Knowing each other

Project Lead: Insa Nolte

This project challenged the state-of-the-art by exploring interfaith and Muslim-Christian relations in Yoruba-speaking southwest Nigeria not through politics and public debate but through a focus on interpersonal relationships and social identity.

It made a ground-breaking intellectual contribution in two key ways. First, the project generated the first reliable survey on religion since the 1960s, and the first large-n ethnographic survey of attitudes and practices by Yoruba Muslims and Christians ever. This data is of major significance in a country where there is no accurate population register, and it will constitute a major resource for researchers in future. Parallel to the survey, the project carried out multidisciplinary qualitative field work including archival research and interviews, field notes, and locally printed texts in English, Yoruba, and Arabic. The analysis of this vast collection is expected to continue for several years after the end of the project.

The project highlighted the creative mobilization of religion and religious difference in a wide range of contexts. It identified generation, education, and gender as crucial to understanding religious coexistence in southwest Nigeria.

First, challenging the idea that modern education is religiously neutral, research showed that in the 1950s and 1960s, Muslim-Christian conversion was closely associated with education. While the conversionary trend was later halted by an investment into Muslim schooling, it raises questions about the religious impact of ostensibly secular education that resonate with contemporary Islamic critiques. Importantly schools were also places of encounter that encouraged Muslim-Christian learning about the other religion.

Second, since the 1980s, women have been more likely to convert to Christianity than men. As the overall population boasts higher numbers of Christian women than men (and vice versa among Muslims), intermarriage between Muslim men and Christian women is frequent. But the dynamics of these marriages mean that female conversion has reduced the Muslim share of the population less than expected. Following the local patrilineal ethos, children from such marriages are normally Muslims. As Muslim men rely on Christian wives and mothers, and Christian women depend on Muslim husbands for self-realisation as mothers, both communities are intimately dependent on each other.

• European Research Council (ERC)
• Starting Independent Researcher Grant
• 2012-17
• based at the University of Birmingham and Osun State University, Nigeria (Second Beneficiary).