Islamic council overrules fatwa on journalist

Nigeria’s leading Islamic council, Jama'atu Nasril Islam, on Thursday overruled the death sentence or fatwa passed on a local newspaper reporter for an article considered blasphemous by Muslims. The northern state of Zamfara had urged Muslims on Monday to kill Isioma Daniel of Thisday daily as a religious obligation for her article dismissing Muslim opposition to the hosting of the Miss World contest in Nigeria. In the article, Daniel, who has since fled Nigeria, suggested prophet Mohammed may have chosen one of the contestants for a wife. "The Zamfara state government has no authority to issue fatwas and the fatwa issued by it should be ignored," a statement signed by Lateef Adegbite, the council’s secretary general, said. The statement said the leader of Nigerian Muslims, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Macido, had asked the fatwa committee to meet and discuss Daniel’s article, having noted the apology made by the newspaper. Muslim protests against the Thisday article had degenerated into four days of sectarian violence in the northern city of Kaduna last week in which more than 200 people died. The Miss World organisers cancelled the contest, which was to have held in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and moved it to London. President Olusegun Obasanjo travelled on Thursday to Kaduna, where he visited some of the wounded in hospital. He told a meeting of religious and traditional rulers he had directed the security agencies to apprehend those responsible for the violence. Christian leaders remained critical of the government’s handling of the crisis, saying most of the casualties were non-Muslims. "If the government fails to protect us, our people will be left with no option but to defend and protect themselves by whatever means available to them," Methodist Archbishop Ola Makinde, told reporters. He blamed the increasing cases of sectarian violence in Nigeria on the introduction of strict Islamic or Shari’ah law by 12 states in the predominantly Muslim north. More than 2,000 people died in Kaduna in 2000 in violence that erupted over an attempt by the government to introduce the Islamic legal code.