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The
Draft of a Letter Sent to the governor of Zamfara, Nigeria About the
Adultery Case
18
Dhul Qiddah 1421 [February 12, 2001]
Governor AlHajj Ahmed Sani
Zamfara State Government
Government House, P.M.B 01050
Gusau
Zamfara State
Nigeria
Fax: [011-234-63-202178]
Your Excellency,
As Salaam Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakaatahu.
The Network of Progressive Muslims is a loose network of Islamic
scholars and activists from Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, India, South
Africa, Spain, Iceland, Tunisia, Mexico, Canada, Germany, the UK and
the USA, among other countries.
As Muslims, we are working towards a renaissance in Islamic
civilization that we hope will bring social justice; entrench equity;
uphold human rights; foster pluralism; develop tolerance; nurture
democracy; fight racism; eradicate patriarchy; and establish a just
peace in our fragile world community. These are, after all, the
objectives of the shari'ah. Ultimately, we, like all concerned
Muslims, hope to achieve a closeness to Allah by realizing His Will
on earth.
As members of the world Muslim community, we followed with deep
anguish the case of our sister, Bariya Ibrahim Magazu who was, we
believe, wrongfully convicted of zinah and for giving false witness,
by a Shariah court in your State, and was later awarded 100 lashes by
a man in front of a large crowd.
We are writing to you to express our outrage and anger at the lashing
of this teen-age mother; a punishment that, we believe, did not meet
the basic requirements of justice under the Shariah. Clearly The
Quran goes out of its way to provide protection to women recognizing
their vulnerability in matters extra-marital or pre-marital sex. A
woman may get pregnant as a result of such an act; a man never does.
We believe that, in terms of the correct understanding of the
shari'ah, the judgment against Bariya and the subsequent punishment
were unjust and not consistent with the Islamic requirements of
evidence. We believe that many essential aspects of the shari'ah for
such a case were overlooked. We have argued this in the attached
Shariah opinion prepared by one of our members, Asifa Quraishi
esquire. Asifa Quraishi is a doctoral student at Harvard Law School,
writing her S.J.D. thesis in comparative Islamic and American
constitutional legal theory. She holds an LL.M. from Columbia Law
School (focusing on federal habeas corpus law), a J.D. from U.C.
Davis and a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley. She has held federal clerkships
in the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals and has published
articles in the fields of Islamic and comparative law, including
gender issues.
Our submission to you now, even though Bariya's punishment has
already been carried out, is to appeal to you to view differently
such cases that might come to you or to your shari'ah courts in the
future. We make this submission to you because you had yourself asked
for Islamic opinions on the matter that might be different from the
judgment issued by the Shari'ah court. We understand your request to
be an attempt at infusing the application of shari'ah in Zamfara with
justice and compassion and an attempt at arriving at the best
possible Islamic judgment. We believe that our submission looks at
the case and the issues involved from a perspective that better
fulfils the Shari'a requirement of justice.
The Network of Progressive Muslims is joined in this submission to
you by the following Muslim organizations. The Initiative for Islamic
Studies, Hamburg, Germany; SIS-Sisters In Islam, based in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia; The Institue of Islamic Studies, Bombay, India; The
Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa;
Muslims Living with Cancer, Pennsylvania, USA; and The Council of
Pakistani Candaians, Toronto, Canada.
We are sure history will remember your act as one of statesmanship
and magnanimity and your re-examination of this case and new
perspective with which you approach similar cases in the future as
acts of statesmanship.
May Allah reward you,
Yours in the struggle for Islam.
Tarek Fatah
Co-ordinator
Network of Progressive Muslims,
South Africa
Zainah Anwar
Executive Director
Sisters in Islam
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Halima Krausen, Principal
Mehdi Razvi, Head of Fiqh Dept.
Initiative for Islamic Studies
Hamburg, Germany
Asghar Ali Engineer
President
Institue of Islamic Studies
9B Himalaya Apts., 6th Road, TPS III
Santacruz East
Bombay - 400 055
Kathleen Weber
Muslims Living with Cancer
7215 Glenthorne Road
Upper Darby, PA 19082
USA
Shurah Yabafazi, South Africa
(an advocay group focused on a women centered approach to MPL
reform in South Africa)
cc:
Dr. Ayesha Imam,
BAOBAB, Nigerian Muslim Women's Organization
[ayesha@baobab.com.ng]
President of Nigeria
[president.obasanjo@nigeriagov.org] |
