State, Religion and Law: A Comparative
Study of Sharia Penal CODES and the Administration of
Criminal Justice in Sudan and Nigeria
Coordinator:
Sabo Bako
Members
of the team
Hafsat Muhamed,
Abuzer E. Basrir, Ebtisam El sayed
Countries of study
Nigeria, Sudan
The comparative research question which the study seeks explanation to is: what
accounts for the differences and similarities between the Sudan Nigeria penal
codes in terms of their evolution, exchanges, social-political content,
political functions and the problems created in the administration of criminal
justice under their newly set up Sharia courts. In this regard, the research
evaluates the roles of the state and the new Islamic actors in the construction
of the sharia penal codes and the problems generated by the processes and legal
officials involved in the administration criminal justice under their newly
established sharia courts.
The argument the study advances is that the restoration and
implementation of sharia could represent an indicator for measuring the
increasing volume of religiosity, which now engulfs the supposedly secular state
and its laws. In this respect, the study exposes the increasing dysfunctionality
of the secular state and its judicial structures, which have virtually collapsed
principally because of the devastating conditions of the ongoing Structural
Adjustment and bad governance, which they have been subjected to. The brazing
incapacities of the state to provide for the much needed social and public
welfare services, including security, law, order and good governance at the
level of judicial delivery of legal justice, have clearly robbed the secular
state and its legal structures of the legitimacy and capacity to effectively
govern and adjudicate on the cases between the parties brought before their laws
and courts.
On their part, the neo - wahbist Islamists, composed of largely
urban based, mostly western educated, organized, reformist, transnational and
political Muslim groups, have for the past three decades developed into some
formidable social and political groups. They have used the campaigns for the
restoration of the Sharia to critique the weakness of the secular state and
elite and mobilized the Muslim masses to occupy the political vacuum created by
wrestling current state power. This has enabled the Islamists to produce and
restore the full-blown Sharia Penal Codes and implemented them in the context of
administration of criminal justice under their courts for Muslims in their
countries.
The study employs comparative historical and social methods to explain the
evolution of the penal codes, socio-political content analysis of the texts of
the penal codes to underscore their social-political leanings, and empirical
observations and interview to establish how the penal codes had been implemented
within the specifically established Sharia courts in the context of
administration of criminal justice, and how the codes could be reformed in
order to further democratize and humanize them according to Islamic
Jurisprudence and human rights provisions of the current national constitutions
of Sudan and Nigeria.
Currently, the group is
preparing for its first methodological workshop. This is to
take place in Dakar in the month of May.
