Rival Fiqh Paradigms in a Nigerian Court Case: The Textual Universe of the Safiyatu Hussaini Trial

Abstract: This paper examines the Islamic source-texts and jurisprudential manuals cited in a famous Nigerian court case, that of Safiyatu Hussaini in 2000–2002. Convicted of adultery by a sharī ʿ a court following “full sharī ʿ a ” implementation and codification in northern Nigerian states, Hussaini was acquitted upon appeal. This paper argues that the legal manuals cited in the proceedings display a clear pattern, and that the citations can be grouped into rival paradigms, each reflecting a particular approach, whether consciously or unconsciously adopted, to the scope and role of human interpretation in understanding and applying sharī ʿ a . The prosecution, relying largely on core manuals from the Mālikī school of Sunni Islam, treated the Islamic legal canon as univocal and clear. The appeals team, led by non-specialists in Islamic law, deployed works of comparative fiqh , works that cut across and therefore relativized the authority of individual legal schools, offering a pluralistic view of Islamic legal rulings and procedures. The appeals judges cautiously endorsed the pluralistic paradigm over the univocal paradigm. This paradigm not only gave intellectual and legal heft to a politically charged acquittal but also offered an alternative view of what sharī ʿ a application could mean. The appeals team’s deployment of comparative fiqh manuals conveyed a sense of the law as multivocal and offering a range of possibilities. As the study and application of comparative fiqh grows within the Muslim world, revisiting the Hussaini trial offers insight into what the deployment of comparative fiqh can look like in a courtroom setting.