Radical Islam in Nigeria
MARSHALL, PAUL
Radical Islam in Nigeria The Talibanization of West Africa. BY PAUL MARSHALL AFTER SAFIYA HUSEINI was sentenced to death by stoning last October 9 by an Islamic sharia court in northern Nigeria,...
...This mode of execution, incidentally, involves immobilizing the person to be stoned by first burying her up to her chest...
...Thus, three days before Huseini's Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, which has just released his book-length report The Talibanization of Nigeria: Sharia Law and Religious Freedom...
...The New York Times Magazine profiled her, and European members of parliament protested to Nigerian president Oluse-gun Obasanjo...
...After September 11, some Islamist violence took on a distinctly anti-American tone...
...February 2000 saw the worst violence since Nigeria's civil war 30 years ago...
...If radical Islam is left unchecked, it will continue to provoke widespread inter-religious conflict that, combined with endemic ethnic strife, may fragment the country...
...As in much of Africa, family law in Nigeria has long drawn on sharia, the body of Islamic law and precedent...
...But men face notable brutality for other offenses...
...The situation in Nigeria also provides an additional reason for the United States to drop its 30-year practice of downplaying demands for human rights and democracy in Muslim societies...
...ally is bound to face further religious violence...
...Since 1999, Zamfara state has sexually segregated buses, taxis, and many public places, banned alcohol, enforced a dress code on women, and closed nonMuslim schools...
...Governor Bukar Ibrahim of Yobe, another sharia state, said that he was prepared to fight a civil war to preserve it...
...Otherwise this fledgling democracy, regional power, and U.S...
...human rights groups say as many as 3,000...
...This could make the giant of sub-Saharan Africa—a major oil exporter to the United States and a new, struggling democracy— into a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists...
...Men are invariably let off for their part in these sexual crimes because sharia courts require a higher standard of evidence to convict them...
...Its justice minister has written that the new sharia is unconstitutional but has failed to mount a legal challenge...
...Ahmed Sani, the governor of Zamfara, the first state to introduce this form of sharia, told Freedom House that "without amputations there is no sharia...
...Trying to appeal a sharia verdict to one of Nigeria's higher civil courts could be taken as a sign of such apostasy...
...Nigerian police say that dozens of Pakistanis have been involved in religious riots, and visiting Pakistani "scholars" have been ejected from the country...
...Sani told Freedom House that the Koran requires Muslims to kill family members who leave Islam, and indicated that his state will not prosecute such killings...
...In Kaduna City, whole neighborhoods were destroyed...
...Nigeria is further proof, if any were needed, that radical Islam is not created or driven by opposition to U.S...
...Sani says that sharia supercedes the Nigerian constitution, and Zamfara's legislative assembly suspended two democratically elected Muslim members because they did not fully support the new laws...
...Perhaps 6,000 have been killed in the last two years in religion-related violence nationwide...
...BY PAUL MARSHALL AFTER SAFIYA HUSEINI was sentenced to death by stoning last October 9 by an Islamic sharia court in northern Nigeria, her case drew international attention...
...Bin Laden remains a hero in much of the north...
...In the cities of Jos and Kano, hundreds died in riots in September and October, with Muslims observed waving bin Laden posters and Christians waving American flags...
...Especially at risk are women and religious minorities, not to mention democracy and stability in West Africa...
...The growth of radical Islam has effects far wider than these draconian punishments...
...Police conservatively estimate that 600 people died...
...Sharia state governments have destroyed dozens of churches...
...It is an aggressive, worldwide ideological movement with its sights set on Africa and Asia as much as the Middle East...
...When, in March, an appeals court overturned the death sentence on a technicality, much of the world sighed with relief and lost interest in the growth of militant Islam in Africa's most populous country...
...In May 2001, an Islamic court ordered the removal of Ahmed Tij-jan's left eye after he was found guilty of partially blinding a friend...
...While no evidence has surfaced of al Qaeda operations in Nigeria, the extremism from which it draws support is spreading rapidly, and is encouraged by radical Islamic groups and foreign regimes...
...Nigeria is about equally divided between Christians and Muslims, with a small number of animists...
...Its hizbah (religious enforcers) mete out immediate, harsh punishments for "un-Islamic" activities such as questioning Islamic teaching or women's wearing pants...
...Another ordered 15-year-old Abubakar Aliyu's hand amputated for stealing...
...But the extremism to which Huseini's case drew attention—she had gone to the police to complain of being raped, then was arrested and tried for adultery—remains a growing threat to human rights in the dozen Nigerian states that have adopted a hard-line interpretation of Islamic law...
...The Nigerian federal government's response has been tentative...
...Before Zamfara instituted sharia, officials from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria, and even Palestinian representatives, visited...
...conviction was overturned in Sokoto state, a sharia court in neighboring Katsina state condemned Amina Law-al Kurami to be stoned to death for adultery, and another court is considering the same for 18-year-old Hafsatu Abubakar...
...NonMuslims are barred from being judges, prosecutors, and lawyers in the courts to which they may be subject...
...The United States should urge Nigeria to oppose extremist sharia vigorously and help it to do so...
...The new laws are not subject to democratic control...
...Since proponents of the new code say that it is divinely ordained, no constitution or election is allowed to challenge it...
...But the versions of sharia introduced in the last two years are closer to those imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia...
...Sudan, which has already supplied Chechnya's criminal code, is running training programs for Nigeria's sharia judges...
...The new laws have precipitated riots throughout the country...
...Even hardheaded realists should see the importance of aiding the country to reform its troubled legal system nationwide and provide education that includes modern knowledge and promotes freedom as an alternative to Islamist schools...
...policy on Israel...
...As Nigerian novelist and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka laments, "The roof is already burning over our head—the prelude to civil war...
...In some states Muslims are subject to sharia even if they prefer civil courts that have protections under Nigeria's bill of rights...
Vol. 7 • April 2002 • No. 30
