The Bloomsbury Handbook of Muslims and Popular Culture: An Endorsement
By Abdalla Uba Adamu
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I had no inkling that I was getting this wonderful book when I received a DHL notification last week that my parcel from MacMillan publishers UK was on its way and would arrive Wednesday 18th October. It did, while I was in class.
Opening the padded envelope was this absolutely smashing book, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Muslims and Popular Culture. I was a bit puzzled at receiving it because I know I did not have a chapter in the book. It was while looking at the BACK of the book (blurb) that I saw my endorsement/review of the book which I was asked by the publishers to do. This was what I wrote:
“This book has shifted the goals of cultural studies from their evolutionary statis to a revolutionary fervor in which popular culture is interrogated not only in diverse Muslim cultures, but also in many forms and meanings. It truly puts the studies of Muslim popular culture on a new terrain in its varied approaches. It is a welcome, and certainly fresh, addition to the field.”
For these sentences I was dashed a copy of the $175 book. The most significant aspect of the book for me was the chapter by Muhsin Ibrahim, “Kannywood: An Embattled Hausa Film Industry in “Muslim Northern” Nigeria (pp. 249-260). It is a wonderful that our scholars are getting noticed and published internationally, and this is definitely a source of pride. Congratulations to Muhsin Ibrahim on this achievement.
Now, before anyone goes asking, it is out on 19th October 2023. There IS a PDF copy available at $157.50, which is almost ₦150,000. Tab! wannan ai sai manyan likitoci irin su Muhammad S Balogun, Shamsuddeen Sani. It’d take a long long time to reach Acibilisburg and Acibilistan, if at all.
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Prof. Abdalla, a scholar par excellence was a former Vice Chancellor of NOUN.
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