NEWS FEATURE: Sharia Law Polarizes Muslims and Christians in Nigeria

c. 2000 Religion News Service KADUNA, Nigeria _ The children’s chanting rises above the honking horns, and pecking chickens wending their way along the dusty paths of this sprawling Nigerian city. On a recent Sunday afternoon, the classrooms of Sheikh Hassan Siraj Islamic School are full. Boys in pressed trousers and girls in veils slowly […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

KADUNA, Nigeria _ The children’s chanting rises above the honking horns, and pecking chickens wending their way along the dusty paths of this sprawling Nigerian city.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, the classrooms of Sheikh Hassan Siraj Islamic School are full. Boys in pressed trousers and girls in veils slowly repeat passages from the Koran. And beaming school headmaster, Sanusi Sirajo, claims business has never been better.


Since the Koranic school opened a half century ago, he said, more than a hundred others have mushroomed across this city, plopped among the rolling hills of northern Nigeria. More than 1,000 students now attend classes at Sheikh Hassan, forcing the school to teach in shifts.

“We are bringing in Islam to govern our entire lives,” said an enthusiastic Sirajo, dressed in immaculate white robes, as he showed a visitor around.

But Nigeria’s Islamic renaissance has not arrived quietly. A new drive to institute Sharia, or Islamic law, in northern Nigeria has sparked bloody clashes, and exposed deep rifts that cut across class and ethnic lines, as well as religious ones.

Several states in the predominately Muslim north have already adopted Sharia. Others like Kaduna, which goes by the same name as its capital, are still debating the matter.

Muslim supporters argue Sharia’s stiff sentences _ which include flogging and amputation for those who steal _ will help right imbalances between Nigeria’s rich elite and impoverished masses, and turn sinners back to Islam, the faith of about half the country’s population.

But many critics argue the battle for Sharia is more about politics than religious belief.

“There’s a real concern about it,” said Clement Nwankwo, head of the Constitutional Rights Project, a Lagos-based human rights group. “If the Islamic code is applied to non-Muslims, it will be a threat to peace and security in the entire region.”


The bloodiest battles have been waged in Kaduna, a majority-Muslim city located about two hours north of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

In February, an anti-Sharia demonstration by Christians spilled into looting and violent clashes that left hundreds dead, according to local press accounts. Another Christian-Muslim clash erupted in May, killing a local lawmaker among scores of others.

The violence spread to other areas of northern Nigeria, taking on ethnic dimensions. Thousands of Yoruba, Igbo and other predominantly Christian groups have since fled south, further consolidating the dominance of primarily Muslim Hausa and Fulani in the north.

The clashes have also torn apart neighborhoods like Kaduna’s Kudunwala sector, where an angry Muslim mob burned down the Celestial Church in late February, in retaliation for Christian attacks.

Today, a vendor sells Islamic prayer rugs by the gaping church entrance. Upstairs, past fire-blackened walls and blasted windows, an old man bows toward a distant Mecca.

Just months before, hundreds of Christians packed the pews of the evangelical Protestant church. They sold food and repaired vehicles in this Muslim-dominated neighborhood. Many have since moved out, local residents say. “We were living fine with them,” said the 28-year-old Usman Mohammed, who chatted with friends across from the church’s charred remains. “Nothing has led us to fight except for this matter of Sharia.”


Nonetheless, Mohammed said he supported Sharia for Kaduna.

“By the will of God, Sharia will happen,” he said, as his friends nodded approvingly. “There are so many people who are cheating. If this Sharia is enforced, they will change their minds and follow rules and regulations.”

Introduced by Muslim warriors in the early 19th century, Sharia has been woven unquestioningly into northern Nigeria’s social fabric. But institutionalizing Sharia began only last October, when Zamfara State adopted it as a criminal code.

Sharia’s supporters argue the law will only apply to Muslims.

“We’re Muslims, and Muslims must be governed by Sharia,” said Sheikh Zubairu Sirajo, who heads the Sharia coordinating committee for Kaduna State. “Christians will be punished according to their own Christian rules. Right now, they don’t know what Sharia is about. Once they do, they will be happy about it.”

But many Christians are not so sure.

In states where Sharia has been adopted, liquor and prostitutes are banned. Authorities in Zamfara State have also banned women’s soccer for being “un-Islamic.”

“Any state where there is Sharia will not allow Christians to be anything,” said Pastor Samuel Oloja, head of the Apostolic Pentecostal Church in Kaduna. “Christians will become second-class citizens.”

“The church is not happy about the situation,” added Rev. M.A. Kalawole, assistant to the Anglican Bishop of Lagos. “Christians and Muslims have been living together for a long time, and this can cause unnecessary rancor.”


A major force behind the Sharia movement, critics say, are northern politicians eager to strengthen state power, and to drum up support from voters jaded by rampant corruption and mismanagement.

“Politicians seized the issue of Sharia as a political issue,” said one expert, who works for a Western embassy. “They are hoping to use religion and ethnic sentiment to maintain control.”

In July, leaders from Nigeria’s predominantly Christian south issued a joint statement calling Sharia unconstitutional. Nigeria, they argued, must remain a secular nation.

Even some Muslims are critical of the Sharia drive.

Nigeria’s Islamic leader, Sheikh Ibrahim el ZakZaky, publicly condemned northern politicians for exploiting the movement to suit their own interests.

“The majority of Muslim brothers didn’t even champion this cause,” said Usman Mohammed, a Muslim who works at a pharmacy in Kaduna. “But most Muslims find it difficult to come out openly and disagree with Sharia.”

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Since the spring clashes, some Muslims and Christians now jointly patrol Kaduna’s neighborhoods, and warn each other against any flare-ups. But in most cases, the violence has polarized the city.


“Before these riots, we were living in their houses and they were living in ours,” said Pastor Oloja, whose Apostolic Church looms over a tangle of tin-and-cement homes in Kaduna’s primarily Christian neighborhood of Kabala. “But now most of the Muslims are gone.”

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Blame has also fallen on Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, a devout Christian. During clashes earlier this year, Obasanjo pointedly waited before sending in soldiers, appealing for calm and reconciliation. The president also ordered northern governors to refrain from adopting Sharia until Nigeria’s parliament debated the matter.

But critics say Obasanjo should have crushed the religious movement from the outset.

“His reaction was to say `this will fizzle away,”’ said Pini Jason, executive editor for The Examiner, a Nigerian daily. “But it hasn’t.

DEAEND BRYANT

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