by Alex Thurston
In 1999, Nigeria made global headlines when Northern states began re-implementing “full shari’a,” i.e. Islamic law codes that included criminal penalties for acts like theft, adultery, and drinking alcohol. The shari’a project in Northern Nigeria caused further controversy when shari’a courts sentenced two accused adulteresses to death by stoning – sentences that higher courts, under domestic and international pressure, later overturned.
As the rebel movement Boko Haram again puts Nigeria back in the headlines, the country’s relationship with shari’a is attracting new attention. Boko Haram’s overall platform remains vague. One of its few stated demands, however, is for broader and stronger shari’a not just in Northern states, but across all of Nigeria. What does this mean? And what historical factors have made shari’a loom so large in Northern Nigerian politics?
Looking at three key dates in Nigeria’s shari’a debates shows that for at least two centuries, the “shari’a question” has never been definitively settled in Nigeria. Additionally, the compromises reached by elites concerning the scope and meaning of shari’a at any particular time are likely, sooner or later, to encounter new factors that generate dissent, including at the fringes of society. At moments of crisis, dissent can feed violence.
Before tackling these topics, though, it will be helpful to discuss what shari’a in general might mean.
What Is Shari’a?
Like any complex religious topic, shari’a, Arabic for “way,” has different meanings for different people. For Sunni Muslims, who include the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Northern Nigeria, shari’a refers to a way of life based on the Qur’an, the actions of the Prophet Muhammad, the examples of the first generations of Muslims, and principles such as analogy, scholarly consensus, and public interest, as worked out over time by legal scholars. Different interpretations of shari’a emphasize, de-emphasize, or even exclude some of the above sources of law. In some understandings, shari’a is a comprehensive legal system that structures society and regulates criminal acts, social interactions, and individual practices.
Most Northern Nigerian Muslims follow the Maliki School of law, which looks to the eighth-century legist Malik ibn Anas as its founder and is the most widespread Islamic legal school in West Africa. Many Northern Nigerian Muslims who undertake a religious education grow up studying classical Maliki texts. Several state shari’a codes in Northern Nigeria explicitly proclaim adherence to Malikism.
Shari’a is not simply a code that legal scholars compose or that political authorities impose from above. It is also a set of institutions, practices, and negotiations that believers attempt to follow in everyday life, including as part of worship (washing oneself before prayer, for example, falls under the rubric of shari’a).
The rise of modern states has raised new questions about who has the authority to enforce shari’a, and how shari’a is to be enforced. Contests over the place of shari’a in modern societies have made it a plank in political platforms, a symbol for Muslim identities and values, and an object of intellectual debate. In Northern Nigeria it is all of these things. And since Northern Nigeria is part of a larger nation, these have become national questions in Nigeria.
Three Key Moments for Shari’a in Nigeria
One major moment in the history of shari’a in present-day Nigeria occurred in 1804. In that year, Sheikh Uthman dan Fodio, a Fulani preacher, began a jihad against Hausa Muslim kings whose Islam, he believed, was deficient. Sheikh Uthman’s initially self-defensive war became one of conquest. The empire he established, the Sokoto Caliphate (so named for its capital, a city located in present-day Northwestern Nigeria), endured until the British conquered Northern Nigeria between 1897 and 1903. Dan Fodio and his heirs attempted to rigorously apply shari’a. The administrative structures of the Caliphate provided the basic institutions upon which the British built Indirect 