Due to Islamic regulations uniquely governing the lives of Muslims even in the public sphere, more non-Muslims need to understand and engage with Islam.
Notwithstanding what Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals in Nigeria have in common (the most obvious being a shared national identity), the orientations of both groups are largely different. Whereas non-Muslim intellectuals look to Thomas Hobbes, W.E.B. Du Bois and John Rawls for foreign political theory, the latter additionally look to Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, and Muhammad Al-Albani. Whereas the former look to Western Europe and the Americas for its foreign cultural and religious power and diplomatic relations, the latter additionally look to North Africa and the Middle East. Whereas the former attend Oxford, Harvard and McGill, the latter also look to centres of learning in Cairo, Medina, Istanbul and Khartoum.
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