Sharia law: Arewa’s export to Yorubaland, By Majeed Dahiru

Consequently, political Islam and Islamist separatism will begin to define the socio-political landscape of Yorubaland as the Yoruba Muslims increasingly get isolated from their kith and kin of other faiths while aligning their democratic choices with their religious agenda, and the region will lose its religious innocence and descend into anarchy, as the centre of social harmony and peaceful coexistence will no longer hold.

At a time that well-meaning Nigerians, including some Muslims, are calling for the secularisation of the Nigerian state and the dismantling of religious laws in the Hausa speaking Muslim North of Nigeria, as a means of effectively separating the state and religion, some wannabe Mullahs in the Yoruba speaking South-West part of the country are struggling to extend Sharia rule to their region. For many decades, the Muslim North has been the hotbed of Islamism, Islamist separatism and political Islam in Nigeria; a situation that has reduced the region to a Siberia of religious intolerance, violent extremism and Jihadi terrorism. The ultimate objective of Islamism is to obliterate secularism, multiculturalism and Western style representative democracy and erect in its place a Sharia ruled Islamic state. The Boko Haram insurgency that the Nigerian state has been battling to defeat for over a decade is nothing but a violent manifestation of Islamism.

On the contrary, the Yoruba speaking South-West region of Nigeria, with a significant population of Muslims who are nearly equal its Christian population has been a shining example of religious harmony and peaceful coexistence between people of different faiths, with zero incident of Jihadi terrorism, as this part of Nigeria has been free of Islamism. Among Yoruba Muslims are found some of the most knowledgeable, pious and forthright vanguards of the religion of Islam in the entire Muslim population. As a matter of fact, Islam reached Yorubaland in places like Iwo from the ancient empire of Mali as early as the 16^th century, making the region one of the earliest sites of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. The practice of Islam that is devoid of Islamism in Yorubaland has set the region ahead as the most peaceful, secure and civilised region in the global Muslim community. In fact, the Islamic conduct of Yoruba Muslims is commonly used to justify Islam as a religion of peace.

But all these are about to change as Islamism spreads south from the Muslim North into Yorubaland. For many years, Yoruba Muslims have been regarded as inferiors by Islamists in the Muslim North, who are unable or unwilling to separate Islam, a divine religion that is practiced through personal conviction, and Islamism, a man made version of Islam  that is practiced by compulsion or imposition on the generality as a religious duty. To Islamists, the level of inter-religious harmony, accommodation and peaceful coexistence that is Yorubaland is an indication of weakness of the Islamic faith of Yoruba Muslims. And in an apparent bid to shore up their Islamic bonafide, some prominent Yoruba Muslims are beginning to clamour for Sharia law in Yorubaland. As far as these set of Yoruba Muslims are concerned, their Islam is no longer complete without a dose of Islamism and they want to now live in an imaginary bubble of a Utopian Islamic state.

First, as a Muslim, I am worried about the spread of Islamism into Yorubaland, as accentuated by the clamour of some prominent Muslim figures for the adoption of Sharia law in the region, because the biggest casualty of Islamism is Islam and its biggest victims are usually Muslims. Second, as a Nigerian I am also concerned that the last frontier of societal sanity in multi-religious Nigeria that has long served as a buffer of peace and harmony is about to be flipped. Whereas Islamism and its social (Almajirici) and violent (Boko Haram) manifestations in the North are often attributed to the educational backwardness and economic underdevelopment of the Muslim North, how are we to explain the rising tide of Islamism in Nigeria’s most educationally advanced and economically developed region? Probably motivated by the politics of religious identity and the need to be accepted as “authentic,” in order to benefit from the majoritarian democratic advantage of the Muslim North in national elections, some Yoruba Muslims now desperately seek to “belong” to the “Rightly Guided Caliphate.” 

…as the educationally backward Arewaland exports Islamism to the educationally advanced Yorubaland, there are salient points to ponder upon. Of what benefit has Islamism been to the Muslim North that it should be extended to Yorubaland? Is it the status of the region as one the most illiterate, diseased, underdeveloped, terrorised, impoverished and traumatised in the world?

Not surprisingly, Islamist individuals, organisations and institutions in the Muslim North have come out to back the demand for the establishment of Sharia law in Yorubaland, cheering and urging Yoruba wannabe Mullahs on.  But as the educationally backward Arewaland exports Islamism to the educationally advanced Yorubaland, there are salient points to ponder upon. Of what benefit has Islamism been to the Muslim North that it should be extended to Yorubaland? Is it the status of the region as one the most illiterate, diseased, underdeveloped, terrorised, impoverished and traumatised in the world?

Nigeria is a secular state by constitutional definition, with inexhaustible guarantees of religious freedom, and Islam is consistent with secularism. Under the constitution, Nigerian Muslims enjoy unrestrained rights to practice their “Sharia” faith without hindrance. What the constitution does not allow is to impose your Muslim values on others, including fellow Muslims. For Instance, as a Muslim, my Sharia faith prohibits me from the consuming alcohol, committing adultery, stealing, murder, lying, etc., and if I decide to comply with the dictates of my faith, the constitution does not compel me to commit any of the aforementioned vices as a matter of citizenship obligation. However, what I cannot do is to compel others to abstain if it does not go against their religious beliefs, much the same way an Indian Muslim should be allowed to sacrifice cow for the feast of Eid-al Adha without attracting the wrath of Hindu extremists who considers such an act a sacrilege of eating their “god” under the secular constitution of the Indian state.

While the argument for the creation of Sharia law courts to handle personal matters such as marriage and inheritance for Yoruba Muslims may come across as persuasive, it is important to point out that as a practicing Muslim of many decades, I have never had direct or indirect dealings with a Sharia court, despite having married and divorced, just as I have lost my father and my inheritance was not a subject of adjudication by a Sharia court or panel. Marriages that are contracted under Islamic injunctions are recognised as legal by Nigeria, just as divorces that are similarly negotiated. As a Muslim, I know my due as a male child and out of conviction will not accept an ounce more than what is clearly prescribed in the Quran. And, the constitution of Nigeria does not prohibit inheritance by religious injunction.

Without Sharia courts or panels, a Muslim misses nothing religious or spiritual in Nigeria, and the advocacy for Sharia is simply an accentuation of Islamism and Islamist separatism, because the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria allows Muslims the uninhibited practice of our “Sharia faith,” in the same way it allows Christians their freedom of “Canon faith.”

And if for any reason anybody tries to deny me my fair share of my father’s inheritance, I will sue for my rights under regular courts, as they have jurisdiction to enforce my fundamental human right of inheriting from the estate of my father, who died as a Muslim, in accordance with Islamic injunctions. Without Sharia courts or panels, a Muslim misses nothing religious or spiritual in Nigeria, and the advocacy for Sharia is simply an accentuation of Islamism and Islamist separatism, because the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria allows Muslims the uninhibited practice of our “Sharia faith,” in the same way it allows Christians their freedom of “Canon faith.” Even the use of Hijab by Muslim women has been guaranteed by the secular Supreme Court of Nigeria as a fundamental right of religious freedom of citizens.

Many Muslims may not have realised that the codified form of Sharia law is not essentially a divinely revealed set of religious laws. Of the many sources of Sharia law, only the Quran is divinely revealed, others such as the Hadiths (compendium of prophetic traditions), Ijma (consensus of scholastic opinions), and Qiyas (deductive logic and reasoning) etc., are the works of men, no matter how rightly guided or well intentioned they maybe. This explains why there are various schools of Sharia jurisprudence with degrees of variation. And because these laws were made for Muslim ruled and dominated empires and states, its full application in a country like Nigeria will always result in a conflict between the state and religion, as we have seen in Northern Nigeria. Fundamentally, Sharia law, as codified, does not recognise the equality of non-Muslim citizens with Muslims, just as non-Muslims cannot lead Muslims in an ideal Islamist state.

Consequently, political Islam and Islamist separatism will begin to define the socio-political landscape of Yorubaland as the Yoruba Muslims increasingly get isolated from their kith and kin of other faiths while aligning their democratic choices with their religious agenda, and the region will lose its religious innocence and descend into anarchy, as the centre of social harmony and peaceful coexistence will no longer hold. And when political Islam fails in the long run, as it did in the Muslim North, Yoruba Muslim youths that would have been radicalised by Islamism may then resort to armed struggle (Jihad) to shake off secular constitutionalism and adorn the cloak of a Sharia ruled Islamic State of Western Nigeria, as we are currently witnessing in northern Nigeria through the violent activities of the Islamic State of West Africa Province.

Majeed Dahiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja and can be reached through dahirumajeed@gmail.com.