Page 142 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Islamic Renewal, Radio, and the Surface of Things 127

inordinate greed for earthly desires” (1972, 25). Later he continued his
attack referring to Sufi sheikhs as “vicious learned men” who “deceive peo-
ple and chop [steal] their money” (34). Gumi’s main tactic was to take
rituals central to the practice of the different orders and cite from the
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Qur’an to demonstrate their illicitness, especially those involved with
awakening ecstasy (sama) through trance. His aim was to undermine the
Sufi claim that sheikhs, at the highest level, could use trance to enter into
states of ecstasy through which they could gain special and extraordinary
knowledge hidden from ordinary Muslims. He ridiculed claims to revela-
tion by quoting from the Qur’an to prove that Mohammed was the seal of
all Prophets, and that with him all revelations closed. “The Prophet did
not conceal anything in his lifetime,” Gumi wrote (1972, 22), and
Mohammed was the final vehicle used by God to reveal his teachings to
humanity. Gumi targeted the concept of the “sheikh.” He argued that “one
of the blameworthy innovations which lead to disbelief” is to believe there
are special beings with special posts such as Qutb or Gawth with special
powers (44) and who “possess an esoteric knowledge” (45). “All these
claims are void and false; the whole of them are the handiworks of imposi-
tors [sic] in Islam” (ibid.). Gumi argued that no one possesses hidden
knowledge: Allah says, “Say none of the inhabitants of the heavens and
earth except Allah knows of the hidden things” (Qur’an 27:65, cited in
Gumi 1972, 45).
Gumi’s use of media should be seen as part of his critique of systems of
religious learning that were organized around the restriction of knowledge
and the inculcation of esoteric practice. But it also should be seen as a the-
ory of knowledge. His aim was to bring more Muslims into a system where
knowledge was transparent and that focuses on the surface of things rather
than their depths. Gumi was the first cleric in Nigeria to translate the
Qur’an into Hausa and to arrange for the translation of collections of
Hadith and his own religious writings into the vernacular. While he was
an advocate of Arabic learning, these acts of translation and the recording
of these texts onto cassettes inaugurated a huge shift in the language of
religious debate from Arabic to Hausa (Brenner and Last 1985). In 1964 he
helped found the Jama’at Nasrul Islam (JNI, Society for the Victory of

Islam) whose aim was to support religious renewal by distributing Qur’ans,
funding public preaching, and reforming religious education to improve
the religious learning of ordinary Muslims (see Gumi 1992; Kane 2003;
Loimeier 1997; Paden 1986). Gumi’s Salafi inspired argument was based
on the concept that the source of Muslim knowledge is rooted in the
Qur’an and the Hadith and that these texts alone should be the basis for
Islamic law. Sufi saints, who claim specialized knowledge denied to other
Muslims through their mystical abilities, are introducing innovations