Rescuing a condemned mom

[StarGazer]

as-Salaam aleykum Wa RahmatuLlah

 

An interesting article on what people are now boiling over in Nigeria: maybe

Muslims can resolve the issue, given that many of them (including scholars)

are disgusted with the result as well.

 

htp://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/08200000aaa04b69.upi&Sys=zzn&Type=News&Filter=Front%20Page&Fid=FRONTPAGAnalysis:

Rescuing a condemned mom

 

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religion Correspondent

 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- The hope of a young Nigerian mother sentenced

to be stoned to death for alleged adultery may lie with the persuasive

powers of top Muslim scholars from around the world, United Press

International learned Tuesday.

 

Prominent Islamic, not Christian, sages should undertake the rescue effort

on behalf of 30-year-old Amina Lawal, according to Lebanese-born law

professor Azizah Y. al-Hibri, who is also the founder and executive director

of Karama, a Washington-based organization of Muslim Women Lawyers for Human

Rights.

 

Hibri told UPI she was ready to assemble an international delegation of

Muslim savants, male and female, to fly to Funtua in the northern Nigerian

state of Katsina, where an Islamic high court rejected Lawal's appeal

against her death sentence on Monday.

 

"The only thing we are lacking is funds," said al-Hibri, who teaches law at

the University of Richmond in Virginia. She added that she hoped for support

from international human rights organizations grasping the efficacy of an

intervention by Muslim scholars. "We must work within the culture," meaning

the Islamic culture of northern Nigeria. Al-Hibri is an expert on the

Shariah, or Muslim religious law.

 

The case involves a poor and uneducated tribal woman, who became pregnant

allegedly after her divorce. A lower court that sentenced her to death in

March used her baby daughter as evidence for her "crime," but acquitted the

child's father, thus violating Islamic code, according to al-Hibri.

 

The high court judges stayed Lawal's execution until she weaned her child

from breast-feeding. In January 2004, her relatives must accompany her to

the site where she will be stoned to death -- the "ultimate form of

torture," as Amnesty International termed it in a statement.

 

The Lawal case is bound to bring to a boil the long-simmering conflict

between the Nigerian federal government and the country's 12 northern states

over their introduction of the Shariah. On this point there is agreement

between scholars and activists such as Paul Marshall of Freedom House, Dutch

Islamic studies professor Ruud Peters, and LaShawn Jefferson, executive

director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.

 

Jefferson urged the Nigerian government Tuesday to commute Lawal's death

sentence and drop the charges against her. The verdict against the young

woman violated the democratic Constitution of the Federal Republic of

Nigeria and the country's "international human rights commitments,"

Jefferson said.

 

Nigeria's democratically elected president, Olusegun Obansanjo, is a

Baptist. Of the 126 million Nigerians, 50 percent are Muslim, 40 percent

Christian and 10 percent follow indigenous beliefs.

 

The Lawal case is expected to be the first test of the Shariah's

constitutionality before the country's Supreme Court. Of the 36 Nigerian

states, 12 have so far adopted the Islamic legal code, though not all of

them with the severity evidenced in Katsina. Peters, a specialist on Islamic

law and a professor at the University of Amsterdam, told UPI, "The Supreme

Court could squash parts of the Shari'ah."

 

In some of the northern regions, "courts have ordered amputations as

punishment for theft," according to Human Rights Watch. Before Amina Lawal,

another Nigerian woman, Safiya Hussaini, had been condemned to die by

stoning.

 

But her sentence was overturned in March after heavy pressure, especially

from the European Union and a declaration by the European Parliament

condemning the verdict. "The EU will act in the Lawal case as well," Peters

predicted.

 

But apart from political efforts, the Shariah itself offers hope to Amina

Lawal, both Peters and al-Hibri contended. "The Shariah judges in northern

Nigeria are not very sophisticated," said Peters who had done research in

that region.

 

Azizah al-Hibri insisted that the Shariah, too, knows the concept of due

process, which was not applied. "If this was consensual sex, how come the

father was acquitted?" she asked. "Furthermore, if the partners weren't

married people, their act wasn't a capital crime under Islamic law."

 

The young peasant woman's conviction was based on her confession to

"adultery," the Arabic term for which is "zena." But her lawyers argued that

she did not even understand this word because she is only conversant in her

tribal tongue. Thus the confession to something she did not even understand

also violated the Shariah, al-Hibri explained.

 

Ruud Peters said that Islamic law, too, includes the concept of reasonable

doubt. "It contains the 'sleeping fetus' notion that pregnancies may take as

long as two years to come to term." This implies that the law should allow

for the possibility that Amina Lawal's child was fathered by her husband

before he divorced her.

 

While this may strike some as sophistry, Azizah al-Hibri stressed that the

Shariah is a problem "that must ultimately be addressed theologically." In

line with an increasing number of Muslim scholars she asked, "Is Islam

properly applied?"

 

Copyright 2002 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

[Haashim]

Thanks, sister tamina for this article.

we have seen it on the tv's and newspapers but they don't concern this (young) women's life, why they don't be so kind and emotional to the palestinian mothers and children whose houses were destroyed their fathers were killed or in the prison, when they reporting from palestine they are not so kind and enthousiastic, they are very cautious to select words, as one sheikh said (IBAADATU SHCABIN BI AKMALIHI MASA'LATUN FIIHAA NADAR, WA QATLU IMRI'IN KAAFIRIN JARIIMATUN LAA TUQTAFAR) = SHACAB DHAN HADDII LA BAABI'IYO WAA MASA'LO BAARITAAN U BAAHAN (goaa'nka waa inaan lagu degdegin), HADDIISE NIN GAAL AH MEEL LAGU DILO WAA DAMBI AAN LA CAFIYI KARIN).

 

If there is something called HYPOCRISY the western media is an example of that. double standard is their biggest weapon, they can enlarge an event if it's their interest and ignore if it's other's intrest.

 

WALLAHUL MUSTACAAN

 

..............................

 

LACNADI HA KU DHACDO DAALIMIINTA, LAAKIIN KUWA KA AAMUSAN MAXAAN NIRAAHNAA

[Macalin]

OK..i am confused here.

The sharia says anyone who commits adultery should be stoned to death? right?

wheres the fine line here?..whats the proof? does the child in question enough?

i mean wallahi am confused the LAW is the LAW and should be followed uniformly..on the other hand i see biasness among the community members!

i hope someone helps her..i see its better for her to have something be4 allah than something infront of some ppl.

again..am confused!

[StarGazer]

Lakkad, you're confused because not all the facts were presented in the article. From my understanding, the woman didn't get a fair trial which is basically all Aziza al-Hibri is trying to convey to everyone. There's a possibility that the judge didn't follow the shariah properly.

As far as Zina goes and the repecussions according to sharia, am not too familiar with it (don't want to give out wrong info).