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Article: The search for security in Muslim Northern Nigeria.
- Article from:
- Africa
- Article date:
- January 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Edinburgh University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSTRACT
The article puts forwards the argument that there is a pervasive anxiety among Muslims over their security, both physical and spiritual, in today's northern Nigeria. It is an anxiety partly millenarian, partly political, that seeks to recreate a stronger sense of the 'core North' as dar al-Islam, with notionally 'closed' boundaries--just as it was in the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate. This has led first to the re-establishment, within twelve of Nigeria's 36 states, of full Shari'a law and then to the formation of a sometimes large corps of hisba (wrongly called 'vigilantes')--this despite Nigeria having a constitution that both is secular and reserves ...