Description

Journal article published in Africa Today, a publication of Indiana University Press. Volume 54, Number 4. You can purchase a copy of this journal from IU Press at: http://inscribe.iupress.org/loi/aft

This article discusses several northern Nigerian video feature
films that depict stories about conversion to Islam. Based
on three months of fieldwork in 2003 and a close reading of
Hausa videos and video magazines, it suggests reading these
films against the backdrop of the current process of religious
and cultural revitalization associated with reformist Islam
and the reintroduction of the shari’a legal code within the
northern states of Nigeria since 1999. Video filmmakers have
used religious themes—and foremost, conversion stories—to
give a “religious flair” to their products, a flair that resonates
with the permeation of public culture with fundamentalist
Islam. Far from addressing potential future converts, conversions
on screen are geared toward a Muslim Hausa-speaking
audience. The invention of heroic jihads and successful conversion
campaigns may have helped assert northern identities
at a time when, on the national level, northern Muslim society
felt politically and economically deprived at the hands of
a federal government led by a southern born-again Christian
president. In a wider context, the link between religion and
media suggested by the material warrants a comparison with
similar processes in southern Nigeria and elsewhere, where
Pentecostal practices have migrated beyond the religious
domain to become part of public culture.