Nigeria: alla ricerca di una Sharia "dal volto umano"

[Willy McBride]

Just last year, the morality police roamed these streets [...] but these days, the fearsome police officers, known as the Hisbah, are little more than glorified crossing guards. They have largely been confined to their barracks and assigned to anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games.

When Muslim-dominated states like this one adopted Islamic law after the fall of military rule in 1999, radical clerics from the Arabian peninsula arrived in droves to preach a virulent brand of fundamentalism. [...] But since then, much of the furor has died down, and the practice of Islamic law, or Sharia, [...] has settled into a distinctively Nigerian compromise between the dictates of faith and the chaotic realities of modern life in an impoverished, developing nation.

Despite several internationally known adultery convictions calling for death by stoning in a public square — including that of Amina Lawal, a woman from Katsina State who gave birth to a child out of wedlock that a Shariah court in 2002 took as evidence of the crime — not one stoning sentence has been carried out. Ms. Lawal’s conviction was overturned the following year, and she is now active in local politics, living freely with her daughter Wasila in her hometown.

“Politicians started seeing Shariah as a gateway to political power,” said Abba Adam Koki, a conservative cleric in Kano who has criticized the local government’s application of Shariah. “But they were insincere. We have been disappointed and never got what we had hoped.”

Facing backlash from ordinary citizens and criticism from human rights groups at home and abroad, state governments that had swiftly enacted Shariah and embraced its harshest tenets are now shifting the emphasis from the punishments and prohibitions to a softer approach that emphasizes other tenets of Muslim law, like charity, women’s rights and the duty of Muslims to keep their environment clean.

The shift may also be helping to ease tensions between Muslims and Christians in a country where sectarian conflicts, often stoked by politicians to stir up support, have killed thousands over the past decade.

“The thing has caused a lot of harm,” said the Rev. Foster O. Ekeleme, a Methodist bishop in Kano who leads a flock of mostly Ibo tribespeople from southeastern Nigeria. “There was burning of Christian churches. Christians were killed. So many people were displaced. But now, the tempo is cooling down.”

These days tensions have cooled, said Garba Shehu, a former Muslim from Dutse who converted to evangelical Christianity. [...] “We thank God we don’t see the same tensions as before,” Mr. Shehu said. “We are free to practice our faith without fear.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/wo...hariah.html?hp