A few thoughts on a book you should try.

The first place I encountered the word Yusufiyya was in Chitra’s book. It roughly translates into “followers of Yusuf” — that is, followers of Mohammed Yusuf, the martyred militant preacher of Maiduguri fame. Compared to the name Boko Haram (or BH, as some abbreviate), Yusufiyya seems more historically accurate, more rooted in time and place.

Here was a group that unleashed the power of the spoken word with unshakeable conviction, a sense of entitlement, and deadly force. Their method, eventually, was to dominate by terror, compulsion and propaganda. They made an effigy of the world, their own world — its politics, education, culture — judged it irredeemable, and then proceeded to burn it down, or at least attempted to, at great cost.

In a twisted way, perhaps this was intended as some kind of community or cosmic cleanup service. Putting life and order back into the body politic. Here was an atavistic call to return. To revert to an original state of moral purity and innocence. After all, biological decomposers break down dead organic matter and, in doing so, prevent the earth from choking on its own biomass.

On the surface, their message combined a call for social justice with exhortations for religious reform: the Nigerian government is corrupt; society is corrupt; there is suffering and injustice in the land; we must return to Islam — to an Islam that has nothing to do with the West (even though history tells us there is no such thing).

However, beneath this appeal was an unavoidable contradiction and perhaps the greatest flaw in the Yusufiyya vision: its insistence on a world led exclusively by men (fathers, to be precise).

Now, question: How can a social movement be experiencing contractions, on the verge of birthing a world presumably reformed or new, and yet its primary oracles and agents are all men? Whether the world being referred to is a city, a nation, the earth, or the universe, no one gender, group, or person can claim to speak for the entirety of it.

Except such a one is a bully. The American essayist, Wendell Berry, once said violence was the death of imagination. In choosing warfare, the Yusufiyya not only silenced other possibilities for political action — they ultimately devoured the very world they claimed to be saving.

The title of Chitra’s book is The World Was In Our Hands.

“What world? And in whose hands?” I remember asking myself the first time I saw this title. It amused me. Could the world ever come into one’s hands? And if so, would it be the fullness of a world, the real world? Or would it be the fiction of one, a caricature?

Put simply, the title refers to the possibility of reclaiming and remaking the world in one’s image, of doing with the world as one deems fit. Obviously, such an expression of power is bound to be transient. Who is he that perfectly understands the natural order of things and thinks his way should gain primacy over all others? In this book, it is Mohammed Yusuf and his followers.

For hundreds of years, men like him and his successor Abubakar Shekau have wielded the power of textual interpretation to limit Islam to a patriarchal framework. This is in keeping with tradition. Still, in recent years, Islamic feminists — like Amina Wadud, a pioneering scholar of Qur’anic exegesis — have been countering this paradigm with strong, visionary critiques that reimagine the sacred texts in a more inclusive light.

These debates (about female agency within Islam) aren’t confined to academic texts, theological treatises, policy papers, or activist speeches. They are lived out by Muslim women every day, within and outside the influence of male authority. Although this is not the book’s primary focus, The World Was In Our Hands brings to light multiple narratives of women exercising agency both at proxy and at a distance from (and in opposition to) patriarchal power.

There is nothing theoretical about this text. Chitra’s book is an archive for the future. It replaces media noise and academic interventions with the actual voices of those living through the aftermath of the 2009 Yusufiyya uprising, and more broadly, the Lake Chad Basin conflict over natural resources. In a way, there is some narrative justice here.

Even more, now that I’ve read the book, when I think about the title, I don’t wonder to whom the lake and its fishes, mothers of the basin and their daughters, Islam and the Qur’an, truly belong? I know each entity belongs absolutely to itself, and that the condition of the world is a profound entanglement. Ultimately, when I think of Borno and the conflict in the basin, it is with a greater awareness and understanding.

This book is a product of many years of work and relationship-building. It is a broad-scoped text that carries the voices of religious and ethnic minorities, queer people, people living with disabilities, as it does that of soldiers and former BH members. In it, we see women not just as niqab-wearing bombers or executioners following some man’s orders, but also as protest leaders, combatants, saviours, and survivors on the other side of the conflict.

“I called all the mothers together. We had been gathering together, hundreds of us, in the same place for about ten days. I asked them, ‘Do you know me?’ They said, no, they didn’t know me. I told them, ‘You are a victim, and I am a victim too. The pain that is paining you is paining me too. I will not fight for only my son. We are human beings, and we will struggle for all of us. Tomorrow, every woman should prepare your house and come out by 9am. If they do not bring our children out by 11am, we will protest. Any woman who wants to join us should follow, and we will go to Government House.’

We gathered at Ramat Square at 9am. We waited until 11, 11.15, and nothing was happening. So we started walking. People joined us, even children, escorting us. We were many, more than 300 people. When we came to the post office, soldiers told us to go back. Some of the women were afraid and wanted to stop, but the rest persuaded them to stay. I told them, ‘When you see that the soldiers have killed me, then you can go back. As long as I am alive, you have to follow me.’ The soldiers were shooting into the air, but we refused to go back.”

Chitra’s book is out on April 22. You can pre-order a copy here.

Written by Sharon Azzahir