Locating Islam: Aspirations, Conflicts, and Ambivalence in the Lives of Young Muslims in Niger

In a recent essay Samuli Schielke has argued that there is “too much Islam in the anthropology of Islam.” Schielke wants to make a simple point, namely that while considerable attention has been paid to Muslims who lead pious and moral lives, far less attention has been paid to those Muslims whose engagement with Islam is fraught with ambiguity and contradiction. I take Schielke's provocative claim as a point of departure to consider the complex yet ordinary ways in Muslim identity is negotiated by young Nigérien men, regardless of the depth of their religious engagement. In Niger young men recognize the supreme authority of religion, yet their definition of morality is not always rooted in weighty theological precepts. Refusing to be boxed in by religious coordinates, they shift between different, intersecting, and at times clashing ethical registers in their efforts to cast their worldly aspirations within a moral field of action. Their self‐realization as ethical subjects takes place in contexts of conflict, ambiguities, and double standards as they make excuses for their apparent lack of piety and offer justifications for pastime and political choices, self‐consciously articulating their moral stances in the process. Through a focus on the existential concerns of male Nigérien youth I consider what the anthropology of morality has brought to the study of Islam as a field of practice that both exceeds and fails to add up to our analytical understanding of “religion.”