Annotation. In 2000 and 2001, twelve northern states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria introduced Islamic criminal law as one of a number of measures aiming at "reintroducing the shari'a." Immediately after its adoption, defendants were sentenced to death by stoning or to amputation of the hand. Apart from a few well publicised trials, however, the number and nature of cases tried under Islamic criminal law are little known. Based on a sample of trials, the present thesis discusses the introduction of Islamic criminal law and the evolution of judicial practice within the regions historical, cultural, political and religious context. The introduction of Islamic criminal law was initiated by politicians and supported by Muslim reform groups, but its potential effects were soon mitigated on higher judicial levels and aspects of the law were contained by local administrators. This title can be previewed in Google Books - http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789056296551.

A survey of Sharia criminal law, commissioned by the European Commission, and to provide analysis of the re-islamification of the Northern Nigerian states, based on classical Islamic texts. The study clarifies and explains the circumstances and background to these new codes, paying special attention to the Koraic offences of fornication, theft, robbery and alcohol consumption. It further identifies conflicts between these codes and the human rights principles guaranteed in the Nigerian federal constitution, and in the United Nations conventions on human rights to which Nigeria is a signatory; and surmises the views of the local people about the laws. The author is Professor of Islamic Law at the University of Amsterdam.

This book explores how the unique historical development of Islamic Shari’a criminal law alongside English common law in northern Nigeria has created a hybridised criminal legal system through a pluralist dynamic of mutual accommodation. It studies how this system may potentially be accommodated by the International Criminal Court. The work examines how this could be accommodated through the current understanding and operation of complementarity, and that it could ultimately prove to be preferable in encouraging the Shari’a courts to exercise criminal justice over the radical insurgents in northern Nigeria. These courts would have the unprecedented ability to combine binding adjudicative judgments together with religious interpretation and guidance, which can directly combat the predominantly unchallenged domain of ideology by extremist actors. It is submitted that these pluralist perspectives are timely and welcome, given the undeniably Western European foundations of modern International Criminal Law. In exploring such potential avenues, our shared understanding of modern international criminal justice is widened to necessarily include other stakeholders beyond its Western founders. It is the aim and hope that such interactions and engagements with non-Western traditions and cultures will lead to a greater shared ownership of the international criminal justice project, which will only strengthen the global fight against impunity. The book will be essential reading for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of International Criminal Law, Legal Pluralism, Islamic Shari’a Law, Nigeria, and religiously-inspired violence.