Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to critically examine the emergent protest for the institutionalization of the hijab as a dress code for Muslims girls in select public institutions of southwestern Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

Recent trends in the ethno-politically and religiously polarized Nigeria indicate that the right to religious freedom has become an instrument for social, economic and political expediencies for state and non-state actors. A recently observable form of instrumentalization of religious rights is the clamour for the recognition of the hijab as a dress code for Muslim girls in public schools in southwestern Nigeria. This tends to be an emergent trend in that region because studies have shown that inter-religious cohabitation is a socio-cultural landmark of the Yoruba people (Soyinka, 1991; Odejobi, 2014; Nolte, Ancarno and Jones, 2018). This paper seeks to critically examine the growing protest for the institutionalization of the hijab as a dress code for Muslims girls in select public institutions of southwestern Nigeria. It embarks on content analysis of newspaper publications examining the controversies generated by the hijab protests in select secondary schools, and also critically analyzes the arguments adduced by proponents of the hijab dress code vis a vis those of the opponents in the light of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Furthermore, it argues that whilst both supporters and opposers find justification for their position in the Constitution, there is need for a common sense approach to address this politics of identity and avert any impending religious conflict that may arise, if the hijab controversy is not properly managed

Keywords: Human rights, Instrumentalization, Hijab, Nigerian Constitution

Paper short abstract:

The paper employs the harm principle, basic to the infrastructure of African cultural values to examine the grounds and impacts of the tension caused by instrumentalization of religious liberty on African cultural realities within the context of rule of law.

Paper long abstract:

True religious liberty recognizes the total right of belief and at the same time, the necessary power of the society to regulate religious conduct and serve the public good. However, driven by desire for power and self-interest, religious liberty becomes instrumentalized and thereby creates tension between religious right and other rights, such as right of individuals to be free from harm, and the rule of law; the tension also exists among African cultural and 'moral tribes' constituting both cultural disruptions and new waves of social relations. The paper examines the grounds and impacts of this tension on African cultural and social realities through the moral perspective of harm principle essential to the infrastructure of African cultural values. It reveals that there are some interests that trump religious conduct in a just and free society. Therefore, using the harm principle, drawn from African cultures as a framework, it argues that some religious conducts require limitation. Thus, to achieve a balance, right to belief in contemporary Africa would require subjecting entities to the rule of law unless they can prove that exempting them will cause no harm to others.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to adopt Appraisal Theory in analyzing evaluation in religious discourse, based on a corpus of purposively selected discursive data from Islamic and Christian contexts as well as from African Traditional Religion.

Paper long abstract:

Although today's world is now more interconnected than at any time in human history, owing to the emergence of ever more sophisticated communication gadgets which utilize the Internet, it is perhaps the case that the fabric of social cohesiveness has never worn thinner. This is mostly owing to the increasing ascendancy of extreme right-wing political ideology but also of insular religion, otherwise known as religious radicalism. However, also implicated in this disturbing state of affairs is the equally disruptive but far more subtle factor of normalized religious 'othering' which happens in linguistically - hence culturally - plural societies. Within the African context, the sub-Saharan part of the continent is well known for its fissures along ethnoreligious lines, frequently leading to wanton fatalities from strife and violence. Such conflicts in the region inevitably emanate from its history of colonization and cultural assimilation. Religion being a discursively constituted social practice, it would be necessary to re-examine the linguistic dimension of the social research on religion in present-day society, especially in light of the hope that more globalization should mean the advent of less insular societies. We therefore propose to adopt Appraisal Theory in analyzing evaluation in religious discourse, based on a corpus of purposively selected discursive data from Islamic and Christian contexts as well as from African Traditional Religion. We hope to examine, in the Nigerian situation at least, to what extent social cleavages are a reflection of the discursive construction of religion as a divisive force in modern times.