“When Knowledge is there, Other Things Follow”: The Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria and the Making of Yoruba Muslim Youths

Abstract

Among the religiously mixed Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria, the knowledge and values involved with being a Muslim are taught by both Muslim clerics in Qurʾanic schools and modern madrasas and by non-scholarly Muslims in different contexts. While some research has focussed on Yoruba clerics, little is known about the teaching initiatives of other Muslims. An important movement led by ordinary Muslims is the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (mssn), formed in 1954 to provide guidance to Muslim students in a predominantly non-Muslim educational environment. Since the 1950s, the mssn has engaged young Muslims in a series of socio-cultural, educational and religious activities aimed at encouraging young Muslims to engage with Islam, but which also equips them with the socio-economic skills necessary to operate in a modern, mixed religious world.