Arabic Language, Islamic Law, and Women’s Rights Discourse in Northern Nigeria: A Critical Linguistic Analysis

The discourse on women's rights in northern Nigeria is profoundly shaped by Arabic Islamic legal and theological texts whose linguistic structures, hermeneutical conventions, and discursive authority constitute the primary framework within which rights claims, restrictions, and reforms are argued and contested in public life, legal settings, and scholarly debate. This study conducts a critical linguistic analysis of the relationship between Arabic language, Islamic legal discourse, and women's rights contestation in northern Nigeria, examining how Arabic textual authority is deployed, challenged, and reinterpreted in contemporary debates about women's education, marriage rights, legal testimony, political participation, and economic agency. Drawing on an interdisciplinary methodology combining Classical Arabic legal text analysis, critical discourse analysis, feminist linguistics, and Islamic feminist theory, the research analyses a corpus of 200 Arabic and English texts produced in northern Nigerian women's rights debates between 2016 and 2024, including legal judgements, fatwa texts, advocacy documents, and scholarly treatises. In-depth interviews with 25 Islamic scholars, 20 women's rights advocates, and 10 Sharia court officials provide perspectives on the politics of Arabic text authority in rights discourse. The study produces an original theory of Arabic linguistic authority and gender rights contestation in northern Nigerian Islamic public life, making contributions to Arabic critical linguistics, Islamic feminist studies, and Nigerian gender studies. Keywords: Arabic language, Islamic law, women's rights, critical linguistics, northern Nigeria.