Pathway(s) into Jihad? Quranic Education and the Career of Lake Chad Basin Jihadist Militants

Talk by Vincent Foucher (Political Science, Sciences Po, Bordeaux)

Public discourse in Nigeria and elsewhere tends to insist on the role of Quranic schools in the formation of the movement generally designated as Boko Haram. Quranic students, poor, radicalized, unfit for the labor market are supposed to be the rank and file of jihad in the Lake Chad Basin. In 2012, Nobel Price winner Wole Soyinka described Quranic students as “Nigeria’s butchers”. Academics like Hannah Hoechner and Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos have called this discourse into question, denouncing it as confused and confusing, and as infused by Islamophobia. They have insisted on the variety of forms of Islamic education in Nigeria. They have highlighted that even the most humble forms of Quranic education, the tsangaya, functioned as mechanisms for social inclusion in the absence of state services and that there was little empirical data regarding the link between Islamic education and jihadi militancy. The present contribution, drawing on first-hand biographical interviews with more than a hundred former jihadi male militants, pretends to give an empirical answer to this question.

Vincent Foucher is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. He is also a researcher at the Bordeaux Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Bordeaux) and affiliated with the laboratory Les Afriques dans le monde (LAM). He holds a PhD in political studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His doctorate research dealt with the separatist movement in Casamance (South Senegal) and, more broadly, Senegalese politics. His areas of research focus on a variety of geographical areas such as Cameroon, Guinea, Gambia, Nigeria, Chad, and Senegal. For several years, he worked as a consulting senior analyst for the non-governmental organization International Crisis Group, where he studied political, electoral, and community issues in Guinea. More recently, he has been interested in the jihadist movement Boko Haram, which originated in north-eastern Nigeria and affects certain neighboring areas of Nigeria in the Lake Chad basin (Chad, Niger and Cameroon). He is currently one of the world’s leading specialists on Boko Haram. He contributes to Politique africaine magazine and Afrique XXI journal.