NASFAT Nigeria

Matthew McNaught describes a Nigerian Islamic movement that imitates African Pentecostal Christianity:

NASFAT targeted the professional class and those aspiring towards it, founding a university, running networking groups, and offering management courses presenting the Prophet Muhammad as an exemplary businessman. The movement encouraged the participation of women, some of whom ascended to leadership roles. NASFAT-linked singers released upbeat songs invoking God and Muhammad, closer in style to gospel music than the austere sonorities of qur’anic recitation. The organization held all-night prayer meetings and sold booklets containing ‘prayer points’ which promised protection from evil spirits. The principal weekly gathering of the faithful took place not on a Friday but a Sunday, to guard against the twin temptations of idleness and exuberant Christianity. The gathering was known as asalatu, from the Arabic for ‘prayer’, but here, too, some believers took their cue from their Pentecostal brothers and sisters, referring to the meeting as a ‘prayer crusade.’

Immanuel by Matthew McNaught