This book is one product of a year-long project of scholars from the University of Jos  (Nigeria) and the University of Bayreuth  (Germany ), under the     title “The Shari‘ah Debate  and the Shaping of Muslim and Christian Identities in Northern Nigeria.” The entire project, including the conference at which the papers collected in this book were first presented, was funded by a grant from the Volkswagen  Foundation, headquartered in Hannover, Germany. That fact, and other things about the project and the conference in Jos  which marked its close, stirred up suspicion and controversy in Northern Nigeria.  We wish to take this opportunity to address some of the issues that came up.  This will permit us not only to introduce the volume and the papers in it, but to provide some information, especially for our Nigerian readers, about the academic grant-making process of which our project was a beneficiary, and to give readers from outside Nigeria some further insight into “The Shari‘ah Debate and the Shaping of Muslim and Christian Identities in Northern Nigeria.”

ORIGINS OF THE PROJECT

Everyone will agree, we think, that the various steps taken, beginning in late 1999, to implement shari‘ah in twelve of Nigeria’s northern states, were by far the most important and most controversial changes in Nigeria’s laws in many years. Grant that this is so. But precisely because shari‘ah implementation  was so significant and so controversial—both locally and globally!—it was bound to attract the attention, not only of politicians, the press, and partisans to the controversies it generated, but also of scholars—academicians interested in studying it, not as something good or bad, not as something to be praised or condemned, not as something to be supported or opposed, defended or attacked, but rather as a complex set of fascinating legal and sociological and world-historical developments to be documented, analysed, and understood—“in the same way as any other important trend in society, such as the economy, education, or public health.”[1]

It so happened that during the academic year 1999-2000, just as shari‘ah implementation  was taking off, there were several scholars based at the University of Jos  whose prior work had already involved them in the study of the application of Islamic law in Nigeria, Muslim-Christian relations, and religion and politics generally,[2] and who were well-prepared and ready to turn their attention to the new developments.  One of these scholars was Professor Frieder Ludwig , then of the University of Bayreuth ,[3] a theologian and historian of religions, who, in furtherance of a long series of exchanges between Jos and Bayreuth, was spending the year at Jos as a visiting professor.  When shari‘ah implementation  started, Ludwig  and others at Jos began collecting and exchanging information about it and discussing its ramifications. Some information was gleaned from the Nigerian newspapers—but the stories in the press were often conflicting, often very obviously biased or confused, and always frustratingly incomplete.  The papers presented at several of the early shari‘ah conferences were obtained and studied[4]—but these tended to be more the literature of religious exposition and apologetics than of academic research and scholarship. Some journeys were made to some shari‘ah states, at personal expense, to try and gather more complete and more accurate information about developments on the ground, including the new laws—but the scope of these efforts was limited by the cost.  Grants were applied for, from the University of Jos , in hopes of getting the funds needed to carry out more extensive research—but this was just at the time when research grants from Nigeria’s universities were drying up almost completely.  These early efforts did bear some scholarly fruit;[5] but by  late 2000, when Ludwig  returned to Germany, it was quite unclear where money might be found to finance the more thorough-going study of shari‘ah implementation  that we all wanted to do.

THE BIG FOUNDATIONS

Scholars seeking funding for their research often turn to the great private foundations which became fixtures of civil society in the West in the 20^th century.  Nigerians will be familiar with some of the names.  The Ford  Foundation, one of the largest, currently with assets of $9.8 billion, has been working in West Africa since 1958, when its first grant was made for training public service professionals in Nigeria. Since then, Ford ’s West Africa office, located in Lagos, has made over 600 grants totalling approximately $250 million to institutions and individuals throughout the region.[6]  In April 2000 Ford , along with the MacArthur  and Rockefeller  Foundations and the Carnegie  Corporation (with assets of $4b, $3b, and $1.8b, respectively) launched their “Partnership to Strengthen African Universities,” committed to investing $100 million in African universities in the first five years of the Partnership’s work.  MacArthur  and Carnegie  are investing in Nigeria:  after sifting through applications from many of the country’s universities, they have now made grants totalling $14 million to six of them.  The aim of these grants is to bolster institutional reforms, strengthen the universities in various other defined ways, and to implement gender  equity projects.[7]  MacArthur , which like Ford  has an office in Nigeria (in Abuja) has been making grants here since 1989.  According to its website,

[t]he core element of [MacArthur ’s] work in Nigeria is to strengthen nongovernmental organizations, universities, independent institutes, some government agencies, and individuals as they work toward improvements in higher education, population and reproductive health, human rights, and the challenges in the Niger River Delta.[8]

And to take just one more example, consider the Bill and Melinda Gates  Foundation, far and away the world’s largest, currently with assets of $32 billion.  According to its website, the Gates  Foundation

works to promote greater equity in four areas: global health, education, public libraries, and support for at-risk families in Washington state and Oregon. * * *  The foundation's Global Health Program is focused on reducing global health inequities by accelerating the development, deployment and sustainability of health interventions that will save lives and dramatically reduce the disease burden in developing countries. * * * Preventing deadly diseases among poor children by expanding access to vaccines, and developing vaccines against malaria, HIV /AIDS, and tuberculosis, are central priorities.[9]

Consistently with these goals, in November 2000 Gates  announced a grant of $25 million to the Harvard University School of Public Health (HSPH) for an HIV /AIDS prevention programme in Nigeria.  Called APIN —AIDS Prevention in Nigeria—the initiative in its first phase has focussed on Lagos, Oyo, and Plateau  States, working with and through universities, government institutions, and community organisations.  Identification of high-risk groups in each state was an important first step: “Nigerian health researchers and physicians believe high-risk groups may vary regionally within Nigeria and that they may differ markedly from such groups in other countries in Africa.” 

HSPH researchers will also work with Nigerian colleagues to standardize screening and data collection, so that the information gathered about seroprevalence is accurate. They will also help upgrade laboratory facilities for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the . . . states chosen and will provide STD treatment, particularly among commercial sex workers, and determine the impact of prevention on HIV  spread. The initiative will also provide screening for pregnant women and antiretroviral treatment for those who test positive. Findings on levels of infection among these women and on the strains of HIV  identified will be shared with Nigerian colleagues and will inform public education efforts.[10]

The Jos University Teaching Hospital has been a beneficiary of this grant. It is an APIN  centre; several staff of the University’s Faculty of Medical Sciences are actively involved in the project; and many sufferers from HIV /AIDS and other STDs from Plateau  State and elsewhere in the North are receiving treatment.

            Let us now sum up very briefly some salient facts about the private grant-making foundations and the way they operate.

·         There are a great many private foundations. According to the Foundation Center  of New York City, as of 2002 there were 57,834 of them in the USA alone, with combined assets of $364.1 billion and total “giving” of $30.4 billion.[11] About half of these totals, however, are controlled by the 200 biggest foundations—including Gates , Ford , MacArthur , Rockefeller , and Carnegie . The numbers for other countries are smaller, but the institution of the private charitable or philanthropic foundation is apparently universal.  In Muslim lands it is known as the waqf —the Islamic pious endowment—“a phenomenon that is present in virtually all Islamic societies and which has a high prestige in social, religious, political, cultural and economic terms.”[12]

·         Private foundations are non-profit organisations—usually incorporated in the West as charitable trusts—that distribute private wealth for public purposes, or “in the public interest.”  Their endowments often (but not always) derive from private fortunes made in business:  the names of Ford  (cars), MacArthur  (insurance, real estate), Carnegie  (steel), and Gates  (computer software) are indicative.  The grantor or grantors convey money, stocks or other property (the endowment) by deed of trust to named trustees, who are responsible for administration of the endowment and its proceeds according to directives given in the trust instrument.  The endowment is invested; the money given away comes from the profit on the investments.  Everything is regulated by the laws of the place where the foundation is domiciled.[13]

·         Within the broad parameters laid down by the law of charitable trusts, foundations are free to set their own grant-making agendas and to run their programmes as they see fit.  Some administer their programmes themselves, others make grants to other charities, public or private, which spend the money on to the desired ends.  Some foundations concentrate on assisting defined population groups;[14]  others fund activities in specific subject areas;[15] some fund “think-tanks” dedicated to the analysis of public policy issues.  Within the world of academic grant-making, foundations may support academic institutions, or individuals at different stages of their educations, or they may fund research in particular fields: law, medicine, the physical sciences, the social sciences, etc., and within those fields research aimed at specific goals, for instance finding a vaccine against malaria or a cure for HIV /AIDS.

·         Because there are so many foundations funding such a wide variety of activities, a whole separate industry has grown up of helping grant-seekers to find grant-makers who might be willing to fund their projects, and then helping the grant-seekers to write “winning proposals.”  The Internet is a rich source for such materials; we give a small sample of books on the subject in our list of references.[16]

·         Some grant-making is directed abroad, as we have seen.[17]  Presumably a wide variety of foreign foundations—not just the ones we have mentioned—are funding activities in Nigeria.  They no doubt have many different agendas, not all of which would be approved by all Nigerians.  This brings us to our final point.

·         The work of private foundations is sometimes controversial.  Their grant-making programmes are defined by their visions of the public good—and these may not be shared by everyone.  In the 1950s, for instance, the Ford  Foundation helped to fund the movement for civil rights for American blacks. This offended Southern conservatives, who didn’t think civil rights for American blacks were such a good idea, and who proceeded to launch two separate Congressional investigations into alleged “subversion and Communist penetration” of America’s philanthropic foundations.[18]  Today there are recognisably “left-wing” foundations supporting such causes as human rights and environmental protection, and “right-wing” foundations devoted to dismantling the welfare state.  Coming closer to home: all Nigerians can support Ford ’s training programmes for public professionals, and Gates ’s APIN .  But what of Carnegie ’s efforts to promote its “liberal Western” ideas of gender  equity here, or MacArthur ’s efforts to strengthen Nigerian NGOs and independent institutes?  Some people hate the very name of “gender  equity.” And some governments, especially in the third world, actively discourage NGOs and independent institutes (along with other elements of civil society), as being rival centres of power with which the governments would rather not have to contend.[19]  In sum, the work of foundations sometimes involves them in political controversy, even political struggle.  This is neither surprising nor a bad thing.  It is part of the healthy ferment and debate that always go on in societies where economic and political power are diffused in many hands and where many different visions of the public good are free to contend.

THE VOLKSWAGEN FOUNDATION

With current assets of $2.6 billion and total giving of $122 million a year,[20] the Volkswagen  Foundation ranks in size between Rockefeller  and Carnegie  among the foundations we have mentioned.  In short, it is among the world’s biggest.  Its endowment, however, did not derive from the gift of one or two wealthy individuals.

It owes its existence as well as its name to a contractual agreement between the Federal German  Government and the State of Lower Saxony which put an end to the controversy concerning the ownership of the Volkswagen  company after 1945. Following lengthy discussion, it was decided in the late 1950s to transform the Volkswagenwerk GmbH [the car company] to private ownership by issuing so-called ‘people’s shares’ and use the proceeds from the sale of these shares to establish the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk [the Foundation], as it was called until 1989.  * * *  By means of prudent and profitable management of its portfolio the Foundation has since increased its initial endowment capital fourfold.[21]

Notwithstanding the origin of its endowment and its name, the Volkswagen  Foundation is in no way affiliated to the Volkswagen  car manufacturing company. It is separately incorporated under German private law, is economically independent, and is completely autonomous in its decision-making.  The fourteen members of its Board of Trustees, appointed to five-year terms, half by the German Federal Government and half by the State of Lower Saxony, are fully independent and are bound only by the Foundation’s statutes. They govern the Foundation and decide on its funding initiatives and the distribution of its funds.[22]

The Volkswagen  Foundation’s funding is directed entirely to higher education and research.

The Volkswagen  Foundation provides financial support to academic institutions in Germany , as well as other countries, and funding is available for projects in all disciplines. Another important part of its mission is to provide support for aspiring young academics, promote international exchange and to enhance the structural conditions for research and higher education. * * * [The Foundation’s] support is spread among a great diversity of fields, ranging from interdisciplinary investigation into materials technology to research into endangered languages and to innovative processes in the corporate sector and society, for example.[23]

By defining its own funding initiatives, Volkswagen  itself takes a hand in setting the academic research agenda, with a decided emphasis on the new:

The work of the Volkswagen  Foundation is not restricted to the mere allocation of funds at applicants’ request. The aim of the Foundation is to make the utmost of its funding opportunities, and to inject new impetus into the world of research.  * * *  [G]enerating impulses which are to have a lasting effect is no easy matter: it can only be accomplished by concentrating the allocation of funds onto a relatively select number of issues. The Volkswagen  Foundation has therefore applied the strategy of focusing its efforts on selected funding initiatives. * * * The main thrust is to stimulate new interdisciplinary developments, to assist in creating highly-qualified research capacity, and to establish new, path-breaking fields of research. * * * Whereas the main concept remains stable, the scope of actual funding is changing constantly. Individual funding initiatives are terminated once they have achieved their goal in generating the originally sought for impetus. This makes way for new ideas and initiatives. [This] practice . . . ensures that the Foundation’s efforts are constantly turning to new challenges. Thus, only one aspect of the support provided by the Volkswagen  Foundation always remains constant – the process of innovation.[24]

Is there anything in this that Nigerians might find controversial?  Perhaps so.  If you believe, as some seem to, that all essential elements of human knowledge were defined and completed long in the past;  that the proper work of scholars now is not to search out new knowledge but rather to preserve and interpret what has come down from of old;  that “there is no progress  in the history of knowledge, but at most a continuous and sublime recapitulation;” that innovation—in thinking perhaps most especially—is sinful arrogance;[25] —if you believe these things, then you might well regard the Volkswagen  Foundation and its mission with the greatest suspicion.  Its passion for innovation, its persistent pursuit of progress, of the new, mark it as a creature of the modern West, facing squarely toward the future, not the past.

VOLKSWAGEN’S  FUNDING  INITIATIVE  ON  INTER-CULTURAL  IDENTITY-SHAPING

In the early 1990s the Volkswagen  Foundation announced a new funding initiative, on the subject of “The Foreigner and the Native—Problems and Possibilities of Intercultural Communications.” For some years this initiative

focused on issues of (inter)cultural competence and interaction, especially with respect to the internal German  problem areas of relations with migrants (including schools, municipal districts, the police, the judicial authorities).[26]

The aim was to encourage academic research “to utilize its potential and opportunities to establish improved prerequisites for intercultural under-standing, communications and conduct.”[27]

            By the year 2000, the Foundation had concluded that this funding initiative should be reconceived.

[T]he impending changes at both the academic and the socio-political levels are providing new challenges for research. This is particularly the case with regard to the structural change discussed in terms of the keyword ‘globalization’, and the attendant transnational interconnections, which bring about ever new forms of conceptualization, combination and intermixture of ‘foreign’ and ‘native’. Thus, for example, the question arises as to what extent identities can emerge within the framework of the globalization trends beyond territorial and cultural loyalty and which relevance is, in this context, ascribed to ethnic minorities. Questions of transnationality and transculturalism are also on the agenda.[28]

The reconceived initiative was given a new name: “How Do We Perceive or Shape ‘Foreign’ and ‘Native’ Cultural Identities?  Research on Processes of Intercultural Dissociation, Mediation and Identity-Shaping.” In 2000 the Foundation announced that “it wishes to support research analyzing [these] processes.” Its call for proposals said, among other things, that:

Investigating these processes [of intercultural dissociation, mediation, and identity-shaping] and their momentum of change, analyzing their premises, conditions, framework, structures, and effects theoretically as well as empirically and with the necessary historical reflection, and thus illuminating them in a problem-oriented perspective—this is the thematic scope of the reconceived priority area. Accordingly, projects which pursue these objectives and address these central points of interest will be given priority. * * * The Foundation is particularly interested in international/intercultural and—insofar as necessitated by the subject matter—interdisciplinary cooperation. * * * It is important to the Foundation that project results are discussed within the framework of an interdisciplinary symposium involving German  and non-German representatives from the respective academic and practical fields. In addition, the presentation and conveyance of results in university teaching and to the public is particularly desired.[29]

The reader will observe how broad, how unspecific, one may even say how vague, this call for proposals is: re-read the last several paragraphs and see. Nothing here about Christian-Muslim relations, or Nigeria, or shari‘ah implementation  in Northern Nigeria:  these in particular, although no doubt highly relevant to the more general study of “processes of intercultural dissociation, mediation, and identity-shaping,” were not Volkswagen ’s priorities, but ours.[30]  For, back in Germany  after his year’s visit to Jos, Frieder Ludwig  saw Volkswagen ’s new call for proposals, and thought this might be just what he and his colleagues in Jos had been looking for: a source of funding for the deeper study of shari‘ah implementation  in Northern Nigeria that we all wanted to do. Certainly we were an international and intercultural group of scholars, with diverse national, ethnic, and religious backgrounds and opinions, and we were interdisciplinary as well, coming from the fields of law and religious studies.  If our project could be shaped to fit Volkswagen ’s new funding initiative, we might just have a winning proposal.

THE  PROJECT  ON  “The  Shari‘ah  Debate  and  the Shaping  of  Muslim  and  Christian  Identities  in Northern  Nigeria”

Two people were primarily responsible for the research proposal that our group submitted to the Volkswagen  Foundation—Professor Ulrich Berner , Chair of Religious Studies I, University of Bayreuth , who led the application process and subsequently oversaw administration of the grant, and Frieder Ludwig , who was the principal architect of the proposal.  Our special thanks go to both of them.  Writing such proposals is no small thing.  Far in advance of the project’s actual execution, you have got to describe what work you and your colleagues intend to do, in concrete detail, month by month for as long as your project will last.  You have got to prepare a budget that corresponds to your workplan and that foresees every expense you will incur—because only rarely can you go back later for more.  You must explain what you expect to achieve, and why, from the point of view of the current state of scholarship in your field, that achievement will be worthwhile.  Not least, you must show that your project fits the funding objectives of your hoped-for grant-maker—because if it does not it will be rejected out of hand, no matter how worthwhile it may otherwise be. Our own proposal went through several drafts which were discussed and revised via e-mail between Jos and Bayreuth.  Finally submitted to the Volkswagen  Foundation in February 2002, it was  approved in June, much to our gratification, and work began in October 2002.  The budget for our projected one year of work was 159,907 €.  This was to fund, first, an extensive programme of information-gathering and analysis in Nigeria, and to a lesser extent in Europe and America, on shari‘ah implementation  in the North since 1999, its effects on the shaping of Muslim and Christian identities in Nigeria, and its perception abroad; second, an academic symposium to be held in Jos half-way through the project, attended by about twenty-five scholars from Nigeria, Europe, and the US, to discuss results so far; and third, a second academic symposium to be held in Bayreuth at the end of the project, again attended by about twenty-five scholars from Nigeria, Europe, and the US, to discuss “Religious Tensions in Northern Nigeria: Their Local and Global Dimensions.”  It was contemplated that one book would emerge from the project; in the end there will be three, of which this is the first to come to press.

            Why did the Volkswagen  Foundation agree to fund this project?  This question was raised later, as part of the controversy surrounding the Jos conference :

Admittedly, Volkswagen  Foundation (VF) has an impressive record in funding research and teaching in science and technology, yet one [may] legitimately ask why is VF recently intruding into sensitive issues that matter a lot in the lives of peoples, without cross examining the intricacies that make the project valid, meaningful, and worthwhile.[31]

Muslims find it difficult to understand the reasons behind the massive interest of the West in shari‘ah implementation , considering the West’s open hostility and aversion to Islam  and the Muslims especially after the 9/11 incident.[32]

The agenda-setting posture of the West is also evident from the topic of the main study . . ., “The Shari‘ah Debate  and the Shaping of Muslim and Christian Identities in Northern Nigeria.”  Muslims argue that the topic appears to be an intuitive articulation of the real goal of the study [i.e. to actually shape identities, rather than to study their shaping].  It is observed that secularism , which has de-Islamised the Muslims in the south-western part of Nigeria for instance, does not attract such study, but the very recent development of implementation  of the shari‘ah is so disturbing to the West that many [projects and] conferences have to be funded apparently to nip it in the bud.[33]

While we are not contesting why the University of Jos  is the main co-host of the project, but it is apt to ask why other critical universities located at the heart of the shari‘ah projects are not selected.  Or is the conflict -ridden multi-religious Jos society neutral for this kind of research project? Would the project represent their hopes and aspirations?  Certainly not.[34]

After what has come before, our responses to these comments and questions can be brief.  Why was the University of Jos  selected as the Nigerian co-host of the project?  Because three scholars from the University of Jos, together with two colleagues from the University of Bayreuth , went to the trouble of preparing and submitting a research proposal that the Volkswagen  Foundation agreed to fund.  Scholars from “other critical universities located at the heart of the shari‘ah projects” were and are free to prepare and submit their own proposals to Volkswagen  or any other grant-maker.  Whose project was it?  Not “the West’s,” and not the Volkswagen  Foundation’s, but the Jos and Bayreuth scholars’ who conceived and executed it.  Why did Volkswagen  agree to fund this particular project?  Because it made good sense as a doable, worthwhile, and relatively inexpensive package of academic research and analysis, it fit well with Volkswagen ’s funding initiative on the study of “processes of intercultural dissociation, mediation, and identity-shaping,” and it met the additional criteria of involving international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary cooperation among scholars.  What was the project agenda?  See the first paragraph of this section.

The information-gathering aspect of the project, particularly in Nigeria, went very well.  A “Nigeria Team” was constituted—including five Muslims, four Christians, and one “free-thinker.”[35]  Detailed lists of documents to be sought for, people to be interviewed, and questions to be asked, were prepared.  Over thirty trips were then made, to all twelve shari‘ah states plus Adamawa, Benue, Enugu, Lagos, Nasarawa, Plateau , Taraba, and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja.  Interviews—of which detailed records were made—were conducted with state officials, religious leaders, and laypersons, men and women, Muslims and Christians.  Thousands of pages of primary documents were collected, including the reports of several of the state Shari‘ah Implementation Committees and Councils of Ulama  on various aspects of shari‘ah implementation , all shari‘ah-related legislation enacted by the Houses of Assembly in all twelve shari‘ah states, many of the shari‘ah-related bye-laws enacted by Local Government Councils, materials relating to hisbah  groups and the collection and distribution of zakat , the decisions of the courts in several important cases,[36] crime statistics covering several years before and several years after shari‘ah implementation , and more.  A great deal of secondary literature was also collected—writings by Nigerian Muslims and Christians on shari‘ah implementation  as they understand its purposes and its effects.  We are grateful to the hundreds of people throughout the North and elsewhere in Nigeria who took the time to talk with us at length, freely answered our many questions, and unstintingly gave us the documents we sought.  Only rarely in our travels did we encounter any suspiciousness or reluctance to cooperate, and this was usually quickly overcome.  Our only regret is that we have not yet found the time to prepare for publication the documents (many of them already hard to find in 2003) and other information we collected.  The book containing them, tentatively to be entitled Shari‘ah Implementation in Northern Nigeria 1999-2003, when it comes out, will be a valuable historical record of this phase of Nigeria’s history and a resource for scholars for years to come.

As planned, a conference was held half-way through the project, but for various reasons it met in Bayreuth instead of Jos.  Holding on 11 and 12 July, 2003, the Bayreuth conference attracted some forty scholars from Nigeria, Europe, and the US.  Its primary aim was to offer members of the project’s Nigeria Team the opportunity to present first results of the ongoing research, and eight out of ten were able to attend and made presentations.  The project also brought over Dr. Ibrahim Na’iya Sada , the Director of the Centre for Islamic Legal Studies  at Ahmadu Bello University,[37] and representatives of two influential NGOs—Mrs. Saudatu Shehu Mahdi , the Secretary-General of the Women Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) ,[38] and Dr. Yusufu Turaki  of the International Bible Society ; all three of these persons also presented papers in Bayreuth and took active parts in the discussions.  Another Nigerian contributor was Sanusi  Lamido Sanusi , an independent scholar (and a banker in his “day job”) who plays an active role in the discussions among Nigeria’s Muslims about shari‘ah.  This was the first opportunity many of the rest of the Bayreuth conferees had had to meet Sanusi ; his presentation on “The Shari‘ah Debate and the Construction of a ‘Muslim’ Identity in Northern Nigeria”[39] so impressed us that we promptly invited him to be one of the main speakers at our project’s Jos conference, which was then in the planning stages. Five other scholars also presented papers in Bayreuth, including Frieder Ludwig .  A number of interesting insights emerged from the lively, informative, and sometimes provocative debates that followed each presentation.  The papers presented at the Bayreuth conference are also being prepared for publication, under the editorship of Professor Ludwig  and Drs. Danfulani  and Gwamna  of our Nigeria Team.

After the Bayreuth conference, our field research continued in Nigeria, though at a much reduced rate, and attention turned to organising the Jos conference—first set for late December 2003, but later moved to 15 to 17 January, 2004.

THE JOS CONFERENCE

According to our research proposal, the Jos conference should have been another small symposium for academicians:  twenty-five or so scholars gathered in a room for two or three days reading papers to each other and talking about them.  But it turned out quite otherwise:  the Jos conference developed into something much larger, much more open and inclusive not just of academicians but of people from all walks of life—and much more controversial—than we had originally envisioned.  Fortunately, prudent management of our project budget meant we had some unspent funds that could be reallocated to the costs of the larger conference.  But even so, we still found ourselves short—a problem whose solution only generated additional controversy before and during the conference itself.

Ideas behind the conference

Several related ideas lay behind the enlarged scope of the Jos conference.

·         Freshness.  By late 2003, all of us associated with the project had attended or read the proceedings of any number of shari‘ah conferences held at venues around Nigeria, seeing the same people, hearing the same speakers from the Muslim side and from the Christian side expressing the same ideas and arguments over and over again.  We wanted to try for something fresh this time, something that might inject new perspectives, new concepts, new ideas and analyses into the Nigerian discourse about shari‘ah and perhaps help move the public discussion ahead.  This thought led to the invitation mostly of foreign scholars to be main speakers—which definitely brought in new perspectives, ideas, and analyses, but also generated a great deal of controversy at the time of the conference itself.

·         Discussion of neglected topics.  We had some specific ideas about topics we thought were highly relevant to the Nigerian discourse but were being ignored or overly simplified.  For instance, the issue of separation of religion and state . Nigerian Christians, arguing against shari‘ah, have tended to take a strongly separationist view—inspired at least in part by the belief that strict separation of religion and state is what obtains in “modern” or “developed” states—i.e. in the predominantly Christian West.  But this is very far from being the case.  We thought it would be helpful if an expert on the comparative study of law and religion were brought in to talk about what obtains elsewhere, in hopes of complicating Nigerian thinking and discourse about this issue.  In the end, in fact, this matter of the variety of relations between religion and state, and the ways these relations are changing in the present day, became a central theme of the Jos conference.

·         Conference title.  In accordance with the foregoing, we decided to give the conference the title “Comparative Perspectives on Shari‘ah in Nigeria.”  If asked, we would have emphasised the ‘comparative perspectives’ part of this.  Others, however, as we discovered later to our chagrin, saw only the ‘shari‘ah in Nigeria’ part:  a conference on shari‘ah in Nigeria, and most of the speakers are foreigners!  But the focus was never intended to be on Nigeria itself, so much as on the broader global community of which Nigeria is a part—from which “comparative perspectives” on Nigeria are possible.  No doubt we did not explain this nearly as clearly as we should have in the lead-up to the conference.

·         Inclusion of a wider audience.  In the tradition of most shari‘ah conferences in Nigeria, we agreed we should invite the public to attend, rather than limiting the proceedings to a relatively few academicians.  This also fit with Volkswagen ’s objective of “the presentation and conveyance of results in university teaching and to the public,” and with our own aim of injecting new perspectives into the Nigerian discourse: to this end we hoped to attract a large audience of both Christians and Muslims from all walks of life.

·         More time for main speakers.  Finally, we decided to abandon the usual rule at academic conferences, according to which speakers (who may have flown half-way around the world to attend) are given only twenty minutes to present their papers.  We decided to allow our main speakers forty-five minutes to present, giving them time to develop their themes at greater length; each would be followed by two commentators on their papers and then take questions from the audience.  

Main speakers and their themes

Once these basic decisions had been taken, we were able to put together a really first-rate roster of internationally renowned scholars as our main speakers—the authors of the eight papers that form the core of this book.

Cole Durham , of Brigham Young University, a leading expert on religion/state relations around the world, agreed to talk on “Nigeria’s ‘State Religion’ Question in Comparative Perspective.” His paper, at pp. 144-167 below, with its valuable taxonomy of religion-state relationships along two axes and its wealth of comparative constitutional information and analysis, will now become essential reading for anyone—judges, lawyers, and laypersons alike—thinking about Section 10 of Nigeria’s constitution (barring any “state religion ”) and its interpretation, as well as for all those interested in knowing more about the wide variety of religion/state relationships that human societies have evolved.

Rosalind Hackett , Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of Tennessee and well known as a scholar of religion in many of its manifestations, spoke on a topic closely related to Durham ’s—the changing role of religion in the “public sphere.”  Her paper, “Rethinking the Role of Religion in the Public Sphere :  Local and Global Perspectives,” at pp. 74-100 below, shows that the impetus for a wider role for shari‘ah in Nigeria is part of a world-wide drive, in virtually all societies of whatever religious complexion, to “claim recognition for, and the possibilities for implementation of, religious ideas, values, practices, and institutions in the governance of nation-states and the lives of their citizens.”

Ruud Peters , of the University of Amsterdam, a leading Western authority on Islamic law, was invited to give a survey of shari‘ah implementation in the Muslim world today—to frame the drive for shari‘ah implementation  in Nigeria in its wider Islamic setting.  His paper, “The Enforcement of God’s Law:  The Shari‘ah in the Present World of Islam,” at pp. 107-134 below, discusses the nature of shari‘ah as religious law and as jurists’ law, its “Westernisation ” in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and finally the current situation: some Muslim societies whose legal systems have been completely secularised, some in which aspects of shari‘ah are applied within the framework of Westernised legal systems, some now re-Islamising , and some completely Islamised.

Abdullahi An-Na‘im , Professor of Law at Emory University, who proved to be our most controversial speaker, gave a searching meditation on “the public role of shari‘ah in present Islamic societies.” His paper, “The Future of Shari‘ah and the Debate in Northern Nigeria,” at pp. 327-357 below, explores the question “how to reconcile the profound and consistent commitment of Muslims to shari‘ah  with the needs of present and future Islamic societies at home, as well as their need for peaceful and cooperative international relations with other societies.”  His conclusion, that shari‘ah has a vital role to play “for its foundational role in the socialization of children, sanctification of social institutions and relationships, and the shaping and development of those fundamental values that can be translated into general legislation and public policy through the democratic political process,” but not “as a normative system to be enacted and enforced as such by the state as positive law and public policy,” will continue to generate heated debate in Nigeria and elsewhere for years to come.

Abdulkader Tayob , of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in the Netherlands, brought these issues of religion/state relationships down to concrete cases, speaking on “The Demand for Shari‘ah in African Democratisation Processes:  Pitfalls or Opportunities?” His paper, at pp. 27-57 below, explores the controversies and crises—very different from country to country—that have arisen over demands for the implementation  of Islamic law, in one form or another, as an element of the processes of democratisation  still going on in Kenya , South Africa , and Nigeria. 

John Reitz ,  Professor of International and Comparative Law at the University of Iowa, like Cole Durham  was invited to speak on a legal topic central to the Nigerian debate about shari‘ah—the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion . There is virtually no Nigerian case-law on this subject.  Reitz’s paper, “Freedom of Religion and Its Limitations:  Judicial Standards for Deciding Particular Cases,” at pp. 178-244 below, discusses the analytical tools—the judicial standards—which the European Court of Human Rights, the Canadian and U.S. Supreme Courts, and the German Constitutional Court have developed to guide them in resolving difficult issues about claimed rights to engage in sometimes controversial forms of religious practice.  Reitz’s paper will become a text-book for students of the comparative constitutional law of religious freedom. 

Gerrie ter Haar , of the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, viewing religion from the social science perspective, as “a human construct, something which has grown among human communities and serves human interests”—a view not intended to contradict the theological or “insider’s” perspective on religion but to complement it—examined religion’s potential for use as “a tool in the hands of human beings that can be used for good or not-so-good purposes, for constructive or for destructive aims and objectives.”  Her paper, “Religion:  Source of Conflict  or Resource for Peace ” at pp. 303-320 below, discusses uses of religion for good or ill in a variety of historical, social, and religious settings, in the end placing the responsibility squarely on each of us “to help steer its course in one or the other direction.”

            Sanusi  Lamido Sanusi , active in the Nigerian debates about shari‘ah but also much exposed to the international scene , was invited to talk about the intense interest foreigners have taken in shari‘ah implementation  in Nigeria.  His paper, “The West and the Rest: Reflections on the Intercultural Dialogue about Shari‘ah,” at pp. 251-274 below, in fact analyses three poles of the conversation: (1) “the totality of discourse in contemporary Muslim Northern Nigeria,” dominated by politicians, traditional rulers, and religious scholars, including “the declaration of shari‘ah by a number of state governments and the various real and cosmetic signifiers of this declaration,” (2) “the opposition voices from Europe and America, in the form of governments and [NGOs], which have stridently condemned the implementation  of shari‘ah  in the name of dogmatic adherence to a Western conception of universal human rights and political values,” and (3) the progressive  Muslim critics of the Northern discourse, “a group that seems to hang somewhere between the Muslim world and the West”—critical of various aspects of the official Northern discourse on shari‘ah but equally “suspicious of Western powers and critical of the West’s strategic approach to the Muslim world.”  Sanusi ’s sophisticated critical analysis of the positions of all sides demands and will repay serious study by all concerned.

Keynotes and commentaries

            Our commentators too were a distinguished group in their own right—all but one of them Nigerians or long-time residents of Nigeria, in order to provide Nigerian perspectives on the perspectives brought in from outside; half Muslims and half Christians, in order to ensure balanced representation of the views of both sides.  Their presentations, scattered through the pages that follow,[40] not only shed more light on the main papers and the themes they address, but also provide windows onto the preoccupations and concerns of Nigerians at this point in their history.

The two keynote speakers make substantive contributions of their own:

Saudatu Shehu Mahdi , a prominent Nigerian women’s rights activist concerned particularly for “the weak and vulnerable, especially women in shari‘ah jurisdictions,” at pp. 1-6 below makes “A Case for Codification of Islamic Personal Law in Nigeria.”  Mahdi  argues that “local customs, laws, and negative value systems continue to encroach upon the implementation [in the shari‘ah courts] of the pure principles of shari‘ah,” to the detriment especially of women.  The remedy she proposes is codification, which “will provide the opportunity for development of shari‘ah  personal law in a manner consistent with the Qur’an  and the hadith  [and will] dispel pressure for its compliance with standards set by parameters other than Islam.”

Danny McCain , the other keynote speaker, has lived and taught in Nigeria for many years.  His paper, “Which Road Leads Beyond the Shari‘ah Controversy?  A Christian  Perspective on Shari‘ah in Nigeria,” at pp. 7-26 below, surveys the roads of mass conversion, confrontation, segregation, and secularism , and rejects them all as being either impossible or undesirable.  Arguing that the only real option for Nigerian Muslims and Christians is the road of consensus, McCain makes a series of concrete recommendations for religious leaders on both sides, including the valuable suggestion, illustrated by a programme McCain himself has initiated, that Christians and Muslims begin working together in an organised way to attack such societal ills as HIV /AIDS and corruption.

We fall under suspicion

We spread the word about the conference, and invited people to come,  through advertisements in the newspapers and the distribution of many hundreds of invitation cards to people in all parts of the North and elsewhere as well.  Here, as we have indicated, we did not do as well as we might have.  In the newspapers, speaking as the Faculty of Law and Department of Religious Studies of the University of Jos , we announced a conference on “Comparative Perspectives on Shari‘ah in Nigeria,” “the culmination of a year-long programme of research and writing carried out in conjunction with the Department of Religious Studies at Bayreuth  University and sponsored by the Volkswagen  Foundation,” and we identified the main speakers by name and institutional affiliation. But, the cost of newspaper advertising being what it is, we did not expand on the ideas behind the conference, or explain why these particular speakers had been selected, or even give the titles of their papers.  More information went out with the invitation cards—we included with them the full conference programme, which included the titles of the main papers, the names of all the commentators, and, at the back, several paragraphs of information about our research project and its sponsor.  We thought that all this information, especially perhaps the titles of the main papers, which reinforced, we thought, the “comparative perspectives” part of the conference title as against the “shari‘ah in Nigeria” part, and the names of the commentators, including many well-known Nigerian scholars on both sides of the religious divide, would allay suspicions about the conference and our motives in staging it.

But it was not to be. What stuck out, especially to Northern Muslims, was:  foreign—nay, Western —sponsor; Western academics brought in as main speakers; even Western organisers planted at the University of Jos; all presuming to come to preach to us about shari‘ah in Nigeria.  There was more.  From their names, it was clear that three of the eight main speakers came from Muslim backgrounds. But two of them were well-known to Nigeria’s Muslims, and what was known was not much liked.  Sanusi  Lamido Sanusi , a scion of the house of the Emir of Kano  and unquestionably an orthodox Sunni Muslim, was nevertheless considered to be “Westoxicated”—spoiled in his mind by his Western education[41]—and of course had been a long-time gadfly of the Northern Muslim establishment.  Abdullahi An-Na‘im  was worse: not only thoroughly Westernised , but in his religious beliefs a follower of the distinctly unorthodox Mahmoud Mohamed Taha , proclaimer of “The Second Message of Islam” and hanged as an apostate by the government of Sudan  in 1985.[42]  And then what of Ruud Peters —already known as the author of a book on shari‘ah  in Nigeria critical of its criminal law aspects on human rights grounds.[43]  It looked, with some justification, as if the conference deck was stacked against the proponents of shari‘ah implementation  in Northern Nigeria.  This was not our intention—as we believe the actual conference and this book demonstrate—but we can see how and why this impression was created and we regret our failure to communicate more clearly in advance what we were about.

And then there was also one more thing again.  The immensely increased expenses of the enlarged conference have been mentioned. Savings effected on other parts of the project made up some of this. But we were still short of money.  It occurred to us that the Cultural Affairs Section of the US Embassy  in Abuja might be willing, under its speakers programme, to sponsor one or two of the four main speakers coming from universities in the US.  We proposed this, giving the Embassy  full information about the conference (which was then already set) and its principal sponsorship by the Volkswagen  Foundation.  The Embassy  eventually agreed to assist us by sponsoring one of the US-based speakers—in the end this was Professor Durham .  This was a great help to us because it freed money we would otherwise have had to spend to bring Durham  over, for other conference uses. Durham  then spoke not only at our conference, but also, subsequently, in Zaria and Kano, before returning to the US.

            So far so good.  But now the Embassy , as is usual, put out its own announcement of the fact that it was bringing Durham  over, and the announcement got badly garbled in the press. Here it is as it appeared in ThisDay, a national daily, a week before the conference:

US Embassy

The United States Embassy , University of Jos and the National Orientation Agency are organizing an International Conference on Sharia.  Nigerian and American scholars at the University of Jos  will attend the nine-day conference titled “Comparative Perspectives on Sharia in Nigeria.”

According to information from the public affairs section of the US Embassy , American scholar Professor Cole Durham  of Gates  University will participate at the Jos conference by putting an international comparative perspective to the current debate on Sharia in Nigeria.[44]

This little news item is laughably confused—no doubt by some junior ThisDay staffer—but many people were not laughing.  They thought they detected lies on our part, about who was sponsoring us and our conference, and as the conference came on this gave them further reason for suspecting that the whole thing was in reality just another manifestation of a Western  agenda to subvert Islam.

Again why one asks, there is the invisible hand of the US Embassy  in the project based on the information coming from its Public Affairs [Section] . . . as contained in This Day, Friday, January 9^th, Vol. 9, No. 3183, page 3.  This calls for deeper probe.[45]

Muslims in Nigeria are almost unanimous in suspecting the motives of the organisers, particularly when the USA’s involvement is alleged. * * *  Muslims consider the West as generally hypocritical, deceptive, exploitative, and unjust.[46]

The organizers, the sponsors, the main speakers (seventy percent of whom are Westerners, the others Western  bred Muslim apologists) make the conference suspect to Muslims.  Only two or three discussants and the participants were to speak for Islam so one wonders what perspectives are in the conference.[47]

The keynote address supposedly from the Muslim side should have been from a well learned and open-minded person not from others with undue Western influence on ‘fabricated’ Women’s  Right Projects.  Clearly, as the Muslim’s interest may not be catered for by the proposed keynote speaker, she is undoubtedly not a match to her Christian co-keynote speaker.[48]

The organisation of such and related conferences must always consider basic imperatives to ensure the promotion and integrity of scholarship which we feel the organisers have systematically destroyed and have undoubtedly said good bye to intellectual integrity, objectivity and fairness.[49]

[T]he Westerner  does not necessarily organize, sponsor or attend a conference such as this in order to understand the Muslims perspectives and perhaps accord it better understanding and respect but to sell his own perspectives and standards. The tuition of Western scholarship, propaganda and indeed entertainment at what ever level and form at all times does not go beyond or fall short of the unavowed goal to prove that the Western races and their civilisation are superior to anything that has or could be produced in the world, and so to give a sort of moral justification to the Western quest for domination and material power.[50]

The concern of the European Union and western multinational corporations is . . . not for the so-called victims of Shari’ah Laws but how to ultimately make European libertarian values universal values.  So that religiously inspired laws will become obsolete and for example same sex marriages will become acceptable.  People will become Europeanized and eventually justify western dominion and looting of the resources of Africans and other oppressed peoples.  Volkswagen  Foundation and the US  Government supported the conference not for academic reasons but for ideological reasons.[51]

And it wasn’t only the Muslims who were suspicious of us either.  There was also a groundswell of opinion among Christian indigenes of Plateau  State—at least in and around Jos—of which we heard from security agents, that far from being anti-shari‘ah, the conference was actually part of an Islamic agenda to bring shari‘ah to Plateau  State.[52]  Fortunately this idea was quelled before it did any damage.

The Jos conference

Muslim suspicions might have led them to boycott the conference, but instead the opposite happened: Muslims turned out in large numbers from all over the North. 

[S]ome states like Kano , Jigawa  and Bauchi  published the conference over their local radio stations and urged Muslims to attend and make positive contributions to defend the cause of shari’ah . . .[53]

On the day the conference started, the Kano State Shari‘ah Implementation Advisory Committee  took out a full-page advertorial in the Daily Trust, a national daily read widely by Muslims, to express its concerns, several of which have been quoted above, and to remind everyone that

Shari‘ah is a deeply seated and fundamental pillar in the lives of Muslims.  It is not a trivial matter.  The conference should open up dialogue and transparent understanding for all religions and cultures.  * * *  The project should not stir up controversy, misgivings or mistrust.  The project on “Shari’ah Debate” should not be presumptuous based on the premise of either demonizing or deconstructing the structure and process of worship (Shari‘ah) of millions of Muslims that populate this great nation.[54]

We hope and believe that we lived up to these admonitions.  The Kano  State government also sent a delegation led by Shaykh Ibrahim Kabo , the Chairman of its Shari‘ah Implementation Advisory Committee; several members of this delegation, including Shaykh Kabo , took active parts in the proceedings.  Altogether, over nine hundred people signed the registration books, and we reckon that there were an average of five or six hundred in the hall at any given time.  Besides the large turn-out of Muslims, many Christians also came, from many parts of the country but predominantly from the various seminaries and colleges in and around Jos; and of course many students and staff of the University of Jos , Christians and Muslims, also attended.  We also had a smattering of Europeans and Americans (in addition to the invited speakers), some of whom came great distances just to attend the conference.  Our thanks goes to all these people, not only for braving all hazards to come, but for their spirited participation in the discussions.

            Besides exceeding our wildest expectations in terms of attendance,  how successful may we judge the conference to have been?  Let us ask the question this way:  how open were the audience to the often complex ideas and analyses articulated by the speakers?  —Not: how open to accepting them, necessarily—this is not the point—but how open at least to understanding them and grappling with them on more or less their own terms? 

            By this measure the conference was only a modest success.  Some in the audience, of course, came already “knowing” what they would hear, with minds firmly shut and a determination only to resist.  The larger problem, however, was different:  it was the novelty of the academic discourses which many in the audience—on both sides of the religious divide—were encountering for the first time: the refusal of the speakers to simplify, trivialize, demonize, or presume;  their insistence, rather, on complexities, uncertainties, and the seriousness of the subjects at hand; their use of concepts and methods of thinking, distinctions and abstractions unfortunately all too foreign to Nigerian discourse at any level.  The Nigerians have a saying:  “Too much English!”, and this was very true of our conference.  Even for the most open-minded, the papers presented difficulties of comprehension that only further reading and study can hope to overcome.

Nevertheless, for many, particularly the students in the audience, the conference was “a lovely and fantastic effort towards boosting learning.”[55]  And as one of our reviewers said,

For the sake of intellectual life in Nigeria, where a number of no-go areas need to be opened up, it was clearly worth the effort and the heat of arguments provoked.[56]

And furthermore: all the more reason for this book!  For despite their difficulties, the papers presented at the conference, now revised, edited, and published here, deal with issues with which Nigerians must eventually come to terms in ways more complicated and informed than they are doing now.  Our hope is that this book will succeed, more than the conference from which it stems, in helping to bring this result about.

THIS BOOK

In conclusion, two brief comments on the book itself.

Spelling of Arabic words. We have adopted a perhaps old-fashioned system of spelling Arabic words: shari‘ah instead of shari‘a or just plain sharia, for example.  We did this because the system adopted seems to be the one preferred in Nigeria.  But in proper names, titles of publicatons, and quotations we have left spellings as we found them.

Lists of references. We have placed lists of references at the end of each contribution—main papers, commentaries, this introduction.  There is in fact very little overlap among the lists of references, and we considered that on balance it was preferable that an author’s references be identified with his or her paper rather than merged in a general list at the back of the book.

REFERENCES

Note:  websites referred to in the footnotes are not mentioned again here.

Ado-Kurawa , Ibrahim, Jos international conference on comparative perspectives on the Shari‘ah in Nigeria, Kano:  Trans West Africa Limited, 2004.

Al-Wasewi , Ibrahim Harun Hasan, “The international conference on comparative perspectives on shariah in Nigeria and a closer look at the views of a western Muslim in Islam at the Crossroads”, 2-page paper distributed at the conference on “Comparative Perspectives on Shari‘ah in Nigeria”, copy with the editors.

Arjomand , Said Amir, “Philanthropy, the law, and public policy in the Islamic world before the modern era”, in Ilchman , Katz , and Queen , 1998, 109-132.

Barber , Putnam, Accountability: a challenge for charities and fundraisers, San Francisco, Ca. : Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2002.

Bendjilali , Boualem (ed.), La Zakat et le Waqf: Aspects historiques, juridiques, institutionnels et économiques, Djeddah: Institut Islamique de Recherches et de Formation (IIRF), 1998.

Chairman, Kano State Shari‘ah Implementation Advisory Committee , “Cause for concern over a lopsided and unbalanced ‘International Conference on Comparative Perspectives on Shari‘ah in Nigeria’”, advertorial appearing in the Daily Trust, 15 January 2004, 33.

Danfulani , Umar, “Expected obstacles and attendant problems in the execution of shariah in Northern Nigeria: a critical analysis”, HUMANITY: Jos Journal of General Studies, November 2000, 1-15.

Danfulani , Umar, Philip Ostien , and Frieder Ludwig , “The sharia controversy and Muslim-Christian relations in Nigeria”, Jahrbuch für Kontextuelle Theologien 2002, 70-95.

Downie , Mark, American foundations: an investigative history, Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2001.

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Garba , Ahmad, “A critique on the Jos international conference on shari‘ah in Nigeria”, New Nigerian, September 24, 2004, 25.

Ghanim , Ibrahim al-Bayumi (ed.),  Nizam al-waqf  wa'l-mujtama` al-madani fi'l-watan al-`arabi, Bairut: Markaz dirasat al-wahdah al-`arabiyyah/al-Amanah al-`ammah li-l-awqaf  bi-daulat Kuwait, 2004.

Glass, Sandra A., ed., Approaching foundations: suggestions and insights for fundraisers, San Francisco, Cal.: Jossey-Bass, 2000.

Harneit-Sievers , Axel, “Encounters and no-go areas in the Nigeria sharia debate”, Daily Trust, January 30, 2004, 7-8.

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Hopkins , Bruce R. and Jody Blazek , Private foundations: tax law and compliance,  New York, N.Y. : John Wiley, 1997.

Ilchman , Warren F., Stanley N. Katz , and Edward L. Queen , II, eds., Philanthropy in the world’s traditions,  Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Kiger, Joseph C., Philanthropic foundations in the twentieth century, Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Kogelmann , Franz, Islamische fromme Stiftungen und Staat: der Wandel in den Beziehungen zwischen einer religiösen Institution und dem marokkanischen Staat seit dem 19. Jahrhundert bis 1937, Würzburg: Ergon, 1999.

_______, “Some aspects of the development of the Islamic pious endowments in Morocco, Algeria and Egypt in the 20th century”, in Randi Deguilhem and Abdelhamid Hénia (eds.), Les fondations pieuses (waqf ) en Méditerranée enjeux de société, enjeux de pouvoir, Kuwait: Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation, 2004, 343-393.

Kozlowski , Gregory C., “Religious authority, reform, and philanthropy in the contemporary Muslim world”, in Ilchman , Katz , and Queen , 1998, 279-308.

Ludwig , Frieder, “Christlicher Revival und Islamische Erneuerung in Nigeria”,  Dialog der Religionen 1997/1,  79–85.

_______, “Religion und Politik im Kontext multireligiöser afrikanischer Staaten am Beispiel Nigerias“, Hallesche Beiträge zur Orientwissenschaft 31, 2001, 249–270.

McIlnay, Dennis P., How foundations work: what grantseekers need to know about the many faces of foundations, San Francisco, Ca.: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

Nasir , J.M., “CEDAW and women under sharia”, Current Jos Law Journal, 5/5, 1999, 20-33.

Oloyede , Is-Haq, “Commentary” on Sanusi  Lamido Sanusi , “The West and the Rest:  Reflections on the Intercultural Dialogue about Shari‘ah”, this volume, 292-302.

Ostien , Philip, A study of the court systems of Northern Nigeria, with a proposal for the creation of lower sharia courts in some northern states, Jos: Centre for Development Studies, University of Jos, 1999.

_______, “Islamic criminal law:  what it means in Zamfara and Niger states”, Journal of Public and Private Law (University of Jos) 4/4, 2000, 1-18.

_______, “Ten good things about the implementation  of shari‘ah in some states of Northern Nigeria”, Swedish Missiological Themes, 90/2, 2002, 163-174.

Peebles , Jane, Handbook of international philanthropy, Chicago, Il.: Bonus Books, 1998.

Peters , Ruud, “Waqf”, in P.J. Pearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition, Volume XI, W-Z, Leiden: Brill, 2002, 58-63.

_______, Islamic Criminal Law in Nigeria, Ibadan: Spectrum Books Limited, 2003.

Renz , Loren, International grantmaking: a report on U.S. foundation trends, The Foundation Center  in cooperation with the Council on Foundations. New York, N.Y.: Foundation Center , 1997.

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Sada , Ibrahim Na’iya, “Commentary” on W. Cole Durham , Jr., “Nigeria’s ‘State Religion’ Question in Comparative Perspective”, this volume, 174-77.

Salamon , Lester M. et al., Global civil society: dimensions of the nonprofit sector, Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins  Center for Civil Society Studies, 1999.

Sanusi , Sanusi  Lamido, “The shari‘ah debate and the construction of a ‘Muslim’ identity in Northern Nigeria: A critical perspective”, www.gamji.com/sanusi.htm, 2003.

_______, “The west and the rest:  reflections on the intercultural dialogue about shari‘ah”, this volume, 251-74.

Schneiter , Paul H., The art of asking: how to solicit philanthropic gifts, Ambler, Pa.: Fund-Raising Institute, 2^nd edition, 1985.

Tanko , Sani B., “Comparative perspective on shariah”, Weekly Trust, Part I: February 7-14, 2004, 12; Part II:  February 14-20, 2004, 12.

Ter Haar , Gerrie, “Religion:  source of conflict or resource for peace?”, this volume, 303-320.

Weiss , Holger (ed.), Social welfare in Muslim societies in Africa, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (The Nordic Africa Institute), 2002.