The Past, Present, and Future of Muslim Personal Law in Ghana: A Judicial Analysis

Ghana has inherited colonial legislation that recognises and regulates the consequences of Muslim personal law. However, in practice courts almost never recognise the normative existence of Islamic marriages, divorces or succession claims and systematically dismiss the cases on procedural grounds without discussing their merits. What explains the judiciary’s attitudes toward Islamic law? Why do Ghanaian courts refuse to engage with Muslim personal law in substantive terms? How does this judicial policy affect Ghana’s plural-legal system and multireligious democracy? Drawing on Robert Cover’s insights and concepts from “Nomos and Narrative”, the present chapter suggests that Ghanaian courts methodically engage in undignified jurispathic killing against Islamic law claims. This occurs because the post-independence judiciary internalised the colonial narrative that Islamic law was not a native law of the land. In doing so, however, courts miss a vital opportunity to inFluence the future development of legal meanings of nomic groups in the Muslim community, which, in turn, increases the risk of marginalisation among Ghanaian Muslims and undermines the legitimacy of the judiciary and the constitutional order in their eyes.