Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, current(GMD/CEO) First Bank
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (SLS) was until his appointment as Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (GMD/CEO), the Executive Director, Risk & Management Control. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1981, after attending St. Anne's Primary School, Kakuri, Kaduna (up to 1972) and King's College, Lagos (1973-1977)and he performed his national service in the then Gongola State. Between 1991 and 1997 he was at the International University of Africa, Khartoum, Sudan where he first studied Arabic before obtaining a second Bachelor's degree, this time in Shariah and Islamic Studies.
Sanusi began his working career in academics, teaching undergraduate Economics at ABU (1983-1985). He then proceeded to a banking career, first with Icon Limited (Merchant Bankers), where in a period of about seven years he gained wide experience in Issuing House activities, Financial Advisory Services, Privatisation, Debt-Conversion and Credit and Marketing. He rose to become Area Manager, Kano Area Office, before he resigned voluntarily to pursue higher education. He returned to banking in May, 1997 when he joined the then newly privatised United Bank for Africa Plc as a Principal Manager 2 in the Credit Risk Management Division. He rose to Principal Manager 1 in January, 1998 and
Assistant General Manager by December of that year. He subsequently earned promotions to Deputy General Manager (January 2002) and General Manager (March 2005).
Sanusi is widely recognized in the industry for his personal contribution to the development of a Risk Management culture in the Nigerian banking sector. He had, in his capacity as Executive Director, Risk & Management Control of FirstBank, championed remarkable
developments in the Bank's enterprise risk and management control mechanisms. Beyond the immediate scope of his primary responsibilities then, he had also made tremendous contributions as a member of the Bank's Executive Committee, displaying much depth and capacity with his eclectic disposition.
Sanusi has presented papers at dozens of academic fora on several continents, and many of his papers have been published in academic journals, books and newspapers.
MUSLIM COMMUNITIES IN MULTI RELIGIOUS MILIEU
Some Reflections on the Madinan Constitution
Theme: Conflict: What has religion got to do with it?
By
SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI
Accra, Ghana
This paper seeks to examine the possibility of the existence of the shari’ah in a secular constitution. I will argue, based on a review of key elements of Muslim legal theory, that Muslim laws cannot be completely secularized and so the shari’ah, strictly understood, is incompatible with secularism, strictly defined. I will however also seek to articulate some reflections on the Seerah, or biography, of the prophet of Islam and the inferences that may be drawn on the possibilities and character of the co-existence of Muslim communities ruled by the shari’ah in multi-religious milieux. Within the general theme that examines the place of shari’ah in secular constitutions, the paper seeks to correct the general misconception that the assertion of Muslim religious identity is incompatible with citizenship in a religiously pluralistic state. My aim is to show that, based on the example of the prophet as documented in Muslim historical sources, the peaceful existence of Muslim communities in a "federal structure" side by side with other communities, the guarantee and protection of freedom of religion and recognition of the principle of citizenship common to nationals irrespective of religious persuasion are integral to Muslim teaching. It is therefore not the aim of this paper to make normative comparisons between religious and secular constitutions, nor to undertake a comparative assessment of "Islamic" and "secular" systems. Its purpose is limited to an investigation of the two questions mentioned above viz: Is full implementation of shari’ah compatible with a fully secular constitution? And is the implementation of shari’ah, correctly understood, responsible for religious conflicts in plural societies?
Let me begin by stating that I am fully conscious of the fact that the "national question", as it were, is a controversial one in the literature. One of the major criticisms leveled by fundamentalist thinkers against the so-called contemporary Muslim "Intellectual School" (al-Madrasah al-‘Aqliyyah) is that it believes, to quote Salman al-‘Audah, in a "national unity" that "brings together all nationals irrespective of religious difference." Muslims who are unduly influenced by the puritanical ideology of Wahhabism are therefore a major source of instability in plural societies. The equilibrium established among adherents of various faiths through the agency of a common citizenship based on respect for each group and equality of individuals is undermined by the call to a superior and exclusive religious identity that rejects common citizenship. Very often, the groups that preach religious hatred and discrimination also make the most vociferous claims to orthodoxy and to adherence to the true traditions of the prophet and the early companions. It is for this reason that I intend to treat in some detail this question, relying on primary sources of Muslim legislation.
The rest of the paper is arranged into two sections and a conclusion. The first section discusses the shari’ah, as a body of laws, and its intrinsic/theoretical compatibility or otherwise with secular law. It explores a potentially controversial point in legal thought: the secular content of Muslim laws. I will argue that certain immutable theoretical constants will always ensure the incompatibility of these laws with outright secularism, where the latter is defined as the complete excision of religion from the legal and political process. The shari’ah is however not incompatible with legal pluralism, nor with modern constitutional arrangements which seek not so much to deny the relevance of religion as to ensure the maintenance of a just balance between affirmation of religious rights and infringement on the equally fundamental rights of other groups and individuals in the polity.
In the second section I discuss the question of shari’ah in a religiously pluralistic setting. I examine the "Madinan Constitution" or rather the "document of Madina" (Watheeqah al-Madinah), which was according to biographical sources, drawn up by the prophet as a guide to the relations in Madinah between the Muslim tribes among the "immigrants" from Makkah (the Muhajirun) and the indigenous Muslim "helpers" (Ansar), as well as between Muslims as a whole and the indigenous Jewish tribes of Madinah. This document will be analyzed with a view to determining the tradition of the prophet on the question of legal and political pluralism, as well as common citizenship in a multi-religious nation.
The paper is then concluded with a discussion of how distortions and misconceptions about Islam- by its adherents and opponents alike- rather than the law itself, are to blame for the general belief that Muslim communities are incapable of peaceful co-existence with adherents of other faiths in modern constitutional democracies. I argue that it is the responsibility of all Africans committed to peace and harmony to reject and oppose the forces of extremism and intolerance each in his/her own religion and ethnic group. These forces, be they Muslim or Christian fundamentalists or advocates of ethnic irredentism and bigotry, constitute a dangerous virus in the fabric of their host communities, leading them inexorably to mindless carnage and destruction under the influence of false ideologies. This we have seen in the Sudan, Rwanda/Burundi, Uganda and Ivory Coast, among other nations ravaged and often decimated by ethnic and religious conflicts.
Shari’ah and Secularism: Theoretical Excursus
In discussing the nature of shari’ah in a secular constitution one needs a theoretical, as opposed to a dogmatic, framework. The question that must be answered first is one of whether Muslim laws are in their totality sacred, or if, as some suggest, they are essentially secular. An excursus into Islamic Legal Theory (Usul al-Fiqh) provides an insight into this perplexing question.
Any student of the complex field of legal theory understands the strong influence of the subjectivity of individual jurists or schools in the production of Muslim laws. All Muslim jurists agree on the Qur’an as a source of legislation. Traditional orthodoxy in both Sunnite and Shiite Islam also recognizes the prophetic tradition, or sunnah, as a second source-although the definition of what constitutes "authentic sunnah" is not the same in the two sects (and often scholars differ even within sects and schools as to the conditions, or shurut, for accepting narrations (mutun), narrators (rijal) or chains of transmission (asanid) in authenticating traditions). The consensus of scholars, or Ijma’, is a third source recognized by both schools (although for Shiites the consensus only has meaning if endorsed by their Imam). A fourth major source is qiyas, or analogical deduction for Sunnites and ‘aql, or the ratio for Shiites.
At this point already a few issues emerge. Within these broad categories it is possible to assert that the Qur’an and the sunnah represent the words of God and His prophet, respectively, while qiyas/’aql and consensus represent the fruit of human rational or logical reasoning. Also, even where a text is established as part of the Qur’an, for example, its interpretation may differ from scholar to scholar or school to school depending on the particular set of rules adopted to guide linguistic and legal reasoning. To the extent that the Qur’an and the sunnah are documented in a language (Arabic), their interpretation is subject to questions familiar to students of literary criticism. The matter is compounded by disputes over the validity and application of other sources of law, such as public interest (maslaha), opinion of a companion (qaul al-sahabi), propriety (istihsan), the practice of the "people of Madinah" (peculiar to Malikites), local traditions (‘urf), or deliberate preference for erring on the side of caution (sadd al-dharee’ah). Scholars and schools differed in their acceptance of these sources, in their definition of them and in the conditions under which they are acceptable, as well as the appropriate line of action in the event of asymmetry (ta’arudh) between one source and another. Indeed, as noted earlier, they differ on the criteria for acceptance or rejection of the authenticity of traditions, the role, if any, of "weak" traditions in jurisprudence, and the significance of multiplicity (tawatur) in channels of narration for tradition, and the problem of abrogation (naskh)- its existence and forms-among other issues.
The bulk of the corpus of knowledge called shari’ah is therefore a product of reasoning based on subjective choices made among these and other areas of dispute. Those choices are human, and represent elaborate epistemological frameworks that are brought to bear on the process of legal induction and reasoning. In general, the larger the number of sources accepted by a scholar or school (and the more expansive the definition and scope of non-textual sources) the greater the human content, so to speak, of the law. This is a fact recognized from the earliest days of jurisprudence. For instance, Shafii insisted in his Risala that no legal ruling could be propounded if it was not ultimately anchored in the Qur’an and/or Sunnah. Accordingly, he had a restrictive definition of qiyas and consensus, as he consciously argued for a law "that would be exclusively divine in its origin." On the other hand the philosophical theologians (Mu’tazilites), the Shiites and the Hanafites gave a more expansive role to human reason or opinion (ra’y) in legislation. The Malikites gave recognition to the "general interest" and to local customs. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, at the opposite extreme, went even further than Shafii in his emphasis of the centrality of scripture. He did not favour qiyas, unless it was absolutely necessary and where there was absolutely no textual evidence for a ruling. His focus on tradition and mistrust for the ratio led to some scholars categorizing him, implicitly or otherwise, as a traditionist in the Shafii school rather than an independent founder of a school of law. He also adopted a literalist approach to exegesis, which, in the case of God’s attributes, veers dangerously towards anthropomorphism. This tendency is present in contemporary Islam in the Wahhabi/Salafi tradition, one that is of primarily Hanbalite genealogy. Dawud al-Zahiri went beyond Ahmad on the question of qiyas by rejecting it completely. His tradition was followed by later Zahirite scholars, particularly Ibn Hazm, even though the latter rejected Hanbalite proto-anthropomorphism in his theology, opting instead for Ash-arite tropology (ta’weel). The point here is that jurists and schools differed in the "secular content" of their theorization. For this reason we find that among Sunnites for instance, the Malikites, Shafiites and Hanbalites referred to themselves as ahl al-hadith (the people of tradition)- as opposed to the Hanafites, labelled as-hab al-ra’y (adherents to subjective reasoning), on the one hand, and the Zahirites or extreme literalists on the other.
If we return to the question of language, choices are also made in adopting the rules of textual exegesis. Decisions have to be made, for instance, as to whether a text contains a command (amr) or a prohibition (nahy); then if the command is obligatory (wajib/fardh), recommended (mandub) or simply permissible (mubah) and in the case of a prohibition if it is discouraged (makruh) or outrightly banned (haram). Is the text of general/universal applicability (‘amm) or exclusive (khass)? Is it unrestricted (mutlaq) or restricted (muqayyad)? Are the words to be taken in their literal sense (haqiqah) or as tropes/metaphors (majaz)? Is there any implied but unspoken ruling (mafhum) deducible from the spoken one (mantuq)? Is the text of clear univocal meaning (nass) or is it ambiguous (mushtarak)? These and other questions are dealt with and rules for dealing with each often differ from school to school.
A final class of items in legal theory are the general rules of jurisprudence (al-qawa’id al-fiqhiyyah), the so-called "comparables and similes" (al- ashbah w’ al-nadha’ir) which aim at regulating the use of reason and providing it with a logical framework. The rules themselves draw from the choices made by the various schools on sources, prioritization and linguistic rules, and we can see the difference by comparing major works in this area by jurists of different schools, such as the Malikite al-Qarrafi, the Shafiite al-Suyuti, the Hanafite Ibn Nudaym and the Hanbalite Ibn Rajab.
The point in all this is to show that there is great deal in Muslim jurisprudence that results directly from subjective choices of epistemological frameworks. Furthermore, the cognitive structures that determine and influence our understanding do not have an existence independent on the historical, economic and social conditions of our existence as such. Most of the modernist onslaught on traditional thought has focused on the twin factors of epistemological relativism and embodiment, demanding a return to Islamic jurisprudence as a dynamic and ever-changing process, rather than an event. Once Muslim jurisprudence is understood as a process of understanding God’s will from the sacred texts, its contents are open-ended and amenable to change in time and space. By treating the law as a historical event, the understanding of a specific jurist or class of jurists is conferred with the attribute of complete objectivity. In effect, that which the jurist is able to understand is separated from the jurist himself, a separation that may have held sway in pre-modern Islam but which seems untenable in the light of modern cognitive theory with its clear demarcation between the thinking subject and the thought object. Although most of the work in this area seems to have been in the world of Sunni Islam, recent work by the Iranian intellectual AbdulKarim Soroush has shaken the epistemological foundations of Shiite legal theory as well. Ashk Dahlen has just published a major work breaking new ground in Shiite legal philosophy in which he interrogates the dynamic relationship between Islamic law, epistemology and modernity.
Secularism
We do not mean by the above discussion to say, as some may suggest, that all of the law is therefore secular. And it is precisely in those areas that may never be delegated to human reason that the incompatibility of shari’ah with secularism is thrown into relief. The term "secularism" is itself controversial, particularly in western democracies. Secularism, understood as a deliberate policy of separating religion from state, morality, education, etc is a product of the history of Europe, and the tempestuous relations between the Christian Church as embodied in the papacy and the political heads of European nations and empires. The rejection of the political influence of the church was accompanied by an emergent intellectual tradition in the wake of the progress made possible by natural science. Advances in science increased faith in its essentially empiricist epistemology and a general mistrust for metaphysics, mythology and superstition. Archaeological discoveries, as well as advances in astronomy, physics and cosmology, undermined the belief in the literal truth and Divine origins of the bible. Biblical stories were now considered fables of the Jews, and religion was either a bundle of superstitions (albeit with some utility)- a la Russell- or an "opiate" designed to deceive the poor and make them blind to their state of alienation- a la Marx.