SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The Pentecostal movement in Nigeria, with its emphasis on this‐worldly blessings and healing, has become so vibrant that today even Muslim organisations appear to be increasingly ‘Pentecostalised’. Nasrul‐Lahi‐il Fathi Society of Nigeria or NASFAT is a case in point. In an effort to compete with Pentecostalism on Yorubaland‘s religious marketplace, NASFAT has copied Pentecostal prayer forms, such as the crusade and night vigil, while emphasising Muslim doctrine. As such, the case of NASFAT illustrates that religious borrowing does not imply that religious boundaries do not matter: indeed, NASFAT is a powerful example of the preservation of religious differences through the appropriation of Pentecostal styles and strategies. In this spirit, religiously plural movements such as NASFAT prompt us to unlock analytical space in the nearly hermetically sealed anthropologies of Islam and Christianity and to develop a comparative framework that overcomes essentialist notions of religious diversity.