We Belong Here, Too

Theoretically premised on the ideology that stresses, as the theorists cited above have forthrightly argued, the urgent need to respect the specificity ot women's social, familial, religious, caste, class, and economic conditions and situations in Africa, this analysis will also reveal the ways in which African feminist theories harbor an inherent bias against Islam. The fact that women are encouraged by men can be traced back to the contributions of the legendary Muslim leader, scholar, and founder of the Sokoto Caliphate in northern Nigeria, Uthman dan Fodio.40 In establishing Islam as the all-encompassing institution in northern Nigeria, dan Fodio encouraged men to teach their wives and children so that all women could receive an education, Contcxtualizing the men's role in supporting women within the sphere of Islamic history in northern Nigeria also provides a different perspective from the one proposed earlier by Ohaeto in his analysis of Alkali's works, insofar as it is possible to see Nana Ai's grandfather and AJiyu as bearers of an ideology already in place rather than one to be implemented, as suggested by Ohaeto, Otherwise stated, the open-mindedness of the men in Alkali's novels is presented not as an example of how things should be for women's freedom in a "stifling" atmosphere, as suggested by Ohaeto, but as an example of how things already are and have been since they were instituted a century ago by Muslim reformers such as Uthman dan Fodio.