Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T00:35:44.525Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Islamic protest under semi-industrial capitalism: 'Yan Tatsine explained

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Paul M. Lubeck
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since 1980, with considerable regularity during the dry season which propels the rural poor into the urban centres of northern Nigeria, religious riots have erupted in or adjacent to five cities: Kano (1980), Kaduna (1982), Bulum-Ketu near Maiduguri (1982), Jimeta near Yola (1984) and Gombe (1985). In each instance the conflict was remarkably similar. When confronted by the state authorities, an Islamic sect, the 'Yan Tatsine, unleashed an armed insurrection against the Nigerian security forces and those outside the sect, resulting in widespread destruction, in thousands of deaths and in millions of naira of property losses. Indeed, if one were to search for a historical equivalent in Nigerian history, only the communal riots of 1966 surpass the destruction wrought by the 'Yan Tatsine insurrections of the eighties. The account appearing in West Africa, describing the Gombe outbreak, provides a typical press analysis of the insurrection:

Fighting began early on Friday, April 29 when a detachment of police moved in to arrest suspected members of a maitatsine type religious sect in the Pantami ward of Gombe. The suspected leader of the religious group is a man named Yusufu Adamu. That was when all hell broke loose. Within hours, some streets had been littered with corpses many of them caught in the cross fire between fanatics and the law enforcement agents. [West Africa, 6 May 1985: 876]

For the following analysis it is noteworthy that the correspondent describes the sect as a ‘maitatsine type’, that the insurrection erupted only when the police attempted to arrest an alleged leader and that the members of the dissident sect are labelled ‘fanatics’ without any supporting evidence.

Résumé

Protestations islamiques sous le semi-industrialisme: explication du 'Yan Tatsine

Le problème de l'explication de l'emergence et de la férocité du mouvement social islamique millénaire, le 'Yan Tatsine constitue le thème central de cet article. Après avoir passé en revue plusieurs explications idéalistes généralisées et très répandues, l'auteur examine l'évolution historique d'une institution islamique dans le Nigéria du nord où le haoussa est communément parlé, les étudiants coraniques ambulants (gardawa). Il est prouvé que ni l'idéologie ni la personnalité charismatique du leader, Mohammed Marwa Maitatsine, ne fournissent une explication satisfaisante de l'essor et de la destructivité endémique du 'Yan Tatsine. Afin de démontrer comment les facteurs matériels, sociaux et politiques toujours changeants peuvent fournir une explication satisfaisante des cinq insurrections urbaines depuis 1980, l'auteur décrit le lien entre les institutions islamiques et les precédés capitalistes commerciaux et industriels, particulièrement au cours de la période du boom pétrolier nigérien de 1974–81. En conséquence, le sapement des bases matérielles du gardawa, le remplacement de l'éducation islamique par l'éducation primaire universelle, la transformation de la ville de Kano vers un capitalisme semi-industriel et le rôle médiateur de l'état et ses forces de police abusives sont prouvés fournir une explication matérialiste et, du point de vue des insurgés, une explication rationnelle de leur hostilité envers les élites politiques, les forces de sécurité de l'état et l'ordre social en vigueur. Finalement, l'idéologie anti-matérialiste de Maitatsine est examinée et comparée à celle décrite par E. P. Thompson au XVIIIème siècle qui, selon ses arguments, forme une ‘économie morale’ pour les producteurs et les consommateurs urbains déplacés.

Type
Popular Islam
Information
Africa , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 369 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arabia. 1984. ‘The mysterious Maitatsines’. May: 26–7.Google Scholar
Bienen, H., and Diejomaoh, V. (eds.) 1981. The Political Economy of Income Distribution in Nigeria. New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar
Chamberlin, J. 1975. ‘The Development of Islamic Education in Kano City, Nigeria’. Columbia University, unpublished PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Foster-Carter, A. 1978. ‘The modes of production controversy’, New Left Review, 107: 47–78.Google Scholar
Frishman, A. n.d. ‘Urban Transportation Strategy in Metropolitan Kano’. Geneva, New York: Hobart and William Smith Colleges, unpublished ms.Google Scholar
Hodgkin, T. 1977. ‘Mahdism, Messianism and Marxism’, in Gutkind, P. and Waterman, P. (eds.), African Social Studies, pp. 306–23. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Hodgkin, T. 1980. ‘The revolutionary.tradition in Islam’, Race and Class, 21: 221–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Last, M. 1967. The Sokoto Caliphate. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lavers, J. 1984. ‘Religious Disturbances in Northern Nigeria’. Paper delivered at Conference on Popular Islam,University of Ilinois/Program of African Studies,Urbana, Illinois.Google Scholar
Lubeck, P. 1979. ‘Islam and resistance in northern Nigeria’, in Goldfrank, W. (ed.), The World System of Capitalism, pp. 189–206. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Lubeck, P. 1981. ‘Class formation at the periphery: the convergence of class and Islamic national consciousness’, in R., and Simpson, I. (eds.), The Sociology of Work. Greenwich, Ct: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Lubeck, P. 1983. ‘Industrial labor in Kano: historical origins, social characteristics and sources of differentiation’, in Barkindo, B. (ed.), Studies in the History of Kano, pp. 147–70. Ibadan: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Lubeck, P. 1986. Islam and Urban Labor in Northern Nigeria: the making of a Muslim working class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maganar Kano. 1980. Friday, 19 December.Google Scholar
Nicolas, G. 1981. ‘Guerre sainte à Kano’, Politique Africaine, 1 (4): 47–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paden, J. 1974. Religion and Political Culture in Kano. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rey, P. 1973. Les Alliances de Classes. Paris: Maspero.Google Scholar
Chronicle, San Francisco. 1984. ‘African roads pile up the deadliest accident record’. 24 August.Google Scholar
Shea, P. 1975. ‘The Development of an Export-Oriented Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano Emirate’. University of Wisconsin, Madison, unpublished PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Shea, P. 1983. ‘Approaching the study of rural production in Kano’, in Barkindo, B. (ed.), Studies in the History of Kano, pp. 93–116. Ibadan: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1971. ‘The moral economy of the English crowd during the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 50: 76–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, M. 1983. Silent Violence: food, famine and peasantry in northern Nigeria. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
West Africa. 1980–1985 (various issues).Google Scholar
Usman, Y. B. 1981. The Transformation of Katsina. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press.Google Scholar
Usman, Y. B. 1982. Political Repression in Nigeria. Zaria: Gaskiya Press.Google Scholar