Stoning Modernity: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam
By
Okezie Chukwumerije
Time
has a way of legitimizing all manner of human practices, which if they were
newly invented would cause outrage.
Ian Buruma
I
love my aunts who were born twins. They are wise and worldly, and reassuringly
comforting at those times when the daily grind of life weighs heavily on my
shoulders. I adore them, and so do my relatives. Strange then to realize that
had they been born several decades earlier, they would have been wasted at
birth. For in my culture the birth of twins used to be considered a sacrilege
and twins were consequently put to death at birth. To give birth to twins was to
offend the gods; killing the twins appeased the gods and averted their
vengeance. At the time no one doubted that killing twins was the right thing to
do. It was a religious dictate, after all. A way of staying in accord with the
gods. Like those who shouted “Allahu
Akbar” when Amina Lawal’s death sentence for committing adultery was
affirmed, inhabitants of my village must also have celebrated when twins were
put to death. Happily, for my twin aunts and for those of us who have had the
joy and the privilege of knowing them, the civilizing conscience of modern
society had swept away before their birth the odious practice of killing twins.
Unhappily for Amina Lawal, and for those who consider her amorous activities a
private matter between her and her God, the fundamentalist strand of the
Nigerian Moslem population continues to reject the modernizing effect of
liberalism and the distinction between private and public morality.
We
owe to modernism and its enlightenment project our freedom from the bondage of
tradition and history. The age of enlightenment, which was founded on reason,
science, and respect for humanity, led to humanity’s emergence from millennia
of darkness and ignorance. Where humanity was previously bound hand and foot by
tradition and religion, modernism, with its emphasis on rationality based on
experience and observation, liberated humanity. With modernism arose the desire
to question, evaluate and reexamine received ideas and values, against the
background of human experience, human reason, and human goals. No longer were
historical texts, like the Bible, the Koran, and the writing of ancient
philosophers, considered indisputable sources of immutable human values; the
texts were a source of truth, but so too were human reason and evolving human
experience. Modernism did not lead to an abandonment of religion or religious
values. Modernism’s major accomplishment was to give us the tools with which
to analyze tradition and received religious values, and with which to
reconceptualize them in the context of our lived experiences as a community of
rational beings.
Another
important contribution of modernism was the creation of liberalism, a philosophy
that emphasizes individual liberty, autonomy, and agency. Freed from the
shackles of tradition and received values, each society was liberated to choose
for itself the values and principles to guide its members. Furthermore,
modernist thinkers like John Locke and Mill highlighted the need for individual
freedom and liberty in a society of reason. Individuals were seen as having some
inalienable rights in virtue of their standing as human beings. They could
exercise their liberty and autonomy so long as they did not cause harm to
another. It is within this tradition of liberalism, an admittedly western
tradition, that contemporary fundamental rights and freedoms – of worship, of
speech, of assembly, etc – were theorized.
Liberalism
has also given us the public/private distinction. This distinction delimits the
permissible scope of state regulation of individual behavior and actions. Within
the public realm, the state can regulate the actions and conduct of individuals.
For example, in most countries the activities of individuals while driving
vehicles are considered to be within the public realm. Consequently, the state
regulates matters relating to the operation of motor vehicles, such as speed
limits, vehicle registration, and issuance of driving licenses. In contrast,
actions or activities within the private realm are considered private to the
individual and free from state regulation. The private sphere is an arena where
the individual is free from government control, regulation, or intervention; it
is an arena where he can be free to do as he wishes, accountable only to his
conscience and to his God. The boundary between the public and the private is a
heavily contested political issue, and the demarcation remains dynamic in
most societies. For example, domestic violence used to be considered a private
matter and most societies did not criminalize it. However, the educational
effect of modern feminism has led to the reevaluation of the issue, and domestic
violence is now one of the most policed issues in modern societies. Regarding
the contested boundary between the public and the private spheres, the important
thing to note is that in all liberal democracies the drawing of the boundary is
a political, not a religious, matter. In liberal societies, it is the state, not
religious groups or religious texts, that decides which activities or behavior
ought to be regulated.
Most
liberal societies are secular societies: they separate the state from religion.
Freedom of worship is one of the core freedoms in liberal societies. Individuals
are free to practice any religion of their choice and the state cannot
improperly inhibit them in so doing. Furthermore, most liberal states do no
entangle themselves with religion: they largely distance themselves from
religious matters, neither inhibiting nor supporting the practice of particular
religions. The rationale is to prevent state action from directly or indirectly
inhibiting individual practice of faith. Britain is an aberration in this
regard; for historical reasons the Queen, at the recommendation of the Prime
Minister, selects the head of the Anglican Church. Nonetheless, in Britain, as
in other liberal societies, the state is not bound by religious texts; neither
can it improperly inhibit individual practice of religion.
The
1999 constitution is a liberal constitution. It guarantees basic rights and
freedoms to individuals, emphasizes human dignity and freedom, and enjoins the
state not to impede the exercise of constitutional rights and liberties, except
where to do so is consistent with democratic and liberal values. Freedom of
expression, religion, association, and assembly – the core freedoms in
liberalism – are enshrined in the constitution. The freedom of speech and the
freedom to practice ones religion implicitly acknowledge the public/private
distinction by suggesting that certain spheres of human activity are inherently
private and should, within limits, be free from governmental intervention and
regulation. Art 37 of the constitution
expressly recognizes this distinction by stipulating that the “privacy of
citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic
communications is hereby guaranteed and protected.”
It
is against this background that one can see how the fundamentalist project of
the radical wing of the Nigerian Moslem community undermines the promise of
modernism and the benefits of liberalism. This fundamentalist project is
designed first to blur and then to eliminate the distinction between state and
religion. The ultimate objective appears to be to Islamize the society and to
impose the Sharia legal system in all parts of the Moslem north.
I
should state that there is no problem with any religious group proselytizing in
any part of the country. Liberalism allows individuals and groups to practice
their faith and prevents the state from interfering with this activity. The
freedoms of religion, together with the freedom of expression, permit
individuals and groups to proselytize their faith in any part of the country. In
fact, the constitution expressly guarantees this right. The problem lies in
cases where individuals and groups in a multi-religious liberal society want to
foist their particular religion on the state and to use state institutions and
authority to enforce religious values.
In
evaluating the fundamentalist project, we should distinguish between Sharia
personal law and Sharia criminal or penal law. Sharia personal law, together
with customary law, has been recognized by successive Nigerian constitutions.
Personal law relates to such non-penal matters as inheritance, marriage, and
devolution of property. There is a case to be made for the reform of Sharia
personal law to bring it in line with contemporary standards. However, some
writers, such as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who has highlighted the debate between
modernity and tradition within Islam, have analyzed this issue with considerable
depth and discernment. [I strongly recommend Sanusi’s classic article on this
issue, “The Politicization of Ontological Questions: Discourses,
Subjectivities and Muslim Family Law in Nigeria,” available at jamji.com]. My
focus in this article is on Sharia penal law, and its effect on the liberal and
modernist values embodied in our constitution.
It
has been suggested that Islam is incompatible with liberalism. Here is what
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had to say on the issue: “The concept of a liberal state
that is ethically neutral and whose task is to create an environment in which
every citizen is free to pursue his/her moral preference without hindrance is
rejected by Islam. Islamic ethic is metaphysical and does not recognize multiple
versions of the truth.” If this is true, should we then give up on the idea of
living together is our multi-religious society? The moral neutrality of the
liberal state enables each individual to practice his or her religion, without
state intrusion and without being force-fed the values of another religion. In
liberal societies, religion is an intimately private matter. Consequently,
people of different religious persuasions can live together in a liberal state,
without fear of state-sanctioned persecution or discrimination. A liberal state
does not necessarily recognize multiplicity of truths; what it does is to allow
each individual to live consistent with his or her truth. If most religions are
metaphysical and reject multiplicity of truths, it is liberalism that makes it
possible for adherents to these religions to live together in a modern state. A
Moslem can live consistent with his truth. So can a Christian. So can an
atheist. Contrary to Sanusi’s conclusion, I believe that Islam is not
inconsistent with liberalism, so long as each individual is permitted to live
his or her own truth. The conflict arises when particular religious groups want
to foist their fundamentalist religious views on the rest of society. Islam can
thrive in liberal states. In fact, Islam thrives in the most liberal of states,
America. It is the Jihadist strand in Islam that makes the religion appear
incompatible with liberalism by seeking to eliminate the separation between
state and religion. If Moslems can practice their faith in the quintessential
liberal society (America), I do not see whey they cannot do so in an emerging
liberal state like Nigeria.
Religions
embody a moral outlook. They dictate how adherents should live their lives; they
indicate how they can align their wills with the will of God. Most religious
people are therefore constricted in their actions by their beliefs. They want to
do God’s will, and God’s will is that enshrined in their particular
religious text. Generally speaking, liberalism does not interfere with the
ability of religious people to practice their faith or to do the will of their
God. On the contrary, it is liberalism that makes it possible for all religious
people to practice their faith in a multi-religious society. What liberalism
prohibits is for particular religious groups to use the rubric of the state to
proselytize their faith and to intimidate others to live in a certain way.
It does not take much to see that this prohibition is essential to the
survival of multi-religious societies.
Sharia
penal law in the north will lead to the elimination of the secular values of our
constitution. Our constitution separates the state from religion. Although the
constitution establishes and empowers Sharia courts to adjudicate issues of
Sharia personal law, it nowhere permits the enactment of the broad scope of
Sharia law in the way it is being done in some northern states. The constitution
after all expressly enshrines the freedom of religion, and the implementation of
Islam-specific criminal law, with its extensive intrusion into, and
criminalization of, intimate individual behavior and actions, would inhibit the
ability of non-Moslem people to practice their faith in states that have enacted
Sharia law. The entanglement of state and religion in these states operates, at
a minimum, to intimidate practitioners of other religions into behaving in ways
dictated by a religion that is not their own. The enactment of punitive
Islam-based sentences and the introduction of Islam-specific prohibitions are
calculated to elide the distinction between state and religion.
Aspects
of Sharia penal law are also at odds with the fundamental objectives of the
Nigerian constitution. Article 15(1) states that the “motto of the Federal
Republic of Nigerian shall be Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress.” Had the
drafters of the constitution wanted us to be bound in eternity by the ancient
cultural values enshrined in religious texts published hundreds of years ago,
some of whose provisions do not even speak to the modern human condition, they
would not have included the word “progress” in our fundamental objectives.
For to aim at progress is to commit oneself to the reevaluation of cultural and
societal practices based on lived and learnt experiences. Religion apart, does
any one really think that stoning a person to death for adultery in this day and
age represents progress? Unblinkered by religious doctrine, who amongst us would
enthusiastically celebrate and blithely hail the stoning of an adulterer, in an
age where adultery is pervasive and divorce common, and at a time when adultery
has been de-criminalized in modern societies? Moreover, the drafters of our
constitution were keen to the fact that cultural practices are not always
commendable. This is why Article 21(a) provides that the “state shall protect,
preserve, and promote the Nigerian cultures which enhance human dignity.”
[Emphasis added.] This provision enjoins the state to promote those cultures
that are consistent with human dignity. By implication, the state should have no
business promoting religious and other values that are blatantly inconsistent
with modern conceptions of human dignity. Vitally, the human dignity invoked by
the constitution is not frozen in time; it evolves with the changing conscience
and values of society. Stoning a person for committing adultery ill becomes a
civilized country.
The
constitutional prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment conflicts with
parts of Sharia penal law. Article 34(1)(a) of the constitution provides:
“Every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person and
accordingly no person shall be subject to torture or to inhuman or degrading
treatment.” This provision raises two crucial issues in relation to Sharia
penal law. First, by what standards should we measure the dignity of the human
person or what amounts to inhuman or degrading treatment? Second, do aspects of
Sharia penal law contravene the prohibition of such treatment?
Regarding
the appropriate constitutional standard, supporters of Sharia penal law would
like to believe that the frozen, ironclad values of the Sharia should prevail.
In their lights, if Sharia law states that an adulterer should be stoned, that
ends the question. After all what could be more consistent with the dignity of
the human person than religious law? Unfortunately, Nigeria is not a theocracy;
it is a liberal democratic state. The values of the constitution are the values
of the broad society, not those of sections of it, neither are they necessarily
those of particular religious groups. Consequently, when we come to decide
whether mandated Sharia penalties are consistent with the dignity of the human
person, we are bound by the constitution to use the contemporary, evolving
standards of our society. If it offends our collective sense decency to chop off
a person’s hand for stealing a cow, or to stone an adulterer to death, then
such practices are inconsistent with the dignity of the human person under the
constitution, whether or not religious patriarchs, writing hundreds of years
before our time, came to a different conclusion.
But
wait a minute, are you not ignoring the lessons of postmodernism? Has
postmodernism not taught us that values are contingent and often irreconcilable?
Has postmodernism not taught us that the seemingly neutral process of
determining societal values often conceal the power games played by those who
make such decisions? We need not surrender to the moral relativism of
postmodernism. True, values are usually in conflict. This is why the liberty and
autonomy inherent in liberalism remains a core virtue in the postmodernist era.
The state leaves us alone, in most cases, to live consistent with our values,
provided we do harm to no one. But where a decision must be made on which values
the state should enforce in particular cases, liberalism and secularism
encourage us to look for what is common to the whole society, and not adopt
wholesale the values of a particular religion. It is a plus that this process of
searching for common values is political. In politics there is dialogue,
engagement, and compromise. In religion, there is blind, often unthinking, faith
in hackneyed doctrine.
On
the second question, I personally think that aspects of Sharia penal law are
inconsistent with contemporary notions of the dignity of the human person, both
within Nigeria and internationally. But let’s not quibble about what I do or
don’t think about human dignity. Let’s concentrate on the broader
constitutional and philosophical issues posed by the broad enactment of Sharia
penal law in Nigeria.
The
Sharia prohibition of blasphemy may also be inconsistent with the freedom of
speech enshrined in our constitution. The penalty for blasphemy under the Sharia
is death. However, even when the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech
is constricted by state restrictions permissible in a democracy, there is no way
one can reconcile this freedom with the capital punishment imposed for blasphemy
under the Sharia. This is more so when one recognizes that the fundamental
values of a modern liberal society like Nigeria are drawn not from religious
principles but from rational conceptions of individual autonomy and societal
interests. What offends, what outrages, religious institutions do not
necessarily offend or outrage a liberal society. Therefore, the mere fact that a
religious group considers a particular expression or act impious and blasphemous
does not in itself warrant the suspension of the constitutional guarantee of
freedom of expression.
In
addition, the broad implementation of aspects of Sharia criminal law may
possibly contravene our treaty obligations. International human rights law, for
example, disapproves the lapidation of adulterers. In fact, the coalescing
international position is the elimination of the death penalty and the
prohibition of physical and cruel punishments, such as amputation and
flagellation. Nigeria seems to be going the opposite direction by enacting the
death penalty for trivial offenses.
Adultery
in modern society is demonstrably ill suited for capital punishment. Rather than
snooping around people’s bedrooms to see with whom they slept, the state ought
to concern itself with devising creative solutions to serious crimes that plague
society. If this penalty for adultery is vigorously and honestly enforced, we
may well eradicate the problem of overcrowding and overpopulation in Nigeria,
because we would quickly dispatch at least a quarter of our population.
Regardless
of what one might think about the aggressive techniques of modern feminism,
there is no gainsaying the fact that feminism has done a commendable job in
unleashing the talent pool and creativity of women, a group that has hitherto
been subjugated to men and oppressed in patriarchal societies. In most Nigerian
universities there are now more women than men, and this is not due to
affirmative action. Contributions of women are increasingly and refreshingly
felt in the medical, the educational, the hospitality, and the business sectors
of our economy. These contributions
are vital in an underdeveloped economy like Nigeria’s, where there is a great
need for well-trained trained and educated workforce. Sadly, it is at this very
period that we are beginning to appreciate the need to empower women that the
fundamentalist strand of Islam in Nigeria has galvanized to clamp down on them.
Using the penal system to segregate women, to put them in inferior schools, to
force them to be subservient to men, and to lapidate them for committing
adultery, will only inhibit the progress of the country. But then what these
fundamentalists want is not progress; it is to revive the medieval culture of
the Middle East in contemporary Nigeria. They want to overheat our liberal
democratic process and then giddily watch as it deliquesces into a murky pond of
unrealized modernist and liberal expectations.
It
is reassuring to note that there are both fundamentalist and modernist strands
in Islam. Sanusi has brilliantly illustrated this fact. If we want to sustain
our liberal democracy in Nigeria, we should support this modernist strand of
Islam in Nigeria. This strand makes the case for a contemporary reinterpretation
of Islam and encourages Moslems to embrace the ideals of pluralism. We should
not allow the fundamentalists to merrily harrow our liberal values and thereby
to destroy our young democracy.
Modernism
has taught us the importance of basing our values and systems of law on
experience and observation, guided by reason; not on immutable and immemorial
rules found in dated religious texts. Postmodernism has taught us that values
are always contingent, rarely universal. You know “the” truth. I also know
“the” truth. The problem is that your truth and my truth are not
reconcilable. How then do we live together in the same country? Liberalism comes
to our aid by allowing us, within limits, to live our own truths, and where
state interests are implicated, it makes the resolution of contested values a
political, not a religious, matter. Our mission as citizens in a liberal
democracy should be to strive to reach agreements on societal values that can
enable us live our lives as autonomous and free individuals in a world of
diversity. Blurring the distinction between state and religion, muddying the
boundary between the private and the public spheres, and foisting absolute and
frozen doctrines of a particular religion on the state, undermine this noble
goal.
Okezie
Chukwumerije
San Francisco, California