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Aside rom giving shape toZinderois’ emergent earso moral disorder, thecontroversy surroundingthe Veiled She-Devilreveals a ragmentedMuslim community tornby disagreements aboutthe parameters o Islamic“tradition.”
 
When Spirits Strt Veiling:The Cse of the Veiled She-Devilin  Muslim Town of Niger
A Mas
In Niger, women have long been seen as embodiments o virtue (or wickedness). O late, with the rise o reormistIslam, their role as upholders o purity has become key tothe denition o moral community. Debates over the controlo emale sexuality and the ordering o social spaces have intensied. While such debates are characteristically ramed in Islamic terms, one should not assume that pre-Islamiccosmologies—oten denigrated by Islam—have become irrel-evant to local moral concerns. In August 2003, rumors o aveiled she-devil haunting the streets o Zinder in search o seductive encounters provoked a moral panic, which eventu-ally received a ull account in a Nigérien newspaper. Muslim reormists argued the apparition was meant to discouragewomen rom veiling, but others countered that it served as awarning to philandering husbands. It demonstrated that ar rom waning under the impact o Islamic revivals, gures o the pre-Islamic past are well entrenched in Islamic towns.Besides suggesting that non-Muslim others cannot be con-signed to history, the rumors o spiritual intrusion discussed
 in this article highlight the centrality of the non-Muslim other in popular constructions of Muslimhood. In an age of renewed
Muslim anxiety about orms o emininity perceived to con- fict with the image o virtuous womanhood, the she-deviloered Nigérien Muslims a means o pondering the dangerso women’s sexuality. At another level, her tale is about spir- its parodying Islam so as to reveal the limits o morality. By subversively playing with notions o modesty and morality,the spirit presented a sobering critique o the hypocrisy o theveil in contemporary Niger.
 
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Introduction
In Niger, women symbolized virtue (or its absence) long beore Islam came to
unction as the privileged vehicle or the sustenance o a moral order. In theatermath o the Islamic reorms that ollowed the Nigérien government’sliberalization o markets and media in the early 1990s, women’s role asupholders o purity has nonetheless become even more central to the deni-tion o amilial, communal, and national moral boundaries. With the rapidspread o Izala, an anti-Su reormist organization,
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women, their mobility,and their visibility have been increasingly scrutinized. Their bodies havebecome the object o meticulous attention, and as is the case elsewhere inthe Islamic diaspora (Ask and Tjomsland 1998; Bauer 1985, 2005; Brenner1996; Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 1995; Göle 2002; Ong 1987, 1995; Sand-ikci and Güliz 2005; White 1999), much o the debate over what constitutes
respectability, piety, and modesty has centered on women’s dress and deport-ment. By advocating veiling, seclusion, and other practices aimed at limiting
women’s mobility and autonomy, Izala members have repeatedly clashed
with advocates o the more “traditionalist” orm o Islam, who resent Izala’s
contestations o a previously unquestioned orthodoxy.Disagreements over the sartorial parameters o piety and the orderingo social spaces that have ostensibly divided Nigériens into opposed camps
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 underscore wider concerns about changing perceptions o gendered reali-ties. At a time when the West is routinely blamed or producing decadentliestyles, conspicuous consumption, and a loss o spiritual values, womenhave become the key elements o a new “sacred architecture” o sexuality
(Mernissi [1957] 1987:xvi), designed as a bulwark against Westernization andits accompanying evils. The management o women’s bodies and the control
o their agency tackle the larger orces at work in the construction o the
body politic. As Ong notes or Malaysia, current contestations over the placeo women in Muslim societies are not about gender politics so much as about
“nationwide struggles over a crisis o cultural identity, development, classormation, and the changing kinds o imagined community that are envi-
sioned” (1995:187). In such contexts, women’s bodies oten end up signiying
order and purity when they are displayed according to morally appropriatenorms o containment and control—though they can just as well becomeseen as deviant, “dirty,” or wicked (Douglas 1966; Hodgson and McCurdy2001; Ong and Peletz 1995; Rosaldo 1974).Current Nigérien debates on how to produce modest bodies and moralselves are characteristically ramed in Islamic terms and inspired by notionso a “universalistic” tradition rather than rooted in local understandingso morality, but it would be a mistake to assume that the local pre-Islamiccosmologies that are routinely denigrated by Muslims have become entirely
irrelevant to the moral imagination. Notwithstanding Izala’s aggressive
eorts to puriy Islam rom “animist” elements—perceived as accretionsthat have contaminated the aith while ensnaring the minds o Muslims in
bonds o obscurantism—some o these occasionally resurace to problematize
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