Remapping the study of Islam and Muslim cultures in postcolonial Nigeria

Abstract

1. During the 2014 hajj season, a video of a group of Yoruba pilgrims singing and dancing to music went viral in Nigeria. One of us (Sara), then in Ibadan, first learned of the video from a Hausa money changer, Umaru. He had received the video from a business associate from Borno State who clearly ‘wanted to make [him] laugh’ by showing what ‘your’ people are doing in Saudi Arabia. A bit of friendly teasing, since although Umaru was Hausa, he was born in Ibadan, a predominately Yoruba city. Yet Umaru did not share his associate’s interpretation that the video confirmed the established stereotype that Yoruba Muslims are less devout and learned compared with Muslims from northern Nigeria. Rather, he argued that the difference was ‘culture’, not religion. Umaru understood such stereotypes as rooted in the past when there were ‘few [Yoruba Muslims] that go deep into Islam’, but he countered that, since the 1960s, ‘Yoruba people know Qur’an; now they go deep’.1 Yoruba Muslims in Ibadan provided different perspectives. Professor Dawud Noibi, then executive secretary of the Muslim Ummah of South West Nigeria (MUSWN), admitted that he had seen such behaviour since his first hajj in 1968.2 Unlike Umaru, he saw the video as evidence that much educational work was needed for Nigerian pilgrims. Similarly, a Yoruba Muslim who had undertaken the hajj that year found the video appalling, especially since they were still in ihram cloth; he went on to denounce other ‘cultural’ practices, such as wearing a sabaka cap.3 Another Yoruba Muslim, yet to make the hajj himself, accused the Oyo State Pilgrims Welfare Board of not adequately screening out pilgrims who disgrace the reputations of