Page 139 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

124 Brian Larkin

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who later became known simply as ‘yan boko (the elites). Gumi became
perhaps their most prominent early leader and the first major cleric to
emerge from this new configuration of knowledge and power.
Gumi praised the style of learning at SAS which encouraged debate
between master and student and introduced students to different philoso-
phies in Islam. “[T]he Law school had an intellectual tradition that made
it unique . . . Very often we were encouraged to assert our own indepen-
dence and initiative rather than the blind obedience to the views of our
teachers. We challenged them frequently . . . [and] I never saw them get
angry” (1992, 33). This is a dialogic statement implicitly referring to the
protocols of Sufi learning and the hierarchies it entails. “The whole expe-
rience left a deep impression on my mind and today there is nothing I love
better than to be challenged about my views” (ibid.). Two things are at play
in this statement. First, he foregrounds the shift in educational style as an
integral part not only of his biography but of his philosophy and practice.
Second, he publicly stages his commitment to an epistemology of openness
and debate that marks enlightenment secularism. This public staging of
openness to debate and welcoming of egalitarian challenge became part of
Gumi’s public persona woven into his religious practice but also his per-
sonal style. His tafsir sessions, for instance, ended in question and answer
sessions where he would take inquiries from any speaker in the mosque
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regardless of rank. Gumi was most often referred to by his supporters as
Mallam, the word for teacher in Hausa but also for any adult male (and
thus a title everyone can lay claim to), even though he was entitled to the
more rarified title of Sheikh. He was known for wearing plain white gowns
rather than the ornately brocaded robes of his Sufi counterparts and
famous for speaking in simple, comprehensible Hausa rather than an eso-
teric religious vocabulary. In their attack on Sufi orders and traditional
royal elites Gumi and Izala criticized the elaborate forms of salute and
greeting in Hausa societywhereby social inferiors greet superiors by crouch-
ing down and saluting. They argued this was against Islam, that it was a
residue of pre-Islamic Hausa practice and it was unnecessary to constantly
demonstrate the hierarchies of social status. Each of these decisions repre-
sents a stark contrast to the performative hierarchies that surround Sufi

Sheikhs and royal elites. Implicit in the wearing of white, or being called
mallam, for instance, is a critique of status as derived from inherited rank
rather than from knowledge and learning. In a typical comment, one Izala
member said to me, “Anyone, anyone could ask mallam a question, even a
child so long as they based their question on the Qur’an and Hadith,”
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emphasizing Gumi’s deeply egalitarian style. This statement rests on a
concept of a world organized by differing modes of legitimacy where, as
Habermas has written of a different context, “the authority of status is