Word: lawal
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When beauty queens from nine nations threatened to boycott the contest because of the death-by-stoning sentence passed on Amina Lawal, who had a child outside of wedlock, the federal government did whatever fancy dance it could to appease their concerns without offending the local, Islamic government. It was determined to pull off this pageant, so instead of abrogating the rule of Sharia, the government found it more expedient to make an ad hoc decree. The woman would not be stoned, it assured the beauty contestants, and this was convincing enough that all of them decided to attend. Again...
...Islamic law against adultery demands that a Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, must be stoned to death because she made love to a man she cared about and bore his child [World, Sept. 2]. It seems ever more clear that the human family will never make the journey to wisdom while chained to the dogma of zealots. If the good, the tolerant, the compassionate and the god-free do not speak up soon, evil is going to win. But before it does, maybe somewhere there is someone who can speak loud enough to save the life of one baby's mother...
Muslims know it, but they don't want to admit that something is wrong with Islamic law, Shari'a. They fear that if they voiced their opinion, it would endanger Islam as a whole. How else to explain the support for the Shari'a court that sentenced Lawal to death by stoning as punishment for adultery and allowed the man she was involved with to walk free? As Jesus said, with regard to the woman caught in adultery, Any one of the executioners who has not sinned should be the first to cast a stone. BUNMI AKINSEMOLA Akure, Nigeria...
Typically, it is only the female member of an accused couple who is sentenced to stoning. Lawal's boyfriend was also arrested, but because shari'a requires stiff standards of proof for adultery--four reliable witnesses must testify to having seen the sexual act--the case against him was dropped. A hard-line Islamic judge ruled that baby Wasila was proof enough of Lawal's guilt. "We see this as selective application of shari'a against women," says Ugochukwu Okezie, campaign director for Nigeria's Civil Liberties Organization...
...Lawal may yet prevail. She has the support of the national government of Nigeria, which did not back the decision of the country's 12 predominantly Muslim northern states to adopt shari'a in criminal cases two years ago. The government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, a born-again Christian, has promised to back Lawal in another appeal. The case may end up in the country's supreme court. In March, Safiya Husseini, the first Nigerian woman sentenced to stoning for adultery, had her sentence dismissed by an Islamic appeals court in another state, in part because she was accused...