The Muslims are winning – they have won. Islam is growing very fast. For many Africans, it makes more sense to reject America and Europe’s secular values, a culture of selfishness and half-naked women, by embracing Islam.¹

– Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, Anglican Bishop of the Central Nigerian city of Jos.

Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, an often overlooked part of the world’s Muslim community, is growing in size and influence. Most experts agree that Islam, with its emphasis on communal living, poverty alleviation, fighting corruption and the rejection of injustice, is spreading faster than any other faith in East and West Africa.² But it is in Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country (almost 130 million inhabitants), that the rise of Islam as a political force has been most noticeable. It began shortly after the country emerged from nearly 16 years of ruinous military rule.

More recently, international media focused on an outbreak of religious rioting in the northern city of Kaduna, which claimed more than 200 lives. This was instigated by Muslim indignation at Nigeria’s plans to host the Miss World beauty pageant and a derogatory statement made by a journalist in a Lagos-based newspaper suggesting that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) “would probably have chosen a wife” from among the beauty contestants.³

Simultaneously, US security interests have been cast in a new light following the attacks of September 11^th. In fact, Africa seemed another important battleground for the war between the US and what it calls “terrorism.” The history of Sudan’s support for regional and international Islamist networks, the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the more recent Mombassa bombings, have made African politics all the more important for the US. In many ways, Nigeria is an important focal point for concern due to its huge oil reserves and the noticeable intensification of religious polarization manifested in political mobilization, sectarian social movements, and increasing violence.⁴

Since 1999, there have been more than 40 incidents of social conflict with a toll of perhaps 10,000 lives.⁵ Nearly every region has been affected, including most major cities and a number of rural areas. State security forces have inflicted hundreds of casualties, “raising serious questions about civilian control of the military and the ability of elected leaders to preserve human rights and ensure public order.”⁶

Clashes in Kaduna left many people dead. Military and police forces were accused of shooting at people without provocation.

In January 2000, the 12 predominantly Muslim northern states introduced Shari’a law. Clashes in Kaduna State between Muslims and Christians in February 2000 resulted in about 2,000 dead. This was followed by backlash violence and the eruption of ethno-religious riots in several Nigerian cities with hundreds more killed.⁷ For many Muslims, the introduction of Shari’a was a celebrated occasion as it symbolized a return to their Islamic roots after years of colonialism in the past and multiple military coups in the post-independence period.

The states in which Shari’a was implemented reported a significant drop in crime rate, alcoholism, prostitution and drug addiction. Many Nigerians were also protected from Africa’s deadliest plague, AIDS.⁸ For the minority Christians in the north, the introduction of Shari’a was another attempt by Muslims to reassert their control over the political and religious spheres after Olusegun Obasanjo, an outspoken Christian, was elected president.

The overwhelming support for Shari’a among Nigerian Muslims comes in response to the hard-driving Evangelism of some Christian groups, who have made it their mission to convert Muslims at the local level.⁹ Many Nigerian Christian fundamentalist groups, funded by Evangelical groups in the United States and Britain, have grown in power and influence recently. Millions of Nigerians watch the television program sponsored by Club 700 of America, and large amounts of gospel tracts and pamphlets circulate freely in Nigeria.¹⁰

Christian fundamentalist groups have become increasingly active in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria to the extent that they could be regarded as belonging to the broad Euro-American fundamentalist movement and even as “the agents of Western cultural imperialism in Nigeria.”¹¹

On October 13^th, 2001, days after the commencement of the US military campaign in Afghanistan, several hundred demonstrators gathered in Kano – the largest city in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim northern region – to protest the American action. The protesters carried banners criticizing the United States, and many reportedly displayed pictures of Osama bin Laden.¹² Investigations revealed that 70% of baby boys born in a hospital in Kano are being named “Osama bin Laden.”¹³

Nigeria’s religious predicament is further complicated by the almost even distribution of the followers of that country’s main faiths. The population of about 130 million is approximately 50% Muslim, 40% Christian, and 10% explicitly “traditional,” making Nigeria one of the largest Muslim population states in the world.¹⁴

The country is also demographically polarized along religious lines as 19 northern states are predominantly Muslim and 17 southern states are predominantly Christian.¹⁵ Highly localized Muslim and Christian groups, often competing for land, jobs and educational opportunities, have found cause to challenge each other as well as the establishment.¹⁶

In spite of their supposed control of government over most of the period of independence, Muslims have found themselves to be the least educated and least represented in the federal bureaucracy.¹⁷ They are also the most impoverished (the percentage of the poor ranges between 55-60% of the population in the south, and 70-78% in the north¹⁸) and dislocated by environmental degradation and uncontrolled urbanization.¹⁹ This has made them more prone to incessant revolts against the state, economy and the multiple secular, authoritarian and military governments that usurped control of Nigerian politics over the years.²⁰

The Roots of Religious Polarization

The spread of Islam in Nigeria dates back to the eleventh century when it first appeared in Borno in the northeast of the country. Islam later emerged in Hausaland in the northwest and its influence was evident in the cities of Kano and Katsina. Islam was regarded as the religion of the court and commerce, and was spread peacefully by Muslim clerics and traders.

Sufi brotherhoods evolved throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the nineteenth century, the Qadiriyya brotherhood affiliation became the identity of the northern Sokoto Caliphate, due to its association with its founder, Usman Dan Fodio, who had launched a jihad in 1804 aimed at unifying Muslims, establishing Shari’a, and “purifying” Islam from innovation and pagan rituals.²¹ In the 1830s and after, the Tijaniyya brotherhood was spread in northern Nigeria. The Sokoto Caliphate ended with partition in 1903 when the British incorporated it into the colony of Nigeria and the sultan’s power was transferred to the High Commissioner.

Christian General Yakubu Gowon

During the early period of Nigerian independence, the foundations for religious harmony and economic prosperity were laid. Religion was never an issue of conflict in mainstream Nigerian politics. Religious conflict, even when it occurred, was very rare, isolated, rural-based and politically inconsequential.²² This was due to the presence of democratic structures, parliamentarianism and multiple political parties. However, with the increasing militarization of politics, the series of coups and counter coups, and the perceived religiously selective pattern of assassinations in the 1960s and 1970s, Nigerian politics turned into a hotbed of religious and communal conflict.²³

The first civilian and democratic government was overthrown in a bloody coup in January 1966, and Ahmadu Bello, the Muslim premier of the Northern Region, was assassinated by a Major General Johnson, a Christian Igbo. At the end of July 1966, in another coup lead by Muslim Hausa officers, General Johnson was killed and a new military government came into power. The riots following both coups and the civil war that followed hurled religiosity into the political arena of the country.

Click here for a timeline of Islam in Nigeria

The subsequent intra-military struggles for power in the 1970s intensified already-existing religious antagonisms. This came out clearly after the overthrow of General Yakubu Gowon, a Christian, by General Murtala Muhammad, a Hausa-Fulani Muslim from Kano.²⁴

Despite the progressive radicalism of Murtala Muhammad and his extreme nationalism, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) accused Muhammad of harboring a secret agenda to Islamize the country.²⁵ During Babangida’s eight years of rule (1985-1993), Nigeria experienced the highest frequency of religious conflict. Babangida tried to play Christians against Muslims in order to prolong and to divert public attention from his administration. Muslims perceived his rule as an attempt to post Christian governors to predominantly Muslim states and to reduce their share of governance.

During the Political Bureau debate on the implementation of Shari’a in the making of the 1989 Constitution, the government accepted all Christian recommendations, and sidelined Muslim requests.²⁶ Even when Muslim candidates from the north emerged as winners in the presidential primary elections which took place in 1992, the government not only annulled the primary results, but also disqualified the 23 candidates who contested the primaries from participating in future presidential elections.²⁷

Dissident Islamists are a significant force in countries such as Nigeria, where there is a ready social foundation, deep inequities, and a broad failure of governance. Conditions that foster Islamic rejection – poverty, unemployment, social dislocation, cultural polarization and a large pool of disaffected young men – are evident in abundance.²⁸ In addition to the already established Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya Sufi brotherhoods, several Islamic movements emerged in Nigeria. The most famous of which was the Izala movement (Izalat Al-Bida’a wa’Iqamat al-Sunnah) – meaning “In Favor of Sunnah and Against Innovation” – founded by Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, a well-known Arabist and legal scholar, from Sokoto. Gumi became influential through his translation of the Holy Qur’an into the Hausa language and his work was the basis of reformation within the Muslim community based on the rejection of pagan practices, religious innovation and a return to the Sunna (prophetic traditions). After the death of Gummi in 1992, several splinter groups emerged from the Izala movement, bearing similar ideas.

In addition, the “Muslim Brothers” emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a younger generation of semi-educated and better educated youth, working against the corruption of the government and local elites. The leader of the group, Ibrahim El-Zak Zaky, was an economics graduate from Ahmadu Bello University who received training in Iran. Throughout the 1990s, the Muslim Brothers and the authorities clashed, and Ibrahim was arrested in 1996. This resulted in widespread protests with 40 members of the group killed in clashes with local police, until his release after the death of the Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha, in 1998.

There are also several Qur’anic school movements in Nigeria, most of which form around a local teacher or preacher. Those schools tend to attract hundreds of students throughout the north and from surrounding countries, such as Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.²⁹

The Oil Factor  

Click here for map of oil reserves around the world

Nigeria’s entire economy revolves around oil as it accounts for almost half of Nigeria’s GDP and about 85% of all foreign exchange earnings.³⁰ Despite Nigeria’s rich natural resources and its earning of about $280 billion from oil during the past 30 years, 66% of the population lives below the poverty line.³¹ The government and the oil companies have profited by hundreds of billions of dollars since oil was first discovered, yet most Nigerians living in oil producing regions are living in dire poverty with no electricity, water, or telephone lines.³²

In addition, Nigeria’s problems have been complicated by the fact that the United States is looking to West Africa generally and Nigeria especially as a source for increased oil imports to offset reliance on an unstable Middle East.³³ Several reports indicated US pressure on Nigeria to withdraw from OPEC, so that it can supply the US with more quantities of oil.³⁴

Currently, Nigerian oil exports are limited by OPEC quota, and many believe that US energy security would be better served by increasing imports from Africa. Vice President Cheney’s national energy policy report called it “the fastest growing source” for American energy needs.³⁵ This is supported by the fact that crude oil production is declining in the US, while consumption continues to rise, implying a continued high US dependency on oil that is foreign in origin.³⁶ However, these efforts could become undercut if West Africa becomes an area of increasing Islamic activism.

Several months ago, President Bush met with 10 West African leaders, most from possible petroleum producing areas. The US is also contemplating the possibility of establishing a military base in Sao Tome. Prior to that, West African output of crude oil is poised to rise significantly. Between 2002 and 2008, crude output is expected to increase by 2.6 million barrels per day (b/d) to a total of 6.3 million b/d. The vast majority of production growth will come from Angola and Nigeria (from 2.2 million b/d to 3.4 million b/d by 2008).³⁷ Despite all the talk about increased oil production, for many Nigerians oil will continue to be seen more as a curse rather than a blessing, exacerbating flagrant inequalities and ethno-religious tensions.

Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo. 

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