Sharia and the Press in Nigeria

Over the decades, Nigerian political elites have devised various constitutional and administrative arrangements to cope with the country's complex ethnic and religious pluralism. Yet, peace and stability have been elusive, as the country continues to experience severe religious and communal co...

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Autor principal: John Boye Ejobowah
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: International Institute of Islamic Thought 2002
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/35cdd7571282435381e6bedd637a545e
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:35cdd7571282435381e6bedd637a545e2021-12-02T17:26:07ZSharia and the Press in Nigeria10.35632/ajis.v19i2.19472690-37332690-3741https://doaj.org/article/35cdd7571282435381e6bedd637a545e2002-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/1947https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3733https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3741 Over the decades, Nigerian political elites have devised various constitutional and administrative arrangements to cope with the country's complex ethnic and religious pluralism. Yet, peace and stability have been elusive, as the country continues to experience severe religious and communal conflicts. These are reflected in the highly polemical book in which AdoKurawa tries to trace the origin and nature of what he calls the hostility of western Christian representatives towards Islam. In the book, Ado-Karuwa attempts to argue that the secular public space is too inflected with Christian values to make a claim to neutrality, and he uses Nigeria as a case study. He begins by noting that historically, Islam in Europe was tolerant and accommodative of the Christian religion, but this was not reciprocated when the Crusades were launched and "Muslims ... received the worst treatment imaginable." According to him, the failure of the armed campaign prompted Christian clerics to embark on an intellectual attack that entailed the negative representation of Islam in scholarly writings. What emerged, according to him, was a body of knowledge that explained the superiority of the West over the Islamic world. Contemporary global dominance by the West has also opened the door for academic institutions in Europe and America to strangulate Islam under the guise of promoting universal science. Ado-Karuwa relates the above to Nigeria by noting that, within the country, both Christian intellectuals and some British-trained Muslims act as agents of the West by promoting a secularism that marginalizes Islam. After a lengthy polemic about orientalism, colonialism, and American imperialism, the author returns to the issue of secularism, which he discusses generally without relating it concretely to Nigeria. He does not show how secularism in Nigeria marginalizes Islam; neither does he make efforts to show that secularism is tainted by Christian doctrines, in the manner done by Louis Dumont. Instead, he undermines his project by arguing that Christianity declined in Europe after secularism was enthroned by the Reformation and the Renaissance, and that in Sweden attendance in the Lutheran Church is only 5 percent. If it is true, as he argues, that the ... John Boye EjobowahInternational Institute of Islamic ThoughtarticleIslamBP1-253ENAmerican Journal of Islam and Society, Vol 19, Iss 2 (2002)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Islam
BP1-253
spellingShingle Islam
BP1-253
John Boye Ejobowah
Sharia and the Press in Nigeria
description Over the decades, Nigerian political elites have devised various constitutional and administrative arrangements to cope with the country's complex ethnic and religious pluralism. Yet, peace and stability have been elusive, as the country continues to experience severe religious and communal conflicts. These are reflected in the highly polemical book in which AdoKurawa tries to trace the origin and nature of what he calls the hostility of western Christian representatives towards Islam. In the book, Ado-Karuwa attempts to argue that the secular public space is too inflected with Christian values to make a claim to neutrality, and he uses Nigeria as a case study. He begins by noting that historically, Islam in Europe was tolerant and accommodative of the Christian religion, but this was not reciprocated when the Crusades were launched and "Muslims ... received the worst treatment imaginable." According to him, the failure of the armed campaign prompted Christian clerics to embark on an intellectual attack that entailed the negative representation of Islam in scholarly writings. What emerged, according to him, was a body of knowledge that explained the superiority of the West over the Islamic world. Contemporary global dominance by the West has also opened the door for academic institutions in Europe and America to strangulate Islam under the guise of promoting universal science. Ado-Karuwa relates the above to Nigeria by noting that, within the country, both Christian intellectuals and some British-trained Muslims act as agents of the West by promoting a secularism that marginalizes Islam. After a lengthy polemic about orientalism, colonialism, and American imperialism, the author returns to the issue of secularism, which he discusses generally without relating it concretely to Nigeria. He does not show how secularism in Nigeria marginalizes Islam; neither does he make efforts to show that secularism is tainted by Christian doctrines, in the manner done by Louis Dumont. Instead, he undermines his project by arguing that Christianity declined in Europe after secularism was enthroned by the Reformation and the Renaissance, and that in Sweden attendance in the Lutheran Church is only 5 percent. If it is true, as he argues, that the ...
format article
author John Boye Ejobowah
author_facet John Boye Ejobowah
author_sort John Boye Ejobowah
title Sharia and the Press in Nigeria
title_short Sharia and the Press in Nigeria
title_full Sharia and the Press in Nigeria
title_fullStr Sharia and the Press in Nigeria
title_full_unstemmed Sharia and the Press in Nigeria
title_sort sharia and the press in nigeria
publisher International Institute of Islamic Thought
publishDate 2002
url https://doaj.org/article/35cdd7571282435381e6bedd637a545e
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