br anding bin laden 175tion, and criminality, which had existed previously, increased enormously
during military rule.
The millenarian hopes were based on the idea that because of its divine
authorship, the religious law would compel even the highest authorities
to act upon the rules of divine justice. The ideal of the unselfish and just
ruler—epitomized by the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate suc-
cessors, the four rightly-guided caliphs—became the benchmark for the
political leaders of the new millennium. About 200 years earlier, Hausa-
land had witnessed the emergence of such an exemplary ruler: Usman dan
Fodio, the founder of the Sokoto caliphate. Today, people still remember
this religious reformer as showing genuine sympathy for the worries of
the common people and living a very modest life himself (Harnischfeger
2006). The discrepancy between this ideal of a just ruler and the lifestyles
of many among the political elites could not have been greater at the dawn
of the new millennium. The elites were known to indulge in a lavish life-
style—distributing the religious alms tax among their clients only as they
deemed fit and paying little, if any, attention to the worries and needs of
the common people. Hence, most governors of the northern states met
the popular call for sharia implementation with considerable reserva-
tion. Gov. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, of Kano state, for example, could
not show himself in public without running the risk of being verbally ha-
rassed, cursed, or even pelted w ith stones (Last 2000). On ly when severa l
thousand people demonstrated outside his office, the so-called governor’s
palace, did he eventually yield to the people’s will, introducing the sharia
in January 2001. Two years later, in the summer of 2003, even the emir
of Kano was battered with stones in his Rolls-Royce; the incident saw
protesters vent their frustration and anger because the sharia still had not
produced the desired effects (Harnischfeger 2006).^1
Meanwhile, the so-called ‘yan hisba had taken up the cause of cleansing
northern Nigeria of cultural practices deemed un-Islamic and immoral.
The ‘yan hisba are a religious police of sorts, initially composed of inde-
pendently acting neighborhood groups. Subsequently, however, they were
integrated into the official bureaucratic machinery of the sharia states
(Last 2008). The alleged agents of moral decay included Christians from
southern Nigeria who, among others, ran bars and hotels in the so-called