Introduction

Eltantawi became interested in the case of Amina Lawal in 2002 when she was working in Washington DC in media and communications after the 9-11 attacks and was inundated with media phone calls about Lawal’s trial. This chapter introduces the book’s themes and lays out its guiding framework, the “sunnaic paradigm”: the concerns of Nigeria’s present, read back into the nineteenth century Sokoto Caliphate, which is then read back into the classical, Prophetic period of Islam. The sunnaic paradigm gave a sense of power to Nigerians as they embarked on the 1999 shar’ia experiment to overcome their societies’ significant challenges. The book wrestles throughout with how the seventh century past (birth of Islam) affects the twenty-first century present (demanding shar’ia).

The Trial of Amina Lawal

This chapter is a step by step recounting of the trials and appeals of Amina Lawal from 2002-2003. The chapter analyzes the form and substance of both the prosecution’s and the defense’s arguments. It also focuses on legal education in Northern Nigeria and traces changes to the Nigerian penal code brought forth by the colonial encounter. Such changes include the use of the Nigerian constitution in an Islamic trial and eschewing jurisprudential arguments for arguments that eminate from primary texts, a practice that I call indicative of “post-modern shar’iah.” The chapter further expands on the concept of “legal warfare” initiated by the British against Islamic law.

Colonialism

This chapter delves into Nigeria’s experience with British colonialism, which culminated in the death of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903. The chapter opens with pro-1999 shari’ah proponents reflecting on how they understand this experiment to redeem the trauma and rupture Nigerian’s suffered under colonialism. These pro-shari’ah proponents also understand international human rights standards as a form of neo-colonialism and take pride in opposing them. The chapter ends by showing how the British declaration of the “Native Courts Proclamation” in 1903 whereby stoning was outlawed exacerbated Nigerian tensions, as stoning was never practiced in Nigeria before this point. Therefore the declaration was considered an attack on Islamic law itself, called “legal warfare.”

Origins of the Stoning Punishment

This chapter explores the deepest layer of the sunnaic paradigm, the Islamic legal history of the stoning punishment. This chapter contrasts the stoning punishment’s perceived stability and incontavertability among contemporary Northern Nigerians against early Islamic intellectual historical accounts which understand the stoning punishment as highly contested and unstable legally and epistemologically. The chapter surveys early pre-Islamic societies’ legalization of the stoning punishment, including Mesopotamia and Judaic sources, and shows how the punishment made its way into the Islamic tradition. This chapter also surveys Qur’an, hadith, linguistic, aphoristic and Islamic legal treatment of the stoning punishment, and explores the analytic tools used by Islamic jurists to make a debatable punishment legal over time.

Gender and the Western Reaction to the Case

This chapter explores the western reaction to Amina Lawal’s case. It outlines how famous western leaders, from Nicolas Sarkozy to Bill Clinton to Oprah Winfrey treated this case, and critically examines western non-governmental organizations’ responses. The chapter also examines how difficult it can be to discuss how Nigerian women feel about shar’iah, if their views are negative, in western scholarly discourses that are understandably concerned about the damage done by “imperial feminism.” This chapter tries to unearth Nigerian women’s voices in as authentic a way as possible, and provides two visions of gender rights in Northern Nigeria: that of Northern Nigerian historian Ibraheem Sulaiman and Northern Nigerian journalist, the late Balkisu Yusuf. The chapter ends with a short conclusion.

Hausaland’s Islamic Modernity

This chapter provides a history of the rise of Islam in west Africa, in particular to Hausaland, which is today’s Northern Nigeria. The chapter then concentrates on the Sokoto Jihad and subsequent caliphate led by Uthman Dan Fodio. The chapter traces his intellectual history, highlighting his engagement with the Arabian peninsula and championing of unifying the Hausaland region under the textual regimen of the Maliki school of Islamic law. The second layer of the sunnaic paradigm, the role the Sokoto jihad plays in contemporary northern Nigerian idealizations of an ideal Islamic society, is explained. Idealization of scholars and hudud punishments are shown to be reinscribed into Nigeria’s present moment as a source of authentication of the 1999 sharia experiment.

A Revolution for Shari‘ah

This chapter is an ethnography of Eltantawi’s research in Northern Nigeria conducted in 2010. It describes and analyzes her conversations with key players in Amina Lawal’s trial. These conversations illuminate how central the Islamic identity is in Northern Nigeria, and critically examines what “Islam” actually signifies for Northern Nigerians, highlighting how difficult it is to campaign for any kind of change outside the framework of “Islam.” Other interviews highlight the sense of rampant material and moral corruption in Nigeria. The chapter also introduces the distinction between “idealized” and “political” shari’ah, and shows how the heavy handedness and corruption of the current sharia experiment is labeled “political” in order to preserve the sense of Islam as an ideal.