Religiosity and its others: lived Islam in West Africa and South India

Abstract

Drawing on research about settings in South India and West Africa characterised by significant religious diversity, we reflect on the ways in which everyday religiosity among contemporary Muslims is constituted through difference and contestation. Our cases are from two ostensibly secular states – India and Nigeria – both former British colonies where secularism has been interrogated over the past few decades. In our focus on what we call ‘lived’ Islam, we pay attention not only to intra-Muslim differences but also to how religiosity is formed and experienced through engagement and encounters with Others, whether religious, ethnic or political, both locally and globally. Everyday religiosity in such settings as South India and Nigeria emerges at the interstices of such encounters where Muslims often seek to draw boundaries at the same time as they fashion themselves – in lifestyle, sociality, aesthetics – in relation to various Others. As we argue, such ethnographic cases with their comparative angle underscore the importance of studying religiosity in heterogeneous settings so as to explode the flawed, idealised sense of wholeness that emerges in some of the literature on the anthropology of one religious tradition or another with such traditions sometimes represented as deriving from self-contained theologies. S'appuyant sur les recherches portant sur l’Inde du Sud et l’Afrique de l'Ouest, contextes caractérisés par une grande diversité religieuse, nous nous interrogeons sur la manière dont la religiosité quotidienne, chez les musulmans contemporains, se constitue à travers la différence et la contestation. Les cas étudiés proviennent de deux États clairement laïques – l'Inde et le Nigéria –, deux anciennes colonies britanniques où la laïcité a été remise en question au cours des dernières décennies. En nous concentrant sur l'Islam « vécu », nous ne nous intéressons pas seulement aux différences entre musulmans, mais aussi à la façon dont la religiosité est construite et ressentie à travers l'engagement et les rencontres avec les Autres – qu'ils soient religieux, ethniques ou politiques –, tant au niveau local que mondial. Dans des contextes comme ceux du Nigéria et de l’Inde du Sud, la religiosité quotidienne apparaît dans l’interstice de ces rencontres, au cours desquelles les musulmans cherchent souvent à tracer des frontières tout en se façonnant eux-mêmes – dans un style de vie, une sociabilité, une esthétique – par rapport à plusieurs Autres. Selon notre analyse ces cas ethnographiques et leur aspect comparatif soulignent l'importance de l’étude de la religiosité dans des contextes hétérogènes, pour briser le sentiment imparfait et idéalisé de complétude qui émerge dans une partie de la littérature en anthropologie portant sur l’une ou l’autre des traditions religieuses, parfois représentées comme dérivant de théologies autonomes. This article focuses on processes of being and becoming Muslim. Drawing on research in settings in South India and West Africa characterised by significant religious diversity, we reflect on how everyday religiosity among contemporary Muslims is constituted through difference and contestation.11 Osella has conducted research on Kerala’s socio-religious reform movements since 1989, and data from this article are drawn from various periods of fieldwork in Kozhikode from 2002 to the present. Soares began research about religion in various parts of Nigeria in 2004 and draws here particularly on several visits to southwestern Nigeria that included ethnographic research about the Muslim organisations discussed herein. We are grateful for the insightful comments from an anonymous reviewer and the editors of this special issue. Our cases are from two ostensibly secular states – India and Nigeria – both former British colonies where secularism has been interrogated over the past few decades. Such a comparative exercise is particularly valuable for shedding light on how religion can be lived in different settings but in ways that follow similar trajectories. In our focus on what we call ‘lived’ Islam, we pay attention not only to intra-Muslim differences but also to how religiosity is formed and experienced through engagement and encounters with Others, whether religious, ethnic or political, both locally and globally. Everyday religiosity in such settings as South India and Nigeria emerges at the interstices of such encounters where Muslims often seek to draw boundaries at the same time as they fashion themselves – in lifestyle, sociality, aesthetics – in relation to various Others. As we argue, such ethnographic cases and comparative reflections underscore the importance of studying religiosity in heterogeneous settings so as to explode the flawed, idealised sense of wholeness that emerges in some of the literature on the anthropology of one religious tradition or another with such traditions sometimes represented as deriving from self-contained theologies, or reduced to a demotic, almost spontaneous religiosity. For several years now, there has been considerable academic attention focused on ethics and so-called piety movements associated with what has been dubbed the Islamic awakening (Arabic, sahwa) in various places in the Middle East, and particularly in Egypt. This attention to ethics has been an important trend in post-Marxist social scientific approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim societies, with inspiration from Talal Asad’s reading of Michel Foucault on the care and cultivation of the self. Such attention to ethics and subject formation (for Foucault, subjectivation) came in part as a critique of instrumentalist readings of subjects and agency, most notably, in work about Islam and politics or political Islam. At the same time, it was a response to simplistic understandings of religious practice within both the social sciences and more generally, understandings that tend to be informed by liberal models of social action that privilege ‘individual’ and ‘autonomous’ trajectories assumed to be moving toward presumed Western models of emancipation or enlightenment, particularly in Western feminism. The study of Islam and Muslim societies with a focus on ethics has been perhaps most fully developed by Saba Mahmood (2005) and Charles Hirschkind (2006), both of whom conducted research in Cairo in the 1990s. Given space limitations, we can only briefly point to some of the problems with the ethical turn in the study of Islam (e.g. Bangstad 2011; Mittermaier 2012; Deeb 2015; cf. Fadil and Fernando 2015; Kloos and Beckers 2017). Some of this work tends to privilege micropolitics over politics and downplays ‘[d]ifferences in orientations, which might vary [sociologically] by social location or class’ (Soares and Osella 2009: 10). At the same time, broader macropolitics are not sufficiently considered, the state and all of its mechanisms – coercive, repressive, persuasive, disciplinary, and so forth – are largely ignored. There is also a danger of cultural determinism in such totalising images of piety movements, focusing as they do almost exclusively on ‘prescriptive discourses’ and therefore on what many would consider ‘orthodoxy’ (Ahmed 2016: 284, n. 84). As scholars such as Magnus Marsden (2005) and Samuli Schielke (2009) have demonstrated, ambivalences, multivocality and contingencies shape the lives and actions of ordinary Muslims. Indeed, ‘struggle, ambivalence, incoherence, and failure must also receive attention in the study of everyday religiosity’ (Soares and Osella 2009: 11). By shifting attention to the complexities of lived, everyday religion (Otayek and Soares 2007; Soares and Osella 2009; cf. Marsden 2005), in this article we are not seeking either to resuscitate stale and altogether improbable oppositions between textual Islam and a demotic, almost spontaneous religiosity (akin to Orsi’s 2002 reading of ‘popular’ Catholicism), or to attribute degrees of authenticity and legitimacy to different or competing traditions of Islamic orthopraxis, as some naïve critics such as Fadil and Fernando (2015; cf. Ingram 2018: 211–12) have suggested. The latter privileges modalities of being Muslim with ethical self-cultivation as central; this is at the expense of other ways of being Muslim that are more diverse than the rather restricted sample of young European Muslims studied in such recent sociological and anthropological research (e.g. Fadil 2011; Fernando 2016). Such a narrow reading of contemporary Islam and ways of being Muslim, in which those who are committed to a pious lifestyle and Salafis are conflated and privileged, is not only empirically flawed but misguided, not least for ignoring ways of being Muslim in postcolonial settings beyond European contexts. In our understanding of lived, everyday religion – rather than in Fadil and Fernando’s misrepresentation of the latter – we seek to develop an analytics of becoming and being Muslim via intersectional exchanges and practices within the wider – and thus political and contested – fields of social and cultural production. This move does not privilege practice over theology, or vice versa, but rather underscores how ways of being Muslim are crafted, imagined and experienced in relation to historical political and economic transformations which simultaneously constitute and transcend ethnic-religious boundaries, as well as those between secular and religious spheres. As such, the notion of lived religion points us towards appreciating the historical and contemporary circulation of practices, aesthetics and theologies, not only within and between religious traditions, but also across different social fields (see Soares 2005; Osella 2018). However, rather than attempting to establish lines of causation between social fields, in our understanding of lived, everyday religion we intend to draw out – in time-honoured anthropological fashion – the contingent historical milieus in which particular modalities of moral reasoning and practical action develop. In other words, rather than positing somewhat fixed Muslim identities and subjectivities, the focus here is on historical modalities of being Muslim in all their complexities, tensions and contradictions, which remain always inchoate and in the process of becoming. We will illustrate this in case from southwestern Nigeria and South to the of studying Islam and Muslim societies at the historical and religiosity more Our case is from a many as almost between Muslims and British in the and since the of the of the (see and through the have a on lived religion and religiosity in The of with to the not only to the of in Nigeria but also to the of of and models of reform which both and Muslims often with in southwestern the there encounters between and Muslims in a where what has to be religion or religion has been the Nigeria has the of both Muslim and which are often and Muslim and in the have for and for their However, which came and who or and from whom will be in Nigeria can be to the the since the but also to the of in the in the and with on some toward Muslims. the of many the Muslim of Nigeria within so-called of the and Muslims a a of such as and and and in their sometimes and to which many Muslims have and for such – particularly from – have been and this is part of the within which some of the and between and Muslims in the since the must be in Nigeria to for and many Muslims to the presumed of the Muslim the have been and in many places in it is important not to the of and Muslim in the between and in the of the has in Some young Muslims to the for inspiration for the of their at a time the space for political was also to and other for and in with other Muslims 2016). considerable to the Muslim a critique of which have been important in and on to the Muslim for the of and of by its one of the Muslim and its have an of Islam and have with ways of being Muslim (see of are of both those Muslims who do not its and and this has to and and its also have a for and the of to their the and to with the some of and political particularly the from the Muslim in the the Muslim represented the and the Muslim have an Islamic and state as the to problems (see and As many Muslims have and out in as both to and often Muslim The of this can be Muslims have to Islam in Nigeria and in recent years have sometimes by the Muslim in the the Such Muslim organisations as as well as the and Muslim have been important for Muslim and in have been since the most the and most By the and many Muslim and seeking to and to Islam, and they to do so with some Muslim with their the South Muslim young Muslim began to what they religious what they by this was to themselves about and the so as to be to with with the of to to Islam (see that many at such to their religion and to to Islam. the there has been considerable of and of and in Nigeria that in part to some of such political economic as the for and and politics have also important in various In it is important to underscore tensions over the encounters between Muslims and in the and more in Nigeria (e.g. Muslims and sometimes to be at this is of not always the However, the of to in states in the to this to a The that states within ostensibly secular state such a to considerable about the of the and The of competing religious – Muslim and – only to in the of There was at least at an in and between and Muslims. it is important to consider places from the Muslim of the that has most since the of the former of is a the most in Nigeria and among the most on the The is in the of the in a the one of the ethnic in the is also most important of economic and a space for considerable social and religious where the of are to out an at least the religious and have been the in this (see et 2017). Muslims and often and are in the same in many lives are characterised by considerable religious diversity, various of Islam, and so-called one of the most important religious in Nigeria has been the of the of with its to what some scholars (e.g. cf. have the of for the and various in but also more Muslims in Nigeria have not been to such In it is to how some Muslims have and the most is the of which is by the (see also this was in the in southwestern The a of and most of the are to be the has to a Islamic with where Muslims are the and among the In Nigeria a subject of is how to have from to as or and do not to this as (Soares 2015; also 2017). from of and are notably, the of and one of its is with a is to the one who to Islamic in the such as the have also the for on rather than on as Muslims are from the for Islamic in or in who the on with Such are to the that in Nigeria and in their In in what to be an from there are and the it would be to that the of by religious has been exclusively a in Nigeria (see and Soares in Nigeria among the to various and in religious However, has been at the of Muslim in various a within the and in considerable in where religious are (see some of the in has a the of the its is in various and the of that are of the and to many There has also been and and of the of is by to be in the the of its However, the that the to to is of young and an that to those to a lifestyle in a by considerable economic In how the constituted an its and various ways of being Muslim that are focused on religious practice and are in for and its and by the and other in the is important to underscore how as an not to have on the so-called in Nigeria and has not for the of in its in the part of the is to this attention to religious practice and ethics within the broader of Islam in The few have the of various of Islamic as in such as the the in to Islam, the more recent of and other such in the of in the and 2016). this of of and Islam and in the case of ostensibly to be of research have diverse many who from with the one of the particularly the various or who in and who might are to focus on piety and being ostensibly has a rather to religion that to to those with with which in its important in Nigeria At the same time, fieldwork in that they be of their and not on a as of the Such understandings of religion and models of reform are similar in to what many Muslims in (see and state how the is to all such between and is and similar to the to draw boundaries with the other and those who practice the of the Muslim in the is in with about and in the of the considerable economic and political of contemporary Indeed, many who to the lifestyle the to would that they what has religion of the is an case for understanding how lived religion and religiosity to wider transformations and how Muslims in this themselves in relation to other and to various Others, in various ways from of and the state of on the of India is to have from the of that in the years have the of politics lines and 2017). this of as an of and might be only 2015; 2015; in recent years The and are to as have interrogated themselves on the shape and of everyday in the of an of a historical of – by of secular and politics – the of the state since and which for the of in the state (see is beyond the of this article to the of processes of formation in a state lives and Muslim – and of the it to that the between and between and religious have constituted the historical for the of modalities of religiosity. to some (see and Islam on the as as the time of the through the of from the 2007; This in with that of who from either the of the or a of by of in The of Muslim and in the economic and political of Kerala’s modalities of religious and and in the of to within a wider politics of to and local 2016). the different of – and British in particular – and Muslims to their religious practices and the local – associated with – to to the and its 2005; Muslim scholars to the which the out by of Islamic and in the 2018: British with an of and between and within religious 2015; Muslim such as and simultaneously Islamic traditions of piety and for the and religious reform of Muslims of and its a of Islamic piety and religious reform from various of and across the but also with various local of socio-religious the or all the of and to the of and social and religious Muslim to Islamic to of Muslim religiosity – the of and for – as from and in and For Muslim and the in of socio-religious reform of modalities of and agency, and with wider and aesthetics of and similar within and The practices and aesthetics of and religious reform a of and within and between different religious and Osella also Osella and Osella this shape to a on which the for social and politics was Indeed, Kerala’s of socio-religious and of politics and have to the of the of and and cf. organisations such as the and their and with different of but they that they are in a For the the in has and social and for the of and and has to and with the of by economic in a critique of and – which draws in on and as well as on secular of social and – for social with a tradition of engagement and which has been the of and political by an to they seek to the shape of The practices of the have also the political and of of and to and to to their practice of and also We similar toward an of social and in the care the understandings of Islamic have for to of to care to Muslim and The to local the care being 2016). organisations to the social and of Muslims are and Osella not only for and Muslim but they also to among Muslims about the for and for a generally, Islamic organisations the of everyday in their or – for and for – or from of and to and (e.g. As in the case of as well as local Muslims with the to the by economic a toward and which to the of social and the moral of the and to and the of contemporary Islam in the one – which draw from such as and – are by an of modalities of care by to have the and of a as and the they to to Muslims towards a and of Islamic with of and economic and have about the shape of between the Muslim and the This has the shape of a from social – from and to everyday – with in a wider and and Osella This of the and a of what it to be a Muslim about the and the secularism of the This has been a with for to whether Muslim in by the of an – a of – or whether Muslims and in the of and some religious and scholars that Muslims from such not practices, the that of their or in which Muslims can are as by as by political In recent some and organisations have been by the for and for Muslim to the Islamic in Indeed, about the of in and the of Muslims as this in the how religious organisations and political with In the of politics in the state and at the call for the of with other religious in as well as with secular political The of Muslims as a seeking and in the and practices of various of Islam. has local religious organisations to Islamic with the and for the circulation of models of Islamic it also to – through by tensions and – and the of of social engagement with as a by an of in in which the of different religious are by the secularism (see At the same time, the of and lives is by the and aesthetics of different within the the or to by or in local and and – in practices or for – of wider in the state and Osella For some the of and might be such as and or the and of the for it might be the of the However, for many it is the of different cultural and social which everyday lives and In this we have discussed how the practice of Islam and ways of being Muslim have been over time in Nigeria and South and historical research from settings characterised by significant religious such as southwestern Nigeria and us to reflect on the ways in which lived religion among contemporary Muslims is constituted simultaneously through practices of as well as via and Muslims fashion themselves in relation to other and various Others. The so-called ethical turn in the study of Islam and Muslim societies has to such As has by the and of what many to be in Islam, not altogether or Islamic traditions are or historical of Islam as a for a more and of historical practices of our us beyond the of textual or political to the lived of religiosity. In our case diverse ways of being and becoming Muslim in which Muslims of and piety have been constituted over time out of with that are not only simultaneously and but also across boundaries – political, of Islamic religious practice to be represented and as by or textual traditions, and understandings of a particular pious lifestyle are and At the historical it is important and to the of Islamic traditions within the broader political and economic in which they are wider and over We have to do this in particular in also the to the and practices of those Muslims who their ethical lives or the narrow of so-called Islamic in recent research and who in the of Muslim and ways of being Muslim, but has been in many contemporary of Islam and Muslim