The Shariah Debate: Between Ignorance and Fanaticism
By
Abdullahi Bego
[TEHRAN, IRAN]
Once again those who see
nothing good in the Muslim legal system, the Shariah, and frequently equate its
introduction in certain northern states in Nigeria with a putsch against
modernism and liberalism are out on mass media platforms making pronouncements
against Islam in Nigeria as an ‘excuse for Fulani privilege’ and
‘blatantly inconsistent with modern conceptions of human dignity’.
The death sentence confirmed on Amina Lawal by a Katsina Shariah Appeal Court on questionable loco standi provided a fertile ground to re-launch the invectives. Before Amina Lawal, Jengebe and Safia Hussaini were the matrix, literally, in the largely political debate between the secular modernists and the neo-fundamentalists regarding the application of Shariah laws in Nigeria; a debate whose tenor and substance were completely lost, as I shall argue, in the hysteria to vilify or the quest to justify the application of the Muslim legal system.
In today’s Nigeria, as
someone argued, public discourse is endangered considerably because ‘it is
often coloured by ethnic sentiments’. What parades itself therefore as a
democratic, liberalist intervention in the Shariah debate is usually nothing
more than an attempt to defend personal interest. Although opponents of the
Shariah legal system in Nigeria have, for instance, deplored the death sentence
as cruel or barbaric and an infringement of the human rights of the persons
subjected to such punishment under the Shariah, these same ‘experts’
wouldn’t mind if ‘only’ Muslims were the ones affected. So the question of
human rights easily evaporates if non-Muslims living in Shariah implementing
states are spared.
This is the sense one gets from Mike Ikhariale’s ‘Amina Lawal and the National Question’. “As long as the Shariah applies only to faithful Muslims”, he argued, “people would ordinarily not be bothered if stone throwing faithfuls decide to stone to death every Muslim woman who runs foul of the Shariah law, since non- members would be spared the horrors of the process.” But because non-Muslims are also subjected to the penal laws of the Shariah “directly and indirectly in many ways,” according to information available to Ikhariale, the Shariah, to that extent, stands to be condemned. This is one of the hypocrisies of the anti-Shariah crusaders as if international human rights laws make a distinction between humans who are Muslims and those who are not.
Of course since Shariah is meant for those who believe in the Islamic religion, it is condemnable to subject those who are not followers of the faith to its penalties for offences that could be tried in the regular courts. But to my knowledge, and this stands to be disputed, no non-Muslim in northern Nigeria had so far been subjected to Shariah laws. All state governors who have introduced the Muslim legal system have said consistently that it applies only to Muslims.
Those who criticized the Muslim ‘north’ of implementing Shariah also condemned the Muslim legal system as being merely and purely a political exercise designed to frustrate the Obasanjo administration and hamstring it capacity to be credible before ordinary voters in the north. Those who hold this view have been asking, for instance, why the Shariah was not introduced before the advent of the present civilian administration and why, in a country without an official religion, certain representatives, elected under the Nigerian constitution, would operate laws separate from or independent of the constitution.
That there are political undertones to the introduction of the Shariah cannot be disputed. Muslim governors who operate the Shariah legal system in their states have done Islam incalculable damage by presenting a universal religion as limited only to the penal code. Islam is far more comprehensive and its worldview far greater than merely concerned about cutting off the hand of Jengebe because he stole a cow. As a religion revealed for mankind, Islam aims to guide humanity to all imaginable levels of progress and perfection and to make man a true vicegerent of God on earth. But without providing the objective conditions for the application of Sharia laws as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi noted elsewhere, the Muslim ‘north’ Shariah enterprise, to paraphrase Iqbal Ahmed, has stripped Islam of its humanism, aesthetics, intellectual quests and spiritual devotion.
Nor
do those who so fanatically insisted on reducing Islam to a tool for gaining new
or lost political grounds shown any benchmark for probity and commitment to the
provisions of Shariah laws themselves. If the millions that they receive or the
billions that they received so far from the State were used according to Shariah
praxis, the economic lot of people in Shariah implementing states and their
social well being would have been a lot better than what they were now. Perhaps
the Jengebes would not have resorted to stealing cows to survive. Perhaps the
common people would have been strengthened educationally to ask questions
regarding their rights and the rights of their leaders over them.
But by not making themselves available to Shariah penalties for offences similar to those said to have been committed by Amina Lawal or her predecessors, Safiya Husseini and Jengebe, by not using resources meant for the betterment of the conditions of their people properly and accountably, custodians of Shariah in the north have given up Islam to ridicule and failed in their attempt to show the Shariah process as purely a ‘response to the demands of the majority of the people who are Muslims’ in their states.
These fundamental breaches however, even while they negate the spirit of the Shariah, do not make Nigeria a talebanising country or reduce Islam to the “norms of 16th century Arabian desert tribes” as some have mischievously imputed. Those who know that the hands of the thief cannot be cut off if he steals unless it was established that he had the means to livelihood but still went ahead to commit the offence or that an adulterous woman cannot be stoned unless it was established that she was not driven by factors beyond her control are pained by the libelous statements daily made against Islam in Nigeria by those who want to criticize ‘political Shariah’.
Yet if opponents of the Shariah are liberal minded and democratic enough, they should be honest to admit the outpouring of popular Muslim support throughout the Shariah implementing states when the Shariah was introduced. If democracy is the prerogative of the majority, then Shariah in northern Nigeria cannot be dismissed as being unpopular or barbaric. Democracy itself, like other ideologies, is a set of beliefs considered sacrosanct by those committed to it. So if Muslims want to be governed by Shariah as believers in the religion of Islam, and this is done in accordance with Islamic injunctions and unaffected by personal or selfish political considerations, then Muslims should be allowed in a democratic state whose constitutional provisions allowed that to have the right to their religious practices.
But the entire debate, for or against Shariah, in the main, has largely been a contest for political space. In the end, Amina Lawal or Jengebe are merely symbols of the struggle among elites and contending political forces to assert their needs or to win the day for their political capital. The millions of Jengebes and Amina Lawals in the north and other parts of Nigeria, for that matter, continue to remain at the receiving end of this contest.
Otherwise
the debate in my view should be on whether or not democracy allows a people to
follow the religion of their choice within the confines of the Nigerian
constitution, on how to protect the rights of followers of other faiths and
ideologies in Shariah practicing states and how to make custodians of Shariah in
those states more responsive and more accountable to the needs of the people.
But so far the debate has simply been one, largely, between those who are
ignorant of the humanity of Islam and those who fanatically restrict its
worldview and constrict the purposes for which it was revealed as a divine
religion.
Abdullahi Bego writes from Tehran, I R Iran (email abego5@yahoo.com)