{"id":205568,"date":"2021-10-19T16:17:38","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T14:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/why-sharia-law-might-be-better-suited-for-state-building-in-somalia-than-external-ideas\/"},"modified":"2021-10-19T16:17:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T14:17:38","slug":"why-sharia-law-might-be-better-suited-for-state-building-in-somalia-than-external-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/why-sharia-law-might-be-better-suited-for-state-building-in-somalia-than-external-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Shari&#8217;a law might be better suited for state-building in Somalia than external ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/why-sharia-law-might-be-better-suited-for-state-building-in-somalia-than-external-ideas.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>August 2021 turned out to be an appropriate moment to read the new book by <a href=\"https:\/\/politics.ucsc.edu\/faculty\/index.php?uid=mmassoud\">Mark Fathi Massoud<\/a>, a professor of politics and legal studies. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/books\/sharia-inshallah\/AFF6E3D685A2D940E834BDA4F9431617\"><em>Shari\u2019a, Insha\u2019allah<\/em><\/a> is in part about the failures of external projects of state building. As I was reading it, such a project was suddenly and dramatically <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/24\/mismatch-of-mindsets-why-the-taliban-won-in-afghanistan\">unravelling<\/a> in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Since 1990, Somalia too has been the subject of a repeated and sustained external \u2018state-building\u2019 interventions. A range of governments and international bodies have sought to reassemble some sort of central authority over the territory of the former Republic of Somalia. Those interventions have some common features: they have very often laid heavy emphasis on the law; and they have had very little success.<\/p>\n<p>As the comparison with Afghanistan suggests, the tone of <em>Shari\u2019a, Insha\u2019allah<\/em> is often sombre. It is a study in how colonial visions of legal order tend to create disorder and oppression. A central theme here is a repeated pattern:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Attempts to centralise power through asserting the dominance of a particular understanding of the law have collided with resilient alternative ideas of the law.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The laws produced by the state have lacked legitimacy in local eyes, and the structures that are intended to enforce those laws have been corrupt and arbitrary. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>State law has appeared as exotic and tyrannical \u2013 whether it has been used in the service of the rule of the British, or the Italians, or former president Siad Barre or the governments in power since <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The consequence is that Somalis today readily see the current governance building efforts by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.so.undp.org\/content\/somalia\/en\/home\/democratic-governance-and-peacebuilding\/rule-of-law.html\">international agencies<\/a> as the lineal successors of earlier colonial interventions.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But the book is also optimistic, an impassioned piece of advocacy for the value of shari\u2019a as a source of justice. \u2018Shari\u2019a law\u2019 has become a hot-button phrase for a certain sort of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-7820353\/Extremists-holding-Sharia-law-trials-prisoners-inside-British-jails-former-inmate-claims.html\">hostile media commentary internationally<\/a>. The tendency is to bundle up multiple negative ideas about Islam: on the treatment of women, amputations and the like. This book aims to challenge that. <\/p>\n<p>The message is a clear one: stability and peace cannot be produced by importing legal experts to hold workshops and advise on laws. They must rest on the everyday processes of dispute resolution that have repeatedly reemerged amid violence and disruption. And in Somalia those processes are understood \u2013 by those who are active in them, and by the ordinary people who turn to them \u2013 as rooted in shari\u2019a. <\/p>\n<p>So while Massoud\u2019s book is a story of failure, it is also a story of success \u2013 and of hope.<\/p>\n<h2>Two ideas of \u2018the rule of law\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>The telling itself raises some questions, though, and at times I found it a little frustrating, or even confusing. The best way I can explain this is through discussion of what are, I think, the two key themes. One is \u2018shari\u2019a\u2019. The other is \u2018the rule of law\u2019 (the definite article is important). <\/p>\n<p>The final chapter seems to emphasise the flexibility of each of these ideas. Yet in the earlier chapters it is apparent that the terms can have much more definite, less flexible meanings.<\/p>\n<p>Shari\u2019a is sometimes described as a specialist subject based on a close knowledge of multiple sources (p. 216, for example). It is also sometimes described as a blend of such knowledge with customary practice (p. 48). It can also be an \u2018independent, fixed and sacred constraint on political power\u2019 (p. 110). Those sound like rather different imaginings. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018The rule of law\u2019, meanwhile, appears as something quite different to the sort of \u2018legal order\u2019 that states seek to impose \u2013 \u2018rule by law\u2019, as some would call it. As Massoud puts it, the rule of law is an inherently desirable condition, in which the state itself is constrained by the law. He calls this \u2018limited government\u2019. <\/p>\n<p>Yet he also uses \u2018the rule of law\u2019 in a more expansive sense, linking it to \u2018political liberalism\u2019 and the \u2018promotion of human rights, equality and liberty for all\u2019 (p.38).<\/p>\n<p>The tensions between those two ideas of \u2018the rule of law\u2019 are significant. Surely, constraining the state is a desirable aim. But does oppression come always and only from the state? And is opposition to the state always liberatory? Massoud tells the story of the sheikhs who bravely stood up to denounce the progressive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qscience.com\/docserver\/fulltext\/messa\/2015\/1\/messa.2015.4.pdf?expires=1634286344&amp;id=id&amp;accname=guest&amp;checksum=7E2CADE9B01338D45059502E7FA91052#:%7E:text=The%20Somali%20government%20under%20President,the%20Family%20Law%20of%201975\">Family Law<\/a> introduced by <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.tufts.edu\/atrocityendings\/2015\/08\/07\/somalia-fall-of-siad-barre-civil-war\/\">Siad Barre\u2019s dictatorial regime<\/a>. They certainly were brave, and they paid dearly for their courage.<\/p>\n<p>But were they just resisting dictatorship? They opposed the Family Law because of its insistence on gender equality \u2013 not because Siad Barre was a dictator. So they were asserting their own, inflexible, reading of shari\u2019a. They were resisting a dictatorial state, but also resisting ideas of gender equality. <\/p>\n<p>So does the \u2018rule of law\u2019 just mean constraining the state &#8211; or does it mean something more?<\/p>\n<h2>Flexibility of shari&#8217;a<\/h2>\n<p>I found this apparent uncertainty most troubling in the fascinating chapter on women activists in contemporary Somaliland, and their deployment of shari\u2019a as a means to assert what are described as \u2018women\u2019s rights\u2019. Shari\u2019a, Massoud argues persuasively, is flexible enough to provide the tools for this. <\/p>\n<p>But what exactly is the place of shari&#8217;a in this example? The activists interviewed by Massoud talk about shari&#8217;a but seem to be deriving their core idea of women\u2019s rights from international norms. They have a particular kind of education, and are in dialogue with international NGOs. So this example might show that shari\u2019a <em>can<\/em> be used as a way to pursue a particular idea of \u2018women\u2019s rights\u2019 that aligns with current international human rights norms \u2013 but only where the desirability of those norms is already accepted. That would imply that those international human rights norms set the goal \u2013 shari&#8217;a just offers a route to them.<\/p>\n<p>There is a further aspect to that, again revealed in this discussion of Somaliland. Women activists are reliant on male sheikhs to provide the interpretations and judgements that they need on topics like violence against women, child marriage and female genital mutilation. No matter how learned women may be, shari\u2019a is understood to be rooted in men\u2019s knowledge of sources. It may be flexible, but access to it is very unequal, and it seems to be rather more readily accessible to what is called here the \u2018patriarchy\u2019 than to activists who challenge that patriarchy. <\/p>\n<p>This book shows that shari\u2019a is not just a tool of violent radicals with a particular set of ideas about sexual morality and gender relations. But it perhaps also tells us that what kind of \u2018rule of law\u2019 shari&#8217;a sustains is a matter of contest \u2013 asserting or challenging state authority, arguing over the rights of ordinary women and men \u2013 and those contests are uneven, and their outcomes unpredictable.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/africa\/\">Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August 2021 turned out to be an appropriate moment to read the new book by Mark Fathi Massoud, a professor of politics and legal studies. Shari\u2019a, Insha\u2019allah is in part about the failures of external projects of state building. As I was reading it, such a project was suddenly and dramatically unravelling in Afghanistan. Since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-205568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/why-sharia-law-might-be-better-suited-for-state-building-in-somalia-than-external-ideas.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}