Paper long abstract:

The talk will put forward the argument that there is a pervasive anxiety among Muslims over their security, both physical and spiritual, in to-day's northern Nigeria. It is an anxiety partly millenarian, partly political, that seeks to re-create 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, since 1999-2000, to the re-establishment, within twelve of Nigeria's thirty-six states, of full shari'a law and now more recently 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 to the Federal Government institutions like police and prisons. The talk will explore the various dimensions, past and present, of 'security' in Kano and will end with the problem of 'dual citizenship' where pious Muslims see themselves at the same time both as Nigerians and as members of the wider Islamic umma.