In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture.

When I would ask women to tell me landays, and they were comfortable enough to do so, they'd tell me ones that reflected the state of their own lives.

I was examining what religious identity meant in Africa. Along the edge of the Islamic world, what patterns were shaping identity? And the truth is, when I looked at the rise of violent forms of religion, no single identity was prevalent. It's central to note that in Nigeria, that tree is rooted primarily in Christianity. It's not just Islamic militants in the Middle Belt.

One of the things about landays is that they thrive in a modern context. Early on I went to this incredible Pashtun novelist, Mustafa Salik, who is a bestselling novelist in Afghanistan and works for the BBC in Pashto. With the question of the sanctity of the poems in mind, I asked him, "Aren't you worried? They've been posted on Facebook and such." And he said, "Just the opposite. This is a folk form; they survive and thrive as people share them."

In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture.

We know what war means, and we know what poverty means. We need to develop a better model for reaching out to the world than we have.

Islam doesn't have a monopoly on violence in Africa. And violence plays a particularly critical role in places where statehood is weak at best, such as the Maghreb.