Editor’s note: An assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Alex Thurston writes on the origin of terrorist group, Boko Haram in Nigeria in relation to Salafism in northern Nigeria. He is an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Internationally, the jihadist sect Boko Haram has become the most famous manifestation of Salafism in Nigeria. Yet Boko Haram is merely a fringe offshoot of a much larger Salafi movement in the northern part of the country.
Boko Haram has been a menace in Nigeria since 2009
Mainstream Nigerian Salafis often use strident and confrontational rhetoric toward other Muslims and toward Nigerian Christians, but they are not jihadists: mainstream Salafis do not generally engage in violence, they do not advocate the overthrow of the secular state, and they do not reject Western-style educational institutions. In my recent book, I argue that the mainstream Salafi movement has had a much larger impact on shaping how northern Nigerian Muslims think about Islam than Boko Haram has, or will have.
Salafis are Sunni Muslims who describe Salafism as an “approach” – in their eyes, the only correct approach – to being Muslim. This approach involves a literalist creed and a conviction that every issue in contemporary human life can be resolved by consulting and applying the Qur’an, the Sunna (model or tradition) of the Prophet Muhammad, and the example of the first three generations of Muslims (the salaf). Salafis are hostile to the Shia, to Sufism (a mystical approach to Islam), and to various theological sects.
For Salafis, Salafism represents the pristine Islam of the early community, but historians increasingly argue that what we call Salafism took its present shape in the twentieth century when Saudi Arabian Wahhabism intersected with various Islamic currents from Egypt, India, and elsewhere.
Salafism is a global movement, but it is loosely organized. Saudi Arabia is a stronghold of Salafism, but Saudi Arabian leaders and scholars do not control everything that other Salafis do. Most Salafis around the world subscribe to what is sometimes called “purist,” “scholarly,” or – misleadingly – “quietist” Salafism.
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A minority, albeit a deadly and highly visible minority, of Salafis are “Salafi-jihadis,” who embrace jihadism and try to impose Salafism by force. Boko Haram, the self-proclaimed Islamic state, and al-Qaeda are Salafi-jihadis.
Salafism in northern Nigeria emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with Abubakar Gumi (1924-1992), who served as the north’s top Islamic judge from 1962-1966 and afterwards became a prominent radio preacher. Influenced by his time in British colonial schools, where he came to view most local northern Nigerian scholars as backward, Gumi became an outspoken opponent of Sufism.
In 1978, followers of Gumi formed the Society for the Removal of Heretical Innovation and the Establishment of the Sunna, better known as Izala (Arabic for “removing”). Izala became a powerful force for disseminating anti-Sufism. Yet there were tensions within Izala, particularly after Gumi died. In the 1990s, Izala split into two main factions, based respectively in Kaduna and Jos.
Meanwhile, young Izala preachers who had studied at the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia were returning home. Some graduates of Medina were dissatisfied with Izala: they considered it parochial and insufficiently attuned to global Salafi scholarship.
In the 1990s, some Medina graduates began to present themselves as independent – as ahl al-sunna wa-l-jama‘a, “the people of the Sunna and the community,” a synonym for Sunni Muslims. These Medina graduates wanted people to think of them not as mere Izala members but as the representatives of a pure kind of Sunni Islam.
The most prominent such Medina graduate was Ja‘far Adam (1961/2-2007), who rose from poor origins to become the most famous Salafi preacher in northern Nigeria after Gumi. After returning from Medina in 1993, Adam promoted a style of Salafism that was both scholarly and political. Adam’s involvement in politics grew after northern Nigerian states began implementing “full sharia” in 1999. Adam served in government in Kano state, although he resigned in disgust in 2005, claiming that sharia was not being properly implemented. Adam was assassinated in 2007, and the crime remains unsolved.
When Adam’s name is heard in the United States, it is often mentioned in connection to his mentorship of – and then estrangement from – Muhammad Yusuf (1970-2009), the founder of Boko Haram.
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Adam’s conflicts with Yusuf were a watershed moment for Salafism in northern Nigeria. Yusuf took advantage of the networks and preaching style that Adam had developed. Yusuf sought to bend those resources to his project of denouncing Western-style education and secular government. Adam fought back by attacking Yusuf’s scholarly credentials and personal integrity. Adam also made the case for why preaching was better than armed jihad, and why Western-style education could benefit the Muslim community.
Read more on Council on Foreign Relations
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