Quranic Schools in Northern Nigeria (The International African Library)
Cambridge University Press, 3/15/2018
EAN 9781108425292, ISBN10: 1108425291
Hardcover, 286 pages, 23.5 x 16.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
In a global context of widespread fears over Islamic radicalisation and militancy, poor Muslim youth, especially those socialised in religious seminaries, have attracted overwhelmingly negative attention. In northern Nigeria, male Qur'anic students have garnered a reputation of resorting to violence in order to claim their share of highly unequally distributed resources. Drawing on material from long-term ethnographic and participatory fieldwork among Qur'anic students and their communities, this book offers an alternative perspective on youth, faith, and poverty. Mobilising insights from scholarship on education, poverty research and childhood and youth studies, Hannah Hoechner describes how religious discourses can moderate feelings of inadequacy triggered by experiences of exclusion, and how Qur'anic school enrolment offers a way forward in constrained circumstances, even though it likely reproduces poverty in the long run. A pioneering study of religious school students conducted through participatory methods, this book presents vital insights into the concerns of this much-vilified group.
List of figures
List of maps
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Notes on translation and anonymization
1. Porridge, piety, and patience
Qur'anic schooling in northern Nigeria
2. Fair game for unfair accusations? Discourses about Qur'anic students
3. 'Secular schooling is schooling for the rich!' Inequality and educational change in northern Nigeria
4. Peasants, privations, and piousness
how boys become Qur'anic students
5. Inequality at close range
domestic service for the better-off
6. Concealment, asceticism, and cunning Americans
how to deal with being poor? 7. Mango medicine and morality
pursuing a respectable position within society
8. Spiritual security services in an insecure setting
Kano's 'prayer economy'
9. Roles, risks, and reproduction
what almajiri education implies for society and for the future
Glossary
Abbreviations
Annex
synopsis 'Duniya Juyi Juyi – How Life Goes'
Bibliography
Index.