Academic literature on the topic 'Political violence – Nigeria, Northern – Case studies'

This article examines the commonalities in the case studies of religious cum political violence in three states of northern Nigeria. The dynamics of religious violence in Nigeria attest to the existing social theories of conflict. The article concluded that there exist certain frenzy elements that have aided the occurrences and the spread of the wave of violence bearing upon multiple factors. The article suggested that a holistic approach which draws insights from the series of the existing cases of violence would be instrumental in propounding a lasting solution to the recurrent incidence of religiously motivated violence in 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

Election violence varies significantly within countries, yet how and why are undertheorized. Although existing scholarship has shown how national-level economic, institutional, and contextual factors increase a country's risk for violence during elections, these studies cannot explain why elites organize election violence in some localities but not others. An analysis of gubernatorial elections in Nigeria reveals the conditions under which elites recruit popular social-movement actors for pre-election violence. Gubernatorial elections are intensely competitive when agreements between governors and local ruling party elites over the distribution of state patronage break down. To oust their rivals and consolidate power, elites recruit popular reformist groups for pre-election violence and voter mobilization. Conversely, when local ruling-party elites are aligned over how state patronage is to be distributed, the election outcome is agreed to well in advance. In this scenario, there is little incentive to enlist social movement actors for violence. Case studies of the Ijaw Youth Council and Boko Haram provide empirical support for the argument. The theory and evidence help explain subnational variation in election violence as well as the relationship between intraparty politics and violence during elections, and speak to broader questions about political order and violence.

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.

Peacebuilding is more likely to succeed in countries with higher levels of gender equality, but few studies have examined the link between subnational gender relations and local peace and, more generally, peacebuilding after communal conflict. This article addresses this gap. I examine gender relations and (non)violence in ethno-religious conflict in the city of Jos in central Nigeria. Jos and its rural surroundings have repeatedly suffered communal clashes that have killed thousands, sometimes within only days. Drawing on qualitative data collected during fieldwork, I analyze the gender dimensions of violence, nonviolence, and postviolence prevention. I argue that civilian agency is gendered. Gender relations and distinct notions of masculinity can facilitate or constrain people’s mobilization for fighting. Hence, a nuanced understanding of the gender dimensions of (non)violence has important implications for conflict prevention and local peacebuilding.

The study adopts approaches in linguistics and critical discourse analysis to interpret media speeches and public statements of the Biafra secessionist movement leader, Nnamdi Kanu, as hate speech. The study shows that hate speech in discourses produced by the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra appears as language aggression, such as insults and verbal attacks, as well as threats. Discourse structures such as the use of interrogation and metaphor also appear in the hate narratives. Compared with the Rwandan case, the study argues that hate speech could result in similar incitement and violence. While hate speech caused genocide in Rwanda, it did not work in Nigeria, largely because of the division among the Biafra campaigners and the Igbo political elite about the Biafra independence campaign.

Which party uses violence to influence election outcomes? There are two existing perspectives that have offered responses to this critical question. One is a more popular position indicating that the incumbent party, more than the opposition party, makes use of violence with the aim of rigging elections; the other is a more radical perspective that suggests that electoral violence is more associated with the weakest party than with the incumbent. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate and to advance the argument suggesting the dominance of the incumbent in the use of violence to rig elections. With evidence sourced from well-trusted reports from independent election monitors, this paper shows with case studies from Nigeria at different electoral periods that, in terms of influencing election outcomes, the incumbent has been more associated with violence during elections than the opposition. It is further argued in the paper that the existing nature of executive power in Nigeria provides a plausible explanation for the incumbent's violence during elections.

AbstractThe study of the Northern Irish Troubles is dominated by ethnic readings of conflict and violence. Drawing on new scholarship from a range of different disciplines and on fresh archival sources, this article questions these explanations. General theories that tie together ethnicity with conflict and violence are shown to be based on definitions that fail to distinguish ethnic identities from other ones. Their claims cannot be taken as being uniquely or even disproportionately associated with ethnicity. Explanatory models specifically developed for the case of modern Ireland do address that weakness. Yet, this article contends, they rest upon the fallacy that the Catholic and Protestant peoples are transhistorical entities. Political ideas, organizations, and actions cannot be reduced to fixed group identities. This article argues instead that the Troubles centered on a political conflict—one over rival visions of modern democracy. The pursuit of equality, the core value of democracy, led not only to conflicts but also to some of those conflicts becoming violent. Focusing on Belfast in the summer and autumn of 1969, this article sets out how the main political actors asserted competing claims to popular sovereignty and traces how multiple dynamic and intersecting conflicts became arrayed around the central one.

“Reconciliation” and “justice” are key concepts used by practitioners as well as authors of conflict-management and peacebuilding textbooks. While it is often recognized that there may be contradictions between the implementation of justice and truth-telling, on the one hand, and an end to organized violence, on the other, the ideal of a seamless fusion of these diverse goals is widely upheld by, among other things, reference to the rather utopianconcept of “positive peace” (Galtung). One difficulty arises from the fact that discourses usually focus on (post-)conflict settings that resemble a victory of one conflict party, whereas peace settlements are often negotiated in a context more similar to a military or political stalemate – a more ambiguous and complicated scenario. This essay discusses these problems against the background of an empirical case study of the peace accord between the government and the rebels in the West Nile region in north-western Uganda.

This study investigates the use of violence by Salafi-Oriented Movement Organisations. Drawing mostly from Social Movement Theory’s “political opportunity” and “resource mobilisation” thesis, it uses the Northern Nigerian-born Boko Haram (BH) to study how such organisation evolved and used different forms of violent activisms for goal attainment. On that basis, three main research questions were formulated: (1) What socio-political structures enabled the evolution of the organisation in Northern Nigeria? (2) Under what conditions did BH begin to use armed violence against the Nigerian State? (3) What specific forms of armed violence did BH use and how were such forms of strategy sustained within the organisation? In answering these questions, the study relied on data collected through one-on-one semi-structured interviews from religious leaders in Northern Nigeria (particularly those within the Salafi networks); selected politicians in the areas where the group operates; some Nigerian security personnel, and on focus group interviews from victims of BH violence. In addition, the study also drew from other documentary sources (videos and audio recordings from different leaders in the group), and from internal correspondence between BH leaders and those of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Along the primary data, these documentary sources showed a striking historical continuity about the emergence and activities of BH from inception, up until they began using violence as a means for goal attainment. The data showed that while the emergence of the group was dependent on specific Northern Nigerian socio-political and mobilisatory structures, the adoption and sustenance of different forms of violence in the group were re-enforced by the interactions between the group’s leadership and the Borno state government; the violent response of the Nigerian government to the group's initial anti-state rhetoric; the mobilisation of different material resources (accruing from the organisation’s interactions and collaborations with similar international Salafi networks) and the internal dynamics in the group (competition between the different factions in the organisation). These inter-related conditions provided the windows of opportunity upon which both the establishment of the group, as well as the internal logic for the development and justification of different forms of violence were sustained within the organisation.
Religious Studies and Arabic
D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

This chapter reviews food security in the West African Sahel, exploring the question of why, since the great drought-famines, of the late 1960s and early 1970s, food security and vulnerability to both climatic and market perturbations have not substantially improved and in some respects has deteriorated. Using my book Silent Violence, which was published in 1983, I revisit and review theories of famine and food security as they have been developed in and around African development. Using a village study in northern Nigeria, I argue that the precariousness of rural life can be explained by the shifting political economy of Nigeria and the forms of rural differentiation and inequality associated with, in the Nigerian case, the emergence of oil as the economic backbone of the country. While Nigeria as a petrostate is a special case, the dynamics at work point to general conditions prevailing across the West African Sahel. Since the 1970s there have been important shifts in policy regarding food and famine, and the ruling orthodoxy is now building resilience through the combination of traditional adaptability and decentralized forms of market integration. I investigate the origins and consequences of this approach and whether it can address the looming problems of global climate change.

The chapter challenges existing political hypocrisy perpetrated by anti-immigrant proponents including politicians and governments in some purposively selected African countries which form part of this case study. The chapter selected South Africa, Nigeria, Libya and Kenya to provide background to investigate the identified problem. This chapter premises that in the selected countries, manifestations of xenophobia in society are perpetrated by hypocritical political speeches of politicians and government officials. These speeches mystifies xenophobia. Politicians and government officials denied existence of xenophobia to justify their xenophobic rhetoric. There is what others have called ‘denialism' with regard to xenophobia in countries such as South Africa where influential politicians including government officials would create theories such as ‘criminality' and influence of ‘third force' which lead to locals attacking immigrant nationals. The chapter presents that, indeed there have been historical xenophobic manifestations in the selected countries which were in the main sponsored by political hypocrisy of politicians and government officials. Political leaders used inflammatory political rhetoric during economic hard times to exonerate themselves from non-delivery of expected service by their electoral bases, and therefore resorted to xenophobic utterances. Contrary to some assertions, immigrant nationals were crucial for local economic growth and general development. Political leaders and government officials should enforce policies and practices that protect immigrant nationals from any harm or any type of violence. Locals should also be educated about the Human Rights of immigrant nationals in terms of domestic statutes and international obligations of states. Also, locals should be educated on the positive contributions immigrant nationals make in society. Locals could learn appreciation of diversity, and therefore be prepared to embrace multi-culturalism in the era of growing internationalization and globalisation.

This concluding chapter discusses the reinforcement of the affective capacity building among dispersed transnational communities within the three cases presented earlier in this book. The first case explores how migrant organisations of Haitian origin engagement in Parisian banlieues is beneficial to their homeland's development. The second case is from the village of Jaziret Fadel that has the biggest gathering of Palestinian who fled to Egypt since the outbreak of 1948 war. It emphasizes the exploration of their new technique of 'killing memory' to gain acceptance, belonging and create a new sense of home within a new spatial context. The third case focuses on how the Northern Uganda war between the LRA and the Ugandan Army (1987-2007) has formulated the Acholi's experience with war, violence, and flight, which has led to different local constructions of place, political belonging, and material and emotional connections. Accordingly, will such communities be able to survive for a future on their own? Will memory to trace their genealogy fuel a sense of belonging after displacement? For what sort of citizenship within their new place?

This introduction argues that ethno-nationalist groups’ ethnic identity, desire for self-determination and territorial concerns are related to a specific context, which reveals a dilemma related to the choice of whether a state pursues armed struggle or a non-military solution. It explains the data collection methods of the book which relies on a broad range of sources including interviews, archival materials, official documents and reports. It then evaluates the nature of ethno-nationalist groups and describes the rationale behind the selection of the ethno-nationalist conflicts in Northern Ireland and Turkey, and how non-violent, political resolution efforts played a role in ending violence in these two comprehensive and long-standing conflicts. It reviews the evolution of ‘conflict resolution’ theory and how this book intends to modify the existing theory. The chapter ends with an explanation of the structure of the book and the specific topics and case studies examined in each chapter of the book.

While examining racism has permeated the discussion in the book thus far, this chapter explores how Islamophobia behaves as a form of racism in relation to the experiences of Muslim minorities in the Global North. With the UK as a focal point, the origins of this Islamophobic racism are traced over the last four decades or so, using case studies in education and media to illustrate the argument that Islamophobia has been growing continuously due to a host of structural and cultural factors. This also refers to policy responses that are specific to the experiences of Muslim minorities, such as the northern disturbances of 2001, the emergence and development of counterterrorism thinking and policy, and the Grenfell Tower tragedy of 2017. This entire terrain is compounded by a perennial discussion of ‘us’ and ‘them’, where ‘them’ is code for Islam and Muslims. However, given the tremendous exposure to these categories, racism is rendered invisible, where religiosity as akin to radicalization and inherent political violence is the dominant discourse framing the subject.