Between New Epistemological Perspectives and Competing Reform Orientations:
MSSN’s Reform, Organizational Crisis and Division, 1980 – 2005 Before our own generation, the MSSN was known for 'sing-song', merrymaking, birthday parties and so on, but today everybody knows that when you are looking for Islamic thoughts from the original source (the Qurʾan and the Sunna), you'll get it from the MSSN. Even when you have springs of it in other organizations, it is the product of MSSN doing those bits. So MSSN led battle for Islamic re-awakening in Nigeria and invariably in Africa too (Mas’ud Bello, National Secretary of MSSN, 2004).783
5.1 Introduction
From about the mid-1980s, there was a ‘gradual but radical’ attempt to reform the MSSN practices and encourage all members to imbibe what is considered the sunna. This involved critical debates on ‘correct’ practices in Islam and da’wa methods. Closely connected to this reform was a marked division in the Society on questions that relate to its identity as a youth/student movement, organisational control and its transformation beyond a ‘school’
movement. This led to fragmentation and schism as several groups left the Society from the mid-1990s and contested the idea of Islam and practices on which the Society was established as well as its power structure. I argue in this chapter that the reform in the 1980s was inspired by historical factors and epistemological change that were connected to the MSSN in Nigeria and the Yoruba Muslim communities and that these developments contributed to the transformation of the MSSN to a reform movement and its fragmentation in the mid-1990s. As I will demonstrate in this chapter, the reform did not happen at once and it was not imposed on the members of the Society. On the contrary, it took shape gradually through discourses on the traditions of Islam and non-Muslims. It also involved a conscious effort to promote religious change and define what is a good Muslim in modern times.
In the first section of this chapter, I analyse the various aspects of this process of reform, particularly the main actors and their da’wa activities. I also draw attention to the role of transnational Islamic movements mentioned in Chapter Four and the impact of the Iranian revolution in 1979. An aspect of my argument in this section is that the reform in the MSSN was the outcome of debates among various actors which included students who studied abroad
783 MSSN UNILAG, “Embryonic Stage of Muslim Students' Society of Nigeria”.
and in Nigeria. To illustrate this further, I will draw attention to these debates in relation to the concepts of knowledge referred to as àgbọ́ yé (Yoruba, understanding) and ḥujja (Arabic,
‘proof/evidence’) that developed from the interaction of these actors. Furthermore, I will explain why the emphasis on these concepts motivated members of MSSN to follow the sunna.
Also, I will highlight what members of the Society referred to as sunna in relation to the contemporary social changes regarded as modernity.
In the second section, I employ Asad’s conceptualisation of Islam as a discursive tradition to illustrate the process and key elements in the discourses that shaped reform in the MSSN. This section also analyses the two main factions that emerged in the MSSN on these discourses,
“The Jama’at” and “The Mainstream.” I will also shed light on the practices and beliefs that were contested and defined as correct in Islam and how the two factions in the Society shaped the discourse. This analysis will be continued in the third section by showing that while the discourse in the MSSN focused on the traditions of Islam, it also included basic issues that relate to the transition of members from educational institutions to public life. In addition, it includes debate on the identity of MSSN as a youth/student movement. I analyse this debate on youth/student by drawing upon and contributing to the literature on the concept of ‘youth.’
In the fourth section, I argue that the discourse that enabled reform in the MSSN does not only centre on asserting authoritative viewpoints about the traditions of Islam as Asad points out. A look beyond the discourse also reveals an actual contest for power and control of the MSSN as an organisation, and I draw attention to this in the section on ‘tension and division.’ On this point about power, I draw attention to the key actors in the contest such as Abdul-Fatai Thanni and Taofeek Abdul-Azeez and the plot to take control of the Society in the mid-1990s which involved “The Jama’at” and “The Mainstream” factions. In this section, I also note that by 1995, the tension created by the plot led to the breaking away of The Jama’at (which became the TMC) and other factions from the MSSN. By 2005, two other factions also left the Society due to the contest for power and differences in the interpretation of Islam. To understand these break-away factions, I give an overview of their interpretations of Islam and their activities (i.e.
TMC, Dawah Front, Lagos Brothers, Laa Jama’ah, TIMSAN). Beyond an overview of these new movements and the crisis that led to their formation, I intend to give an empirical evidence to my argument in Chapter Two about “reintepretation” and “schism” as forms of religious change.
In the concluding section, I reflect on the reform and crisis in the MSSN and how my argument departs from Peel’s notion of religious change among Yoruba Muslims. Also, I wish to note that the history of the MSSN in this chapter is a continuation of how post-colonial Nigeria shaped religious change and encounters which I discussed in Chapter Four. Various examples such as Nigeria’s educational policy that give rise to graduates of madrasas in the MSSN and what is defined as the sunna concerning modernity are given to illustrate this point.
5.1 Aspects of Islamic reform in the MSSN
The radical reform in the MSSN from the 1980s was a process that began before this period.
Loimeier’s study has drawn attention to the fact that historical conditions in a particular context are central to the emergence of an Islamic reform movement.784 I found this to be true in the case of the MSSN as focusing on the Yoruba Muslim society and specific actors demonstrate that there were historical factors and epistemological change that shaped the reform in the MSSN. The historical factors include the emergence and influence of Muslim graduates (who studied both abroad and in the local madrasas) and their da’wa activities, while epistemological change focuses on the theory of reform which is framed around two key concepts of knowledge: ḥujja, and agboye. I refer to these historical factors and epistemological shift as the ‘aspects’ of reform in the MSSN to show that the reform was neither shaped by one single process nor fixed to a point in time. With respect to my argument in Chapter Two on religious change, the reform involved many factors which are entangled into one another such as the actors that facilitated the it and their activities as well as the historical conditions that aided the the process. The reform also showed different forms such as the reinterpretation of existing practice (e.g. sunna). Both the process and forms are, indeed, crucial to understanding the Islamic reform in the MSSN and how it was achieved from the 1980s. I begin by showing the process and forms with the case of returnee graduates and their propagation of Islam through study groups among Muslim students.
5.1.1 Returnee graduates, study groups and da’wa
Before the British colonial administrators conceded, after several agitations, to establish a tertiary institution in Nigeria in 1948,785 many young Nigerians had been attending universities in the UK or the US. In contrast to the colleges such as Yaba Higher College founded in 1932
784 Loimeier, Islamic Reform in Twentieth Century Africa, 23.
785 Ade Fajana, “Colonial Control and Education: The Development of Higher Education in Nigeria, 1900-1950,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 6, no. 3 (1972): 336–9.
in which they presumed to train Africans for mid-level administrative positions,786 the scholarship abroad was regarded as the ‘golden fleece,’ a symbol of authority and honour that guaranteed them a higher status in professional life.787 From the late 1950s, several Muslim students who had been associated with the MSSN joined those who sought their scholarship in the UK and the US as well as Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In addition to their studies, they were exposed to various Islamic teachings and movements. On their return, they established study groups and organisations which they employed for da’wa activities that were often connected to those abroad. These study groups attracted the participation of Muslims in many communities, including members of MSSN, in the learning of Islamic texts. Over time, through the members of MSSN in these study groups, new interpretations of Islam found their way into the MSSN. In many communities, the returnees were well respected not only because of their knowledge of Islam but also due to their exposure outside the country. Thus, I refer to them as the men of Ọlaju in the Yoruba Muslim communities. These returnee graduates are many, but I will focus on four who were frequently mentioned by my respondents and who had a significant impact on the history of the Society.
Jibril Oyekan was a leading example among these returnees. He completed his bachelor’s and graduate degrees at the Imperial College London in the 1960s with a doctorate in Chemical Engineering. As I noted in Chapter Four, he considered London to be the place where he “fully discovered Islam.”788 This is because of the cosmopolitan nature of the university which allowed him to meet Muslim students from different parts of the world including Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis and Turks. The university had a mosque and an association for Muslims, the Imperial College Islamic Society (ISOC), which he later headed. The ISOC had a study group where members memorised the Qur’an and engaged Islamic texts in seminars. In addition to these texts, Oyekan also attended lectures organised by the London Islamic Circle outside the university. The information about those who formed this circle is scant, but according to Oyekan, the circle had Muslims of many nationalities who met every Saturday at
786 See F. O. Ogunlade, “Education and Politics in Colonial Nigeria: The Case of King's College, Lagos (1906-1911),” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 7, no. 2 (1974).
787 Adebayo Oyebade, “A Retrospect on Colonial Nigeria,” in The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, ed. Adebayo Oyebade, 15–26 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003); Ojiaku, Mazi Okoro and Ulansky, Gene, “Early Nigerian Response to American Education,” Phylon 33, no. 4 (1972): 380–3.
788 Jibril Oyekan, interview by Adeyemi Balogun.
the Islamic Cultural Centre. The Centre, which was granted to migrant Muslims in 1944, also had a mosque before the building of the London Central Mosque, at Regent's Park by 1976.789 As a representative of ISOC, Oyekan contributed to the formation of the Federation of Students Islamic Societies in the UK and Ireland (FOSIS) in 1963. Like the vision set for the MSSN, the FOSIS was aimed at uniting all Muslim students’ organisations in the UK and Ireland.
Oyekan first served as Secretary of FOSIS and later as President. He was also the chairman of FOSIS’ monthly journal, The Muslim, for some years. The platform provided by FOSIS further allowed Oyekan to interact with prominent Islamist thinkers in the Muslim world such as Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi (1903-1979), a Pakistani and author of several Islamic texts.790 He also had exchanges with Muhammad Asad (1900-1992) who gave lectures at programmes organised by the FOSIS. Muhammad Asad was born Leopold Weiss but adopted the Muslim name after converting to Islam. He authored the English translated Qur’anic text, The Message of the Qur’an.791 By 1970, on his return to Nigeria, Oyekan introduced a weekly study circle, Qur’anic Study Group, at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). According to him, the group focused on intensive study of the fundamentals of Islam in the Qur’an and the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. A number of students in the MSSN participated in this circle, and he considered them to have “transmitted the spirit” of what they had learnt to the Society when they became leaders.792 As I noted in the previous chapter, Oyekan also played a role in the establishment of WAMY as a regional representative in Lagos. In his professional life, he served in many ministries of the government in Nigeria as a director such as the Ministry of Industries and the Department of Petroleum Resources and was later appointed a member of the Board of Trustees of the MSSN.
There was also the Islamic Study Group of Nigeria (ISGON) used by many Muslim elites to study the Qur’an and the Hadith. Up to the early 2000s, the group often addressed the public on social issues such as alcoholism. Akande Abdul-Kareem Hussein, a pioneer member of the MSSN who studied in the United States, was a major figure in this group between the 1970s and 1990s. He became a professor in the field of biochemistry and taught in Nigeria and at a
789 For a history of the mosque, see A. L. Tibawi, “History of the London Central Mosque and the Islamic Cultural Centre, 1910-1980,” Die Welt des Islams 21, 1/4 (1981).
790 See Roy Jackson, Mawlana Mawdudi and Political Islam: Authority and the Islamic State (London:
Routledge, 2011).
791 See Zahid M. Amir, “First Wind of Islamic Revivalism After World War II: Muhammad Asad (1900-92) and International Islamic Colloquium, 1957-58,” Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies, no. 8 (2015).
792 Jibril Oyekan, interview by Adeyemi Balogun.
university in Sudan.793 One of the students that participated in this study group was Ibrahim Uthman, the B-Zone MSSN President in 1994. He was an active member of ISGON between the 1970s and 1980s, although he also identified with other Muslim organisations in this period.
At ISGON, he was inspired by Hussein’s method of teaching, because according to him, Hussein would discuss what he and other colleagues had learnt at the end of each meeting with them one after the other. This method of learning as well as his exposure to various Islamic texts during the meetings ensured that he was well-informed about Islam and could engage many Islamic texts when he eventually became a committed member of the MSSN.794
Dawud Noibi, mentioned in previous chapters, was another returnee MSSN graduate. From a young age, Noibi had a “burning desire” to know about Islam and speak Arabic. Thus, in 1965, he enrolled in the Arabic and Islamic Studies programme at Cairo University, Egypt and declined an offer to study English. By 1972, he completed his graduate studies in the same field at the American University in Cairo. While at Cairo, he facilitated the formation of an MSSN branch in the university together with other Nigerian students. His knowledge of Arabic was enhanced when he had a temporary appointment as a broadcaster and translator of Yoruba-Arabic-English language on the Egyptian Radio (also known as Radio Cairo) for the Nigerian community in Cairo between 1966-1972. Before this time, he had worked with Imam Ekemode of Ansar-Ud-Deen at the Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation as a discussant. As I noted in Chapter Four, he lectured at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Ibadan (UI) where he was appointed a professor. He also served as Imam of the UI Muslim community up to 1990.795 Through his weekly Friday sermons and Ramadan lectures, he engaged the Muslim community, including students on issues such as the Sharia and the importance of unity among Muslims in Nigeria. He was also invited to MSSN programmes for lectures, and Uthman considered him to have inspired many students, especially those who thought it was impossible to do a proper exegesis of Islamic texts in English.796
The other major figure was Abdul-Fatah Thanni (b. 1939). In 1969, after completing his elementary education at Ansar-Ud-Deen Primary School and Qur’anic studies at a madrasa in Lagos, he travelled to Kuwait to further his education. He studied at a teacher training institute in Kuwait and received a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Economics at the University of Kuwait. Within this period, he had a special coaching on Islamic education and was exposed
793 Ibrahim Adegbola, interview by Adeyemi Balogun, July 27, 2017, communication on Facebook.
794 Ibrahim Uthman, interview by Adeyemi Balogun.
795 D. O. S. Noibi, interview by Adeyemi Balogun.
796 Ibrahim Uthman, interview by Adeyemi Balogun.
to several texts of Islamic scholars. After his education, he worked for almost a decade in Kuwait. He was first employed by the Kuwait Finance House, a bank established in 1977 to operate according to Islamic law. He also worked at an American school called Al-Bayan as a business manager before his return to Nigeria in 1982. In 1984, he was appointed a representative of the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of Kuwait for Nigeria and West Africa, a position he held until 1990. The ministry supervises charitable institutions which assist Muslims in many parts of the world in such areas as education, Qur’anic study centres, and refugee crises.797 By 1990, Thanni decided to dedicate himself fully to da’wa.798 For most of my respondents, Thanni is assumed to be the most influential figure in the radical reform and crisis in MSSN from the mid-1980s, which sets him apart from other returnees. Unlike others, he broke the barriers of societal approval against the expression of what is referred to as “pristine Islam” in the Society.799 His project of reform was promoted in many ways which included establishing a da’wa group called the Islamic Centre of Nigeria (ICN) in the 1980s.
The Centre produced sermons on audio cassettes and engaged many young Muslims in weekly study circles in places such as Lagos and Ibadan.800 Later, I will discuss how he contributed to the reforms and the crisis in the MSSN.
There were other returnees from countries such as Sudan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s who taught Islam based on those considered al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ (or Salafis). One could argue that the Salafi orientation might not be new to the MSSN in this period. Lauzière has argued that even though it was restricted in meaning, the Salafi orientation in Islam had existed prior to the twentieth century. While it only reflected a theological position in the past, today it has been expanded to represent the broader examples of some predecessors as well as theology, laws, and etiquette.801 With the assumption that the Salafi interpretation of Islam had gained currency from the twentieth century, it is possible to argue that some Yoruba Muslims were already familiar with it by the time the MSSN was established in 1954. Thurston’s study on Salafism in Northern Nigeria has drawn attention to another root of this interpretation of Islam in
797 Mara A. Leichtman, “Kuwaiti Humanitarianism: The History and Expansion of Kuwait’S Foreign
797 Mara A. Leichtman, “Kuwaiti Humanitarianism: The History and Expansion of Kuwait’S Foreign