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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Brill. I am Emily Tanken, and this week we will be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. I'm speaking with Dr. Adayami Bolugan.
He is at the University of Bireth and is the author of the paper When Knowledge is There, Other Things Follow, the Muslim Student Society of Nigeria and the Making of the Ruba Muslim Youth. Adayami, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you, Emily. So to start out, how did you decide to write this paper and how was it, or to what extent was it an extension or outgrowth or logical next step of your other work?
I started to write this paper in 2016. The paper actually is part of the Big App Project, which is my PhD at the University of Bireth. And I wrote this paper as my own presentation at the conference in the UK in 2016. And at the conference I got a lot of feedbacks.
I presented it in all the academic guidelines in Bireth and I improved on the paper and this is the result of that paper. Secondly, this paper develops from my own curiosity about the changes in the expression of Islam in South West Nigeria over the last 20 years. There is a remarkable transformation, especially among young Muslims, in how they dress, in their consciousness to religious knowledge and Arabic language. I'm also India, followership of new Muslim organizations.
Now, this Muslim organization that I talked about, many of them are South European, with connections outside Nigeria. And you see a lot of young Muslims who have been attracted to this organization. So I've been curious about this kind of transformation that has been going on in your balance and generally in Nigeria. And I think it's something that is very interesting for researching on considering the fact that we are talking about a multi-religious society and for us to see a new form of religious consciousness growing on in that context, I think it is something that is what we're searching on.
In a way, this paper is also an aspect of my present and future work. My other work, I focus generally on the history of Muslims in the Jogbalan and by station, Muslims in Nigeria and other parts of Nigeria. So this is basically what the paper, this is how it goes on. Right.
So before we get to the paper, just to give our listeners some background, could you speak a bit about the extent to which, so your community as you write is religiously mixed. There's Muslims and Christians. Could you speak a bit about the extent to which that is a point of tension or isn't and why? For most part, religious difference has been denoted by society.
Among the Jogbalan, for instance, you will find people of different faiths in the same nuclear or centered family. And this attitude can be traced to the period before Islam and Christianity in touch with the government. There's a problem of saying among the Jogbalan that is used to emphasize this attitude to religious difference. The Jogbalan, what is a jakir, unifar bofa, jakimasho, kai bai, what that means is let the jakir, if I let the jakimasho, so that the world would become a better place.
This way of thinking allows religious difference and diversity to thrive among the Jogbalan. With the coming of Islam and Christianity, this attitude to religious diversity was and continued to be sustained. Yet, in spite of this attitude, religious difference has often led to clashes in the Jogbal community, even though the magnitude of the clashes has been minimal compared to northern India and I'm sure you're familiar with the cases of the Jogbalan. Yeah, of course.
So for instance also in Jogbalan, there have been cases of violence between traditionalists and Muslims and between Muslims and Christian. The just stations have also been witnessed in inter-religious marriages and in politics. Therefore, despite their consciousness to tolerate each other's fits, the tolerance among the Joguba of different religious fits are too collapse and we have seen different cases of this. So if we could speak more specifically about the movement that you focus on in your paper is it started in 1954.
What was significant about that year? What was significant about 1954? It's not very straightforward. The year itself, the year itself in which the MSS was found, which is a movement I talked about, is very significant for a number of reasons.
I also understand this. We need to also look at the wider context of the history of the Jogbal Muslims and the British colonial in Nigeria. The colonial for instance facilitated a massive transformation in social, economic, political and cultural life of Joguba. And there are three aspects of this transformation that are directly related to the history of the movement that I talked about.
First, the colonial system encouraged the emergence of Western schooling that allowed Muslim students to meet and formed the MSS in 1954. Now, the idea to form the MSS actually developed in these schools. Secondly, there were new forms of associations that were enabled by colonial rule. This association would be political, cultural, recreational, religious or economic orientation, which also emerged as part of the consciousness of modernity with the colonial rule of the world and the social interaction of the new colonial order.
The MSS also emerged as part of that colonial association. Secondly, the colonial system created a social context in which economic and political opportunities were helpful to many Joguba, thereby allowing inter-religious encounter to try among them. Part of this encounter saw people of different faiths growing from one another, participating in each other's religious tradition, combating each other's religion and even competing among themselves. And to a certain extent, the MSS is an example of this phenomenon.
So in this regard, the UN-54 can be considered as embodying these previous pieces of digital bound Muslims in the colonial period. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So before I let you go, I wanted to ask you, so this was a religious movement, but you wrote about, you read about in your paper, how they also passed on socioeconomic skills to the broader population. And I was wondering if you could speak a bit about if you see there being advantages or disadvantages to those skills having been learned through a religious, as opposed to a secular avenue. Yeah. Yeah.
This question can be a discussion on the leadership between religion and the secular society. But if I was to answer this question, I would say that the main advantage is when religious activities are employed through remote skill acquisition, social economic skills acquisition. And we need to understand that the movements I talked about in this paper also considered that socioeconomic skills for the modern society as part of what it takes to be the Muslim. Also, this movement is so desire, we are that learning such skills is needed for survival of Muslims in contemporary world.
So using religious activities to promote skill acquisition can help, you know, believe us, not just mostly, many believe us to negotiate their religious and economic life better. People with faith more broadly, it doesn't happen in Muslims, but yes, yes, yes. And you know, maybe I've been through these activities, often then valuable work ethics that can be useful for your professional life. And we have seen this in really studies, for instance, the study by Max Weber, who emphasizes how the protestant work ethic was very instrumental in what acquisition and also leading to the formation of the capital system.
So religious activities generally I consider it to be very important and to play a very useful role in socioeconomic skill development in society. Yeah. I have been speaking with Dr. Adeyemi Balogan.
He is at the University of Bierth in Germany. And his paper when knowledge is there, Other Things Follow the Muslim Student Society of Nigeria and the Making of Your Ribbon Muslim Youth can be found in the publication Islamic Africa. Adeyemi, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you,