A former Head of Islamic Law Department, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Prof AbdulRazzaq Alaro, has said the reason the adoption and implementation of Sharia law is facing stiff opposition and resistance in the Southern part of Nigeria is because people take Sharia as synonymous with punishment.
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Alaro who described Sharia as one of the most misunderstood terms in the region said, to the average Southerner, the term means punishment, a misconception which he said has given birth to a myth or long time wrong notion that Sharia is all about punishment.
He made the assertion in his lecture entitled: “Sharia beyond the Criminal justice system: clarifying the myth and misconceptions scrounging the application of Sharia law in Nigeria”, delivered at the 2025 Annual Ramadan Lecture of the Muslim Lawyers’ Association of Nigeria (MULAN), Oyo State Branch.
The guest lecturer who made reference to the Yoruba speaking community of the Southwest who use ‘seria’, a term loosely derived from Sharia in the local pallance to mean punishment, said anytime the issue of application of Sharia law in Nigeria comes up for implementation or discussion, it is met with stiff resistance.
He added that it was even more worrisome that in recent times, the discussion about application of Sharia received the same old and unwelcoming resistance not only from non-muslims, but even from those he described as uninformed Muslims.
He commended MULAN for taking the step of choosing the topic for the lecture, as well as a plans to follow it up by legal and strategic planning to ensure the application if Sharia in Oyo State becomes a reality.
The guest lecturer clarifies that Sharia, linguistically and technically, is not synonymous to punishment, rather a complete system of law primarily derived from Quran and Sunnah.
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