Islam in Nigeria
is the largest religion in Nigeria, accounting for around 56% of the country's population. The history of Islam in Nigeria spans over a millennium with scholars suggesting that Islam was introduced to the region as early as the 9th century, it is more commonly accepted that the religion began to take root in what is now modern-day Nigeria around the 11th century. The spread of Islam was facilitated by trade routes across the Sahara and the influence of Muslim merchants and scholars.
By the 19th century, the Sokoto Caliphate, founded through the Fulani Jihad led by Usman dan Fodio, established Islam as the predominant religion in northern Nigeria. The religion also spread to the southwest among the Yoruba through trade and cultural exchange.
Islam is the predominant religion in Nigeria, with Muslims comprising an estimated majority of the population, commonly cited at around 50–55%. Estimates of religious affiliation vary due to differing survey methodologies and the absence of an official national religious census since 1963. The vast majority of Nigerian Muslims identify as Non denominational, at around 40%. With Sunni Islam as the second biggest, with the Maliki school of jurisprudence being dominant. Sufi orders, particularly the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya, play a significant role in religious life, with approximately 37% of Muslims identifying as Sufi.
Islam predominates in northern Nigeria, particularly among the Hausas, the Fula, and the Kanuris and has a strong presence among the Yorubas in the southwest. Higher fertility rates in Muslim-majority northern regions contribute to a projected increase in the Muslim population share by 2060.
Since 1999, twelve northern states in Nigeria have gradually adopted Sharia law. Initially limited to civil matters such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance, the scope of Sharia was significantly expanded in 2000 to include criminal law, beginning with Zamfara State and followed by eleven others This expansion introduced punishments such as flogging and amputations, sparking concerns about compatibility with Nigeria’s secular constitution.
History
Islam in Northern Nigeria
Islam was introduced to Nigeria during the 11th century through two geographical routes: North Africa and the Senegalese Basin. The origins of Islam in the country is linked with the development of Islam in the wider West Africa. Trade was the major connecting link that brought Islam into Nigeria. Islam was first documented in Central Sudan by medieval Islamic historians and geographers such as Al-Bakri, Yaqut al-Hamawi and Al-Maqrizi and later works of Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun offered more notes about Islam in West Africa.Islam grew in North-East Nigeria, in particular, the Kanem empire as a result of trade between Kanem and Northern African regions of Fezzan, Egypt and Cyrenaica in the eleventh century. Muslim merchants from the North sometimes remained in settlements along trade routes, this merchant class would later preach the message of Islam to their host communities. The first documented conversion of a traditional ruler was in the eleventh century when Mai Ume Jilmi of Kanem was converted by a Muslim scholar whose descendants later held a hereditary title of Chief Imam of Kanem.
Writings by Ahmad Fartua an Imam during the period of Idris Alooma provided glimpse of an active Islamic community in Bornu while religious archives showed Islam had been adopted as the religion of the majority of the leading figures in the Borno Empire during the reign of Mai Idris Alooma, although a large part of that country still adhered to traditional religions. Alooma furthered the cause of Islam in the country by introducing Islamic courts, establishing mosques, and setting up a hostel in Makkah, the Islamic pilgrimage destination, for Kanuris.
In Hausaland, particularly Kano, Islam is noted to have penetrated the territory in the fourteenth century from West African traders who were the Mande people Muslims from the Senegalese basin and Muslim traders from Mali Empire. Muhammed Rumfa was the first ruler to convert to Islam in Hausaland. It had spread to the major cities of the northern part of the country by the 16th century, later moving into the countryside and towards the Middle Belt uplands. However, there are some claims for an earlier arrival. The Nigeria-born Muslim scholar Sheikh Dr. Abu-Abdullah Abdul-Fattah Adelabu has argued that Islam had reached Sub-Sahara Africa, including Nigeria, as early as the 1st century of Hijrah through Muslim traders and expeditions during the reign of the Arab conqueror, Uqba ibn al Nafia, whose Islamic conquests under the Umayyad dynasty, during Muawiyah's and Yazid's time, spread all Northern Africa or the Maghrib Al-Arabi, which includes present-day Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco.
Fulani War
In the early 19th century, Islamic scholar Usman dan Fodio launched a jihad, which is called the Fulani War, against the Hausa Kingdoms of Northern Nigeria. He was victorious, and established the Fulani Empire with its capital at Sokoto.Sokoto Caliphate
In 1803, Usman dan Fodio founded the Sokoto Caliphate. Usman dan Fodio was elected "Commander of the Faithful" by his followers. The Sokoto Caliphate became one of the largest empires in Africa, stretching from modern-day Burkina Faso to Cameroon and including most of northern Nigeria and southern Niger. At its height, the Sokoto state included over 30 different emirates under its political structure. In its hold, the caliphate ruled through much of the 19th century, until 29 July 1903, the second battle of Burmi concluded its dissolution by British and German forces.Islam in Southwestern Nigeria
Islam also came to the southwestern Yoruba-speaking areas during the time of the Mali Empire. In his Movements of Islam in face of the Empires and Kingdoms in Yorubaland, Sheikh Dr. Abu-Abdullah Adelabu supported his claims on early arrival of Islam in the southwestern Nigeria by citing the Arab anthropologist Abduhu Badawi, who argued that the fall of Koush southern Egypt and the prosperity of the politically multicultural Abbasid period in the continent had created several streams of migration, moving west in the mid-9th Sub-Sahara. According to Adelabu, the popularity and influences of the Abbasid dynasty, the second great dynasty with the rulers carrying the title of 'Caliph' fostered peaceful and prosperous search of pastures by the inter-cultured Muslims from Nile to Niger and Arab traders from Desert to Benue, echoing the conventional historical view that the conquest of North Africa by the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate between AD 647–709 effectively ended Catholicism in Africa for several centuries. Islam in Ancient Yoruba is referred to as Esin Imale, which folk etymology states it comes from the word "Mali." The earliest introduction of the religion to that region was through Malian itinerant traders around the 14th century. Large-scale conversion to Islam happened in the 18th-19th centuries.Yorubas came in contact with Islam around the 14th century during the reign of Mansa Kankan Musa of the Mali Empire. According to Al-Aluri, the first mosque was built in Ọyọ-Ile in AD 1550 although, there were no Yoruba Muslims, the mosque only served the spiritual needs of foreign Muslims living in Ọyọ.Progressively, Islam came to Yoruba land, and Muslims started building Mosques: Iwo town led, its first Mosque built in 1655 followed by Iṣẹyin, in 1760; Lagos, 1774; Ṣaki, 1790; and Oṣogbo, 1889. In time, Islam spread to other towns like Oyo, Ibadan, Abẹokuta, Ijẹbu-Ode, Ikirun, and Ẹdẹ before the 19th-century Sokoto jihad. Several factors contributed to the rise of Islam in Yoruba land by mid 19th century. Before the decline of Ọyọ, several towns around it had large Muslim communities; when Ọyọ was destroyed these Muslims relocated to newly formed towns and villages and became Islam protagonists. Second, there was a mass movement of people at this time into Yoruba land, many of these immigrants were Muslims who introduced Islam to their host. According to Eades, the religion "differed in attraction" and "better adapted to Yoruba social structure, because it permitted polygamy"; more influential Yorubas like soon became Muslims with positive impact on the natives. Islam came to Lagos at about the same time like other Yoruba towns, however, it received royal support from Ọba Kosọkọ, after he came back from exile in Ẹpẹ. According to Gbadamọṣi Islam soon spread to other Yoruba towns, especially, during the intra-tribal wars-when there was a high demand for Islamic teachers-who dubbed as both Quran teachers and amulet makers for Yoruba soldiers during the intra-tribal wars in Yoruba land. Islam, like Christianity also found a common ground with the natives that believed in Supreme Being, while there were some areas of disagreements, Islamic teachers impressed upon their audience the need to change from worshipping idols and embrace Allah. Without delay, Islamic scholars and local Imams started establishing Quranic centers to teach Arabic and Islamic studies, much later, conventional schools were established to educate new converts and to propagate Islam. Traditional shrines and ritual sites were replaced with Central Mosques in major Yoruba towns and cities.