Hauwa Ibrahim brings the experience of Sharia to SLU School of Law
By Malena Amusa
For the St. Louis American
Meet Hauwa Ibrahim. Age 39. Born and raised in Northern Nigeria. A lawyer.
Over the past six years, Ibrahim has worked as defense counsel for more than 90 pro-bono cases involving the harsh treatment of people, especially women, under Sharia law, an Islamic legal system used in Northern Nigeria.
In 2000, Ibrahim took on the case of Amina Lawal, a young lady who was sentenced to a stoning death for birthing a child out of wedlock. Ibrahim became an international hero after averting Lawal’s sentence despite facing death threats by Islamic fundamentalists and a ban from the court because of her gender.
A lecture she gave recently at the Saint Louis University School of Law, where she is a visiting professor, revealed the challenge of planting seeds of female empowerment in a desert of gender equality.
As a female lawyer in a Muslim society, Ibrahim said, “Society still considers women less than human, and half of a man.”
In Northern Nigeria, male literacy rates dramatically outpace female rates; girls are wed off to men two and three times their age; and courts condemn women and girls to death-by-stoning and flogging for committing personal crimes.
In this environment, Ibrahim has to exercise extreme caution when she takes on women’s rights. If she comes off as too intolerant, she’ll lose the fight, and maybe her life, she said. So Ibrahim focuses on defending women through her expert interpretation of Sharia laws, while paying great respect to her Islamic culture.
In Lawal’s case, some religious leaders (known as mullahs) accused Ibrahim of being anti-Muslim, which put her in a dangerous predicament. In a bold move, Ibrahim decided to meet some mullahs at large mosque in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.
She entered the mosque covered from head to toe in traditional cloth.
“I walked toward them, kneeled down, and sat on the floor,” she said. “In the culture, you aren’t allowed to look at their faces.”
Although the mullahs kept insisting Ibrahim sit on their level, she stayed kneeled with her eyes locked on the floor. In the end, they agreed neither to oppose nor support her. “If they were against me, I knew I’d have no security,” she said.
Like many women in Northern Nigeria, Ibrahim grew up poor. She sold peanuts in rustic markets and climbed mountains to fetch firewood.
“I didn’t have money growing up,” she said. “Money doesn’t mean anything to me now.”
When Ibrahim did make money, she hid it under a tree near her house and later used it pay for boarding school after she was kicked out. “I was educated by accident,” she said. In 1987, Ibrahim was the only woman from Northern Nigeria in her class to earn a law degree.
During school, Ibrahim met her first husband and fell victim to domestic violence.
“He gave me the beating of my life,” she told the American, “because I didn’t want to consummate my marriage. I thought it was a sin.” Ibrahim soon ran away.
For two years after college, Ibrahim worked as a police investigator. She left the post after seeing too much corruption. “They just killed people,” she said.
She then became a minister of justice in the Northern Nigerian government. Meanwhile, she met an Italian man who worked in construction in Nigeria, and broke another family custom by marrying him.
In 1996, Ibrahim started her own law firm, which led to her meeting an United Nations official who hired Ibrahim as a consultant.
This work set the stage for her first Sharia law case involving a 13-year-old girl sentenced to flogging for becoming pregnant after being raped by three men. Eventually she became senior partner in the Aries Law Firm in Abuja.
In 2003, she came to America as a Humphrey Fellow at the American University Washington College of Law. This December, Ibrahim will return to Nigeria with plans to build a school for girls.
She said, “We want fair and equal treatment under the law.”