Nigeria, March 8 -- The shutting down of schools on the order of Hisbah (the moral police) in some predominantly Muslim states of northern Nigeria in the month of Ramadan, is a clear indication that Islamism has ascended new heights in the Muslim north. The entrenchment of a range of religiously inspired political ideologies that hold the belief that Islam should influence the socio-political and economic system of public administration (Islamism) in the Muslim north has resulted in the imposition of Sharia laws in the region and establishment of Hisbah to banish vice and enforce virtue. As the Nigerian state is increasingly weakened by the politics of religious identity, the influence of Islamism has expanded in a manner that has severel...