Ebenezer Obadare
As a paradigm for the contemporary travails of free thought and freedom of worship, the ongoing saga of Yahaya Sharif-Aminu would be infuriating if it were not so depressing. The Nigerian musician, an adherent of the Tijaniyya Sufi Islamic order, has been running the legal gauntlet since he was first arrested in March 2020 for circulating via WhatsApp audio messages that apparently elevated Ibrahim Niasse, a Tijaniyya Muslim brotherhood Imam, above the prophet Muhammad.
[ . . . ]Nigeria is currently one of seven countries worldwide (the others are Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia) where blasphemy is punishable by death. According to Humanists International, at least eighty-nine countries continue to have blasphemy laws in their statutes. The United States International Commission on Religious Freedom pegs the number at seventy-one.
The variation in estimate does nothing to mitigate the seriousness of the problem, for as the situation in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria amply illustrates, blasphemy laws would be impossible without the prior popularity and acceptance of what Danish legal scholar Jacob Mchangama calls “the Fanatic’s Veto.” This is the idea that perceived blasphemy against the person of the prophet Muhammad warrants a sentence of death executable by the same individual or group of individuals who leveled the accusation. In this way, blasphemy violence sprouts from and authorizes a condition of permanent fatwa in which ordinary citizens are permitted to instigate violence against their fellow citizens in retaliation for real and perceived slights. Under such circumstances, it is impossible to think and speak freely.
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Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).