Debating Diya: Indirect Rule and the Transformation of Islamic Law in British Colonial Northern Nigeria

Abstract For all of British Colonial Indirect Rule’s avowed deference to Islamic law and institutions in Northern Nigeria, it radically transformed them. Of the most overt areas in which this occurred was the colonial state’s elimination of diya , the payment of compensation for unlawful killing. Justified by the colonial state on the basis of good order, the abolition of diya was the product of a debate over who had the prerogative to respond to crimes directed at the person: the aggrieved individual or the state. Prominent Muslim jurists argued in favor of the former, citing source texts and the precolonial practice that gave life to those textual prescriptions. On the other hand, colonial administrators insisted that the response to crimes against the person was the state’s prerogative and that interpersonal resolution of such matters challenged imperial authority, the protection of which was not without basis in Islamic law. At the same time, the peculiar design of Northern Nigerian indirect rule meant that statutory, and therefore, unequivocal elimination of diya , remained elusive—at least until the eve of independence. This article traces the contours of the debate over the fate of diya as a lens through which one may apprehend the impact of colonial indirect rule on Islamic law, particularly criminal law, in Northern Nigeria. The demise of diya illuminates colonial indirect rule for what it was: a “constitutional trick” that paid lip service to Islamic law and institutions while radically transforming their essence and, eventually, eliminating them. Ultimately, however, that the means through which the demise of diya was brought about—the reconfiguration of the precolonial constitutional balance between political and juristic authorities—is, at least, as significant as the demise of diya itself. Indeed, that constitutional transformation has endured, surviving colonialism and finding expression in nascent attempts to reinstate Islamic law in the postcolonial state.