Marloes Janson

Searching For God

Every morning my host Bachir,1 a Gambian Muslim in his late twenties, solemnly removed the lace doily protecting his cassette recorder against dust. In his small livingroom, decorated with Islamic wall hangings, posters of Mecca, and plastic flowers, we listened to tape-recorded sermons. That morning he selected an audiocassette of Ahmed Khatani, a South African preacher who visited The Gambia several times to deliver sermons in the mosque where Bachir and his comrades pray. On the tape Khatani preached in English with a strong Indian accent, alternated with words and Quranic verses in Arabic, about the purpose of human beings on earth, that is, worshipping God. When he raised his voice, Bachir’s one-year-old daughter, believing that the preacher was singing, started to dance. Bachir exclaimed, “Astaghfirullah (I seek forgiveness from Allah), this must be my mother’s influence.”2

Introduction: Towards a Framework for the Study of Christian-Muslim Encounters in Africa

A special issue of Africa on the comparative study of Islam and Christianity in Africa, with response papers by the late John Peel, Birgit Meyer, Brian Larkin, and Ebenezer Obadare, and articles by Marloes Janson and Benjamin Soares.

‘How, for God's sake, can I be a good Muslim?’: Gambian youth in search of a moral lifestyle

By analysing the case study of a young Muslim mans conversion within and between different expressions of Islam in the Gambia, this article challenges common understandings of conversion that see it as a transition from one form of religious belief or identity to another, as well as theories of Islams place in Africa that distinguish between ‘local’ traditions and ‘world’ religions. The ethnographic case study illustrates that, for Gambian youth, conversion is not a unilinear path but entails the continuous making of moral negotiations and a preparedness to reflect on the ambiguity of selfhood – an inevitable result of the making of these negotiations.

The spiritual highway: religious world making in megacity Lagos (Nigeria)

While roads have often been studied from an infrastructural and functional perspective, or as the embodiment of civil engineering, the colonial experience, emergent capitalism, and more recently technopolitics (e.g. Dalakoglou 2012, Larkin 2013, Dalakoglou and Harvey 2014), this photo essay focuses on a less explored aspect of roads, namely their spiritual use. Religion plays an important role in the lives of road users in Nigeria’s former capital Lagos1 – often described in terms of an “apocalyptic megacity” overwhelmed by cars (Koolhaas 2001) – where road signs have been replaced by religious billboards and where prayer is the means to avert the dangers of the road (Figure 1). Together with the Nigerian photographer Akintunde Akin-leye, I hit the road to map how the busiest road in Nigeria – the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway – has produced new forms of religiosity and how these have inscribed themselves in urban space (Figure 2). This 120-kilometer route that connects Nigeria’s first and third largest cities arouses both fear and fascination throughout the country. It was opened in 1978 at the peak of the oil boom, a period known as “paradise on wheels”. The road now carries around 250,000 vehicles per day. Due to increased traffic, in combination with poor maintenance, from the 1990s decline set in. Resulting from the fact that it has become one of the most accident-prone highways in Nigeria, a popular label for the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway is “Highway of Death” (Figure 3). Death on the road is a near-daily event; car wrecks and corpses on the tarmac are common sights. Rumours abound that the dead are the victims of the “Kings of the Road” (armed robbers) and ritual murder; these “urban myths” are sutured with others about abductions from taxis and buses, trade in body parts, spirits and other predatory evil powers. According to Smith (2007), these road rumours represent the criminalization of the political economy and the changing nature of inequality in the maintenance of political power in Nigeria, of which the Expressway is seen as a symptom. While it has failed as the artery linking the north and south of Nigeria, the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway has succeeded as a stage for the performance of public religiosity, earning it the moniker the “Spiritual Highway.” Since the late 1980s, more than twenty revivalist Christian and Muslim movements have constructed massive prayer camps along the Expressway. Two factors are responsible for this “drive in” religion (Figure 4). First, the late 1980s were a historic moment for Nigeria, marked by the implementation of tructural adjustment programs and neo-liberal reforms. These developments resulted in the privatization of the Nigerian state and deregulation of the market. The gradual withdrawal of the state from the economy generated a new public sphere evolving around private enterprises, including religious organizations. Today, religious organizations account for some fifty percent of all social service provision in Nigeria (Obadare 2007: 144). In addition to organizing spectacular religious events, prayer camps run their Akintunde Akinleye lives in Lagos and works for Reuters Nigeria. He is the first Nigerian photographer to have been awarded a prize in the World Press Photo, Netherlands in 2007. An award fellow of the National Geographic Society, in 2012, he was nominated for the Prix Pictet Photography award, and he has exhibited his work worldwide. In addition to being a photographer, Akinleye has degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently seen as the periphery of the Muslim world, in terms of both geography and religious influence. This chapter shows that Islam has had a presence in Sub-Saharan Africa since the earliest days of its history. Scholars studying Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa have long written about an ‘African Islam’, reflecting the Sufi bias typical of scholarship on Islam in the region. Janson demonstrates that this approach hampers a better understanding of the emergence of reformist-oriented movements. She concludes by pointing out new approaches to the study of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, which capture the fluidity of the different ways of ‘being Muslim’ in everyday living, thereby challenging ingrained analytical concepts such as an ‘African Islam’ versus ‘Arab Islam’, and an accommodating Sufi Islam versus an orthodox reformist Islam.

Male Wives and Female Husbands: Reconfiguring Gender in the Tablighi Jamaʻat in the Gambia

The Tablighi Jamaʻat—a transnational Islamic missionary movement that propagates greater religious devotion and observance in The Gambia—opens the door to a new experience of gendered Muslim piety. Tabligh or Islamic missionary work results in novel roles for women, who are now actively involved in the public sphere—a domain usually defined as male. To provide their wives with more time to engage in tabligh , Tablighi men share the domestic workload, although this is generally considered ‘women’s work’ in Gambian society. Contrary to the conventional approach in scholarship on gender and Islam to study such inversion of gender roles in terms of Muslim women’s ‘empowerment’ and Muslim men’s ‘emancipation’, in the Gambian branch of the Jamaʻat the reconfiguration of gender norms seems to be motivated by Tablighis’ wish to return to the purported origins of Islam. Following the example of the Prophet’s wives, Tablighi women actively engage in tabligh and, taking Muhammad as their example, Tablighi men have taken over part of their wives’ household chores. Paradoxically, by reconfiguring gender norms Gambian Tablighis eventually reinstate the patriarchal gender order.

Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia: Male Wives and Female Husbands

The Tablighi Jamaʻat—a transnational Islamic missionary movement that propagates greater religious devotion and observance in The Gambia—opens the door to a new experience of gendered Muslim piety. Tabligh or Islamic missionary work results in novel roles for women, who are now actively involved in the public sphere—a domain usually defined as male. To provide their wives with more time to engage in tabligh , Tablighi men share the domestic workload, although this is generally considered ‘women’s work’ in Gambian society. Contrary to the conventional approach in scholarship on gender and Islam to study such inversion of gender roles in terms of Muslim women’s ‘empowerment’ and Muslim men’s ‘emancipation’, in the Gambian branch of the Jamaʻat the reconfiguration of gender norms seems to be motivated by Tablighis’ wish to return to the purported origins of Islam. Following the example of the Prophet’s wives, Tablighi women actively engage in tabligh and, taking Muhammad as their example, Tablighi men have taken over part of their wives’ household chores. Paradoxically, by reconfiguring gender norms Gambian Tablighis eventually reinstate the patriarchal gender order.