ABSTRACT
The author's objective is to study how a set of related political ideologies, born of the peculiar histories of Islamisation and colonisation in the Sahel-Sudan, endeavour to transform state and society in that region by resorting to methods of persuasion and of violence. Until the intense fractures of Europe's cultural and social homogeneities caused in the 16th century society was religious across Europe. There is a general sense that the evolutions that led to Sharia becoming, in Northern Nigeria, a system of positive law to be administered by state organisations are not in themselves puzzling. The state, in all five countries, can be understood as the transformation of the colonial regime through the acquisition of sovereignty. The oldest Islamic sociological base in Sahel-Sudan was the clerical community. Most of the literature assumes that Islamisation in the Sahel-Sudan was a gradual process that commenced early on in the history of the faith around the 8th century and that grew over time.
