In many Muslim countries in West Africa and beyond, “protests against Charlie Hebdo” occurred when citizens went out on the streets following Friday prayers on 16 January 2015. However, only in Niger did these protests turn extremely violent. This report analyses the social, political and religious workings behind the protests in Niger. In doing so, it shows that the so-called “protests against Charlie Hebdo” are only superficially linked to the Muhammad cartoons by the French satirical magazine. Similarly violent protests have occurred in Niger – often in the town of Zinder – for quite different reasons and on different occasions in recent years. The report therefore argues against simplistic notions of religious fundamentalism and shows that the protests can be explained more appropriately in terms of politics and socio-economic exclusion.
In contrast to similar organizations in its neighbouring countries, Niger's domestic Salafi associations have remained peaceful and apolitical. Drawing on historical institutionalist scholarship and on recent conceptualizations of the state as a religious actor, this article examines how the Nigerien state has tried to regulate religious practices since Seyni Kountché's military coup in 1974. It argues that the institutional regulation of religious practices is one important variable that accounts for Niger's deviant trajectory. During Niger's autocratic period (1974–91), the government established the Association islamique du Niger (AIN) as the sole legal authority regulating access to Niger's Friday prayer mosques. Committed to peaceful and apolitical interpretations of the Koran, the AIN confined access to Niger's religious sphere to local clerics and Sufi brotherhoods. After the breakdown of autocratic rule in 1991, the AIN served as a religious advisory body. Salafi associations could assemble freely but had to abide by certain criteria. Confronted with the prospect of Islamic violence in 2000, the Nigerien state intervened in Niger's religious sphere in several ways. Among other initiatives, the government began to resurrect a more rigorous system of religious supervision in order to monitor religious practices on an ongoing basis.
This article discusses youth religiosities and how young Salafi (Sunnance) appropriate the discourse of the popularization of the Sunna and at the same time distance themselves from the well-known Izala movement. The Sunnance have become a social formation only recently, but have earnestly and regularly taken the stage to lay the ground for a new expression and understanding of the Izala reform agenda. They claim to be Izala though they have consistently taken theological positions and promoted practices that challenge and break with Izala “orthodoxy.” These developments, the article argues, are the manifestation of the Izala effect, an intra and inter-Muslim dynamic that is gradually reshaping both anti-Sufism dear to Salafism and Sufi practices. The article is based on ethnographic materials collected in Niger over the last four years among youth promoters of a religious life in line with the “Pious Ancestors.”
How does the francophone élite in Niger manifest the ideal for a moral order in line with Islamic values, especially when this social category has become more than a consumer, but also a producer of key discourses and practices of a new Islamic culture? I argue that both the intellectual life and the social and moral models that ensued result in a new knowledge economy, expand the modes of expression of religiosity while they make French, along with Arabic and Hausa, a key Islamic idiom. More than a linguistic shift, this process is also epistemic, sociological and philosophical which bridges two cultural types that have been so far perceived as mutually exclusive.
In Niger, Izala is a well established Islamic reform movement that is known for its strategic use of small media. The author investigates how these media are produced and circulated during the Wa’zin kasa, a three-day international preaching rally, and how they play an active role in popularizing Izala’s discourses and practices and in shaping a moral community. The author illustrates that the mobility of these small media has instigated a media dynamic that has transformed the mediascape in Niger and produced new actors and new religious discourses. These ‘Sunna media’ have played an important role in the spread of the reformist movement, and in the establishment of new forms of authority. In the case of the Izala movement, they have also generated a specific religiosity.
In Niger, the role of the media in the re-islamization process that began two decades ago has remained understudied. This article seeks to remedy this gap and discusses a particular example of media usage and appropriation in the urban context of Niamey. It draws on a series of fieldwork studies undertaken in Niamey during the last two years. It focuses on Alarama, a young preacher and one of the most prominent media figures in Niamey. In addition to a series of TV and FM radio programmes he hosts, he has also developed recording and distribution practices that have resulted in the Islamic discotheque, a space that helps him popularize his CD and DVD sermons. I analyse how he has gathered around himself an expanding group of followers, many of whom have developed with him a fan–star relationship. Alarama's case exemplifies the way audiovisual media are constitutive of a new urban Islamic culture, which in return redefines media appropriation and religious imagination.
The academic accounts of Islamic reform in Niger have focused on the Izala movement, reducing it to an anti-Sufism. When these representations stress the wahhabi-salafi tendency of this movement, not only Izala appears as the Sufi foe, it is also viewed as a brand of Islamic discourse of foreign origin. This article shows that these accounts have told only part of the genealogy of Izala. References to Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio’s 19th century jihad are pervasive in Izala discourse despite the fact that he was affiliated with the Qadiriyya Sufi order. Dan Fodi’s acts, deeds and ideas are consistently read as Izala moments. The evidence presented is based on the pronouncements made by two Izala organizations. Both illustrate how the Izala reform has continuously appropriated and reinvented the legacy of Usman Dan Fodio, recasting this historical figure as the “true” Sunni and the Sheikh of the Sunna. Theoretically, what is at stake here is not so much how Izala operates, but how accounts of this movement have relied on a dichotomy Sufi/Anti-Sufi which contributes to rigidify our categories and therefore handicap our conceptual apparatus. In this sense, while highlighting how Usman Dan Fodio has become a “lieu de memoire”, this article seeks to shed some light on the genealogy of this Islamic reform discourse, and interrogate the categories used to characterize it. What the Izala appropriation of Usman Dan Fodio achieves is not so much a call to redefine Izala, as a readjustment of our conceptual map, which seeks to make sense of this movement.
The rare literature on Islam in Niger that has addressed the contribution of Islamic organizations to the broad domain of development, has most often focused on the controversies involving these organizations, their elite entrepreneurs on one side, and state officials on the other side. Criticism and rejection have not been the only attitudes toward state-sponsored initiatives. Participation has also been a pattern of these interactions. Whether with family planning or HIV/AIDs projects, ulama have contributed if not to run these initiatives, at least to raise awareness among communities across the country. In addition to local organizations, many international Islamic agencies have initiated several well-digging programs, charity programs and assistance to undertrained young Nigeriens. This has given “Islamic development” a materiality since the emergence of an Islamic sphere seeking to provide Islam with a normative role in all domains of public life. For a long time development has remained the preserve of the state, in particular because of the theoretical assumption that state mediates development. With the emergence of a civil society in the 1990s, this statist consideration gave way to the philosophies of “local development” stressing the local appropriation of development initiatives. With the idea of doing Aid and assistance the Islamic way, a universe of discourse has opened up enriching the problematic of development by emphasizing the faith factor. This contribution looks at how Islamic development actors intend to promote and mediate development by focusing on communication, managerial skills and ethics.
Scholars of Islam in Niger have pointed to the social, political and cultural significance of the re-Islamization processes currently taking place in urban contexts. Several authors have also examined the Islamic ethical project as a set of norms and values that seek to inform not only individual behavior but also public action. So far, however, very little has been written about the tools of this project of moral transformation, in particular when it grounds itself in the reproduction and reinterpretation of Islamic norms. Studies of Islam in Niger, for example, have rarely mentioned the fact that the medium of proselytizing is generally sermons recorded on CDs and DVDs. Within the last few years, the local production of these media has grown significantly, adding to the already dynamic sector of imported Islamic CDs and DVDs.
This paper proposes an ethnographic study of these media : their emergence, structuring and reception. How is manufacturing undertaken ? Who are the principal actors involved ? Why CDs and DVDs ? How do these media impact the production, reproduction and invention of norms in these renewed forms of Islam ? It focuses on the Niamey area where the preaching industry — which represents the basis for the production and circulation of Islamic CDs and DVDs — has a tripartite structure that includes preachers (who are now aware of the support these media bring to their discourses), “Islamic discotheques” (that distribute the media of this new moral economy), and audiences (seeking Islamic performances and “albums”). The data for this paper were collected during a series of field visits undertaken from 2007 to 2010.
The processes surrounding the elaboration of democracy in Muslim societies can be examined via a comparative consideration of three West African countries: Senegal, Mali, and Niger. Departing from analyses that ask whether democracy can be established in Muslim societies, the key question is how the democratic question is framed and discussed in such religious contexts. The launching of African democratic experiments in the 1990s provoked significant negotiation and discussion both within religious society and between religious groups and the secular elite about the desired substance of democracy. These processes have gradually empowered Muslim majorities to challenge and nuance the agenda presented at the transitions, but this is a direct outcome of the democratic process itself.
Le but de cet article est de montrer comment la femme nigérienne a négocié et continue de négocier sa citoyenneté dans un pays à 99 pour cent musulman. Dès l’indépendance, on voit nettement le jeu d’équilibre que faisait le président Diori Hamani pour préserver la laïcité du pays et les droits de chaque composante de la nation. En 1975, à la faveur de l’Année Internationale de la femme, celle-ci entre sur scène et depuis lors, elle revendique quotidiennement ses droits.
La démocratisation de la société nigérienne à partir de la Conférence Nationale de 1991 a amené aussi dans l’espace public les associations musulmanes et chrétiennes, avec leurs revendications propres. Ce qui distingue ces nouvelles forces sociales de celles auxquelles l’Etat nigérien était habitué, c’était que celles-ci posaient des problèmes nouveaux, d’ordre religieux. Le débat a aussi engagé l’intelligentsia du pays, qui éclairait l’opinion. Toutes ces luttes citoyennes ont permis la prise en compte des femmes dans les choix politiques malgré les pesanteurs religieuses.
In the early 1990s, democratization in Niger meant a political reform detached from the military rule, but also safe from religious influence. The adoption of the principle of a radical secularism (laïcité) sought, first, the autonomy of the political sphere from the religious one, and second, the submission of religious authority to the political one. The consecration of this principle led to the criticism of Muslim public actors who argued that such a principle was violating the religious identity of Niger’s society. This paper discusses the difficulty to separate the realm of politics from that of religion as Islamic organizations and Muslim actors have stepped into the political arena, articulating various religion-inspired discourses and seeking the conversion of Niger’s politics to Islam. Nowadays, this activism led to a rearrangement of the state’s position in relation to religiosity and its role in the public domain. This case of ambiguous secularism, I suggest, might be one of a reinterpretation not only of secularism, but of democratization itself.
In Niger, women have long been seen as embodiments of virtue (or wickedness). Of late, with the rise of reformist Islam, their role as upholders of purity has become key to the definition of moral community. Debates over the control of female sexuality and the ordering of social spaces have intensified. While such debates are characteristically framed in Islamic terms, one should not assume that pre-Islamic cosmologies—often denigrated by Islam—have become irrelevant to local moral concerns. In August 2003, rumors of a veiled she-devil haunting the streets of Zinder in search of seductive encounters provoked a moral panic, which eventually received a full account in a Nigérien newspaper. Muslim reformists argued the apparition was meant to discourage women from veiling, but others countered that it served as a warning to philandering husbands. It demonstrated that far from waning under the impact of Islamic revivals, figures of the pre-Islamic past are well entrenched in Islamic towns. Besides suggesting that non-Muslim others cannot be consigned to history, the rumors of spiritual intrusion discussed in this article highlight the centrality of the non-Muslim other in popular constructions of Muslimhood. In an age of renewed Muslim anxiety about forms of femininity perceived to conflict with the image of virtuous womanhood, the she-devil offered Nigérien Muslims a means of pondering the dangers of women's sexuality. At another level, her tale is about spirits parodying Islam so as to reveal the limits of morality. By subversively playing with notions of modesty and morality, the spirit presented a sobering critique of the hypocrisy of the veil in contemporary Niger.
In this article, I discuss how the spread of Islam in the town of Dogondoutchi, Niger has profoundly transformed the local imaginary, helping fuel perceptions of witchcraft as a thoroughly Muslim practice. I suggest that it is because witchcraft is seen as a hallmark of tradition that Muslims, despite their claim to have embraced modernity, are accused of being witches. For a small minority unconvinced of the superiority of Islam over local religious traditions, witchcraft offers a convenient means of demonizing Muslims and a powerful commentary on the ways that the globalizing impact of Islam has supposedly transformed local modes of sociality and kinship as well as forms of wealth production and consumption.
There is an international movement that advocates the establishment of quotas for women, especially in political and governmental positions. Partly as a result of its initiatives and efforts, countries have introduced legislation that endorses its spirit. These efforts have been important in addressing the gender gap; however, the means of articulating these legislative measures and implementing them vary from country to another. This article focuses on the textual formulation of the Quota Bill (2001) in Niger and how secularist and Islamist political elite women responded to it during the debate that led to its legal adoption.
Through a focus on the problems associated with bridewealth and wedding expenses in Dogondoutchi, a predominantly Muslim town of some 38,000 Hausa speakers in rural Niger, I discuss the predicament of young Mawri men who, in the double pursuit of marriage and maturity, often struggle to satisfy contradictory sets of moral and financial requirements. I trace the distinctive and divergent ways in which Mawri men and women of different generations participate in interpenetrating debates about wealth, domesticity, and sexuality to highlight how the experience of social reproduction is shaped by distinctly local dynamics of gender and generation. In contemporary Niger, the combined effects of neo-liberal economics and reformist Islam have massively transformed the terms and meaning of marriage. What emerges most conspicuously from this exploration of the ways in which processes of identity formation are played out in the controversial arena of marriage is the palpable sense of declining opportunities that young men experience as they delay marriage.
This article posits that a new and important transformation is occurring in Sahelian society. Westerners have tended to see the rise of “Islamism” as just another rejection of globalization and modernization. This article argues that another interpretation is possible, one that looks at the rise of movements like Izala as an attempt of embryonic Hausa capitalists to become part of globalization by substituting a much more individualized set of beliefs and behaviors for the older social and normative constructs of “traditional” Hausa society that obliged them to limit their accumulation of capital.
Terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 overlapped with ongoing movements of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa; however, these movements have not been identical, nor have they encountered uniform responses from the governments overseeing them. This is evident in the Hausa borderlands of Niger and Nigeria, where I conducted fieldwork (first begun in the early 1980s) two months after the attacks. Differences in the application of shari'a (Islamic law) on both sides of the border accentuate differences in Hausa culture and society along national (i.e., Nigérien vs. Nigerian) lines. Traditional Hausa customs that have flourished for centuries (praise-singing, drumming, group dancing, and singing) are now proscribed in the northern Nigerian state of Katsina, where shari'a is tantamount to de-Africanization. In contrast, Zinder, a neighboring state in the Republic of Niger, has so far resisted a comparable Islamization of its legal code. Cultural differentiation across the Niger-Nigeria boundary persists along religious lines, despite the status of Islam as the common faith. This inflected globalization of Islam highlights the significance of national boundaries in delimiting the influence of religious revivalism. Other differences relating to Islamization are inferred from comparing the extent of pilgrimage to Mecca and the incidence of wife seclusion in neighboring Hausa villages on each side of the Niger-Nigeria boundary.
Spirit possession ostensibly solves problems by freeing the object of possession from certain responsibilities, yet it also creates a whole nexus of unavoidable obligations as the human host learns to cope with the social, financial, and moral demands of her powerful alter ego. Rather than simplifying situations, possession complicates them by introducing new relations and enabling new forms of communication. In this article, I explore what bori possession as communication entailed for a young Mawri woman from Dogondoutchi (Niger) when her possessing spirit made dramatic revelations that forced her to make changes in her life. I show that possession opens up a space of self-awareness for mediums as they struggle to gain progressive control over the terms of their relationships with spirits. In this space of reflexivity they help create and in their role as interlocutors, accusers, or diviners, spirits play a crucial role in the refashioning of human histories and identities.
Le Wahhabisme est le dernier courant réformiste à s’être diffusé au Niger (en attendant le Schi’isme) : en effet, il ne s’y est véritablement implanté que durant les années 1980, lorsque le mouvement Izala d’inspiration wahhabite s’est diffusé du Nigeria au Niger, notamment à Maradi, par le biais d’un ancien élève d’Aboubacar Goumi, malam Chaïbou Ladan. Au niveau de Maradi, ce dernier, aidé par un riche commerçant, Elhaji Rabé Kané dan Tchadaoua, va favoriser l’implantation du mouvement Izala, non seulement en menant des waazi (prêches), mais aussi en organisant un réseau d’écoles coraniques. Ces “ izalistes ” vont être également à l’origine de la création d’une association islamique d’obédience wahhabite dénommée Adini Islam, qui représente à partir de 1993, la vitrine légale du mouvement izala au Niger.
