International records / OpenAlex research

Islamic Sharia at the Crossroads: Human Rights Challenges and the Strategic Translation of Vernacular Imaginaries

SAFIYA HUSSAINI AND AMINA LAWAL Safiya, as she has been popularly called, was an unemployed and divorced thirty-year-old Muslim mother of four when she was sentenced to death on October 9, 2001, by a Sharia court in Gwadabawa, Sokoto State, in northern Nigeria. She had been found guilty of adulterous involvement (covered by the Arabic word zina ) with Yakubu Abubakar, an older neighbor. The act had apparently led to Safiya Hussaini's pregnancy. Abubakar denied paternity and was acquitted for lack of evidence. (Safiya would later claim she had been pressured into accusing Abubakar of raping her…