ISLAM IN NIGER: SLOW MOTION CULTURAL CHANGE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 NIAMEY 001193 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS DEPT: FOR INR AND AF/W; PASS TO USAID FOR AMARTIN; PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHER E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PTER EAID SOCI KDEM NG SUBJECT: ISLAM IN NIGER: SLOW MOTION CULTURAL CHANGE REF: A. 05 NIAMEY 1434 ¶B. NIAMEY 574 -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (U) This is the first in a series of cables examining the changing nature of Islam in Niger and its implications for the world's least developed Muslim democracy. Emboffs' recent travel to Maradi - a key trading center on the Niger/Nigeria border in the heart of "Hausaland" - and our examination of a Democracy and Human Rights Fund (DHRF) financed study on Democracy and Islam in Niger serve as a base for some preliminary inquiries into this subject. As the most heavily (98%) Muslim country in sub-Saharan Africa, and a young democracy characterized by weak institutions and pressure group politics, Niger makes an interesting place to pose some fundamental questions: to what extent can a modern, global movement like fundamentalist (or self-styled "reform") Islam gain ground in a pre-modern, isolated, and strongly provincial country? Are Nigeriens, by virtue of their strong attachments to local traditions and mores, Sufi chiefs and marabouts, immune to a pan-Islamic identity that takes its cues from the Persian Gulf and Nigeria? Does a sense of national identity and loyalty to the secular nation-state trump the cross border ethnic ties that bind Nigerien Hausas, Arabs, and Tuaregs to the cultures of Nigeria and the Mahgreb? Finally, to what degree is reactionary, fundamentalist Islam linked to some of the forces that otherwise seem poised to modernize Nigerien life - international trade and travel, a free-market economy, and access to mass media? ¶2. (U) This cable is a scene-setter for these and other inquiries. Septels will explore the above, and related issues including: the development of fundamentalist "Izalay" Islam in Niger; its relationship with older, more organic and moderate forms of Sufi Islam; the implications of this "slow motion cultural change" on issues ranging from local politics to women's rights, democracy, and perceptions of the US; and, the development of a "pan-Islamic" identity in a country known for its provincialism and isolation. Post elicits readers' views of other profitable avenues of inquiry. END SUMMARY -------------- -------------- ISLAM ON THE BORDER: NIGERIA AND THE CULTURE SHIFT -------------- -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Recent travel by Emboffs' to the southern city of Maradi, Niger's most vibrant trade center, yielded a snapshot of religious divisions and change along the Niger / Nigeria border. Maradi is the door through which much of Niger / Nigeria trade flows. At least 40% of Niger's foreign trade is conducted with Nigeria (a figure including informal trade flows would likely be much higher) and it is the Hausa speaking areas on both sides of the border that account for this. That cultural commonality also ensures that much of the local seasonal labor flow ("exode") from Niger is directed toward Nigeria. People and ideas cross this border with frequency and ease. Local contacts in the Islamic community report an interesting recent phenomenon: the annual movement of thousands of young Nigerien men toward the old Islamic teaching centers of Kano and Zaria, Nigeria. This is exode with a religious rather than economic inspiration - the young men seek out Koranic teachers in Northern Nigeria with the hope of returning home as successful and popular marabouts. ¶4. (U) The fundamentalist Islam of Northern Nigeria is being imported by trade and teaching, economic migration and cultural emulation. It lends more diversity to an already vibrant local religious scene characterized by three other schools: Tidjaniya, Shefu Dan Fodio / Qadiriyya, and Shi'a. Layered over each other, these older sects illustrate Islam's evolution and its relationship to local history, class, and ethnic loyalty. The sects' competition for adherents has led to rapid growth in the number of madrassas in Maradi - the number currently stands at 150 - but this has not had as profound an effect on public educational standards as one might expect. Far from teaching a hidebound curriculum of Koranic memorization and recitation, local contacts report that Maradi's madrassas conform to the Government of Niger's NIAMEY 00001193 002 OF 005 (GON) educational standards. Content and pedagogy are conceived, taught, and evaluated by the Ministry of Education. The only real difference is language - the madrassas are Arabic medium schools, while the GON's public schools are French medium. In this way, Niger's adherence to the "French model" of strong central government control sets the country apart from neighbors where madrassas are left to their own devices, with predictable pedagogical consequences. ¶5. (U) The turn toward madrassa education in Maradi can be partly explained by the collapse of the secular public school system, which lost funding and teachers to bankruptcy and retirement in the turbulent 1990s. It can also be explained by Nigeriens' traditional reluctance to embrace the secular public schools imposed on them, first by the French, and then by the authorities of the country's own secular governments. The first independent Islamic Association formed after democratization in the early 1990's, the Association Nigerienne pour l'Appel et la Solidarite Islamique (ANASI), made Islamic education its goal. Through support for madrassas, radio stations, and public education sessions for adults raised in the country's secular school system, the ANASI attempted to reintroduce Islam into education. In so doing they presented Nigeriens with a vision of education that conformed to their values. A similar promise seems to draw Maradi parents toward the madrassas. -------------- -------------- TIDJANIYA ISLAM: SUFISM, TRADITION, AND HIERARCHY -------------- -------------- ¶6. (U) Tidjaniya is the oldest and most popular sect in Maradi. Its local leader is Shefu Dan Jiratawa. The name derives from the sect's 18th century Algerian-born founder, Sheikh Ahmad Muhammad al-Mukhtar al-Tijani. In Niger, Tidjanis follow the Sheikh of Kiota, who was both the student and son-in-law of Tidjaniya's 20th century spiritual leader, the Senegalese Sheikh Ibrahim Niass. Tijaniya is classically Sufi, with an emphasis on saints, relics, and the authority of traditional chiefs and Marabouts. Many of the latter are thought to possess magical powers, a belief deemed heretical by fundamentalists, but one that suggests the means by which Tidjaniya co-opted the traditional faith healers or "witch doctors" of the animist past. Nigeriens are recent (18th and 19th century) converts to Islam, and it was Tidjaniya, with its mysticism and magic, to which most of them were first converted. Tidjaniya Islam makes some claims reminiscent of the pre-reformation Roman Catholic Church: that the Koran can only be read in Arabic, and must be interpreted for laymen by trained and literate Imams; that authority derives from these Imams and the traditional chieftaincy; that elaborate and costly rituals such as weddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies are essential to the faith; and, that relics and saints' tombs have healing powers. When one thinks of syncretistic African Islam, one is thinking of Tijaniya. ¶7. (U) Women enjoy a much more public role in Tidjania than in more fundamentalist sects. The present Sheikh of Kiota's mother, Oumoulkheir Niass (wife of the former Sheikh, and the daughter of Tijaniya spiritual leader Sheikh Ibrahim Niass) runs an Islamic Women's association know as Jamiyat Asaru-Addine. This active association affords Tidjaniya women a public role and a level of parity with men that is not often replicated in Nigerien Muslim society. While the Jamiyat concentrates on women's empowerment and women's role in maintaining the faith, Oumoulkheir also runs an Islamic women's school - the Al Islami Kiota. ¶8. (U) Tidjaniya is the religion of mainstream political power in Niger. The vast majority of traditional chiefs and established Marabouts adhere to it. Niger's first military leader, Gen. Seyni Kountche (1974-1987) was a devout Tidjani, who was closely advised by a Mr. Bonkano - simultaneously a Tidjani Marabout and head of the secret police. Col. Ibrahim Mainassara Bare (1996-1999) was another Tidjani. A devotee of the Sheikh of Kiota, he had a paved road constructed to link the Sheikh's isolated small village to the main national highway. Each year, that small village welcomes tens-of-thousands of pilgrims from across the country who gather there to celebrate Mouloud, the Prophet's birthday, in a display of the vernacular Islam so typical of Niger and the Tijaniya order. NIAMEY 00001193 003 OF 005 -------------- IZALAT'BID'A: BACK TO BASICS: -------------- ¶9. (U) The global fundamentalist movement Wahabiyya finds its West African expression in something known as Izalat'bid'a - "the exclusion of all that is superfluous" - a fair summation of the group's literalist, textual approach to the faith. "Izala" Islam originated in Nigeria in the mid-1970's, when Aboubacar Gumi, the Grand Kadi of that country's Sharia Court of Appeals, began to advocate "reform" in Sufi dominated Northern Nigeria. The creation of the Jama'a Izalatil Bid'a wa Iqamatus Sunnah (Movement against Negative Innovations and for Orthodoxy) in 1978 marks the formal starting point of the Izala movement in Nigeria. It made its initial inroads into Niger as early as 1982, and has expanded its reach since. Its primary objective is similar to that of the 19th century Quadiriyya crusader Ousmane Dan Fodio - to convert Muslims and the society in which they live to a purer and more textually accurate version of the faith. NOTE: Post anticipates providing a more extensive examination of Izala Islam's history and tenets septel END NOTE. ¶10. (U) Izala's appeal to the young, the Nigeria returned, and certain major businessmen and professionals has made it the fastest growing sect in Maradi over the last decade. Its local leader and spokesman, Rabe Dan Tchadouwa, is a prominent businessman with commercial ties to the Middle East and Nigeria. Dan Tchadouwa and other smaller players finance the construction of mosques, madrassas, and, increasingly, the provisioning of social welfare activities. Local contacts report that the Izala community has formed groups of young men, given them distinctive green uniforms, and put them in charge of security and crowd control at the sect's mosques during Friday prayers. Speaking to the diversity of their engagements as well as the depth of their pockets, local contacts noted that, had the USG not financed the popular CARE Maradi Youth Center, the Izalas probably would have done something similar in our stead. NOTE: The CARE Maradi Youth Center is partly funded by the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP). It trains unemployed young people for jobs realistically available in the Maradi economy, and gives them the microcredit financing necessary to start their own businesses. It also organizes them into mutually supportive groups that teach others about HIV/AIDS, democracy, and political participation. END NOTE ¶11. (SBU) USAID officer, drawing on 30 years of periodic experience in Niger, noted that the number of bearded men and veiled women in Maradi has increased. Traditionally, Nigeriens did not sport beards and hijabs in the Izalay fashion. Local contacts familiar with the Izalay indicate that the sect is divided over fine points of dress and doctrine, including ideal beard length, pant leg-length (the idea being that long pants touch the dirt and therefore render the wearer unclean for mosque services),and other seemingly minor matters. COMMENT: One wonders how many Nigeriens have the time or the resources to maintain the exact sartorial standards demanded by some adherents of Izalay. The movement's origins in the urban, middle-class trader community are reflected in such preoccupations. No one else has the resources necessary to support the sequestration of women - whose labor is essential to rural Niger's subsistence economy - or the obsessive attention to personal attire and grooming that some Izalay Imams demand. END COMMENT. -------------- SHEFU OUSMANE DAN FODIO AND THE NIGER/NIGERIA "JIHAD." -------------- ¶12. (U) There is nothing new about Islamic reform movements designed to purge West African Islam of its organic "superfluities." Izalat'bid'a's textualism and emphasis on a return to Koranic fundamentals brings to mind the "Jihad" of Shefu Ousmane Dan Fodio, who brought a measure of both political and spiritual stability to northern Nigeria and southern Niger in the aftermath of the Songhai Empire's collapse. The Songhai Empire's successor chieftaincies were politically incoherent, and the brand of Islam practiced in their palaces, while broadly within the Sufi tradition, included many unorthodox practices. Islamic laws limiting NIAMEY 00001193 004 OF 005 polygamy and addressing prayer, inheritance, and governance were ignored. An accretion of organic practices led to an "impure" version of the faith. From 1804-1812, Dan Fodio and his followers led a successful "jihad" to purify the Muslim faith and establish a political system that would enable "true belief and right practice." The end result was the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria and the imposition of a more rigorous, though still Sufi, version of the faith. ¶13. (U) This Qadiriyya jihad set the tone for Islamic practice for the better part of a century. Ousmane Dan Fodio is still revered by many Nigeriens, who name mosques and streets after him. Interestingly, Maradi was one of the small kingdoms that held out against the Qadiriyya Sokoto Caliphate in the early 19th century. But what force of arms did not accomplish, trade and cultural exchange among the Hausa populations of the sub-region did. The Qadiriyya Islam that Dan Fodio encouraged played a major role in other parts of Niger throughout the 19th century, before declining to a more marginal status in the 20th. -------------- QADIRIYYA AND SHI'A: ISLAM AT THE MARGINS -------------- ¶14. (U) Qadiriyya is Sufi sect similar in most of its outward forms to Tidjaniya. It is the oldest order in West Africa, but of less consequence in Maradi than Tidjania or Izalay. Qadiriyya derives its name from its 13th century founder, the Iraq-born cleric Abdu-l-qadir al-jilani. While Qadiriyya enjoyed some early inroads in Niger via Dan Fodio's jihad and subsequent assimilation, it declined throughout the 20th century as Tidjaniya sects took more and more of its members. Among the Sufi sects Qadiriyya boasts the largest number of holy ascetics. This detachment from material possessions and earthy concerns distinguishes Qadiriyya from both Tidjaniya - with its emphasis on lavish ceremony - and Izalat'bid'a, with its emphasis on effecting change and reform among believers and within the society they inhabit. ¶15. (U) Shi'a Islam is minor force in Maradi, as it is elsewhere in Niger. Abdoulmalik and Rabiou Miko are the Shi'a leaders, both in Maradi and for the country as a whole. Shi'a boast a single mosque in Niamey and one in Maradi, and generally maintain cordial relations with other Muslims. -------------- BASTIONS OF SECULARISM -------------- ¶16. (SBU) To all accounts, Niger's Army remains a bastion of secularism and a bulwark against Islamist politics. DAO reports that there is no discernible move toward more rigid Islamic practice within its ranks. This may reflect Izala's status as a predominantly Hausa movement. While at least 56% of Nigeriens are Hausas, the group has always been underrepresented in the traditionally Djerma military. Given the military's role in national life (Niger was governed by military rulers from 1974-1993 and again from 1996-1999, and the current President is a retired Lt. Col.) its continued cultural distinction is significant. However, there are civilian bastions of secularism as well. The country has a small but influential middle class composed of French speaking urbanites employed in the formal sector (usually as government employees, NGO staff, or educators). Its members range from secular to conventionally religious; sacrificing some accuracy for simplicity, we refer to it as the "secular middle class." ¶17. (U) The secular middle class's ability to advance its cultural vision through politics is limited - as failed efforts to establish a modern family code or bring Niger into compliance with international agreements on women's rights prove (reftels A, B). However, its ability to fend off Islamist assaults on existing secular gains is stronger. It was the secular middle class that supported President Tandja's government in its successful efforts to shut down radical Imams who preached against polio vaccinations and the International Festival of African Fashion show. This class likewise opposed Islamist efforts to make Niger a theocracy in the 1990s. NOTE: the country settled for status as a "non-confessional," though not "secular" state after an NIAMEY 00001193 005 OF 005 intense debate over this aspect of its new constitution. END NOTE ¶18. (U) Though small in number, the secular middle class has long enjoyed great latitude in expressing its views. Public media and most of the country's numerous private weeklies cater to it and reflect its views. Public sector employees constitute the single largest constituency for the principal opposition party, and members of this class, or of the military class, run all of the country's major parties and trade unions. The ruling MNSD party is led by a former military officer (President Tandja) and a former customs officer and government administrator (Prime Minister Amadou); other ruling coalition parties are led, respectively, by a retired international aviation administrator; an economist; an army officer and ex-minister; and, a mathematician. While many of these men are conventionally religious, none are Izalas. While the MNSD counts on traditional chiefs and Islamic clergy for much of its support, the key players are all Islamic traditionalists and adherents of one of the Sufi schools so opposed to Izala. For the moment, Izala is limited to just a few major patrons, located outside of government. -------------- COMMENT: FUNCTIONNAIRES AND COMMERCANTS: SLOW MOTION CULTURAL CHANGE AND THE REDEFINITION OF "SUCCESS" -------------- ¶19. (U) The bastions of secularism seem strongly rooted, and thus far have proven largely impermeable to Izalist influence. In the event that Izala doctrine begins to win converts in the military or secular middle class it would be a sure sign of fundamental cultural and political change in Niger. Likewise, the marginalization of either class within the Nigerien polity would say much about Izalay's rise. These two small but influential classes are yardsticks for gauging the process of slow motion cultural change that is bringing the global phenomenon of fundamentalist Islam to Niger. ¶20. (U) Another, much larger measure is Nigerien youth, and an examination of youth in Maradi suggests that slow motion cultural change may be kicking into higher gear. An estimated 75% of Nigeriens are under 30 years of age. Young people in Maradi seem to be embracing a new vision of success, substituting the Islamist model of the illiterate trader ("commercant") for the secular middle class model of the civil servant ("functionnaire"). Formal studies and countless informal conversations with mission contacts give the same impression: that the well-educated, francophone, modern, public sector employee is no longer the ideal role model for many Nigerien young people. Success increasingly seems to be defined by the illiterate, Islamist, wealthy but very traditional (as evidenced by multiple wives or the practice of purdah) trader. ¶21. (U) To some extent, this aspirational shift derives from recent Nigerien history. The 1990's witnessed the imposition of budgetary strictures and the concomitant collapse of Niger's public education and public employment systems. This made the old "functionnaire" ideal seem unattainable to many young people. At the same time, Izala style Islamic literalism seems to have became "cool" - a sign of one's transcendence of the Sufi oddities of village life and one's embrace of a more rational, modern, and pure version of the faith. ¶22. (U) For many nouveau riche urban commercants, Izalay provides a connection to a global Islamic culture associated with the glamour and wealth of Nigeria and the Middle East. For young Nigeriens seeking absolute answers in a confusing environment of rapid urbanization, population growth, and political change, Izala's certainties are satisfying. At the same time, the sect offers them a role model in the successful Izala commercant. Therefore, the sort of Izala Islam we see in Maradi is not simply a regression toward anti-scientific, one-size-fits-all textual literalism - it is a way for some Nigeriens to feel modern and "connected" in a globalizing world. END COMMENT ALLEN