Crossing borders: the case of NASFAT or ‘Pentecostal Islam’ in Southwest Nigeria
2020; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/1469-8676.12769
ISSN1469-8676
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture analysis
ResumoThe Pentecostal movement in Nigeria, with its emphasis on this-worldly blessings and healing, has become so vibrant that today even Muslim organisations appear to be increasingly 'Pentecostalised'. Nasrul-Lahi-il Fathi Society of Nigeria or NASFAT is a case in point. In an effort to compete with Pentecostalism on Yorubaland's religious marketplace, NASFAT has copied Pentecostal prayer forms, such as the crusade and night vigil, while emphasising Muslim doctrine. As such, the case of NASFAT illustrates that religious borrowing does not imply that religious boundaries do not matter: indeed, NASFAT is a powerful example of the preservation of religious differences through the appropriation of Pentecostal styles and strategies. In this spirit, religiously plural movements such as NASFAT prompt us to unlock analytical space in the nearly hermetically sealed anthropologies of Islam and Christianity and to develop a comparative framework that overcomes essentialist notions of religious diversity. Le mouvement pentecôtiste au Nigéria, qui met l'accent sur les bénédictions et la guérison en notre monde, est devenu si dynamique qu'aujourd'hui les organisations musulmanes elles-mêmes apparaissent de plus en plus « pentecôtistes ». La Société Nasrul-Lahi-il Fathi du Nigéria (NASFAT) en est un parfait exemple. Dans le but de concurrencer le Pentecôtisme sur le marché du religieux en pays Yoruba, la NASFAT s'est inspirée des modèles de prière pentecôtistes, comme la croisade et la veillée nocturne, tout en insistant sur la doctrine musulmane. Le cas de la NASFAT montre que l'emprunt ne nie pas l'importance des frontières entre les religions : en effet, la NASFAT illustre de manière efficace la protection des différences religieuses à travers l'appropriation des styles et des stratégies pentecôtistes. Dans cet esprit, les mouvements religieux pluriels tels que la NASFAT nous encouragent à ouvrir une espace analytique dans le champ presque hermétique des anthropologies de l'Islam et du Christianisme, et à développer un cadre comparatif qui dépasse les concepts essentialistes de diversité religieuse. 'Welcome to Lagos; here everything is possible' were the words with which my research collaborator, Mustapha Bello, greeted me when I first arrived in Nigeria's economic epicentre. That everything is possible in Lagos I soon discovered when we drove by a three-storey building that hosted a mainstream church, a Pentecostal church and a mosque. Although he described himself as a 'die-hard Muslim', Mustapha did not seem to have any problem with a mosque sharing the same space as a church. Underlining the pragmatism that characterises Lagosians, he argued that this was an 'economic use of space'. While in this particular building different religious institutions occupied different floors, I also came across movements mixing Islam and Christianity. Nasrul-Lahi-il Fathi Society of Nigeria or NASFAT – one of Nigeria's largest contemporary Muslim organisations – is a case in point. Complementing the typical image of Nigeria as being torn by religious violence, this article illustrates that rivalry is just one aspect of Muslim–Christian manifold relations. I argue that if we want to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of religiously pluriform settings such as Yorubaland in southwestern Nigeria,11 Although Yorubaland is certainly not an exceptional setting in Africa, its religious constellation is unique for several reasons. Whereas elsewhere in Nigeria and beyond, multi-religious communities are small-scale and geographically demarcated, in Yorubaland – a vast region of approximately 50,000 square miles with a population of about 40 million people – religious pluralism is practised on a large scale (Peel 2000). where Muslims and Christians interact, align with and copy from another (Peel 2016a), we must bridge the common divide in the study of religion along theological boundaries and overcome essentialists notions of religious difference. The call to devise better ways of understanding religious encounters in Africa (and beyond; see this special issue) is not new. Sanneh's prediction that interreligious encounter, which he illustrated with a vignette of a Christian man reciting a Muslim prayer, heralded 'the arrival of an age of religious convergence' (1975: 108) has not come true. Three decades later, Soares wrote in his edited volume on Muslim–Christian encounters that the dynamics of 'their interactions in Africa are still not properly understood' (2006: 1).22 In his follow-up article, Soares concludes that even if it is now acknowledged by some scholars that it is no longer sufficient to study different religions as separate units, the study of Muslim–Christian encounters is 'only beginning to receive the empirical and analytical attention that it merits' (2016: 691). Around the same time, Larkin and Meyer proposed to look at reformist Islam and evangelical Pentecostalism in West Africa as doppelgangers: 'enemies whose actions mirror each other and whose fates are largely intertwined' (2006: 287). Nevertheless, more than a decade later, Muslim–Christian relations in Africa are still largely approached in terms of either religious conflict (a tendency that has gained more currency since the upsurge of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria) or what scholars attempting to advance ecumenical ideas have called 'interfaith dialogue'. Although these two approaches represent opposites, they suffer from the same limitation: they take religious boundaries for granted. By means of an ethnographic case study of NASFAT,33 This case study is based on approximately nine months of ethnographic field research in Lagos, between 2010 and 2017. this article attempts to open up the binary logic of an exclusive 'either/or' that permeates the anthropological study of religion and replace it by an inclusive 'both/and' paradigm (Lambek 2008). Nigerian Muslims fear that Pentecostalism, with its lively worship, flashy health and wealth gospel, extensive use of modern media and opening up of leadership positions to young people, will lure their children away from Islam (Soares 2009). In an attempt to curb anxiety about the exodus of youth, a group of Western-educated young Yoruba professionals founded NASFAT in Lagos in 1995. Targeting Muslim youth, they fashioned NASFAT as a 'pacesetting Islamic organisation' aspiring to achieve 'conformity to modernity'. In consonance with neoliberal consumer capitalism and a lifestyle associated with modernity, NASFAT offers management courses taking the Prophet Muhammad as exemplar businessman, professional network meetings and a dating service called 'Dating the Halal Way' (Janson 2018). These are also the kinds of services that Pentecostal churches offer, which explain their appeal to a youthful, upwardly mobile middle class. NASFAT may thus be interpreted as a direct response to Pentecostalism, adopting strategies and practices from it, thereby affirming Obadare's argument that 'Christian resurgence, epitomized by Pentecostalism, has provided an impetus for Muslim revivalism and charismatisation' (2018: 26). Consequently, many Nigerians (Christians and Muslims alike) refer to NASFAT in terms of 'Islamic Pentecostalism' (Sanni 2004; Soares 2009: 183-4; 2016) or 'Muslim born-agains' (Peel 2016a: 187). Although I do not deny that Islam and Christianity have their own distinctive historical traditions in Nigeria and propagate different doctrines, my point here is that we should focus more on the ways in which religious practitioners actually 'live' religion and how their ways of 'living' religion relate to each other. A focus on lived religiosity may eventually shift the attention from a narrow analysis of religious traditions as mutually exclusive to the complex dynamics of actual entanglements. Although under the influence of the 'fundamentalisation' of religion in Nigeria (Peel 2016b) there has been an increasing tendency to underscore religious boundaries,44 Two prominent examples of this tendency are the militant Islamist group Boko Haram and the Pentecostal mega-churches that aim to reform the way religion has long been practised locally. However, even those movements that emphasise neat religious divisions are themselves often the product of engagement with religious others. For example, Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM) – one of the fastest growing Pentecostal churches in Nigeria – calls adherents to break with their 'sinful past' of 'idol worshipping', but in doing so it constantly revokes 'traditional' Yoruba religion (see also Meyer 1998). the case of NASFAT illustrates that while it urges Nigerian youths to become 'good Muslims', and thus emphasises religious divisions, it simultaneously borrows from Pentecostalism. Our challenge is therefore to develop a new comparative framework that sheds a fresh perspective on practices of religious pluralism. A factor explaining NASFAT's success in southwest Nigeria is its targeting of Yoruba Muslims, and youth in particular. In the few studies that exist on NASFAT, the organisation is described in terms of ethnicity. For instance, Soares claims that 'although NASFAT has spread rapidly and widely since it was founded in the mid-1990s, it remains very much a Yoruba Muslim organization, arguable even a form of Yoruba Muslim cultural nationalism' (2009: 190). This may explain why NASFAT's spread to northern Nigeria was originally resisted: northerners read an ethnic motive by Yoruba Muslims into the movement's growth (Adeniyi 2013). Given its particular religious constellation, it is not surprising that NASFAT originated and expanded in Yorubaland. In what follows, I map NASFAT as part of Yorubaland's pluriform religious constellation. Nigeria has a long history of conflict and religious violence, which makes it an interesting setting in which to study NASFAT's entanglement of Muslim and Christian beliefs and practices. As Smith (2007: xii) points out, conflict and violence are so closely associated with the image that people (not only outsiders but also Nigerians themselves) have of the country that a common phrase in Pidgin English to characterise the nation is 'Nigeria is a war'. And yet, Muslim–Christian relations in Nigeria are not just marked by conflict: Muslims and Christians have long lived side by side, often in harmony with practitioners of Yoruba religion (Peel 2000, 2016a). For centuries, there were high levels of social interaction between Muslims, Christians and 'traditionalists', and interfaith marriages and reverted conversions were common (Soares 2006: 2–3; Nolte and Ogen 2017a, 2017b). Most analysts date the beginning of Muslim–Christian confrontations in Nigeria to the late 1970s,55 This is not to say that Nigeria was free from religious tension before the 1970s. For example, in the early 19th century, Usman dan Fodio led a jihad that resulted in the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate, the largest state in West Africa until it was conquered by the British. However, since the late 1970s incidents of religious violence have increased in number, spread geographically and affected larger portions of the population (Falola 1998: 5). when a new constitution had to be adopted after power temporarily shifted from the military regime to civil politicians. Conflict arose over the question of whether Nigeria should become a secular state or subscribe to the shari'a legal system (Falola 1998). Moreover, the rapid rise and spread of Pentecostalism and its increased presence in the public sphere fundamentally altered Nigeria's religious landscape (Obadare 2018). As Ojo (1988: 179–84) points out, the Pentecostal movement took off when vastly increased public revenues from oil permitted a great expansion of higher education and fuelled urban growth. Pentecostalism had its roots among university staff and students. It later moved with them off campus and continued to grow in the urban centres. Due to worsening economic and political conditions as a result of collapsing oil prices in the 1980s, Pentecostalism expanded even faster. Over the past three decades, Pentecostalism has drawn many Nigerian Christians from the mainline churches, promising them spiritual rebirth. The Pentecostal upsurge has thus played a central role in the increasing political cleavage along religious lines. That religion has become 'weaponised' (Obadare 2018: 126) is apparent in Pentecostals fighting what they see as 'a life and death battle with the enemy', i.e. Muslims (Marshall-Fratani 1998: 308). Muslims reacted with equally aggressive proselytisation campaigns. In this current of conflict, Yorubaland is something of an exception. Muslims, Christians and practitioners of Yoruba religion have lived together relatively harmoniously here since the 19th century, making the region an icon of ecumenism (Peel 2000). Indeed, many extended Yoruba families are composed of Muslims, Christians and practitioners of Yoruba religion, and mutual participation in each other's ritual festivities is a standard feature of Yoruba social life. For instance, an elderly Christian told me that during Christmas he asks a Muslim butcher to slaughter a ram for him in the halal way, so that his Muslim relatives and neighbours can also partake of the meal. Similarly, Christians participate in the festivities at the end of Ramadan. This asserts Laitin's argument that in Yorubaland 'cross-cutting cleavages have made the politicization of religion difficult' (1986: 141). Yoruba religion, Islam and Christianity do not exclude each other; in fact, they go together. The reason why I was late for this interview was that I had been performing Muslim supplications all morning. On Sunday I go to the church, and I practise Yoruba religion as well. Being a Yoruba means that you don't see a contradiction between the three religions. Although the Yoruba remain a beacon of religious amity, also in Yorubaland religious relations grew tenser in the 1980s. For instance, the history of Yoruba popular theatre recounted by Barber demonstrates that whereas the early history of the theatre was marked by 'ecumenical inclusivity' (2000: 424), towards the late 1980s there was an increasing trend of religious polarisation and 'fundamentalist exclusions and oppositions carved up the theater's audience into smaller and smaller fragments' (2000: 340). While the focus in Yorubaland shifted again to religious symbiosis in the 1990s, it is well possible that the competition between Muslims and Christians will contribute to the hardening of religious boundaries in the future (Nolte and Ogen 2017b: 264). NASFAT demonstrates not only the porosity and fluidity of religious boundaries in Yorubaland, it can also be interpreted as an emancipation attempt by Yoruba Muslims. Islam in the southwest is often described by northerners as having been subject to a process of 'domestication' or 'Yorubacisation' (Danmole 2008: 205–6). This appellation is, as Nolte and Ogen (2017a: 14–15) note, problematic because it suggests that there exists a 'pure Islam' from which Yoruba Islam, which is considered less 'orthodox' and more prone to syncretic 'mixing' with traditional elements than Islam in the north, is derived. To counter this image, NASFAT provides Yoruba Muslims with an organisational framework for a reformed religious community, thereby underlining that Yoruba Islamic practice is 'modern' and 'enlightened'.66 Both terms are widely used in NASFAT's Mission Statement. All citations in this article are from NASFAT's Constitution (http://nasfat.org/images/stories/NASFAT%20CONSTITUTION.pdf Accessed 16 October 2018), Prayer Book (NASFAT Society 2006), Code of Conduct (NASFAT Society 2005) and website (http://www.nasfat.org/ Accessed 16 October 2018). NASFAT originated in Yorubaland's cosmopolitan centre Lagos, whose estimated population of 20 million represents a crossroads of people from around the continent and the world. It is a node not only for migrants seeking jobs and education, but also for drug-traffickers, smugglers and fraudsters or '419'.77 '419' is what Nigerians call fraud – apparently after a section in the Nigerian criminal code that describes these crimes (Smith 2007). The immorality that is associated with life in the 'Sin City' is compensated by a saturation of both the public sphere and people's private lives with religion, converting the 'Sin City' into a 'Prayer City' (Ukah 2013). Larkin and Meyer explain the dynamism of reformist Muslim and Pentecostal Christian movements in urban West Africa by their ability to provide 'the networks and infrastructures that allow individuals to negotiate the material anxieties of living in uncertain economic times' (2006: 307). In a similar vein, NASFAT's appeal can be explained by its ability to negotiate the culture of insecurity that marks daily life in the 'apocalyptic megacity' that is Lagos (Koolhaas 2001). This context of uncertainty necessitates the skills of inventiveness and entrepreneurship that resonate with the novel ways of being Muslim as propagated by NASFAT. By participating in NASFAT's professionalisation activities, Lagosian youths have converted themselves from passive victims of an eroding state and a failing urban infrastructure into enlightened Muslims who actively engage the religious world they help to create. Concerned about the lack of religious awareness among Muslim youngsters, a group of seven young professional Yoruba men – university graduates who were working in banking and other modern sectors of the Nigerian economy – assembled in Lagos in 1995 to establish a prayer group. The driving force behind the group was Alhaji Abdul-Lateef Olasupo, now retired as a senior manager with one of Nigeria's largest banks and chairman of NASFAT's Board of Trustees. He and his fellows named the prayer group NASFAT, an acronym of Nasrul-Lahi-il Fathi Society of Nigeria, which translates as 'There is no help except from Allah' (Soares 2009; Peel 2016a: 186–91). In less than two decades, NASFAT has become hugely successful: it claims to have over 300 branches in Nigeria and other African countries, Europe and the USA, and a membership exceeding 1.2 million. We noticed that Muslim youths were useless on Sundays, sleeping late, watching television, doing nothing, while Christians went to church. Friday is the most blessed day for Muslims, but we don't have the same kind of privileges on Fridays as the Christians have on Sundays. That's how the idea of Sunday asalatu came up. When the number of NASFAT members increased, asalatu was decentralised. Nowadays prayer gatherings take place in NASFAT's headquarters in Lagos and local branches spread all over Yorubaland. The first Sunday of the month the members based in Lagos assemble at NASFAT's prayer camp, stretching to 100 acres of land along the busy Lagos–Ibadan Expressway. Drawing on the examples of the Redeemed Christian Church of God's Redemption City and Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries' Prayer City – massive prayer camps where hundreds of thousands of worshippers flock to attend prayer services – NASFAT's prayer camp, called NASFAT Islamic Centre, is being projected as a model city for Muslims. That NASFAT competes with the Pentecostal prayer camps became apparent in 2001, when its celebration of Laylatul Qadr (the night during Ramadan when the first verses of the Qur'an were allegedly revealed to Muhammad) attracted tens of thousands of worshippers, as a result of which the traffic along the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway was blocked for two days. Because in the southwest the blocking of streets for prayer is usually associated with Pentecostal churches, NASFAT's flooding of the Expressway can be interpreted as an attempt to assert Muslim presence in what is marked a 'Christian space' (Obadare 2016: 75–6). NASFAT has a strong mission and vision, which speaks to the Muslim elite. The majority of our members are bankers, business executives, accountants, lawyers, engineers, doctors, university lecturers and government officials. Besides elites, we are progressive Muslims who practise Islam in a way that fits today's world. Our social profile distinguishes us from other prayer groups. The Western suits and ties that are worn during NASFAT's executive meetings are a symbol of the elite status to which NASFAT aspires. The targeting of Muslim professionals needs to be studied in relation to Pentecostalism's theology of the Prosperity Gospel that preaches that God bestows spiritual and material blessings on those He loves, which explains Pentecostalism's popularity among a young, upwardly mobile middle-class (Marshall 2009). In an attempt to reconcile Islam with the modern society in which urban youth live, NASFAT overtly copies from Pentecostalism (Soares 2009: 186–7; Peel 2016a; Ibrahim 2017). In line with its self-presentation as a modernist movement for the Western educated elite, NASFAT preaches and publishes mainly in English. Any Muslim can thrive in NASFAT; we are a liberal movement. Sufis and Salafis assemble on Sundays to pray together. You find here men with beards, clean-shaved men, … women with fashionable hijabs, and women with body-covering gowns. When you are a Muslim who accepts other Muslims, you are welcome. Other Muslim movements are strict on their members; they don't want women to wear fashionable clothes. But when I attend NASFAT's asalatu in jeans with a small shawl to cover my hair, nobody will complain. That's why I feel at home in NASFAT. Here it should be noted that, despite its open character, NASFAT is preoccupied with the development of a reformed Muslim society that condemns the way Islam has long been practised locally. Women are the main pillar of support for NASFAT. They are more effective in raising funds and they are more committed to their faith than their male counterparts. Men are a bit funny you know. If you want to draw them in, you need to pamper them like babies. Women are not like that. Because NASFAT is negotiating new roles for women, some established Muslim scholars accused its leadership of implementing bid'a or un-Islamic innovations (Adeniyi 2013: 332). NASFAT leaders defended themselves against these accusations by arguing that NASFAT strictly obeys the Islamic principle of gender segregation. Women and men sit separately during asalatu, and security patrols to make sure that this rule is observed. If we do not want to lose our grip on the Society [NASFAT], we must copy Christian management structures. Only then can we deliver on our mandate of providing strong leadership to the Muslim umma in combating the onslaught of Pentecostalism. NASFAT's modernist message of Islamic reform is disseminated during the Sunday asalatu which, copying Pentecostal discourse, is referred to as 'prayer crusades' and whose timing coincides with that of Pentecostal services. Below I describe the course of events during asalatu. After another sleepless night, caused by the loud night vigil in the Pentecostal church next to the compound where I was staying, my alarm clock rang at some ungodly hour. Dressed in a body-covering dress and a hijab, I rushed to the gate, where the taxi driver – whose car window sported a NASFAT sticker – was waiting. Along the way, we picked up Mustapha Bello, who at that time was NASFAT's Assistant General Secretary. Although it was still early, we got stuck in a 'go-slow' – Nigerian slang for traffic congestion. From the stationary taxi, I observed Lagosians heading to their various Sunday programmes. In the cars next to us, I spotted men wearing smart suits accompanied by dressed-up women wearing hats or towering headdresses, with a Bible on the back shelf. In other cars, with prayer beads attached to the rear-view mirror, men dressed in caftans with matching caps were accompanied by women wearing colourful headscarves or more distinguished black hijabs. Bumper stickers propagated a variety of religious messages, ranging from 'I've found a friend in Jesus' to 'Proud to be Muslim'. A group of young evangelists ran along the motorway, accompanied by a brass band, while shouting 'Hallelujah' in an attempt to combine their early morning workout with proselytisation. Hoping for alms from drivers stuck in the traffic, beggars reciting Qur'anic verses knocked on car windows. Young men manoeuvred between the cars recommending religious paraphernalia. Loudspeakers set up in the recording studios along the highway sounded Christian hymns and Muslim sermons. Mustapha did not seem to be disturbed by this cacophony of religious sounds and symbols: 'This is Lagos for you', was his dry remark. We finally reached NASFAT's headquarters. At the gate – with separate entrances for women and men – a young woman and man, wearing vests with the caption 'usher', distributed envelopes for members' 'prayer requests' – a practice that is common in Pentecostal churches but that I had never observed among Muslim groups. In the stall next to the gate, I bought a CD with Akinbode's 'Islamic gospel music'. I knew Akinbode as NASFAT's resigned Chief Missioner, but it turned out that in a previous career he had been a renowned lead vocalist. To my surprise, the CD did not contain the solemn Qur'anic recitation that I was used to but upbeat songs – resembling Christian gospel music – praising God and the Prophet. In another stall I bought NASFAT literature, including a booklet subtitled Believers' Sword – a collection of Muslim prayers for 'protection and for shielding against evil' (Shekoni 2012), which resembled the booklets with special prayer formulas or 'prayer points' that are sold in Pentecostal bookstores. After shopping, I entered the 'extension ground', where several tents had been put up promoting NASFAT's 'strategic objectives'. According to its Mission Statement, which addresses NASFAT members as 'stakeholders', it is NASFAT's mission to 'empower Muslims spiritually as well as economically'.1010 NASFAT's use of managerial language resembles Pentecostal discourse, which from its American sources is well saturated with the idioms of corporate business (Peel 2016a: 188). With this aim, it has invested heavily in business ventures, of which TAFSAN (NASFAT spelled backwards) Beverages is the oldest. TAFSAN produces and markets the non-alcoholic malt beverage Nasmalt,1111 Nasmalt tastes like Maltina, a non-alcoholic drink popular at Pentecostal social events (Peel 2016a: 277 n.53). which is sold during asalatu. Ten per cent of TAFSAN's profits go to NASFAT's university, Fountain University, which was founded in 2007. Explaining the university's foundation, a NASFAT missioner told me: 'Because of the Pentecostal syndrome that keeps Nigeria firmly in its grasp, we decided to establish our own university. All big Pentecostal churches have a university, so we thought we also needed one.' Also TAFSAN Tours and Travels and TAFSAN Investment were represented at the extension ground. To facilitate the increasing number of Nigerian pilgrims to Mecca, NASFAT launched its own travel agency in 2006, which arranges travel to and accommodation in Mecca. TAFSAN Investment is the name of NASFAT's community bank, which operates in accordance with the ban in Islamic jurisprudence on charging interest on loans. It offers microcredit for small businesses and vocational training for women and youth. These business ventures are meant to fill the vacuum left by the Nigerian state – which has cut back or stopped providing social services – and to generate income and publicity for NASFAT. They put the movement on a par with Pentecostal churches which, as Ukah (2013: 189) points out, run elaborate marketing plans that have turned them into known 'brands' on the heavily contested religious marketplace that is Lagos. Unlike many other Muslim organisations, NASFAT is not patronised by Islamic scholars but is organised as a corporate business composed of an Executive Council, Management Council, Board of Trustees, Business Secretary, Treasurer and a Strategic Committee that is responsible for 'developing the corporate strategy of the Society [NASFAT]'. Over the past two decades, NASFAT has turned into a known brand that is recognisable by its stylised logo composed of the Islamic star and crescent, which has gained both national and international recognition. Cars with a bumper sticker with the NASFAT logo have become a common sight in the Nigerian traffic. NASFAT's vice-president told me laughingly that even his Christian friends drive cars with a NASFAT bumper sticker: 'NASFAT has become a household name in Nigeria. Because NASFAT members are known to be trustworthy, my friends believe the police will not stop them at road-blocks when they see the sticker with the NASFAT logo.' In addition to bumper stickers, the NASFAT logo is printed on promotional materials merchandised on NASFAT's website and sold at asalatu, such as prayer mats, wall hangings, t-shirts with the text 'Islam – my brand', key rings, and the like. Another way in which NASFAT has turned into a known brand is through its media campaigns (Ibrahim 2017). It runs a public relations office that negotiates airtime for NASFAT missioners on radio and television, sends out press releases, and posts on Facebook and Twitter. Because of its active involvement in marketing and media – domains that have long been dominated by Christians – some mainstream Muslim organisations categorised NASFAT as not 'truly Muslim'. NASFAT's leadership responded to this criticism by arguing that their involvement in business-related activities is the only effective way in which Islam can survive the onslaught of 'rival faiths' on the competitive religious marketplace (Adeniyi 2013: 336). When the sound of thousands of voices reciting Qur'anic verses was elevated to ear-splitting volume, I hurried to the prayer ground, where I seated myself with a group of young women on a prayer mat. As with Pentecostal
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