Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria

Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria tells the story of Islamic reform from the perspective of dress, textile production and trade, and pilgrimage, over the past 200 years. As Islamic reformers have sought various means to address societal problems such as poverty, inequality, ignorance, unemployment, extravagance, and corruption, they have used textiles as a means to express their religious positions on these concerns. Home first to the early indigo trade and now a thriving textile mill industry, northern Nigeria has been a center for Islamic practice as well as a place where everything from women’s hijabs to turbans, buttons, zippers, short pants, and military uniforms offers a statement on Islam. Elisha P. Renne argues that material distinctions, along with an understanding of the religious ideology and the political economic context from which successive Islamic reform groups emerged, are important components for understanding how people in northern Nigeria have continued to seek a proper Islamic way of being in the world and how they imagine their futures—spiritually, economically, politically, and environmentally.