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Secularizing Islam: The Colonial Encounter and the Making of a British Islamic Criminal Law in Northern Nigeria, 1903–58

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Abstract

Emerging critiques of mainstream accounts of secularism reveal the imbrication of the sacred and the secular in ‘secular’ states. In the context of colonial Northern Nigeria, this sacred-secular entanglement, which took the form of the co-option of Islam for the colonial ‘secular’ enterprise, did not leave Islam unchanged. Co-opting Islam for the colonial project necessitated the making of an Islamic Law amenable to the colonial state. With a focus on criminal law, this article narrates the making of a British Colonial Islamic law in Northern Nigeria through the unprecedented expansion of siyasa. Departing from orthodox accounts of Islamic law's reification in colonial Northern Nigeria and heterodox assertions of its erosion by the colonial state, this article argues that neither the reification nor the erosion accounts illuminates the relationship between the colonial state and Islamic law. To show how the colonial state could assert secularism while co-opting Islam, this article presents a narrative of reform that foregrounds the following questions: Who had (and exercised) the power to decide what Islamic law was? How was the exercise of this power justified? How did the exercise of this power fit with the broader colonial project of governing religious difference? What were the consequences of these processes for Islamic law, institutions and colonial subjects?

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2019

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Footnotes

The author thanks David Kennedy, Duncan Kennedy, and John Comaroff for several intellectually stimulating discussions that inspired this article. The author is also indebted to Intisar Rabb, Kimberly Wortman, Kristen Stilt, Mitra Sharafi, Noah Feldman, and Priyasha Saksena for their helpful comments and is grateful to the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University and Harvard Law School Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, for funding the research necessary for writing this article. Finally, the author thanks the anonymous reviewers of this piece for their valuable comments.

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33. Even Muhammed Bello, most liberal in constructing siyasa, states in his Tanbih al-raqid: “Rulers have dared to oppose the Sharia under the false apprehension that the policy of the Sharia is not capable of dealing with people and the best interest of the community. They overstep the limits of Allah and abandon the Sharia by rebelling in various ways and making innovations in government in a way that is not permitted. The reason for this is ignorance of the Sharia.” Sulaiman, The Islamic State, 73. See also Martin, B. G., “A Muslim Political Tract from Northern Nigeria: Muhammad Bello's Usul al-Siyasa,” in Aspects of West African Islam, ed. McCall, Daniel F. and Bennett, Norman R. (Boston: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1971), 6386Google Scholar.

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39. Moosa, “Colonialism and Islamic Law,” 166–67.

40. Quraishi-Landes, “Islamic Constitutionalism,” 560.

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43. High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, 1900–1906, and Governor General of Nigeria from 1912 to 1914.

44. See Willink, Henry, ed., Nigeria: Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Fears of Minorities and the Means of Allaying Them (London: HM Stationery Office, 1958), 58Google Scholar (hereafter Willink Commission Report).

45. The administrators who subscribed to Lugard's thesis.

46. So invested were the Lugardians in the idea of the autonomy of the Muslim emirates that Margery Perham, biographer of Lugard and prominent scholar of colonial administration, labeled the Lugardian form “ultra-indirect rule” and noted that that they tended to treat these emirates as entities with the status of the princely states of India. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, xl.

47. Governor of Nigeria, 1931–1935.

48. As Mamdani argues, direct and indirect rule were “two faces of power” rather than starkly different forms of colonial domination. Mamdani, Mahmood, “Historicizing Power and Responses to Power: Indirect Rule and its Reform,” Social Research 66:3 (1999): 859886, 862Google ScholarPubMed.

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50. Moosa, “Colonialism and Islamic Law,” 177. See also Kendhammer, Muslims Talking Politics, 54. For an account mapping out the ways in which the varied responses of colonial subjects to colonialism were justified in the language of the Shari'a, see Umar, Muhammad S., Islam and Colonialism: Intellectual Responses of Muslims of Northern Nigeria to British Colonial Rule, vol. 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2006)Google Scholar.

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52. Lugard, Dual Mandate, 78.

53. At the inception of colonial rule, there were 100 British officers for Northern Nigeria, which had a size of 828,796.195 square kilometers and population of 8,700,000. Annual Report, Northern Nigeria, 1901. This manpower shortage would continue because of revenue constraints. Revenue was almost solely generated from taxes, and 75% of this revenue was expended on administration.

54. John Cornes was the Institute Colonial Studies’ supervisor of colonial services courses when Schacht was commissioned to conduct the Northern Nigerian study. Prior to this, he had served in Northern Nigeria.

55. Schacht, “Investigation into the Application of Islamic Law in Nigeria,” 5.

56. “Rights of Non Mohammedans Before Mohammedan Courts,” File np 16032, Arewa House Kaduna in Umar, Islam and Colonialism, 48.

57. John Anderson, “A Survey of Islamic Law in Nigeria,” PPMS 60/1/12-17 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library Special Collections, London.

58. Ibid. The abolition of the options of forgiveness or payment of diya (compensation) was particularly contested by alkalai, emirs, and even some colonial administrators because of the fear that insisting on the capital penalty would revive the practice of blood feud. Brooke Commission Report, 186.

59. Anderson, “A Survey of Islamic Law in Nigeria.”

60. Brooke Commission Report, 184.

61. Native Courts (Amendment) Proclamation (No. 10, 1908) (N.Nig.), 1911 and Native Courts Ordinance (No. 5, 1918) (Ng.).

62. Native Courts Proclamation.

63. Report of the Native Courts (Northern Provinces) Commission of Inquiry Laid on the table of the House of Representatives as Sessional Paper No. 1 of 1952 (Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1952), 128Google Scholar.

64. Lugard, Political Memoranda, memorandum no. 3

65. One of these was the 1916 English Criminal Code. The Protectorate Courts were of two categories: (1) the Supreme Court and (2) the Provincial Courts comprising Provincial Courts and Cantonment Courts. See Protectorate Courts Proclamation of 1900 and Cantonment Courts Proclamation of 1902. Colonial administrators wielded immense power over both courts. The Supreme Court was the highest in the hierarchy with both supervisory and appellate jurisdiction: appellate jurisdiction over the provincial courts and supervisory jurisdiction over cantonment courts and native courts if political officers transferred cases to it.

66. Jurisdiction was determined by: (i) whether the accused person was a native/non-native; (2) whether the alleged offense was committed within the boundary of an emirate and whether the case was investigated by the Nigerian police or the Native Authority Police; and (3) whether the resident or other officer saw fit to transfer the case from the native courts.

67. Resident of Sokoto Province to the Secretary of Northern Provinces, “Delineation of Jurisdiction,” Native Courts File #11454, 1915, Volume I. Kaduna National Archives cited in Patricia C. Gloster, “The Evolution of Maliki Law in Northern Nigeria 1930–1960” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1987), 137.

68. This was in spite of the Native Court Proclamation of 1900's provision that the law applicable by a native court was native customary law prevailing in its area of jurisdiction.

69. Although Islamic courts had exercised a degree of jurisdiction over some non-Muslims in the precolonial era, this was restricted. Colonial rule expanded the territory over which Islamic institutions exercised governance powers. Further, the precolonial ad hoc systems of trial of non-Muslims residing in emirates by persons of the ethnoreligious persuasion of the parties, ceased to operate. In Reg v. Ilorin, the Supreme Court upheld this colonial era subjection of non-Muslims to the jurisdiction of Islamic criminal law on the basis of the argument that criminal law is territorial. The court further pointed out that in Northern Nigeria, there is no personal law in the sense in which the concept exists in India. Anderson, “A Survey of Islamic Law in Nigeria,” 83.

70. Christian Missionary Society General Committee III's January 26 1916 Memorandum in which it urged the colonial government to conduct judicial and civil administration was according to custom rather than Islamic law. Resolution by Subcommittee on Difficulties with the Nigerian Government, January 26, 1916. CMS/B/OMS/A3/CL/1916, University of Birmingham Cadbury Research Library Special Collections.

71. J.N.D. Anderson, The Reform of Criminal Law Introduced by the British, File 365205 PPMS 60/1/12-17, SOAS Library Special Collections, London.

72. Some Muslims labeled “skin-deep Muslims” also engaged in this practice of settling disputes outside of the legal system. Schacht, “Investigation into the Application of Islamic Law in Nigeria.”

73. Native Courts Proclamation (No. 2/1900) (N.Ng.).

74. Although Uthman Dan Fodio was a scholar of Maliki jurisprudence, he encouraged alkalai to explore other schools of thought. Yusuf, Ahmed B., Nigerian Legal System: Pluralism and Conflict of Laws in the Northern States (New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1982), 27Google Scholar.

75. Ruxton, Fitz Herbert, Mâliki Law: Being a Summary from French Translations of the Mukhtasar of Sîdî Khalîl: with Notes and Bibliography (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1916)Google Scholar. See Lugard, Political Memoranda.

76. Letter from official (name illegible) to Anderson. Anderson Collection, PPMS 60/01/16, SOAS Library Special Collections, London.

77. Native Courts Proclamation (No. 2/1900) (N.Ng.).

78. Milner, Alan, African Penal Systems (London: Routledge and Paul, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Eltantawi, Shariah on Trial, 121.

79. Section 13 of the Native Courts Ordinance. See the Hassane of Fura case and Katsina NA v. Yakudi of Hababa and Dankoko of Renage.

80. Lugard, Political Memoranda, 93–94.

81. Lugard, Report on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria, 1914.

82. Clifford's ideas did not receive the support of the Colonial Office the way Cameron's did.

83. Prior to being governor, Cameron had accumulated experience in many phases of colonial administration in Southern Nigeria and Tanganyika, neither of which featured the Lugardian brand of indirect rule.

84. Elias, Taslim O., The Nigerian Legal System (London: Routledge & Paul, 1963)Google Scholar.

85. H.D. Hooper to WRS Miller, June 9 1931. IMC-CBMS/01, SOAS Special Collections, United Kingdom.

86. Cameron, Donald, “Native Administration in Tanganyika and Nigeria,” Journal of the Royal African Society 36 (1937): 329, at 23Google Scholar.

87. The 1933 Native Courts Ordinance.

88. For example, although Cameron's initial plan was to strip all emirs’ courts of jurisdiction over capital matters, he acknowledged that “it is quite impossible to withdraw this power over which they have exercised the full consent of the Government for over thirty years” and opted to reduce the number of emirs’ courts with jurisdiction over capital cases from twenty-three to sixteen. Brooke Commission Report, 186.

89. The stage for this dichotomy between the “establishment” and the opposition was set by the design of colonial indirect rule. For an account of how colonial rule created a dichotomy between “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims,” on the basis of alignment with the Masu Sarauta, see Reynolds, “Good and Bad Muslims.” For an account of the Masu Sarauta's utilization of siyasa to repress opponents in the postwar period, see Reynolds, Jonathan, The Time of Politics (Zamanin Siyasa): Islam and the Politics of Legitimacy in Northern Nigeria, 1950–1966 (San Francisco: International Scholar Publications, 1999), 1Google Scholar.

90. Muslim Court of Appeal decision, CNC/0101 Misc. KAD MIN JUS, in Gloster, The Evolution of Maliki Law, 230. See also Willink Commission Report, 69.

91. Colonial administrators could not always decisively reprimand the over-reach tendency of emirs. For example, when the emir of Kano convicted five political opponents of “holding a political meeting without a permit” the Resident, Richard E. Gresswell criticized the emir, pointing out that he had no power, save with regard to offenses that had fixed penalties, to award more than twelve strokes on a single person at a trial. He also informed him that he was at a risk of being ordered to pay damages if the defendants appealed the decision. In response, the emir insisted that he had acted within his authority citing Tabsirat al-Hukam, a Maliki text. KSHCB, “Native Courts Policy and Instructions,” June 29, 1956, in Reynolds, The Time of Politics, 93.

92. For a comparison of Cameron and Lugard's relationship with Christian missionaries, see Akande, “Navigating Entanglements.”

93. According to Hugh Middleton, the resident, Eluaka had failed to pay a tax levied on his ownership of two plots of land in Bukuru, Pleateau Province, a Type II area. Eluaka informed the native chief that he could not afford to pay the tax.  Alongside three Muslim natives, he was charged to an alkali court.  During the proceedings, the four defendants did not “seem to take the alkali's warnings seriously,” so the alkali issued a final warning: “If the four of them did not pay their taxes in six hours, he would have them arrested and publicly flogged.” When they did not comply with the order, they were arrested, hauled to a public square, and flogged. Within a few hours, they paid their taxes in full. Public Record Office File, CO 583/190/1130 (1933), 2 in Gloster, The Evolution of Maliki Law.

94. “The Bukuru Tax Flogging Case,” a June 24, 1933 account in West Africa Magazine, 614.

95. Not all administrators blamed the alkali. For example, the Acting Secretary of the Northern Provinces, Herbert B. James, observed that the alkali had considered the sentence justifiable according to al-Mukhtasar, a Maliki text. Further, the alkali believed that Eluaka and his codefendants had considered the fine to be “a laughing matter.” Confidential Memorandum signed by H. B. James, Acting Secretary of Northern Provinces, No. 19062/26, April 4, 1933, Public Record Office File, CO 583/190/1130 (1933), 13.

96. See Effiong Ekpo v. Kano Native Authority (1957) N.R.N.L.R. 129 in which the High Court of Northern Nigeria, held that contrary to the appellant's assertion that the Emirs’ Court had no jurisdiction over non-Muslims, the Emir's Court had jurisdiction to apply Islamic law “over all persons who are within the Native authority's jurisdiction and whose general mode of life while there is that of the general native community,” 130.

97. These courts’ application of Islamic law was, as previously, limited by the repugnancy test (measured by “natural justice, equity and good conscience”). They were also required to apply certain ordinances. Native Courts Ordinance of 1938.

98. Bryan Sharwood Smith, Lieutenant-Governor, Northern Nigeria (1954–57). Sharwood-Smith, Bryan, But Always as Friends: Northern Nigeria and the Cameroons, 1921–1957 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), 282Google Scholar.

99. Anderson, Islamic Law in Africa, citing Magudama v. Bornu NA, 1946 decision of the West African Court of Appeal, unreported.

100. Tsofo Gubba v. Gwandu Native Authority (1947) WACA, vol. 12.

101. Scott, Peter H.G., A Survey of Islamic Law in Northern Nigeria in 1952 (Kaduna, Nigeria: Government Printer, 1953), 7Google Scholar.

102. Some emirs and alkalai interviewed by Schacht in his 1950 study stated that because the government had chosen to contravene the guarantee of noninterference by interfering with the courts, it was preferable to abstain from exercising jurisdiction rather than to apply “non-Islamic” law or be overturned on appeal. Stripping themselves of jurisdiction would take the matter “out of their conscience.” Schacht, “Investigation into the Application of Islamic Law in Nigeria,” 15.

103. Memorandum by Annur Tingary, Bashir El Rayah, and Mohammed Swar El Dahab “Extension of Jurisdiction of Native Courts” KANO PROF File #2182, 41–43, in Gloster, “The Evolution of Maliki Law in Northern Nigeria,” 40.

104. Bryan Sharwood-Smith, But Always as Friends, 282–84.

105. Fagoji v. Kano NA (1957) NRNLR. 57 (S.C.)

106. Maizabo v. NA (1957) NRNLR. 133 (S.C)

107. Brooke Commission Report, 185. The commission recommended that future alkalai be trained in customary law and apply it in matters involving non-Muslims. It also proposed the establishment of a Muslim Court of Appeal (created in 1956: Moslem Court of Appeal Law, No. 10, 1956). The emirs and alkalai remained unappeased because this court's decisions were appealable to the High Court.

108. Andrew Cohen, Assistant Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Office's Africa Division, played an especially prominent role in channeling this anti-indirect rule current into legal reform. See Thompson, Todd, Norman Anderson and the Christian Mission to Modernize Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 163–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109. Mantena, Alibis of Empire, 177.

110. Anderson, J.N.D., “Homicide in Islamic Law,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13 (1951): 811–28, at 811–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111. Anderson, “Homicide in Islamic Law,” 815.

112. Thompson, Norman Anderson, 167, citing Anderson's letter to N.J. Brooke April 6, 1951.

113. See Thompson, Norman Anderson.

114. Anderson letter to N.J. Brooke April 6, 1951 in Thompson, Norman Anderson, 168.

115. Beyond the discretionary power of the ruler, Anderson argues that siyasa ought to encompass “a wider application of the principle that the Ruler may prescribe, in any point on which Muslim jurists have differed, which of the variant views is to be applied by the Courts.” In his view, this had been the basis of reform in Shari'a in Egypt and Middle Eastern countries. Anderson, J.N.D., “Islamic Law in African Colonies,” Corona, The Journal of His Majesty's Colonial Service 3 (1951): 265Google Scholar.

116. Ibid.

117. Robert Wray and Maurice Smith. Thompson, Norman Anderson, 180.

118. “Draft Confidential Dispatch to the Governor Northern region, Nigeria, for Clearance SECRET AND PERSONAL by the Governor Before Issue,” August 1957, London Private Collection of Ian Edge, Anderson papers cited in Thompson, Norman Anderson, 180.

119. See Willink Commission Report.

120. Sharwood-Smith to Macpherson, April 18 1957 NA/CO 554/1941 in Thompson, Norman Anderson, 179.

121. Besides Justice Abu Rannat, the members of the panel included Anderson; Justice Mohammed Sharif, the Chairman of the Pakistan Law Commission; Shettima Kashim the Waziri (Vizier) of Borno Province, Peter Achimugu, a prominent Christian politician in the ruling Northern People's Congress and Mallam Musa, the Chief Alkali of Bida.

122. Report of the Panel of Jurists, September 10, 1958, PPMS 60/01/01, John Anderson Collection, SOAS, London.

123. The Indian Penal Code's provisions were inspired by the Common Law as well as statutes in England and North America including the Louisiana Civil Code and the New York Code.  Mawani and Hussin, “The Travels of Law,” 741.

124. Attorney General H.H. Marshall to the Panel of Jurists, September 10, 1958, in Ostien, Philip, ed., Sharia Implementation in Northern Nigeria 1999–2006: A Sourcebook, vol. I (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum), 5960Google Scholar.

125. See also Anderson, J.N.D., “A Major Advance,” The Modern Law Review 24 (1961): 616–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126. See Price, Justin, “Criminal Law Reform in Northern Nigeria Retrograde Legislation in Northern Nigeria?The Modern Law Review 24 (1961): 604–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Anderson's response in Anderson, “A Major Advance.” Defending the panel's work, Anderson argued that although the panel had, in deference to the Masu sarauta included certain provisions, which may “outrage a lawyer trained in Anglo-Saxon notions of justice,” the code was a “great advancement.” For the response of a northern elite, see Bello, Ahmadu, “Reply to Mr. Justin Price's Attack,” in Bello, Ahmadu, Work and Worship: Selected Speeches of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto (Zaria: Gaskiya Corporation, 1986), 225–32Google Scholar.

127. Dudley, Billy J., Parties and Politics in Northern Nigeria (London: Routledge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

128. Ahmadu Bello, “Speech to Assembly on Legal Reforms on December 12, 1958,” in Bello, Work and Worship, 222. On Bello's moves between “reform” and “tradition,” see Paden, John, Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto: Values and Leadership in Nigeria (Zaria: HudaHuda, 1986)Google Scholar.

129. Bello, “Speech to Assembly,” in Bello, Work and Worship, 221, 223.

130. Paden, Ahmadu Bello, 210–11.

131. Reynolds, The Time of Politics, 101.

132. See Asad, Formations of the Secular; Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age; Agrama, “Secularism”; Salomon, For Love of the Prophet; and Galanter, “Secularism.” For prominent liberal accounts, see Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, “Modes of Secularism,” in Secularism and its Critics, ed. Bhargava, Rhajeev (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Ackerman, Bruce, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Smith, Donald Eugene, India as a Secular State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

133. Adcock, The Limits of Tolerance, 25.

134. In Samuel Moyn's account, this was true of Europe. Contrary to the association of Christianity with secularism by the new wave of secularism critiques, Moyn argues that Christianity's “religious freedom” project “was most often intended … to marginalize secularism.” This was especially the case in the transwar and postwar periods when the religious freedom project (that culminated in the adoption of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) set out to protect Christianity against the onslaught of secularism. Moyn, Samuel, Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 139–67Google Scholar.