Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In 1999 and 2000, twelve states in northern Nigeria declared Islamic law
(Shari’ah) the state criminal law for all Muslims, redefining the boundaries
of identity, civility, and criminality.1 In the city of Kano, the Independent
Shari’ah Implementation Committee, similar to Islamic state-forming coali-
tions in Algeria and in the Sudan, galvanized the political will to move
beyond the rhetoric of Shari’ah as a democratic alternative to, and strong
critique of, colonialism and the elitism and corruption of federal and state
68
members (‘yan daba) agitated alongside other Muslim youths for the imple-
mentation of Shari’ah criminal codes, yet with others deemed “marginal
Muslims,” became the immediate objects of preaching and surveillance by
Hisbah (Shari’ah law enforcers). Perceptual experiences in everyday life—
whether one wore the beard of Muslim orthodoxy, or the baggy jeans and
chains of Los Angeles rappers, or prayed at the tombs of Sufi saints—began to
redefine and frame identity in terms of ethnic and regional forms of Islamic
“authenticity,” morality, and neighborhood and state security.
What was visible, in the form of dress or comportment, was insepa-
rable from what was not seen, or the world of spirits, which, as Mbembe
(2001) points out, strengthens the visual image and the power of the visible.
Hisbah extracted scriptural verses from the Qur’an to preach and project
visual stereotypes of the “enemies of Islam” into popular consciousness.
Hisbah who identified themselves as “Nigerian Orthodox Muslims,” an
uneasy alliance of reformist Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, many of whom were
reformist Sufi, vigilantly scrutinized Muslims living in ethnically plural
spaces, Muslim ethnic minorities, and people who, by virtue of their region
of origin, religion, or ethnicity, were deemed to be “marginal Muslims” or
polytheists, and thus, “out of place.”3 Hisbah considered Muslim ‘yan daba,
‘yan Bori (followers of Bori),4 nonreformist Sufis (with pro-Shari’ah Sufi
critics of Hisbah), and non-Hausa Muslims, particularly Muslim Yoruba,
to be political–spiritual saboteurs who disallowed the reenchantment of
orthodoxy and its ability to function as an Islamic collective memory, a
history of perception that would unify Nigeria’s Muslims, and draw them
more fully into world networks of politically active Muslims.5 Citing the
Prophet Mohammed’s prediction that the Islamic umma (community) would
split into seventy-three sects after his death, only one of which would bring
salvation, Hisbah declared a jihad, “a struggle against a visible enemy, the
devil and against self (nafs),” enemies of Islam, visible and unseen (Abdul
1988:241).6
There is growing documentation of the contributions of Islamic
reform movements in Nigeria and in Niger, particularly of Wahhabi/Salafi-
oriented‘yan Izala, to open debate over reigning political and moral ortho-
doxies and the legacies of colonialism (Loimeier 1997; Masquelier 1999;
Umar 1993; Westerlund 1997). Such movements, as they seize on the signs,
objects, and practices they seek to reform, create a “precarious oscilla-
tion of democracy and despotism” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999:29). In
69
salvation, about practicing the “true” form of Islam, and the potential for evil
to enter oneself and one’s community through a lack of religious commit-
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ment. The Hisbah jihad, at the time of Shari’ah implementation, expressed
the tensions of democratization and censorship, and provides an ongo-
ing perceptual framework for ethnic and regional significations of Islamic
authenticity, the identification of “bad” Muslims as kafirai (nonbelievers)
and ba’ki (strangers), a shift in the policing of “un-Islamic practices” to the
identification of “un-Islamic people,” and for routine violence against such
people as “enemies of the state.”7
Among northern Nigerians, the relations of political–religious antago-
nism, forged during the nineteenth-century Islamic jihad, British coloniza-
tion, and the Nigerian civil war, intersect with media portrayals of violence
against Muslims within and outside of Nigeria’s national borders. Such
antagonisms are rooted in, reproduce, and transform the ideologies and feel-
ings of “affective citizenship,” which I define as displays of feeling about
belonging to, and having agency within, the state. In Nigeria, “affective
citizenship” is a fusion of personal, ethnic, religious, and regional citizen-
ship, based on ethnic customary law, religious law, and the historical per-
ceptions of enclosure and exclusion that underpin memories of belonging,
backed by law, but a law that, historically, has been arbitrary and violent
in its application. Hisbah, along with recruits among ‘yan daba and alma-
jirai (Qur’anic students), use violence as a means of establishing them-
selves as dutiful Muslims—as “affective citizens,” who passionately display
their feelings of belonging to, and having agency within the reforming
government of Kano State.
Muslim identities in northern Nigeria have historical dependence on
evil others, who through the interpretation of Islamic symbols and ethnic
descent may be routinely vilified, yet in newly relevant ways (Ado-Kurawa
2000; Gumi with Tsiga 1992; Kumo 1993; Paden 1986; Sanusi 2006a; Umar
2001). Shehu Usman ‘dan Fodio (1754–1817), founder of the Sokoto caliph-
ate in northern Nigeria, sought to purify Islam, distilling the teachings of
the Prophet as the basis for a unified spiritual umma (community). He was
considered revolutionary because he called for jihad against Muslims he
considered nonorthodox. Further complicating the spiritual, political unity
that he sought was the existence of several anti-Caliphate, antijihad states,
including Argungu (Kebbi), Gobir (Tsibiri), Maradi, Damagaram, Gumel,
Borno, Ningi, Abuja, and Daura (Baure).8
In 1898, Flora Shaw suggested the name Nigeria for the British colonial
project of uniting “politically neighboring but formerly autonomous states
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and peoples under imperial rule in one colonial state” (Levin 1997:135). Brit-
ish administrators arbitrarily established specific territorial units within the
colonial state as autonomous, in what Mamdani (1996) calls “decentralized
despotism,” exacerbating ethnic, religious, and regional political tensions.
The British takeover of the Royal Niger Company in 1900, indirect rule as
the British governing principle in northern Nigeria, and the consolidation of
British colonial power under the Sokoto caliphate framed the regional motif
70
of British colonial policy (Last 1967; Levin 1997; Paden 1986). Fractions
emerged between the majority Muslim Hausa in the north, Christian Igbo in
“Marginal Muslims”
the southeast, and Christian and Muslim Yoruba in the southwest, and the
ethnic, religious minorities within these regions, most notably the Ogoni in
the oil-rich southeast (Crowder 1978; Falola 1998; Okpu 1977; Paden 1973;
Saro-Wiwa 1992).
The colonial transfer of state power to northern Muslims in 1960 at
Nigeria’s independence brought with it a renewed interest in world Islamic
affairs, grassroots Muslim brotherhoods and efforts to reimpose Shari’ah
codes that had been excised at independence. The Nigerian civil war in the
late 1960s generated thousands of internally displaced persons, requiring
state governments to manage disputes about the constitutional and prag-
matic rights and protections of displaced people. Under General Murtala
Mohammed and General Olusegun Obasanjo, political attempts to establish
a Federal Shari’ah Court of Appeal failed, but Shari’ah courts gained state-
level appellate status, which was incorporated into the 1979 constitution
(Williams 1997). These events, coinciding with the 1979 Iranian Revolu-
tion, emboldened reformist Muslims who considered the implementation
of Shari’ah law a way to confront Nigeria’s political economic and social
ills. Nigeria’s oil boom, in the 1970s, and the state’s “petro-capitalism” and
“spoils politics,” further deepened political antagonisms, based on ethnic,
religious, and regional interests in the control of Nigeria’s land and resources
(Falola 1998; Saro-Wiwa 1992Watts 2001). In the 1980s and 1990s, the cre-
ation of new states (Levin 1997), the convergence of religious and state poli-
tics (Falola 1998; Williams 1997), and development projects (Ocheje 1997)
again displaced large numbers of Nigerians, reviving constitutional disputes
over state jurisdictions and the ethnic, religious, and regional dimensions of
national and state rights and protections.
In northern Nigeria, conflicts over historical Islamic reform, Mahd-
ism and millenarian militancy, colonial legacies and Western influences,
and local ethnic, religious and regional perceptions of Islamic authenticity
occur in dynamic relation to Nigeria’s political economic crises (Falola 1998;
Watts 1996). Historical doctrinal disputes between Saudi Arabian Sunni
and Iranian Shia enter contemporary northern Nigerian conflicts over the
“role of the imam, umma, the importance of devotion, and legal matters”
(Falola 1998:231). Interpretations of nineteenth-century disciplinary regimes,
reformed in the Islamic scholarship and military-minded force of Shehu
Usman ‘dan Fodio, provide ongoing scripts for identifying and punishing
ethnic, religious, and regional others, in Kano State, once they are considered
71
Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” and war against Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq, Muslim reformists increasingly draw upon nineteenth-century jihadi
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disciplinary regimes, as well as those of contemporary resistance movements
such as Hezbollah and Hamas, for guidance in what they perceive as a war
on Muslims and the talakawa (commoners, poor).
Media, as Feldman (1994:405) suggests, separately or combined with
state and legal rationalities “can erect a cordon sanitaire around ‘acceptable’
or ‘reasonable’ chronic violence to the same extent that they successfully
infiltrate social perception to neuter collective trauma, subtract or silence
victims, and install public zones of perceptual amnesia that privatize and
incarcerate historical memory.” Reformist movements gain momentum by
extensive uses of, and responses to, media and telecommunications, embed-
ded in the profiling stratifications of state violence, violence sanctioned by
the governments of the United States, the Nigerian nation-state, and Kano’s
Shari’ah state, and state, legal, and media legitimizations of violence toward
“enemies of the state” under “wars” and “states of emergency.” Whether in
the United States, where profiling has substantially increased after 11 Sep-
tember 2001, or in Kano State, where the assessment of Islamic authenticity
intensified with the reimplementation of Shari’ah criminal codes, the “wars
of orthodoxy” require “truth-telling” to recruit for, to justify, and to hide,
ongoing colonial, imperial, and state violence against the “enemies of the
state,” typically ethnic and religious minorities, and the poor.
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of youths as the objects and perpetrators of violent acts, documenting inci-
dents of interpersonal, intergroup fighting with fists, clubs, sticks, spears, or
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guns, and indirect, intergroup fighting through the use of spirits and witches.
Through violent acts, I explored temporal and spatial convergences of vio-
lence with other ongoing events, ritual–religious calendars, the fetishization
of certain forms of violence, and narrations of violence that had wider social,
religious consequences than the acts of violence themselves.
vigilantes across Nigeria after the 1999 democratic transition and demilitar-
ization, most notably the Yoruba O’odua Peoples Congress in the southwest
(Akinyele 2001; Nolte 2004), and the Igbo Bakassi Boys of the southeast
(Baker 2002; Harnischfeger 2003; Smith 2004).10 Vanguards in the politics of
identity and citizenship, these ethnic and religious vigilantes represent diver-
gent political imaginings of Nigeria, and the use of power to enforce certain
ethnic, religious, and regional interests. With demilitarization, deregulation
74
and the primacy of the market, Nigerian vigilantes use violence to “control
the means of coercion,” gaining advantage in conflicts over state sovereignty
“Marginal Muslims”
75
and hostility (Ya’u 2000).
‘Yan daba recruits speak about getting even with people who had
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“downgraded” or “underrated” them. Insults and injuries are taken as
reenactments of earlier acts, variably related to personal experience and to
cultural, religious, or political abstractions, but that nonetheless, excuse
violence. Forceful acts of domination are accompanied by outbursts of rib-
aldry and derision that seem to mock and mimic officialdom, while creat-
ing new forms of officialdom altogether (Mbembe 2001:102). A ‘dan daba,
dressed lavishly in a Muslim-style dress (riga), smoking a joint reminiscent
of Cheech and Chong, slaps an almajiri to the ground for forgetting to say
his prayers, and the crowd cheers and laughs. Using an arbitrary application
of pain and caretaking, ‘yan daba produce a combination of fear and respect
that “reinforces certain moral values within society” (‘dan Asabe (1991:99).
The felt and expressed qualities of fear and respect emerge as an entangle-
ment with what Mbembe calls the “banality of power,” part of which is a
“distinctive style of political improvisation, by a tendency to excess and
lack of proportion, as well as by distinctive ways identities are multiplied,
transformed and put into circulation” (2001:102).
‘Yan daba are the main caretakers of younger male siblings and alma-
jirai whose moral aesthetics and behaviors develop through ambiguous
attachments to social rituals and daily life in Qur’anic school and to those
of the daba street economy. Younger siblings and almajirai form the main
pool of youths from which ‘yan daba recruit.15
‘Yan daba self-identify with wards, hanging out in particular joints,
but they shift among modes of violent opposition to other wards, tolerant of
separation and eclecticism. They take non-Hausa street names, like Scorpion
or Pusher, or words combining Hausa with references to people elsewhere,
such as Kayaman ‘reggae man’ or Takur Sahab (person who has a leader in
India). ‘Yan daba have adopted a style of dress they associate with “West-
side niggers” (or Los Angeles–based rappers). In their sunglasses, chains,
and baggy jeans, ‘yan daba show a broad interest in world youth cultures,
questioning me, through whirls of Indian hemp, about the political impact of
rappers like Tupac Shakur and the revolutionary politics of his Black Panther
mother. ‘Yan daba use ideas from the Black Panthers and other revolution-
ary groups in their plans to violently force politicians to make good on their
political promises to the poor.
Until the emergence of Kano government-sponsored ward vigilantes in
1999, and the Hisbah in 2000, ‘yan daba were the main protectors of their
wards, safeguarding them from armed robberies, police brutality, communal
africa today 54(3)
violence, and crimes committed by ‘yan daba of other wards. Ward vigilan-
tes and Hisbah, agemates and neighbors of ‘yan daba, brought an intimate
challenge to the authority of ‘yan daba in the realm of ward “policing.”
In the late 1970s, a burgeoning media industry and increased access to media
coincided with a powerful reformist Sunni movement, Jama’at Izalatil Bid’a
“Marginal Muslims”
77
With increased international criticism of the implementation of those codes,
he appeared frequently in the media decrying the U.S. Bush administration’s
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“war on terrorism” as a war against Muslims. ‘Yan Shia refer to Yoruba
President Olusegun Obasanjo as “the U.S.’s boy,” implying Yoruba ethnic
support for U.S. government policies. Though El-Zakzaky insists that he and
his followers are not Shi’ite, they wear the garments of Iranian clerics, dis-
tribute Shi’a literature, and echo Shi’a doctrine in their own publications.17
El-Zakzaky and his followers have been routinely imprisoned on charges of
posing a threat to state security by denouncing the Nigerian State as a system
of nonbelievers (kafirai).
Before the implementation of Shari’ah law in Kano, Hisbah of diverse
religious sects and factions drew together as “Nigerian Orthodox Muslims,”
following the model of such Nigerian reformists as Shehu Usman ‘dan
Fodio, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, Mallam Isma’il Idris, and Sheikh Ibrahim El-
Zakzaky, and such scholars as Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, from eighteenth-century
Arabia, and Ibn Taymiyya, of the fourteenth century, Sudan’s Hasan al-Turabi,
and Iranians such as Ayatollah Murtadha Mutahhari, protégé of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, who sought “to establish the rule of the oppressed”
(Sanusi 2006a, b). Through bitter political struggles with Dr. Rabiu Kwank-
waso (Kano State Governor), the emir (Alhaji Ado Bayero) and the Sufi estab-
lishment, members of reformist sects united in the struggle for Shari’ah and
violently forced the implementation of Shari’ah law as Kano State criminal
law, claiming the governor, the emir and certain religious leaders were not
“good Muslims.”18 Beyond local level politics, much Hisbah anger and politi-
cal momentum came from identification with the talakawa in relation to
failures of the international judicial system and global inequities:
Sufis recite, until they lost a sense of time, place, and identity, and disturbed
their relatives with shouting and bizarre behavior. Spirits from far away
places such as India, the United States, and the Sudan possessed women and
men with greater frequency, causing new symptoms such as spontaneous
“dancing like they do in Indian film” and “American break dancing,” inter-
spersed with paralyses (Casey 1998, forthcoming).20 Debates within various
healing communities about the prevalence and signification of rashin lafiya
78
79
worsening realities by restoring Islamic “authenticity,” and the sensorial
memories associated with taqwa ‘fear of God’, and tahara ‘ritual purity’,
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reflected and constituted conflations of Islamic authenticity, morality and
security, a jihad against self and others, censorship and self-censorship.
Among Muslims, persistent conflicts about whether to sanction reli-
gious history and mystical traditions that predate the nineteenth-century
Islamic jihad led by reformist Shehu Usman ‘dan Fodio have become the
norm, with Qadiriyya and reformist Sunnis claiming him as a member of
their sects.22 Litigation between ‘yan Bori has become increasingly common,
focusing on the “genuineness” and “originality” of ‘yan Bori, and their
capacity to represent Hausa “traditional culture.” There are complex pat-
terns of conflict, for Bori, as traditional culture, is tolerated and protected
by the Sufi emirate, yet condemned by reformist Muslims who lay claim
to orthodoxy, sharply differentiating themselves against the heterodoxy of
Bori and the “un-Islamic practices” of the Sufi brotherhoods (Ibrahim 1991;
Loimeier 1997).
Well-funded at a time when the Nigerian national government was in
a fiscal “state of emergency” and neither willing to provide regular salaries
for government employees, nor social services and amenities for the poor,
members of reformist movements became rapidly absorbed with the needs
of Muslims, converting hundreds of Sufis, through education and free spirit
exorcisms, to Shi’a and Sunni forms of orthodoxy. Conflicts between reform-
ist Sunni Muslims and nonreformist Sufis and ‘yan Bori emerged in response
to the sensory structures associated with Sufi and Bori ritual uses of music,
dance, perfumes, and amulets, visiting the tombs of Sufi saints, and excessive
feasting and celebrations—practices that draw spirits to humans. Reformist
Sunnis considered all of these practices forms of shirk (polytheism, or the
forbidden association of partners such as humans, the jinn or witches with
Allah),23 bid’a, and blasphemy (sab’o), and to be economically excessive,
with reformist Shi’a concurring that many of these practices were emblem-
atic of, or infused with, animism and Western capitalism, yet what consti-
tuted shirk, bid’a, or sab’o, or the conspicuous consumption of Western
capitalism, was always a matter of interpretation and debate. For instance,
in times of political conflict, most notably the 1999 violence in Kaduna, over
the implementation of Shari’ah law, many reformist Sunnis and Shi’as relied
on the use of “traditional” ritual forms of medicinal protection, heightening
enmity between reformist Sunnis, Shi’as, and nonreformist Sufis. Umar, a
Sufi ‘dan tauri (people who make and use ritual herbal medicines to prevent
injury from weapons), said:
africa today 54(3)
ing rubutu.24 They said these are all blasphemy. But Allah says
stand up and I will help you.25
“Marginal Muslims”
81
We are all Muslims. Shari’ah will help us to know each other
better. In this way, crimes will be reduced and the rich and
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poor will be the same under the law.29
‘Yan daba described their hopes for jobs and schooling, healthcare, and per-
sonal reforms in behaviors such as their use of alcohol, forms of idealism
reflected in wider discourses of support for Shari’ah law. However, alongside
these public narratives of support for Shari’ah law, ‘yan daba activities
revealed mistrust, anger, and feelings of betrayal. ‘Yan daba developed ward
“lookouts,” who monitored their neighborhoods for Hisbah. Some said dis-
cretion was their best protection from Hisbah because “Shari’ah works with
eye-witnessing a crime.” Others said they would allow Hisbah to preach to
them, but would not change. A member of daba smoking Indian hemp on
the side of a major road joked with Hisbah:
‘Yan daba and Hisbah were concerned with masculine power and the
moral authority to secure an area. A member of Hisbah said, “We are over
a hundred and we are ready to lose our lives to defend this town.”31 A ‘dan
daba who was a strong supporter of Shari’ah said:
‘Daba actions and mode of life do not conform with what soci-
ety wants, so people like the Hisbah are the ones who abuse
them. If they come and meet ‘yan daba committing an offense,
they will try to arrest them; thus there is this kind of indirect
abuse or small talk between them. . . . But ‘yan daba will not
stop because they would be labeled as cowards.32
Another ‘dan daba said:
We can stop our activities perhaps, . . . but you should remem-
ber that if a person is just killed without committing any
offense, do you think if the Shari’ah doesn’t do anything about
it that we will let the matter rest? To me, you cannot give
advice to ‘yan daba after such a thing. . . . The Shari’ah says if
africa today 54(3)
you kill a man, you should be killed too. So why should you
kill and not be killed?33
‘Yan daba, who were on intimate, joking terms with Hisbah from their
wards, responded to the personal character (hali) of Hisbah in face-to-face
confrontations. They most respected Hisbah whom they perceived to be gen-
erous, fair, and sincere about their social roles, people they considered to be
82
ment of Kano State, through daily challenges of masculine power and Islamic
authenticity, in tension with the democratic notions of majority rule and the
protection of individual human rights.
Profiling and the Jihad against Visible Enemies and the Devil
83
In the early stages of Shari’ah implementation, there was little money
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for the creation of jobs, social services, or education, other than reformist
Islamic education, funded by Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iraqis, and wealthy Nigeri-
ans. Instead, the Kano State Shari’ah Implementation Committee started
campaigns against the sale and consumption of alcohol and prostitution, and
for marriages of all unmarried Muslim Hausa women. Sanusi, a member of
Hisbah, told me:
Women are the people to bring all moral conduct. It is for them
to teach children. They are our mothers, so we like them to be
in front. They are the figureheads of everything moral.35
Hisbah complained that Muslim Yoruba and Christian women, not practic-
ing the partial seclusion (kulle) of Muslim Hausa women, were “too indepen-
dent,” available attractions for Muslim men. Among Muslim Hausa, failing
to maintain what is considered proper control of one’s love, including mari-
tal and familial relations, erotic desires, and sexual behavior, is a religious
lapse, a falling into non-Muslim patterns of indulgence and romanticism
(Callaway and Creevey 1994; Wall 1988). Because erotic desire and sexual
urges are considered natural and inevitable, moral virtue is relative to one’s
behavior within the family, the guardian and container of eros and sex.
Unmarried women and women who live alone are commonly called karuwai
(prostitutes), bound to men only through sex and money, potential sources
of communal betrayal. There is a widespread sentiment among Muslim
Hausa that ethnic others, spirit and human, and members of the opposite sex,
men and women, are “uncontrollable”—that, without volition, their erotic
desires and sexual activities inevitably overflow the boundaries of marriage.36
During the implementation itself, ‘yan daba received silent encouragement
(or thought they did) and condemnation from reformist Muslims to frighten
and attack Muslim women, married and unmarried, who ventured out of
their homes unaccompanied.
Conceptions of reformist interventions in moral, social order are
widely associated with conservative ideologies of gender and family, yet ‘yan
Shi’a and ‘yan Izala simultaneously developed strong educational programs
for women and persuaded women to participate in politics. Muslim Hausa
women, marrying and having babies, were a major front in the domestic poli-
tics of democracy as majority rule, but they also participated in protests and
other public displays of reformist political affiliation. In December of 2000,
africa today 54(3)
85
thereby making them ready targets for extermination by all
other Nigerians.
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According to Ado-Kurawa (2000:324), Christian Yoruba controlled media,
backed by Christian imperialists, are the main force behind the anti-Shari’ah
propaganda:
“States of Emergency”
In March of 2001, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, the reformist Sunni Deputy Gov-
ernor of Kano State, announced an Islamic “state of emergency,” referring to
the inability of Shari’ah law, as it was being practiced in Kano State, to stop
“prostitution” and the sale and consumption of alcohol. In conflict with the
governor, Dr. Ganduje led Hisbah on a series of raids to local hotels, restau-
rants, and “cool spots,” where Hisbah verbally abused patrons and destroyed
millions of dollars’ worth of alcohol. Because Christian Igbo and Muslim
Yoruba owned most of these businesses, these raids bankrupted some, and
scared others into a mass exodus. Establishments stayed indefinitely closed
or operated at odd hours or with armed guards patrolling the gates. Jokes
about “dying for a drink” became a permanent fixture, as humor rose to
africa today 54(3)
meet increased levels of anxiety. Rumors about the arming of Muslims and
Christians came more frequently. In response, President Olusegun Obasanjo
called Dr. Ganduje to Abuja, stating in public that the deputy governor had
endangered Nigerian state security, thus reframing Kano’s Islamic “state of
emergency” as a national one.
86
Concluding Remarks
“Marginal Muslims”
I am grateful to Aminu Sharif Bappa, Abdulkarim ‘dan Asabe, and Show Boy for introducing me
to ‘yan daba and Hisbah, and to the ‘yan daba, Hisbah, and families who allowed me into their
lives. For reasons of confidentiality, they shall remain unnamed, but I greatly appreciate my
experiences with them. I thank Abdulkarim ‘dan Asabe, Salisu Abdullahi, Phillip Shea, Murray
87
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NOTES
1. The civil code of Shari’ah law, which guides matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody,
and inheritance, has been continuously in place since the nineteenth century (Gumi with
Tsiga 1992:50). The change in 1999 and 2000 involved a reimposition of the criminal code of
Shari’ah that had been in place during the colonial period (under the control of the British,
who had outlawed hadd punishments, which they found “repugnant”), but had been excised
at independence (Kumo 1993:7–8).
2. While many Muslims considered Shari’ah law as an alternative to, or critique of, colonial and
postcolonial elitism and corruption, the Independent Shari’ah Implementation Committee
was the first group to implement it as a legal structure, with Hisbah (Shari’ah law enforcers),
Sirhul (committee of community elders), and Shura (Shari’ah court judges).
3. Scholarly debate about the impact of Shi’a Muslims on the politics of religion in northern
Nigeria is based on the notion of “authentic” Shi’a identity and a preference for doctrinal, rather
than communal, identification (Gumi with Tsiga 1992; Umar 2001).
4. Bori is widely regarded as animism or a spirit-possession cult, which predated Islam (Besmer
1983; Greenberg 1946; Masquelier 1993; Onwuegeogwu 1969; Palmer 1914; Tremearne 1914).
Scholars describe the Bori spirit-possession rituals, practiced in Kano State, as religious
opposition to Islam (Besmer 1983; Onwuegeogwu 1969) and as alternative or oppositional
gender experience and expression (Callaway 1987; Wall 1988). ‘Yan Bori consider themselves
Muslims, while Kano reformist Muslims variably refer to them as “fallen Muslims,” “marginal
Muslims,” or “pagans.”
5. After the implementation of Shari’ah law, in November of 2000, members of the Indepen-
dent Shari’ah Implementation Committee Sirhul (community of elders) and Shura (Islamic
judges) condemned Hisbah violence as “un-Islamic.” The Kano State government formed
the Kano State Shari’a Implementation Committee to address charges that Hisbah were
“abusing their powers.” The government retained most Hisbah from the Kano Independent
Shari’a Implementation Committee, but provided increased supervision and a written code
of conduct.
6. Nafs refer to the biopsychological powers of humans, such as feelings, emotions, sexual
desires, and carnal appetites.
7. See Casey (2007) for an analysis of the Kano ‘yan daba violence that occurred on 11 May 2004
against kafirai, Kiristoci, and ba’ki.
8. Personal communication, Professor Phillip Shea, Department of History, Bayero University,
Kano, Nigeria, 19 July 2004.
9. During the 1950s, Fulani elite used the al’kali (Islamic judge) courts for “political ends, to sup-
africa today 54(3)
press dissent, especially by adherents of the Northern Elements Progressive Union” (Christelow
2002:195).
10. Pratten (2005:2) suggests Annang vigilantes come to terms with Nigerian state disorder “by
means of brokerage, by inserting themselves within political and economic niches,” arrived at
through monitoring and surveillance, and ambiguous notions of accountability. Gore and Prat-
ten (2003:213) find “popular responses to disorder contribute to an ‘insurgent’ construction of
the public realm in which groups marginalized and excluded challenge the logic, locations,
88
paid Nigerian police officers increasingly involved in armed robberies and other forms of
extrajudicial violence.
12. Saro-Wiwa (1992) documents routine pleas to the United Nations and to the Nigerian nation-
state for public safety and a fair claim to oil revenues and jobs.
13. According to the Report of Tribunal of Inquiry on Kano Disturbances, Maitatsine ‘The One
Who Curses’ (a nickname given to him by Kano residents) came to Kano from Damaturu
in Borno State. He claimed that Kano Muslims had no direction (kibla), and he repeatedly
shouted at them, “May Allah separate you from all of His blessings!” He considered himself
a prophet, whose followers were “original” Muslims, uncorrupted by unlawful innovation
(bid’a) and shirk.
14. Interview with a hunter, ‘Yadda ‘Kwari, Nigeria, 26 October 2000.
15. Ya’u (2000) describes the social services ‘yan daba have historically provided for their
wards, including labor for community projects, protection, sporting and cultural events for
community entertainment, and enforcing the community discipline.
16. While there have been a number of slightly different names and translations given to this
movement, this is the name Gumi gave to it at its inception, 8 February 1978, in Jos, Nigeria
(Gumi with Tsiga 1992:155–156).
17. El-Zakzaky, former leader of the Muslim Brothers, a Sunni sect, developed close relations with
Iranian scholars and frequently traveled to Iran. Many of his followers, funded by scholarships
from the Iranian government, claim to be Shi’a.
18. ‘Yan daba threatened to use their black-market petrol to burn down the city of Kano if the Kano
State governor refused to sign Shari’ah criminal codes into Kano State law.
19. Interview with a member of Hisbah, Kano, Nigeria, 3 August 2001.
20. Indian masala film is the most popular genre watched in Kano, followed by Chinese Kung Fu,
and Nigerian magical and American crime films (Larkin 1998).
21. Musa, and all subsequent names that I use to ease the narratives of Kano Muslims, are
pseudonyms, meant to protect their identities.
22. Please see Paden (1986:43) for scholarship that supports both positions. During the transition
to independence, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, revived the works of Shehu Usman
‘Dan Fodio to unify northern Muslims, regardless of brotherhood or legal school.
23. ‘Yan Shi’a and ‘yan Izala consider secular human legislation one of the most egregious forms
of shirk because it places humans on par with Allah (Westerlund 1997:309).
24. Rubutu is a Muslim Hausa treatment for rashin lafiya (imbalance in all areas of life—psychical,
spiritual, social, physical). To take rubutu, the afflicted person writes Qur’anic verses on a board
or bowl, washes it with water, and drinks the solution, to, literally, internalize the medicinal
verses.
25. Interview with a hunter, ‘Yadda ‘Kwari, Nigeria, 9 September 2000.
89
31. Interview with a member of Hisbah, Kano, Nigeria, 3 August 2001.
32. Interview with a ‘dan daba, Kano, Nigeria, 29 January 2001.
Conerly Casey
33. Interview with a ‘dan daba, Kano, Nigeria, 23 February 2000.
34. Interview with a member of Hisbah, Kano, Nigeria, 3 August 2001.
35. Interview with a member of Hisbah, Kano, Nigeria, 15 January 2001.
36. Before the implementation of Shari’ah law, I witnessed the exorcism of a Muslim Yoruba spirit
who had possessed a Muslim Hausa woman because “he loved her.” The malams performing
the exorcism challenged him to recite from the Qur’an—to prove, in other words, his Islamic
authenticity—before firmly establishing his possession as “oppression.”
37. Interview with a member of Hisbah, Kano, Nigeria, 3 August 2001.
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