Islamic reform in contemporary Nigeria: Methods and aims

Abstract

Islamic reform is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria but what makes both it and the response to it appear so radical today is the means that Muslim reformers use to establish their position as Muslims, and to articulate and stake out their claims in this relatively new entity, the independent nation-state. The nation-state makes demands on Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who in turn not only make demands on it but also hold differing views as to its character and orientation. The relatively new nation-state then, and the way in which Muslims attempt to insert themselves into it or at times extricate themselves from it, provides, it would seem, the most appropriate socio-historical framework for an understanding and explanation of Islamic reform and the response to it in contemporary Nigeria. Nigeria's Muslims easily constitute the largest Muslim community in sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria itself Muslims are in a majority in eleven of the twenty-one states, including the capital Lagos. The contours of modern Nigerian Islam have until quite recently shown a distinct break between northern Islam and Islam in the rest of the country. They were laid down by a group of Muslim scholars, mainly of Fulani origin, who initiated a major reform movement in Sokoto in the late eighteenth century. The Sokoto jihad or holy war led by Usman dan Fodio (1754-1817) set its sights on the reform of Islam in Hausaland and the western Sudan. The reform movement had far-reaching cultural, religious, political, social, and economic consequences for Muslims and non-Muslims alike from Sokoto state in the north-west of the country, through the old Muslim city of Kano, east to the ancient Islamic state of Borno and south to the city of Ilorin in present-day Kwara state.' The movement, in so far as it was a military conquest, involved a loss of autonomy and a measure of enslavement for some of the non-Muslim peoples of the region, thereby creating both fear. of and opposition to Islam which persist to this day in many of the so-called 'pagan' areas in