Senegal is a major center of West African Islam, and its imams, mullah, and brotherhoods are influential across the Sahel. The holy city of Touba, 120 miles east of the Senegalese capital of Dakar, is the site of a major annual pilgrimage called the Magal

Nigerians like to say that they are the world's happiest people and the most religious. The basis of their happiness, they go on to say in the face of poor well-being statistics (such as one of the highest levels of maternal mortality), is religion.

This update represents violence in Nigeria and related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger from August 10 to 16, 2019.

The interview—Falmata’s first—took place in the village of Shekau in Yobe state. VOA notes the village’s isolation and how villagers avoid mentioning it is the birthplace of Abubakar Shekau.

In countries where corruption has become “structural,” distorting much of daily life, it can assume very localized forms. A petition by thirty-two imams, deputy imams, and muezzins of certain mosques…