|
|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Working from Within: Nigerian Women and Conflict Resolution
by Gwendolyn Mikell
Most national conflicts have to do with competition for political space and resources. Recent conflict resolution and political activism by Nigeria's Muslim women's groups are worthy of deeper consideration because of the political and policy relevance for the international community in peace building and societal reconstruction. While women's groups throughout Africa are making progress in peace and reconstruction efforts in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, initiatives in Nigeria are particularly noteworthy. There, Muslim women's groups mediate the cultural and ideological dynamics of national conflicts to legitimately reconstruct society. Female activism has helped bring Nigeria back from the brink of collapse by building local grass roots movements for democracy, human rights, and conflict resolution despite a precarious political environment.
Nigeria provides a significant example because of the leading role it plays in peacekeeping and conflict resolution in West Africa, and due to its large Muslim and Christian populations. Furthermore, Nigeria faces considerable domestic turmoil given its interpretation of Shari'a law and its history of militant violence, compounded by tensions over oil ownership. In Nigeria, Muslim women's groups bridge the Islamic and non-Islamic discourses on democratic rights and women's rights and achieve compromises that advance national reconciliation in ways that parliamentarians and politicians, both foreign and domestic, cannot. One of the most pertinent examples of this was the peaceful resolutions of the Amina Lawal and Safiya Husseini cases, in which two Muslim women were sentenced to death under Shari'a law.
The international community can learn important lessons from states, such as Nigeria, that are multi-ethnic, multireligious states, have avoided collapse, yet still face tensions that threaten state stability. To learn from these women's groups, four assumptions must be challenged. First, we must confront considerable Western ignorance about Islamic cultures and reject anti-democratic, anti-female stereotypes. Second, we must abandon the Huntingtonian assumption that "terrorism" will emanate from all Muslim areas where anti-Western rhetoric develops.2 Third, we need to interrogate the nature of global-local linkages, since, contrary to Western expectations, global influences may intensify the conflicts that these women seek to resolve, and can elevate the level of anti-Western and anti-Christian speech in these areas. Lastly, we need to contextualize the Nigerian conflict; women's peace movements are sustained by an intricate dialogue between cultures and within a culture, and cannot be fully understood without discussion of the circumstances.
This article is premised upon a challenge to these four assumptions. It examines Nigerian Muslim women's conflict resolution initiatives by exploring the roots and nature of their activism, their unique perspectives on terror and local violence, their experiences with globallocal exchanges, and the intra-Islamic dialogues to which their initiatives respond.
Gwendolyn Mikell is Director of the African Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Professor of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University.