Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching and Politics, Alex Thurston

Abstract

Studies of Salafi and Wahhabi movements in West Africa since the 1990s have focused on tracing these movements’ local origins in order to accentuate Africans’ agency in contrast to the erroneous assumptions that these movements were imposed on “gullible” Africans by foreign Muslim missionaries.1 These studies demonstrated that African Muslims were not passive recipients of Salafi ideas emanating from the Arab world; on the contrary, they actively participated in the production and diffusion of such knowledge to address specific local concerns; moreover, they meticulously reconstructed the Salafi message to appeal to local audiences.