 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Islamist bandage
By Gamal Nkrumah
for Africa's open sore
"If you stone, or cut off hands, then you will be violating the Constitution of Nigeria." Thus spoke Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, an ethnic Yoruba from the southwest of the country, and himself a Christian, when he appeared on national television following last week's outbreak of Christian-Muslim violence. "For any law to be, it must be codified. Shari'a is not codified. They just make references to the Quran and a number of other books. What sort of law is that?" Obasanjo added.
The tone and cadence indicated that peroration was imminent. Obasanjo made it crystal clear that amputations for those convicted of theft and flogging for drunkenness, pre-marital and extra-marital sex will not be tolerated. His comments have, understandably, angered many Muslims.
A religious fault line runs across this vast West African country, separating the largely Christian south from the mainly Muslim north. Fundamentalism is running wild to either side. According to both pundits and popular legend, Christians in Nigeria already tend to see Muslims as gripped by a chronic tunnel vision, and their perpetual quest for the implementation of the Shari'a only strengthens this conviction. Obasanjo's own televised comments vividly illustrate the chasm that separates the two communities.
With a population of 120 million, Nigeria is by far Africa's most populous country. It is a nation that is much misunderstood and often maligned. Although predominantly Muslim, it has a large Christian minority, who are generally both better educated and better off.
Between 1967 and 1970, the country was embroiled in a bitter civil war, one of the most ferocious to be fought in Africa this century. God forbid that we should ever witness another like it. Yet the eruption of religious violence which has this month claimed over 300 lives in the city of Kaduna, some 120 kilometres north of the Nigerian federal capital Abuja, and in the neighbouring cities of Kafanchan and Zaria, serves as a grim reminder of the bloody events of three decades ago.
Kaduna is now divided into warring zones split along religious and ethnic lines. The mixed neighbourhood of Hanyan Banki was turned overnight into a veritable wasteland. Dozens of homes and businesses were burnt down, the city's Baptist Theological Seminary was razed to the ground and the Roman Catholic cathedral attacked. Thousands have been injured, some deliberately disfigured and mutilated. Thousands more have been made homeless and are now stranded in military camps and makeshift displaced people's centres scattered around the northern cities, where they are being kept under heavy police protection.
Those with long memories will remember that it was an exodus of the substantial Christian minorities in Kaduna and Kano which signalled the start of Nigeria's civil war in 1967. Virtually every large town in northern Nigeria has its own Sabon Gari, or "Strangers' Quarter", where Christians from the southern ethnic groups reside. These ghettos have become targets for the Islamist militants' fury. With 400 ethnic and tribal groups and over 200 languages scattered across the country, religious violence in Nigeria can all too easily take on ethnic overtones.
During his visit to Egypt this week, the Pope took time to express his "deep pain" over the religious clashes in Nigeria. It was presumably with this in mind that he then exhorted zealots of all kinds to bury their differences. The problem, some say, is that Nigeria is too heterogeneous a nation for its people to live peaceably together. Nigeria's own Nobel literature laureate, Wole Soyinka, called his country The Open Sore of a Continent. Coming from the mouth of the nation's steeliest champion of democracy, this was powerful endorsement for what frequently feels like the ubiquitous philosophy of Nigerian unmanageability.
On independence from Britain in 1960, legislative ascendancy was given to the reluctant-to-join and overwhelmingly Muslim "Northern Region", which constituted 79 per cent of the national territory by area and was home to 60 per cent of the country's population. Welded together by Islam and the Hausa language -- and by their control of the army -- the northerners consistently refused to devolve any significant degree of power to the south, until the democratically-elected Obasanjo took office last year. Yet now the sad irony is that religious violence appears to be erupting precisely as a spin-off from the process of political liberalisation.
It is in Zamfara, one of Nigeria's poorest and least-developed states, that the precedent for the implementation of Shari'a law has now been set. (Out of 36 states, 22 are predominantly Muslim.) Governor Ahmed Sani provoked nationwide controversy with his decision, which he claimed was intended to check prostitution, intemperance, debauchery, gambling, theft and armed robbery.
Shari'a law is already in full force in Zamfara, and has also been signed into law in the northeastern states of Sokoto and Niger. Kaduna, Kano and Yobe states are also considering implementation. In sharp contrast to rural and almost exclusively Muslim Zamfara, Kaduna state, which is 40 per cent Christian, has a robust urban-oriented economy and several large and vibrant cosmopolitan cities. It is in those states which have large Christian minorities that the violence has so far been the worst.
Segregated educational, medical and public transport facilities, and a strict prohibition on the public consumption of alcohol, can hardly have been calculated to assuage Christian fears. Fortunately, the forces of secularism and Christianity -- which in Nigeria tend to be synonymous -- have refused to capitulate. The Human Rights Law Service (HRLS) promptly started court proceedings to try to have Shari'a declared unconstitutional in Zamfara. Like Obasanjo, the HRLS appears to believe that the Shari'a must be done away with for democracy to be given a fair chance.
Yet the problem is that, thanks to Muslim numerical superiority, democracy will always dictate that the Shari'a be implemented, at least in the north of the country. Islamic courts are springing up everywhere, supposedly only to the discomfort of errant Muslims. Yet it is the Christians who have emerged as the most vociferous critics of Shari'a, even though they are legally exempt from its domain, and will retain the right to be tried in secular courts under secular law even in states which have adopted Islamic law. "They want us to live their lives as if we shared their religion," is a complaint commonly heard in Nigeria today.
Nor has the move been entirely unpopular among Muslims, even though it is they who will be whipped in public and have their limbs truncated, if found guilty. A growing body of opinion sees salvation in the implementation of the Shari'a alone. Thousands marched through the streets of Kaduna to urge the introduction of Islamic law, as they did in Niger state.
Then last Monday, the Christians of Kaduna took to the streets too, to protest the imposition of Shari'a. Muslim counter-demonstrators soon appeared, brandishing placards which menacingly proclaimed, "Sharia ya Mutu, Sharia or Death". When the inevitable rival "No to Sharia" banners were raised in defiance, violent clashes ensued. The ferociousness of the battles came as no surprise to close Nigeria watchers. First fistfights, then machetes and then guns -- the stage was set for a blood bath. But it was the proliferation of firearms that was especially worrying.
Where the Shari'a has been implemented, social life has already changed beyond recognition. New women-chauffeured women-only taxis now ply the streets of Gusau, Zamfara state's capital, and male taxi-drivers are barred from taking women passengers. Motorbike taxi operators have been jailed for soliciting women customers. Not only that, but women's soccer is now banned, Shehu Gusau, Zamfara's director of sport, having described it as "un-Islamic". "The sport is against the teachings of Islam," he told reporters at a recent press conference to explain his decision. Nigeria's national women's team, the Falcons, are currently African champions, but it looks like they will not be playing in Zamfara state again any time soon.
