{"id":31443,"date":"2016-12-28T23:07:52","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T23:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/nigeria-s-sultan-of-sokoto-rejects-gender\/"},"modified":"2016-12-28T23:07:44","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T23:07:44","slug":"nigeria-s-sultan-of-sokoto-rejects-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/nigeria-s-sultan-of-sokoto-rejects-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria&#8217;s Sultan of Sokoto rejects gender equality bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Nigeria&#8217;s most senior Muslim cleric has rejected a new gender equality bill, which proposes that women and men inherit an equal share.}<\/p>\n<p>The Sultan of Sokoto, Mohamed Sa&#8217;ad Abubakar, said Muslims would not accept the violation of Islamic law guaranteeing men a greater share.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria&#8217;s main Christian body has welcomed the bill, saying its religion permitted equal inheritance.<\/p>\n<p>Activists have pushed for the bill to end discrimination against women.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria is a deeply religious society with roughly the same number of Christians and Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at a Koranic recitation ceremony in northern Zamfara state, the sultan said: &#8220;Our religion is our total way of life. Therefore, we will not accept any move to change what Allah permitted us to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He added: &#8220;Islam is a peaceful religion; we have been living peacefully with Christians and followers of other religions in this country. Therefore, we should be allowed to perform our religion effectively.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In October, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said it did not find anything wrong with the bill because in &#8220;Christianity inheritance is shared equally between male and female&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers say they will consider public opinion before a decision is taken on which aspects of the bill to approve and which aspects to reject.<\/p>\n<p>In March, Nigeria&#8217;s senate rejected an earlier version of the bill, saying it was incompatible with Nigerian culture and religious beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>Human rights activist Bukky Shonibare called the rejection of the bill in March a sad day for Nigerian women and said it showed &#8220;how backward we are&#8221;.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-17345 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_93156517_sultan2.jpg\" alt=\"The Sultan of Sokoto says Muslims should be allowed to uphold their religious beliefs\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Nigeria&#8217;s most senior Muslim cleric has rejected a new gender equality bill, which proposes that women and men inherit an equal share.} The Sultan of Sokoto, Mohamed Sa&#8217;ad Abubakar, said Muslims would not accept the violation of Islamic law guaranteeing men a greater share. Nigeria&#8217;s main Christian body has welcomed the bill, saying its religion [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31443"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31443"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}