The growth of rural madrasa

In parallel with mosques, centres of Quranic education, known locally as madrasa, sprang up in the countryside between c.1920 and 1960. They were small, poor, and often transient; their one defining feature was the presence of a mwalimu, a teacher. Comparison of the parallel development of madrasa and mission schools makes clear that the main reason for this divergence was not resistance to Christian elements in the missionaries' syllabus, but to the perceived interference of mission teachers with the authority of students' families and with local religious practices. By contrast, madrasa tolerated these practices and were more closely integrated into the social networks of parents. The spread of madrasa and of mission schools involves three subtle long-term processes. Topics covered include educational practice and the status of knowledge, madrasa and mission schools, unyago, colonial politics and local networks, schools and madrasa as local institutions, madrasa as sites of encounter with Muslim knowledge, imagining Muslim scholarship, and performance and orality in Muslim education. In general, the history of madrasa emphasizes an indirect association between education and social control – the complex status of knowledge.

Migration, trade, and religious change at the onset of colonialism, 1890–1905

This chapter sets out the hierarchical, exploitative conditions of the late pre-colonial period that villagers would react against. The elusiveness of ritual authority that characterized indigenous religious practice helps elaborate the relatively low profile of Islam in relationships of dependency beyond the coast. The chapter first discusses the coast in terms of a reference point in regional politics. The factors mitigating Muslim influence up-country are shown. It is tempting to suggest that big men turned to Islam to overcome the limitations of their role in local religious practice. Muslim practice was diverse on the coast and became discernible up-country in discrete elements, and big men had no reason to assume that they would be able to retain control over it. Additionally, the oral evidence on long-distance trade, viewed from the villages, and the effects of colonization, are presented. The role of coastal Muslims in the interior was nothing if not ambiguous. Inasmuch as Muslim practice was recognized as ritual practice, it faced both towards society and towards spirit forces.

Internal debates and international influences: the rise of Islamic radicalism in the 1990s

Although the synchronicity of the rise of Muslim radicalism in East Africa with similar phenomena in many parts of the world gives that radicalism the appearance of an unstoppable ideological tide, it is intricately connected to recent political and economic changes in Tanzania. It is shown that while the Ansar of Southeast Tanzania formed part of a transregional reformist current, their confrontational style and inflammatory rhetoric were directed against the specific conjunction of the political and religious authority they faced at home. The reformist debates and Muslim discontent in East Africa after independence are explained. In addition to the above, this chapter elaborates on the crisis of the urban economy and of the tarika. The parallelism of political and trade liberalization has made commercial strength a potential basis for the pursuance of political aims. It is difficult to present a conclusive account of the Ansar in Southeast Tanzania, since their role is still unfolding. The attack on Muslim notables and their relations with government are illustrated. The proactive and calculated response of the authorities to the actions of the Ansar indicates that Tanzanian politicians take the provinces more seriously than is immediately apparent to the outside observer.

The heritage of slavery and the educationalist shehe of the Sufi brotherhoods

This chapter describes the significance of the Sufi brotherhoods. It starts by addressing the arrival of the tarika in Southeast Tanzania. The tarika-shehe of the inter-war period, who are most clearly remembered in the coastal towns, were themselves fairly well travelled, well connected, and partly of patrician parentage. Ritual practices constitute a crucial unifying element for the tarika. Two tarika became influential in the late nineteenth century in Southeast Tanzania. The main characters of twentieth-century saints are summarized. The outlines of the shehes' lives and work already give a sense of the tensions they negotiated: between urbanites versed in Arabic script and immigrants to town versed in ngoma, between the ideology of patrician separateness and superiority, and the self-assertion of villagers struggling to make the colonial towns their home. The ritual expertise, colonial domination, and the reformulation of categories of social distinction are discussed. The spread of the tarika and their ritual practices along the Swahili coast illustrates the unity in diversity of this culture area at work.

The book, the wilderness, and the family: Islamic doctrine and African practice

The renegotiation of relationships of dependency within households and families in which Muslim teachings became implicated took place amid the consolidation of the political practice that is termed ‘republican’, and was similarly low key. Differences in the way men and women related to the sphere of commerce existed before the colonial period in Southeast Tanzania. Muslim teachings could be readily evoked to argue for changes that affected women. The villagers' views of religious change are discussed. Funerary practices common among non-Muslims have come to be redefined as Muslim. In addition, the chapter presents the problems surrounding healing and dealing with witchcraft. The development of witchcraft cleansing in Southeast Tanzania shows the resilience of pre-existing ways of addressing misfortune. Witchcraft cleansing constituted a significant field of religious practice, whose dynamics cannot be reduced to the concurrent spread of Islam. Furthermore, the chapter reports the survival and decline of sacrifice.

Teachers, elders and shehe: how Islam came to the villages

The contrast between the deep involvement of urban Muslims' exclusionary attitudes in the social struggles of the late pre-colonial period and the absence of references to such struggles in oral accounts of early rural Muslims could give the impression that conversion constituted a slightly anachronistic pursuit of coastal allegiance. Oral sources suggest that conversion occurred as part of an active search for new ritual and social options, and that villagers interpreted their Muslim allegiance to suit the pursuit of divergent aspirations. The ways of conversion among villagers are first described. The chapter also traces how rural Muslims in the inter-war period managed to depart from and reinterpret the problematic associations of Muslim allegiance. It explores the early history of rural mosques, focusing on a group of four mosques founded between c.1925 and 1947. The republicanism of rural Muslims is discussed. Islam had become a fundamental, albeit low-profile, element of social life.

From Muslim big men to rural waalimu, 1905–1927

It is clearly stated that religious elements were significant both in starting the war and in living through it, but the origins, content, and reach of these notions are controversial. The changes following Maji Maji, and arguably in some regards the war itself, give a particularly graphic illustration of the transitions that were occurring up and down the Swahili coast. The role of religious figures and ideas in Maji Maji is controversial in several respects. This war was the moment when the claim to be of the coast became part of a popular movement, rather than of the identity of limited groups of traders and big men. The context of the beginnings of rural Islam during 1907–27 is reported. The chapter also addresses the local variations and common themes in the beginnings of rural Islam. The prominence of the Maji Maji War in the history of the region invites the association of the acceptance of Islam with an anti-colonial stance. The new rural Muslims effectively negated the adversarial character of relations between coast and interior in the nineteenth century and reinterpreted the Islamic allegiance of the coast as a connecting rather than a divisive element.

Conclusion

The future of relations between Tanzanian Muslims and the state is in the balance as recriminations between reformists and Bakwata continue, and the outline of potential compromises between Ansar and Lailah Muslims is as yet hard to see. Beyond the acceptance of basic religious practices, being Muslim meant very different things to different people at different times: a privileged connection to coastal sites of exchange for pre-colonial big men; social ascendancy for pre-colonial patricians, but social equality to inter-war immigrants; full participation in the social and ritual life of the village for rural converts in the mid-twentieth century; an increasingly problematic separate allegiance for post-colonial Tanzanians. The permutations of public ritual are covered. The concern about ignorance is not in itself a product of post-colonial political rhetoric. The chapter then discusses the political topography and the distribution of religious affiliations. The history of town and countryside helps in the understanding of the context that has shaped academic representations of Swahili culture as an urban culture. The Ansar and the debate on Islam and modernity are explained. The Islamist movements in the Southeast and East Africa at large draw on allegiances and grievances rooted in both recent and long-term history.

New horizons: the era of independence, 1954–67

The rhetoric and expectations that characterized Tanzania's transition to independence related to many of the issues also involved in the acceptance of Islam: social allegiance, entitlement, and the negotiation of social obligations and ambitions. There are no traces of the Islamic anti-independence party in either the oral or written record of the Southeast. People in East Africa learned to use the rhetoric of progress just as they had learned the jargon of Indirect Rule. A discussion on the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), Muslim notables, and the development of a new progressive style is provided. A closer look at the Muslim networks that supported TANU and their methods helps us to understand the way local people construed their relationship with it. The religious debates and experiments around the time of independence are described. The chapter also reports the reformulation of authoritarianism and the beginnings of disconnection, and the growing isolation of Muslim notables. The endorsement of ‘localist’ styles by national politicians was less an acknowledgement of the value of Tanzania's political heritage than of the importance, and potential difficulty, of keeping the citizens in line.

Introduction

Muslims and Muslim polities have been present for hundreds of years on the coast of East Africa. Some 80 percent of the population in Southeast Tanzania is estimated to be Muslim. How and why this came to be the case, and how this process has shaped both the ritual practice of these Muslims and the way they understand their place within their country, is the subject of this book. It concentrates on the role of proselytizers rather than the motives of converts, emphasizing the former's personal commitment and piety. The conversion to Islam among non-Muslims in the countryside, and the spread of Sufi orders in the towns where many people already were Muslim, are addressed. The religious practice and everyday life, and the role of the state, travel, and local society in the production of oral records are described. Moreover, the chapter discusses the historicity of local views of history and religion, kin networks, villages and religious affiliations, and the polyvalence of religious change, struggle, and negotiation.