Salafism vs. Secular Authority – Political Thought of Muhammad Yusuf, Ideologist of the Boko Haram Organisation

Abstract

The paper presents the political thought of Muhammad Yusuf, who was the ideologist of the northern Nigerian organisation for Islamic renewal known as Boko Haram. Muhammad Yusuf was a Salafi scholar who preached the necessity to revive the earliest form of Islam, to introduce Sharia in full in northern Nigeria, and to build a religious state based on the Sokoto caliphate. Yusuf regarded democracy as an illegal political system and equated it with polytheism. He perceived politicians and secular state’s administrational workers as idolaters and negated their right to consider themselves Muslims. His teachings, based on disdain for the incumbent government, provided him with social support and served as inspiration for anti-establishment sentiments.