Islamically, this probability decreases with the application of good respondents to the religion of Islam, while increases where Muslims dominants are not educated Islamically, especially those who are lacking background teachers at home. There is no evidence in support that Islamist propaganda causes ordinary Muslims radicals. Yet, in northern Nigeria affected by homegrown terrorism, it is observed that justifying terrorism is strongly associated with an increase in political agenda through religious extremism, providing support that Islamist groups are attracting Islam radical individuals. Our framework helps to develop an understanding of negative impact of extremism that goes beyond a focus on violence, and suggest optimistic majors to be taken.

Nigeria is both a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, with Islam and Christianity being the dominant religions. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is therefore an institution that the Muslim segment of the country can readily identify with. However, there is the question of the secular posture of the country, which Christians within the polity use as an excuse to distance the country from an institution they perceive to be exclusively for Muslims. However, despite being an organization that emerged from Muslim solidarity, the OIC transcends faith to provide economic and political opportunities for member nations. The fact that Islam remains a rallying point within the OIC, however, made Nigeria’s relationship with the organization tenuous for the most part. It is against this backdrop that the paper traces the origins and evolution of Nigeria’s involvement with the OIC, identifying its cost and benefits. The essay argues that Nigeria will be the better for it if both the Christian and Muslim segments of the population embrace the OIC as a whole or are unanimous in discarding it. The divisive tendency that Nigeria’s membership breeds, however, will be detrimental to the nation’s unity and development.

The radicalization of Islam in Cameroon is quickly changing the country&apos;s religious landscape and contributing to the spread of religious intolerance. Unlike, for example, neighboring Nigeria and the Central African Republic, previously Cameroon rarely faced serious manifestations of sectarian tensions, but over the past 10-15 years traditional Sufi Islam has been increasingly supplanted by the ideology of Wahhabism. Wahhabism is rapidly spreading not only in the north of the country, but also in the south, which until recently was inhabited mainly by Christians and animists. The spread of Wahhabism is actively supported and funded by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt. Sufism, the followers of which mainly include Fulani living in the northern regions, is gradually losing its position. The specific interpretation of Islam leads to the destabilization of religious and public political life, and Koranic schools and refugee camps become &quot;incubators of terrorists&quot;. The growing influence of radical Islam in Cameroon is largely due to the expansion of the terrorist organization Boko Haram into the country; one of the consequences of this is the broadening affiliation of Cameroonians, inspired by calls for the cleansing of Islam and the introduction of Sharia law, with this armed Islamist group. As in other African countries, the radicalization of Islam is accompanied by the intensification of terrorist activities, leading to an exacerbation of the internal political situation, an increase in the number of refugees, and the deterioration of the socio-economic situation of the population, etc. The failure of the Cameroonian government to counter terrorist activities in the north of the country in the near future may lead to an escalation of the military-political conflict on religious grounds in the context of political instability that Cameroon is experiencing at the moment.

This article critically analyses the role religion (I refer here to Islam and Christianity) has played in promoting silence and extortion in Africa with particular reference to Nigeria. In my philosophical analysis, African and Western literatures will guide my reflection on religion, the role it played in advancing the colonial agenda and its use in today’s African societies. This analysis seeks to present a case for the position that the colonial debris of disempowerment, injustices, manipulation, and extortion are still very much part of African society. They have only assumed new outlooks and language, thus plunging many Africans into silence in the face of what is often presented as sacred and unknown. The desired aim of this article is to present a philosophical critique of religion by comparing it with existing use of religion in Africa, especially Nigeria. Keywords: Religion, Christianity, Extortion, Silence, Nigeria, Injustice