M. Sani Umar

Associate Professor of Religion
Department of Religious Studies
Office: 620 Library Place, Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: (847) 467-0692
E-mail: m-umar@northwestern.edu

Office Hours: M W 12:45 - 1:45pm (Winter 2012)

M. Sani Umar (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1997) is Associate Professor of Islam with research interests in Islam and Colonialism in West Africa, Islamic Law, Sufism-Anti-Sufism in West Africa, Contemporary Islamic Thought and Liberalism, Islamic Intellectual Traditions of West Africa, and the Theory and Methodology of Academic Study of Religion. Before joining Northwestern faculty in 2007, Dr. Umar taught at Lawrence University in Appleton  (Wisconsin) and Arizona State University in Tempe (Arizona).  He was trained in Islamic Studies for the B.A. at University of Jos in 1983 and for the MA at Bayero University, both in Nigeria. He has received many honors and awards, including appointment as Carnegie Scholar in 2008/2009, Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2006-2007, and Global Fellow at the International Institute, University of California, Los Angeles in 2003-2004, where he conducted research on contemporary Islamic discourses and liberalism. He is also currently working on traditional Islamic thought in the modern era.  In August 2007, Dr. Umar was appointed the Director of the Institute for Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) at the Program of African Studies of Northwestern. He is the author of Islam and Colonialism: The Intellectual Responses of Muslims of Northern Nigeria, (Brill, 2005), and numerous essays in edited volumes and the leading journals of Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, and African Studies.

Selected Works

• Islam and Colonialism: Intellectual Responses of Muslims of Northern Nigeria to British Colonial Rule, (Leiden: Brill 2005), i-xiv-295 pp.
• "Gender Issues in Application of Islamic Law in Nigeria," Jami'a: Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 45/1 (2007): 29-56.
• Muhammad Sani Umar, "Ethnic/Religious Conflicts and Democratic Transitions in West Africa: A Nigerian Case-Study," in Identity Conflict: Can Violence be Regulated?, edited by J. Craig Jenkins and Esther E. Gottlieb (Transaction Publishers, 2007).
• "Reading Islamic Themes in Barth's Travels and Discoveries through the Lenses of Edward Said," in M. Diawara, P. F. de Moraes Farias and Gerd Spitller, eds. Heinrich Barth et l'Africa, (Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 2006) pp. 201-214.
• "Mass Islamic Education and the Emergence of Female Ulama in Northern Nigeria: Background, Trends, and Consequences," in Scott S. Reese, ed., The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa, (Leiden: Brill, 2004) pp. 99-120.
• "Studying Islamic Thought in Africa: Work in Progress and Issues for Further Research," Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara, Dossier: Muslim Scholars and the State vol. 17/18 (2004): 5-9.
• "Profiles of New Islamic Schools in Northern Nigeria," The Maghreb Review, vol. 28, 1-2, (2003): 146-69.
• "Muslim Engagements with the Colonial State in Africa," Journal for Islamic Studies, vol. 22 (2002) :pp. 1-19
• "Islamic Discourses on European Visitors to Sokoto Caliphate in the Nineteenth Century," Studia Islamica, 95 (2002): 135-59.
• "Islamic Arguments for Western Education: Mu'azu Hadejia's Hausa Poem, Ilmin Zamani," Islam et Societies au du sud du Sahara, 16 (2002): 85-106
• "Fatwa and Counter-Fatwa in Colonial Northern Nigeria," Journal for Islamic Studies, vol. 21 (2001): pp. 1-35
• "Education and Islamic Trends in Northern Nigeria: 1970-1990s," Africa Today, 48 # 2 (Summer 2001): pp. 127-150.
• "The Tijaniyya and British Colonial Authorities in Northern Nigeria," In Jean-Louis Triaud and David Robinson, eds., La Tijaniyya: Une confrerie musulmane a la conquete de 'Afrique, (Parias: Karthala, 2000), pp. 327-355
• "Muslims' Eschatological Discourses on Colonialism in Northern Nigeria," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 67 #1 (March 1999): pp. 59-84.
• "Sufism and its Opponents in Nigeria: The Doctrinal and Intellectual Aspects," in Frederick de Jong and Bernd Redtke, eds., Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversy and Polemics, (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 357-385.
• "Changing Islamic Identity in Nigeria from 1960s to the 1980s: From Sufism to Anti-Sufism," in Louis Brenner, ed. Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 154-178.
• "Islam in Nigeria," in J.A. Atanda, G. Ashiwaju, and Y. Abubakar, eds. Nigeria Since Independence, The First 25 Years: Religion, (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1989) vol. ix, pp. 71-97.