TheShari'ahConundrum in Nigeria and the Zamfara Model

One of the outstanding issues in contemporary Islamist revivalism in sub-Saharan Africa is constitutional reform which will ensure the re-enactment of the shari'ah as a main, if not the main, legal system in countries with Muslim majority or where Muslims constitute a sizeable minority. Although shari'ah had always had a restricted sphere of operation, especially in Islamic societies where colonialism had often deprived it of jurisdiction on areas other than family law and religious endowments,1 1. See Talal Asad, “Thinking about Secularism and Law in Egypt,” The International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Paper 2, Leiden: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, 2001. agitations for its full entrenchment have, like flickering flames poked from dying embers in a grate, always surfaced under new political dispensations. Admittedly, ethnic divisions have always undermined the unity and sovereignty of Nigeria,2 2. John Hatch, Nigeria: A History, London: Martin Secker and Warburg, 1971, p. 197. but such divisions and suspicions are often suppressed by stronger factors such as religion. Until 1999, the penal aspect of the shari'ah was all but suspended in Nigeria. But on 21 January 2000, the governor of Zamfara State (North Eastern Nigeria) reintroduced this aspect, and since then, most of the northern Nigerian states, and to a certain extent, some areas in Yorubaland (south-west Nigeria), have equally tried their hands at it. This paper will examine the history of the Islamic legal system in Nigeria and the efforts of the Nigerian youth in promoting or opposing its application and sustenance as a veritable tool for solving contemporary political, social, and economic problems bedeviling the nation

Colonialism · Constitution · Context (archaeology · Islam · Jurisdiction · Muslim world · Political science · Politics · Secularism · Sharia · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · History · Law · Religion and Sociopolitical Dynamics in Nigeria

• Between Democracy and Federalism

  Bolaji, Bolaji Bolaji•Africa Today•2013

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