Nationalism and Islamic Legal Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa

This chapter follows Norman Anderson’s attempts to foster legal reform in Northern Nigeria in the late 1950s by criticizing indirect rule and appealing to reforms associated with the Arab world. Despite his criticism of imperialism, Anderson developed contacts in Britain’s Colonial Office and utilized British imperial networks to attempt to spread reform strategies popularized by scholars in Egypt to countries emerging out of formal British imperial rule. Anderson was particularly concerned about restricting traditional approaches to criminal law in Northern Nigeria and justifying this restriction on grounds popularized by Arab thinkers that seemed to find wide support amongst Muslims.