Entangled Domains
Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria

This book provides the first account of the sustained entanglement of law, religion, and empire in Northern Nigeria.

Rabiat Akande (Author)

9781009055048, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 23 January 2025

338 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.5 kg

'Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, Akande confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multi-religious population through what remained of the pre-colonial caliphate. Secularism emerges as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference.' Howard S. Erlanger, Law & Social Inquiry

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains grapple with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes.

Introduction
Part I. Governing Faith: 1. Jousting for souls: indirect rule, Christian missions and the governance of religious difference
2. Governing Shari'a
Part II. Constituting Difference: 3. The construction of minorities: late imperial secularity and the constitutional politics of decolonization
4. The making of the 1958 Penal Code
5. Constituting rights: Christian religious liberty in the late colonial state
Part III. Imagining the Past: 6. The 1977 Constitutional Conference and beyond
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Public international law [LBB], Law & society [LAQ], Comparative law [LAM], Islamic studies [JFSR2]