Philip Ostien, Contributor

Philip Ostien practiced law in Des Moines, Iowa, and subsequently taught for many years in the Faculty of Law of the University of Jos, Nigeria. He now works from Madison, Wisconsin as an independent scholar. He is the author, co-author, or editor of a number of works on the laws and legal institutions of northern Nigeria, on sharia in Nigeria, and on Muslims and Muslim-Christian relations in Nigeria. Besides the documentary and analytical materials on sharia implementation in northern Nigeria reproduced here, these include:  A Study of the Court Systems of Northern Nigeria (Centre for Development Studies, University of Jos, 1999); “An Opportunity Missed by Nigeria’s Christians: The 1976-78 Shari‘a Debate Revisited” (in B. Soares, ed., Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa, Brill, 2006); “Jonah Jang and the Jasawa: Ethno-Religious Conflict in Jos, Nigeria” (Muslim-Christian Relations in Africa, www.sharia-in-africa.net/pages/publications.php, 2009);  “Sharia and National Law in Nigeria” (with A.J. Dekker, in J.M. Otto, ed., Sharia incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present, Leiden University Press, 2010); “Legal Pluralism in Colonial Lagos: The 1894 Petition of the Lagos Muslims to Their British Colonial Masters” (with A-F Makinde, in Die Welt Des Islams, vol. 52, 2012), and “The Muslim Majority in Northern Nigeria: Sects and Trends” (in A.R. Mustapha and D. Ehrhardt, eds., Creed & Grievance: Muslim-Christian Relations & Conflict Resolution in Northern Nigeria, James Currey, 2018).