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Godforsaken Hellhole Update

Nigerian Sharia court punishes lesbian couple

11th April 2008 15:00
Tony Grew

Two women in Kaduna, Nigeria have been sentenced to six months in prison and 20 lashes each for having a lesbian relationship.

The Sharia court said that Malama Hauwa and Hajiya Ai'sha were violating the tenets of Islam and the teachings of Sharia law.

So says PinkNews (News, reviews and comment from Europe's largest gay news service), here.
We first noticed it on Little Green Footballs, this afternoon, where it looked like the standard "Lesbians Caned After Conviction In Nigeria's 7th Century Legal System Details page A6" story. We thought also that it would make a suitable peg for a "Why are so many gays and lesbians supporting Mr. Barack Obama?" post (as they do here, for instance). But when we looked a little more closely, we found some confusing details, like the one about how the original story came from "Nigeria's Most Widely-Read Newspaper", Punch, which is cited, but not linked, at PinkNews.
Punch's version goes like this:

Sharia court jails lesbian couple after cane punishment
By Segun Olatunji, Kaduna
Published: Friday, 11 Apr 2008

An Upper Sharia Court in Tudun Wada, Kaduna, has sentenced a lesbian couple, Hajiya Ai?sha and Malama Hauwa to a six-month imprisonment for living contrary to the teachings of the Sharia.

The lesbians had told the court that they had been married for five years.

The Hausa service of the Voice Of America monitored in Kaduna on Wednsday reported that Sharia Judge, Mustapha Umar ordered that apart from the 20 lashes given to each of the lesbians at the court premises, they should also spend the next six months in prison with no option of fine for violating the tenets of Islam.

The whole thing lives here, and it seems to fit in with everything we know about the Islamic legal system, except maybe the unexpected leniency of the court, but veers off into a weird tale of gay marriage, adultery, returned dowry, repentance and something about "Hauwa on her part said her ?husband? (A?isha) was not telling the truth because she was not trying to ?marry? another woman but was only tired of living as a lesbian."
Okay, but what's this business about the Voice of America's Hausa Service? Since we don't speak Hausa, we used the VOA's search engine to try to find references to each of the proper names mentioned in the Punch story: Tudun Wada, Kaduna, Malama Hauwa. Hajiya Ai'sha and the Honorable Mustapha Umar. None of these produced any results. Google News searches did turn up a reference to Tudun Wada, as the scene of a massacre of Christians at the hands of Muslims in September and October 2007.
(What they do have goes along these lines:

An Sayar Da Wani Tsohon Makullin Ka'aba Dollar Miliyan Goma Sha Takwas
Majalisar Dokokin Kamaru Tana Shirin Amincewa Da Dokar Ta Zarce Ga Mulkin Paul Biya
Duk da Karin Matakan Tsaro Da Aka Dauka a Bagadaza An Kashe Akalla Mutane Goma Sha Uku
Janar David Petraeus Da Jakada Ryan Crocker Sun Bayar Da Shaida Game Da Yakin Iraqi
Sojojin Taron Dangi A Afghanistan Sunce Sun Raunana Mayakan Sakai Matuka A Wani Fada Da Suka Gwabza A Lardin Nuristan

But then there's the question of why a VOA broadcast from Kuduna would be monitored in Kaduna for a newspaper published in Lagos? This sounds like the kind of thing that could have happened, but as with so much of what we read in the media, it's hard to tell exactly what the real facts are.
And what about Mr. Obama? We'll leave that for another post.

Full post as published by West Neanderthal Drive on April 12, 2008 (boomark / email).