Shekau ignores sharia law

The first and most important principle is expressed in the Quran, sura II, verse 256, “la ikrah fi din”, meaning “there is no coercion in faith”. This signals divine intolerance for conversions to Islam obtained through the use of threats or force. The rule is reiterated in sura X, verse 99, which reads, “how could you force men to be believers against their will?”

Not satisfied with having disobeyed a clear divine order, Shekau also shows that he does not know the sharia, when he says he has acted for the best, by preventing the girls from receiving a corrupted education, and subsequently declaring that the girls’ desire to study gives legitimacy to his act of selling them to the market as slaves.

The search for knowledge is a duty for believers, recalled in at least two hadith (stories in the Quran): “he who does not seek knowledge or does not want to give it will be punished” and “the search for knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim man every and Muslim woman.” Even more importantly, the right to seek knowledge, where one believes best, extends to those who, being non-Muslim (as were the kidnapped girls), can access schools and formational institutes that do not include Islamic religious education. It is unclear where Shekau derives the belief that it is allowed to prevent a non-Muslim from receiving their education, as there is no mention of it neither in Islamic sources in general, nor in Maliki jurisprudence in particular.

Slavery in Islamic jurisprudence

Worse still is the illogical conclusion that Shekau draws from the search for education – that it is permissible to force into slavery a human being who was born free. First of all, the entire Quranic text is oriented in favor of recognizing the status libertatis (state of freedom) to all individuals – so much so that freeing a slave is one of the recommended acts that a Muslim can carry out to expiate a fault before God. More important yet, Shekau appears to be unaware of the fact that, being a non-essential institution, slavery was abolished already in the mid 19th century. There was even a fatwa introduced that certified the new ban on forcing people into slavery.

At the same time, even admitting that slavery was not effectively eradicated from the entire Muslim world over a century and a half ago, it is still clear that Shekau did not learn what conditions there were on making a man or woman a slave – for an infidel (in this case, the Christian girls) the only permissible scenario is slavery after being seized as war booty.

The jihad of Boko Haram

We can therefore ask ourselves whether Boko Haram is waging war and against whom. Shekau asserts that he is at war against the corrupt Nigerian authorities who do not allow the enforcement of sharia law. This is not true, as a matter of fact – for in the state of Borno, where the Boko Haram group is active and where they kidnapped the girls, sharia is enforced both in the personal statute and in the penal code. But we must also acknowledge that the term jihad, which Shekau uses with impunity to justify his own actions, harkens back to a very precise notion developed by the framers of law already in the first centuries of Islam.

Jihad is an obligation collectively shared by the community, unless it means facing an armed aggression from the enemy, in which case the obligation becomes individual as well. In order to declare jihad one needs to be the head (caliph or imam) of the Community, since war imposes human and financial costs which require the clear identification of an individual to bear the great responsibility of the loss of the lives of others. Thus it is clear that Shekau lacks all and any legitimacy to act, and that forcing the girls into slavery is illegitimate.

We are still left with this question: why do those who in the Muslim world hold the moral and legal authority to contest the legitimacy of Shekau’s actions remain silent or act with excessive caution? I do not have the answer – but it is certain that in this way they are serving the cause of a common delinquent by betraying the highest values of Islam and of sharia law.

Deborah Scholart is a researcher on Muslim Law  and Law in Islamic Countries at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.

Translation by Lavinia Borzi

Original article published in Italian on AffarInternazionali