Foreword
p. x-xi
Texte intégral
1This book is the result of collective work carried out from 2014 to 2017 by a team of seven researchers as part of the Trans-Islam research programme. Developed and implemented by IFRA-Nigeria (Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique, based in Ibadan), Trans-Islam aimed to study cross-border religious dynamics in an area encompassing northern Nigeria and southern Niger. The project, which brings together European and African researchers, historians, anthropologists, and political scientists, was submitted to the CSFRS1 as part of a non-thematic call for proposals. Trans-Islam was fully funded by the CSFRS, which enabled its research team to conduct lengthy field investigations and collect a rich set of primary and original data.
2Initially, the project was intended to be coordinated from IFRA’s office in Zaria, northern Nigeria. However, security developments, increased attacks, and a high risk of kidnapping led to the closure of the office. Researchers were nevertheless able to carry on with their fieldwork, even in difficult-to-reach areas such as the Nigerian states of Borno and Adamawa, which were still in a state of emergency at the time. The project was thus coordinated from IFRA’s headquarters in Ibadan, south-west Nigeria, but the team met annually for research meetings in Niamey, Niger, and Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, north-east Nigeria.
3For two years, the seven researchers on the team – two from Nigeria, two from Niger, two from France, and one from the UK – conducted fieldwork in both Niger and Nigeria, sometimes for several months in a row. The innovative nature of this project lays in the emphasis on fieldwork and its long duration, in the originality of the data collected, and in the comparative perspective that was central to the research. The aim was to find a common resonance in the phenomena studied on both sides of the border, but also to highlight the contextual differences in the two countries – in particular, in terms of their respective institutional cultures, the nature of their colonial heritage, and their relationship with the state. These differences partly account for the specific developments of some phenomena in one country or the other.
4While English and French were the two main working languages, Hausa was also used, as it is spoken fluently by most of the team members. This common asset made it possible for researchers to collect, exchange, and analyse as a team many documents produced in Hausa, thus building a corpus of original sources.
5Each of the contributions presented here is part of a cross-border perspective that has so far been rarely adopted in studies conducted on Islam in Niger or Nigeria2. One of the objectives of this collective work was therefore to bring together French-speaking and English-speaking fields of research which, in West Africa, have long remained compartmentalized.
6Builing on this unique approach – at once transnational, comparative, and multidisciplinary – the project has therefore defined, as an objective, the analysis of the religious processes currently at work within the Nigérien-Nigerian space, as well as the dynamics and techniques of transformation / adaptation / appropriation that accompany them. While each topic was chosen individually, the issues were discussed and polished collectively. This approach has made it possible not only to cover a wide range of research questions, but also to shed light on different dimensions of current Islamic dynamics: their social consequences, their political effects, and their impacts on the security situation.
7This book presents the results yielded by these two years of fieldwork and two extra years of data compiling, sharing, discussions, and collective reflections.
Notes de bas de page
1 Conseil Supérieur de la Formation et la Recherche Stratégiques (Superior Council for Strategic Research and Training) is a public interest grouping based in Paris that brings together several French ministries and research and training institutions.
2 In a collective book entitled Islam, sociétés et politique en Afrique Subsaharienne, (Paris, Les Indes Savantes, 2007), Hassane Souley, Maïkorema Zakari and other specialists of Religion in West Africa looked at the evolution of Islamic dynamics by using case studies from Niger, Nigeria and Senegal but their approach didn’t include transnational phenomena. In contrast, William F.S. Miles’s book, Hausaland divided: Colonisalism and Independence in Nigeria and Niger (Cornell Univeristy Press, 1994) provides an analysis of colonial and post-colonial experiences on both sides of the border, describing common patterns that includes, but are not limited to, religious pratices.

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