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Islamic Renewal, Radio, and the Surface of Things 135

found out he had joined, he said they accused him of becoming a pagan and
a Jew and some refused to speak with him. But for his generation this was also
the modern education they aspired to. Interview, op. cit.
7. Boko refers to Hausa written in Roman script (before the coming of the British
Hausa was written in Arabic [ajami]). ‘Yan boko refers to those educated in
Western schools and has come to have a more general meaning of “the elite.”
8. It was in question and answer sessions that Gumi was asked the most direct ques-
tions about Sufism and so often gave his most inflammatory answers. These were
edited out from Radio Kaduna because of their propensity to provoke religious
conflict but included on cassette often leading to the cassette’s popularity. For a
discussion of these sessions and Gumi’s tafsir see Brigaglia 2007.
9. One can get a sense of this affective power in a description of meeting Gumi
by the scholar Ousmane Kane, himself a grandson of a major Sufi sheikh and
well versed in the social norms of Sufi orders: “I was quite struck by his egali-
tarian tendencies. In his living room all the visitors were sitting in armchairs,
including young people and people from apparently modest origin. Everybody
shook hands with him as a way of greeting. It would never occur to any mem-
ber of a Sufi order to shake hands with a Sufi Shaykh or to sit in an armchair
in the same room as a Shaykh” (2003, 138).
10. See note 3.
11. In the case of the Tijaniyya Gumi attacked claims that the salat al-Fatih
prayer, the recitation of which is a key part of Tijani practice, was equal in
merit to reciting the Qur’an 6,000 times. This merit was believed to have been
revealed to Ahmad al-Tijani through mystical communication with the
Prophet. Gumi pointed out that the Qur’an states the Prophet Mohammed
was the seal of all prophets and that there would be no new revelations after
his death. As none of the Hadith mention the salat al-Fatih then any recitation
is an illegal innovation (bid’a) in religious practice. In the case of the Qadiriyya
Gumi rejected the use of the drums in the mosque as a means of aiding pos-
session. He cited from the Qur’an to argue that “those who combine drum-
ming with religion or the recitation of the Qur’an and the praises of Allah in
the mosque, such people are considered as those who reduce their religion to
a plaything and make thereby a mockery of it. They therefore fall within the
group of those the Qur’an refers to when it says ‘And their prayers in the house
of God is nothing but whistling and clapping of hands. They would taste the
punishment which they disbelieve’ ” (Q 8:35. Cited in Gumi 1972, 43).
12. This is a dismissive reference to the traditional mode of Islamic education in

the north. Traditionally students pursuing higher studies in Islam would not
attend a school or learn from a set syllabus but travel to the house of a
respected Sheikh to learn about a particular text that Sheikh had mastered.
Students came to sit in the zaure, the room at the front of the house dedicated
to receiving visitors and where instruction would take place. This is a prac-
tice that continues today among Sufi circles. Mallamin zaure became a
derogatory reference by more Salafi inclined followers to stereotype this
mode of education as backward. Interview, Sheikh Sanusi Gumbi, Kaduna.
18 May 1995.