Sunday 2 December 2007

Candace Feit: Nigeria's Islamic Nigeria

Image Copyright © Candace Feit/NY Times-All Rights Reserved

The New York Times has just published the work of one of my favorite photographers, in a slideshow feature entitled Islamic Nigeria.

Candace Feit's photographs are always luminous, and well composed. I've blogged about her work a few times on TTP and she always succeeds in impressing me. She's a photojournalist based in Dakar (Senegal) and her work appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, Chicago Tribune to name but a few.

The accompanying article reports that the Islamic "revolution" that was supposed to transform northern Nigeria has now waned and gone in another direction, and as Lydia Polgreen writes "...the practice of Islamic law, or Shariah, which had gone on for centuries in the private sphere before becoming enshrined in public law, has settled into a distinctively Nigerian compromise between the dictates of faith and the chaotic realities of modern life in an impoverished, developing nation.

This is a topical article in view of what's going on in the Sudan at the moment.

By the way, it was originally titled "Humane Shariah" but that was later changed to "Islamic Nigeria"...was that because of an editor's decision to use a more "politically correct" title?

The New York Times' Islamic Nigeria

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