Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town [Paperback]

In the small town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, Malam Awal, a charismatic Sufi preacher, was recruited by local Muslim leaders to denounce the practices of reformist Muslims. Malam Awal's message has been viewed as a mixed blessing by Muslim women who have seen new definitions of Islam and Muslim practice impact their place and role in society. This study follows the career of Malam Awal and documents the engagement of women in the religious debates that are refashioning their everyday lives. Adeline Masquelier reveals how these women have had to define Islam on their own terms, especially as a practice that governs education, participation in prayer, domestic activities, wedding customs, and who wears the veil and how. Masquelier's richly detailed narrative presents new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim woman in Africa today.

Dogondoutchi is a small, provincial town in Niger, a West African country that is among the poorest in the world. It is also the site of Masquelier's anthropological research since the mid-1980s. In this book, Masquelier (Tulane) explores the timely and difficult topic of the impact of modern forms of Islamic revivalist movements on the Hausa-speaking population of this West African community. Central to the author's analysis is a powerful, charismatic Muslim preacher whose mission and methods illustrate the transformative influence of reformist Islam in Africa and its impact on women in particular. How do women experience this influence, and what does it mean to the daily conduct of their lives? Much of the public debate about issues of Islamic morality, propriety, and piety tend to translate into women's deportment, dress, and seclusion or 'moral domesticity,' which, for the Hausa women, includes modesty, obedience, thrift, veiling, and seclusion. An examination of the complex politics of the hijab, bride wealth, and mosque attendance, among other issues, reveals the different strategies that women employ to safeguard theirlÓ$