Censorship, citizenship and cosmopolitan unity in Muslim and Christian creative responses to repression in northern Nigeria

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Main author: McCain, Carmen
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-38944
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic M Music
PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
P Language and Literature
description Nigeria is often portrayed as having a ‘Muslim north’ and a ‘Christian south’. Such representations oversimplify the complicated interrelationships between the two religious communities and their geographic locations. Similarly, while much has been written on the conflict between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, there has been less scholarly attention to the philosophical and communal relationships between adherents of the two religions in northern Nigeria. I argue that there are parallels in the way in which Hausa-speaking Muslim artists responded to a censorship crisis in Kano State in 2007–11 and in the way in which Hausa-speaking Christian musicians from Nigeria’s north-east responded a few years later to the Boko Haram crisis. I examine Muslim filmmaker Hamisu Lamido Iyantama’s response to the Kano State Censorship Board, alongside Christian musician Saviour Y. Inuwa’s response to Boko Haram. Iyantama and Inuwa both counter repressive forces by expressing parallel understandings of their identities as citizens in the pluralistic state of Nigeria and as righteous members of universal religious communities that emphasize God’s justice in the end times. I argue that these Hausa-language artists present a vision of cosmopolitan unity across ethnicity and religion, as an alternative to the repressive forces of both state censorship and the anarchic violence of Boko Haram.
format Journal Article
author McCain, Carmen
author_facet McCain, Carmen
authorStr McCain, Carmen
author_letter McCain, Carmen
title Censorship, citizenship and cosmopolitan unity in Muslim and Christian creative responses to repression in northern Nigeria
publisher Cambridge University Press
publishDate 2022
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/38944/

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