Afrika Zamani, Nos 18 & 19, 2010–2011, pp. 133–150 © Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa & Association of African Historians, 2013 (ISSN 0850-3079)

Muslim Women Reformers in Africa: The Case

Omobolaji Ololade Olarinmoye*

Abstract Islamic reform is a process of examining and advocating changes in accepted practices and doctrines of Islam. Islamic reform in Nigeria has provided women with an opportunity to re-examine Islamic principles that discriminate against them and create a space within which women can pursue issues of empowerment on terms that are acceptable to the principles of Islam as stated in the Qur’an and free from the influence of traditions that are mostly ‘male friendly’.

Résumé La réforme islamique est un processus d’examen et de plaidoyer visant à apporter des changements dans les pratiques acceptées et les doctrines de l’Islam. La réforme islamique au Nigéria offre aux femmes l’opportunité de réexaminer les principes islamiques discriminatoires à leur égard et de créer un espace au sein duquel elles pourront réfléchir sur les questions du renforcement de l’autonomie de la femme. Les termes doivent correspondre aux principes de l’Islam tels qu’énoncés dans le Coran et être libres de toute influence des traditions qui sont pour la plupart « favorables aux hommes ».

* Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. Email: [email protected]

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Negotiating Identity: Women and Faith in Nigeria Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Muslim world has been in a continuous state of reform. The reform process has been multifaceted in nature involving all groups within the Islamic world, male and female, old and young, Sunni and Shi’a. The place of women within Islamic reform has drawn a lot of attention in recent times because they are generally seen, both within policy circles and the academia, as ‘objects of development’ requiring external intervention to achieve emancipation. Such a view of Muslim women flows from the dominant western view of Islamic reform as a movement that advocates a patriarchal and conservative worldview within which women are accorded no significant rights. The view of women as objects of development has taken on a greater importance, in the light of the recent spread of Islamic reform in Africa in the context of the prevailing under-development of most African states, and has had a significant influence on the nature of development aid to African states. There is therefore a need to understand the nature of women’s engagement with Islamic reform in Africa. What is the nature of women’s engagement with Islam generally? What is the nature of their engagement with the current wave of Islamic reform sweeping through most African states? How do Muslim women see themselves vis-à-vis their male counterparts in the Islamic reform movements? Are there Muslim women reformers? What is the influence of education and secular ideologies in the mode of organization and actions of women Muslim reformers in Africa? What are their goals? What have they achieved? Beyond clarifying the position of women in Islam in recent times, answers to these questions will help to close the gap in the current knowledge of African women’s history more so as the lack of clarity as to the role and nature of Muslim women’s engagement with Islamic reform in Africa can be traced to a much wider gap in the knowledge of women’s history in Africa. This article argues, using Nigeria as a case study, that there are different modes of female engagement with Islam and Islamic reform in Africa. Most draw upon the same core principles of Ijtihad but deploy different strategies to achieve their goals. They are however in agreement that Islam has a place for women and it is not as second-class members of their religion. The article is in five sections. Section one examines the concepts of Islamic reform and Muslim women’s reform. Guided by the theoretical explorations in section one, sections two and three cover the various forms of Muslim reformers and then critiques their guiding philosophies. Section four focuses on the dynamics and elements of Muslim women’s engagement with the Islamic reform project in Nigeria through explorations of the discourse of FOMWAN (Federation of Muslim Women Association of

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Nigeria) and the BAOBAB project, while section five concludes that they have both succeeded in creating a space for Muslim women within the context of Islam and Islamic reform in Nigeria with such spaces going a long way to influence external development organizations’ engagement with Muslim . Islamic Reform (Re-awakening) as Empowerment According to Bako (2004), reform is conceived as the … survival strategy adopted by religious and secular systems during their moribund and weak periods, when they are forced to undergo internal and external reconstitution in order to strengthen and consolidate their hold and retain relevance in a fast changing society. Islamic reform is an exercise in group empowerment that involves: retaining the fundamental belief system and practices of the religion concerned; discarding elements deemed unnecessary; borrowing from rival religions and manipulating their weaknesses; rejecting, fighting and withdrawal from dominant systems and undergoing internal renewal and invigoration through the revival of their golden age. For Islamic reformists, reform signifies a revival, a return to sources of Islam to regain a purified vision, long lost in the mire of worldly governments. They argue that reform, a return to the roots and recapturing of both the purity and the vitality of Islam as it was at inception, is necessary because Islam is a total and comprehensive way of life and religion is integral to politics, law, and society. They further argue that the failure of Muslim societies is due to their departure from the straight path of Islam and their following a western secular path, with its materialistic ideologies and values. Islamic reform is a continuous process and is basically a response to changes in the wider society of which the Islamic community is a part and to which the community feels it is necessary to address in order to ensure its survival as a distinct corporate group. The notion of reform is very much anchored in the processes of interpretation as it is in the domain of interpretation and adjustments that Islam is deemed to have become degraded. Thus notions of return are very much anchored in the processes of interpretation and adjustments. The rooting of reform in the domain of interpretation establishes the fundamentally political nature of the process of reform/empowerment. In other words, such anchoring has immediate consequences for power relations in Islamic societies as contenders to political power validate their claims for change in power configuration on ‘new interpretations, puritanical interpretations and adjustments, interpretations that wipe out the centuries of misdeed and hardships and open the way for the future’ (Afshar 1994).

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Discourse of Muslim Women Reformers It is within the context of Islamic reform as discussed above that Muslim women reformers have operated in recent times. We use the term Muslim women reformers rather than Islamic feminism because Islamic feminism refers to just one of many groups of Muslim women seeking a better status for women within Islam. Muslim women reformers share a set of core values representing and articulating their role within Islam. The key element of such a discourse according to Afshar (1994) involves the ‘claiming of rights from within the framework of Islam’ as Islam displays several aspects that serve their purpose when it comes to articulating the meaning of women’s rights, gender inequality and social justice. For them, what western- style feminism has done is to make women into second-class citizens through an analysis of the female condition based on labour market analysis and the experiences of a minority of affluent middle-class women and the failure of western-style feminism to carve an appropriate, recognized and enumerated space for marriage and motherhood (Afshar 1994:17; Imam 1999). Muslim women reformers argue that Muslim women benefit from a return to the sources of Islam because Islamic dictum bestows complementarity on women as human beings, as partners to men and as mothers and daughters; Islam demands respect for women and offers them opportunities to be learned, educated and trained while at the same time providing an honoured space for them to become mothers, wives and home makers. Furthermore, unlike capitalism and much feminist discourse, Islam recognizes the importance of women’s life cycles as it gives them different roles and responsibilities at different times of their lives and at each and every stage they are honoured and respected for that which they do as seen through the lives of exemplary female role models such as Fatima, the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter and wife to Imam Ali, which clearly show the path that can be honourably followed at each stage. For Muslim women reformers the first feminist of Islam was the prophet Mohammed himself as it was during his prophethood that many reforms concerning the treatment and place of women were instituted. He abolished female infanticide, allowed women to possess and implement full control over their wealth, and guaranteed women the right to inherit property and keep their dowry while ensuring that strict limits were placed on polygamy (Arshad 2008). They thus advance claims that women constitute a special category constructed by Islam and .and. Female demands therefore have to be confined within the boundaries set up by religious tradition and the legal, theological and political frameworks it establishes as Islam is open and flexible, allowing women a space to engage in negotiating their rights.

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Thus for Muslim women reformers, the goal of Islamic reform of returning to a golden age of Islam is a good one as it gives reason for optimism and much room for women to manoeuvre, a situation which is reinforced by the emphasis of Islamic reform on the right to individual interpretation of the Qur’an and the Sunna or ijtehad (independent reasoning) which permits women the rights to (re)interpret Islamic law and challenge dominant patriarchal interpretations that disempower women. Briefly put, the empowerment discourse of Muslim women reformers involves undermining the clerical agenda both within and outside the Islamist framework by subtly circumventing the dictated rules and engaging in a feministic ijtehad, emphasizing the egalitarian ethics of Islam, reinterpreting the Qur’an, and deconstructing Sharia-related rules in a women-friendly egalitarian fashion. Variants of Muslim Women Reformers The discourse of Muslim women reformers has been adapted by different reform actors to specific and local contexts to produce three principal variants (Fazaeli 2006): Islamic feminism, Islamist feminism and Muslim feminism. Nayereh Tohidi describes Islamic feminism as ‘a movement of women who have maintained their religious beliefs while trying to promote the egalitarian ethics of Islam by using the female-supportive verses of the Qur’an in their fight for women’s rights, especially for women’s access to education’ (Chamas 2009; Moghadam 2002:27). For Uthman (2009:7), the term ‘Islamic feminists’ refers to Muslim women ‘who hold tenaciously to Islamic teachings and work within Islamic matrices in their struggle for a change’, while Islamic feminism refers to their struggle against all forms of injustice including gender injustice and oppression through their activities in the Islamic movement. Islamic feminists challenge the orthodox understanding of women in the Islamic world which confines them to the domestic arena and gives men the power of arbitrary divorce and polygamy, and legitimizes disparities in inheritance. Islamic feminists ground their arguments in Islam and its teachings and seek full equality of women and men in the personal and public sphere. They can include non-Muslims in the discourse. In order to re-establish an egalitarian Islamic order, Islamic feminists have deconstructed Muslim conceptual structures, while leaving untouched the foundational character of the Qur’an and hadith as texts with a sacred value. According to Islamic feminists, it is necessary to remove from the text the patriarchal conjunctures that conditioned their production in order to be able to extract the concept of humanity present in the Qur’an (Luz n.d.).

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The discourse is inspired by the Islamic methodology of ijtihad (a critical investigation of religious sources) and utilizes as the core tool of analysis the tasfir or exegesis (Badran 2006:2) which is closely associated with efforts aimed at reforming Islamic societies. Through re-interpretations such as ‘Qur’an and Woman: Reading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective’ (Wadud 1999) and ‘Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an’ (Barlas 2002), Islamic feminists demonstrate that Islam is ‘gender egalitarian’ and ‘gender just’ and expose the unjust nature of patriarchal practices in Islamic societies that have over the ages been justified through appeals to Islamic texts. Muslim feminists broadly refer to ‘feminists... who work within secular matrices’ while Muslim feminism refers to ‘their struggle within Muslim traditions and societies applying secular matrices’ (Uthman 2009:8). Muslim feminism chooses to approach women’s equality in Islam from a liberal religious context. Its proponents adopt a liberal view of Islam and try to adapt it to modern times. They argue that for a long time, the Islamic imagination has been dominated by a patriarchal vision of Islam but that such is not necessarily the authentic Islam. They propose as a solution a primary focus on the teachings of the Qur’an because much of hadith and Sharia is a patriarchal reading of Islam. Muslim feminists argue that if one believes that ‘God is just and that the Qur’an is God’s word, then it is unreasonable to consider that any verse in the Qur’an could legitimize gender inequality. Rather, what the Qur’an does is to provide examples of powerful female figures that have played important roles in Islam and in the Prophet’s life. Muslim feminists point out that a liberal and feminist review of the Qur’an could contribute to the development of women’s emancipation in the Islamic country’ (Darvishpour 2003). Muslim feminists are therefore, for Moghissi, ‘feminists who champion feminist rights within a liberal Muslim discourse and composing of mere secular and postmodern relativist feminists and academics with Muslim backgrounds’ (Moghissi 2000:126-146). The trans-national Muslim women’s network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), is a very good example of a Muslim feminist organisation. Islamist feminists share an interest with Muslim feminists for a clarification of the position of women in Islam through ijtihad but they do not see it as the right of women to revisit the Islamic texts and reinterpret them on the basis of theological study and contextual understanding. They make a distinction between referring to traditional, authoritative interpretations of religious texts and finding the ones most suited to the modern-day context and attempting to reinterpret them. For Muslim women to engage in

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reinterpreting the Qur’an is to challenge the traditional ‘right’ of male Muslim leaders to interpret the Qur’an (Karam 1998:12; Ladbury & Khan 2008:12). The three variants of the Muslim women’s reform project reflect a continuum of women identities possible within Muslim societies. For example, Cooke (2000:94) argues: Islamic feminist performances and practices are situated somewhere on a continuum between the ascribed identity of ‘Muslim’ and the achieved identity of ‘Islamist’. To be a Muslim is to be born into a particular religious community, to carry an identity card that fills in Muslim next to the category ‘religious identity’. Those to whom a Muslim identity is ascribed participate in a Muslim culture and community without necessarily accepting all of its norms and values. Muslims might be secular, occasionally observing some ritual – for example, fasting for the month of Ramadan while not necessarily praying regularly. Muslims might even be atheists. Islamists, on the other hand, achieve their sometimes militant identity by devoting their lives to the establishment of an Islamic state. The Islamic identification connotes another form of achieved identity, one which is highly volatile and contingent. ‘Islamic’ bridges the two poles of Muslim and Islamist identifications. It describes a particular kind of self-positioning that will then inform the speech, or the action, or the writing, or the way of life adopted by someone who is committed to questioning Islamic epistemology as an expansion of their faith position and not a rejection of it (Cooke 2000:94).

Critiques of Muslim Women’s Reform Project The Muslim women’s reform project has generated a lot of hostile reactions from radical and conservative thinkers. For radicals, no reform is possible in an Islamic legal and political system where ‘the very structure of power is male-dominated to an absolute degree, backed by the Constitution, an all- male clerical system ruling the country, and a Sharia written for an era long past its sell-by date’ (Kia 1994:20-21). In other words, attempts to reinterpret the Qur’an and to restructure Sharia law are useless due to the power of orthodox interpretations of Islam (Chamas 2009:248) that makes of Islam ‘a religion in which the role of women is clearly stated’. This stated role includes women’s inferior status with respect to marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, and court witnessing, the ban on women judges, and mandated veiling. In such a situation, veiling, domesticity, and dedication to Islamic principles cannot be interpreted as signs of free agency, self-determination or identity construction.

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For example, Haideh Moghissi complains that: it has become fashionable to speak sympathetically and enthusiastically about the reformist activities of Muslim women and to insist on their independence of thought. ... The message is that a new road has been opened up for women-Muslim and non-Muslim alike to gain equal rights to men: a road based on feminist interpretations of Islamic Sharia laws (Moghissi 1998). Conservatives on the other hand, especially the Ulama, tend to Muslim women reform goals and deny that Islamic tenets on women are oppressive. Rather they ‘counter-pose the indignity women are suffering in societies of other religions with the advancement of women as permitted in Islam and conclude that in Islam lays their true liberation’. In other words, Islam ‘represents advancement because it is less oppressive against women than other religions’ (Uthman 2009:6). But as argued by Uthman, the Ulama in their position display a ‘unique conservatism and stand accused of remaining decades behind the societies they are supposed to guide. Such conservatism is untenable ‘as the Ulama are expected to function as a reforming instrument producing rulings that take the dynamics of society into account’ (Uthman 2009:6). Islamic feminists such as Saba Mahmoud (2005) recognize that the fact that Muslim women, in order to assert themselves in what have traditionally been male-centric arenas have had to deploy the very rhetoric that has traditionally justified their submission to male authority, is problematic but she addresses such contradictions by arguing that Muslim women reform efforts are best seen as attempts to exercise free agency within a system of subordination. ‘Women resist the dominant male order by subverting the hegemonic meanings of cultural practices and redeploying them for their own interests and agendas’ (Mahmoud 2005:6). Saba’s argument is supported by Cooke who sees Islamic feminism as an expression of: A double commitment: to a faith position on the one hand, and to women’s rights both inside and outside the home on the other. The label Islamic feminist brings together two epithets whose juxtaposition describes the emergence of a new, complex self-positioning that celebrates multiple belongings. To call oneself an Islamic feminist is not to describe a fixed identity but to create a new, contingent subject position. This location confirms belonging in a religious community while allowing for activism on behalf of and with other women. This linking of apparently mutually exclusive identities can become a radical act of subversion (Cooke 2000:93).

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The reality of the Muslim women reform project is therefore a plural and very complex one. It is very easy to focus on one strand and raise it to represent all the other perspectives. It is equally misleading to see the various strands as distinct; in most cases they are intertwined, existing sometimes within the same organisation and expressed in different ways and spaces by different actors all without detracting from the central goal of improving the status of women within Islam as the cases of FOMWAN and BAOBAB which the following clearly shows. Muslim Women Reformers in Nigeria: FOMWAN and BAOBAB FOMWAN is one of the largest Muslim women’s organizations in Africa. It is a federation of over 500 affiliates across Nigeria and was established in 1985. It lays emphasis on the improvement of the lives of Muslim women and children in particular and Muslims in general through the provision of social services to Muslim women and families through its primary schools, HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health Education Programme and training of Traditional Birth Attendants. It also plays an active political role through participation in election monitoring (state and presidential elections). FOMWAN is an Islamic NGO. Like all Islamic NGOs it provides relief and humanitarian assistance to poor communities during emergencies, natural disasters (prolonged drought and floods), famine and epidemics. It is also engaged in long-term development activities, including community development, agriculture, water, health and education in the least-developed Muslim societies in Nigeria. Like other Islamic NGOs, FOMWAN distinguishes itself from other NGOs (secular) by the fact that ‘voluntarism is a religious duty in Islam, and claims also to be advancing a Muslim way of life and expanding the Islamic umma (community) worldwide’ (Salih 2002). FOMWAN women’s reform discourse is articulated through its objectives and statements of its leadership. FOMWAN’s objectives, statutes and laws, which can be found in the handbooks of the organization and especially its publication titled ‘The Rights and Responsibilities of Muslim Women’published in 2000, express the desire of the organization to act as a champion of women’s rights within the context of Islam. FOMWAN seeks to promote the understanding and practice of the teachings of Islam, to encourage Muslim women to establish groups throughout the country for educational purposes, to establish a framework for national cooperation and unity among women Islamic associations and to provide a forum for Muslim women’s views to be expressed at national and state levels.

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More importantly, FOMWAN seeks to protect and promote the different rights of women and children under Islam. It seeks to promote their general rights, which are the rights to life, worship, education, self-respect, to choose a husband, fair treatment in marriage, divorce and expression. It promotes their economic rights to a dower, maintenance in matrimony, right to property, to enter into contracts, to have a will, to inherit, to have a job and engage in economic activity; and their political rights to a political view, to participate in politics and to vote. It also promotes their rights in difficult circumstances that for a divorcee include the right to shelter, to a dower, to maintenance, and support during maternity, for widows’ rights to maintenance, not to be inherited and to re-marry, and for Muslim women refugees, the right to remarry and political rights. The clearest articulation of the reformist orientation of FOMWAN can be found in the public statements of its leadership (Okunnu 2001; Yusuf 2002; Adekola 2005). A very good example of such articulation can be found in the paper presented by Alhaja Okunnu (then vice-president of FOMWAN), at the ‘Conference on ’ held in London in April 2001. The reformist agenda of FOMWAN comes out clearly in the title of Alhaja Okunnu`s paper ‘Women, Secularism and Democracy: Women’s Role in the Regeneration of Society’ (2001) which she interpreted as ‘The Role of Women in Islamic Re-awakening’ with re-awakening being defined as ‘a battle to reinstate Islamic values above secular values’. Secularism is seen as negative as it ‘replaces references to God with the meaningless term ‘nature’ and sees the goal of life as ‘mutual well-being, a life of ease, pleasure and power’. Briefly put, secularism is about ‘Godlessness’. On the other hand, Islam is about ‘morality’ and so superior because it creates a person whose life revolves around the ‘Unity of God’. The Muslim community is thus the best because it runs on Islamic principles taught in the Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet Mohammed. The lack of morality and its associated values endemic to secularism are seen as the cause of societal degeneration as modern nations like Nigeria ‘are guided by man-made ideologies’ such as democracy which is defined as government of the people for the people and by the people. It ‘is a product of secularism and distinctly unislamic as it has no reference to Allah, though power is held in trust for Allah and his will manifested in the Sharia is the real source of all Sovereignty’. But Islam is not anti-developmental because unlike Christianity that was an instrument of colonialism, Islam was a ‘tool of decolonialization and re-affirmation of morality in community life’. FOMWAN’s efforts are therefore directed at ‘reinstating Islamic values above secular values’ through its educational, social and moral development programmes. Through its Tarbiyah Programme, FOMWAN aims at providing

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the means to protect Muslim children and adolescents from indiscriminate mixing with non-Islamic surroundings. Its Youths Programme focuses on insulating young men and especially young women from the glamour and decadence of Jahiliyah society through the actions of groups such as the ‘Movement for Islamic Culture and Awareness’ whose target population are those Muslims ‘who do not readily identify with the religion, Muslims who have little or no exposure to Islamic teachings and Muslims who are generally seeking a better understanding of Islam (Okunnu 2001). Based on its fundamental opposition to secularism, FOMWAN sees ‘sex education’ by the state as ‘secular/ sexualist’ in nature and orientation and encouraging of ‘infidelity and promiscuity’ because its goal of teaching the youth about their bodies, how to respect each other, how to abstain from sex and protect themselves if they decide to have sex is unislamic. It therefore argues that ‘sex education should be handled by family members or professionals in the field of medicine, preferably members of the same sex’ (Okunnu 2001; Yusuf 2005). Finally FOMWAN argues for complementarity of males and females in Muslim societies and supports such with quotes from the Qur’an. It views the man as the head of the family and breadwinner while the woman’s primary responsibility is the home and the family because ‘the mother is a school. If she is a bad school she will turn out bad children unto society and if she is a good school her children will be assets to society’. Therefore FOMWAN through a combination of religious education and functional literacy seeks to inculcate the virtues of islamically-defined statutes of the woman in its members, especially the re-orientation of educated sisters from western culture which is antithetical to true Islamic culture. Its goal is to ‘attain the standard set in the time of the Holy Prophet’. The Muslim Women’s Reform agenda in Nigeria is also pursued through what can be described as a ‘Muslim feminist’ alternative represented by BAOBAB. BAOBAB For Women’s Human Rights is an organization which focuses on women’s legal rights issues under the three systems of law - customary, statutory and religious laws in Nigeria. It therefore works within the ‘secular rights’ but is an off-shoot of an international organization with an explicit Muslim identity and focus, the Women Living Under Muslim Law (WLUML) based in the UK. WLUML was initially founded to mobilize around imprisoned Algerian feminists and gradually extended its concerns to all women affected by Muslim laws generally. WLUML seeks to network and encourage women to reflect, analyse and reformulate the identity imposed upon them through the application of Muslim laws and by so doing, to assume greater control over their lives. WLUML activities have been extended throughout the Muslim world through sister

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organizations that have a rights-centred approach. Principal amongst them is BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights founded by an ad hoc group of activists, social scientists, lawyers, and specialists in Muslim laws and Arabic who were responsible for executing the Women and Laws Nigeria project, under the auspices of the International Solidarity Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws from 1993 to 1996. BAOBAB operates from a national office in Lagos and has outreach teams in 14 states across Nigeria. These are: Adamawa, Borno, Edo, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Taraba and Zamfara. BAOBAB seeks to: promote the knowledge, development and exercise of women’s rights; protect and defend the rights of women; raise awareness of women’s human rights, abuse of these rights and other legal issues as they affect women, with a view to determining policies which can best promote all human rights; further the construction of truly universal and relevant human rights, and support and strengthen women’s and other human rights-focused organizations and individual activists. To achieve its goals, BAOBAB has adopted the following strategies: outreach activities (public awareness, paralegal training); social and legislative advocacy publishing (books, pamphlets and posters); comparative analysis of women’s human rights activities in different societies (local, regional and international); interdisciplinary teaching; capacity building for other women’s groups and NGOs through training, skills building and networking in Nigeria, within Africa and worldwide. Muslim Women Reformers and Sharia Implementation in Northern Nigeria The actions of northern state governments, since the beginning of the implementation of the new Sharia code in Nigeria, have specifically targeted the objectives of Muslim Women’s reform movement in Nigeria and have provided the various strands of Muslim Women’s reform movement in Nigeria with the opportunity to reinforce the space for Muslim women in northern Nigeria and in Nigeria as a whole (Pereira 2005). FOMWAN adopted the following resolutions in response to the introduction of Sharia in Northern Nigeria: • FOMWAN appreciates the concern of various NGOs about the expansion of Sharia in parts of the country, particularly as it may affect women. • FOMWAN believes this concern is largely misplaced, and urges all concerned to be humble and learn the tenets of Sharia from reliable sources rather than to hold on to age-old misconceptions and misinformation.

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• FOMWAN recognises that Nigeria is a multi-religious and multicultural society and believes that in diversity lies our strength. We should therefore learn to show tolerance and mutual respect for our religious differences. • FOMWAN supports and salutes the courage of the Governor of Zamfara State and other States that have responded to the yearnings of their predominantly Muslim populations by enlarging the scope of Sharia in their States. This is in keeping with the democratic principle that upholds the wishes of the majority. • FOMWAN urges all the States that are intending to enlarge the scope of Sharia to practice the system of shura (consultation) as prescribed in the Qur’an and practiced by the Holy Prophet Muhammad so as to carry their people along with them. • In interpreting and implementing the Sharia such States are urged to set an example of honesty, transparency and fear of Allah. In the above statements of FOMWAN, as pointed out by Nasir (2003), there is recognition of the concerns of non-Muslims about the potential adverse effects of Sharia implementation on women (expressed at the time by various women NGOs). But the non-Muslims are urged to calm down, to respect the beliefs and desires of their Muslim compatriots, and to wait and see how the proper application of Sharia might in fact benefit women, not harm them. Turning to their fellow Muslims – i.e. the men – the women say that in the process of Sharia implementation they wish to be consulted: this was also expressed in other forums. BAOBAB for its own part has adopted a very vigorous activist posture vis- à-vis what it sees as an implementation of Sharia in northern Nigeria that is discriminatory towards Muslim women. While the Sharia campaign claims to protect the interest of the poor and the vulnerable in society such as the old, the young and women, BAOBAB argues that: Those who have been charged under the new Sharia Penal Codes have been predominantly poor, often rural but also the urban poor, non-literate women, men, and children. It is clear that women more often than men are prosecuted for zina, despite the fact that adultery, fornication and ‘immoral gatherings’ require (at least) two people – one of each sex. Although both women and men have been found guilty of fornication and consequently whipped (and/ or imprisoned, if men), only women have been convicted of adultery, with its higher penalty of stoning to death. In cases of alcohol consumption, theft and sodomy, men more often than women are prosecuted – so far only men and boys have been tried and convicted of theft and sentenced to amputation. And, regardless of sex, it is the poor and not the wealthy or powerful who have faced criminal prosecutions under the new Sharia Acts (BAOBAB 2003:3-4).

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More specifically for BAOBAB, women’s rights have been extensively violated under the new Sharia code in Nigeria as sex education is being removed from the school curricula; attempts are made to prevent non- governmental organizations (NGOs) from running sex education workshops (on family planning and reproductive health care, for example), the father’s right to control the marriage of a never-married daughter (ijbar) is being re- asserted; and child marriage is being reemphasized. In addition, under the new Sharia system in northern Nigeria, there has been discriminatory implementation and improper procedures that vitiate women’s rights in particular. For example, by postulating that pregnancy outside marriage is evidence of zina (a minority position in Sharia which is not held by the Hanafi, Hanbali and Shafi schools, nor a variant of the Maliki school), women have been held to a different standard of evidence than have men. Non-married women are required to provide evidence to prove their innocence, but men are not. If the prosecution does not provide independent evidence, such as four eye-witnesses, men can simply walk away, unlike women. This is without respect for the prescription in the Qur’an, which specifies that whoever brings an allegation of zina without four witnesses, be they male or female, will themselves be guilty of bearing false witness and subject to punishment. More women than men have been both charged and convicted of zina (BAOBAB 2003:8). BAOBAB has successfully mounted challenges against Sharia court rulings that discriminate against women in northern Nigeria with such being done within the context of Islamic law and Sharia courts. In the words of Ayesha Imam (2003) […] appeal is couched first in terms of Muslim laws, with the argument that due process has not been followed in Muslim laws, and second, in terms of Nigerian secular law, saying, again, that constitutional rights have not been followed in issues of evidence and representation. For example, BAOBAB contested the death sentence passed on Bariya Ibrahim Magazu by the Zamfara Sharia court on September 2000 on the following grounds supported by relevant sections of the Sharia law of Zamfara state of Nigeria: • Invalid consent: Section 38(c) of the Sharia Penal Code of Zamfara states that ‘a consent is not a consent as is intended by any section of this Sharia Penal Code, if the consent is given by a person who is under eighteen years of age or has not attained puberty’.

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• Punishment and Compensation: Section 95 states ‘When an accused person who has completed his seventeenth but not his eighteenth year of age is convicted by a court of any offence, the court may instead of passing the sentence prescribe under this code, subject the accused to: (a) confinement in a reformatory home for a period not exceeding one year; or (b) twenty strokes of the cane, or with fine or both’. • Rape: Section 128(1) states that ‘A man is said to commit rape who has sexual intercourse with a woman in any of the following circumstances; (a) without her consent; (b) with her consent, when her consent has been obtained by putting her in fear of death or being hurt; (c) with or without her consent, when she is under fifteen years of age or of unsound mind’. • Remittance for the offence of qadhf (false accusation of zina): Section 141 states ‘The offence of qadhf shall be remitted in any of the following cases (a) where the complainant (maqzu) pardons the accuser (qazif)’ (BAOBAB 2003). The strategy reflected the central arguments of Muslim women’s reform movement that Islam is not hostile to women and that women’s interest can be and are best promoted and protected within Islam. Ayesha Imam assets that ‘not a single case we have brought has been lost. Higher Sharia courts always quashed the conviction. We have won both on Muslim and Nigerian secular laws, but usually on Muslim laws’. She further argues that: ‘human rights are not the exclusive province of international human rights law or international human rights organizations. Human rights concepts exist in Muslim, customary, and secular laws. When we refer to human rights, we don’t always have to refer specifically to international human rights conventions. We can refer to human rights found in religious or secular discourses. International human rights law is quite insufficient in many ways and still needs to be developed itself’ (Iman 2003). Similarly, BAOBAB has made public statements criticizing the nature of the passing of the Sharia acts (lack of open discussion, lack of democratic process, and an infringement of constitutional and human rights), citing the critique largely within Muslim discourses (such as referring to the verse which says the rule of Muslims is by consultation). BAOBAB has also encouraged others to speak publicly, through organizing joint statements with other NGOs and initiating a coalition of NGOs for the Protection of Women’s Rights in Religious, Customary and Secular Laws (Imam 2004).

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In line with the Muslim reformers’ argument that discrimination suffered by women in Islam is not supported by the Qur’an, BAOBAB has made … more widely available information about the nature of laws (including specifically Muslim laws as historical, context-laden, and changing human constructs), about critiques within Muslim theology of male-biased interpretations (both historical and contemporary), about the struggles of Muslim women for rights from early Muslim history onwards, and about the debate around ‘re-opening the doors of ijtihad (Imam 2004:129). For Imam, ‘making this history, and the existence of these long-held debates, accessible outside the very small group of men who read Arabic, provides the basis for many to feel confident that their concerns are not traitorous to Islam, are shared by many within the Muslim world and to reclaim a long and varied history of struggle for women’s rights within the Muslim world’ (Imam 2004:129). Conclusion Islamic reform is a process of examining and advocating changes in accepted practices and doctrines of Islam. As a process of questioning and advocating for change within Islam, Islamic reform has provided women with an opportunity to re-examine applications of Islamic principles that discriminate against women. Such a re-examination has thrown up many different approaches: secular Muslim feminism, Islamic feminism and Islamist feminism. But as our study of Nigeria has shown, the variants share the goal of empowering Muslim women and have worked together to create a space within Islam for women to pursue issues of empowerment on terms that are acceptable to the principles of Islam as stated in the Qur’an and free from the influence of tradition that are mostly ‘male friendly’. In the process according to Umar (2009), ‘women activists learned a lot about the classical formulations of the Maliki School of Islamic law, where they discovered the rich flexibility of Islamic thought, and that has empowered them to articulate Islamic criticisms against gender bias in the recently enacted Sharia codes’.

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