Radicalism and Reform in East Africa
Abdin Chande
The emergence of Islamic radicalism in East Africa in recent decades is fired by a vision of the universal umma, the commonwealth of all believers over time and space. This radicalism is in some sense an attempt to recover this community vision of Islam. It is motivated by an impulse to influence other Muslims, as well as to reform their practices to bring them in line with scriptural Islam. This desire for reform to reconstruct local understanding of Islam has caused a massive internal struggle against the accepted or ingrained popular mind-set. It reflects both Islam’s entrenchment in the region and tensions within the Muslim community that in fact mark the end of the period of religious tolerance of local Islam.1
The three East African countries have witnessed intensive preaching activity in recent decades—a phenomenon connected with Islamic mobilization of the community. The preachers, trained locally or (in many cases) in Saudi Arabia, appeal to young people to become agents for renewal and reform. Some, especially in Uganda, espouse a radical understanding of Islam of the “fundamentalist”/Islamist variety.2 This type of Islam has been influenced by trends in the Islamic world where political pressure is exerted for the implementation of Islam in the wider area.
Discussion of this topic has to be set in the context of developments during the colonial era. The problems that East African Muslims face (and that make Islamic resurgence or activism possible) to a large extent stem from that period. More specifically, it was the colonial educational system (dominated by Christian missions) that structured the social order. The outcome was that education was and has continued to be a source of Muslim grievance. The educational structure perpetuated the existing social and economic divisions in East African societies, thus privileging certain ethnic groups with the longest and deepest contacts with Christian missions. Muslim efforts to mobilize their communities for educational opportunities have progressively over time contributed to a growing Islamic consciousness.
In the case of Kenya, a political dimension clearly has been involved in this growing Muslim awareness. The process of colonization, moving from the coast to the interior, underlaid the shift in power that, to the present day, continues to favor up-country ethnic groups. Most high positions in government fell to non-Muslims educated in the up-country Christian mission schools. This was why, during the period of colonial rule and agitation for independence, coastal Muslims, fearing unfair treatment by the dominant ethnic groups, launched the Mwambao movement to fight for autonomy (the ten-mile coastal strip they sought was theoretically part of Zanzibar), whereas other Muslims (including most in up-country areas) joined the dominant African political parties such as Kanu and Kadu.
The process of marginalizing Muslims continued during the postcolonial period, at first through Kenyatta’s privileging of ethnicity and then through Moi’s privileging of both ethnicity and religion.3 In a new era of multiparty politics, with Kenya’s political marketplace having thus been ethnically defined, Islamic interests came to be voiced in the 1990s by the Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK) and Shaykh Balala. Thus in Kenya (the subject of the next section) Islamic resurgence has taken different forms and has manifested in different arenas.
The Islamic Reform Movement in Kenya
The reform movement in East Africa has its origins in developments in the Middle East in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The ideas of Muslim thinkers such as Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida (the latter had Wahhabi sympathies) began to filter into the East African coastal region in the 1920s and 1930s.
Shaykh al-Amin Mazruʿi, the chief qadi of Kenya until his death in 1947, emerged as the leading champion of reform against “religious innovations” (bidʿa). A popularizer, through lectures in mosques and in his newspapers (al-Islah and al-Sahifa), Mazruʿi championed modernist reformist ideas. He sought both to promote a stricter form of Islam (in opposition to the local popular version) and to suggest ways in which Kenyan Muslims on the coast could respond to the changes brought about by colonialism.4
Mazruʿi’s crusade was continued by a former student of his, Shaykh Abdalla Saleh al-Farsy, who became chief qadi of Kenya in 1968. Shaykh al-Farsy opposed local practices such as saint veneration, costly khitmas (mourning rites), and the lavish celebration of mawlid. Born in Zanzibar, where he lived until 1967, when he moved to Mombasa, he died in 1982. (The best-known representative of the traditional ʿulamaʾ group in these years was Sayyid Ali Badawi Jamalil-Lail (d. 1988), who was based in Lamu.) Farsy, the main advocate and popularizer of reformism in East Africa, had access to radio and other forums. He also gave sermons and public lectures in mosques, and his many writings, which were widely read, included the first complete translation of the Quran in KiSwahili.5
Farsy inspired a whole generation of young Muslims. The new group of scholars (both locally- and foreign-trained) represented by him are motivated by an impulse to restructure the local understanding of the Muslim faith along strict Salafi lines. Those who espouse reform (i.e., a return to a stricter form of Islam in line with scripture and the prophetic model) refer to themselves as Salafi. In other words, these reformers call for a return to the religion of the salaf, the ancestors, who followed the original principles of the faith. Their activities have both heightened Islamic awareness and precipitated a major struggle within their communities.
Islamic Radicalism in Kenya
Radicalization of the Muslim community in Kenya has its basis in three factors: the rise of a new ulama group; the heightened awareness created by the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran; and the rising number of Muslims who are being exposed to secular education at Kenya’s four local universities.6 The new ʿulamaʾ include Shaykh Ali Shee (currently imam of the Jamia mosque in Nairobi), Shaykh Nasoro Khamisi (who delivers mosque-lectures in Mombasa, continuing the work of al-Farsy), and Shaykh Ahmad Msallam. A considerable number of young Muslims who have been educated at Islamic centers of learning, most notably the university of Madina, have returned as reformers and as pan-Islamists (that is to say, those with a much more global understanding of Islam than that of most local ʿulamaʾ). A good number have also had the opportunity to combine Islamic with secular education; they have been exposed to the political Islamist writings of scholars Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Qutb, and others. This makes them uniquely qualified to relate their sermons to the problems of the day and thus raise Muslim political consciousness.7
Muslims were especially exercised over Kenya’s controversial law of succession.8 This issue came up in the late 1970s and 1980s, at a time when Muslims were better prepared than before to mount a united opposition. Shaykh ʿAbdillahi Nassir, a Muslim activist committed to socioeconomic and political reform of society, played an important role in mobilizing Muslim opinion against the proposed law (as did the current chief qadi, Shaykh Nassor Nahdi, and others). Nassir, well-known in Kenya for his sympathies for the Iranian revolution and for writings and talks on Shiʿism, became a controversial figure in Kenya’s predominantly Sunni Muslim community. Through concerted efforts and diplomacy, Muslims persuaded the Moi government in 1990 not to apply the controversial laws of succession, marriage, and divorce, which were seen as undermining the shariʿa. Another sensitive issue has been the wearing of head scarves in secondary schools: Muslim girls have been suspended from school for donning hijab. In a number of cases, however, the courts have ruled, based on the Kenyan constitution, in their favor.
Muslims make up between 20 and 30 percent of Kenya’s population,9 yet for long they have felt effectively excluded from the power-sharing process. Although the rise of multiparty politics provided Muslims with opportunities to voice grievances against the ruling Kanu party, the government has proved reluctant to deal with issues of land, employment, and educational opportunities.10 The Muslim organization known as the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem—established in 1973) has been as ineffective as its equivalent, Bakwata, in Tanzania (Christian organizations—for instance, NCCK in Kenya—have been far more effective and more vocal on political issues).
From modern Kenya’s beginnings, Muslims have had little political power. Kenyatta’s cabinet contained no Muslims—although during his era it was not religion that was the governing factor: Kenyatta was much more swayed in his political decisions by ethnic considerations (in distribution of positions of power, access to foreign aid, resettlement plans, and other economic opportunities and privileges, his policies tended to favor his kinsmen). Moi was the first to make religion a factor in Kenya’s national politics (his weekly attendance at church is given wide coverage in the media). Moi’s cabinet, like Kenyatta’s, did not include a single Muslim; then the abortive coup attempt of 1982, which he survived due to the loyalist forces led by general Mahmoud Muhammad, a career soldier of Kenyan Somali origin, led to the general’s younger brother being appointed a cabinet minister. However, in a political system riddled with patronage and sectional/ethnic lobbying, Muslim politicians (Moi loyalists) did little to promote the interests of the Muslim masses.11
In January 1992, in an atmosphere of growing Islamic political awareness, the Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK) was founded by young, educated Muslims Omar Mwinyi and Abdulrahman Wandati.12 By the middle of the year, the head of the IPK was a young activist, Shaykh Khalid Balala, a University of Madina graduate and self-employed businessman who had traveled extensively in the Middle East, the Far East, Europe, and Africa, preaching and advancing Islamic scholarship.13 President Moi, fearing that such an Islamic party would erode Kanu’s support in Muslim areas, was quick to dissuade Muslims from associating with “Islamic fundamentalism,”14 but what was in fact at stake (even Muslim public figures within Kanu admitted this) was the discriminatory practices of the government toward Muslims.15 When the IPK successfully capitalized on the general feeling of alienation among coastal Muslims, the government predictably denied it official recognition,16 and with tensions running high in Mombasa, on 19 and 20 May 1992 there was a rampage by Muslims. In the aftermath, some Muslim preachers who were critical of the government were arrested at a public rally. This sparked a two-day riot (cries of “Allahu Akbar” were heard in the city). Four Muslims were shot dead by the police.17
Muslim grievances included low representation in government/public institutions; discrimination in applications processed by government ministries; fewer educational institutions set up in the coastal region, and no university; lack of equal time for Muslims on government-run radio and television; up-country Christian Africans (Kikuyus and Kalenjin) being given the lion’s share of jobs and profits from tourism and hotels on the coast; and the lack of developmental projects (other than in tourism) in the coastal towns.18 Shaykh Balala, delivering impassioned speeches to Muslim crowds, called on them to press their demands; if the demands were not met, Muslims should, he said, advocating active Muslim confrontation with the secular power, take their destiny into their own hands.19 When Shaykh Balala was arrested, the ensuing one-day strike paralyzed Mombasa.
The riots propelled the IPK into prominence, garnering support in the Muslim community. Ali Mazrui, who was denied permission to give a public lecture a few days later, took the case of the plight of Muslims to the international press corps; a leading Kenyan Muslim intellectual also spoke out against anti-Muslim discrimination;20 and the stand-off continued. The police stormed a mosque in Mombasa and the government later apologized; President Moi, speaking at annual Madaraka Day celebrations, in Muslim eyes insulted them by equating Islam with slavery.21
Tensions simmered through 1995 and 1996. Violent raids erupted in August 1997 at Likoni and continued on Kenya’s southern coast in September and October. These were aggravated by (but not necessarily caused by) unemployed Muslim and non-Muslim youths at the coast who were alienated at the sight of wealth and prosperity all around them.22 Moi subsequently instigated the formation of an association called the United Muslims of Africa (UMA)—an attempt to divide coastal Muslims along ethnic lines, UMA (headed by Masumbuko) was presented as the party of “African” Muslims, as against the IPK, which was painted as a party of “Arabs.” Balala, forced to flee to a European country, had his passport cancelled; the Moi government claimed he had a Yemeni passport and forbade his return to the country.
In the run-up to the 1997 elections, amid Muslim unrest and dissatisfaction with Kanu, the opposition parties attempted to secure the Muslim vote by promising power-sharing if elected, and the IPK failed to achieve broad national support. The party, which declared an alliance with the National Democratic Party (as it had done with Ford-Kenya in 1992) exerted minimal influence on Kenyan Muslims. The result reflected the success of Moi’s politics of divide and rule, and the ongoing challenge to the different ethnic communities to forge unity.23
Relations between the Kenyan Muslims and the Moi government continued to deteriorate, especially following the bombing of the U.S. embassy, on 7 August 1998, one of the consequences of which was the banning of Muslim NGOs—a cause of much anger among Kenyan Muslims. Through legal representation, however, Muslims were later successful in having the ban lifted against these NGOs which had been de-registered, though without justification, by Kenya’s Non-governmental Organizations’ Coordination Board.
The Contemporary Islamic Movement in Uganda
Uganda’s political history is a tale of competition between Islam and Christianity and between Roman Catholics and Protestants—struggles that are charged by numerous issues, historical, political, and socioeconomic.
Islam arrived in southern Uganda (Buganda) from the East African coastal region by 1840. The religion also reached the country from a northerly direction with the stationing of Sudanese soldiers in northern Uganda under the command of Emin Pasha. Due to developments in northern Sudan in the era of the Mahdi, these Muslims eventually settled in Madi and parts of West Nile. Nevertheless, although Islam reached the country three and a half decades before the arrival of Christianity, it lost out to the latter because the British colonial authorities saw Islam as a potential threat to their interests. In the bitter rivalry and religious wars of the 1880s, Muslims were defeated. Thereafter, the spread of Christianity, aided by the school system, was encouraged to check the diffusion of Islam.
The outcome of these developments in the colonial era was that positions of influence in the country eventually fell into the hands of missionary-educated African Christians. Lacking Western education, Muslims ended up as traders, butchers, taxi or bus drivers, and petty shopkeepers.24 In Uganda as in Kenya, Muslim activism in the contemporary Uganda therefore can be seen in large measure as a response to the economic and social inequalities that developed in the colonial and postcolonial period.
In Uganda, however, the political strength of Muslims bears no relation to their numerical strength, which is between 10 and 15 percent of the population. In the political struggles between the Democratic Party (DP), which drew its support from the Catholic areas, and the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), which was identified as the party of the Protestants, Muslims were courted by the UPC—and the UPC was successful in its bid for power.
The endemic leadership struggles within the Muslim community (which go back to the early decades of this century in Buganda), have been exploited by successive regimes in Uganda to split the Muslim community by supporting one rival leader against another.25 Milton Obote (UPC), through the efforts of his cousin al-Hajj Nekyon, a cabinet minister, created the National Association for the Advancement of Muslims (NAAM) in 1965 as a support base for his party in Buganda in opposition to a Mulangira Muslim faction, with ties to the Buganda monarchy. With the overthrow of Obote’s government in 1971, Idi Amin banned NAAM and other Muslim organizations. Amin created a central body, the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC). It was provided with awqaf (property endowments), which included some buildings belonging to Asian Muslim jamaʿat (community organizations with religious or social functions). The regime also appointed qadis in each district (although they operated only on the periphery of society).
Clearly, Muslims came into prominence in the 1970s under Amin, a Muslim military leader. The Amin regime established closer relations with some Arab states, and thus Ugandan Muslims were able to pursue Islamic education at the Islamic University of Madina. Uganda also became a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and received petro-dollars to finance projects such as the construction of Islamic schools, the Islamic University of Mbale, mosques, and clinics. But Idi Amin lacked a political constituency beyond his tiny Kakwa ethnic group, which only enjoyed a strategic base in the Uganda army. Amins ouster from power in 1979 raised the fears of Muslims, especially in the wake of atrocities committed against Muslims, particularly Nubis (reprisals for the brutalities of the Idi Amin regime). There were reports of mosques being transformed into nightclubs in eastern Uganda, and of the mass flight of Nubis as refugees to Sudan.26
The Reformist Movement in Uganda
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, several hundred Ugandan Muslim students studied at the Islamic University of Medina. On their return to Uganda, they preached a stricter form of Islam that until then had been unknown in Uganda. The influence of reformist trends strengthened the international network linking Ugandan Muslims to the major centers of Islam for the first time. Pan-Islamic activism, associated with the Salafi movement, coincided with a growing Islamic awareness worldwide. This activism was eventually to turn in a political direction, a development not new to Uganda, where religion and politics have often interacted, notably with state attempts to control the institutions of civil society.
By the mid-1980s, the emerging divisions between the young Salafis and the traditional ʿulamaʾ of popular religion had begun to harden. Ugandan Muslim society divided along generational lines, with the youth (vijana) on one side and the elders (wazee) on the other. In most major towns, and to a certain extent in villages, too, in the southern, eastern, and even Western parts of the country one today finds that young people tend to frequent mosques run by the Salafis while the elders attend the mosques of traditional ʿulamaʾ.
The Salafi reputation rests on their scholarly activities and the challenge they pose (given their skills in the Arabic language) to the monopoly on religious education held by traditional scholars. Their efforts have made Islamic education more accessible.
The Tabligh Movement in Uganda
The 1970s and 1980s also witnessed growing activism by the international Jamaʿat Tabligh.27 This movement originated on the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. Considered to be the largest missionary organization in the world, its daʿwa (missionary efforts) are directed toward fellow Muslims. It purposes to revive faith at the individual level. In Uganda, the leading proponent of Jamaʿat Tabligh is Shaykh Marmazinga. Some leading Salafis (for example, Shaykh Sulaiman Kakeeto) reportedly began their missionary activities with the Jamaʿat Tabligh then later parted company with it to set up their own version of the movement. The two cofounders of the first Salafi organization (Spidica—the Society for Preaching and Denouncement of Qadianism and Atheism, which split off from the parent organization), Shaykh Muhamad Ziwa Kizito and Hussein Musa Njuki (both graduates of Islamic law in Pakistan), disagreed over priorities: the former was interested in first constructing a mosque; the latter insisted upon setting up a shariʿa newsletter to propagate Islam.28
The catalyst that transformed the Salafis from a reformist group to a full-fledged radical Islamist movement was the decision by Uganda’s supreme court on 19 March 1991 to rule in favor of Shaykh Ibrahim Luwemba as the mufti of Uganda.29 The Salafis opposed both Luwemba’s leadership and the leadership of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council (UMSC), which they blamed for taking an issue involving Muslims to a non-Islamic court for adjudication. It was unacceptable to them that Luwemba’s position be decided by a “kafir” court, and in protest they took matters into their own hands. On 22 March 1991 they attacked the UMSC building (which houses the old Kampala mosque) and took it over. In the ensuing confrontation, four policemen and one Salafi were reported killed, and in the aftermath, an estimated 434 Muslims were rounded up and charged with murder.30 The charges were later dropped; apparently money was sent by a Saudi philanthropist to the Tabligh to cover the youths’ legal expenses. A row developed within the group over this money, straining relations between the militant Jamil Mukulu and Kakeeto (accused by the former of misuse of these funds).31
Some top leaders of Tabligh, including one Shaykh Muhammad Kamoga, fled the country; others, among them Mukulu,32 went to prison. Kakeeto was elected as the group’s national leader—that is, the one who gives fatwas (religious rulings and decisions on problems posed by Muslims).33 He quickly charted a new course for the group, denouncing the use of violence and setting up the Tabligh movement as an autonomous religious group with its own mosque.34
Mukulu, upon release from Luzira prison, denounced Kakeeto’s policies and in August 1992 established the more radical wing of the Tabligh movement (the Salaf Foundation), which drew most of its membership, at least initially, from the youths who had been in prison with him. Its main objectives were to disseminate correct Islamic belief and practice and to work for the establishment of an Islamic social, moral, and political order guided entirely by shariʿa principles. They also sought to construct mosques, hospitals, schools, and orphanages to form a support base for realizing the group’s goals. Their main center (which included a hostel) was the famous Masjid Noor Mosque on William Street where Mukulu was the main preacher from 1986 to 1992, with considerable success at converting non-Muslims (Christians) to Islam. The group’s radical message—plus its diagnosis of Uganda’s ills in purely political Islamist terms, with a clear program for change, and its activist stance by highly motivated individuals (some of whom have trained in the use of firearms)—has attracted committed young people, especially in the eastern part of the country.
Shaykh Mukulu’s militancy and preaching style has antagonized non-Muslims and the wider Muslim community, further creating division within the Salafi movement between strict Salafis and the moderate but larger wing headed by Kakeeto. For instance, Kakeeto does not forbid his followers from associating with those who perform mawlid and other rituals labelled as religiously unsanctioned. He believes that it is through wise preaching and dialogue, rather than the use of harsh language, that such Muslims can be educated to give up their old practices. He has thus succeeded in appealing to some Muslims of the older generation.
In the early 1990s, Shaykh Mukulu’s young activists engaged in what other Ugandans saw as divisive preaching; they eventually began to defy what they considered to be kafir (infidel) authority. By the beginning of 1995, Mukulu was reported to have fled the country for England. Around the same time, the Uganda Muslim Liberation Army (UMLA) was formed to champion the rights of Muslims against what they saw as the Museveni government’s disregard for their rights and interests. They accused the Museveni government of attempting to undermine their religion and their community by converting mosques into offices as part of a policy to return several properties formerly under the control of UMSC to their former Asian owners.35
Socioeconomic forces were clearly at play here: when Muslims, as a minority, call for the establishment of an Islamic government to replace the “kafir” one, they are seeking the rights and privileges of “full citizenship” that they feel they have been denied. This community response to the failure of national institutions to provide social services and so on, is rooted in religious identity. In this interpretation, one can therefore say that the Salafi assault on popular practices has not only been directed against local “religious innovations”/devotional aberrations, but also against government authority. Such authority itself is seen as an aberration.
The Museveni regime, conscious of Muslim frustrations and unfulfilled aspirations (especially with the reversal of fortunes following the ouster of Amin) has maintained Uganda’s links with some Arab countries. In the hope of gaining some benefits, Museveni has retained Uganda’s membership in the OIC. He has also (unlike the Moi government in Kenya) included several Muslim ministers in his cabinet. Yet Museveni (like Obote before him) has also exploited leadership struggles within the Muslim community—for example, by supporting Luwemba; his vicepresident has also thrown his weight behind Shaykh Kakoza, the main rival and leadership contestant.
In view of the radical stance of the Salafis and, more importantly, their opposition to UMSC, Luwemba (as official mufti) distanced himself from the Tabligh movement. Following attacks on police stations in 1995, for instance, he used the occasion of the Id-ul fitr celebrations to attack a “clique” in the Muslim community that, he said, since 1991 had been fighting the government under the guise of fighting religious wars against him.36 Luwemba’s death recently has not ended Uganda’s Muslim leadership woes.
The Tabligh movement itself has become weaker: Mukulu’s flight robbed the Salaf Foundation of his dynamic leadership, and the moderate Shaykh Kakeeto has been warming to the government, as evidenced by the receipt of a pickup truck as a present from President Museveni, a Mnyankole like himself. Uneasy relations with the government continue, however, as indicated by the flight of a radical member of the movement: Abdul Karim Sentamu left the country to avoid apprehension by the authorities. The bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August 1998 further strained these relations, especially following indiscriminate arrests of Ugandan Muslims for investigation. Jamaʿat Tabligh groups from India and Pakistan have since been banned from entereing Uganda. There have been, moreover, reports of human rights abuses and mysterious disappearances of Muslims in Museveni’s attempts to deal with rebel groups belonging to ADF (Allied Democratic Front), which has Muslim fighters.
The main programmatic objective of the Salafis has been, as we have seen, to establish an Islamic society in which Islam would be purged of local customs; hence the emphasis on the role of fiqh to redress social and economic ills. In their efforts to promote their cause, the Salafi have challenged not only popular Islam but on occasion the central authority as well. Conflict over such critical issues was in fact bound to develop into such a confrontation. Some have resorted to armed training (as in the case of some of Mukulu’s followers) and in the western part of the country this has led to clashes with the security forces. The Museveni regime—seeking to restrict elements whose agitation was provoked by the pressures of nationalism and the politics of secular modernization (groups labeled “fundamentalist”)—is strongly concerned about confirming its authority over a population divided along ethnic and religious lines. Islam, for its part, has clearly been reasserting itself as a political force.
Islamic Reform in Tanzania
We noted above that the Zanzibari-born Shaykh al-Farsy (qadi of Zanzibar, later appointed the chief qadi of Kenya) was the main popularizer and leading proponent of reformist ideas in East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. His reformist crusade is being championed today by his former students in Zanzibar and, especially, in Dar es Salaam. There Shaykh Saʿid Musa, through his writings, is the leading critic of popular Islam in the country. Here are also some Muslim youth organizations (such as the Ansaar Sunna of Tanga, some of whose members have been exposed to Wahhabi teachings or Saudi-based education) that have attempted to recast the Islamic discourse along scripturalist-traditionalist lines. Young people have thus introduced controversy over “true” Islam by their insistence on strict adherence to Quran and Sunna as the only sources of guidance and practice for Muslims.
Such groups have opened their own mosques to propagate their ideas unhindered. Their Arable-language skills have provided them with the means to challenge the traditional ʿulamaʾ. Yet, it should be noted that religious reformism is still in a state of gestation; it is not a major element in the evolving ideology and identity of Tanzanian Muslims as a whole. And for most Muslim youth organizations, reformism is not their main platform or orientation; they tend more toward Islamic activism, whose goal is partly to redress existing imbalances in society and partly to establish an Islamic social order.
Islamic activism in Tanzania, while it has a history of its own, is exemplified today by Warsha, which appeals to students and seems to enjoy the sympathy of a good segment of the urban Muslim population. Warsha attempts to get this segment involved in issues of concern to the Muslim community, and in this is consistent with Islamic movements led by university students elsewhere. There is, however, one significant difference, which has to do with demography. Warsha, which is far more limited in resources and manpower (it is not a mass movement or even an unofficial party like the IPK in Kenya), has behaved more as a Muslim pressure group that catalogues Muslim grievances than as a group set on contesting power with the government.
As noted earlier, the increasing politicization of Islamic groups has its roots in colonial developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Political and economic changes brought about then created conditions for regional and national-level politics and awareness. In Tanzania, this was also the period when Islam, in its diffusion and consolidation in the interior of the country, became an integrating factor for the identity of Africans who were involved in anticolonial struggles. Some of this anticolonial resistance became channeled into organizational activities by Muslim groups responding to the socioeconomic inequalities. The next section deals with this political challenge.
The Political Challenge of the Tanzanian Revival
The first important Muslim involvement in an oppositional role during the colonial period was during the Maji Maji war (1905–7), when rural followers of the tariqas (the Qadiriyya in particular) were among those involved in the struggles against the Germans. With the onset of British rule after World War I, when indirect rule was established, urban Muslims were at the forefront of organizational attempts to bring about changes in the territory.
These efforts led to the establishment of, first, the Tanganyika Territory African Civil Service Association (TTACSA) in Tanga in 1922 to fight for the privileges for African civil servants. Martin Kayamba, head clerk in the Tanga District Office, was the president of the society.37 During the same decade, the Tanganyika African Association (TAA), TTACSA’s successor, was set up in Dar es Salaam. It had a special appeal for clerks and teachers and was particularly attractive to Muslim townsmen.38 After World War II, the TAA became increasingly political and began to develop into a national movement with branches in different parts of the country. It began to attract traders and farmers. In 1954, the Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu) was established to succeed TAA as a national political organization. Tanu was most successful in Muslim areas of the country; for instance, in Bagamoyo followers of the Qadiriyya order threw their support behind the nationalist movement and got involved with the party.39 Muslim trader-politicians in many urban centers of the country (Tanga, Tabora, Dar es Salaam) were especially active in Tanu.40 By joining Tanu, Muslims hoped to be able to contribute to policies aimed at redressing imbalances in society.
Concern for Muslim advancement in education and government jobs led other Muslims to organize independently of Tanu. In 1957, the All-Muslim National Union of Tanganyika (AMNUT) was formed, AMNUT attracted some conservative coastal leaders, elderly TAA activists, who were its founders. It tended to act as a Muslim pressure group in the nation’s capital.41 In 1959, it urged the British government to delay independence until Muslims acquired sufficient education to be able to share equitably in the fruits of independence.42 AMNUT was roundly denounced by Muslim leaders who were strong supporters of Tanu. Nevertheless, when elements within Tanu itself put forward “Muslim” demands, the party reacted quickly by providing an Elders Section within Tanu.43 The elders wing of the party was dominated by the coastal and Islamic branches of Tanu based in Dar es Salaam and Tanga. In 1958, Shaykh Sulaiman Taqdiri was expelled from Tanu because he made religiously based demands. At a mawlid festival (attended by Nyerere), Taqdiri pointed out that Muslims were not getting a fair deal. More seriously, he complained that there were not enough Muslims on the Tanu election slate. Nyerere had him expelled from the party because he had mixed religion with politics.
In the postcolonial period (October 1963), a Muslim society known as Daawa al-Islamiyya was established to promote unification and advancement of Muslims—for instance, by expanding the number of Muslim schools. It sent a letter to all bishops and religious leaders complaining about the lack of parity in educational matters between Muslims and Christians; it expressed frustration at government indifference toward Muslim attempts to set up schools.44 The society was in fact arguing that Muslims needed special help from the government since they did not have institutions on a par with church missions. Shortly after the release of the letter, Khamis J. Abedi, president of the society, and Abdillahi S. Plantan were sent to detention camps in Mnulu and Chunya “in the interests of security.”45
The above examples reveal a nationalist Tanu strongly reacting to pressure from Muslim groups. Nyerere was apprehensive that the highly emotional subject of Muslim educational backwardness might create dissension and disunity in the country; therefore, to keep Muslim demands at bay, he kept on insisting that Tanzania’s politics knows no religion. Religious issues, particularly involving Islam and Muslims, were considered too sensitive for public discussion. The Nyerere regime wanted the Muslims not to be alarmed at the slow pace of their community’s educational progress; that they be patient and trust the government to change conditions that promoted inequality in the country.
Accordingly, in keeping with its policy first announced in 1961 to provide free education for all, the government took over a few selected church mission and other private schools, including Muslim ones. Secondary schools and seminaries were not affected. In 1969–70, following the Education Act of 1969, Tanu assumed control of the primary-school system as a way of ending differential access to education by virtue of religion, geographical origin, class, or ethnicity, and also as a way of promoting education for social development. This, however, did not solve the problem: the policy of education for social development, or ujamaa, which among other things, aimed at enhancing education of less-privileged groups, had not had “the desired effects when applied to selection for secondary schools, an area where there was considerable scope for patronage and nepotism.”46
From the mid-1940s onward, the Muslim community was led by the East African Muslim Welfare Society (EAMWS), which mobilized Muslims for educational opportunities. EAMWS was pan-Islamic and nonsectarian. Its activities were felt all over East Africa, and for this reason it was capable of unifying Muslims, especially coastal elements, into a bloc that could pose as a threat to Tanu. In 1968, however, the society became involved in a minor religious dispute (between the national headquarters and the Bukoba branch of the society) that eventually ripped the society apart. The dispute (over whether or not the prescribed noon prayers should be offered in addition to the Friday prayers that occur at the same time) was transformed from a mere theological argument into a serious ideological dispute and leadership contest. Confused by ideology and power dynamics, the conflict encouraged the intrusion of politics, and as a result the Nyerere government got involved in the Muslim crisis. Pan-Islamists were pitted against ujamaa supporters within EAMWS and the conflict was exploited to bring Muslims under control in a new pro-government Muslim council known as Bakwata. Tanu and the ujamaa regime banned the EAMWS and gave speedy recognition to Bakwata.47
Despite being closely associated with Tanu, or CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi) as it came to be known later, Bakwata itself was later involved in trouble—the seminary dispute of 1981–82, when two of its secondary schools (one in Dar es Salaam and the other in Tanga) were converted into what can be known as Muslim seminaries.48 Bakwata’s Kinondoni school in Dar es Salaam was run by Islamic activists belonging to Warsha (a young Muslim writers’ workshop). These youths had come under the influence of Muhammad Malik, a secular teacher (originally from Pakistan) who during his free time taught young people who wanted to learn more about Islam. He played a crucial role in the evolution of a broader Islamic outlook among young Tanzanian Muslim students, exposing them to the teachings of Sayyid Qutb and Mawlana Maududi. Clearly the Nyerere government was afraid that these schools run as seminaries might become a seedbed for Islamic activism.
The dynamism of Warsha’s activities (producing textbooks for the seminaries, contributing to Bakwatas monthly newsletter Muislamu) captured the attention of Muslims as they sought to expand the role of religious institutions and scope of religious practice. It was a situation that could lead to the mixing of religion with politics. As a result of intrigues that followed within Bakwata, the secretary general of Bakwata, Shaykh Muhammad Ali al-Buhriy, was forced to resign and Warsha was expelled from Bakwata.
The above examples illustrate TANU/CCM’s cynical attempts to squash institutions of civil society in its efforts to eliminate sources of potential opposition to the regime and the one-party ujamaa policies. The nature of this state control over civil society, and of popular perceptions of that control, lies at the center of Muslim groups’ dealings with the government.
In the period of Mwinyi’s presidency, Islamic activism became much more pronounced. For instance, Warsha continued to make its presence felt in the country through its writings, including widely circulated letters around Friday mosques. It has particularly appealed to people aged between their late teens and the late thirties.49 Its emphasis has been on a renewed commitment on the part of Tanzanian Muslims to the establishment of an Islamic social order. It has in fact influenced other youth Muslim organizations, including MSAUD (Muslim Student Association of University of Dar es Salaam—which is closely linked to Warsha) and Uvikita (Union of Muslim Youths, also known as Ansaar Sunna in Tanga) in urban centers such as Tanga and Mwanza.
Among many Muslim groups that share this activist stance are the Union of Muslim Preachers (Uwamdi—whose videos and cassettes have been available for sale) that has been involved in confrontations with Bakwata;50 the Islamic Propagation Center (IPC), which is an off-shoot of MSAUD and publishes a newsletter known as Annur; Baraza la Walimu wa Kiislamu Tanzania (the council of Tanzanian Muslim/Islamic teachers—mainly made up of former University of Madina graduates); Balucta (the council for the promotion of the Quran in Tanzania), which promotes Quranic recitals in public (it was involved in the “pork” episode discussed below); and Aboud Jumbe’s Bamita (the council of Tanzanian mosques), which has been weak since Jumbe’s fall from political grace in 1984. Even Bakwata, which is generally timid and ineffectual, has felt the activist pressure and on occasions has organized public lectures on Islam and made statements asking the government to reestablish Islamic courts.
This rise in Islamic activism was the result of a number of factors, among them the collapse of the one-party system, which allowed Muslims to organize and to speak freely in the new multiparty environment (although no party based on ethnic or religious affiliation was to be allowed to function); the activities of external Islamic organizations, including Muslim embassies (in sympathy with Muslim aspirations) in financing new mosques, schools, scholarships, dispensaries, and so on;51 and the significance of the Iranian revolution. My impression from discussions with Tanzanians both in Tanzania and North America is that in the 1980s and 1990s these Muslim youth organizations have had an impact on the youth that far exceeds their resources and numerical strength. For instance, the older people (rather than the youth) in some parts of the country are much more likely to be involved with the tariqas (Qadiriyya and Shadhiliyya). (The same observation can be made about Kenya and Uganda, where tariqas never had much influence to begin with). Tabora, in Tanzania, had been one of the strong centers for tariqa activities, yet even there, according to Mohamed ʿAbdul Ghani, whose grandfather was a tariqa leader in that town, its influence has declined.52
The 1980s and 1990s also witnessed public interfaith debates in which Tanzanian Muslim missionaries (Uwamdi) addressed public rallies and engaged Christians in Bible-based discussions on the divinity of Christ. These discussion (which led to some Christians converting to Islam, including a few clerics) have often angered the Christian clergy. Hence the ruling party’s attempts to curb such exchanges: they have banned them and ordered that audio/video tapes of such discussions be surrendered to the government.53 The debates, however, have continued.
In March 1993, Muslim scholars of the Bible (though not involved in the attack on pork shops in the Ndungumbi area of Dar es Salaam, where Muslims complained that non-Muslim butchers had sold them pork knowingly) were among the first to be arrested, as were a number of shaykhs, including Shaykh Kassim b. Juma. Tapes were also confiscated in what was seen as an attempt to stamp out Islamic “fundamentalism.”54 Further action by Augustine Mrema, the then minister of home affairs, included expelling three Sudanese teachers (in the belief that through foreign contacts Islamic activism was being fostered). The important point to note is that in the 1990s (contrary when Nyerere was president) Muslim issues such as the above were being discussed in newspapers and in the ruling party and state institutions. The Muslim factor had resurfaced in Tanzanian politics again, with Muslim groups urging the Mwinyi government to take special steps to promote the number of Muslims in government positions and in higher institutions of learning. This had become a recurring theme in public agitation in the form of, for example, newsletters or public letters that are widely circulated in Muslim circles.
During an interfaith Bible-based debate held on 12 February 1998 at the Mwebechai mosque in the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, a confrontation occurred between the police and the gathered Muslims.55 (The police were there to apprehend the leader of this gathering, Ustadh Magezi Shaʿbani Maranda, for what the authorities called inflammatory speeches and creation of religious tension.) The confrontation soon engulfed the passers-by and developed into widespread Muslim unrest for two days. Muslim protesters stoned government vehicles on the Morogoro road leading out of the city.56 The protesters (who claimed that President Benjamin Mkapa’s government favored Christians and was denying them freedom of assembly)57 also marched on a CCM branch office and burned two government vehicles and set government flags afire. Paramilitary forces were brought in to back up the police. Some Muslims, including women, locked themselves inside the mosque for their own safety and came out only after the armed police had broken the front door and fired rounds of tear gas into the crowd in the mosque. In all, the police shot dead two people and arrested more than one hundred. The funerals for the dead (considered martyrs) drew huge crowds, the high turnout making a clear a political statement about Muslim rage at perceived government suppression. On 29 March 1998, Muslim women who claimed to have been tortured and humiliated while in police custody staged a peaceful sit-in in the Mwembechai mosque’s compound. More Muslims arrived to show their support and to protest what they saw as oppression of Muslims.
Islamic assertiveness in Tanzania has been most evident in Zanzibar. Young people have increasingly and openly identified with an Islamic trend in this mainly Muslim society that has special status in the Tanzanian union. The Tanzanian government has worried about this upsurge in Islamic activism on the island. This led the government leaders (Nyerere and his successor President ʿAli Hassan Mwinyi) in the latter part of 1987 to make a number of speeches on national unity in which the secular nature of Tanzanian society was emphasized. This did not stop the unrest. Island resentment at the control exercised by the mainland over local affairs and the economic decline in Zanzibar erupted in May 1988 demonstrations in which two people died and eight were injured.58 The demonstrations were sparked by remarks made by Sophia Kawawa (the wife of Rashid Kawawa, the then CCM national secretary general), the head of a CCM-affiliated association for Tanzanian women (UWT).
In the antigovernment demonstration, the groups participating included some Saudi-educated Zanzibaris who helped channel the religious and political discontent into an activist Islamist direction. Various Zanzibari organizations had questioned the control exercised by the mainland over affairs in the islands. These groups had sprung up in the Gulf countries, in Britain, and the Scandinavian countries. Because Zanzibar had joined the Organization of the Islamic Conference, even if only for a brief period, indicated President Mwinyi’s willingness (unlike his predecessor) to acknowledge Zanzibaris’ aspirations/desire to associate with Muslim/Middle Eastern countries (especially via the OIC) as a way of ameliorating their poor economic situation.
Islamic assertiveness in Zanzibar can be traced back to the activities of the Karume regime, which curtailed religious education/Arabic classes in schools and generally discouraged Zanzibaris from traveling outside the island.59 With the death of Karume, his successor Aboud Jumbe attempted to cultivate a religious constituency for his own political ambitions. By establishing Bamita (the council of Tanzanian mosques) he sought to attract oil-rich Arab money to Zanzibar. During this period, some Zanzibaris got the opportunity to further their Islamic education in the Gulf region, and those who were studying in mainland Tanzania got access for the first time to Islamic literature easily available in Dar es Salaam through MSAUD (the Muslim Student Association of the University of Dar es Salaam). In Zanzibar itself, a number of religious scholars were active providing religious education to a small circle of students. Jumbe’s efforts notwithstanding, he was in the end forced to resign as the vice-president of Tanzania due to his perceived failure to check separatist tendencies in Zanzibar. Yet during the leadership of his successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi (another Zanzibari who later became president of Tanzania), Islamic activism was to come out in the open with full force.60
The abandonment of the statist approach to development in Tanzania in the mid-1980s allowed autonomous religious organizations to assert themselves (whereas in the ujamaa era, a concerted attempt had been made to co-opt them). Religious politics was therefore to enjoy something of a resurgence in the post-Nyerere era. As the state control over the institutions of civil society began to ease (especially in the transitional period to multiparty politics) Mwinyi came increasingly under criticism from Christian groups61 for not checking what was seen to be a rising wave of activist/“militant” Islamism.62 The subsequent preparations for the multiparty general elections, 29 October 1995, underscored serious divisions and splits within the ruling CCM as it sought to choose a successor to Mwinyi, whose term of office was nearing an end. In the first round of preliminary voting, a Muslim candidate, Jakaya Kikwete (the former finance minister), was thought to have won. Nevertheless, by the time the presidential race was over, Benjamin Mkapa (Nyerere’s choice) emerged as the party’s presidential candidate amid rancor and bitterness over the whole voting process.
Among the people who were deeply disappointed and decided to defect from the party to join the opposition was professor Kighoma ʿAli Malima, who was an activist Muslim.63 As Mwinyi’s minister of education, he had been targeted for criticism by Christian groups for insisting on Muslims being promoted in government positions and in institutions of higher learning. Reacting to this pressure, Mwinyi had been forced to remove him from this sensitive ministry and appoint him as the vice-president of the planning commission. After Malima defected from CCM, he was named as the presidential candidate for the National Party for Reconstruction. He had deliberately made it clear to Tanzanian Muslims that he was seeking their vote: he was hoping they would vote as a bloc for his party. It was reported during this period that some Friday sermons in mosques had been calling for “proper voting,” while an Anglican bishop had apparently warned of the danger of the country being plunged into chaos should religion decide the next president. Malima’s death a few weeks later, on a fund-raising visit to London, eliminated a Muslim challenger in the elections. The general elections were now to be fought between two leading Christian contenders, Benjamin Mkapa of the old ruling CCM party,64 and the anticorruption champion Augustine Mrema, leader of the main opposition party, the National Convention for Construction and Reform (NCCR-Mageuzi).
CCM’s victory and Benjamin Mkapa’s assumption of power (succeeding ʿAli Mwinyi as the president of Tanzania) seemed to indicate the country’s opting for a system of presidency that alternates between Muslim and Christian candidates.65
Notes
1. I am grateful to ʿAbdalla Noor, of Jinja, Uganda, for making available to me relevant printed material, including newspaper coverage (in Luganda, English, and Kiswahili) of recent events dealing with the Muslim communities of East Africa.
2. They seek societal reform at the same time as they aspire (at least if one goes by their rhetoric) to bring about reform at the state level.
3. Personal communication with al-Amin Mazruʿi. See also the discussion in Bakari and Yahya 1995, 234–51.
4. See Pouwels 1981, 329–45.
5. Farsy produced many students, including the Tanzania-based Shaykh Said Musa—a prolific writer in his own right.
6. See Bakari and Yahya 1995, 168–93, 247.
7. Ibid., 248.
8. Part of Kenya’s colonial legacy involves the inheritance of a Western civil code (English common law) side by side with Islamic law. In matters of personal status, for example, Muslims could turn to qadi courts.
9. Muslims are concentrated in the coast and northeastern provinces (with significant representation in the populous western province). One-half of the Asian population is Muslim.
10. See the discussion in Bakari and Yahya 1995.
11. Bakari and Yahya 1995, 243–44.
12. Geist 1981.
13. See the Kenya Muslim monthly the Message No. 62(1996).
14. Daily Nation, 2 May 1992.
15. See Oded 1996, 406–15.
16. The grounds or, rather, pretext for denying the IPK permission to register itself as a political party was that it was a religiously based organization; in fact (except for its name) its constitution was nonsectarian.
17. Ibid., 406–7, and Bakari and Yahya 1995, 256. See also O’Brien in Hansen and Twaddle 1995, 213–15. The riots broke out in Mombasa in May and September 1992, and in Lamu in September and August 1993.
18. Oded 1996, 406–15.
19. Bakari and Yahya 1995, 256.
20. Ibid., 247.
21. Ibid.
22. See Sperling 1997.
23. Ibid. Shaykh Balala returned to Kenya in 1997 (when he was again issued a Kenyan passport) although he did not play much of a role in the elections. I heard that he was detained on the actual day of elections to forestall any problems he might create for the government.
24. Mazrui 1971, 184.
25. Uganda’s current president, Museveni, touches briefly on the subject of religion and politics in Uganda in his book Sowing the Mustard Seed, (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1997, 41–42), without, however, indicating the role his government has played in favoring one leadership candidate over another.
26. Yet the Obote II regime’s record was even worse: he came back with old scores to settle with the Baganda and other ethnic groups opposed to his rule (and so the cycle of violence started by Idi Amin continued).
27. Tabligh refers to the process of conveying or extending the “call” to a life of faith.
28. See “Who Are the Tabliqs; What Do They Want?” New Vision, Kampala, Uganda, Nov. 27, 1996, with references to Kayunga 1993.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. New Vision, 4 Sept. 1992.
32. Jamil Mukulu, a former Christian who embraced Islam, obtained his Islamic education (specializing in the Arabic language) in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.
33. Shaykh Kakeeto is reported to have two degrees from Saudi Arabia. By other accounts, he received his education from Pemba, Tanzania. His emphasis is on dawʿa.
34. See “Who Are the Tabliqs?”
35. Ibid. See also “Are Muslims Being Sidelined?” New Vision, 28 Aug. 1996, 22.
36. See “Mufti Confirms Militant Clique,” New Vision, 3 Mar. 1995.
37. See Mambo Leo, Mar.-Apr. 1923.
38. See Iliffe 1979.
39. See Nimtz 1980.
40. Iliffe 1979, 551.
41. Bienen 1967; 64.
42. el-Alawy, Tanganyika Standard, 20 Aug. 1959.
43. Bienen 1967, 64.
44. Swantz 1965, 34.
45. Tanganyika Standard (12, 14, 15 Oct. 1963); and the Reporter 1964, as cited in Swantz 1965, 34.
46. Mazruʿi and Tidy 1984, 307.
47. Westerlund 1980, 103–4.
48. Owing to the fact that they were strictly for Muslims, the seminaries came under criticism of Christians. These complaints soon attracted the attention of the CCM leadership. See my dissertation (1992, 229–54).
49. See Islamochristiana, 1990, 180–81.
50. Uwamdi, which publishes the newspaper Mizani, is headed by Shaykh Musa Hussein, who is from Ujiji. See Balda 1993b, 228–31.
51. See Lodhi and Westerlund 1997.
52. Personal communication with Mohamed ʿAbdul-Ghani in Kingston, Canada.
53. The interfaith debates are seen as capable of disrupting public peace.
54. See Crescent International, 1–15 Jun. 1993, for more on the pork episode.
55. The meeting was organized by members of Khidmat Dawat al-Islamia, according to Dar es Salaams regional commissioner.
56. For local Muslim coverage of events, see AN-NUUR, 20–26 Feb. 1998; for the official explanation of events, consult the semi-official Daily News (14 Feb.).
57. Recent Muslim agitation against the government (see the Muslim newsletter AN-NUUR) includes a thirteen-page documented memorandum by the secretary of the Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Muslims, Juma Isa Ponda. This document draws up a list of charges against Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Christian church groups, depicting them as architects of Muslim marginalization in Tanzania.
58. See Country Report 4 (1987), 2 (1989), 4 and 3 (1989), 9 (1989).
59. Personal communication in the summer of 1997 with Khatibu Rajabu, a Zanzibari who is writing a book on Islam and political developments in Zanzibar.
60. Some Zanzibari seem to think that Nyerere had nominated Mwinyi as his successor probably partly to placate Zanzibaris and partly to placate the feelings of those who thought the country was controlled by a Christian elite.
61. On growing Christian “fundamentalism” in Tanzania, see Lodhi and Westerlund 1997, which discusses the view of local activist Christian groups that consider Islam as an archenemy, especially since the collapse of Communism.
62. Nyerere himself had been unhappy with what he saw as Mwinyi’s failure to curb Islamic “nationalism,” which threatened to divide the country.
63. See the discussion in Islamochristiana 16 (1990), 171–82.
64. Despite the pre-election defections and internal disputes within CCM, the party emerged as the winner in the Oct. 29, 1995 multiparty polls (though not without all the opposition candidates denouncing widespread polling irregularities—activity confirmed by the Commonwealth group of observers).
65. Despite the changed leadership, Islamic activism continues in Tanzania. Elsewhere in Africa, political Islam is making itself felt in various ways.
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