Islam and Visual Culture: Sharia Implementation and Cinema as Visual Management in Nigeria

Human experience is more visual and visualized than ever before. This has been obvious in Africa since the 1990s, when democratization, media liberalization, proliferation of small technology, and religious reform movements introduced new ways of meaning-making. Ibrahim’s ethnographic research shows how sharia implementation and cinema as cultural production in northern Nigeria are embedded within the implicit and explicit visual regime of influencing what and how people see, think, and perform. The strategic replacement of cinemas with religious or other “neutral” objects is a visual regime that shifts people’s vision or encounter from one means of cultural production to another.