Amina Lawal and the National Question
By
Mike Ikhariale
Unless a miracle happens such as the Almighty Allah himself intervening to stay the hands of the blood thirsty mob of Funtua that is now busy gathering stones and cudgels preparatory to their enthusiastic implementation of the order of the Sharia Appeal Court, to wit, stone Amina Lawal to death for her “crime” of adultery, the nation is on her way to an immediate global certification as a Taliban and pro-al Queda state. Never since the defunct Taliban regime of Afghanistan has any other country come under the search light of the international community as an ‘outlaw’ than that which the Amina saga has brought upon Nigeria, a country in which not more than half of the population is Moslem.
As long as the Sharia applies only to faithful Moslems, people would ordinarily not be bothered if stone throwing faithfuls decide to stone to death every Moslem woman, who runs foul of the Sharia law, since non-members would be spared the horrors of the process. Unfortunately, the reports that we have is that it has also been applied directly and indirectly against non-Moslems in many ways, thereby raising the matter beyond the protected parameters of personal beliefs to that of the open arena of national discourse. What is more, as long as we all belong to the same country, the excesses of one group and the bad publicity that goes with it must necessarily be a resistible infraction into the protected rights of others, and vice versa.
It is important that the point is made that in and outside of the country, onlookers do not readily find it possible to tell who is involved and who is not in this phenomenon and this reality has further made it necessary for all us, Moslems and non-Moslems alike to, in good conscience, stand up to condemn these developments that indiscriminately affect all of our commonwealth. It is very easy to feel un-peturbed about the feelings of others and how they see us especially if the subject matter is that of religion and personal beliefs but, time and time again, it is has been demonstrated that reason ultimately prevails over dogma; logic over sentiments, good and enlightened conscience over brute zeal which tends to fade with the passage of time.
For those of us outside the shores of Nigeria, it has become a daily source of shame and endless embarrassment as the country has become the butt of international jokes and derision all because some Taliban influenced citizens are immersing themselves in the frenzy of an ‘old time religion’ in spite of the changing times and the paramountcy of the national constitution. It is even more worrisome when you know that many of those currently lampooning the descent of human rights and the dignity of the human person, especially that of the women in the country are from nations that are far more Islamic than Nigeria. One begins to wonder whether it is not the same holy Koran that is in used in Nigeria that is also read in these officially Islamic states. Even at that, the last time I checked Nigeria is not an Islamic state and, if she is to remain as one federated country, can never be. So why the newfound zeal to be more catholic than the Pope?
I find it pretty difficult to understand why they do not openly stone adulterous women in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iraqi, Palestine, etc., etc., and we are about killing them in Nigeria at this age and time. Even in Nigeria, it is obvious that the majority of our Moslem compatriots are equally taken aback by the misguided extremism of these few pro-Taliban groups who are reputed to be very ignorant of the holy scriptures but dangerously fanatic in their self-professed extremist doctrine. Most true and knowledgeable Moslems are seemly afraid to speak out against the excesses their brethren for fear of been labeled for a possible fatwa which they are not sure that the secular government and the wobbling state institutions in the country would come to their aid. As a result, everyone carries on as if the whole aberration is the ‘will of Allah’.
It should not be too difficult to differentiate between the norms that are predicated purely on the wickedness of man and those flowing from the fountain of the loving God, no matter how beguiling the language might be. But when extremists continue to hammer on the “way of life” premises of their religious practice, they unwittingly debase the discussion from universal rationality to that of unfathomable relativism where crude sentiments always tend to prevail in the short term over solid reasoning. In their fits of blinding demagoguery, they speak as if there was no life lived before the new faith arrived. But we know this is not necessarily true. Nearly all the great religions had gone through this conflictual process and the judgment of history is that reason always prevails at the end. Amina Lawal and all others still on the line to the stoning posts in the hands of those seemly very eager to re-invent the religious wheel in Nigeria are only but pitiable guinea pigs in this horror filled theological laboratory.
It is to avoid this situation that most of the
‘enlightened world’ established secular laws in the management of the social
order, living the spiritual realm largely within the personal domain. However,
as long as some people continue to depend for their material sustenance on how
far they are able to push the religious cart in their society, the line between
the spiritual and the material worlds will continue to be blurred quite
deliberately. This reality is the same in both Islam and Christianity. Let us
not forget that Christianity had once been used to burn innocent people on the
stakes; stone them to death; drown them with stone tied to their necks and other
horrible practices over issues that were largely illusory. But for the courage
and persistence of a few, it was heretical to suggest a different idea to the
dominant ones at that time which were presented to the gullible faithfuls by the
clergy as the ‘will of God’. That
may well be the path to be trodden by the new Sharia punishments for some
credible voices are already on the echo.
How does Amina Lawal feature in all of these? A quick list of sample summaries of the views of nations and groups that have condemned Nigeria, so far, over the Funtua judgment will illustrate the point I am making:
1. The Republic of Congo's La Semaine Africaine: "Islam, in the third millennium, continues to treat women as slaves”. The paper ended up condemning what it calls "Africa's shame", adding that "Stone age practices like stoning offenders... only serve to compound Africa's already bad international image as a brutal and coarse place that is walking away from civilization." Quite correctly the Congolese paper was able to situate the whole development within the framework of the national question by noting that “the federal government is in a "very tricky" situation, amid fears that the predominantly Christian south and Islamic north might secede.
2. On its part, the Le Pays of Burkina Faso has this to say “A democracy is in danger as Nigeria faces an "enormous gamble", explaining further that with the Amina stoning to death order by a religious court, “Nigeria has been plunged into chaos, where no power has the authority to achieve respect."
3. From Uganda, the national parliament passed a motion condemning the sentence just about the same time our National Assembly was passing its motion on impeachment. But the Uganda parliament was more concerned about the survival of the nation of Nigeria, something that obviously escaped the attention of our own parliamentarians. In their owns words, they urged the Nigerian government to intervene because the decision does not completely represent the Islamic view on the matter and that “The matter is intricate and it can cause division within Muslims. The matter is important and concerns us all,"
4. From Naples also came a very tough momentary on the matter, thus: “If the Islamic court somehow proceeds with the sentence, the Nigerian central government should ignore the religious extremists in its midst and bring murder charges against anybody who participated in the stoning and the judges who ordered it. Unless stopped, as the world learned with the Taliban, this sort of fanaticism will breed only more fanaticism. Lawal is the second Nigerian woman condemned by a religious court to death by stoning. The first got off on appeal, but the impression is that the Sharia courts will keep pushing the central government to see if they can get away with their medieval sentences — stoning, beheadings and amputations. Islam has no central religious authority to rule on matters of doctrine. But it would help if the more enlightened Islamic clerics would speak out more forcefully and vigorously to coax their more primitive brethren into the 21st century. What these courts are practicing is neither religion nor law; it is barbarism”.
5. From far away Australia, came the scathing admonition that “The Australian government is universally and consistently opposed to the use of capital punishment in any circumstances," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement three days after the court ruling. "If this sentence were to be carried out, it would be received with outrage in Australia and in the wider international community," he said" Death by stoning is a cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment and is therefore prohibited under both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention Against Torture, to all of which Nigeria is a party."
I have deliberately omitted the very strong and strident condemnatory statements emanating from the various Western countries because even at the best of times, these nations continue to have serious reservations about how we run our affairs. Let me also note that the United Nations and several diplomatic missions, including China, Russia and the Vatican, have not been left out of the Nigerian bashing spree, a development, which for all practical purposes, indicates that there is a truly universal condemnation of this barbaric development.
The last time Nigeria went so low before the comity of nations was when Abacha killed Ken Saro Wiwa upon the already unacceptable unjustified incarceration of MKO Abiola who the world knew won an election for the post of president but was cruelly rewarded with imprisonment.
One other factor that has compounded current Nigeria’s problems following the Funtua adjudication, is the prevalent of the Bush Doctrine on the war on terrorism in which Moslem extremists world wide have become the “new enemies of the free world” after the fall of communism. So, most nations would therefore want to be heard to have condemned the rising talibanism in Nigeria and declare their stand as clearly as possible, as the current operative mantra in Washington is “if you are not for us, then you are against us”. Particularly now that President Bush is busy fashioning a mammoth instrument of war against actual and perceived al Queda and their supporters wherever they may be found, starting with the hapless Iraq, not even the so-called Islamic states would dare speak for Nigeria. It is therefore understandable why Nigeria has become an instant pariah once more just for the simple reason of some fanatics doling out unto themselves unconstitutional death sentences over non-existent crimes.
It is particularly pathetic that at a time the President has invested so much diplomatic energies on repairing the image of Nigeria abroad even at the expense of his attention to the home front that this needless diplomatic reversal is happening. It must be painful to him even if he continues to maintain his inexplicable kampeism that not much in the form of good image is accruing to Nigeria. Rather than weep for Amina as the president planned to do if and when she is murdered by stoning, he should look beyond Amina and weep for the nation whose foundations are being weathered irretrievably in the process. We seem to have embarked on a quick road to perdition by giving excuses for our enemies to further undermine the nation’s capacity to succeed us as the national economy is been held up for destruction as a pawn in the ensuing “war of civilizations”. Who is coming to invest in a nation where the norms of 16th century Arabian desert tribes are now the operative source of popular jurisprudence? It is really a lesson in collective delusion to note that Saudi Arabia, the undisputed custodian of Islam, is daily modernizing its economy while secondary receivers of the same faith are trying to outdo themselves in upholding only the harsh punishments of the Sharia while ignoring the passionate and humane side of it.
Whatever foreigners may be saying about the current turn of events in Nigeria, it is however how the issues that these events are raising ultimately play themselves out within that is important to us. No doubt, it is always the case that those under a falling tree are always the lasts to note the danger coming their way. But the case of Nigeria has taking a long time coming and no one can honestly say that he or she did not know that the Sharia phenomenon raises grave questions bordering on the fundamentals of our variegated polity or the substratum of the society. In other words, the Sharia debacle is an integral part of the national question that we have for long pretended does not exist. Now that aspects of it has begun to manifest themselves in matters of “life and death”, it should not be difficult for the Thomas’s in our midst to begin to acknowledge the fact that there is an urgent need to tackle these problems rationally while it is still possible to do so.
Those who are now bringing the crude version of the Sharia law back to some parts of Nigeria were around during the colonial era and all through the attainment of independence in 1960. They were also around during the first republic and all through the long years of military dictatorship. But they did not deem it necessary to re-introduce it then. Now that a non-Moslem is in power as a democratic head of state, they suddenly remember what Allah said about Sharia and its prescribed punishments. People are free to adopt any legal system of their choice as long as that system would promote peace, unity and progress. The situation in Nigeria where we have more than one religion logically prescribes that no one group can promote its religion at the expense of the other unless there are workable arrangements to separate the various groups as a way of averting interminable sectarian violence and ecumenical tension.
Unfortunately, no such arrangements have been made. And when the rest of the ‘civilized world’ make mockery of Nigeria and Nigerians all over the place as a result of the Sharia issue, they do not readily discriminate between the Sharia advocates from the Sharia victims. What is more, these religious fanatics are using state machinery and taxpayers’ resources to pursue their narrow sectarian agenda and the evidence so far is that they do not even discriminate between Moslems and non-Moslems when applying these antediluvian laws.
The very thought of one religion imposing its will, bigotry and doctrine on members of other religions in a multi-religious society like Nigeria raises very serious constitutional questions of equal protection and the rule of law. When we came into the Nigerian union in 1960, the constitutional understanding was that the nation would be a secular republic and not a theocracy as some of our Taliban brothers are now imposing on us. The simple truth is that this thing will not work as people are not prepared to undermine their own religious integrity by permitting others to claim or purport to claim more than their allotted constitution space within the framework of equal citizenship, freedom of religion and of conscience. No country has been able to do so peacefully. Something must give for that jural equation to be altered and I am aware that is was the same bitter path Lebanon treaded not too long ago.
So the Amina Lawal furore is a lot more than what do we do with a lady that had sex outside wedlock; it is more than the gender insensitivity involved by blaming only the woman and not the male partner. It has to do with whether Nigeria can accommodate such degree of extremism by one religion when we know that there are many competing and mutually antagonistic religious sects in the country.
It would be necessary that we renegotiated the constitutional framework within which the various religions must peacefully co-exist and mutually interact in the country since some have since unilaterally jettisoned the secular platform upon which the union was initially established.
It is not too much for us to ask that we should begin to print two sets of national passport; one for Sharia Nigerian citizens and another for non-Sharia Nigerian citizens because the constitutional obligations of the two classes of people to the Nigerian State are apparently not the same. While one group sees the constitution as merely a convenient appendage to the Koran, the other does not know and does want to know what is inside the Koran - the only supreme law they know is the national constitution. The palpable doctrinal irreconciliability thus present is in addition to the fact that we would not have to always explain ourselves as non-Talibans to a very justifiably scared world just because some Nigerians are rooting for some extreme form of islamism and that many of us do not necessarily subscribe to the stoning to death of women by men who unfairly defiled them in the first place.
As Nigerians, we all reserve the rights to live our lives the way we like; serve the God of our choice or none at all. This freedom carries with it certain political costs because, the first condition for a federated society like ours to endure is that one group’s rights end where those of the others begin, as we cannot eat our cake and still have it. As long as we all live under one national roof, it is only proper that we do not satisfy ourselves at the expense of others for that would be courting unnecessary schisms. Many Nigerians are not Moslems and they deserve to be assured that their rights are secured within the federation’s constitutional order or are free to seek solace under a more protective arrangement. That reality, to many citizens, is a very high item on the agenda of the National Conference and Amina Lawal has only just highlighted it.