In August and September, we look back at some of our most read essays and roundtable contributions published in the past year that attracted a lot of interest. Each week, we focus on essays and posts that touch on a similar topic relating to Islamic law. This week, we take a look at Rabiat Akande’s popular essay, “Colonialism and Islamic Law,” which provides a concise summary of the themes she explores in her recently published book, Entangled Domains: Empire, Law, and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Akande begins her essay by explaining how Northern Nigeria provides a particularly apt site to study colonialism’s impact on Islamic law, “given that Northern Nigeria was one of those rare places where Islamic law formally remained public law in the age of European imperialism.” Focusing on historical debates over the place of Islamic law in the state, Akande documents how colonialism, by moving the source of constitutional authority from the divine to the state, “invest[ed] the state with the unprecedented constitutional authority to pronounce the law.”
Using Nigeria as a case study, Akande’s essay serves as a segue into a broader discussion of how colonialism and Islamic law were entangled to produce lasting effects for how Islamic law is understood and deployed in modern societies.
Read Akande’s full essay, “Colonialism and Islamic Law,” here.