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This paper discusses the way in which listening to sermon is perceived not only as a learning experience (kara ilimi, in Hausa), but also as an aesthetic moment. It focuses on the lived experiences of young Muslims who engage in the popularization of the Sunna (tradition of the Prophet Muhammad), an act many equate to a religious obligation. The paper analyzes how in a salafi context, youth mobilize listening and hearing as instances of religious experience. Aesthetic may not be viewed as epistemic, but in this case, young Muslims clearly make a connection between the cognitive and the bodily experiences as they seek to make the self available to the Sunna. How knowledge is lived and could be theorized in this context is a question that will be central to my discussion. I argue that in order to understand current appropriations of Salafism in West Africa, we need to go beyond its dismissing of the body and claims of rationality, and pay attention to the ways in which Salafi practices reintroduce other aesthetic modes. In that sense, Salafi epistemology produces its own aesthetic as it relies on the body and the beauty of the sermon, but also on the listening moment. The presentation is based on materials I collected in Niger during a series of fieldwork I conducted among young Salafi, mainly in Niamey, a city where Salafism has been instrumental in reforming Muslim aesthetic sensibilities, intellectual practices and epistemic horizons.

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