The Sharif-Aminu Blasphemy Case in Kano, Nigeria: Some Context

On August 10, an upper sharia court in Nigeria’s Kano State handed down a death sentence for a singer named Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, who was convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in one of his songs. Kano is the most populous state in northern Nigeria and one of the states where a version of “full sharia” (including penalties for what are considered criminal offenses in most interpretations of Islamic law) has been on the books since the turn of the millennium.

Here is a bit of context:

• Sharif-Aminu belongs to the Tijaniyya Sufi order, one of the most popular Sufi orders in northern Nigeria and across much of North Africa, West Africa, and the greater Sahelian band (and internationally). Within the Tijaniyya, he belongs to what is sometimes called the Niassene Tijaniyya or Tijaniyya Ibrahimiyya after a Senegalese shaykh named Ibrahim Niasse (1900-1975), who played a pivotal role in spreading and reviving the Tijaniyya from Senegal to Sudan. Sharif-Aminu’s song reportedly (I have not heard it) stated or implied that Ibrahim Niasse was greater than the Prophet Muhammad, a sentiment that violates a core tenet of Islam, namely that the Prophet Muhammad was the ultimate human being.
• It is very important, however, for Western journalists or others not to conflate Sharif-Aminu’s (purported) comments with the Tijaniyya as a whole.
  • First, other representatives of the Tijaniyya are already taking pains to distance themselves from Sharif-Aminu, even to the extent of saying (Hausa) they find the death sentence justified.
  • Second, there has been a millennium and more of efforts by Sufi intellectuals and ordinary Sufis to make the argument that Islamic law and Sufi spirituality are not just compatible but mutually reinforcing. Most members of the Tijaniyya, even as they consider figures like Niasse (or the order’s founder, Ahmad al-Tijani, who died in 1815) to be exceptional human beings, would never suggest that any person was greater than the Prophet Muhammad. Indeed, there is a long tradition of Sufi literature – including specifically West African Sufi literature – praising the Prophet Muhammad, as a new book by Oludamini Ogunnaike documents.
  • Third, there is a long history of tensions between Sufis and anti-Sufis, or we could say between Sufis and Salafis, in northern Nigeria and in other parts of Africa and in other parts of the Muslim world. I think it is crucial for journalists and Western academics not to take sides within those conflicts – and it is very easy to inadvertently adopt the anti-Sufi/pro-Salafi position by using phrases like “the Sufis say X, while the Sunnis say Y” or by creating binaries such as “Sufism versus orthodoxy.” Observers need to keep in mind that most Sufis consider themselves (a) Sunnis and (b) orthodox. And bluntly speaking, your average journalist or commentator is not really qualified to decide who represents “orthodoxy” within Islam and, moreover, I don’t think it’s appropriate in a journalistic (or Western academic) context to make that call in the first place. Meanwhile some Salafis will be eager, amid this case, to make the equation “Sharif-Aminu=Tijaniyya=Sufism,” and that’s a problematic equation to make, to say the least.
• In my view there are patterns to how cases of alleged blasphemy have tended to play out in recent years: authorities, even in Muslim-majority societies, tend to be very quick to give death sentences and very slow to carry them out. The Sharif-Aminu case has deep similarities to a previous case in Kano, and indeed directly builds on that case because the exact same core issues are at play. Notably, the death sentence pronounced in that previous case has also not yet been carried out. By responding quickly, authorities can react to and shape local pressures; by delaying actual executions, they can allow international outcry to fade.
• The popular mobilizations demanding the death penalty in such cases are worth examining closely – they raise questions that I’ve never been able to fully explore to my own satisfaction, whether in the Nigerian context, the Mauritanian context, or elsewhere. To wit: Are such mobilizations spontaneous and bottom-up, or are they shaped by elites? If so, by which elites, and for which motives?
• The role of Kano’s Hisbah Board and its Commander, Dr. Harun Sani Ibn Sina, will be worth following closely in all this. The Hisbah is a sharia-related moral enforcement body whose role has evolved in complex ways since its creation in the early 2000s in Kano (there are Hisbah Boards in some other states as well, but Kano’s is the most sophisticated and powerful). As Commander, Ibn Sina is relatively new in his role, having taken over from longtime Commander Aminu Daurawa in 2019 after the re-election of current Kano Governor Abdullahi Ganduje. Ibn Sina is reportedly very close to Ganduje, but other than that I don’t know much about him. Daurawa was/is one of Kano’s leading Salafis, but when I asked a friend in Kano who is very knowledgeable about the religious scene, he said that Ibn Sina* has no obvious affiliation to the Salafis or to any other specific constituency. I will see what I can find in the coming days. In any case the Hisbah Board can function as a focal point for mediating between the top political authorities and “the street” (or segments of it) when it comes to issues involving Islam in Kano.
• The protesters who mobilized against Sharif-Aminu do not necessarily speak for all Muslims in Kano. There is a sizable Christian minority in the city and the state, and moreover the Muslim population is diverse, with a substantial presence of Sufis (and note that there are multiple orders as well as prominent leaders within each order), Salafis, and a notable Shi’i minority. Again, the vast majority will recoil from any perceived insult to the Prophet Muhammad, but it does not automatically follow from that that they want Sharif-Aminu to die – some will see him as a wayward boy (he is reportedly just 22 years old, an age often considered to be still a boy in northern Nigerian society).

We will see how this plays out. Again, I would be surprised if Sharif-Aminu is executed any time soon.

*It is possible that Ibn Sina is a nickname referencing the medieval philosopher (d. 1037), but I’d be a bit surprised if that were the case, actually.

Senegal: More on Macky Sall’s (and Marième Faye’s) Visit to Touba

Earlier this week I posted about the upcoming Magal celebration in Senegal. The Magal is a mass gathering of the Mouridiyya, one of the country’s two major Sufi orders; the event commemorates the return of founding Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba (1853-1927) from exile in Gabon during French colonial rule. The Magal takes place in the Mouridiyya’s hub, the city of Touba.

The event attracts courtesy calls from various politicians, including President Macky Sall – who, as one specialist pointed out to me, is not particularly popular in Touba. In the first round of the 2012 elections, then-incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade won an outright majority in the Mbacké Department, where Touba is located (and then went on to lose the overall election to Sall in the second round). As I discussed in my last post, this year the Mouride hierarchy had to publicly intervene to stop a junior shaykh from “sabotaging” Sall’s visit to Touba this year. Although it is partly, as mentioned above, a simple courtesy call, this visit is possibly more important than the average such call, as this is the last Magal before the February 2019 presidential elections.

Some press reports indicate that Sall’s visit went well. And reporters are calling attention not just to Sall but also to the First Lady, Marième Faye. One headline reads, “Macky in Touba: This Gesture by Marième Faye, Calculated or Not, Reinforces His Popularity.” From the article:

Having arrived late to the great room of Khadim al-Rasul [servant of the Prophet, a common title for Ahmadou Bamba among the Mouridiyya] residence at the moment when her husband, President Macky Sall, was going to begin his speech beside the Khalife General of the Mourides, the First Lady, Marième Faye, suddenly crouched down in the middle of the audience, a few steps from the doorway she had just crossed. Like a simple disciple.

Photos here.

Such images and moments have a longer history, as articles like this one spell out. From the Catholic President Leopold Senghor to the somewhat reservedly Tijani President Abdou Diouf to the overtly Mouride President Abdoulaye Wade and the openly Mouride President Macky Sall, the relationship between the Senegalese presidency and the Sufi orders – and we might say the Mouridiyya in particular – has been dynamic, even if certain deep continuities persist. Wade’s public displays of Mouride affiliation were controversial, particularly among intellectuals in the capital, one of whom coined the now-famous descriptor of “the Republic on its knees” in reference to Wade’s prostration to the Mouride Khalife General in 2000. Has something changed since 2000, in terms of how these moments play out in Senegalese public life? It’s beyond my expertise to say – but the parallels are interesting. I’m also reminded of something several young Mourides said to me when I lived in Senegal in 2006-2007, namely that it was divinely ordained that Senegal would first have a Christian president, then a Tijani president, and then all the rest would be Mourides thenceforth. Wa-Allahu a’lam.

Here, finally, is the president’s speech (in Wolof):

 

Mali: Soumaïla Cissé Courts Religious Leaders in Advance of the Second Round

On 12 August, Mali will hold the second round of its presidential elections. The top two vote-getters – the incumbent, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK), and the runner-up from the previous election, Soumaïla Cissé – will face off. As I mentioned here, Cissé has something of an uphill climb ahead of him in this short interval between the first and the second rounds. Having scored just 18% to Keïta’s 41%, Cissé has to quickly assemble a diverse coalition in order to win.

In this context, it is worth commenting on Cissé’s visit on 6 August to the town of Nioro du Sahel (map) to see the figure who is arguably Mali’s leading religious personality – Mohamed Ould Bouyé Haïdara, better known as the Chérif of Nioro. “Chérif” here is simply the French transliteration of the Arabic sharif, meaning a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. More immediately, the Chérif is the son of Shaykh Hamallah (1893-1943), one of the most prominent and controversial Sufi shaykhs in colonial West Africa. Hamallah’s story is too complicated to retrace here – see Benjamin Soares’ book for more.

After his visit to Nioro, Cissé announced that he had received the Chérif’s formal support for the second round. Cissé commented on the Chérif’s “aspiration…to see the country definitively get out of the crisis that we have known during these recent dark years.”

With the Chérif’s support, Cissé can also expect that of Mahmoud Dicko, president of the High Islamic Council of Mali and another key Muslim leader in the country. In January of this year, Dicko (who leans Salafi, but is sometimes accommodating toward Sufis and their interests) stated that he would follow the Chérif’s lead when it came to the 2018 elections. Both the Chérif and Dicko, it will be recalled, backed IBK in 2013, partly through a movement called Sabati 2012 (which is itself, we should note, again supporting IBK this time).

At this time, an IBK victory still seems more probable to me than a Cissé victory, although the endorsements of some of the major, still undecided candidates from the first round could make a big difference one way or the other. In any case, one takeaway is that key Malian religious leaders appear confident that they can break with IBK and come out okay even if he wins a second term. Even if IBK wins re-election, then, one should not assume that he has a massive mandate, either from ordinary Malians or from the country’s political, social, and religious elites.

 

Nigeria and the Islamic University of Medina’s Dawra: An Interesting Anecdote

Last week, while doing a quick Google search to confirm the life dates of Umar Fallata (see below, I came across this obituary for the Nigerian Muslim religious leader Isa Waziri (1925-2013). The obituary contains an interesting anecdote about the dawra (tour), a kind of educational and recruitment initiative by Saudi Arabia’s Islamic University of Medina. The dawra, as I discuss in my book, was a key mechanism for recruiting Nigerian students to Medina; worldwide, Nigeria was one of the countries where the University conducted the most tours. The dawra was a key early step in the careers of several prominent Nigerian Salafis.

But as the anecdote makes clear, the Saudi and African scholars who ran the dawra took pains to make sure that it was not just a Salafi affair:

I saw one great quality with Shaikh Isa Waziri around 1994 during the annual Dawra, which is a course for Arabic teachers organized by the Islamic University of Madina under the leadership of Shaikh Abdalla Zarban Al-Ghamidi.  A dinner was organized at Da’awah Group of Nigeria in which almost all the Islamic Scholars in Kano were present. Equally present at the dinner was late Shaikh Umar Fallata, a highly respected Islamic scholar who teaches in the Mosque of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

It was an interesting event, because despite all the differences between Izala and Tariqa, many prominent Islamic scholars from Tijjaniyya, Qadiriyya, and Izala were present. But one thing you cannot miss during the dinner was that Shaikh Isa Waziri was the rallying point among these scholars, some of whom do not get along publically. On that day, I saw some wonders, because some of the scholars that members of the public thought would look away when they meet each other were so respectful of one another. You wouldn’t be completely wrong if you suggest that sometimes our scholars dribble the followership.

Not only was Waziri a prominent shaykh from the Tijaniyya Sufi order, but the dinner included figures from both the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya, the two most prominent Sufi orders in northern Nigeria. This is not to say that there are no tensions between Salafis, who are often vehemently anti-Sufi, and Sufis – it would have been quite fascinating to attend that dinner! – but it is to say that sometimes stereotypes don’t hold true. Moreover, as the author of the obituary points out, sometimes public hostility can give way to private cordiality.

The anecdote raises two other points:

1. African scholars who took up residence in Saudi Arabia and became part of the Saudi Arabian religious establishment also, often, became key links between Saudi Arabia and Africa. One can see that in the case of this anecdote and Umar Fallata. The best English-language source on Fallata is Chanfi Ahmed’s 2015 book on West African scholars in the Hijaz. See also here (Arabic) for an official Saudi Arabian biography.
2. I think a lot about the idea of a “fragmentation of sacred authority” in the Muslim world (see here and here). That’s on display in this anecdote too, as the author of the obituary argues that no scholar in northern Nigeria today can play the unifying role of someone such as Waziri. No one wants to fall prey to a distorting nostalgia about the past – it’s not like there were no intra-Muslim conflicts during the twentieth century! – but it does seem like the Muslim world, and various Muslim communities, are much more internally fragmented than they were even a generation ago.

“Takfir” Can Cut Both Ways

Youssou Ndour, the Senegalese musician who now serves as the country’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, made headlines in the Senegalese press this weekend for saying (French), “I sincerely think that these people who are destroying the tombs of saints and historic sites [in northern Mali] are not Muslims.”

Statements like Ndour’s, denying membership in the Muslim community to Muslims who practice violence against other Muslims, are not rare. Governor Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe State, Northern Nigeria, has made similar remarks about the rebel sect Boko Haram:

We cannot call these people Muslims. They are transgressors, who commit heinous crimes, which are totally condemnable. Islam is and will remain a religion of peace and even the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SWA) lived peacefully with followers of other faiths. Therefore, no one can justify attacking places of worship belonging to other faiths as Islamic.

I think such statements merit reflection on two levels. First, these statements challenge us to think about who is and is not a Muslim. As an outsider, I prefer to avoid taking stances on such issues, but we should at least question our assumptions and our habits. It is odd and tragic how we sometimes rush to question the purity of someone’s Islam when they wear an amulet or put up a poster of their sheikh, but we don’t question it when they shed blood.

Second, and closely related to the preceding point, we are reminded that talk of excommunication can cut both ways. Even as the media sometimes presents Boko Haram and Mali’s Ansar al Din as some kind of ultra-Muslims, some other Muslims feel that these groups have forfeited their claims to the faith entirely. One must be careful with terminology, of course: I do not consider Ndour and Gaidam’s statements equivalent to formal declarations of takfir (excommunication). But when analysts use “takfiri” as a synonym for “jihadi” or “terrorist,” they risk implying that such groups are the only ones willing to be exclusivist, and they risk sacrificing historical and contextual depth. Over time, Muslims of many different theological and ideological stripes have been willing to deny the Islam of their rivals – even the Sufis who are so often assumed to be only targets of excommunication, never its proponents.

What is your reaction to Ndour’s statement? What effects do you think it might have on audiences in Senegal and Mali?