Cyberspace as the battleground for the future of Yoruba Islam – Between Salafism and Sufism

According to the Nigerian online newspaper, Premium times, Nigerians spend an average of 3 hours on social media every day, surpassing the global average of 2 hours and 22mins (Jacob, 2021). In the year 2020 alone the number of active social media users in Nigeria grew by 22%, eclipsing a global average increase of 13% (Jacob, 2021). The advent of new media as a disruptive innovation and its adoption into the Islamic scholarly discourse in Yoruba land has engendered debates and discussions within the two strands of the Islamic tradition, Sufism and Salafism. To this end, the incorporation of new media technologies into religious discourse and argumentation engenders a process of democratization of religious authority and a re-construction of Yoruba Muslim identity along ideological lines. This thesis adopts a mixed-methods approach of interviews and thematic video analyses to distil this trend of religious media engagement and new religious consciousness in Yoruba Islam. This thesis argues that there exists a contested turf of media engagement and weaponization of social media by both sides of the theological persuasion. This study further indicates an active engagement with new media contents and a process of self-fashioning whereby listeners of religious media actively adopt the contents of these doctrines and construct their own idea of religious authority albeit in alignment with either side of the Sufi-Salafi theological persuasion. To this end, the social media religious nexus encapsulates a new form of social cohesion and dissension for Yoruba Muslims who are constantly in the process of navigating between culture and religion.