The Journal of Religion 178 potent manner. His desire to maintain the development of Santerı ´a as a pro- cess versus a collection of static essences is fundamental to understanding the true nature of this religion and can serve as a model for religious studies. The text can be, however, at times highly theoretical, and the author’s presentation of Santerı ´a is on occasion eclipsed by the academic concerns and debates of his field. In addition, while Brown notes the importance of gender in his conclu- sion, his study would have been further enhanced by the inclusion of a sus- tained gender analysis throughout the text. Also, while Brown is to be com- mended by his depiction of the “local histories” of Santerı ´a, one can appreciate that locality only in light of the broader historical narrative of race and religion in Cuba. Nonetheless, this is an excellent book, one that is sure to become a classic in the field of Afro-Cuban studies. Brown’s text forces scholars in the United States and Latin America to question the boundaries that are drawn between African, black, Latin American, and La- tino/a studies, demonstrating the intersection and unity of these races and cultures within Santerı ´a. This book is essential reading for scholars of reli- gion and theologians who explore religion in the Americas in its various forms and locations. MICHELLE A. GONZALEZ, Loyola Marymount University. KANE,OUSMANE. Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria: A Study of the Society for the Removal of Innovation and Reinstatement of Tradition. Leiden: Brill, 2003. xxi+283 pp. $92.00 (cloth). The argument that Islamist movements are modern and technologically pro- gressive has been central in recent studies of Islam. Ousmane Kane stands in this tradition, arguing that the Islamist movement Izala (the society mentioned in the title) mediates social and religious change and represents the modern- izing (not backward) side of Nigerian Islam. His work enters into a crowded field in the scholarship on religion and politics in northern Nigeria. The out- lines of the story are well known: in the 1970s Izala rose under the charismatic direction of Sheikh Abubakar Gumi; to do so, it drew upon the new bureau- crats and military officers of postcolonial Nigeria, and through this it devel- oped a Wahhabi-oriented Islam attacking local forms of Sufism while intensi- fying connections to the wider Muslim world. According to Kane, Izala’s aims were at once theological and political. The- ologically its members argued that practices of possession in Sufism repre- sented shirk (a denial of the oneness of God) and were wholly un-Islamic (chap. 5), and, further, they argued against the dependence on sheikhs and in favor of a greater reliance on studying the primary sources of Islamic law: the Qur’an and hadith. They denounced Sufis politically as rich materialists aligned with corrupt royal authorities and agitated for religious and political reform of the traditional aristocratic system that prevailed in the north and ultimately for the institution of an Islamic state. So far this argument is well known, but Kane brings both methodological and theoretical innovation to his analysis. He takes on the enduring dichot- omy in studies of Islam that contrasts the modernity of Islamism with the backwardness of Sufism and situates the discussion of modern Islam solely among anti-Sufi movements. In this narrative, Islamic practice in Nigeria,