When Spirits Start Veiling: The Case of the Veiled She-Devil in a Muslim Town of Niger

8/14/2019 When Spirits Start Veiling: The Case of the Veiled She-Devil in a Muslim Town of Niger

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Aside rom giving shape to

Zinderois emergent earso moral disorder, the

controversy surrounding

the Veiled She-Devil

reveals a ragmented

Muslim community torn

by disagreements about

the parameters o Islamic

tradition.


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When Spirits Strt Veiling:

The Cse of the Veiled She-Devil

in Muslim Town of NigerA Mas

In Niger, women have long been seen as embodiments o

virtue (or wickedness). O late, with the rise o reormist

Islam, their role as upholders o purity has become key to

the denition o moral community. Debates over the control

o emale sexuality and the ordering o social spaces have

intensied. While such debates are characteristically ramed

in Islamic terms, one should not assume that pre-Islamic

cosmologiesoten denigrated by Islamhave become irrel-

evant to local moral concerns. In August 2003, rumors o a

veiled she-devil haunting the streets o Zinder in search o

seductive encounters provoked a moral panic, which eventu-

ally received a ull account in a Nigrien newspaper. Muslim

reormists argued the apparition was meant to discourage

women rom veiling, but others countered that it served as a

warning to philandering husbands. It demonstrated that ar

rom waning under the impact o Islamic revivals, gures o

the pre-Islamic past are well entrenched in Islamic towns.

Besides suggesting that non-Muslim others cannot be con-

signed to history, the rumors o spiritual intrusion discussed

in this article highlight the centrality of the non-Muslim other

in popular constructions of Muslimhood. In an age of renewed

Muslim anxiety about orms o emininity perceived to con-

fict with the image o virtuous womanhood, the she-devil

oered Nigrien Muslims a means o pondering the dangers

o womens sexuality. At another level, her tale is about spir-

its parodying Islam so as to reveal the limits o morality. By

subversively playing with notions o modesty and morality,

the spirit presented a sobering critique o the hypocrisy o the

veil in contemporary Niger.


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Introduction

In Niger, women symbolized virtue (or its absence) long beore Islam came to

unction as the privileged vehicle or the sustenance o a moral order. In the

atermath o the Islamic reorms that ollowed the Nigrien governmentsliberalization o markets and media in the early 1990s, womens role as

upholders o purity has nonetheless become even more central to the deni-

tion o amilial, communal, and national moral boundaries. With the rapid

spread o Izala, an anti-Su reormist organization,1 women, their mobility,

and their visibility have been increasingly scrutinized. Their bodies have

become the object o meticulous attention, and as is the case elsewhere in

the Islamic diaspora (Ask and Tjomsland 1998; Bauer 1985, 2005; Brenner

1996; Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 1995; Gle 2002; Ong 1987, 1995; Sand-

ikci and Gliz 2005; White 1999), much o the debate over what constitutesrespectability, piety, and modesty has centered on womens dress and deport-

ment. By advocating veiling, seclusion, and other practices aimed at limiting

womens mobility and autonomy, Izala members have repeatedly clashed

with advocates o the more traditionalist orm o Islam, who resent Izalas

contestations o a previously unquestioned orthodoxy.

Disagreements over the sartorial parameters o piety and the ordering

o social spaces that have ostensibly divided Nigriens into opposed camps2

underscore wider concerns about changing perceptions o gendered reali-

ties. At a time when the West is routinely blamed or producing decadentliestyles, conspicuous consumption, and a loss o spiritual values, women

have become the key elements o a new sacred architecture o sexuality

(Mernissi [1957] 1987:xvi), designed as a bulwark against Westernization and

its accompanying evils. The management o womens bodies and the control

o their agency tackle the larger orces at work in the construction o the

body politic. As Ong notes or Malaysia, current contestations over the place

o women in Muslim societies are not about gender politics so much as about

nationwide struggles over a crisis o cultural identity, development, class

ormation, and the changing kinds o imagined community that are envi-sioned (1995:187). In such contexts, womens bodies oten end up signiying

order and purity when they are displayed according to morally appropriate

norms o containment and controlthough they can just as well become

seen as deviant, dirty, or wicked (Douglas 1966; Hodgson and McCurdy

2001; Ong and Peletz 1995; Rosaldo 1974).

Current Nigrien debates on how to produce modest bodies and moral

selves are characteristically ramed in Islamic terms and inspired by notions

o a universalistic tradition rather than rooted in local understandings

o morality, but it would be a mistake to assume that the local pre-Islamiccosmologies that are routinely denigrated by Muslims have become entirely

irrelevant to the moral imagination. Notwithstanding Izalas aggressive

eorts to puriy Islam rom animist elementsperceived as accretions

that have contaminated the aith while ensnaring the minds o Muslims in

bonds o obscurantismsome o these occasionally resurace to problematize


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in a dramatic ashion the very issues which local reormists claim to have

identied and provided solutions or. It is precisely what happens when

the boundaries o Islam become (despite constant policing) tainted by non-

Muslim intrusive elements that I wish to explore by ocusing on a case o

residual animism emerging in the public sphere. Besides pointing to theimpossibility o securely relegating non-Muslim others to a past rom which

Islam tries to dissociate itsel,3 the case I discuss highlights the centrality o

the non-Muslim other in popular constructions o Muslimhood.

In August 2003, rumors o a veiled emale spirit haunting the streets o

Zinder in search o seductive encounters provoked a widespread moral panic

among local residents. Zinder is a city o some 140,000 Hausa-speakers and

the historical capital o the once powerul sultanate o Damagaram. Formerly

a major stopping point on the trans-Saharan trade routes, it is a characteris-

tically Muslim town, so much so that it is oten called the heart o Islamin Niger (Glew 1999:100). There, spirits do not usually serve as the visual

currency o morality and modesty: quite the contrary. Against all odds, the

apparition that was thereater known as Aljana Mai Hijab (the Veiled She-

Devil) became the talk o the town as reports o her requent encounters with

local residents started circulating widely. Her story received a ull account

in the 11 September 2003 edition o Haske, a Niamey weekly that enjoys a

wide circulation, thanks to its regular postings on the Internet4:

The Veiled She-DevilThis past August, there was big scare throughout Zinder when

the city became haunted by a veiled spirit. This apparition,

seemingly on a quest or romantic adventures, provoked such

a panic that local religious leaders were orced to intervene

and provide clarications [regarding the nature o the appari-

tion] on the airwaves. [The ollowing] is an account o this

very bizarre story.

During the entire month o August, a rumor was circulat-

ing: on the outskirts o Zinder, a spirit had appeared. A grow-ing number o testimonies started tallying. The districts o

Garin-Liman, Karkada, Hippodrome and Aroport were her

avorite hangouts; especially at night between midnight and

three oclock in the morning. Fairly complexioned, slender,

and adorned with shining eyes, she was beautiul and veiled.

Except or her ace, her entire body was covered to hide her

hooed eet, according to those who had met her. Hence the

name given to her by the residents o Zinder: the Veiled

She-Devil. She shits shapes and disappears under the light.At rst, she pretended to request rides rom moped-taxis

and would be transported to dark places to then instantly

disappear.

Tailors, mechanics, and numerous late-nighters claim to

have met her at specic times during the night. [During these


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encounters,] she was visibly peaceul and loving. All the men

whom she approached said that she invited them to ollow

her. But they were overwhelmed by ear and reused her oer,

seeking only to save their skin. Between the 16th and the 24th

o August, the requency o her appearances provoked wide-spread panic among the local population. By ten in the eve-

ning, people would hide in their homes and i they had to be

out, they avoided paths without light. But the intervention o

marabouts on the radio reassured them. [One o them,] Malam

Manirou conrmed the existence o evil spirits in this part o

Zinder. When his students recounted to him their encounters

with the veiled One, he advised them to recite the sura

[ayat al-Kursi] koursyou. His recommendations [on how

to protect onesel against the spirit] were aired several timeson Radio Anani o Zinder. The theologian Oustaze Bachir

and the priest in charge o the Catholic mission in Zinder,

ather Emmanuel NGona, provided the [respective] Islamic

and Christian interpretations o what a spirit was. According

to them, within the realm o the spirits, there are good and bad

diables [spirits, devils]. However, ollowing increased urban-

ization and the electrication o cities, these spirits have been

orced to abandon their shelters or their traditional homes.

Ater that, subsequent sightings o the spirit in Zinder gaverise to diverging interpretations. The most undamentalist

[o Muslims] claimed that the spirit acted to prevent women

rom wearing the veil. This, in their eyes, is contrary to the

teachings o Islam. Others (especially women), in contrast,

were happy. They hoped that men would be distrustul o [the

spirit] and that they would be orced to remain aithul to their

wives.

Yet others have decided to exploit peoples ears o the

spirit and deceive men in order to rob them. They disguisethemselves as girls [sic] wearing white veils to terrorize their

neighbors. In the ace o it all, regional and local authorities

have remained silent. Nothing has oicially been done to

reassure the [local] population.

Amadou Mahamadou

In this essay, I address the relevance o spirits in the Muslim imagination

in an era o Islamic renewal in which what was a once sel-evident Muslim

identity must now be continually redened in terms o correct practicesset in opposition to improper ones (Masquelier 1996). As nonhuman

and (mostly) non-Muslim, spirits are the ultimate otherthe expression

o a wild, yet powerul alterity, which can seldom be contained within the

ordered parameters o social lie. I spirit devotees claim that one can com-

municate with spirits to channel their powers productively and reassert


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the malleable boundaries between spirit and human worlds, Muslims, in

contrast, must abstain rom any contact with these ethereal creatureseven

when it is the latterwho initiate contact (Masquelier 2001). Over the past

century, Islam has gained ground over spirit worship on the visible terrain o

religious practices. Today, more than 95 percent o Nigriens consider them-selves Muslim.5 Now that Islam has become the taken-or-granted context

in which lie is lived (Delaney 1990:514), spirit devotees are increasingly

perceived as crude and unprogressive by their Muslim ellow citizenseven

i paradoxically, their services are requested in times o crisis (Masquelier

2001). Muslims, in their eagerness to construct themselves as sophisticated

urbanites, increasingly avoid associations with spirit devotees, and insist

that they want nothing to do with bloodthirsty spirits (aljanu, plural orm

o aljani, a male spirit, and aljana, a emale spirit).

Animism (as French-educated Nigriens call the practice o worship-ing spirits), is not about believing in spirits so much as it is about communi-

cating with them. The existence o spirits is not questioned by local Muslims

(many o whom routinely purchase amulets and other Quranic medicines

rom Muslim religious specialists to ward o any harmul spiritual infu-

ences), but direct dealings with spirits are, publicly at least, denounced as

sinul by the great majority o the aithul. It is precisely because everyone

recognizes the existenceand by implication, the powero spirits that the

rumors surrounding the Veiled She-Devil aected the Zinderois community

so dramatically. At a time when much scholarly attention is ocused on theglobalized and globalizing dimensions o Islam, the panic surrounding the

sighting o the Veiled She-Devil is a reminder that the local too can be

ruitully harnessed in the service o a moralizing ideology predicated on a

notion o a universal, unchanging Islam. It urther suggests that despite its

denunciation o spirit related practices, Islam in Niger remains dependent on

its religious alter ego or legitimizing its own superiority. In what ollows,

I ocus on the space o questioning ormalized by the prolieration o media

in Nigrien society to examine how the current legitimization o Islamic

practices entails the deployment o images o non-Muslim, marginal, mostlyemale others that remain vital to emerging denitions o Islamic identity

and authority. At another level, the tale o the Veiled She-Devil is about spir-

its parodying Islam in a perormance that is all the more unsettling in that it

reveals the limits o morality and the porousness o categorical boundaries.

By subversively playing with notions o modesty and morality, the spirit

provided a sobering critique on the hypocrisy o the veil while giving shape to

the anxieties surrounding womens sexuality in contexts o growing unease

with existing orms o emininity, perceived to be at odds with the image o

proper womanhood championed by reormist Muslims.The subject o gossip and rumor has traditionally been the province o

olklorists, not anthropologistswhether the stories under scholarly scru-

tiny are about the real or the antastic. Stories that cannot be proved

present a methodological problem to social scientists. Not only are they

diicult to trace, but they are even more diicult to pin down as evidence.


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Several versions o the same story may coexist at the same moment and spin

o each other, like many-headed hydras, to become more entangled as they

spread and multiply. Rumors are by nature slippery, ephemeral, and unpre-

dictablein a word: insaisissable. In a ne historical analysis o vampire

rumors in colonial Arica, White (2000) nevertheless urges scholars to takerumors seriously and treat them as a meaningul economy o inormation.

Interpreting rumors as regional products, she suggests, reveals them to be

both socially constructed and socially situated (White 2000:16). Heeding

Whites advice, I make no attempt to gauge the veracity o the rumors about

the Veiled She-Devil, but ocus instead on the deeper, unspoken truth

(Farge and Revel [1988] 1991:107), seeking to emerge rom the snatches o

knowledge, manuactured memories, hal-truths, and make-believe that

orm the rumor. This essay is thereore not solely about rumor and gossip,

but about the world rumor and gossip reveals (White 2000:5; see alsoSoares 2003).

The Stubborn Relevnce of animismin the Nigrien Islmic Sphere

Niger has its quotients o stories that eature a persons encounter with a

perect stranger who turns out to be very strange indeed. In this stock o

narratives, the so-called strangers are nothing but spirits, who oten take theappearance o eerily beautiul women or innocent-looking, young girls, to

entrap desirous men into their destructive schemes. When the men eventu-

ally discover the real identities o their seductresses, it is usually too late or

them to escape rom the malevolent spirits clutches. O signicance in these

narratives is the implicit recognition that mens (and more rarely, womens)

incapacity to see through the spirits treacherous deceits is what inevitably

seals their ate. In this regard, the story o the Veiled She-Devil haunting the

streets o Zinder is hardly exceptional, except or the act that none o the

victims o her stalking appear to have died. Like other stories o seductiveencounters that I have come across over the years (Masquelier 1992, 1995,

1997, 2002c, 2005, 2008), this one provides an ediying commentary on

the dangers aced by those who blindly ollow their sexual impulsesand

thereby ail to notice the hooed extremities o the lovely women whose

company they are enjoying. Hooed eet, any Nigrien will tell you, provide

an obvious clue that one is dealing with a nonhuman entity that is only

pretending to be human.

Reported accounts o the veiled spirits modus operandi conorm to

a narrative genre that clearly existed beore Islam became identied withthe status quo, but the moral import o these narratives is complicated

extraordinarily by certain elements, most notably the spirits apparent

Muslim identity and the sartorial expression o pious womanhood that she

promotes by haunting the streets o Zinder while hiding in a veil. For one

thing, there is something o a contradiction in the idea o a spirit wearing a


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hijabi, the veil that has since the early 1990s become the sartorial sign o

Izala identity or Nigrien women.6 Female spirits may dress in local garb

(and that may include a head covering), but they do not veil in a recogniz-

ably Muslim manner. Though the repertoire o spirit possession practices

known as bori has been thoroughly infuenced by the style and politics oMuslim worship (Masquelier 2001), there are spirits whose identities have

not been encompassed by the theatrics o bori ceremonies and who are

thereore not domesticated through sacricial oerings and possession.7 It

is instead when their shrines are destroyed to make space or a road or to

establish a mosque that they resurace to terriy or punish the trespassers.

As we shall see, the Veiled She-Devil is such a spiritwild, unpredictable,

and oten rightening.

Beore their uprooting by the twin orces o modernization and religion,

these spirits were regularly propitiated on behal o lineages and communi-ties through sacricial oerings. Many o them have been orgotten, but all

remain inescapably rooted in a pre-Islamic, indigenous imagination. There

is, o course, a whole contingent o male Muslim spirits in the constantly

evolving bori pantheon, but the shape-shiting creatures one occasionally

comes across in the market, in the bush, or even near ones home on a late

night and who are called mutanen daji people o the bush are neither part

o the bori cast o spiritual characters, nor Muslim. They cannot be domes-

ticated through the practices o bori, and are best avoided by bori devotees

and Muslims alikeunless they are identied as the tutelary spirits o aparticular place and venerated by local priests (Masquelier 2001). As the rst

occupants o the land, many o these spirits were there long beore the advent

o Islam, but most have been displaced by the encroachment o roads and

human communities on the bush (Masquelier 2002c). It is precisely because

they are inextricably dened by their earthly attachments that their pres-

ent dispositions and interventions in human lives can rarely be understood

outside o the context o how they came to be there in the rst place. Spirits

who haunt stretches o roads or terrorize whole neighborhoods are noth-

ing but displaced creatures, compelled by circumstances to expose theirtransience to the people responsible or their displacement.

One o the ways in which those who participate in bori spirit posses-

sion demonstrate the legitimacy o their practices is by claiming to be able

to protect both people and communities rom potentially vengeul spirits

looking or prey. From Oustaze Bachirs and ather Emmanual NGonas

explanatory accounts o the spirits presence in Zinder, we gather that the

Veiled She-Devil is one o the displaced spirits who seek revenge or the

indignities they have experienced since losing their homes to sprawling

human settlements or electrication. To accommodate the housing needso its growing population, Zinder has progressively expanded to incorporate

rural lands into its urban oldby cutting trees and leveling mounds where

spirits like the Veiled She-Devil probably once resided. Evicted rom her

abode by the lights that are now cutting through the darkness o many Zinder

neighborhoods, she wanders at night, searching or some saely obscure


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place. In all probability, her alleged requests to be transported to dark

places are nothing but attempts to escape the brightness o urban nights.

When she hits a bright spot, she instantly disappears, we are told. One can

speculate that many o the places that she haunts are in the district that she

once called home.What makes the Veiled She-Devils spectral presence in the dimly lit

streets o Zinder signicant is neither her homelessness, nor her avoidance

o bright lights, so much as her style o dress. As noted above, mutanen daji

are not Muslim, nor do they generally hide behind recognizably Muslim

attire. They may disguise themselves as air-complexioned Fulani women

wearing black clothing and large earrings, but they do not attempt to pass or

Muslims, least o all reormist Muslims. Not only do they stand or all that

most Muslims claim to despise and reject, but they owe their very rootless-

ness in part to the spread o Islam and the concurrent erasure o a complexmythical topography that previously documented and concretized human

communities relations o mutual dependency with the people o the bush.

As a spirit epitomizing simultaneously a vanishing, local pre-Islamic past

and a newly emerging tradition o Islamic piety rooted in universalistic

values, the Veiled She-Devil is an oxymoron, an uncanny combination o

residual animism and o the strict Islamic reormism that has recently

emerged in Niger.

The proessed intent o the hijabi is to hide women rom the public eye

and protect their virtue. In Izala households, women and girls as young asthree may don veils. In the 1990s, when these vestiments rst appeared on

emale bodies, they ell to the knee or the ankle, and generally matched the

rest o their brightly colored outtsmarking their wearers as pious, enlight-

ened Muslims. Ironically, ar rom ensuring their inconspicuousness, these

vivid expressions o piety would enhance the wearers visibility: the deep

yellow, green, purple, or turquoise shades o their attires contrasted strik-

ingly with the polychromatic garb o other women. Today, veils are oten

shorter and duller in color, but they can be adorned with lace and imported

rom Nigeria. What they have lost in conspicuousness, they have gained instylishnessso much so that even non-Izala girls have taken to wearing

them, as they aim to ashion themselves publicly as pious Muslims. Indeed,

because thehijabi is now considered ashionable, such veils have become

standard gits which suitors bring to the women they courttogether with

jewelry, hair extensions, and perume. Though we do not know what color

the spirits veil was, mention o her hijabi is enough to imply a reormist

status and membership in Izala, by ar the largest and most visible reorm-

ist Muslim organization in Niger. We are told that those who capitalized on

residents ears o the veiled spirit to rob them adopted a white veil to passas the Veiled She-Devil. Whether or not this could be taken as a clue that

the real spirit dons a white veilsignicantly, white is (with black and

red) a color recognizably associated with spiritsI want to underscore what

the presence o the veil implies or the relevance o stubbornly resistant

and denitionally marginal animist orms amid the secularization o


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Nigrien society by Muslim reormists intent upon eradicating syncretic and

magical practices rom daily lie.8

Aside rom reminding us that spirits are by denition translators well

versed in the art o adaptation and the stylistics o adoption, the diablesse

exemplies a new orm o spirit-centered discourse that is emerging at thesite o its alienation to allow or the fuid dissemination o representations

that Muslims, in their attempts to redene, authenticate, and universalize

Islam, have been trying to suppress. Rather than opposing Islam to ani-

mism, she resignies animism with the authority o Islam at the same

time that she insists on Islams dependency on the language o animism.

As an uncanny mixture o non-Muslim and Muslim elements, o comort-

ing amiliarity and dangerous otherness, she provides the material basis

or articulating distinctly Muslim issues in animist terms. Spirits are o

course part o Islams cohort o cosmological others; as such, they gureprominently in the Islamic imagination. What is signicant here is that

it is precisely local Muslims success in marginalizing spirit possession as

a orum or resisting Islamic hegemony that has opened up a space or the

emergence o hybrid spiritsrecognizably Muslim, yet emblematic o the

superstition that reormist Islam disown.

To note here that there is something uncanny about the Veiled She-

Devil is to recognize that she is part o that which Freud characterized as the

unheimliche, namely that category o experiences, eelings, and situations

that seem strange at rst but turn out to be recognizable, amiliar, and part oones past ([1919] 1962). For Freud, the uncanny was essentially connected to

the reappearance o something amiliar rom the childhood o an individual

or o humankind, but it also characterized the ear that arose in primitive

cultures when belies that had been extirpated rom local repertoires o

knowledge resuraced through peoples attempts to ace a rightul situation.

Encounters with the Veiled She-Devil aroused dread and horror, but they

also provoked a feeting sense o recognition: or many, there was something

terriyingly amiliar about the spirit, once one caught sight o the hooed

extremities hidden under her cloak. In her persona, the past, long orgot-ten, was resuracingand seeping into the present. Later, the veil worn by

the spectral apparition unctioned as part o the haunting apparatus, o that

which evoked a eeling o terror, because instead o guring as an emblem

o piety, it had become the recognizable sign o dreadul alterity, making the

She-Devil a concrete objectication o the return o the repressed.

In an account o the scientization o the Vedas in colonial and post-

colonial India, Gyan Prakash (2003) demonstrates that trying to disentangle

modernity rom magic rarely worksand even when it does, magic and

modernity both end up recast in the image o the other. There, a reormmovements eorts to redene the Hindu nation through the lens o sci-

ence ailed, Prakash points out, because it could neither appropriate the

superstitions (which had become incommensurable with an emergent

Indian modernity), nor puriy science rom its inherent magicalities. In the

Nigrien case, one could sayparaphrasing Prakashs description o sciences


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dependency on Hinduism in colonial Indiathat in condemning pre-Islamic

practices, reormist Islam has positioned spirits as demons internal to its

lie at the same time as that which remains outside its grasp, and haunts

its dominance (2003:40). Despite Muslimsespecially Izala members

eorts to puriy Islam o its backward elements, Islam remains hauntedby myth and superstition.

Spirits in the Islmic Sphere

Throughout Niger, the pluralization o the religious landscape and the spread

o Izala in the 1990s were encouraged by the progressive retreat o the state

rom civic lie, ollowing the decline o the economy and the implementation

o structural adjustment programs. Ater the collapse o the military regimeand the establishment o the rst democratically elected president, in 1993,

the liberalization o politics ushered in an era o public debate through the

creation o new, independent newspapers (such as Haske), the emergence

o private radios, and the oundation o civic organizations and political

parties (Masquelier 1999). Nigriens who had long suered an austere,

authoritarian regime began to exercise their rights to ull participation in the

civil and political lie o their country. In the process, Islam became a privi-

leged medium or expressing ideological, political, and even socioeconomic

cleavages (Al-Karsani 1993).The decade that ollowed the introduction o civil liberties was none-

theless turbulent and lled with disappointments. Ater a military coup,

raudulent elections, and the assassination o one military leader by another,

the civilian government put in place in late 1999 inherited a series o

unsolved political, social, and scal crises. Faced with a growing debt and

pressured to implement austerity measures by international lenders help-

ing Niger meet its debt-service obligations, preceding governments had

shrunk their pool o civil servants and trimmed social services, to citizens

considerable dismay. Recent graduates were no longer oered the bureau-cratic positions they elt entitled to, armers could not longer count on state

investments in the rural sector, the educational system was in danger o col-

lapsing, and overtaxed hospitals provided only limited services to the sick

and the needy. The progressive withdrawal o the state rom the realm o

welare and social entitlements (Ahmad 1995) let a vacuum that was soon

lled by Islamic associations that provided social and educational services

(sermons, Quranic schools, etc.). In 1994, ve oicially recognized Islamic

associations (one o which was Izala) had emerged next to the Association

Islamique du Niger, a single corporatist association. By the year 2000, thisnumber had jumped to more than orty (Charlick 2004; Glew 1996). In

the space o a ew years, organized Islam had emerged as a major orce in

Nigrien civil society (Charlick 2004:101).

The spread o new media and the emergence o an Islamic public

sphere enabling discussions about what it means to be Muslim in Niger has


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complicatedyet also broadened the terms oreligious debates at the same

time that it has made ideas and inormation about Islam more readily avail-

able to the public (see Soares 2004 or the case o Mali). Engagingprivately

or publiclyin these debates about the nature o Islamic knowledge and

the correctness o Islamic practices has occasionally orced Muslims toquestion previously axiomatic truths and to justiy their adoption o par-

ticular traditions through an appeal to Quranic sources. Distinctions or

deviations in styles o worship, or instance, have been important criteria

or identiying proper versus improper versions o Islameach side

condently claiming to practice the correct version. For members o Izala,

ostentatiously wearing prayer beads, practicing zikiri (recitation o one o

the Names o God), and parading to Friday prayer dressed in a richly embroi-

dered babban riga (a voluminous robe worn over matching shirt and pants)

signal that one is not a good Muslim: one only pretends to be Muslimthrough the adoption o showy, supercial attributesquite the opposite o

what God requires o those who submit to his will. As a reormist riend

once put it, these [practices] are not part o Islam, they are just what the

hypocrites do.

For the so-called deenders o traditionalist Islam, however, it is

the reorms introduced by Izala in the context o worship, medicine, lei-

sure, commensality, and domesticity that are un-Islamic and thereore

unacceptablethough many nevertheless agree with their reormist oes

about the importance o Quranic education and the need to regulate wom-ens mobility. Members o Izala thus argue that Quranic-based medicines

(such as amulets or washed-out ink used to write a Quranic verse) must be

abandoned because they are not mentioned in the Quran. Engaging in such

practices, an Izala adherent explained, is like putting another god between

you and God. It is a sin. It is also a sin, Izala preachers have pointed out,

to seek magical protection against spiritsironically, something many

Zinderois elt compelled to do when rumors o a spirit haunting the streets o

town suraced. Traditionalists, in contrast, see nothing wrong with manu-

acturing or purchasing protective medicinesas long as these are based onQuranic words. There is, in short, considerable debate as to what constitutes

Islamic practiceand what does not. From prayer to bridewealth transac-

tions to how to celebrate the birth o a child, all that traditionally dened

virtuous Muslimhood has become a bone o contention, pitting reormists

against traditionalists in public arenas.

The question o how, when, and where to pray has been vigorously

debated (Masquelier 1999, in press), but no other issue has aroused more

passion than that o the role, rights, and the visibility o women in Nigrien

society. For one thing, much o the content o Muslim sermons broadcast onNigrien airwaves ocuses on the management o womens dress and deport-

ment (Cooper 2006). Over the past twenty years, young women wearing

Western dress or knee-length skirts have been verbally harassed, stripped,

and occasionally beaten by reormists, or whom such skimpy attire is

synonymous with impiety and decadence. Tellingly, most o those incidents


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have occurred in Zinder and the neighboring city o Maradithe latter being

known throughout the country as a hotbed o reormist activism. In Zinder,

in the early 1990s, the newly built womens cooperative was destroyed by

reormists, who claimed that the members o the cooperative did not ollow

properly the principles o the Quran (Glew 1999).In the rest o country too, women have been targeted by conservative

groups claiming to protect society rom those who do not adhere to the tenets

o Islam. In 1991, when the Rassemblement Dmocratique des Femmes du

Niger (RDFN), a new womens association, asked to participate in the Sover-

eign National Conerence held to reorm the Nigrien state, some leaders o

the association were assaulted by reormist Muslims in Maradi and Zinder;

two years later in the capital, those associated with a amily-planning cam-

paign were threatened by members o Islamic associations (Charlick 2004).

At that time, the amily-code project, which would have provided legalprotection or women and children, was similarly opposed by reormists, on

the ground that it was based on secular principles and thereore anti-Islamic.

By mobilizing those who wanted Islam to play a larger role in the politi-

cal lie o the country and leading to the creation o two emale reormist

associations, the controversy surrounding the project greatly contributed

to the orging o an Islamist consciousness in Niger (Niandou-Souley and

Alzouma 1996). In 1999, protests led by Islamic groups became so intense

that the government, intending to ratiy the U.N. Convention on Ending All

Forms o Discrimination against Women, elt obliged to add reservations toits ratication, thereby, in the eyes o some, eectively nulliying it (Char-

lick 2004). A year later, it was the second edition o the heavily publicized

Festival International de Mode Aricaine (FIMA) that became the target o

Muslim anger: in the eyes o reormists, scantily clad models parading in

ront o a vast audience were an incitement to debauchery. In Niamey, busi-

nesses were vandalized, and inappropriately dressed women were harassed.

In Maradi, protests turned violent, and businesses and compounds were

destroyed (Cooper 2006; Masquelier 2002b). These incidents illustrate how

local eorts to carve out a moral order routinely ocus on the creation o thevirtuous woman in contradistinction to Western models o womanhood,

perceived as sources o moral degeneracy. The targeting o women who are

identied as the source o moral contagion is nothing new in Niger. In times

o drought, throughout the Hausa-speaking region, single women and so-

called prostitutes wereand still aretraditionally identied as culprits,

and chased out o their communities to permit the rains to come. Concerns

about emale visibility and sexuality have nonetheless intensied with the

growth o Islamic reormismand the rising rustration o young men who,

in their obstructed search or marriage and economic stability, must blamesomeone or their economic impotence and dashed hopes. Because, immoral-

ityor at least, the perception o ithas become the source o all social ills,

it must be aggressively ought i society is to be saved rom urther decline.

In this regard, the appearance o a mysterious emale gureat once

modest and beguilingin the streets o Zinder is hardly coincidental.


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Emerging as she did in the midst o protracted debates about the place o

Islam in the aairs o the state and the role o women in Nigrien amily

and society, the Veiled She-Devil spoke to Nigrien societys concerns

about emale sexuality, space, and status.9 As the personication o emale

sexual power in its most dangerous, because unrestrained orm, she symbol-ized or many what happens when people are led astray by a secular state,

which operates with little concern or Islam and or the role that women

should ideally play as upholders o purity. For Muslim reormers who have

denounced French imperialism or having deled Nigrien society and led to

its ruin, control o womens sexuality and mobility is key to the envisioned

order that will control the social orces unleashed by Westernization and a

morally corrupt government (see Ong 1995 or a comparable situation in

Malaysia). That so many girls become spoiled (that is, pregnant) beore

marriage is, these zealots oten insist, a sign o societys moral decadence, asituation that can be remedied only through the imposition o Islam as the

state religion, the implementation o religious education in all schools, and

the tight regulation o emale sexuality. Even when parents do not espouse

the reormist agenda, they worry about the alleged promiscuity o unwed

girls, many o whom engage in premarital sex and ostensibly carry out

aairs with wealthy, married men they do not intend to marry. In the past

decade, I have heard Nigrien mothers complain about the soaring rates o

pregnancies among unwed girls and express rustration at their inability to

control their daughters comings and goingsa measure o the increasingconcerns that are given expression through and generated by Izalas moral-

izing discourses. In 2003, Zinderois preoccupations with the loose moral

standards so virulently criticized by reormist leaders throughout the coun-

try ound their most concrete expression in the ambiguous persona o the

Veiled She-Devil.

Aside rom giving shape to Zinderois emergent ears o moral disor-

der, the controversy surrounding the Veiled She-Devil reveals a ragmented

Muslim community, torn by disagreements about the parameters o Islamic

tradition. According to the Haske article, while traditionalist Muslimpreachers invoked the regions rich animist past to provide a largely bewil-

dered population with a rational explanation or the presence o the earul

spirit (and by the same token, legitimize their livelihoods as procurers o

Quranic protective medicines), Muslim reormists argued that the spec-

tral apparition was meant only to discourage women rom wearing the veil.

Put dierently, i malamai (Muslim religious specialists) long used to devis-

ing practicalas well as remunerativeways o dealing with the threats

posed by lustul or vengeul spirits, elt no compunctions about recognizing

an animist heritage that many would rather bury away, their Muslim oesappeared more concerned with deending the moral boundaries o true

Islam rom animist contagion. For the latter, the veiled apparition pro-

vided yet another opportunity to disengage Islam rom superstition while

reminding everyone o the temptations awaiting the true believer. Arguably,

by mentioning the spirit at all, reormists eectively validated the rumors


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o her existence. One could even say that by empowering her with the capac-

ity to prevent women rom wearing the veil (or simply acknowledging

the risk o such a thing happening), they unwittingly rescued animism

rom its invisibility to invest it as the constitutive other [that] haunts the

sels identity and authority (Prakash 2003:40). By publicly implying thatshe might be a threat (or at least, not denying that it could be), specialists

o all religious persuasions made it acceptable or Muslim Zinderois to seek

protection against a possible encounter with her. Local residents could recite

Quranic verses as a protective measure against her without ear o being

labeled bad Muslims or accused o dabbling in pagan practices.

By appearing in a largely Muslim space, where spirits are not publicly

acknowledged,10 much less dealt with, the Veiled She-Devil orced Zin-

derois to choose sides in the debate on pious versus pagan practices,

and in so doing, to address the contradiction between their ideal o Islamicunitythe ummaand their experience o Muslim disparity. Though many

Nigriens see themselves as being part o the umma, most are aware that

disagreements between Muslims are not easily reconciled with the idea o

a transnational Islamic community. In addition to promoting an Islamic

consciousness, the multiplication o Islamic associations and the emergence

o reormist currents aiming to rid society o unbelievers (karai) acilitated

the standardization o Muslim practices. Some twenty years ater the imple-

mentation o the rst Izala reorms (in worship, wealth management, dress,

and so on), the substance and expressions o tradition remain nonethelessfexible and subject to reormulation. Despite peoples claims to membership

in mutually exclusive Muslim campsa situation that, as I have noted, is

oten simplied in terms o traditionalist versus reormist Islamthe

Nigrien religious landscape is more fuid and inconsistent than ever, as

so-called traditionalist and reormist Muslims negotiate their place in the

social order, through not only conrontations, but also compromises and

accommodations (Masquelier 2007). By using the spirit to position them-

selves in relation to the reormist/traditionalist divide, Zinderois men

and women redened the borders o their cosmological universe, a universethat included or excluded the Veiled She-Devil, depending on where they

drew these borders. In so doing, they conronted each other, questioning each

others motives and contesting each others positions at the same time that

they struggled to come up with a meaningul explanation or the appearance

o such a creature in their midst.

That yet (more skeptical) others would callously appropriate the

rumored encounters with the Veiled She-Devil to perorm haunting sessions

o their own and urther terrorize an already weary town probably high-

lighted the veracity o these rumors or some o Zinders residentsbesidesalso hinting that not everyone took the story seriously. In my experience,

stories o spirit attacks would occasionally elicit puzzlement, and even

skepticism, on the part o some listeners, but in many cases, only because

the latter claimed to be able to tell a real rom a ake attack. From this per-

spective, a alse rumor or a aked possession perormance only reinorces


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the validity o genuine encounters between spirits and humans, be they

benecial or harmul: intimations o raud necessarily imply that there is a

real way o being attacked or possessed by a spirit. Aside rom providing

a vivid demonstration o how akery and authenticity require each other

(Morris 2000:101), those who hid behind the Veiled She-Devils veil toscare nocturnal passersby into submission and rob them provided a blatant

conrmation that appearances can be deceiving indeed.

Veiling s Trnsgression, Veiling s Trnsvestism

To ollow up on the theme o deception, I want to explore urther how the

veiloriginally meant to hide womens charms and protect them rom unwel-

come stareshere comes to signiy camoufage and imply orgery in complexand tangled ways. As a starting-point, let us assume that there is simply a

spirit who, or reasons that remain ar rom clear, decides to veil. While she

looks like a pious Muslim as she prowls through the streets o Zinder, she

is in act hiding her hooves (and thereore her spirit identity) in the olds o

herhijabi to ease the entrapment o her victims. The veil unctions here not

only as an instrument o deceit, but as part o the artice through which

she seduces her prey: it adds to her mystery and enhances her desirability

quite the opposite o its intended purpose. Men attracted by what the article

describes as her air complexion and her brilliant eyes will presumably wishto see the rest o her slender gure, which she cleverly hides under the abric

o her modest attire. Her apparent modesty operates a double deception: it

conceals both her repulsive animality and her alluring (human) sexuality.

At another level, by hiding not just her bodily charms, but also her

harmul intentions under the cloak o Muslim respectability, the spirit makes

a mockery o Islamic expressions o piety by suggesting that not all women

who veil are pious. Recall that non-Izala young girls who wish to appear

stylish and respectable occasionally donhijabai11 that, largely because they

are imported rom Nigeria, are no longer associated with antiashion, butwork instead as signs o cosmopolitanism, as well as expressions o piety. In

Izala households, wives might be using the veil as a coveror anti-Muslim

undertakings, perhaps. Indeed, it is not unheard o or Izala women to engage

in activities no proper Muslim woman would ever consider engaging in (such

as selling ood in the marketplace) simply because thehijabi they wrap them-

selves in enshrouds them in respectability. What it does not do, however, is

ully hide their identities, as some o my non-Izala riends once implied with

a chuckle when they recounted to me how one o our neighbors, a young Izala

woman living in semiseclusion, had been thoroughly beaten by her husbandater men reported seeing her (I suspect that they recognized her purple veil)

trading items at the Friday market in the town o Dogondoutchi.

Similarly, i the Veiled She-Devil could hide (at least, momentarily)

her ugly hooves thanks to her veil, it was paradoxically that very disguise

that distinguished her rom other spirits and contributed to her notoriety in


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Zinder and beyond. While thehijabi provided a kind o sartorial alibi that

legitimized the spirits presence in public places by oering the portable

orm o seclusion that many Muslim women value, it conerred on its wearer

such instant recognitionhow oten does one see a veiled spirit?that indi-

viduals looking to pull tricks could now pass as the spirit just by wearing awhite veil. One could almost say that by using an element o womens garb

that is encoded not just as emale, but as Muslim, the spirit was in eect

cross-dressinga sartorial move that is not without consequences.

Drawing on the work o Marjorie Garber, who sees cross-dressing as a

challenge to comortable notions o binarity, gendered and otherwise, I want

to consider briefy how the concept o the transvestite, which unctions

to indicate the place o the category crisis (Garber 1992:28), is suitably

exemplied by the Veiled She-Devil. By adopting a veil and hiding behind

it, the spirit eected multiple vestimentary transgressions: in addition topretending to be human (something that many spirits do when they do not

alternatively penetrate a human orm to momentarily become feshy), she

violated normative boundaries o religious identication by claiming to be

Muslim. As the pagan bush spirit who dressed in the shroud o Islamic

piety and as the embodiment o that which overfows a boundary, she

thus became the uncanny supplement (Garber 1992:28) that mark[ed] the

space o possibility structuring and conounding culture (Garber 1992:28).

Gender, I would argue, is a crucial dimension o the kind o trans-

vestism which the spirit can be said to have engaged in. While male spiritdevotees routinely adopt the babban riga (a cumbersome and elaborately

embroidered gown), which marks one as Muslim and bestows upon its

wearer the prestige associated with Islam, womens dress was, until the

adoption o thehijabi by Izala women, ar less indicative o their religious

allegiance. Thus, while it was until recently practically impossible to tell

a emale bori devotee rom a Muslim woman by inspecting her attire (or

one thing, both wore headscarves), it became possible to dierentiate Izala

women rom other womenwhether they be spirit mediums, traditionalist

Muslims, or Christianswhen the ormer started wearing thehijabi. Thesedress codes and the distinctions they articulated were abruptly disrupted

with the appearance o the Veiled She-Devil, however. Having previously

unctioned as the denitional element o emale Izala sartorial identity,

the veil now became the index o the destabilization wrought by the cross-

dressing spirit. Now that pagan gures looked like pious Muslims, the

veil could no longer remain the distinctive eature that once identied

Izala women or what they were: modest, devout, honorable ollowers o

the Prophet. By borrowing the most visible sign o Izala-ness and making it

her own, the Veiled She-Devil rendered emale reormists illegible whileinsuring her own distinctiveness as a spirit.

A consequence o the kind o vestimentary border crossing that the

Veiled She-Devil engaged in during the summer o 2003 is that one kind o

crisis category pregures, even provokes another. To transgress against

one set o boundaries, Garber points out in a discussion o class and gender,


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is to call into question the inviolability o both, and o the set o social

codes . . . by which such categories [are] policed and maintained (1992:32).

The veiled spirits crossing o the animist-Muslim boundary inevitably

crosse[d] into another (Garber 1992:28), as the categories o gender and

ontology which appeared to contain and to regulate religious identity were,in turn, interrogated by it. As she transgressed the sartorial boundaries that

distinguished animists rom Muslims, she undermined other previously

secure gendered and ontological distinctions: men, eager to take advantage

o a credulous population, thus appeared in the streets o Zinder dressed

as girls while pretending to be the Veiled She-Devil. Using the space o

possibility opened up by the tranvestite spirit, these pranksters were ur-

ther destabilizing binarisms (male/emale, human/spirit) that unctioned

as central axes o the local socio-moral order. As transvestite themselves,

they signaled, through their transgression, not simply the blurring o certaincategorical boundaries, but the blurred boundary o categoryitsel (Garber

1992). That categories were in crisis became more palpably apparent with the

emergence o various, oten contradictory, discourses, on the radio and else-

where, ollowing the nocturnal sightings o the spirit. Aside rom violating

human space and prompting commentaries about where spirits came rom,

the Veiled She-Devil incited urious speculations about the slipperiness o

religious (some veil to demonstrate piety while others veil to prevent yet

others rom being pious) as well as gendered (not only women but men as

well dress as women) categories.

Testing the Limits of Piety nd Morlity

In the context o these slippages and o the anxieties they generated, there

remained one element o constancy: mens alleged unaithulness. At a time

when the distinctions between spirits and people, Muslims and animists,

women and men threatened to ade, male indelities provided the amiliar,

steady, and gender-specic ingredient o genuine manhood. Men, it is widelyacknowledged, cheat on their wivesa situation that elicits routine condem-

nation rom Muslim preachers during sermons. Signicantly, i some men

were momentarily tempted to engage in the illicit pleasures oered by the

seductive aljana, none was known to have taken the baitand this is why

they had managed to escape alive. As I already noted, spiritual seductresses

who satisy their carnal appetite by having sex with men are legion in the

local imaginary. At once beautiul and dreadul, they are said to drain their

victims o their strength and lie ater their sexual encounters. Though they

look harmless, they are nevertheless ruthless: once they have hooked aman, it is generally impossible or the victim to extricate himsel rom his

enchantresss clutches.12

The Veiled She-Devil, however, did not look harmless. There was

apparently something ominous (or uncanny) about her making hersel sexu-

ally available to total strangers, and as a result, she became immediately


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suspect to the men she propositioned. By almost instantly rightening

potentially adulterous husbands into discontinuing their philandering (and

encouraging even those she did not meet to do the same), she kept men at

home, under their wives surveillance. That numerous Zinderoises sup-

ported her tactics is thereore hardly surprising. As wives orced perhaps toendure the promiscuity o disloyal husbands, they saw her as a potential ally,

which could straighten men out and return them to their proper mates.

No doubt because they perceived her activity as cleansing rather than pollut-

ing, they welcomed the presence o the spirit in the streets o Zinder. Rather

than embodying the kind o unettered sexuality that reormist preachers

associate with non-Muslims or bad Muslims, she ended up promoting or

these women the very values (sexual restraint, marital delity, and so on)

that Izala leaders had aggressively been championing. It is perhaps no wonder

then that the same reormists accused the spirit o scaring women intonot wearing veils. Only by classiying her as a ake, intent upon discredit-

ing Islam, could they reject her as a non-Muslim creature, with whom they

need not bother.

Despite their eorts, the Veiled She-Devil was not perceived by all as

antithetical to Islam, and it is precisely her enigmatic nature and ambiguous

demeanor (Was she a true Muslim? Did she approach men only to scare

them into going home?) that set tongues wagging in Zinder and warranted

a detailed account in one o the countrys most widely read newspapers.

In an age o renewed Muslim anxiety about moral corruption and ungen-erative sexuality, she oered Zinderois concrete means o pondering not

just womens needs to veil or rights to enter public spaces, but emininity

and emale power more generally. Whether she sought solace in the dark

alleys o Zinder, pursued revenge or the loss o her home, or chased men

o the streets to cleanse the city o its moral contamination, she spoke to

all, regardless o their religious persuasions. As the epitome o the sexually

voracious emale bent on destroying her human would-be partners, she not

only dramatically instantiated the ears that surrounded emale sexuality in

contemporary Niger: she became the authorizing point or addressing theplace and powers o women in society.

Among Hausaphone communities such as Zinder, women are expected

to marry early and bear numerous children, their virtuous ertility ideally

circumscribed within the protective mud walls o the marital compound.

Women o reproductive age whose sexuality is not regulated by marriage or

who display too much autonomy are widely suspect o engaging in prostitu-

tion. Indeed, the prostitute gures prominently in popular representations

o the moral threats currently endangering Nigrien society, its integrity,

and its reproductive potential (Masquelier 1995). As the symbol o an increas-ingly immoral economy, in which the commoditization o sexuality leads

to barrenness, disease, and death, the prostitute and her cohort o seductive

(human or spiritual) sisters are the antithesis o the virtuous Muslim wie,

whose pure, properly restrained, but productive body bespeaks societys

strictly dened morality.13


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Such gendered equations o unregulated sexuality with social disor-

der are neither new, nor unique to Nigrien society. In northern Thailand,

rumors o widow ghosts looking or men to kill and take as husbands

fourished in 1990. Emerging when patterns o generational authority and

gender-role expectations became undermined by labor migrations, thismoral panic had much to do with peoples ambivalence toward national-

ist discourses on development and social change (Mills 1995). Though the

Moroccan she-demon Asha Qandisha occasionally looks like an old hag

with pendulous breasts, she takes on the appearance o a beautiul woman

when she wishes to seduce a man. Unless he quickly plunges a steel knie

into the earth, the victim is powerless against her seductive powers; like

the Veiled She-Devil, she is endowed with camel (or donkey) eet, which

she invariably hides under a fowing catan (Crapanzano 1973). These

similarities alone are suggestive o the ways in which images are borrowedrom other places or pantheons so that spirits may play with images o

alterity and translate the oreign into the recognizably other. In northern

Sudan, beautiul prostitute spirits emerge in the context o zar ceremonies

to comment provocatively on all that a Muslim wie should not be: they

are southerners, pagan, uncircumcised beings who use [their] sexuality

inappropriately and immorally, or personal gain (Boddy 1989:299). Like

the Moroccan seductress and the widow ghosts o northern Thailand, the

Sudanese prostitutes o the zar pantheon are the spectral maniestations

o widespread anxieties about womens sexuality. As personications othe condent, cunning, and lustul emale, who kills the men she sleeps

with, they speak to the dangers o emale sexuality that is not controlled

by an array o social, spatial, and sartorial practices centered on marriage

and maternity.

The Veiled She-Devil, too, personied the seductress who tempts

strangers into having sex with her, but she emerged as a more ambiguous

character. She played a double game, luring men with her beauty, only to

scare them into running home. Unlike spirits who undress to seduce their

prey (Masquelier 2005), she covered up. In doing so, she unveiled animportant dimension o the veilnamely, its appeal as a ashion statement

and a means to create the kind o respectability that makes Muslim women

attractive to potential husbands.14 Far rom constructing a woman as sexu-

ally unappealing, the veil marks her as desirable precisely because it signies

her inherent virtue. While it translates into unavailability, this very inac-

cessibility makes her appealing: she is pure, virtuous, and unspoiledand

thereore desirable (Mernissi [1957] 1987). She will make a suitable wie.

This paradox, which is at the heart o the veiling tradition, has little to do

with deception, though it does not prevent the veil rom simultaneouslyoperating as a cover or womens imperections, whether moral or physical.

In short, the veil is a useul element, which enhances a womans womanli-

ness by highlighting her moral, rather than her sexual, attributes. Young

women know this, and this is why many o them wear ahijabi when they

need to impress a potential suitor.


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By covering up, the Veiled She-Devil played with the ambiguities o the

veil. In so doing, she uncovered a wide deception, one linked to thehijabis

unction as a screen that oten cloaks impious selves. Let me explain. As

mentioned earlier, the wearing o thehijabi is no longer restricted to emale

members o Izala households, and even when it is, it sometimes ends upbeing more about concealment than modesty. Signicantly, hijabi wear-

ers are not always acting on their own when they decide to adopt a more

modest garb. Traditionalist clerics, who only a decade ago bitterly

criticized Izala womensheaddress, have recently come to recognize that the

hijabi is no longer necessarily synonymous with a strict reormist orienta-

tion, and that it might signiy piety in a more encompassing Muslim sense.

They have occasionally urged women to cover their heads and shoulders

under a veil to look more like the women o Mecca.

Meanwhile, ever since Izala women have appeared in public spaceswrapped in theirhijabai, some o their traditionalist counterparts have

disparaged them bitterly or hiding their not always honest intentions behind

a aade o pietyeven as they themselves adopt more conservative attire

intended to defect opprobrium. Nigrien women riends have pointed to

the ways that veiled women take advantage o the supposed anonymity o

the veil to engage in disreputable activities. I was once told that the junior

wie o an Izala businessman in the Hausa-speaking town o Dogondoutchi

had been seen selling cooked ood near the car park: the women who set up

ahotel [portable open air eatery] there, they are all prostitutes, my riendand neighbor Hassana, had concluded. Thehijabi, she implied, might be an

expression o pious modesty, but it was no guarantee o the purity o the

wearers character. In the same town, a highly controversial preacher o Nige-

rian origin had, since 1997, joined his persuasive voice to the chorus o critics

who poured scorn on Izala sartorial reorms. Thehijabi was pure hypocrisy,

he told me during a conversation we had in 2000: it enabled women to hide

their malevolent intentions behind a cover o virtue. Ever since the Prophet

was almost killed by a woman who carried a weapon under her veil, he

explained, the hijabi had been orbidden (haram). Though he advocatedthe wearing o a head covering or women, he insisted that such a covering

need not all ar below the shouldersit should shield womens charms, not

disguise their wickedness. In parodying virtuous Muslim womanhood while

acting as a prostitute (karuwai), the Veiled She-Devil thus used her own

deceptive dispositions to mimic the raudulent ways that the hijabi was

increasingly used to pretend, to conceal, but also to carve out newly cong-

ured expressions o morality and piousness. By taking on the mantle o piety

only to demonstrate how impious she remained beneath her coverup, she

denounced the hypocrisy o the veiland o Muslim sartorial practices thatenabled women to move undetected in the most public o spaces, enolding

them in a moral community they did not truly belong to.


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Conclusion

I there is a lesson to be learned rom the tale o the Veiled She-Devil, it

must certainly be that despite Izalas eorts to homogenize Islamic prac-

tice, local Muslim sensibilities remain haunted by a pre-Islamic imaginary,whose ghosts routinely inltrate ongoing debates about women, their roles

as repositories o Islamic morality, and their representations in the public

sphere. Far rom waning under the impact o Islamic revivals, iconic gures

o the indigenous past turn out to be well entrenched in Muslim spaces

especially since the emergence o decentralized, private media. While her

rightul presence evoked an era in which spirits roamed the earth undis-

turbed by roads, urbanization, and electricity, the Veiled She-Devil should

not be seen as the rozen remnant o some animist past, however. As a

syncretic orm, born at the interace o two supposedly distinct traditions,she momentarily highlighted the extent to which Islam and spirit-centered

practices are part o a larger set o intersecting, oten dissonant, and rarely

totally consistent discourses. Operating in the murky space between raud

and ear, she exemplied how local eorts to purge Islam rom animism

have concealed the multiple points o intersection between these institu-

tions and produced uncanny hybridsseemingly Muslim, yet not Muslim.

Because she was Muslim only in appearance, she could reveal through her

artul deception the contradiction o the iconoclasm that had produced her

in the rst place. Piety, she showed, can be more a matter o pretense thanaith. By wearing a veil that concealed more than it should have at the same

time that it parodied the dissimulation enacted by seemingly pious women,

she challenged the moral legitimacy o public expressions o piety. As a

hallmark o overdetermination that underminded categorical boundaries,

she ultimately highlighted the cultural constructedness o identities, thereby

setting in motion a debate about the authenticity o these identities. Like

the transvestite described by Garber, she was both terriying and seductive

precisely because [she] incarnat[ed] and emblematiz[ed] the disruptive ele-

ment that interven[ed], signaling not just another category crisis, butmuchmore disquietinglya crisis o category itsel (1992:32).

AcknoWledgeMentS

rsa s ssay as b a s 1988, s by awas m naa

S Fa, naa is Ma ha, a W-g Fa

o Athoooa reseah; a eowsh om the Aa Stues cete, lee/cete Aq n, Bax; a llwss m tla uvsy. A vs s

ssay was s a 2004 Aa Ss Assa aa m nw oas, as

a a a isam ba Aa. i am a Bjam Sas a Ma na-

a lBa az a a rb laay sv mms

as a sssa. t a was als s a 2004 Symsm cmay


23/28


60

africaToDay54(3)

psvs Ay, az by Ba Wss gv, caa. i am a

aas, say Msy Basa, Ja cma, la ha, a Ba Wss,

vaab sss. A smwa vs was s dam

Aly a clmba uvsy. i ally akwl ll mms i v

m a. Ma naa lBa a Bjam Sas v m aabak. Fally, aks s Arica Todaya w ayms vws

vaab a .

noteS

Izala1. s s Jamaa izaa a-Ba wa iama a-Sa (Mvm Sss

ivas a rs Sa). i fs m 1970s na ss v xsss qayya a tjayya bs. is am was

aa syz abs a, aas Msms a m a ma

a s as Ws asm. i s bam a s mv-

m, am a ma wa a sy a a v xavaa s a

ss sy (s gw 1999; g 1993; gm 1992; ka 1994; lm

1997; uma 1993).

As w sa s, s bw ms mmbs izaa a aas (2.

s-a Sf) Msms s smwa bma, as aay as mx,

a a ms a sb, ss a a bw, b as w,vas s ams. i y assms a izaa assa a Sf s a

ml ss, ws vals a sa amsly by a ms mmbs.

S a ss a ss y v by ns, ass

s as v a.

S My a pss3. Magic and Modernity(2003) sm s aayss w, a m

av b m mysa ms, my vyw s y w

w ma a mv.

Bas i asa a m F, i a yaa4.

s. i av ss b as a as ssb as sy w.ts a s a by ms Msms w, s x y5.

isam a isam bass ns aa , am a aay 100

a s Msm (s na-Sy a Azma 1996).

t a isam s n w ms svav saas msy 6.

ma mmbs a j m v as a ss. i d,

a hasa w sm 38,000 , Sf a js s ws wa

a w v a s sy ( sy, js ) m hijabia fs

wa as a mmb izaa assa. i as w yas, wv, w saa

s av ma s bw hijabia ms isam, as i by s ssay.

F m 7. bori, s Bsm 1983; a 1991a, 1991b; Mas 1995, 2002a; Ma-

nas 1972; owjw 1969; tma 1914.

i av b s by Mss sl aalyss mms tala (2000).8.

i b, In the Place o Origins, Ms ms vva a mms s jy


24/28

AdelineMASquelier

61

africaToDay54(3)

y ca Ma. S sws a w s vva was ab by aa

saza mms mas, mza mms as

may a a w maay (a a as) ym

s mass ma a av ma wa a as ssb.

pmsy sx s zms ably by Mslm as w sms9.a a y s a mmayb isam mass ma as-

y mss a m s ss ma mas a ma mas.

Whe izaa eahes meto the st-etee ates o10. bori attoes the

sms, s y f m as a a a m w Msms av

m.

Hijabai11. s a m hijabi.

o l, s, am s a a, as as b ss m, s12.

m (a a wm) as ss mal a. A all, s y w a

als s w s. A , sm wm ak avaa mala ss a vl ss wl ssa m m wa w a

ak a. t s ms sly as a mmay ms als, wv, s

s sy sas wm as m wkss a mmaly. nw

m a v n, wm, a la mas a a assa w m, av

m f mal mmy all s ay mss (s gl 2002).

i am say a s fs as a13. newx mmay, a s ay

as: i am ss, sa, a as a ay mx a w,

Mslm a kafri, s k a a lva x bas ab

sas wm isam sy.i am b ayms vws s s.14.

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Mas, A. 1992. e w a ra S: Mas, Bs, a cmms

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p - ISSN 1935-8644e - ISSN 1935-8562

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When Spirits Start Veiling: The Case of the Veiled She-Devil in a Muslim Town of Niger