Quranic Schools in Northern Nigeria
Everyday Experiences of Youth, Faith, and Poverty

Through the eyes of northern Nigerian Qur'anic students, this book explores what it truly means to be young, poor, and Muslim.

Hannah Hoechner (Author)

9781108425292, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 March 2018

286 pages, 10 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.3 cm, 0.59 kg

'For all the anxiety they provoke in domestic and global political debate, students who pursue Qur'anic education in northern Nigeria are themselves rarely heard. Hoechner's densely layered book lays out their motivations and concerns in clear prose. Students and scholars alike from a wide range of disciplines will benefit from a close engagement with this important work.' Samuel D. Anderson, International Journal of African Historical

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.

Subject Areas: The Koran [HRHS], Islamic life & practice [HRHP], Islam [HRH], African history [HBJH], History [HB], Humanities [H]