I continue my engagements with Governors and people in Government at all levels over the institution of Sharia penal law.
Nigeria is a country driven by competing egos and sentiments. The experimentation with penal Sharia is driven by religious ego rather than any rational thinking or benefit expected from it.
It is often defended as an aspect of freedom of religion. I find this extremely exasperating. It is the most absurd basis for the defence of the institution of penal Sharia.
How can penalty or punishment be defended on the basis of freedom? How can the condemnation of anyone to death be defended on the basis of freedom? How do you tell anyone that you are stoning to death that you are doing so to defend their freedom?
Penal Sharia is the very opposite of freedom of religion. It compels religious observance by subjecting any disobedience to punishment, including death. It is contrary to the fundamental human rights that are guaranteed under Chapter 4 of the Nigerian Constitution.
It is also contrary to the guarantee of the Nigerian State, at Section 10 of the Constitution, that neither the Federal Government nor any State Government shall adopt any religion as a State religion.
When the coercive instruments of the State are used to enforce penalties decreed by any religion for offences created by that religion, the meaning, in effect and substance, is that that religion has been set up as the religion of the State. You cannot use the police, the courts and the prisons of a secular federation to punish a person for failing to observe the dictates of one religion, and still call that arrangement freedom.
Freedom of religion means the freedom to believe or not to believe, to practise or not to practise, without the threat of state-sanctioned punishment hanging over that choice. The moment the State attaches a penalty, up to and including death, to non-compliance with a religious code, what is being protected is no longer the individual’s freedom. What is being protected is the authority of that religion over the individual, backed by the full coercive power of government.
That is not religious liberty. That is religious compulsion, dressed up in the language of liberty because the language of liberty is harder to argue against. I will keep saying so, to Governors and to anyone in government who will listen, because a constitution that promises no State religion cannot, in the same breath, be read to permit the machinery of the State to enforce one.
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
