Sharia and control over territory: conflicts between ‘settlers’ and ‘indigenes’ in Nigeria

Abstract

Introducing Islamic laws is a means of setting up claims over territory in which the will of Muslims reigns supreme. This has led to violent conflicts, especially in parts of the Middle Belt of Nigeria, where Muslim ‘settlers’ from the north, most of them Hausa and Fulani, have clashed with indigenous ethnic groups which are largely Christian and ‘traditionalist’. The call for Sharia is popular among the migrants, as it provides them with a divine mission: they have to assume supremacy over the local non-Muslim population in order to shape public institutions according to what they see as the will of God. The ‘indigenes’, however, have little interest in a religious confrontation. As ‘sons of the soil’, they want to defend their ancestral land against ‘foreign tribes’; they therefore emphasize ethnic, not religious, antagonisms.