Performing Shīʿīsm and Martyrdom: The Place of Religious Songs in the #freeZakzaky Occupy Abuja Movement

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the transformation of IMN’s religious songs associated with IMN’s religious rituals as a means of framing martyrdom in the face of state suppression; protesting against the secularity of the Nigerian State, and calling for the release of IMN’s leader Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zakzaky during the #FreeZakzaky Occupy Abuja Movement. Why does the IMN incorporate its religious songs into street protests and what roles does it play in performing pain, suffering, and martyrdom in the occupy movement? This study is framed around the theoretical conceptualization of “radicalism” to understand the causes of the IMN’s radical approaches in ideologies, its frequent confrontational protests against the State security apparatus, and the implication for future religious radicalization. The causes of the IMN protests are performed through songs to narrate the Zaria carnage and the State’s violence against the IMN and reenact the religious ideation of martyrdom. The immortalization of martyrs and the religious ideation of achieving martyrdom became a collective identity of performing suffering and death as a religious necessity for IMN’s true followers amid religious repression during the #FreeZakzaky Occupy Abuja Movement. I argue that the performance of the pain and suffering of past and present events will further radicalize members of the IMN, and in the future, there could be a possibility of some of them integrating into a violent jihadi group as a means of self-defense and religious determination against the predominantly Sunni community, and by extension, the Nigerian State.