Negotiating Futures: Islam, Youth, and the State in Niger

Abstract

Dogondoutchi, December 2004. It is Saturday night in this small rural town of southern Niger. 1 On a vast vacant lot where neighborhood boys routinely play impromptu games of football in the late afternoon and where, less frequently, girls in party uniforms dance to welcome political candidates campaigning for votes, a massive crowd of people has assembled around a makeshift podium. Though I spot groups of youthful men as well as women, both young and older, most of the attendees are senior men. Many of them are wearing the local jaba—a knee-length tunic worn over pants that has become the standard dress of pious Muslims. Standing on the podium, Malam Shaibou, a local preacher, is angrily denouncing “false” Muslims who worship only halfheartedly. He is a member of Izala, the reformist Islamic association that has organized the two-day proceedings, during which prominent preachers will deliver lectures in rapid succession—a special event whose format and content contrast markedly with the less-flamboyant weekly preaching at a local mosque. “There are people,” Malam Shaibou declares accusingly, who say that they are Muslim. But [they are Muslim] only in words. Not in their hearts. If it is in dreams that they are Muslims, they should stop pretending. The Day of Judgment will come when God will reveal those who speak the truth and those who are liars! His words, amplified yet also distorted by the substandard sound system hastily set up for the occasion, carry across the mud walls of nearby compounds to reach even those who do not wish to hear them. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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