Fodiology: African American Heritage Connections to West African Islam

Abstract By the miracle of poetic time-travel, West African Shehu Usman ’dan Fodio (1754–1817) and his daughter Nana Asma’u (1793–1864) arrived in Pittsburgh, PA, at the end of the twentieth century, and settled into the Muslim Light of the Age (Zaman Nur) community by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Nana Asma’u was more than just a legend in her own time (nineteenth century) and place (Sokoto, Nigeria): her high regional profile and contemporary notoriety in Pittsburgh—two centuries and an ocean away from her home—attest to her prominence among contemporary Muslim American women, who revere her ethics and study her poetic works. Their revival of Asma’u’s leadership is part of the greater community’s intentional emulation of the Qadiriyya Sufi Fodio family of northern Nigeria. This study documents how a group of American Muslims frame, practice, and understand West African Qadiriyya Islam by following the religious and cultural traditions of the scholarly Fodio family in the areas of scholarship, service, attire, and artistry. In doing so, they are preserving West African Islamic traditions of their heritage by adapting these practices to the needs of their contemporary American community.