LITMIR.BIZ

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       The Evolution of a Movement

       Who Was Mohammed Yusuf?

      For such an important figure, our knowledge of Mohammed Yusuf’s life is remarkably sketchy. Biographical information, especially about his youth and early career, is limited. And since a surprisingly large amount of what we do know comes from his opponents, it is hard to separate the truth from accusations made to discredit him. Many of the most common claims about Yusuf’s journey from small-time cleric to leading extremist can be traced to just a handful of original sources of uncertain reliability, and there are some things we will never know.

      Most agree that Yusuf was born in 1970 in Girgir, a small village in western Yobe State. Religious dissent was the family business. His father was a small-time cleric with a reputation for challenging local religious authorities, and at least one leading Boko Haram critic, a Salafi preacher named Sheikh Muhammad Auwal Albani Zaria, has alleged that his death in 1980 was part of the Maitatisine uprising in Kano. After his father died, Yusuf came under the care of a family friend, the Maiduguri-based businessman named Alhaji Baba Fugu Mohammed. Fugu saw to his young ward’s Qur’anic education, although he seems not to have pressed him to attend state-run schools or even (reputedly) to learn to speak English fluently.

      By the early 1990s, Yusuf had become a mallam in his own right, preaching in the town of Potiskum. Around 1995, he joined a local Salafi group in Maiduguri founded by a cleric named Abubakar Lawan. When Lawan left to study at IUM, Yusuf took over as one of the group’s leaders. By 2000, he was a popular religious figure in Maiduguri, appearing regularly at the Ndimi Mosque in the company of a group of young Salafis—including students at the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID, as it is known locally)—who had grown disenchanted with Nigerian society and politics.

      Over the next few years, Yusuf was a star on the rise. He came to the attention of the Ahlussunnah network and seems to have served for a time as Sheikh Ja’afar Adam’s local representative. Along the way, his message evolved in more confrontational directions. As British journalist Andrew Walker has documented, UNIMAID in those days was an institution in flux. These were the waning years of the Sani Abacha dictatorship, and Nigeria was an international pariah. The children of elites found it difficult to gain admission to prestigious international universities, and UNIMAID saw an uptick in wealthy and well-connected students. This influx had a profound impact on campus culture, which many “ordinary” students saw as dominated by ostentatious displays of wealth and booze, dancing, and gambling. Just as with the barracks of the colonial era, locals perceived UNIMAID as a space where elites and cultural outsiders could flout the norms of Muslim society, free from consequence.¹ Some of the most critical students were drawn to Salafi activism, which offered a ready-made story about the relationship between elite corruption and moral decay.

      Encouraged by these new connections, Yusuf’s preaching took on a newly combative tone toward “Western” educational influence and Nigeria’s new civilian government. Sometime in 2001 or 2002, he left (or was barred from) the Ndimi Mosque, taking with him a small but growing collection of followers, including future “Taliban” stalwart Aminu “Tashen-Ilimi” (a pseudonym that translates roughly to “Growing Knowledge”). Their new mosque, named for Ibn Taymiyya, occupied a plot of land leased by Baba Fugu Mohammed in the “low-cost” Anguwan Doki neighborhood. It would remain there until 2009, when it was destroyed in the confrontation that cost Yusuf his life.

       The Shari’ah Revolution