Muslim modernity in postcolonial Nigeria

Ousmane Kane has a PhD in political science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and is Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Currently he is a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His more recent books include Intellectuels non europhones (Codesria, 2002), and (with Jean-Louis Triaud) Islam et Islamisme au Sud du Sahara (Karthala, 1998).

During this seminar he will present his book Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria, which deals with Muslim modernity in a country with the largest single Muslim population in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides much-needed new grounds for comparative study. Until now, virtually all socio-anthropological works about any specific African country have either been authored by nationals of that country or by Western scholars. This book is an exception because its author is an Islamicist and a social scientist from Senegal who trained in the French social-science tradition. Therefore, his work offers an original perspective in the study of Nigeria. In addition, the study of Islam south of the Sahara has so far focused on Sufi orders, which form the mainstream of Islam but which by no means cover the whole Islamic field. So-called Islamic fundamentalist movements are also part of the religious landscape. This book is devoted to the study of the largest single Muslim fundamentalist organization in postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa, the Society for the Removal of Innovation and Reinstatement of Tradition.