Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy, and Law in Northern Nigeria
Brandon Kendhammer
Abstract
For generations, both Islamic and Western intellectuals and policymakers have debated the prospects of Islam’s compatibility with democratic government, usually to few solid conclusions. Sadly, the voices of ordinary, working-class Muslims have been largely absent from these conversations, even as the fate of democracy across the Muslim world rests primarily in their hands. Muslims Talking Politics tells the story of one such community of Muslims in northern Nigeria, which has over the past 20 years witnessed a stunning return to democracy alongside both widespread popular agitation for the im ... More
For generations, both Islamic and Western intellectuals and policymakers have debated the prospects of Islam’s compatibility with democratic government, usually to few solid conclusions. Sadly, the voices of ordinary, working-class Muslims have been largely absent from these conversations, even as the fate of democracy across the Muslim world rests primarily in their hands. Muslims Talking Politics tells the story of one such community of Muslims in northern Nigeria, which has over the past 20 years witnessed a stunning return to democracy alongside both widespread popular agitation for the implementation of sharia (Islamic law) and the growing threat of radical religious terrorism. This book argues that despite Nigeria’s struggles with the jihadist insurgency Boko Haram, the story of Nigerian Islam is in fact one of tenuous and fragile reconciliation between mass democratic aspirations and concerted efforts to retain space for Islamic values in government and law. Muslims Talking Politics explores the co-evolution of popular Muslim attitudes and beliefs about sharia and democracy through careful historical analysis and the conversations, debates, and everyday experiences of Nigerian Muslims. Finally, it offers some tentative lessons for how democracy might consolidate alongside the legal recognition of Islamic values and institutions in public life.
Keywords:
Nigeria,
Islam,
democracy,
Sharia,
African politics,
political Islam
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226368986 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: January 2017 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.001.0001 |
