The Sick Man of Nigeria and the Missing Debate
By
The north is the sick man of Nigeria. In the north, poverty, ignorance, disease is almost a regional culture. Children and youths, men and women,
from Sokoto to Yola, from Kano to Damaturu, wear their hopelessness like tribal marks. It has been like this for a long time. Because it has always been there,
like an old signboard that you only notice when it is removed, we have somehow, come to normalise the sickness of the north.
But why single out the north, when the entire country urgently recommends itself for the Intensive Care Unit? Because when trouble starts, it always start from
somewhere. As it is, the north is a very good candidate. Not because the northern people are poor; Nigeria is a country of poor people. Not because the people
are hopeless; everyone has long learnt to resist hope in Nigeria. But because in no other part of the country, is there such a systematic conspiracy against the
people by the political elite, which is anchored on their most powerful emotion: religion.
When in 1999, Alhaji Ahmed Sani launched the Shari'a, the people did not need to be mobilised. Some trekked the long distant to the Gusau from villages far
away. Some rode on donkeys and Carmel. The luckier ones piled themselves into lorries. The tumultuous reception exceeded the upper limit expectations of even
the Yerima himself. And he wept. He didn't need to say anything, the people have spoken. That unrented crowd was the governor's finest credential that he truly
represented the aspiration of the people. But he read the message upside down.
Shari'a is a Muslim way of life. But when politicians began to launch it like books, everyone should be worried. Yes, people have been sufficiently worried over
the Shari'a, but for different reasons. In Nigeria's mindless politics of differences, we have all missed the opportunity for a robust debate. The Christian
elite only make noise about some Islamist conspiracy somewhere; while their Muslim counterparts grandstand about Shari'a being their 'customs and costumes.' The
civil society people, mostly Christians, posture and pose about concern for human rights and hatred for 'barbarism'; money people cry about how many investors
Shari'a has chased away. Journalists play games with the different arguments that suit their own bias and add heap loads of their own ignorance and prejudice;
and those who are not sure where their interests lie have kept quiet: The debate is not taking place.
Behind the national intellectual poverty on Shari'a is the culture of fear. On one side is the much talked about 'Islamophobia'; on the other is what has, much
recently, come to be known as 'Islamophilia'. One is an irrational fear of Islam; the other is an irrational fear to criticise any practice dressed as Islamic.
While the Christians largely suffer from the first, Muslims are afflicted with the second. And when the two meet, they create some kind of mental paralysis that
induces people to argue the way we have done over Shari'a. In today's Christian world, fear of and ignorance about Islam is the dominant emotion that define
response to anything Islamic, especially Shari'a. And that is why also most Christian elite hardly make a distinction between what is Islamic, what is ethnic,
regional, class or political interest of Muslims. The explosion of Pentecostal fundamentalism has complicated this case. An average 'born again' person has not
seen the Qur'an before and does not even want to see one. I once offered to give a friend a copy, but she "reject it in Jesus name" and argued that Allah and
God are not the same, because Allah directs that people should be killed, while God forgives. She is not alone. And much of the reaction that had trailed the
Shari'a, and especially the Safiya case, or now that of Amina Lawal, hardly depart from this ignorant fundamentalism.
For the Muslims however, the ignorance and fear are of a different strand, even if they lead to the same level of paralysis. 'Islam is the answer', 'Qur'an is
our constitution' are empty slogans that are driven more by the emotion of Nigeria's identity politics than by any conviction based on knowledge. So many
Muslims have argued that Shari'a represents the aspiration of Muslims everywhere, but what they have failed to tell us is whether Shari'a, as being practiced in
the north of Nigeria, conforms with the aspiration of Allah as handed down by the Rasullulah, Muhammad. So many of the northern political elite have confessed
to me privately that they are not happy with what is going on. But no one is willing to speak out for fear of either 'serving into the hands of the enemies of
Islam' or for fear of being branded an apostate.
Two great Muslim scholars, Ziauddin Sardar and Zafar Abbas Malik wrote about this phenomenon, in a book published way back in 1994. They wrote: "In recent
times, a number of Muslim countries declared themselves to be Islamic states and ostensibly established the Shari'a. But what is actually put into practice is a
small number of classical juristic rulings concerning punishments, status of women and other spectacular aspects of classical jurisprudence. Thus, great show is
made of 'Islamic punishments' or huddud laws, and floggings and amputations are advertised...what we thus get is an austere state operating on the basis of
obscurantist and extremist law, behaving totally contrary to the teachings of the Qur'an and spirit of Islam, yet justifying its oppressions in the name of
Islam! The self-declared Islamic states are thus nothing more than cynical instruments to justify the rule of a particular class, family or the military." The
freezing of knowledge has been the tragedy of Islam. There is a tragic contradiction in insisting that a religion must progress only by imitation of a distant
past, and proclaiming in the same breath that its values are relevant for all times and ages. There is no such contradiction in Islam.
Few months after Alhaji Ahmed Sani announced Shari'a in Zamfara, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zaky-zaky told journalists that he was afraid that the political elite would
use the emotion of the people to exploit them. How prophetic that has proved to be. Look how Shari'a has been reduced to the stoning of women. The millions of
people who turned out to celebrate the 'introduction' of Shari'a in Zamfara in 1999 did so because the Shari'a offered a hope to a people that have been
nurtured in hopelessness. They are poor, they are ignorant, they are sick, they are tired. But above all, they recognise the injustice in the way the world is
arranged. They also know that Islam abhors injustice. And when the Shari'a was handed to them, they dreamt of a glorious heritage, when the Holy Prophet of
Islam was the ruler in Medina, and the Qur'an was the constitution and everyone was dealt with fairly and justly. It was the prospect of social justice that is
embedded in the Shari'a that the people were celebrating. But we have all seen how social justice has been replaced with social order; and a compassionate and
loving God, reduced to a coercive one that is oppressive of women. Three years on, the people are still waiting. A few hands would be chopped off, Amina Lawal
would be stoned or pardoned, another woman would be caught, Islam would be desecrated, the politicians would enjoy their reign. But it would soon be daybreak.
Somebody would rise, in the heart of Gusau or Zaria, who would shake the people awake and show them that this is not the will of Allah. The emergence of
fundamentalism that that seized Egypt and Algeria followed this pattern. When Hajiya Bilikisu Yusuf said she felt sorry for the governors introducing Shari'a
because they don't know the implication of what they are toying with, not many people paid attention. But when trouble starts, it doesn't need a foot note to
announce itself.
Not a few scholars have fingered Bhudism as the ideological driving force for what came to be known as the Economic Miracle in South-East Asia. I believe that
Islam can do the same for the north. I am convinced that Shari'a and Islam can provide the driving force to release the positive energy of the people if
deployed well. What Ismail El-Faruqi and others started some years back as 'Islamisation of knowledge' provides the framework for an ideology that can point the
way out for the suffering people of the north, and of course Muslims everywhere. But Muslims have to do more than merely shouting that Shari'a is their
fundamental right. Last year, I visited Zamfara and came back to do what I thought was a good story. I received many complaints from fellow Muslims who felt my
story was unduly fixated on the sexuality of Shari'a. I agreed with them. But no matter how sad, we have to admit that this is politicians have reduced
everything to. Shari'a has become a machine devoted solely to catching adulterers.
Whether we like it or not, identity politics will continue to dominate our national space. And in the coming years, religious identity issues would even prove
more decisive. One only needs to match the explosion of Pentecostal movements with the emergence of new groups in Islam like Nasfat, the Quareeb Family and so
on to understand what we are saying here. This in itself is not a problem. But there is a way Islamophobia and Islamophilia feed into each other to create the
kind of social paralysis and anarchy that we have all seen happen in other places. It can happen here, unless we urgently commit ourselves to the task of
knowing and develop the capacity to engage the politicians on their own terms. The government of Bangladesh has reduced to ratify the Convention for the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on the ground that its provision contradicts the Shari'a. But when gender activitists in that country
committed themselves to the task of searching through the books, it didn't take them long to expose the lie coming from Dhaka and prove that nothing in CEDAW
contradicts the Shari'a. The real debate on Shari'a has to start now. But this goes beyond shouting anti-Islamic or anti-north slogans. It is hard work.