They are now well on their way to 'dipping the Koran in the Atlantic ocean' whist flying the flag of their great patriach and forefather
Usman Dan Fodio and galloping with fury on his ancient white war horse.
"What Boko Haram have done is claimed to be the inheritors of the 19th century
Usman dan Fodio Sokoto Caliphate," explains Gomez.
The daughter of the Nigerian Sokoto Caliphate founder
Usman dan Fodio, she devoted her life to educating women both rich and poor, Muslim and non-Muslim.
A juxtaposition of
Usman dan Fodio (the leader of the 1804-1810 Jihad in Hausaland) and Mohammed Yusuf (the leader and founder of the Boko Haram sect) will yield instructive historical lessons and parallels that will help put the Boko Haram terror group in a clearer context and perspective.
Although there is a brief mention of the jihad launched by
Usman dan Fodio, the more ordinary Africans who must have selected (or captured) the slaves for transport to Ghadames are not represented in this work.
(10) Nur said, for example, that "replacing the Shari'a from
Usman dan Fodio's jihad" in Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon with the "European secular constitution caused poverty and misery." During the early 1800s,
Usman dan Fodio, a Fulani, led a revolt against the Hausa kingdoms in what is now southern Niger, northern Nigeria and northern Cameroon and subsequently established an Islamic caliphate based in Sokoto.
In the area that became northern Nigeria and Niger, the jihad was led by a sheikh of the nomadic Fulani tribe,
Usman dan Fodio. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, dan Fodio established a veritable Islamic empire over what had been a loosely amalgamated set of Hausa kingdoms and fiefdoms.
Even earlier West Africa was home to a continuous series of reform jihads, the most successful, that of
Usman Dan Fodio, which created the Sokoto Caliphate, a state lasting from 1803 to 1903.
In fact, much of
Usman dan Fodio's criticism of the rulers in the Hausa states stemmed from the fact that the patronage of Muslim scholars did not necessarily indicate an acceptance of the restrictions and demands which an orthodox Muslim ruler should place upon the polity and society (Waldman 1965).
In 1806, a Fulani, Moddibo Adamu having received a flag from Shehu
Usman Dan Fodio, returned home, to what we now refer to as Adamawa and rallied round himself the Fulani settlers in the area.
Such differences in the composition of culture and religion polarised religio-political ideas that resulted in the inception of the Fulani Jihad led by Shaihu
Usman Dan Fodio (also spelt as Shehu Uthman Dan Fuduye).