An Islamist state government in northern Nigeria has issued a fatwa urging Muslims to kill the British-educated author of the newspaper article on the Miss World contest which triggered three days of religious rioting that left more than 220 people dead.
Isioma Daniel, who studied journalism and politics for three years at the University of Central Lancashire, is understood to have fled Nigeria for the US before the deputy governor of Zamfara state announced the death sentence on the local radio station on Monday evening.
News of the fatwa was delivered as the Miss World organisation, which has evacuated its contestants to London, confirmed the beauty pageant will now go ahead on December 7 at Alexandra Palace in London.
The choice of Nigeria as host nation was dogged by controversy from the start. Half a dozen contestants boycotted the event in protest at the decision by one of Nigeria’s 12 Muslim majority northern states to order the stoning to death of an unmarried mother.
On November 16, the national ThisDay newspaper printed a comment piece by Daniel, a 21-year-old features writer, which examined arguments for and against the Miss World contest and asked whether it would benefit the country’s economy.
It considered the genesis of the plan to bring the event to Nigeria. ”As the idea became a reality,” she wrote, ”it also aroused dissent from many groups of people. The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity.
”What would Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them. The irony is that Algeria, an Islamic country, is one of the countries participating in the contest.”
Mention of the Prophet Mohammed’s susceptibility to female allure inflamed Muslim feeling across northern Nigeria. In the riots that followed, Christian and Muslim gangs roamed the city of Kaduna, murdering families of the opposite religion.
Daniel resigned from the newspaper the day after her article appeared. Despite a series of front-page apologies, protesters torched ThisDay’s office in Kaduna.
The fatwa was announced by the deputy governor of Zamfara State, drawing comparison with the infamous decree by Iranian religious leaders.
”Like Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed,” Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi declared after regional politicians and Islamic leaders met to decide the sentence. ”It is binding on all Muslims, wherever they are, to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty.”
Yesterday, the information minister of Zamfara, Umar Dangaladima, confirmed this was the state’s policy: ”It’s a fact that Islam prescribes the death penalty on anybody, no matter his faith, who insults the Prophet.”
Earlier this week, President Olusegun Obasanjo pinned the blame for the riots on ”irresponsible journalism”, though he conceded that ”what happened obviously could have happened at any time”.
ThisDay’s editor, Simon Kolawole, was detained by the secret police on Saturday but is expected to be released shortly. Nduka Obaigbena, the editor-in-chief and chairman of ThisDay, said he had sent a team to Zamfara ”to clarify the issues” with the state authorities.
One of her journalism lecturers in Preston, Geoff Ward, described Daniel, who left in June 2001, as a ”delightful personality and an attentive student”.
Rachel Grant, who shared a house with Daniel for two years, has kept in touch. ”She’s a lovely person who isn’t afraid to speak her mind,” she said.
”What Isioma wrote has been taken out of context. It’s been interpreted in a different way by fundamentalists and other people. She’s not the sort of person who would want to incite hatred. She wanted to reveal the truth and defend justice.”
Zamfara was the first of 12 states in northern Nigeria to reintroduce the strict Islamic, or sharia law since the end of military rule three years ago.
In London, the organiser of the Miss World pageant, Julia Morley, pleaded for forgiveness for Daniel, saying she had ”already apologised and admitted it was a very irresponsible thing to do”.
Miss World will be screened in more than 130 countries but there are currently no plans to show it on British television.
The Nigerian embassy in London has dismissed the fatwa as unconstitutional.
”It’s one of these over-zealous statements,” a representative said. ”The state government has no authority in this matter. There’s a proper system of laws in Nigeria.” – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001