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YORUBA 875
favoring Islam. Further, Islam is seen as a black man's religion, Christianity the
faith of the white man.
An early dominance of Qadiriyya teaching was later overcome because of the
preference (by Hausa clerics) for Tijaniyya. Nevertheless, the stronger Tijaniyya
strictures on women have not overcome traditional Yoruba female independence.
Seclusion is so rare in most cases as to seem virtually nonexistent.
In the 1920s, the Ahmadiya sect began to gain strength in the south, beginning
in Lagos. The movement has remained relatively small in numbers, but its
modernist tone and concern for education in the European mode gave it considerable
early success in the more affluent community and may have had some
influence on the orthodox Muslims. The largest Muslim educational society in
Nigeria, the Ansar-ud-Deen, has never been Ahmadiya, but it has been steadfastly
nonsectarian (enrolling even qualified Christian students without overt discrimination).
It is in large measure a successful attempt to duplicate the Christian
mission's school system, which for much of this century attracted thousands of
children of ambitious Muslim parents, children who were then lost to the faith.
During the 1930s the Young Nawar-ud-Deen Society became active, competing
with the Y.M.C.A., and the Islamic Missionary Society challenged the Church
Missionary Society.
Islam in southwestern Nigeria may be said to have been more deeply influenced
by Yoruba and colonial culture than the reverse. Women's dress was hardly
affected at all. Muslim men can often be distinguished by their preference for
the loose trousers and jumper top of the buba and sokoto as opposed to the tight
trousers and dress shirts of European fashion. Otherwise, it is hard to identify,
superficially, characteristics that differentiate Yoruba from Yoruba. Proud and
cohesive, Yoruba dominate three of Nigeria's finest universities, those of Ibadan,
Ife and Lagos. At all three some Islamic study is offered, but at the University
of Ibadan, the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies is particularly
distinguished.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Aronson, Dan R. The City Is Our Farm: Seven Migrant Ijebu Yoruba Families. Cambridge,
Mass.: Schenkman, 1978.
Baldwin, David E., and Baldwin, Charlene M. The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria: An
Indexed Bibliography (to September 1974). Boston: Hall, 1976.
Biobaku, S. O., ed. Sources of Yoruba History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Eades, J. S. The Yoruba Today. Cambridge: The University Press, 1980.
El-Masri, F. H. "Islam." In The City of Ibadan, edited by P. C. Lloyd, et al. Cambridge:
The University Press, 1967.
Fadipe, Nathaniel A. The Sociology of the Yoruba. New York: Africana, 1970.