DATE=3/3/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=NIGERIA / SHARIA
NUMBER=5-45572
BYLINE=WILLIAM EAGLE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
NOT VOICED:
INTRO: Islamic law - or Sharia - has been suspended
in several northern states of Nigeria after days of
violent protests against the law that resulted in many
deaths. The violence began after a demonstration by
Christians against the introduction of Islamic law in
the state of Kaduna. Nigeria's Supreme Court is
expected to rule on whether the country's secular
constitution permits any of Nigeria's 36 states to
adopt Sharia. It's not clear when that decision will
come - or whether it will end the controversy. VOA's
William Eagle spoke with some Nigeria watchers about
the Sharia issue and has this report.
TEXT: Muslims say there's nothing to worry about -
that Islamic law would apply only to Muslims.
Abdulateef Adegbite [pron. ab-doo-lah-TEEF ah-DEG-bee-
tay] is the secretary-general of the Nigerian Supreme
Council for Islamic Affairs. He spoke with VOA from
his home in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
Mr. Adegbite expressed surprise that the adoption of
the Sharia's criminal code would upset non-Muslims.
/// ADEGBITE ACT ///
Sharia has always been with us in Nigeria for
more than a thousand years; it predated the
British colonial period and Christianity. So it
is not true that it has just been introduced.
What has happened is that Sharia is being
enlarged in some states and extended into some
areas (of criminal law), but I've made
it abundantly clear that the
laws will only apply to Muslims,
and not non-Muslims.
/// END ACT ///
Scholars note that Nigeria's Muslims have adhered to
parts of Sharia for many years. Sharia courts have
long been used to settle family matters - like divorce
and inheritance issues. But it is not this part of
Sharia that worries non-Muslims, or those who prefer a
clearer separation of religion and government. The
Muslim governors of several states in the north want
the enactment of the Sharia's criminal code - which
can include the amputation of limbs for stealing, or
flogging for adultery.
(OPT) Since the enactment of the Sharia as a criminal
code in Zamfara State a few months ago, several people
have been punished: one man was flogged for having
extramarital sex, another for drinking beer, and
motorbike taxi operators have been jailed for carrying
women as passengers. (END OPT)
Shortly after Nigeria's independence, the country's
penal code was formed in consultation with Muslim and
non-Muslim legal scholars. Under the new code,
Sharia-based punishments - like amputations and
flogging - were replaced with other penalties, such as
increased prison time.
For the time being, northern governors have agreed to
return to the post-independence system of law that was
in place before the Sharia controversy began. This
system also included some aspects of Sharia law,
though not those sections that called for punishments
considered inhumane in the West. /// OPT /// As
Nigeria's Muslim vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, told
reporters this week, Sharia has been a part of
Nigeria's legal system since independence, and should
not be blamed for the current crisis. He confirmed
that the states which are for now suspending the
harsher aspects of Sharia are returning to laws that
were nevertheless based on Islamic ideas of justice.
// END OPT //
The controversy over Sharia in Nigeria breaks down
along ethnic as well as religious lines. Hausa-
speaking Muslims in the north support Sharia, and it
is opposed by the largely Christian Yoruba and Igbo
communities. Many of the Christians are traders who
live in some of the north's largest cities, like Kano
and Kaduna.
One person who has seen the turmoil between the
different ethnic groups up close is Mohammed Salih.
He's a Sudanese Muslim now working with the Institute
of Social Studies in the Hague (the Netherlands).
Professor Salih has seen similar violence in his own
country, where there's a civil war between a largely
Muslim north and a predominantly Christian and animist
South. He is concerned that the same thing might
happen in northern Nigeria:
/// OPT: SALIH ACT ///
I am very pessimistic about northern Nigeria. I
was there during Muslim-Christian confrontations
in 1987 and 1988 [when] I was at Amadou Bello
University in Zaria. I saw more than 25
churches burned in front of my eyes. I was
supposed to give a lecture on the dangers of
Islamic fundamentalism giving them the case of
Sudan and that Nigeria should never go [in that
direction]. My lecture was cancelled; I was
escorted (home) by the police and could not go
to the university for a whole week; Muslim
fundamentalist mobs were looking for me.
/// END ACT /// // END OPT ///
Professor Salih sees the recent violence in Nigeria as
part of a pattern of attacks against southern
immigrants - mostly ethnic Igbo and Yoruba.
He believes northern conservative Muslims are behind
the tension. He says elections have weakened their
hold over the nation - control that was guaranteed for
most of the past 40 years by northern military
dictators. That ended last year with the election of
former General Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner and a
Christian. Professor Salih says some in the north are
said to blame southerners living in the region for
helping bring moderates like Mr. Obasanjo to power.
Others say northerners who initially favored Mr.
Obasanjo now believe he has given too much power to
the south.
/// OPT /// Professor Salih also questions the timing
of the Sharia controversy. He says northern
politicians did not push for the enactment of the
Sharia's criminal provisions during Nigeria's long
years of military dictatorship, nor under the brief
civilian administration of Shehu Shagari - a northern
Muslim who ruled in the early 1980's. /// END OPT ///
For Professor Salih, today's Sharia controversy is a
way for northern conservatives to de-stabilize the
Obasanjo government and the threat that democracy
brings to their traditional hold on power.
/// SALIH ACT ///
My point is that in 1970 there were riots with
southerners thrown out of the north - [in
effect] de-populating northern Nigeria so
democracy and elections [would not] change the
political map of [the country]. [This]
happened in 1965 - in events leading up to the
[separatist] Biafran war; also, in 1972, 1985,
and when I was there in 1988. It is difficult
to prove, but I can see some of the events of
the past week as a pattern of de-populating
northern Nigeria [of non-Muslim immigrants].
When you create a democratic system, it is a
gamble. Those strong Muslim elites who amass
wealth from oil can rig elections once, or two
or three times, but not forever. A new system
of global governance - including international
election observers - will make this difficult
for this group of people to rig elections and to
do business as usual.
/// OPT /// At the helm of politics in northern
Nigeria, is the [ethnic] Hausa-Fulani alliance
of the well-to-do and upper middle class. These
are people in universities, in mosques, part of
the Nigerian establishment with big [ethnic
quotas] in the army - and who always frustrate
[efforts to take a fair population] census in
Nigeria. This - so they can claim the north has
a higher population in the south, [thereby]
keeping a [higher quota of northerners in the
army.] These are the people who are going to
lose if Obasanjo and others who are moderate
[succeed in building a secular state]. // END
OPT ///
/// END ACT ///
Some say the violence over Sharia is not based on
religion - but on economics.
John Voll is deputy director at the Center for Muslim-
Christian Understanding in Washington, D-C. He blames
the Sharia turmoil on years of military rule that kept
Muslims from asserting their own interests.
/// VOLL ACT //
Conditions were unpredictable and (it was)dangerous to
express an opinion that affirmed an identity that was
not in accord with what the military thought was
appropriate. And this [violence today] is partially a
consequence of the relaxation of authoritarian control
[after last year's elections]. I think that the
break-down of inter-communal relations exhibited in
the recent days in Kaduna and other areas of Nigeria
has some real similarities to inter-communal relations
in Bosnia as the former Yugoslavia began to collapse.
You had a combination of economic tensions working
with a relaxation of long-standing authoritarian
control. This opened the way for new tensions that
had long been building.
/// END ACT ///
For some, the loosening of authoritarian controls is
allowing Nigerian Muslims to catch up with changes
happening elsewhere in the Islamic world - including
in Iran and Afghanistan, whose leaders are guided by a
scripturalist, or literalist, view of Islam.
William Miles is a professor of political science and
religion at Northeastern University in Boston.
/// MILES ACT ///
I look more toward the international dimension
of Islam and in the last two decades greater
consciousness belonging to a greater wider
Islamic world. [Nigerian Muslims] are looking
at Islam in Iran and Sudan and other countries
that have been changing their legal systems to
confirm to religious [sharia] law. There is a
desire to integrate into the global Islamic
world. Nigerian Muslims are trying to catch up
[with the revolutionary Islamic politics of] a
generation ago, even though those states [such
as Iran] are now having to balance [some of] the
fundamental changes they instituted long before.
/// END ACT ///
Others note that countries like Iran or Afghanistan
are not divided almost equally between Muslims and
non-Muslims, as is Nigeria. Analysts point out that
in Iran and Afghanistan, interpretation of Islamic law
does not call into question what it means to be
Iranian or Afghani. Some Nigerians fear that separate
legal systems would keep people apart in a country
working to pull itself together. (Signed)
NEB/WE/KL
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03-Mar-2000 15:45 PM EDT (03-Mar-2000 2045 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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