Book Review, 

Sharia and the Press in Nigeria: Islam versus 

Western Christian Civilization 

Ibrahim Ado-Kurawa 

Kano, Nigeria: Kurawa Holdings, 2000. 461 pages. 

121 

Over the decades, Nigerian political elites have devised various constitu­
tional 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 con­
flicts. These are reflected in the highly polemical book in which Ado­
Kurawa 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 knowl­
edge 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 dis­

cusses 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 





Book Review, 123 

state religion. The author's claim that Sharia is meant to apply to Muslims 
only has turned out to be inaccurate, as recent events have shown. For exam­

ple, governors ofZamfara and Kano states, to mention a few, have reneged 

on their earlier promise that the law will not apply to non-Muslims. ln these 
two states there have been cases of some lgbo traders receiving various sen­

tences for being in possession of alcohol. 

On the whole, the author has a good thesis, but it should be argued log­

ically in a less adversarial and accusative language. Many pages, in some 
cases a hundred at a stretch, are pure rhetoric. Removing these pages 

would help focus the argument. Also, there are too many quotations and 

very often they are presented as substitutes for arguments. It would be bet­

ter if the author allowed his arguments to stand on their own feet. Finally, 
the typesetting is poorly done, as the right margins cut off sentences and 

page numberings. 

John Boye Ejobowah 

Department of Politi cal Science 
University of Toronto 

Toronto, Ontario, Canada