Cover of Muslims Talking Politics
Muslims Talking Politics Framing Islam, Democracy, and Law in Northern Nigeria
by Brandon Kendhammer
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Cloth: 978-0-226-36898-6 | Paper: 978-0-226-36903-7 | Electronic: 978-0-226-36917-4
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

For generations Islamic and Western intellectuals and policymakers have debated Islam’s compatibility with democratic government, usually with few solid conclusions. But where—Brandon Kendhammer asks in this book—have the voices of ordinary, working-class Muslims been in this conversation? Doesn’t the fate of democracy rest in their hands? Visiting with community members in northern Nigeria, he tells the complex story of the stunning return of democracy to a country that has also embraced Shariah law and endured the radical religious terrorism of Boko Haram.
           
Kendhammer argues that despite Nigeria’s struggles with jihadist insurgency, its recent history is really one of tenuous and fragile reconciliation between mass democratic aspirations and concerted popular efforts to preserve Islamic values in government and law. Combining an innovative analysis of Nigeria’s Islamic and political history with visits to the living rooms of working families, he sketches how this reconciliation has been constructed in the conversations, debates, and everyday experiences of Nigerian Muslims. In doing so, he uncovers valuable new lessons—ones rooted in the real politics of ordinary life—for how democracy might work alongside the legal recognition of Islamic values, a question that extends far beyond Nigeria and into the Muslim world at large. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Brandon Kendhammer is assistant professor of political science and the acting director of African Studies at Ohio University. 

REVIEWS

“An original, very much-needed, and outstanding contribution to the analysis of the intersection of sharia law and electoral democracy in Muslim majority countries. This is a rich, empirically grounded work that links structural questions about political democracy with the actions and thoughts of elite and popular actors on the meaning of democracy and the role of Muslim law in contributing to justice and good governance.”
— Paul M Lubeck, Johns Hopkins University

“Kendhammer’s book explores the relationship between Islam and democracy in one of the most complex and intriguing contexts where that relationship is being debated and negotiated. To the surprise of many, the politics of democratization across the Muslim world have been accompanied by a rise of religious activism in the public sphere. The simultaneous return to democracy and adoption of sharia in northern Nigeria beginning in 1999 is one of the most consequential examples of this phenomenon, yet one that remains poorly understood. Kendhammer’s pathbreaking work makes a huge contribution in helping to fill this gap. Based on long and careful fieldwork, the book explores the ways in which the people whose lives are at stake themselves struggle to define what a just, moral, and democratic society might entail. Empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated, and with important policy implications, this book is sure to be widely considered as one of the most important of the spate of works on Islam and democracy to appear in recent years.”
— Leonardo A. Villalón, University of Florida

"The extent to which Islam and democracy are compatible forms the core of this interesting and topical analysis of northern Nigeria. Following an initial discussion of colonial rule and early independence, the book focuses on the period after the return to civilian rule in 1999. Kendhammer uses a variety of research techniques to consider the role and context of Islam in the federation."
— The International Journal of African Historical Studies

"Muslims Talking Politics is compelling and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the vision for human flourishing that underlies everyday Muslims’ demand for Sharia. In a productive departure from much of the political science literature that seeks to advance the project of secularization, the book is not a critique of ordinary Muslims’ vision for democracy. Instead, it is an elegantly crafted portrait of the challenges facing Muslim-majority countries at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and an overdue history of Nigeria’s Sharia politics. Kendhammer’s erudite engagement with related literatures in anthropology and Islamic Studies, and his research ethic of empathy, set this book apart from recent work on Islam and politics and should ensure that it has a lasting influence."
— Perspectives on Politics

"Kendhammer traces the complex history of Nigeria’s shari’a politics back to the moment of colonial modernity when the agendas of the colonial authorities, Muslim reformers, and local political elites converged to constitute a top-down and state-centered Islamic legal system based on codified Islamic laws. . . . Kendhammer’s work is particularly important for pointing to how the agendas for the expansion of Islamic law in Northern Nigeria were championed not by the so-called fundamentalists or radicals, but by those who can be aptly described as moderates who have also consistently expressed support for democratic governance over autocracy. . . . Kendhammer is able to provide vivid accounts of how the relationship between Islam and democracy is continuously constructed in practice."
— Political and Legal Anthropology Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0001
[Obasanjo, Public reasoning, Discursive traditions, Post-Islamism]
The global rise of "sharia politics" in new and uncertain Muslim-majority democracies poses a number of key questions for scholars of Islam and democracy. Among the most important is the question of whether growing popular demand for the preservation of Islamic law and values in the public sphere are compatible with what seems to be equally broad support for democratic government in these countries, many of which have long and unhappy authoritarian pasts. Using the Nigerian case as its basis, this book proposes to find the answer in two places: the historical patterns that came to position sharia as a key political demand for Muslim citizens in post-colonial societies, and in the conversations and debates of both elite political actors and ordinary Muslim citizens about the usefulness of democracy as a solution to their societies' most pressing concerns. (pages 1 - 23)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0002
[Islam's compatibility with democracy, Public spheres, Islamic exceptionalism, Public opinion, Objectification of religion, fiqh]
Despite a longstanding tradition in sociology and political science research of treating Islam and democracy as separate and competing systems of thought to be reconciled, new empirical approaches increasingly suggest that most Muslims actually view them as potentially complementary worldviews with significant room for negotiation and overlap. This chapter argues that the primary source of tension between the two is not the attitudes and beliefs of individual Muslims, but the historical transformation of the Islamic legal tradition under European colonial rule, which has increasingly rendered Islam and Islamic religious knowledge as objects of state control. The result has served to pit the two against each other intellectually and politically in novel and unexpected ways as autocratic regimes have begun to give way across the Muslim world to new and uncertain democracies. (pages 24 - 50)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0003
[Sokoto Caliphate, First Republic, Colonial legal reform, Native administration, Nigerian Independence]
This chapter traces the development of "Muslim politics" in northern Nigeria from the era of the Sokoto Caliphate through British colonial rule and the independence-era Nigerian First Republic. Drawing on the work of Hussein Ali Agrama, Mahmood Mamdani, and other critical scholars of secularism, colonialism, and law, it traces the "state-ification" of Islamic law, and the growing use of the religious and sharia as sources of political control under colonial and early independence-era government (pages 51 - 84)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0004
[Federal character, Second Republic, Federalism, Constitution, Abubakar Gumi, Salafism in Nigeria, Military rule]
This chapter focuses on the role of two key forces in shaping the revival of the sharia question in the Nigeria of the 1970s and 80s. The first was the massive social and economic transition resulting from the extraordinary growth of the country's oil sector and, to a lesser extent, exposure to global Islamic trends. These transformations encouraged Muslim activists to draw on the Caliphate legacy to demand that the state take an active role in fostering religious revival. The second was the efforts of Nigeria's post-civil war constitutional framers to stem the ethnic outbidding and violence that brought down the First Republic. As Muslim "interest groups" organized during the late 1970s and 80s in response to these new institutional norms, they began to promote the idea that sharia might be a means not only of restoring the pre-colonial past, but of solving contemporary problems of governance and economics. With Christian groups pursued similar strategies to press their own interests, the scene was set for the rise of a new sort of sharia politics. (pages 85 - 116)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0005
[Democratic transition, Fourth Republic, Women's rights under sharia, Sharia implementation, Islamic courts, hisbah]
This chapter documents the 1999 transition to an elected civilian government in Nigeria, as well as the surprising rise of mass popular demand for the (re-)implementation of sharia. It documents the politics behind the movement--including the surprising finding that it was led primarily by political elites with limited initial support from religious authorities--and well as the numerous legal and administrative challenges in creating a sharia system out of the existing institutions. It also addresses the core political and human/women's rights struggles around the sharia implementation project, with a focus in particular on how vulnerable groups inside sharia states mobilized in its wake. It argues that despite massive popular support, the realities of sharia were marred by inconsistent and ineffective implementation and political gamesmanship. (pages 117 - 147)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0006
[Frame analysis, Discourse analysis, Elites, Media, journalists]
What can the public conversation around sharia implementation tell us about the relationship between Islam and democracy in practice? This chapter focuses on how Muslim political and religious elites imagined sharia implementation as public policy and law in the context of the Fourth Republic's democratic opening. Drawing on the "framing" approach to understanding political communication and messaging, the chapter argues that elite Muslim voices in the Nigerian sharia debate focused their discursive efforts on a handful of "frames" that emphasized the basic compatibility of sharia with the country’s new and uncertain democratic project. (pages 148 - 179)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0007
[Peer group interviews, Ordinary Muslims, Morality, Attitudes towards democracy]
This chapter explores the consequences of the elite message of sharia's compatibility with democracy for the attitudes and beliefs of ordinary Muslim citizens. Relying on group interviews, the chapter argues that while these ordinary citizens largely internalized the basic premise of sharia's (and Islam's) compatibility with democracy, they challenges specific components of elite discourse that position sharia (and democracy's) benefits in terms of abstract ideals like "rights" and "justice" in favor of far more tangible and immediate benefits alongside broader aspirations for the re-moralization of northern Nigerian society. Although their vision of democracy is both hardly liberal and often strongly exclusionary of non-Muslims, it also represents more universal demands for accountability and development. (pages 180 - 212)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226369174.003.0008
[Boko Haram, Sharia paradox, Elections, Local]
This chapter offers a set of conclusions, linking potentially waning support for democracy across northern Nigeria with the challenge posed by the "sharia paradox" in contemporary political Islam. Contemporary sharia movements exist fully within the realm of secular state authority, encouraging top-down implementations schemes that offer few opportunities for citizen engagement or feedback. Despite the broad popular sentiment in Nigeria and elsewhere in the Muslim world that sharia and democracy are potentially compatible, the failure of these state-driven sharia plans to live up to their transformative promises opens the door for the rise of new religious critiques of state power, including groups like Boko Haram. (pages 213 - 234)
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Appendix: Methodology

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2016. Page maintained by BiblioVault.