Praise Allah! Islam goes evangelical in south Nigeria
Sunday morning is usually the preserve of Christian pastors in the Nigerian megacity of Lagos but a new form of worship is emerging to challenge the monopoly.
“Praise Allah!” shouts the imam of the Nasrullahi-li Fathi Society of Nigeria (NASFAT) before thousands of his faithful in the trademark bombastic style of Nigeria’s evangelical preachers.
NASFAT is one of a growing number of groups practising “charismatic Islam” in response to the massive success of pentecostal Christianity in Nigeria, said Ebenezer Obadare, a sociology professor at the University of Kansas.
“The aim is to maximise favourably the leisure time that exists among Muslims who laze away on Sunday mornings,” NASFAT explains on its website.
Unofficially, it also stops them from being invited to Sunday services at neighbouring churches — even if the movement doesn’t admit it. “It creates an attraction to Islam, to start pulling Muslims out of the churches,” said Sheriff Yussuf, who joined in 1998.
NASFAT and other Islam groups have been embraced by Yoruba community, one of the few in Nigeria not to be attached to a particular religion. But the siren song of charismatic Christian churches in Lagos is just too strong for many to resist and conversion to Christianity is very common. So instead of fighting the evangelicals, a handful of wealthy bankers from Ibadan decided it would be better to learn from their competitors. “We were gathering on Sunday to talk about the Koran, this is how it started,” said Musediq Kosemoni, one of the seven founder members of NASFAT in 1995. — AFP