"Islam Outside The Arab World", David Westerlund, Ingvar Svanberg

ISLAM
OUTSIDE THE ARAB WORLD

ABSTRACT
David Westerlund & Ingvar Svanberg (eds),Islam Outside the Arab World.
Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999. 488pp. ISBN 0-7007-1124-4 (Hbk).
ISBN 0-7007-1 142-2 (Pbk).
Today about 85 per cent of the world's Muslim population live outside the
Arab world and due to population growth, 'missionary' (dawa) endeavours
and migration, the number of Muslims in non-Arab nations is rapidly
increasing. Yet many people in the West conceive of Islam as an 'Arab'
religion and it is only recently that a more thorough scholarly interest in
other parts of the Muslim world has emerged. This volume presents the
spread and character of Islam in many non-Arab countries in Africa (south
of the Sahara), Asia, Oceania, Europe and the Americas. It focuses
particularly on the contemporary situation, but also presents an historical
background. Much attention is devoted to Sufism, which appears to be the
predominant form of Islam in most non-Arab countries, as well as to the
growing significance of Islamism, which challenges both secularism and the
Sufi forms of Islam. An extensive introduction provides a general
background account of the origin, expansion and characteristics of Islam.
Key concepts: Islam, Sufism, Shia, Ahmadiyya, conversion, immigrant

communities, minorities, folk religion.
ISLAM
OUTSIDE THE ARAB WORLD
edited by
David Westerlund
and
Ingvar Svanberg
Routledge
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First Published in 1999
by Routledge
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Editorial Matter 0 1999 David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg

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Preface
In January 1998 the Anchorage Daily News reported that there is a

growing presence of Muslims in Alaska and that there are now three Islamic
centres in Anchorage. Increasingly, Islamic obligations like fasting during
the month of Ramadan are observed by Muslims in places as far apart as
Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Stockholm and Christchurch. This illustrates
the fact that Islam is not only a religion of Arabs. In fact, the great majority
of Muslims are neither Arabic-speaking, nor resident in the Middle East,
but are spread across virtually all parts of the world, particularly in Central,
South and Southeast Asia as well as in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Of
the six most populous Muslim countries in the world - Indonesia, Pakistan,
India, Bangladesh, Turkey and Iran - none is Arab, and in Africa sub-
Saharan Nigeria has more Muslims than any of the Maghrib countries of
North Africa. Furthermore, after the Second World War and decolonisa-
tion, labour immigration and refugees have given Muslims a significant
minority position in Western Europe.
This book deals with the great variety and complexity that characterise
Islam outside the Arab world. The case studies present Islam and the role of
Muslims in a number of countries in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe and the
Americas. The contributions provide a historical background to the growth
of Islam in the respective areas but concentrate primarily and comprehen-
sively on the contemporary situation. Among other things, much attention
is focused on Sufism, which is the most significant form of Islam in many
non-Arab parts of the Muslim world, as well as on the importance of the
recent resurgence of Islam in the form of various Islamist movements and
organisations. The introduction to the book provides a historical and
theological background to the area studies and accounts for some
important and recurring Islamic concepts.
The volume is partly a result of a research project at Uppsala university,
sponsored by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and
Social Sciences. The contributors represent several disciplines, such as
anthropology, ethnology, history of religions, Iranian Studies, Islamic
studies, missiology, political science and sociology. This indicates that
research on Islam and Muslims is today quite well-established in a great
number of disciplines. Much of the authors' material is based on field notes
and local sources. References to some scholarly books and articles, which
may be recommended for further studies, are found in an annotated section
at the end of each chapter. Since the volume is written for a wide circle of
readers, there is a simplified system of transcription without diacritical
marks, and the Islamic concepts used are briefly explained in each
contribution.
David Westerlund and Inguar Suanberg

Contributors
Muhammed Abdullah al-Ahari is a postgraduate in Linguistics and History

at Northeastern Illinois University. His main research interest is Islam in the
Western world. He has published extensively in American and other
journals and is currently working on a multi-volume Encyclopedia of Islam
in the Americas and Europe as well as translating slave narratives and
Islamic works from Arabic to English.
Ishtiaq Ahmed is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stockholm

University. His scholarly interests cover a wide range of contemporary
issues and areas. He has written on the politics of South Asia and the
Middle East, nationalism and ethnicity, religion and politics in Islam,
human rights and international migration. Currently, he is working on the
project 'Islam and human rights: a comparative study of Turkey, Egypt and
Pakistan'. His recent publications include State, Nation and Ethnicity in
Contemporary South Asia (1996).
Justin Ben-Adam is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tulane

University, New Orleans. His major research fields are China, Central Asia,
urban anthropology and cultural studies of religion. He has carried out
extensive field work in Chinese Central Asia. In addition to articles on
Uighur culture, he has recently published the monograph Uyghur
Nationalism along China's Silk Road (1997).
Sven Cederroth is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor at the

Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Gothenburg University. He
has specialised in the anthropology of religion with a focus on Indonesia
and Malaysia. His recent publications include Survival and Profit in Rural
Java: The Case of an East Javanese Village (1995) and Managing Marital
Disputes in Malaysian Syariah Courts: Islamic Mediators and Conflict
Resolution in the Syariah Courts (1997).
Svante Cornell is a postgraduate in the Departments of Peace and Conflict

Studies and East European Studies at Uppsala University. He has published
Contributors
a number of articles on politics and conflicts in the Caucasus and

Transcaucasus regions in journals such as Current History and Central
Asian Survey.
Eva Evers Rosander is Senior Research Fellow in Gender Studies at the

Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University, and Associate Professor in Social
Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her main scholarly interests are
Islam, particularly Sufism, gender and development, currently with a focus
on Senegal. She has carried out extensive field work in Morocco, Ceuta and
Senegal and is the author of W o m e n in a Borderland: Managing Muslim
Identity where Morocco Meets Spain (1991) and the co-editor, together
with David Westerlund, of African Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters
between Sufis and Islamists (1997).
Mattias Gardell is Assistant Professor and Research Fellow in the History

of Religions at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University. His main fields
of interest are African-American religion, political Islam, religious racism
and radical nationalism. He recently published In the N a m e of Elijah
Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (1996).
R o n Geaves is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of

Wolverhampton. His main fields of interest are the religions of the Indian
subcontinent, including the varieties of Islam that have developed in that
region. As a result of migration processes, he is particularly interested in the
transmigration and adaptation of subcontinental traditions into Britain. He
has recently published the monograph Sectarian Influences within Islam i n
Britain (1996) and is currently working on a book entitled T h e Sufis of
Britain.
Christer Hedin is Associate Professor of Studies in Faiths and Ideologies and

teaches Islam and the History of Religions at the Universities of Uppsala
and Stockholm. His main scholarly interest is Islamic theology, Quranic as
well as contemporary. In addition to a number of articles in English, he has
published several books and articles in Swedish, including an introduction
to Islam entitled Islam i vardagen och varlden (1994).
Bernhard Helander is Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural

Anthropology, Uppsala University. His regional focus is Africa, and he has
carried out research in Somalia since 1982. He has published extensively in
the fields of local community organisation, medical anthropology and post-
conflict management.
Michael Humphrey is Senior Lecturer in the School of Sociology at the

University of New South Wales. His interests include issues of cultural
Contributors
identity and globalisation, especially in the context of the contemporary

crisis of the nation-state. In this field he has recently published the volume
Ethnicity and Identity in a Globalizing World (1998). He has also
published extensively on Islam in Australia and Lebanon, including the
new book Islam, Multiculturalism and Transnationalism: From the
Lebanese Diaspora (1998).
Franz Kogelmann is Lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies at

Bayreuth University. Apart from Muslim communities in Europe, his
scholarly work focuses on contemporary Islamist movements and pious
endowments (waqfs) in modern Muslim societies. His recent publications
include Die Islamisten ~ ~ y p t e nins d e ~Regierungszeit Anwar as-Sadat
(1994) and Islamische fromme Stiftungen und Staat: Der Wandel in den
Beziehungen zwischen einer religiosen Institution und dem marokkanischen
Staat seit dem 19. Jahrhundert bis 1937 (1998).
Abdulaziz Lodhi is Senior Lecturer in Swahili and East African Area Studies
at the Department of Asian and African Languages, Uppsala University. He
has published extensively in Swahilistics and on Zanzibar affairs. Currently
he is working on the project 'Oriental influences in East Africa (with special
reference to loanwords)'.
Kjell Magnusson is a sociologist and Assistant Professor at the Centre for

Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University. His main scholarly interests are
ethnic and national conflicts, sociology of religion and society and culture
in the Balkan peninsula. In addition to numerous articles on Yugoslavian
and Balkan issues, he has recently published the book Attitudes and Values
in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Sociological Investigation (1995).
Roberta Micallef is Research Fellow and teaches Turkish at the Department

of Asian and African languages, Uppsala University. Her current research
focuses on Uzbek and Middle Eastern literature. She recently published the
volume National Identity Construction: The Case of Uzbekistan (1997).
Neal Robinson is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Department of

Theology and Religious Studies in the University of Leeds. His current
major research interests are Quranic studies and Islam in France.
Discovering the Qur'an (1996) and Islam: A Concise Introduction (1998)
are two of his recent publications.
William Shepard is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the

University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His primary
interest is in Islamic ideology in the modern world, particularly in Egypt.
His most recent book is Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (1996), an
Contributors
annotated translation of the last edition of Qutb's Social Justice in Islam,

comparing it in detail with the earlier editions.
Christopher Steed teaches African history at Uppsala University. His

current research interests are Christian missionary strategies towards
African Islam, and the ecclesiatical history of Nigeria. He is joint author,
with Bengt Sundkler, of A History of the Church in Africa (1999).
Ingvar Svanberg is an ethnologist and Senior Research Fellow at the

Department of East European Studies, Uppsala University. His research
interests include Central Asian culture, religion and history, ethnobiology
and minority issues, particularly concerning Muslims. He has written
numerous books and articles on a wide range of topics. Recently he
published the monograph China's Last Nomads: The History and Culture
of China's Kazaks (1998), together with Linda Benson, and the collective
volume Contemporary Kazaks: Cultural and Political Perspectives (1999).
Abdulkader Tayob teaches Islam and Religious Studies at the University of

Cape Town. Recently he has been studying the history and institutions of
Muslims in South Africa and their transformation during the period of
transition and democratic government. In 1995 he published Islamic
Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement, and another
book, on South African mosques and sermons, is now in press.
David Westerlund is Associate Professor at the Department of Comparative

Religion, Stockholm University, and Senior Lecturer in the History of
Religions at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University. His main
scholarly interests are indigenous African religions and Islam in Africa,
religion and politics, Sufism in Europe and inter-religious relations,
particularly between Christians and Muslims. He has recently edited
Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence of Religion in
Politics (1996) and co-edited, with Eva Evers Rosander, African Islam and
Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists (1997).
Bo Utas is Professor of Iranian Studies in the Department of Asian and

African Languages, Uppsala University. His scholarly interests cover a field
from the history of West Iranian languages (especially Persian) to the
history of Persian culture, religion and literature, particularly Sufi poetry.
He has published articles and books on a wide range of topics, including the
recent Arabic Prosody and its Applications in Muslim Poetry (1994), which
he co-edited with Lars Johansson.
Introduction
Christer Hedin, Inguar Svanberg and David Westerlund
Say (0Muhammad): O people! I am the messenger of God to all of you.

(Suva 7:158)
At the beginning Islam was the religion of the Arabs, although non-Arab
Muslims often point out that even some of the Prophet Muhammad's first
disciples were not Arabs. During the Umayyad period (before 750) a
particularist view was predominant, and there were hardly any attempts to
convert colonised peoples to Islam despite the universalist features of the
Quran, exemplified by the quotation above. It was not until the Abbasid
period (after 750) that Islam to a considerable extent started spreading
among non-Arab peoples. Even though the vast majority of the Muslims of
the world are now found outside the Arab world, it is still common in the
West to consider Islam as an Arab religion. Scholars of religion, whose
work has concentrated primarily on the development of early Islam and
who have often combined the research on Islam with studies of Semitic
languages, have seldom wanted - or been able - to follow the enormous
expansion of Islam in time and space, further and further out into the
'periphery'. It is primarily owing to other specialists such as historians,
anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and philologists who
specialise in other 'Muslim' languages such as Urdu and Swahili that,
particularly during the last few decades, a sounder knowledge of Islam
outside the Arab world has been acquired. The substantial number of social
scientists now involved in the study of Muslims in most parts of the world
reflects the increased political influence of Islam.
The concept of the Arab world can be understood in various ways. Here
it is not used in a geographical or ethnic sense but as language term.
Currently the number of people whose mother tongue is some 'dialect' of
Arabic is at least 175 million. Of these approximately 90 per cent are
Muslims. However, the total number of Muslims in the world probably by
far exceeds 1 billion. Thus, only some 15 per cent of all Muslims are Arabs.
Moreover, the number of Muslims is growing more rapidly outside than
inside the Arab world. The increase is primarily due to population growth
in Muslim areas, but it is also caused by conversions to Islam. In particular,
Introduction
conversion is an important additional reason for the expansion of Islam in

Africa south of the Sahara. The purpose of this book is to present Islam and
its current renewal among non-Arab Muslims. The volume includes a
number of case studies on different parts of the world: Africa, Asia,
Oceania, Europe and the Americas. These studies exemplify the rich variety
that so often is obscured in stereotypic and monolithic accounts which are
common in Western media. We have tried to avoid stereotypic simplifica-
tions not only in the texts but also in the illustrations that we have chosen.
Hence, the latter are not dominated by Western standard pictures of, for
instance, veiled women and praying men, which easily heighten prejudices
about Muslims.
The multiplicity of Islam is largely associated with Sufism, which is the
predominant form of Islam in many areas outside the Arab world. Yet,
despite all the variety among Muslims, there are certain basic features, such
as classical Arabic as a ritual language and Mecca as a ritual centre, which
give the worldwide community of Muslims a feeling of togetherness. In
particular, the basic creed (shahada) - 'there is no god except God and
Muhammad is His Messenger' - unites all Muslims of the world. There has
always been a more orthodox stream which has depicted Islam as a
homogeneous entity. However, pan-Islamic and Arab-oriented tendencies
can also be found within Sufism. Currently, it is above all the so-called
fundamentalist or Islamist groups that stress the international issues and
want to 'purify' Islam from the 'degenerate' influence of Sufism and
Western secularism. In this introduction we will first provide a more general
background to the regional studies that follow. Since the book is written not
only for students of Religious Studies or specialists on Islam but for a wider
circle of readers, there is a fairly detailed account of some basic elements of
Islam, which will facilitate the reading of the following essays. In the latter
there will, therefore, be only brief explanations of Islamic concepts used.
Since Sufism is of great significance in areas outside the Arab world, we will
pay considerable attention to introducing this type of Islam. Much
attention will also be focused on the contemporary, and not least politically
important, Islamic resurgence.
The foundations of Islam

In Western studies, Islam is often portrayed as a founded religion, whose
origin can be dated back to the seventh century. Since Muhammad is
regarded as the founder, the term 'Muhammadanism' has been used.
According to Muslims, however, Muhammad was not the founder of Islam
and, as a consequence, they reject the concept of Muhammadanism. Islam
is the original religion of humankind, founded by God. For the same
reason, Islam is the natural religion, the religion which is in perfect
accordance with human nature and reason. The first human beings were
Hedin, Svanberg and Westerlund
Adam and Eve. This Muslim belief has seldom led to any conflicts with the
findings of the natural sciences concerning the age of the earth and the
origin of the species. Adam and Eve may be seen as symbols of the
emergence of humankind. For Muslims, Adam was not only the first human
being but also the first Muslim and first prophet. Islam is not primarily a
religion in a limited sense but a basic view on, and a whole pattern of, life.
In Western handbooks, Islam is often translated 'submission'. Although this
is not wrong, it becomes misleading if it is not seen in its proper context.
Theologically trained Muslims do not use the term 'submission' to depict
what is central in Islam. Islam is an Arabic word, and like other Arabic
words it is based on three consonants with a basic spectrum of meaning.
The consonants 'slm' are found in the term salaam too, which signifies
piece, harmony, balance and righteousness. Living as a Muslim means
living in a right relationship to God and fellow human beings. Today it is
often added that it also means to live in a right relationship to nature. God's
creation is good, and He has appointed the human being as His deputy. If
humans live righteously, the world can develop its potential for perfection.
The duty of human beings is to administer the creation so that all its
opportunities are taken advantage of and all its gifts are shared in a
righteous way.
From the beginning, the whole creation was in a state of Islam, an
innocent and promising phase with a potential for a perfect life for all.
Animals and plants still live in this original Islam - they live in accordance
with the laws of nature, instituted by God, and consequently in a right
relationship to their creator. The problem is humankind. Since humans are
created in the image of God, they must have free will. Therefore, they can
deviate from the natural order they were born into and grew up in. The
adult human is the only created being that can refuse to live according to
the will of God. Created in the image of God, a human being is not only free
but also morally good and rational. In Islam there is no doctrine of a Fall
and original sin. The optimistic view on humans is a necessary consequence
of the concept of God. God is one, and He is wise and omnipotent. Nothing
must be put on a par with Him. He would never accept that the evil power
controlled His finest creature, the human being. To believe in such a
possiblity would be to put Satan on a par with God. Satan is a spiritual
being who refused to venerate the human being as God's most perfect
creature. At the end of time Satan will be eternally punished, but until then
he tempts human beings. The evil is rooted in lack of knowledge and
insufficient wisdom. Humans can make faulty judgements that make them
act in a wrong way. Since evil is associated with reason rather than will, it is
generally argued that reason must control the basic instincts of human
beings.
The fact that Adam is the first Muslim as well as the first prophet means
that he has been commissioned by God to convey to other human beings the
Introduction
message about God's will. However, this message was soon distorted by
ignorant and unreasonable people. God then sent new prophets, whose
message was also distorted. Before God sent the final prophet, Muhammad,
there had been hundreds of thousands of prophets commissioned by God to
teach the right way of life, that is, the meaning of Islam. Through
Muhammad, God wanted to give humankind a revelation which corrected
all previous misrepresentations and could not be distorted. It is the last
revelation, perfect in all respects. According to the majority of Muslims, no-
one can claim to be a prophet after Muhammad.
Muslims hold that the deity they worship is the same as the one
worshipped by Jews and Christians, although there are various names in
different languages. Allah (literally 'the God') is an Arabic word used by
Christian Arabs too. Muslims believe that God revealed Himself to a vast
number of Biblical persons like Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus,
but their revelations were recorded in a distorted way, and it is these
versions that were put together to form the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.
The flawless, and thus impeccable, version of God's revelation was
conveyed by Muhammed and recorded in the Quran. Its similarities with
the Bible prove that it is the same God who has revealed Himself to all
prophets, while the dissimilarities demonstrate that the older revelations
have been misrepresented. Since animals and plants live unconsciously and
involuntarily in Islam, we can learn about God's intentions by studying
nature. Human beings, however, who have a free will, can in their actions
deviate from the 'laws of nature' which apply to them, that is, from those
norms that express the will of God. In order to counteract the possibility of
human deviations, God has revealed His will not only in the Quran but also
in the perfect life of Muhammad. In other words, there are two parts of the
divine revelation: the Quran and the example of the Prophet, sunna.
The book called the Quran is a terrestial copy of a heavenly prototype,
commonly called the Original Quran. It is the contents of that Quran which
has been revealed to prophets at all times. Muhammad was an 'ordinary'
human being in the sense that he was in no way divine. Muslims frequently
believe that he could not read or write. Among scholars, this is a questioned
belief, but for Muslims the crucial point is that the Quran came into
existence through a miracle. The miracle being that an unlearned man could
present a book which in all respects is the most perfect one that has ever
existed. The perfect language of the Quran means that Arabic holds an
exceptional position as the sacred language of Islam. As a rule, Muslims
regard the learning of Arabic as a religious duty and, ideally, the Quran
should be read in this language. Outside the Arab world, however, Muslims
often memorise certain parts of or even the whole book without properly
learning the language itself. In particular, memorising as much as possible
of the Quran has been, and still is in many places, an important goal in the
education of Muslim youth. Since Arabic has a special religious status,
A copy of an old Quran in the Muftiate centre of Tashkent, Uzbekistan

(photo: David Thurfjell, 1998).
knowledge of that language has a legitimising function. However, this does

not mean that all teachers in Quranic schools can explain how the
principles of Islam are rooted in the sacred texts. This has proved important
when, for instance, Muslim feminists in Pakistan have learnt Arabic
'properly' and opposed male religious leaders on issues concerning the role
of women. Because of their superior knowledge of Arabic, they have been
successful in such debates.
The life of Muhammad is largely known, although a number of
uncertainties remain. He was about forty years old when he first presented
his message in Mecca, calling for a reform of the old Arab religion. In the
early seventh century there was social unrest in Mecca, with many young
Arabs having lost the traditional bonds with their tribes. It was largely from
this group of uprooted people that Muhammad started attracting followers.
Very few of his adherents had a social standing in Mecca, and many of the
city's leaders fought against him. Muhammad then moved his activities to
Medina, where an Islamic society was established. A couple of years before
his death, the people of Mecca became his followers too. When he died in
632 almost the whole Arab peninsula was united in one country based on
affiliation to Islam. Since Muhammad's own life was associated with Mecca
and Medina, these cities are of special significance to Muslims. Every year,
millions of people make the pilgrimage (hajj)to present-day Saudi Arabia in
Introduction
order to visit them. With the old Meccan temple of Kaba as the ritual
centre, a complex set of rites is performed by the pilgrims. There is,
moreover, a Muslim tradition which says that Muhammad once made a
nightly journey to Jerusalem. In that way, his deeds were connected to those
of the old prophets. Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are - in that order - the
most important cities of Islam, although some theologians are critical of the
veneration of Jerusalem.
Knowledge of Muhammad's life can be gained from a number of sources.
Since the followers saw the Prophet as an ideal in all aspects of human life,
they started recording those episodes that could in some way be used to
regulate Islamic behaviour. As time went on, a vast number of brief stories
about Muhammad's sayings and doings circulated among Muslims. In
Arabic a report of this kind is called hadith. Eventually learned religious
scholars made collections of stories which were considered authentic. On
the basis of these collections they were able to depict the life of Muhammad
and, as a consequence, the life of any righteous Muslim. This ideal is called
sunna (custom, practice). Because only about 500 of the 6,000 verses in the
Quran form a basis for laws about right and wrong, the most part of the
legal regulations must be based on the Sunna. As a religious source of
inspiration the Quran holds the central position, but as a source of law the
Sunna is at least as important as the Quran.
Muslims often say that there is no distinction in Islam between doctrines
and ethics. One cannot make a distinction between doctrine and pattern of
life. Islam is a total way of life, often described with the Arabic term
tawhid, which means oneness in several respects and concerns, above all,
God Himself, who is One and Unique. This view of God, and the meaning
of Islam, implies that one cannot distinguish between spiritual and non-
spiritual, between religion and politics or between soul and body. Ideally,
this means that a Muslim's whole life becomes a service of God, a
'worship'. The right worship is a life in Islam, and the guidelines for such a
life are found in the Quran and Sunna.
Islamic law and organisation

As a historical religion Islam has, consequently, developed into a system of
advice, commandments and prohibitions. This legal system is called the
sharia. The Islamic law is based on the Quran and Sunna, but the principles
of analogy and consensus (of the learned scholars), as well as new
interpretations (ijtihad), have contributed to a great flexibility in terms of
adjusting the regulations to new areas and periods of time. Although there
are Muslims who argue that the 'gates of ijtihad' were closed about 1,000
years ago, the majority hold that new interpretations should be made.
During the first few centuries some so-called law schools or traditions
developed. In part, these are based on various traditions of interpretation
and have different 'founders'. The differences between them are, in general,
fairly small, although they have been of some significance in terms of
shaping the identity of Muslims in various parts of the world. The Maliki
school is associated with Malik Ibn Abas, who died in 795, and
predominates in North and West Africa. Abu Hanifa lived in Mesopotamia
during the eighth century and became the originator of the Hanafi legal
tradition. Most of its followers are found in Turkey, Central Asia and India.
Al-Shafii worked in Egypt in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. His
work was aimed at systematising the various methods for deriving new from
old within Islamic jurisprudence and became the point of departure for the
Shafii school of law, which is found mainly in East Africa and Southeast
Asia. The fourth tradition is the one that differs most from the others. Its
founder was Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, and his followers are found mainly on the
Arabian peninsula. Outside the Arab world it has few adherents, but during
several centuries reform movements calling for a return to the original Islam
have been inspired by the Hanbali tradition. In that way its influence has
spread far beyond the borders of the Arab peninsula.
There is no priesthood in Islam. The religious tradition is transmitted
primarily by juridically and religiously trained scholars. A Muslim jurist is
called faqih (plural fuqaha), and the activities of the fuqaha are called fiqh.
Religiously learned scholars, who often also have a substantial knowledge
of legal matters, are called ulama (singular alim, learned). The ulama can
work at a university, a mosque or some other study centre. They have no
special ritual functions in the mosque worship, even though, for example,
they may preach at the main Friday service. With regard to their
relationship to God, Muslims do not depend on the ulama. Each individual
is directly answerable to God. Thus, there are no 'sacraments' that have to
be administered by religious leaders.
All Muslims in the world belong to what they call umma, which may be
translated as community or congregation. The umma has no decreed
organisation. The learned scholars, ulama and fuqaha, are the most
important 'functionaries' of Islam, but there is in principle no ordination
for their roles and no hierarchy which gives one power over the other. In
practice, certain local forms of organisation have developed, but there are
few, if any, similarities to the strict hierarchy of, for example, the Catholic
Church. Muhammad was an inspired preacher who received a number of
revelations of a very practical kind. These contributed to the detailed
regulation of organisational matters concerning, for instance, marriage,
divorce and inheritance. The following of Islamic inheritance rules means
that a deceased person's belongings are given to a considerable number of
relatives. Thus, it has been difficult or impossible for individuals to
accumulate great fortunes through inheritance. However, it has been
possible for individuals or families to form a religious foundation (waqf).
Many Muslim activities have been initiated and administered by such
Introduction
foundations. They can be involved in, for instance, education and health
care, but they may also build mosques and shelters. This privately formed
network of organisations has largely been able to function outside the
control of religious leaders.
Theology of religion
The idea of Islam as the original and natural religion makes its relationship
to other religions an inclusive one. What does it mean to be a Muslim? On
the one hand, one can be a 'nominal' Muslim. There is no baptism in Islam,
but it is commonly held that those who have said the creed in the presence of
two witnesses have become Muslims. On the other hand, Muslim religious
leaders may argue that it is possible to be a 'functional' Muslim despite
nominal adherence to another religion. Following this line of thought, even
a person who does not consider himself or herself to be religious at all may
be regarded as a Muslim. When Muslims today discuss the difficulties of
poor Muslim countries, they may say that the problem is the Muslims
themselves: 'They are no longer Muslims'. Conversely, they may argue that a
formally Christian European or American is 'a good Muslim'.
In all religions there may be people who live 'in Islam'. However, the
religions of the so-called peoples of the Book are considered to be
particularly close to Islam. As 'protected peoples' they should have the right
to a considerable amount of independence in Islamic countries. First and
foremost Jews and Christians, who received revelations from older prophets
which are collected in books, belong to this category of peoples. When
Muslims later encountered other believers with holy books, such as
Zoroastrians in Iran, some of these were occasionally also included in the
category of peoples of the book. By contrast, groups or individuals who
have claimed to fulfil or supplement the revelations of the Quran have been
strongly opposed by the vast majority of Muslims. Two examples of such
movements are the Bahai of Iran and the Ahmadiyya of South Asia. At times
they have been ruthlessly persecuted. There may have been several reasons
for such persecutions, but the theological justification is that the revelation
of Muhammad is complete and therefore cannot be supplemented.
Sunnites and Shiites

Muhammad managed to unite the Arab peninsula, but who should succeed
him as the leader of this region after his death in 632? There was no
revelation which made it clear how the umma should be lead or
administered after that time. Eventually the struggle for power lead to
the division of Muslims into two main groups, Sunnites and Shiites. The
majority of Muslims favoured the appointment of the Prophet's father-in-
law, Abu Bakr, as his successor (caliph). An opposing group argued that the
rightful successor to Muhammad was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali.

According to them, the Prophet had a unique position among human
beings, and only those who were related to him could have the proper
resources to succeed him. Those who favoured Ali may have had their own
interests of power, and it is possible that they planned to take advantage of
Ali's youth. When Muhammad died, Ali was only thirty years old. This was
something held against him by his opponents.
Abu Bakr became the first caliph, and the supporters of Ali bided their
time. When Abu Bakr died in 634, they had a new chance, but this time
another of Muhammad's helpers, Umar, was elected. Following Umar's
death ten years later, Ali was yet again passed over, and Uthman became the
third caliph. It was not until the death of Uthman that Ali eventually became
the prime leader of the Muslims. However, he had many enemies, especially
among Uthman's relatives in the Umayyad family, and Ali was accused of
being an accessory to the murder of the third caliph. In 657 Umayyad
soldiers met Ali's supporters in the battlefield. Ali seemed to prevail over his
enemies, but he accepted a cease-fire and arbitration. As a result, a large
group of followers left Ali. These people, the Kharijites (seceders), formed
their own congregation and exerted a considerable political influence during
the first few centuries of Islam's history. According to the Kharijites, the
prime leader of the Muslims should be the most pious person, regardless of
descent. The leader must have the support of the congregation, and purity of
life is the crucial test. The Umayyads continued to threaten Ali, and
eventually he too was murdered. The leader of the Ummayads at that time
(661),Muawiya, became the new caliph and established his headquarters in
Damascus. The Shiites were now an opposition group lead by Ali's sons, first
Hasan and later Husayn. In 680, Husayn's followers urged him to attack the
new Umayyad caliph Yazid. Their forces met in the battlefield of Karbala,
where the outnumbered army of Husayn suffered a devastating defeat. The
battle of Karbala, and the idea of martyrdom associated with this struggle,
have an immense significance in Shiite Islam. For many Shiites, Karbala is
thus an even more important city than Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.
The highest Shiite leader is called Imam. After the death of Husayn, his
son became the fourth Imam; following whose death the Shiites split into
two groups which supported different successors. The Zaydis, named after
their candidate Zayd, were the minority group. However, at the end of the
ninth century they managed to establish a Zaydi state in Yemen, which
existed until 1963. After the death of the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, in 765,
another division occurred when a minority supported the elder son Ismail,
while the majority held that Jafar al-Sadiq had designated his younger son,
Musa al-Qazim, as his heir. The Ismaili Shiites later suffered further
divisions. Some of the splinter groups still exist, while others have
disappeared. A well-known branch of the Ismaili tree is the Nizaris
(Khojas) led by the Aga Khan. The Druse are a non-Muslim offshot of
Introduction
Ismailism. Theologically, Ismailis tend to be very eclectic, and their

doctrines may deviate substantially from those of more orthodox forms
of Sunni Islam. The largest group of Shiites, the followers of Musa al-Qasim
and a series of subsequent Imams, are called Imamites or Twelvers. Their
twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Muntazar, disappeared or left the earth in the
ninth century. The Twelvers believe that he went into seclusion but will
return at the end of the world as a messianic figure, the Mahdi (expected
one), and usher in the perfect society of Islam. In Iran, Imamite Shiism is
now the politically established form of Islam. Ayatollah Khomeini (d. 1989)
was called Imam, but in that case it was an honorific title. The returning
Imam, the Mahdi, is still expected, and the Shiite leaders of Iran claim that
their Islamic rule is paving the way for his reappearance.
The largest group of Muslims, who regarded the caliph as their prime
leader, were called Sunnites. Among other things, this refers to their
adherence to the sunna of the Prophet, which is considered more important
than the leader's ties of consanguinity. The Shiites have always been a
minority within Islam, usually between 10 and 15 per cent. Although the
basic conflict has concerned the leadership question, other differences have
also gradually developed, and Shiite Islam now differs in many respects
from Sunnism. Since the Imams are conceived of as divinely inspired
leaders, their interpretations and guidelines are of utmost importance.
Ordinary Shiites can understand the exoteric aspects of the Quran, but the
Imams have been entrusted with an additional esoteric message. Sunnites,
who do not conceive of the caliphs in that way, emphasise more strongly the
need for each Muslim to read the Quran and Sunna, the final revelations, in
order to find out what is right and wrong.
In Shiite Islam, suffering and martyrdom is exalted as a duty and
happiness. The prime model of Shiite suffering is the above-mentioned
death of Husayn. The memory of Husayn's martyrdom at Karbala is
recalled to mind every year through exquisite recitations, passion plays and
street processions, which may include dramatic physical self-torment as the
tragedy of Husayn is relived. Through ritual reenactment and identification
with the experience of Husayn, Shiites seem to seek atonement for their sins
and hasten the final triumph, which will be accomplished when the Mahdi
returns. Somehow this hope for the future and the memories of the past
may compensate for suffering here and now. In Shiite theology the view of
man tends to be darker than in Sunnism. Shiites need their spiritual leaders
for proper guidance, but their eschatology provides hope for a bright future.
The historical spread of Islam

The Islamic empire founded during the time of Muhammad proved to be
militarily very strong. The powerful neighbouring countries Byzantium and
Iran were soon defeated as were Egypt and Mesopotamia. One century after
the death of Muhammad the caliphate covered a huge area from the Indus
in the east to Spain in the west. Karl Martell's victory over the Muslims at
Poitiers in 732 had a symbolic rather than a political significance, but it
sealed the border of Muslim expansion in Western Europe.
As of 750 the caliph resided in Iraq, but as early as the ninth century he
lost his real political power. Turkish military leaders and Iranian rulers
became increasingly powerful. However, Islam thoroughly influenced
Turkish and Persian culture. The Turks largely contributed to the further
spread of Islam in Central Asia. In the thirteenth century Mongols invaded
large areas with Muslim populations, but many of them soon converted to
Islam. During the following centuries Islam spread further and further
eastwards. The Shiite Safavid empire was established in the sixteenth
century in Iran. The Mughul empire of South Asia was founded at the
beginning of that century, and this region eventually became religiously
divided, basically between Hindus and Muslims. The further spread of
Islamic influence in South East Asia, mainly through trading activities, was
a slow process. Now, in the late twentieth century, Islam is the politically
dominant religion in Malaysia, and Indonesia has more Muslims than any
other country. The most successful of the Turkish empires was the Ottoman
empire, which was founded in the thirteenth century. It was the Ottomans
who captured Constantinople in 1453, and conquered Egypt in 1516-17.
The Ottoman sultan in Istanbul was called caliph at least from the
eighteenth century until the caliphate was abolished in the early 1920s and
a new secular Turkey was formed. Through Ottoman rule in the Balkan
region, many people in those areas became Muslims. However, the
Ottoman advance in Eastern Europe came to a halt when they were
defeated at Vienna in 1683.
North Africa became a part of the Islamic empire early on. From the
north, Berber and Arab merchants spread Islam in the Sudanic belt, and
some kings in West Africa converted to Islam. Moreover, Islamic influence
in Africa south of the Sahara spread from Egypt through traffic on the Nile
and from the east towards the highlands of present-day Eritrea and
Ethiopia. In East Africa, Arab traders established settlements along the
coast and started intermarrying with Bantu women, eventually forming the
eclectic Swahili culture. In most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, however, only
very limited numbers of people converted to Islam before the modern
period of European colonialism. Paradoxically, that period favoured the
spread not only of Christianity but also of Islam.
Through the slave trade, some Muslims came to the Americas. In post-
colonial decades, emigration from Islamic parts of the world has brought
considerable numbers of Muslims to the Western world, particularly
Europe. As immigrants, a limited number of Muslims also arrived in
Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. In all these parts of the
world only a few people have converted to Islam.
Introduction
Sufism
In Western studies Sufism is often referred to as the mysticism of Islam, even
though it involves much more than that. It has its roots in the earliest period
of Islam, and grew gradually to become immensely important, especially in
areas outside the Arab world. In the life of Muhammad, and particularly in
his early message, there was an element of mysticism. He left for lonely
places to pray and meditate, and as a prophet he had intense religious
experiences. Sufis often refer to Muhammad, as well as to Jesus, as prime
examples of mystical life. As a mystical movement, Sufism was also a
reaction against the splendour and affluence that characterised the life of
Muslim political and other leaders. The ideal of ascetism was an important
aspect of early Sufism. Furthermore, Sufis were influenced by pious people in
other religions, particularly Christians. Even some of the philosophical
schools of late antiquity had elements of mysticism which influenced Sufi
Muslims. During the earliest centuries of Islam, Sufi leaders frequently
demanded a modest life style and stood up for 'spiritual' values. Their
ascetism was combined with a strong trust in God (tawakkul). Love of God
was the cardinal virtue, and could only be received as a gift. The Sufis turned
against the predominant role of the jurists and wanted to replace obedience
with love as the central aspect of people's relationship to God. Also, they
tended to see sentiment as a more important religious element than reason.
The term Sufism is probably derived from the word suf, which refers to
the simple wool garments worn by early ascetics. Although Christian
monastery life was one of their sources of inspiration, Sufis did not live a
celibate life. In the earliest period, they were not organised, but during the
ninth century the communal aspects, in terms of spiritual exercises and
religious discussions, became increasingly important. Dhikr (remembrance
of God) seances, with repetition of God's names and passages from the
Quran, litanies and deep meditation became characteristics of Sufi
gatherings. Music and dance were important elements in these meetings.
At the beginning they could take place anywhere, even in mosques, but
gradually special buildings came to be used, and the Sufi gatherings became
to some extent alternatives to the mosque services.
The rift between Sufism and 'official', or more orthodox, forms of Islam
widened during the ninth century. Sufis established structures which
resembled monasteries, and some of them withdrew from the world
outside these compounds. The Shiite doctrine about the coming saviour of
the world, the Mahdi, was incorporated even in the Sunni forms of Sufism.
Sufi leaders walked about in towns and in the countryside, preaching and
telling dramatic life stories, often influenced by other religions. In order to
justify new elements in their message, they referred to hadiths which more
orthodox religious leaders dismissed as spurious. Whole doctrinal systems
soon developed within Sufism. By referring to these, Sufis defended
themselves against accusations of religious anarchy. Spiritual life was

regulated in detail, and Sufis passed through various stages towards greater
closeness to God. In trance, some Sufis even identified themselves with God.
Through the spiritual 'refinement', ideas of sainthood and veneration of
saints became important elements within Sufism. In some respects, saints
were regarded as even more important and holy than the prophets.
Although Muhammad was the last prophet, that did not mean that an even
greater saint could not appear later. There is a cosmic dimension of
sainthood - the very existence of the world depends on the cosmic saint.
Such a mysterious saint, who is called al-Khadir, is an invisible guardian
saint who guides human beings to spiritual perfection.
As of the tenth century Sufism became more and more questioned by
representatives of 'official' Islam. In 922, the Sufi al-Hallaj, who claimed
some kind of mystical identification with God, was executed. Perhaps there
were also political reasons for this execution. However, one branch of
Sufism now came nearer to orthodox theology, and around 1100 a
'reconciliation' was brought about through the work of Abu Hamid al-
Ghazali. He stressed the importance of mysticism for theology and created
a synthesis which demarcated theology from philosophical speculations and
mystical excesses. In that way one branch of Sufism became socially
presentable, but - with a few exceptions - this also alienated the
philosophically interested from theology. In other branches of Sufism, the
influence of Gnostic, neo-Platonic and other philosophical currents
continued to be important. In neo-Platonically inspired pantheistic Sufi
speculations, a monistic view of reality developed. The strict cleavage
between the Creator and the created was thus blurred, and it was argued
that God is everything. The leading representative of this Sufi speculation
was Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240), who carried the monistic pantheism to its
extreme. This form of Sufism became increasingly exclusive and lost its
popular support, although its theological contents could be used to
legitimise several traits in popular Sufism. Since there was a divine presence
in the creation, things like music, dance, wine and sexuality could offer
attractive ways to contact with God. In poetry and preaching such worldly
pleasures were given a prominent place; and since nothing human could be
completely void of divine contents, ideas from other religions were
incorporated and regarded as expressions of Islam.
The twelfth century was important not only because of al-Ghazali's
legitimation of certain forms of Sufism but also because of the formation of
the first great Sufi orders or brotherhoods, turuq (singular tariqa, method,
path), lead by spiritual masters or shaykhs. Sufism thus became transformed
from loose associations to well-organised, distinctive institutions, which by
the thirteenth century created international networks developing Sufism
into a popular mass movement whose preachers became the great
missionaries of Islam. The source of a shaykh's authority was spiritual
Introduction
reputation, lineage connections with predecessors and miraculous powers.

A special blessing (baraka) was the product of their spiritual power. In Asia
as well as in Africa the orders were influenced by other religions as they
spread further and further away from their places of origin, and new orders
or new branches of old orders were formed. Islam thus became more and
more varied and complex. Increasingly, the orders also became socially and
politically important, particularly during periods of unrest and oppression.
As resistance organisations they fought against unfair treatment and
exploitation of sultans and other rulers. Official Islam, lead by ulama, was
in general closer to the representatives of political power, while popular
protests could be chanelled through Sufism. Hence, the orders sometimes
had the function of socio-political interest organisations or liberation
movements, and the spreading of information, propaganda and plans for
actions against various regimes could be a part of 'religious' gatherings. It
must not be forgotten, however, that there are also examples of Sufi leaders
and orders that have been closely allied to political rulers.
A Sufi master or shaykh was called pir in Persia and South Asia and
marabout in North and West Africa, while a disciple could be referred to as
murid, dervish or faqir. The whole Sufi community was often called ikhwan
(brothers). Normally, there were two kinds of members. The inner circle
lived in the compound or headquarters (zawiya, Persian khanqah), where
the master usually lived too, while the outer circle lived elsewhere and met
the shaykh more rarely. An order or tariqa is made up of several zawiyas.
The brotherhoods are usually named after their founders. The oldest and
most widespread of all Sufi orders is the Qadiriyya, whose founder was Abd
al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166). This tariqa was formed in Baghdad but has
spread to virtually all parts of the Muslim world. In most places the Qadiri
order is fairly close to more orthodox forms of Islam and opposed to
popular excesses. It is now divided into several branches.
The oldest of the Turkic orders is the Yasaviyya, founded by Ahmad
Yasavi in the twelfth century. It has been influenced by a number of Asiatic
religious traditions of a shamanistic kind. Another eclectic order is the
Bektashiyya, an early offshoot of the Yasaviyya, which is influenced by
Shiite and Christian ideas. These orders are unusual in that women are
strongly involved. The Naqshbandi tariqa, now one of the most widespread
and important orders, was founded in the fourteenth century in Bukhara by
Baha al-Din, called Naqshband, the painter. He was given the name
Naqshband because he used to 'paint spiritual pictures in the heart'. His
disciples do the same by silently reading certain words in the dhikr seance.
Although there are some connections between the Naqshbandiyya and the
Bektashiyya, they constitute separate orders. The Naqshbandi brotherhood
is younger and a good deal closer to orthodox Islam. It has been successful
particularly in Central and South Asia but more recently also in the West.
Its best-known member in South Asia was the reformer Ahmad Sirhindi,
The mazar (tomb) of Muin al-Din Chisti, the founder of the Chisti
brotherhood, at his shrine centre in Ajmer, India (photo: Ron Geaves,
1998).
who in the seventeenth century worked for the purification of Islam from
pantheism and other elements derived from contacts with Hindus and the
teachings of al-Arabi. In Sirhindi's view, Islam and Hinduism were mutually
exclusive. The best-known among the primarily urban-based orders in
Turkey is the Mawlawi, organised by the poet Jalal al-Din Rumi in the
thirteenth century. Rumi's poetic work Mathnawi has been enourmously
important and has been referred to as 'the Quran of Sufism'. Because of
their whirling dance, the Mawlawis have been called 'the dancing
dervishes'. They are found mainly in Turkey and other parts of the Middle
East. In South Asia, not only the Qadiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya but also
the Chistiyya play a particularly significant role. The Chisti order was
founded in the thirteenth century by Muin al-Din Chisti, whose grave in
Ajmer is an important pilgrimage centre. During the time of the great
Mughul emperor Akbar (d. 1605) the Chistiyya flourished, and after a
period of decay, it was reorganised in the nineteenth century by Kwaja Nur
Muhammad and became again an influential part of South Asian Islam.
In Africa the Qadiri order has been, and still is, particularly strong. Less
widespread in Africa is another order of Asian origin, the Shadhili tariqa,
which was founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, who lived in the thirteenth
Introduction
century and was strongly influenced by al-Ghazali. The now most

widespread order formed in Africa is the Tijani, which was founded by
Ahmad al-Tijani in Fez in the late eighteenth century. He held that good deeds
are the most important form of divine service. The Tijanis thus tend to engage
intensively in social activities of various kinds. In general, Sufi orders in
Africa have been strongly influenced by indigenous African religions. Here,
as elsewhere, their openness and flexibility have facilitated the mission work.
Through conquests and immigration, Sufi orders came to Europe. For
instance, during the period of Ottoman rule in the Balkan region, several
Sufi orders, notably the Bektashi, were introduced. In recent decades several
Sufi orders have come with Muslim immigrants to the West. The
Naqshbandi, for instance, is widely spread and has also been fairly
successful in terms of converting Westerners to Islam. Among Western
converts to Islam, intellectuals who have been attracted by Sufism are an
important group. Their form of Sufism is often not tied to specific orders. A
more general form of Sufism, to some extent connected to the New Age
movement, is nowadays preached by Sufi missionaries such as Fadhlalla
Haeri and the British convert Reshad Feild. In their work, Sufi preachers
and organisations, as well as other Muslim leaders and associations,
increasingly make use of the modern medium of the Internet.
Islamic culture
During its first few centuries Islam spread in regions with age-old cultures
such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. When the caliph was installed in Baghdad
(probably in 7 6 3 ) , this city developed into the leading centre of Islamic
culture. Since the tenth century, a competing caliph was based in Cordoba,
but there was a lively cultural exchange between these centres. The
Spanish-Arabic culture created buildings, adorned with arabesques, of
lasting beauty. Architecture was the most encouraged art form.
Muslim scholars in Baghdad endeavoured to assimilate all available
scholarly knowledge. The most important source of inspiration was
classical Greek philosophy. Greece had been devastated by the Goths, but
Greek scholarly works had been brought to Egypt and later translated into
Syrian. In Baghdad such works were translated into Arabic. In Spain,
Jewish and Christian scholars cooperated with Muslim academics in order
to transfer as much knowledge as possible into this language. Not all
scholars in Baghdad were Arab, but Arabic was the learned language until it
was superseded by Persian around 1000. Here great works in for instance
astronomy, medicine and mathematics were produced. The development of
mathematics was influenced by scholarly discoveries in India. During the
twelfth century, centres for translations from Arabic into Latin were
established in Spain and Sicily. Around 1200 the Greek and Arabic
achievements of science were thus available in the learned language of
Europe. This initiated a development that would not have been possible
without the Muslim scholarly activities.
Muslims were not only interested in the natural sciences but studied
language, history and religion too. Even music eventually developed despite
the early lack of interest among more orthodox Muslims. Artisan products
like carpets and metallic vessels were produced with great dexterity. A
particularly important field of interest was law. The judicature was
combined with a development of theology and politics. Islamic scholars
thus studied statecraft, historical theories and economics. During the
fourteenth century, however, Muslim scholarly and cultural creative power
petered out and did not return until about half a millennium later. When
Europeans met Islam in the modern colonial period it seemed to be inimical
to culture and to have a retraining effect on scholarly work. Yet Muslims
themselves are well aware of the glorious scholarly and cultural
achievements of earlier Islamic periods, as well as their significance as a
basis for the later development of science and culture in the West, which
eventually gave Westerners a sense of superiority to, and contempt for,
Islam.
Women
The Arabic culture in which Muhammad grew up was patriarchal, and
Islam later spread in areas with predominantly patriarchal traditions.
Hence, there has been a tendency to regard it as a religion that is
particularly hostile to women. However, most other religions, including
Judaism and Christianity, also have their roots in patriarchal cultures. In the
normative Muslim texts, the Quran and the Sunna, there are certain parts
that seem to discriminate against women but there are others that place all
human beings on an equal footing. Many hadiths stress the decisive role of
women as mothers. The pre-Muslim tradition of killing some newborn girls
was outlawed by the Quran. Because many men died in the battlefields, it is
possible that the (restricted) Islamic acceptance of polygyny was partly
caused by the resulting surplus of women. The Quran states, however, that
complete impartiality is a condition for polygyny. Since the Quran also says
that only God is completely just, or impartial, it is frequently argued that
implicitly the Quran forbids polygyny. Nowadays many Muslims are
actively opposed to it. Those who defend it may argue that in exceptional
cases it can give women and children the protection of living in a family.
In terms of, for instance, divorce and inheritance men and women are
not treated equally in Islamic law. In practice, however, local traditions
have tended to be more important for regulating the relations between the
sexes than have the official regulations of the sharia. In some areas this may
prove advantageous and in other areas disadvantageous to women. In a few
regions, mainly of Northeast Africa, female 'circumcision' is practised by
Introduction
Muslims. Essentially, however, it is a pre-Islamic custom which is practised

not only by Muslims but also by Christians and adherents of indigenous
African religions. It is difficult to defend by reference to the Sunna, and in
most parts of the Muslim world it is not considered to be a part of the
sharia. On the contrary, it is condemned by most Muslims of the world.
Today there is an intense debate about the position of women. In
particular, Muslim feminists fight for a thorough implementation of the
ideals of equality. Although there is general agreement that men and women
are equal, the interpretations of the consequences of this principle differ. As
in the West, some argue that equality means the right of women to be
different from men in terms of, for instance, occupations and position in
society, while others disagree. Many men obviously try to protect their own
privileges. Women's issues have been interlaced with a wider discussion of,
and opposition to, Western influences. Some argue that the changing roles
of women in the West have lead to increasing promiscuity and a crisis in
family life. In their view, traditional Islamic family values safeguard against
such developments. Among Muslim feminists, some are influenced by
various Western feminist thoughts and practices, while others champion
more specifically Islamic solutions to the problems of gender inequality.
Today there are many Islamist feminists who support their views on
equality between the sexes by referring to certain passages in the Quran and
Sunna. In general, it should be stressed that, both in terms of ideas and of
practices, the varieties are so great that it is grossly misleading to speak
about 'the role of the woman in Islam'. Like other world religions, Islam
has been utilised to legitimise a wide variety of ideals concerning women,
sexuality and family life.
Reform movements
The relationships between Christians in the West and Muslims have largely
been hostile, and Western pictures of Islam have for propaganda purposes
been darkly painted. During the colonial era, Muslim contacts with
Westerners were intensified. At that time an incressingly gloomy picture of
Islam as an oppressive religion and culture, which was inimical to culture
and hindered or at least retarded development, legitimised the white man's
'responsibility' to administer Muslim regions. Among Muslims who
cooperated with the purpose of opposing colonial rule Islam frequently
became an ideological tool. When Europeans accused Islam of hindering
modern development, Muslims increasingly responded that this was
because of the degeneration of Islam caused by the influence of Sufism.
A 'purified' Islam would be the strongest shield against Western
imperialism.
Some Muslims who were inspired by the West abandoned Islam, but the
majority of 'modernisers' opted for a reform of their religion. The complex
Introduction
others. When Muslim countries became independent in the mid twentieth

century, many new regimes were controlled by reformist-oriented Muslims
who tried to balance the Islamic heritage and new Western influences. In
many countries Islamic socialism became the ideological guiding rule. This
idealistic form of socialism is said to be based on Islamic values and
principles, but secular legislation is largely accepted.
The more recent development of Islamism, or 'Islamic fundamentalism',
may partly be seen as a reaction to the failures of Islamic socialism. In the
West, the term Islamic fundamentalism became particularly topical in
connection with the Iranian revolution in 1979, and at least in mass media
it is still a popular concept. One reason for its popularity is that it is a
derogatory term. It is accusatory rather than descriptive. Besides, Islamic
fundamentalism has little in common with the proper fundamentalism
which was formed among American Protestant Christians in the early
twentieth century. In Muslim contexts, Islamism is a more appropriate
term. At least partly it is a self-designation, and it emphasises the use of
Islam as an ideology. The Islamist goal is that Islam and its revealed law, the
sharia, shall permeate the whole society as well as the lives of individuals. In
that way a just society is created. By utilising the principle of ijtihad,
Islamists interpret Islam in the context of the modern situation. Historical
examples can be important sources of inspiration, but the purpose is not to
recreate old forms of Islam. Many Islamists are well-educated, often in the
natural sciences, and they react not only against the Western tendency to
privatise religion but also against the 'conservatism' of Sufism. In all
respects - religious, political, economical, social, moral and cultural - they
aim at a renewal and work out Islamic programmes for changing existing
conditions. In a sense, thus, Islamism may be seen as a Muslim
modernisation project.
In Western analyses of the rise of Islamism it is largely interpreted as a
result of growing economic and social problems. However, this focus on
negative factors needs to be supplemented by a study of the activities of the
Islamists themselves. Why have Muslims increasingly chosen Islamism,
rather than some other ideology, as their tool for expressing opposition
against various regimes? One of the factors that have attracted people is the
development effort of Islamists. While awaiting the foundation of Islamic
states they build Islamic societies, and their activities in the fields of, for
instance, education and health care have a modern character. The
combination of modernisation efforts and the strong emphasis on the
Islamic cultural and religious heritage attracts many Muslims at a time
when the critique of what is seen as Western cultural imperialism and
economic exploitation increases. When, due to economic and other
problems, state welfare systems are facing serious problems, private
initiatives become particularly important. The Islamist development work
may be compared to the similar and long-standing work of Christian
r"'
1 DIYAlldQUMQ HALAC
A fast food restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, serving halal meat

(photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1989).
mission organisations, which has contributed to attracting new followers.

To some extent Islamists are supported by petrodollars, especially the
moderate wing, but the work is largely voluntary.
Another important aspect of the growth of Islamism is the modern
organisations. New Islamist local, national and international organisations
have mushroomed in virtually all parts of the Muslim world. Ironically, the
rise of new 'religious' organisations is partly an effect of the Western secular
influence, the separation between state and religion. There is also a Western
influence in the way that Islamist associations are constructed. Unlike Sufi
orders, with their more hierarchic and hereditary leadership, Islamist
organisations usually have proper constitutions and elected leaders. In many
Muslim countries, even where multi-party systems have been introduced, it
is illegal to form political parties based on religion. However, as the example
of the National Islamic Front, the political arm of the important Islamist
organisation the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) in Sudan,
indicates, Islamist 'religious' associations may fairly easily be transformed
into political parties should the opportunity arise. In general, Islamist
organisations tend to be stronger on local and national than on international
levels. However, the Muslim Brotherhood is an association which is spread
throughout many Muslim countries. Besides, the leading spokesperson for
Introduction
the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, Hasan al-Turabi, one of the most

influential theorists in the Islamist movement, has tried to increase the
organised international cooperation between Islamists from various coun-
tries by establishing the Pan Arab and Islamic Conference (PAIC).This new
international Islamist association is intended to be an Islamist oppositional
counterpart to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which is
an official 'commonwealth organisation' for the Muslim world.
The growth of Islamism is in a way associated with improved
educational standards. In general, post-colonial regimes in Muslim
countries have devoted much attention to the construction of a modern
school system. A great interest in modern education, though more inspired
by Islamic ideas, is also a characteristic of Islamist organisations. Their
members fight against what they may call neo-iahiliyya -the new ignorance
- which is actually worse than the ignorance that characterised pre-Islamic
Arabia before Muhammad appeared because the Quran and Sunna, the
revealed sources of enlightenment, are now available. Islamists argue that
the governmental school systems are too one-sidedly focused on secular
subjects, whereas Sufi Muslims are criticised for their trust in the spiritual
power of their shaykhs and failure to learn classical Arabic which makes it
impossible for them to study the Quran and Sunna in the language in which
they were revealed. Many Islamists and other students from non-Arab
countries study in Arab countries. Such studies, as well as international
activities such as conferences and distribution of literature, improve the
level of knowledge and often strengthen the Islamic orientation.
Islam's revitalisation has much to do with its potential for opposition
against the state. It provides a political language, and its symbolic arsenal is
available to all. In a sense, the current Islamist revival is nothing new.
Movements of a similar kind have reappeared time and again like waves of
history. One particularly important example is the Wahhabi movement,
established by Muhammad Ibn al-Wahhab in the eighteenth century, which
has influenced many modern groups of Islamists. It is hardly a coincidence
that Islamist groups are particularly strong in countries such as Sudan and
Nigeria, where mythicised reform movements and Islamic states in the past
are important sources of inspiration for contemporary organisations. First
and foremost, it is in Arab countries, where Islam is deeply rooted and the
population most homogeneously Muslim, that Islamist groups gain wide
support. Although the leaders of such groups frequently come from a
middle class background, their message also appeals to followers in poorer
social strata.
The growth of Islamism has attracted a great deal of attention among
scholars and media, whereas other contemporary Muslim movements have
been more overlooked. However, it should be emphasised that Islamism is
only one, albeit a very important one, of several political forces in countries
with a predominantly Muslim population. Although secularisation is
weaker here than in the West, leaders who oppose the Islamist tendencies
and favour a status quo, that is, a distinct separation of religion and state,
are usually still in power. With the main exceptions of Iran and Sudan,
Islamists thus form opposition groups. Moreover, support from economic-
ally strong Western countries favours political leaders who oppose Islamists,
with varying degrees of severity. Time will show if the current Islamic wave
has reached its peak or whether more modern Islamic states will be founded.
Africa
It is difficult to assess the number of Muslims in Africa. For political
reasons, official statistics on religious affiliation is nowadays often
forbidden. However, it is likely that almost half of the continent's
appoximately 700 million people are Muslims. The number of Christians
about equals that of Muslims, and there is in many areas an intense struggle
between Christian and Muslim missionaries to convert those people who
are still adherents of indigenous African religions. Such people are found
mainly in certain parts of West and Central Africa. Some African peoples
have proved quite 'resistant' to both Muslim and Christian attempts to
convert them, but normally the conversion process is very rapid. In North
Africa, as in Somalia and Mauretania, almost 100 per cent of the
population is Muslim. Egypt has a Christian minority of at least 5 per
cent. In West Africa, countries such as Senegal, Guinea, Mali and Niger are
predominantly Muslim. The number of Muslims in Nigeria, with almost
100 million people the most populous country of Africa, is about 50 per
cent. At least two thirds of Sudan's population are Muslims, while one third
of Ethiopia's population is Muslim. Tanzania is exceptional in East Africa
in that almost half the population is Muslim. In other parts of East Africa,
as well as in Central and southern Africa, where Christianity is the
predominant religion, Muslims form more or less substantial minorities. In
these parts of Africa, the Muslim presence is particularly noticeable in
Malawi and Mozambique.
The rapid spread of Islam during the modern colonial era was caused
partly by improved communications, urbanisation and economic change.
Sufi Muslims in particular were actively involved in missionary work. The
European colonial reactions to Muslims varied from vigorous opposition
to pragmatic cooperation. The colonial use of literate Muslims for local
administration sometimes contributed to the consolidation and spread of
Islam. One example of cooperation between colonisers and Muslims is the
close contacts between the British and the emirs of northern Nigeria,
which is depicted in the chapter by Christopher Steed and David
Westerlund. The attitudes of Muslims towards the colonisers also varied
a great deal. Some cooperated and took advantage of colonial rule. Unlike
Christianity, however, which was largely associated with the colonial
Introduction
powers, Islam frequently became a religion of resistance, although open

revolts were rare.
The traditional split between Sunnites and Shiites is not very conspicuous
in Africa. Here the vast majority of people are Sunnites, although Shiites in
earlier periods have been strong in some parts of North Africa. Particularly
in Africa south of the Sahara the Shiites are normally only tiny minorities.
Many of the West African Shiites have a West Asian origin, while most of
the Shiites in East and southern Africa have their roots in South Asia. The
Ahmadiyya have had some success, especially in West Africa, but their
numbers are very limited. The great variety of Islam in Africa has above all
been caused by the strength of Sufism and its ability to adapt to various
local traditions. In, for example, the contribution by Bernhard Helander on
Somalia there is a detailed account of the local character of Sufi Islam.
Almost everywhere in Africa south of the Sahara, Sufism is the predominant
form of Islam, and the Sufi orders contain virtually every kind of local
variation. Even in South Africa, which is sometimes referred to as an
example of a fairly strong orthodox Muslim presence in Africa, there is a
considerable number of Sufi Muslims, possibly more than half of the
population. An account of Islam in South Africa and some neighbouring
countries is provided in the chapter by Abdulkader Tayob.
The Qadiri order is found in virtually all parts of Muslim Africa,
whereas Tijanis live primarily in North and West Africa. In addition to
these widely spread orders, which are divided into several sub-orders, there
are other, more locally restricted orders, such as the Askariyya, which is
mentioned in the contribution on Tanzania by Abdulaziz Lodhi and David
Westerlund. The Mouridiyya in Senegal have many followers, but they are
basically restricted to that country and to the Wolof people. Mouridism
contrasts sharply with, for instance, the reformed branch of the Tijaniyya,
founded by the Senegalese shaykh Ibrahim Niass, which has a much
stronger international and pan-Islamic character. The chapter on Senegal,
by Eva Evers Rosander and David Westerlund, provides another detailed
account of Sufism, in this case particularly of the religious and political as
well as social and economic significance of the Mouridiyya. Senegalese
Islam is very strongly influenced by the Sufi orders. However, all the
chapters on African countries illustrate the great importance of Sufism in
this part of the world. Like other chapters in the book, they also show that
Sufism involves much more than just 'mysticism'.
The new Islamist organisations are stronger in the homogeneously
Muslim North Africa than in the religiously more diverse Africa south of
the Sahara. In the latter part of the continent the message of the Islamists is
often branded as 'foreign' or 'Arab', and here the Islamist groups are
usually quite small. Even if the rise of Islamism has weakened Sufism in
several areas, it is still strong enough to counteract efficiently the Islamist
challenge, which in certain respects comes hand-in-hand with Arabisation
The old central mosque in Dakar, Senegal, which is controlled by the Tijani
brotherhood (photo: Roman Loimeier, 1991).
tendencies. In some parts of sub-Saharan Africa there are strong memories

not only of Western colonialism but also of the Arab slave trade which
dampens any enthusiasm for the more 'Arab' forms of Islam. Furthermore,
in markedly multi-religious contexts it is difficult to work for an
Islamisation of the state. Lately the Sufi shaykhs, who have traditionally
had their strongholds in the countryside, have developed their activites in
the rapidly growing urban areas, where the Islamists have been most
successful. In their competition with Islamists, the shaykhs also increase
their efforts to provide, for instance, modern education and health care.
Nigeria is exceptional in sub-Saharan Africa in that more orthodox
forms of Islam are fairly strong there. The background for the relatively
Introduction
strong orthodox traditions, especially the significance of the Sokoto

caliphate, is described in the chapter on Nigeria. In Sudan, which is in
the border area between the Arab and the non-Arab world, an Islamisation
policy during the 1980s culminated after the military assumption of power
in 1989. Here the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has exerted great influence.
However, certain Islamist tendencies have also been noticeable within the
Ansar and the Khatmiyya, the two predominant Sufi orders in Sudan,
showing that the borderline between Sufism and Islamism need not be that
distinct. Like Nigeria, Sudan has an 'Islamist heritage', and the Ansar order
is the heir to the Mahdist state that was formed at the end of the nineteenth
century. In Somalia, Senegal and Tanzania the Islamist tendencies are
clearly weaker than in Nigeria and Sudan. Zanzibar is to some extent an
exception. Its population is virtually 100 per cent Muslim, and the Islamic
roots and Arab contacts are old ones. In Central Africa, the small minority
groups of Muslims have not shown much interest in the Islamist movement.
In South Africa, where Muslims in general are more highly educated, its
effects are felt more strongly, although Islamist associations such as the
Iran-inspired Qiblah and the more Saudi-oriented Muslim Youth Move-
ment are relatively small minorities here too.
Asia and Oceania

During the nineteenth century the Ottoman empire, which at its peak
included most parts of North Africa, West Asia and the Balkan Peninsula,
was divided into a number of nation states in which Christian minorities in
particular redefined their identities in a spirit of nationalism. When the
secular republic of Turkey was born in the 1920s, it included Anatolia and a
small part of the Balkan Peninsula and became a geographical and cultural
bridge between East and West, connecting Europe and Asia. The idea of
nation-building in Turkey has been to replace Islam with Turkish
nationalism as the integrative force. In a contribution by Svante Cornell
and Ingvar Svanberg the survival of Islam in secular Turkey is discussed.
The development since the 1980s has given religion a certain political role,
and Turkey may function as a bridge between, on the one hand, the Islamic
countries of the Middle East and, in particular, Central Asia and, on the
other hand, the secular countries of the West. By and large the project of
constructing a Turkish identity has succeeded in the western parts of the
country, but in the eastern parts the Kurds fight for a national identity of
their own and the foundation of an independent Kurdistan. Kurds are
found in northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and as a small enclave in Syria
too, where they oppose Arab supremacy.
During the sixteenth century Iran appeared as a regional super power
with Shia Islam as its state religion. The Imamite form of Shiism is
inseparably linked to the modern history of Iran. In the chapter by Bo Utas
the case of Iran as well as of its neighbouring countries Afghanistan and

Tajikistan, whose history partly coincides with the history of Iran, is
studied. However, while Iran is dominated by Shiites, most inhabitants of
Afghanistan and Tajikistan are Sunnites. The integrative significance of
Sunni Islam was an important asset during the long war against the Soviet
Union. The recent formation of several new states in Central Asia brings the
role of Islam in nation-building to the fore. In the Turkic-speaking republics
of Kazakstan, Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan, Islam has been used to
strengthen and consolidate the national identity in opposition to Russians
and others who nowadays are often regarded as strangers and intruders. In
current views of history, Islam is a part of a process of creating a national
identity. What role Islam may play in debates about domestic and foreign
policies is dicussed in the chapter on Turkic Central Asia by Roberta
Micallef and Ingvar Svanberg. Particularly for politicians in Kazachstan,
where only about half of the population is Muslim, the issue of national
identity may turn out to be crucial.
For a long time the Muslim population of China has been quite unknown
outside this country, although they number at least 18 million. Islam has
been an integrated part of China for more than 1,000 years. The Muslim
religion reached China along the so-called silk road through Central Asia.
The gaining of independence by the Central Asian republics in the early
1990s created a new uncertainty in China, where there is a fear that
Chinese Muslims may become inspired by their fellow Muslims across the
border. However, the majority of the Chinese Muslims are Hui who, in
terms of language and culture, are very closely related to the Han majority
of China. The Hui population is spread throughout China and has no
territorial demands. Besides, some of the Chinese Muslim groups, like those
in Shanghai and in Tainan on Taiwan, are quite isolated from the wider
Muslim world, and their Islam is strongly influenced by non-Islamic ideas
and practices. Nevertheless, the Islamic consciousness among China's
Muslims has increased in recent years, partly because of improved contacts
with Muslims outside China and partly due to the activities of some Sufi
orders. The complexity of the Muslim presence in China is presented in this
book by Justin Ben-Adam.
South Asia has played an important role in the development of Islam.
During the modern period of European colonialism Muslims and Hindus
had a common enemy in Great Britain, and they were united in the Sepoys
revolt in 1857. Later on, however, Muslims and Hindus became divided in
the nationalist struggle, and eventually the former created a new state in the
Muslim-dominated parts of the north. Many Hindus therefore left West
Pakistan, fleeing to India, while millions of Muslims fled in the other
direction. Yet a substantial minority of Muslims (about 10 per cent)
remained in India. A very large part of the world's more than 1 billion
Muslims are found in South Asia, notably in Pakistan, Bangladesh and
Introduction
India. In terms of population, Pakistan is, with about 100 million Muslims,
the second largest Muslim country, after Indonesia, whereas Bangladesh
with 94 million is the third. Ever since the time of independence Islam has
continued to play an important role in the political development of South
Asia, and due to Islamist as well as anti-secularist Hindu movements its
significance has increased in recent years. In the longest essay of this book,
which includes sections on Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Ishtiaq Ahmed
provides a detailed account of the development and present role of Islam in
South Asia.
In South East Asia adherents of indigenous religions, Buddhism, Islam,
Christianity, Hinduism and Chinese religions meet each other. O n the
Mindanao island of the Philippines, Muslims have fought a war of
liberation against the Catholic-dominated central government. Demands
for independence have also been voiced by Muslims in southern Thailand.
In Vietnam and Cambodia the Muslim minorities have been openly
oppressed. The strongest Muslim presence in South East Asia is found in
Malaysia and Indonesia, which have many similarities in terms of language
and culture. The character and role of Islam in these two countries is
discussed in a contribution by Sven Cederroth. For those who tend to
identify Islam with the Arab world the encounter with Islam in Indonesia
provides a particularly useful corrective. As in Africa south of the Sahara,
for instance, Islam in Indonesia is largely characterised by local traits and is
not a state religion. In Malaysia, by contrast, Islam is the state-established
religion, and the Muslims, who constitute half of the population, are given
certain advantages over the Chinese.
Further south, in Australia and New Zealand as well as on some of the
South Sea Islands, notably Fiji, Muslims constitute small or even tiny
minorities. An account of the arrival of Muslim immigrants and their
contemporary situation in Australia and New Zealand is provided in the
chapter by Michael Humphrey and William Shepard. The Muslim
interaction with the majority population is gradually increasing. Thus,
they tend to move from being Muslims 'in' Australia and New Zealand to
becoming Muslims 'of' these countries. A similar process can be observed in
several Western countries.
Europe and the Americas

Due to immigration of workers and refugees from the so-called Third
World, Europe now has a substantial number of Muslims. However, Islam
is not a new religion in this part of the world. The Ottoman Muslim
presence on the Balkan Peninsula as well as the Arab Muslim presence on
the Iberian Peninsula have already been mentioned. Besides, mosques from
the Ottoman period have been found in southern Hungary, and there was
an early Muslim presence in what is now southern Italy. In Eastern Europe
The mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand (photo: William Shepard,

1985).
Islam has existed since the tenth century when it reached the Volga area,
and the town Ufa in present-day Bashkortostan in Russia is still an
important Islamic centre. In the tsarist empire Muslims, who were mainly
merchants, artisans and soldiers, were spread over most parts of Russia. In
those areas of the empire that eventually became Lithuania and Poland,
Muslims are still found whose traditions there are several centuries old. The
impressive new mosque in Warsaw is a sign of the increased significance of
the Muslim presence in contemporary Poland. Despite the emergence of
new states in Central Asia, which were previously parts of the Soviet Union,
there are still significant numbers of Muslims in Russia. In this book an
account of Islam in this country is given in a contribution by Svante Cornell
and Ingvar Svanberg.
Muslims are found in all the Balkan states, first and foremost in Albania
and Bosnia and Herzegovina but also, as substantial minorities, in southern
Serbia and Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. The predominant
languages used by Muslims in these areas are Slavonic, Turkish and
Albanian. Due to the recent devastating war in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
there is now a greater international awareness of the situation of the Serbo-
Kroatian Muslims in former Yugoslavia. In his chapter on Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Kjell Magnusson shows how the Islamic identity after the
Introduction
Second World War developed into a national identity, which was

strengthened during the troubled period of the 1990s. In addition to the
human suffering caused by the war, a great number of old mosques and
other Muslim buildings, as well as churches, were destroyed.
In Western Europe the strongest Islamic presence is felt in France, where
the Muslims number some 3 million. France also probably has the largest
number of converts. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, however, the great
majority of the Muslims are immigrants or children of immigrants, in this
case primarily from the former French colonies of North Africa,
particularly Algeria. The complexity of the Muslim situation in France is
discussed in the chapter by Neal Robinson. Germany is another country
with a substantial Muslim minority. After the Second World War many
Muslim workers arrived, in particular from Turkey and North Africa. Some
Turkish Islamist and traditionalist movements, which have been forbidden
in Turkey, have had an opportunity to develop and attract followers in
Germany. For instance, the Nurculuk and the Siileymanli movements, as
well as Milli Gorii~,have their European centres in Germany, even though
they are also represented in most of the other nations of Western Europe
too. An account of Islam in Germany, and the small Muslim minority in
neighbouring Austria, is found in the chapter by Franz Kogelmann.
In Great Britain the heated discussions about Salman Rushdie's book
The Satanic Verses in the late 1980s and early 90s contributed to the fairly
high political profile of Muslims in this country. Muslims in Britain
struggle, among other things, for Islamic schools and against racism. A
radical Islamist position was represented by the Iran-inspired Kalim
Siddiqui (d. 1996), who, in 1992, founded the Muslim parliament in
London. Most of the Muslims in Great Britain came originally from former
British colonies in South Asia and East Africa. Because of its colonial past
Great Britain, like France, has old ties to Muslim cultures and societies, and
the history of Islam is older in Britain than in other countries of Western
Europe. The history and present conditions of Muslims in Great Britain is
discussed in the contribution by Ron Geaves.
In the Nordic countries the Muslim presence is not as strong as in
France, Germany and Great Britain. The Muslim minorities of Denmark
and Sweden are composed of people from several different countries,
notably Turkey, Iran and Bosnia. In Norway, Muslims with a Pakistani
background are predominant. As early as 1925 a mosque, still used for
religious purposes today, was built by Tatars in Finland's capital Helsinki.
In Finland the Tataric minority now numbers about 1,000 people. Among
other things, the recent immigration of refugees to the Nordic countries has
contributed to an intensified debate about Islam. However, much of the
discussion concerns an imaginary Islam created by mass media rather than
the real Islam of present-day Muslims in the Nordic countries. The book's
chapter on this part of Europe is written by Ingvar Svanberg.
The mosque in Malmo, Sweden (photo: David Thurfjell, 1998).
Islam came to the Americas with the slaves from Africa and with
immigrants from various Muslim parts of the world. In North America
almost half of the Muslims, presented by Mattias Gardell, are African
Americans. In the United States the Nation of Islam, lead by Louis
Farrakhan, has become a particularly important but also controversial
element. The conversion of a number of well-known sportsmen and
musicians has contributed to the publicity of this organisation, which has
an interesting role in discussions about African American identity. Now
there are - largely unknown - Muslim minorities dispersed in Caribbean
and Latin American countries. Trinidad and Tobago, Surinam and Guyana
are countries with substantial numbers of Muslims, most of whom have a
South or South East Asian background. In the large countries of Brazil and
Argentina the Muslim minority presence is quite strongly felt too.
Muhammad al-Ahari provides a comprehensive account of Islam in the
Caribbean and Latin America, far away from the ritual centre of Mecca.
Literature
John L. Esposito's book Islam: The Straight Path (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, revised edition, 1991) is a good introduction to
Islam. The collective volume Islam, ed. Peter Clarke (London: Routledge,
Introduction
1988), which is published in the British series The World's Religions,

provides easily comprehensible overviews of Islam in different parts of the
world. Ira M . Lapidus' A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) is a broad and impressive historical
introduction of more than 1,000 pages. Edward W. Said's book Orientalism
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978) is a critical discussion of Western
research on Islam that has attracted much attention. Another interesting
Muslim study of Western views on Islam is Akbar Ahmed's Postmodernism
and Islam: Predicament and Promise (London: Routledge, 1992). Muslim
Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey, ed. Richard E. Weekes, 2 vols.
(Westport: Aldwych Press, 1984) is an important handbook on the world's
Muslim peoples. Essays on pilgrims and Islamic migrants from Africa, Asia
and Europe are found in Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the
Religious Imagination, eds. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori
(Berkeley 1990). A useful periodical called Journal: Institute of Muslim
Minority Affairs is published biannually and includes essays of varying
quality on Muslim minorities from virtually the whole world. Continuous
bibliographical information is found in Index Islamicus, which is a
quarterly publication.
Annemarie Schimmel's monograph Mystical Dimensions of Islam
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) is a classical study
of Sufism. Among more recent introductions to Sufism, Julian Baldick's
Mystical Islam: A n Introduction t o Sufism (London: Tauris, 1989), A.J.
Arberry's Sufism: A n Account of the Mystics of Islam (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1990) and Jiirgen Frembgen's Derwische, Gelebter Sufismus:
Wandernde Mystiker und Asketen i m Islarnischer Orient (Koln: DuMont,
1993) may be mentioned. An overview of various orders is presented by J.S.
Trimingham in T h e Sufi Orders of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1971). A more recent and extensive work on orders is the French collective
volume Les voies d'Allah: Les ordres mystiques dans le m o n d e musulman
des origines a aujourd'hui, eds. Alexandre Popovii- and Gilles Veinstein
(Paris: Fayard, 1996).
Among books on Muslim women the following may be recommended:
Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern
Muslim Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975, 1987);
W o m e n in Islamic Societies, ed. Bo Utas (London: Curzon Press, 1983);
M.E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality and Sacrifice
(New York: Colombia University Press, 1989); Fatima Mernissi, W o m e n
and Islam: A n Historical and Theological Inquiry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1991); Leila Ahmed, W o m e n and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a
Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Lila Abu-
Lughod, Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1993); and Fatima Mernissi, T h e
Forgotten Queens of Islam (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
The increased political significance of Islam has been discussed in a great

number of books. An interesting example of works focusing on the Middle
East is Henry Munson's Islam and Revolution in the Middle East (London:
Yale University Press, 1988). A large number of case studies from different
parts of the world are found in 'Islam and Politics', a special issue of the
journal Third World Quarterly, 10:2 (1988). The German volume Islam in
der Gegenwart, eds. Werner Ende and Udo Steinbach (Munich: C.H. Beck,
1991) contains a general introduction to Islam's role in the development of
anti-colonialism and nationalism with special emphasis on the contempor-
ary situation. An overview and bibliography are found in Yvonne Y.
Haddad, John 0 . Voll and John L. Esposito (eds.), The Contemporary
Islamic Revival: A Critical Survey and Bibliography (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1991). Current Western views on Islam are studied in Fred Halliday's
Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: Tauris, 1995), and in a
recent book entitled Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996) Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori critically discuss, among other
things, Samuel Huntington's well-known and controversial ideas about the
'clash of civilizations'.
A still useful, if somewhat outdated, introduction to Islam in Africa is J.S.
Trimingham's The Influence of Islam upon Africa (London: Longman, 2nd
edition, 1980, first published 1968). The more recently published African
Islam and Islam in Africa: Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, eds. Eva
Evers Rosander and David Westerlund (London: Hurst and Athens, Ohio:
Ohio University Press, 1997), contains several broad overviews on both
North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. In Les musulmans et le pouuoir en
Afrique noire (Paris: Karthala, 1983), which focuses primarily on West
Africa, Christian Coulon discusses the political role of Islam. Sufism is
presented in a number of case studies in Charisma and Brotherhood in
African Islam, eds. Dona1 Cruise O'Brien and Christian Coulon (Oxford:
Clarendon and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Mervin Hiskett's
The Development of Islam in West Africa (London and New York:
Longman, 1984) and Peter Clarke's West Africa and Islam: A Study of
Religious Development from the 8th to the 20th Century (London: Edward
Arnold, 1982) are fine introductions to the history of Islam in that part of
the continent. Contemporary Muslim issues, primarily in West Africa, are
discussed in Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed.
Louis Brenner (London: Hurst, 1993). Concerning Islam among Swahili-
speakers in the east, R.L. Pouwels' The Horn and Crescent: Cultural
Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800-1900,
African Studies Series, 53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
can be recommended. The French collective volume Les voies de l'islam en
Afrique orientale, ed. Franqois Constantin (Paris: Karthala, 1987), presents
contemporary aspects of Islam in East Africa. A useful French journal on
Islam in sub-Saharan Africa is Islam et socie'te's au sud du Sahara.
Introduction
The range of introductory and comparative literature on Islam east of

West Asia is limited. However, there are some important overviews with
detailed statistical information on Muslim peoples in the former Soviet
Union, namely Shirin Akiner's Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986) and the volume Muslims of
the Soviet Empire: A Guide, by Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders
Wimbush (London: Hurst, 1985). In the series Studies of Nationalities,
published in Stanford by the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and
Peace, several monographs on Muslim peoples in the former Soviet Union
have appeared. Some examples are: Edward A. Allworth, The Modern
Uzbeks (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1991); Audrey L. Altstadt, The
Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford:
Hoover Institution Press, 1992); Alan W. Fisher, The Crimean Tatars
(Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987); Azade-Ayse Rorlich, The Volga
Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,
1986); and Martha B. Olcott, The Kazakhs (Stanford: Hoover Institution
Press, 1987). Valuable essays on Islam in Central Asia are found in Muslims
in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1992). The collective volumes Contributions to Islamic
Studies: Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, eds. Christel Braae and Klaus
Ferdinand (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1987), and Islam in Asia, ed.
John L. Esposito (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), contain a
number of useful studies on Muslims in Central, South and Southeast Asia.
The Moro Muslims of the Philippines and Muslims in Thailand are
presented in detail in W.K. Che Man's Muslim Separatism: The Moros of
Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand (Singapore:
Oxford University Press, 1990).
Since the 1980s an increasing number of works on Islam in Europe have
been published. The Islamic Presence in Western Europe, eds. Tomas
Gerholm and Yngve G. Lithman (London: Mansell, 1988) discusses the
situation of immigrant Muslims. A broad overview of Muslims in European
countries is found in Jorgen Nielsen's monograph Muslims in Western
Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), while L'islam et les
musulmans dans le monde, 1: L'Europe occidentale, eds. Mohammed
Arkoun, Rkmy Leveau and Bassin el-Jisr (Beyrouth: Centre Culture1 Hariri,
1994), contains more detailed studies. The Integration of Muslims and
Hindus in Western Europe, eds. W.A.R. Shadid and P.S. van Koningsveld
(Kampen: Pharos, 1991) focuses on some specific problems. Islam and
social issues are discussed in Muslims in Europe: Social Change in Western
Europe, eds. Bernhard Lewis and Dominique Schnapper (London: Pinter
Publishers, 1994). Overviews as well as more specialised studies are
published by the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim
Relations at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham (England), in the series CSIC
Papers: Europe (before 1990 called Research Papers: Muslims in Europe
1979-1989). Views on Islam and how the Islamic presence in North

America and Europe influences the West are discussed in Claus Eggewie's
Alhambra - Der Islam im Westen (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowolth,
1993). Muslim missionary endeavours and conversions are focused on in
Larry Poston's book Islamic Dawah in the West: Muslim Missionary
Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
A valuable introduction to Islam in North America is The Muslims of
America, ed. Yvonne Y. Haddad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Garbi Schmidt's recent book American Medina: A Study of the Sunni
Muslim Immigrant Communities in Chicago, Lund Studies in History of
Religions, 8 (Stockholm: Almgvist & Wiksell International, 1998), provides
an in-depth view of the situation in an important city. Interesting essays on
Islam in, among other countries, Brazil and Trinidad are found in The
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito, 4
vols. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Chapter One
Somalia
Bernhard Helander
At the beginning of 1985 I had a conversation with an elderly man residing

in the Somali interior. Our discussion on this, and numerous other
occasions, evolved around the issue of my own confessional standing. The
man argued that if I would only open my heart and embrace Islam (what he
really said was that I should 'surrender', iska Islaam), not only would the
doors of paradise unlock for me, but it would also facilitate my work at the
time, collecting material for my doctoral thesis. I retorted by asking if he
really meant that I should convert just for the sake of making my field work
easier. He then partially withdrew his statement and ventured into a long
discourse, the point of which was that as a non-Somali I would not be a
good Muslim anyway. In a sense the man was right; Islam constitutes a
fundamental cornerstone in Somali social and cultural life. There is hardly
any daily event that does not to some extent involve or invoke Islam. Even
in circles of urban and secularised intellectuals, Islam makes itself
remembered through expressions uttered or customs that have to be
observed. A Somali atheist will, just as anyone else, utter an astonished
Bismillahi! (in the name of God) to express his or her surprise.
More than seven years of brutal civil war and the total collapse of the
Somali state has left Somalis with few solid ties - outside those of clan and
subclan membership - apart from those provided by Islam. While certainly
at times also divisive, Islam in Somalia has always been able to suggest
solutions where secular institutions have failed. For many Somalis, Islam
also provides a means of positioning themselves in the world and in history;
the different peoples of the world and the different religions are sometimes
presented as the descendants of the different prophets. By some, Muslim
eschatology can also at times be drawn upon to explain the relative poverty
of their own continent as well as a consoling promise that, for believers,
compensation for mundane imperfections awaits in the 'next world'.
Background
Somalia is situated on the very tip of the Horn of Africa and is estimated to
have a population of about 8 million. At least two-thirds of these live in the
rural areas where they engage in various forms of nomadic animal
husbandry and settled agriculture. Animal produce from camels, cows,
goats and sheep, constitutes both core subsistence items and valued export
articles. Widespread cultivation of sorghum, maize and vegetables exists in
both rain-fed and riverine communities and banana plantations have also
been established in the south. The rapidly growing urban areas have a long
tradition in overseas and internal trade. Family-based handicraft enterprises
are also an important part of the subsistence activities in urban areas.
Before the advent of European colonialists towards the end of the
nineteenth century, Somalia did not exist as a political entity. The area was
made up of different clan-based sultanates of varying size and length of
reign. The southern coastal strip held strategically located freshwater
sources attracting Arabian and other traders on their way from East Africa
to the Arab peninsula and beyond. For a time the area was colonised by the
Oman sultanate. Southern Somalia was purchased by Italy from the Omani
sultan and remained an Italian colony until 1943, while northern Somalia
came under British control. Following the Second World War and a period
of UN trusteeship, the two former colonies were united in 1960 arid granted
full independence. The 1960s was a decade of chaotic experimentation in
parliamentary democracy that came to an abrupt end in 1969 in a coup
d'ktat staged by a group of army officers led by Mohamed Siyad Barre.
Barre's regime developed into a brutal East-bloc dictatorship, drawing
inspiration and support from, inter alia, Kim I1 Sung of North Korea and
Ceaugescu of Romania. From 1979, Barre was able to obtain support from
the United States, Italy and other Western governments. He was over-
thrown by a coalition of clan-based militias in early 1991 and Somalia has
remained without a central government since then. In 1992 large-scale
militia battles led to famine in the southern interior. Difficulties in
delivering relief aid eventually resulted in an armed intervention by
international peace keepers from December 1992 until March 1995.
From an ethnic point of view Somalia has mostly been described as
relatively homogeneous. The country is almost exclusively populated by
members of the same ethnic group, the Somali. Before the civil war, larger
urban centres contained sizeable settlements of Arab, Pakistani, Indian
and Italian traders. Somali is a nationwide language understood and
spoken in all parts of the country. However, in the so-called inter-river
area in the south a dialect known as Af-May exists. The language and
ethnic homogeneity have played crucial roles in the articulation of
nationalist feelings throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. The
ambition to found a nation-state for all Somali speakers - including those
in the neighbouring countries Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya - came to
colour much of the post-colonial politics. However, after the collapse of
the state and the ensuing civil war this ambition has frequently been
questioned.
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Islam has a long history in Somalia. Excavations in the capital

Mogadishu have revealed remnants of a mosque that is one of the oldest
on the entire continent. Early inscriptions also confirm the early arrival of
Islam in the coastal cities, and burial remains in the interior indicate a
comparably early spread of Muslim funerary practices. By the end of the
eleventh century most people in what is today Somalia had at least been in
touch with Islam. It is generally assumed that prior to Islam, the Somalis
shared another religion with other Cushitic language speakers such as the
Oromo of Ethiopia and the Afar of Djibouti and Eritrea. Traces of this
'Cushitic religion' can still be found in certain practices and in some
religious terminology. One example is the name of the Cushitic sky god,
Waaq, which is still used as one of the names for God in modern Somali.
Somalis are almost exclusively Sunni Muslims and follow the Shafii
school of law. In later years, some followers of the Wahhabi (Hanbali)
school of law have also emerged as well as some Shia influences. To what
extent these forms of Islam are gaining ground is hard to assess due to the
civil war. Non-Muslim Somalis are relatively few. There are Christians who
went to schools organised by either Italian Catholics or North American
Mennonites. However, Christian missionary movements in general have
never gained any greater foothold in the country.
The Somali social system

The traditional social system in Somalia ties together all people in a wide-
branching system of clans. By calculating descent along paternal lines, every
Somali can position himself or herself in one particular clan. The clan, or a
sub-group of it, is what has traditionally served as a social security system,
judicial system and unit of solidarity in times of warfare. Since the collapse
of the state in 1991, clans form the only viable organisation to shoulder
these functions in many areas of Somalia.
Somalis divide themselves in six larger clusters of clans. Daarood live in
the northeast and in the far south. They are also found in eastern Ethiopia
and in northern Kenya. Isaaq live in the central northern Somalia. Hawiye
inhabit the central parts of the country and the fertile stretches along the
river Shabeele. They are also found in the southern coastal cities. This
southern zone moreover comprises members of the different Dir clans, the
majority of whom, however, live in the northwest and in Djibouti. In the
area between the two southern rivers, Jubba and Shabeele, live the Digil
and Merifle groups of clans, collectively known as Reewin or Rahanweyn.
Each one of these six clusters is divided into clans (qoolo or qabiil). It is
only on that level of division that kinship assumes concrete social and
political significance. The basis for the division in clans is the Somali
descent system according to which each person belongs to the same descent
group as his or her father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. The size of
Somalia
clans can vary considerably; some may comprise just a few thousand
members while others number some 100,000 members. In the latter case it
is the subdivisions within the clan that function as the politically significant
groups.
From a Western point of view, a clan's internal organisation may appear
chaotic. Decisions taken by councils of elders and other bodies are valid, in
principle, only among those participating in the decision. In some clans it is
possible to have verdicts pronounced by one group of elders retried by yet
other assemblies of elders. The clanship's most tangible function is the
handling of blood compensation (diya), that is, the fines exacted for
breeches of customary rules. When someone is sentenced to pay such fines,
it is seen as the collective responsibility of that person's descent group.
Similarly, if one stands to receive compensation from someone else, this
should be distributed within one's sphere of patrilineal kin. There are no
self-evident boundaries for this form of solidarity but it is decided in
different clans according to a principle called beer, a kind of contract
specifying the range of solidarity as well as the size of fines to be paid for
different types of infractions. Clan elders also have the option of organising
large-scale raids in defence of the clan or in revenge of acts committed
against it.
In this strongly decentralised political system, religion often assumes the
role of a uniting force. Religious leaders are expected to intervene where
secular leaders have failed and religion also plays a role in the recurrent
nationalist movements, comprising all Somalis. However, despite this
pivotal position of Islam, it is only rarely that secular leaders seek to
validate their own power in religious terms, and ordinary people often
perceive a great divide between the secular and religious leadership.
Traditionally it is impossible to gain both worldly and religious repute as
every man is either a waranleh (spear bearer), someone engaged in the well-
being of his clan, or a wadaad which is the Somali term for religious leaders
or shaykhs. The dualism between profane and religious leadership implies
that Somalis sometimes, but not always, regard with scepticism political
leaders seeking to legitimise their power in religious terms. For instance,
when, shortly before his downfall, the overthrown president Mohamed
Siyad Barre tried to establish himself as a religious national leader by giving
religiously inspired public addresses, these events were generally ridiculed
by the public. Similarly, those who today are against the increasing presence
of Islamist groups, often argue that it is really politics masked as religion.
The cornerstone of the social system are the genealogies comprising one's
ancestors that all Somalis are taught by heart at an early age. A genealogy
(abtiris, 'counting ancestors') may comprise more than twenty generations
of relatives. By comparing one's genealogy with others it is possible to
assess exactly how closely related one is to other persons. Such proximity
may be expressed by the counting of ancestors; one can hear it said that 'we
Helander
A Somali member of the Qadiriyya demonstrates her religious genealogy

which unites her with her shaykh and ancestors all the way back to the
Prophet Muhammad. This tablet is more than three yards long and includes
thousands of names (photo: Bernhard Helander).
count eight ancestors', meaning that the genealogies of the two persons
merge eight generations back. Although genealogies play this crucial role in
shaping both personal identity and patterns of social interaction one should
not be tempted to regard them as authentic historical documents. The
further back in time one gets along the lines of names that are recited, the
larger the amount of purely fictional elements. On a high genealogical level
many Somalis regard themselves as descendants of the Prophet Muham-
mad's lineage Quraysh, usually mediated by the Prophet's uncle Abu Talib.
This implies the possibility of arguing that Somalis are of Arab descent, a
topic that remains disputed among many Somalis. When Somalia joined the
Arab League in 1974 as the only non-Arabic speaking country, it was partly
motivated by rhetorical statements according to which 'Somalis are Arabs'.
The strong and widespread Somali commitment to Islam is another fact
often brought forth by those arguing for an Arab ancestry.
There are some Somali clans which are believed to descend from the
Prophet more directly than others. These include, for instance, the Asheraf
clan, members of which enjoy a great amount of respect and are frequently
called upon as mediators in disputes. Their ability to assume this and other
functions is based both upon the fact that their ancestry is seen as lying
outside that of the Somali genealogical grid and the religious grace (baraka)
they are held to possess.
Somali custom and Islamic law allow a man to have four wives
simultaneously. The different wives of a man form their own independent
households and it is also common for the children of a particular wife to
take on specific roles in the larger family economy. While conflicts between
siblings and half siblings are not uncommon, the family as a whole is a
relatively tightly organised social unit. The fact that all members of a family
function together as one economic unit contributes to this. The authority of
the parental generation is strong and to some extent based on the ability of
elderly people to pronounce blessings (duco) or curses (inkaar). The fear of
parental curses is widespread, even among highly educated young people.
The organisation of Somali Islam

During the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries a
number of Muslim revitalisation movements spread in the Somali interior.
These movements were Sufi orders of which four still exist in the country
and formally organise nearly all Somalis. The three largest orders are the
Qadiriyya, Ahmadiyya and Salihiyya. The Rifai order has also been
represented among the population of Arab origin that lived in the southern
coastal cities before the war. To be a member of a Sufi order implies that one
counts as a spiritual disciple of the founder of the order. Through his grace,
baraka, and teachings, members are able to lead lives that enable them to be
in touch with God. An order is often referred to as 'a way', dariiqa (Ar.
tariqa), in a religious sense. While it is not uncommon to find people who
change their membership of one order for another, the specifics of order
membership begin in Quranic schools. Among the more conspicuous
differences between the orders are the religious celebrations that each order
manifests, beyond those common to all Muslims. Normally these are
commemorative rites in celebration of previous local leaders of the order.
Deceased leaders and other prominent order members can sometimes be
elevated to saintly status and the shrines erected for them become sites for
country-wide pilgrimage during festive periods. Pilgrimages to the shrines
of saints are in many orders seen as actions mediating contact with the
founder of the order, the Prophet Muhammad and, ultimately, with God.
There are also minor liturgical differences between the different orders,
such as distinct songs of worship and texts that are regarded as order-
specific. The success of Sufi orders in Somalia must to some extent be seen
in relation to their capacity to institute social unity in religious terms. More
than once in Somali history, Islam has been able to provide more inclusive
identities than those provided through the tracing of patrilineal descent in
the system of clanship. The ability to bridge clan differences by offering a
more basic form of unity has also been in line with the nationalist
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sentiments that swept across the country for decades - at least before the
civil war. While mentioning these unifying tendencies in Somali Islam, it
should also be borne in mind that the different orders have occasionally
fought harsh battles against one another.
The Qadiriyya, named after its twelfth century Iraqi founder Abd al-
Qadir al-Jilani, is probably the largest order in Somalia and it was also the
first one to reach the country. The support it enjoys in the country is a result
of a cleverly conducted campaign by Shaykh Uways Muhammad Baraawe
(1847-1913) during the decades around the turn of the century. Shaykh
Uways, who was descended from a family of former slaves in the city of
Baraawe, returned after studies in Baghdad to become the leader of a local
branch of the Qadiri order, nowadays often named 'Uwaysiyya' - a term at
times extended to mean the entire Somali Qadiri movement. During
extensive travels in Somalia and neighbouring areas, Shaykh Uways and his
disciples spread poetry and religious songs - composed into local dialects -
that skilfully combined insights into local political affairs with the teachings
of the Qadiri order.
The Ahmadi order was founded in Mecca by Sayyid Ahmad ibn Idris al-
Fasi (1760-1837). This reform movement was spread in Somalia by Shaykh
Ali Maye Durogba (d. 1917). The latter part of the nineteenth century saw
intense competition between the Ahmadiyya and Qadiriyya. The Ahma-
diyya opposed local practices, such as tobacco chewing, on the grounds that
these were not in keeping with Islam. There are still Somalis who argue that
the Ahmadiyya teachings are more strictly in adherence with Islam than are
those of the Qadiriyya.
The Salihi order is originally an offshoot from the Ahmadiyya and was
founded in Mecca by Sayyid Mohamed Salih (1853-1917). Under the
leadership of Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan (1864-1920) this order was
developed into a militant movement that for twenty years maintained an
armed struggle against the presence of British and Ethiopian troops on
Somali soil. The British press dubbed him 'the Mad Mullah', but he remains
known as simply Sacidka, 'the Sayyid', a term reserved for those who, in a
spiritual or real sense, are thought of as direct descendants of the Prophet
Muhammad. The followers of Sayyid Mohamed - known as 'the dervishes'
- at times pursued large-scale armed raids against their opponents. They
saw the Qadiri movement as their particular enemy. Shaykh Uways, the
leader of the Qadiriyya, was killed by dervishes in Biyoole in southern
Somalia in 1913.
The more devout members of an order frequently form their own
settlement (jamea). There is a large number of such settlements scattered
across the interior of southern Somalia. The members of a jamea are
originally disciples of a shaykh who gradually also start to attract other
settlers to join them. Formally, such settlements are fully governed and
controlled by the shaykh. They draw historical inspiration from the many
small sultanates that existed in northern Somalia and Ethiopia between the
fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The best-known of these, Ada1 (or Ifat),
had its centre in the town of Zeyla and was, like the present-day jamea,
populated by a mixture of people from different clans and social strata.
Members of such settlements may choose to abandon or downplay the
significance of their secular social ties. Genealogies linking them to their
clans of origin are replaced by a religious genealogy (silsilad, Ar. silsila,
'chain') consisting of shaykhs within the order. In such a chain the leader of
the settlement is the first name, followed by the name of the person who
was his teacher and so on until the chain reaches the Prophet Muhammad
and, sometimes, even beyond him to earlier prophets. The generation links
suggested by this practice are of a spiritual, inspirational kind. While they
have little to do with real genealogies, these documents (they are frequently
committed to writing) are by most people seen as a replacement for their
ordinary genealogies. Consequently, members of a jamea often speak of the
leader of the settlement as their father, not just in a spiritual sense (aaw),
but also in a real sense (aabe). This custom of replacing real (or socially
assigned) ancestors with religious teachers and leaders is probably one
important factor in explaining why even Somali secular genealogies
ultimately posit descent from the Prophet's lineage of Quraysh. In a similar
way, many Somalis argue that Christians are descended from Nabi Isa, the
prophet Jesus, while Jews are believed to count descent to their prophet,
Moses.
The religious settlements have often served as safe havens for people in
difficulties. The growth and establishment of many of them seem to be
connected to times of social upheaval. A wave of settlements was
established shortly after the large manumissions of slaves in the mid
1920s. Another peak in settlement activities occurred shortly after the
Second World War. Again, in the 1970s, many of the ethnic Somalis who
had fled from Ethiopia found sanctuary in the religious communities.
During the 1980s many of the religious settlements were engaged in social
and economic experiments. New types of houses and huts were developed
and new crops and growing techniques introduced. While these efforts took
place largely without any form of outside support, development projects as
well as government organised cooperatives displayed a high degree of
interest in the settlements. Some religious settlements were forced to label
themselves 'cooperatives' to help boost the record of the otherwise meagre
results of the cooperative movement.
During the current civil war members of 'fundamentalist' movements
have founded several large settlements that, in terms of organisation, bear a
strong resemblance to the more traditional jamea. One of the better-known
of these is situated in the town of Luuq along the Jubba river in the
southwest of the country. While the settlement was attacked by Ethiopian
airforce and army contingents in 1996 and 1997 on the grounds that it
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served as a basis for terrorist activities in neighbouring Ethiopia, many

reports also point to the calm and relative affluence that has been created
there in the midst of the civil war.
The so-called fundamentalist or Islamist movements in Somalia have
gained strength and attracted followers during the civil war. In the course of
the escalating resistance against the former regime during the 1980s, a
group popularly known as Akhiwaan Muslimen - the Muslim Brotherhood
- grew. Originating among Somali students at the Islamic university Al-
Azhar in Cairo and elsewhere, the movement was influenced by the more
militant Egyptian movement of the same name. The Akhiwaan in Somalia
were initially engaged in a moral critique of the corruption in government
circles. Religiously, this and other movements draw direct inspiration from
the Wahhabis, who are prominent in, for instance, Saudi Arabia. Since the
autumn of 1990, the Islamist movements have changed shape and have
become a force in the struggles for political power. Intermittently, various
groups of the movement have received armaments from Iran, Libya and the
Sudan. In 1992 an Islamist group calling themselves Al-Ittihad Al-Islami,
'The Islamic Struggle', attacked the northern port city of Bosaaso. This led
to a series of armed clashes with local militia called the Somali Salvation
Democratic Front (SSDF) which has its power base among the Majerteen
clans in that area. In 1994 the Islamist group said that they would continue
their struggle for power by peaceful means. While they have not sought to
gain seats in any of the political bodies that have been established in the
north-east, their influence remains visibly strong in, for instance, dress code,
hospitals, schools and mosques.
It is not established to what extent the northern Al-Ittihad movement is
organisationally connected with the southern movement of the same name.
In the south, too, the actions of the Islamist groups have been a part of the
clan war and their support for one of the major factions, the Somali
National Alliance (SNA), is of great importance in the over-all political
balance. In the eyes of the factions opposed to SNA, the Islamist support is
seen as threatening, and the Ethiopian attacks on Al-Ittihad settlements
mentioned above have been supplemented by attacks from neighbouring
militias. Some reports suggest that there exist close links of co-operation
between the Al-Ittihad and three other Islamist groups that operate in the
country: Harakat Al-Aslah, Mujuma Al-Uluma and Wahdat Al-Shabab Al-
Islami.
Many Somalis are openly opposed to the growth of the Islamist
movement. It is often regarded as too alien in comparison with the
traditional Somali Islam, often known as the Islam of the ulama (the
religious scholars). The mixture of political ambitions and religious
teachings represented by the Islamists is one factor that directly opposes
the traditional Somali tendency to keep separate religious and secular
power. In contrast to the leaders of the Islamist movements, traditional
Somali religious leaders have in a number of cases acted as peace
negotiators. It deserves to be pointed out, also, that there are tendencies
in Somali society that may be misread as heightening Islamist power, while
in fact they only are effects of the increasing significance attributed to
religion generally. Many Somalis argue that this significance ultimately may
be traced back to the absence of a government. One should also be cautious
not to give the impression that the only form of religious innovation in the
country is that represented by militant Islamist groups. On the contrary, the
traditional brotherhoods are very active and new groups based on
traditional Somali Islamic beliefs continue to appear. One of the most
recent examples of such groups is called Timo Weyne ('big hairs'), which
has established a number of settlements in the northeast. They are followers
of Shaykh Muhammad Rabi (b. 1920) and frequently engage in open
dispute with Islamist groups over matters such as the control of mosques.
Everyday Islam
The life of a Somali person is surrounded by religious events. One of the
first things done when a child is born is to lean towards its ear and recite the
call for prayers. The Quran is also one of last things a person will hear as it
is customary to recite the sura Yaasiin for a dying person. Verses from the
Quran are among the first things a child learns to write, usually already at
three or four years of age. For a vast number of Somalis, Quranic schools
remain the only form of education establishment they enter. To become a
Quranic school teacher or perhaps a shaykh is the only form of intellectual
career available in the interior of the country. For most Somalis, the only
foreign travel they ever engage in is the pilgrimage to Mecca. Although it is
often modestly designed, even the remotest village frequently has a mosque
of its own. Islam also functions as more than just a collection of articles of
faith. Diseases among humans and animals are treated with Quranic verses
and there are probably very few Somalis who have never worn a leather
amulet stuffed with Quranic citations around their neck.
Despite these important roles played by Islam on both national and
individual levels, the dominant approach to religious matters is light-
hearted. Conventionally Somali women have never worn veils, but revealed
both arms and shoulders wearing their colourful traditional dress
(guntiino). The transparent silk dress (dira) worn by many urban women
can even be regarded as slightly coquette. However, from the late 1980s,
women's dress code began to change with the introduction of Saudi-
inspired attires, often supplemented by a veil. This dress, known in Somali
as shuko, covers the entire body with the exception of feet and hands. While
this form of dress initially spread primarily among women within the
Islamist groups, it has lately also inspired women of a more secularised
orientation.
Helander
The Islamic law, sharia, has never been rigorously implemented in

Somalia. Media reports on, for instance, mutilations and stoning, remain
isolated exceptions to this more general trend. The growing number of so-
called sharia courts that exist across the country are mainly concerned with
civil cases and the settling of compensation disputes. Where criminal cases
are brought to court, the Somali penal code of 1962 (written in Italian)
remains the principal legal instrument. This is due to the fact that judges in
sharia courts have the ability to pronounce a case to be taasir, i.e. a less
serious crime, in which case there may be a choice of which code to apply.
Where traditional courts of clan elders are involved in legal proceedings
there may sometimes emerge discussions about whether Somali customary
law or the sharia should be used in determining the size of the fine to be
paid by the respondent. The only implication of this, however, is that the
fines suggested by the use of Islamic law often are regarded as higher. In
cases of homicide, execution of the culprit is generally carried out swiftly.
However, the bereaved party have the right to waive their claim, pardon the
culprit and settle with only the blood compensation for their murdered
relative. Somali customary law and Islamic law have a uniform view on a
number of important issues. This is the case, for instance, in matters of
inheritance. When, in 1975, the former regime introduced a legislation that
gave women the right to inherit on an equal basis to men, it led to country-
wide demonstrations. The wave of protests was halted only after the public
execution of ten leading shaykhs and opponents to the new law. In practice
the new inheritance law was never implemented, but women continue to
inherit half the amount their brothers inherit.
A normal day in a Somali home features a number of religiously inspired
events. Even before dawn, many people leave their homes to visit the
mosque. The late 1980s saw an increasing attendance in mosques, but it is
still mainly men who pray outside their homes. While the husband and,
perhaps, some of the older sons visit the mosque, the wife lights incense in
the house. This is done twice a day in most Somali homes - at sunrise and
sunset, or as the expression goes: 'at the two red lights'. Regarded as brief
moments during which 'blessings are accepted' the custom may be inspired
by the belief in Muslim eschatology that the sky will be coloured red shortly
before the day of judgement. It is also said that 'the angels bear one's
prayers to God'. Others point to the way in which the incense helps to ward
off the jinns and other lingering spirits of the night.
Early in the morning the younger children leave for Quranic school. The
number of years spent in this form of schooling varies greatly. In general,
boys attend for longer than girls although families differ in this respect.
Quranic schools aim at teaching their students large parts of the Quran by
heart. Depending on the skills of the teacher the education may also feature
explanatory lectures. There is a surprisingly high number of Somalis who
are able to recite the entire Quran. The fact that Somalis on several
Somalia
occasions have won international contests in Quranic recitations is a matter

of national pride.
On Fridays many families call a shaykh to their home to perform a
weekly blessing. He will be seated with a cup of water in front of his mouth
and while he silently recites, he will spit over the water which then may
preserve to use for curing ailments of household members during the
coming week or simply sprinkle in different rooms as a blessing. The
spitting, common in many forms of blessings, is probably of pre-Islamic
origin. The water is called tahaliil and may be used for a variety of different
purposes, such as blessing the fields before the season of cultivation. Fridays
are also the days when beggars will appear in front of houses. In the
dualism between religious and secular power that Somalis maintain in
many contexts, the poor and destitute are often seen as possessing mystical
forces that may be harmful if their demand for alms is rejected. These
potentially dangerous forces are something a compensation for what they
may lack in terms of worldly goods.
Household members usually eat together, both women and men.
Previously it was common for women to eat separately from men, a
practice that still is in effect when entertaining guests and when eating in
restaurants and cafks. In the latter one rarely encounters women at all,
unless separate rooms are provided for them. Before eating it is customary
for the oldest male to grab a bit of the food and say Bismillahi Arahmani
Arahim, 'in the name of God, the Omnipotent, the Merciful'. This way of
blessing the food is so fundamental that the very expression 'begin to eat' is
'go ahead and say Bismillahi'. To initiate something in the name of God is
not restricted to meals but occurs in a wide variety of contexts. When
entering a bus, when starting a car, when getting out of bed or going to
sleep and in a large number of other settings, many Somalis mouth a silent
Bismillahi or some related expression.
After the midday prayer - in Somalia usually coinciding with lunch and
the afternoon rest - people may pull out a rosary (tusbah) and remain
seated on their carpets. On such occasions they perform particular tasks
(awraad) and recitations normally suggested by some shaykh who has been
consulted. Among the least complicated tasks are to keep repeating a
specific phrase a couple of hundred times, carefully counting them on the
beads of the rosary. The reasons for such additional tasks are manifold,
ranging from seeking to restore personal health to more theologically
inspired aims. Among the ordinary prayers, the late afternoon prayer, assar,
is generally regarded as hard to say. For people, like herders, who have
spent the entire day in the sun, the time for prayer comes as the animals
begin to seek shade, giving the herders a first chance to rest. For urban
dwellers this prayer usually interrupts the midday nap.
During the month of fasting, Ramadan (in Somali known simply as soon
'fast'), many daily routines change. Somalis, like many other Muslim
Helander
peoples, prepare particular dishes served only during the night meals of this
month. Everyone above the age of fifteen should fast, except for those who
are ill. Most Somalis often start the fast with the intention of maintaining it
to the end of the month. However, it is not uncommon to find people
resuming normal eating after a week or so. The general level of poor health
in the country is probably a major contributing factor in this. The date of
the commencement of the fast is a topic widely debated across the country,
as well as in the many exiled Somali communities. Somalis view with
suspicion those who let the dates for the holy month be ruled by calendars,
relying themselves solely on lunar observations. On the night marking the
beginning of the month, a thin crescent should be visible at sunset. As the
new moon has been sighted the observation is rapidly broadcast on short
wave radio to the entire country. It is reported that cloudy weather once
forced Somalia to commence Ramadan a few days after that the rest of the
Muslim world had started. Similarly, on local community level, it is often
observation of the sunset that determines the appropriate time for the daily
breaking of the fast (af-furow, 'open the mouth'). National radio calls to
break the fast are ignored if they contradict observations at the local
mosque.
Most Somalis wish to carry out the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, at
least once in their life. In the past this was something that relatively few
people were able to find the means to do. In the 1940s and 1950s there
was considerable prestige attached to being able to return to one's home
village or town adding the title of haji (for men) or hajiya (for women) to
one's name. Today, a considerable number of Somalis perform the hajj,
some even several times in their lives. The traditional male sign of having
done the pilgrimage, a small cap called kofiyad, can today be worn by
anyone.
Within the Qadiri order there are groups who maintain a local
alternative to the Mecca pilgrimage. Travelling to the mountain Bur Heybe
in central south Somalia for seven consecutive years and participating in the
rites staged there every year, counts as equal to one 'real' pilgrimage. On the
top of this mountain are some remarkable rock formations that are said by
some to be the graves of Adam and Eve.
Funerals are religious events of major importance in Somali Islam. Even
the most ordinary funeral contains crucial social symbolism in which the
members of a village or neighbourhood reconfirm their mutual relations
as friends and neighbours. While graves themselves remain little-
decorated and may even become nearly invisible after a few years, they
are always meticulously dug in the same fashion. A deep trench is dug so
that one of the long sides faces Mecca. Inside the grave, a small chamber is
carved out in the long side and in it the corpse is placed. Even with the
mass burials during the famine 1992, it was attempted to design each
grave in this way.
The religious landscape
The world of beliefs of a Somali Muslim is constructed from a number of
fundamental assumptions provided by Islam, Somali tradition and, to a
lesser extent, influences from pre-Islamic religion. However, even the most
basic Islamic beliefs often have specifically Somali connotations generated
by the local tradition of interpretations. In this final section I shall point to
some of the particular qualities of Somali Islam and seek to outline how the
'religious landscape' appears from a Somali point of view.
Even secondary school leavers often host doubts concerning what physics
classes have taught them about the nature of the universe. It is a widely held
view that the idea of the earth revolving around the sun is something the
Soviets forced Somalis into believing during the 1970s at which time
Somalia was something of an African Cuba. The moon landings are also
dismissed as pure propaganda; space flights are held to be possible only in
the lower spheres where communication satellites are stationed. I have met
Somalis who argue that there are American movies (for instance 'Capricorn
One') that show how the bluff of the Apollo satellites was staged.
The evolutionary theory of the human species' gradual development
from monkey-like ancestors is firmly rejected. There is an interesting Somali
variation on this theme that reverses the sequence of events entirely. There
are large numbers of monkeys, both in the interior and in the cities, and
Somalis admit that these do display some very human traits, both in
features and in behaviour. It is said that the monkeys once were humans
who were transformed into monkeys as the result of a curse. Another - and
slightly more moral - version of this tale has it that the cursed ones were
insubordinate pupils of a Quranic school teacher and the curse pronounced
as a punishment for their insubordination.
The earth is seen as populated not only by humans but also by invisible
spiritual beings, jinns. These spirits are seen as harmless and are believed to
establish their settlements in places where humans will not disturb them.
Nevertheless, it may happen that humans accidentally stumble over and
hurt jinns who, in revenge, will inflict sickness or death. For Somalis there is
no evil power in the cosmos that challenges the might of God. The term
shaydaan, Satan, is in Somali just a synonym name for the relatively
harmless jinns. Apart from the jinns, the existence of which is described in
the Quran, many Somalis also believe in other forms of spirits which are
thought to be able to possess people, causing them great harm. Unless the
wishes of these spirits are obeyed, the possessed person will never be freed
from the affliction. However, given proper attention, the spirit possession
may even become advantageous. Throughout Somalia there is a wide
variety of different spirit possession cults that seek to cater for the demands
of particular types of spirits. Members of such cults, all presumed to be
possessed by the same type of spirit, meet regularly to perform spectacular
Helander
rites featuring ecstatic behaviour and attempts to communicate with the

spirits - often in foreign languages. It should be mentioned that there is a
considerable number of people who view these cults with scepticism and
argue that they are contrary to Islamic faith. Members of the cults deny this
and regard instead the possession cults as ordinary Sufi orders. Many cults,
for instance the so-called Boraane of Shaykh Hussein, do bear indisputable
traces of copied symbolic traits from the large Sufi orders. Since many spirit
possession cults recruit their members among politically and socially
peripheral categories, it has been argued that the cults could be seen as a
form of social protest.
Somali Islam provides a number of specific explanations for the different
character of the peoples of the earth. A distinction is often made between
'history' and 'origin'. While secular political leaders and clan elders are held
to be knowledgeable about the former, the religious experts possess
expertise on the latter. According to the religious experts, Africans' dark
complexion is due to their descent from the cursed son of the prophet
Noah, Ham. The descendants of the other son, Sam, have remained light-
skinned. Similar types of explanation are also frequent in seeking to explain
the relative status of different clans. When remote villages were reached by
relief food drops during the famine of 1992, there were those who regarded
this as a sign of the moral superiority of the light-skinned relief workers.
Somali Sufism also contains a mystical orientation. The differences
between the different orders are considerable in this respect (and are also
one of the reasons for their historical disagreements). However, the basic
tenet is that everything in the universe is seen as related to everything else.
The name and personality of a person, the celestial bodies and the different
prophets, the seasons of the year and the genders are but a few of the
phenomena whose mutual relations can be ascertained and analysed by the
knowledgeable. However, knowledge of the full extent of this system of
cosmic correspondences is not regarded as possible for humans, as it forms
part of the way in which God created the world. At the same time it is also
seen as signs left in the creation by God for the faithful to discover through
devout studies. By mastering at least parts of this system, shaykhs are
believed to be able to perform useful services - and sometimes miracles -
for the laity. Most religious experts are regularly consulted for a variety of
purposes: to cure sickness as well as finding missing objects or livestock.
One of the more conspicuous cases of such religious expertise that I have
encountered was in 1988 when a shaykh was arrested and threatened with
execution for having helped deserting soldiers from the government army to
turn invisible.
One could argue that a basic idea of both practice and theory of Somali
Sufism is that the truth is hidden in reality; that things are not what they
appear to be but that pious study may reveal fragments of their true nature.
O n an even deeper level, human beings must also discover that 'this world'
(adduunyo),that is our existence on this side of judgement day, is but an
imperfect replica of what awaits in 'the next world' (aakhiro) where the
righteous will have their reward in paradise. Perhaps it is this insight in the
extreme consequence of eschatological teachings that is behind the warning
so often exchanged between Somalis: Ilaahi ka abso, 'fear God'.
In view of the importance of Islam in Somali social life, and given the
proximity to matters of faith in everyday routines, it is hardly surprising that
the civil war has fostered hopes that Islam in some way should provide a
bridge across the chasms that have torn through previous state. Even among
highly secularised intellectuals one finds the expressed opinion that Muslim
morality - within the framework of the Somali tradition of interpretation -
should be made the guide for how to reconcile the nation. Among the more
than 1 million Somali who now live in exile, Islam has partially assumed
new functions. While Somalis abroad previously proudly presented
themselves as Somalis, the destruction of this identity brought about by
the civil war now occasionally has people presenting themselves simply as
'Muslims'. It is not only for such persons that Islam provides a social
identity; in every conceivable future Somali state or federation, Islam is
likely to play a far greater role than was the case during the previous regime.
Exactly what shape this influence will assume is hard to discern. On the one
hand the support for hard-line militant forms of Islamism may grow, on the
other hand there is reason to assume that the broad popular support for the
traditional form of ulama Islam may serve to revitalise the Sufi orders.
Literature
The writings of Ioan M. Lewis provide the best introduction to Somali
social life as well as Islam in Somalia. A Modern History of Somalia:
Nation and State in the Horn of Africa (Boulder: Westview, 1988) devotes
considerable space to Islam. Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) offers a good overview of
recent research on spirit possession. Lewis' recent book Saints and Somalis:
Popular Islam in a Clan-based Society (Lawrenceville, N J : Red Sea Press,
1998) contains both classic essays on Somali Islam and newly written
material.
Bradford G. Martin's Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century
Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) and J.S. Trimin-
gham's Islam in Ethiopia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952) are
helpful in placing Somali Islam in a regional and historical perspective.
Mohamed Mohamed-Abdi's Histoire des croyances en Somalie: Religions
traditionelles et religions du Livre (Besangon: Annales littiraires de
1'Universiti de Besan~on,1992) provides some interesting insights into
Sufi traditions and the history of Islam in Somalia. Said S. Samatar's Oral
Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mohamed Abdille
Helander
Hasan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) is a detailed study

of the foremost leader of the Sahlihiyya order in Somalia, while the rich
volume In the Shadow of Conquest: Islam in Colonial Northeast Africa
(Trenton: Red Sea Press, 1992), ed. Said S. Samatar, presents Somali Islamic
history in a political context. Mohamed Haji Mukhtar's essay 'Islam in
Somali History: Fact and Fiction', included in the otherwise disappointing
volume The Invention of Somalia (Lawrenceville, N J : Red Sea Press, 1995),
ed. Ali Jimale Ahmed, provides a brilliant reassessment of crucial aspects of
conditions promoting Islam's spread in Somalia.
Chapter Two
Nigeria
Christopher Steed and David Westerltrnd
The Federal Republic of Nigeria, which was granted independence from

Britain in 1960, is often referred to as the 'giant' of sub-Saharan Africa.
Trisected by two wide rivers, the Niger and the Benue, Nigeria contains
diverse geographical environments. This tropical country has a population
of over 90 million, and contains a vast diversity of ethnic backgrounds,
encompassing over 400 languages and cultures. Two-thirds of the
population, however, come from the three largest ethnic groups: the
Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest and the Igbo in the
southeast. The use of English, as the official language, is one of the chief
factors unifying the nation. In the northern half of the country the Hausa
language is also used as a lingua franca amongst many ethnic minorities.
With half the population under twenty years of age, migration to the towns
and cities is one of the dominant characteristics of modern Nigerian life.
It is estimated that about 50 per cent of the population is Muslim. The
Christians are possibly somewhat fewer. The question of which of these
two religions has most followers is a perennial subject of controversy, and
no recent census has officially recorded figures for religious affiliation.
Islam in Nigeria predates sustained Christian contact with the country by
many centuries. Muslims entered Nigeria from the interior of the
continent, from across the West African savannahs and the Saharan desert
to the north, while Christianity spread along the West African coast, via the
Atlantic ocean to the south. Roughly speaking, this has meant that
Christianity is mostly located along the southern coast, and in the rain
forests and plains (populated by the Igbo, Efik and Tiv, among others),
whereas the savannahs and Sahel of northern Nigeria (chiefly inhabited by
the Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri peoples) are seen as the Islamic 'heartland' of
the nation.
Two areas of the country are religiously mixed, having both strong
Muslim and Christian identifies. Firstly, the west with its dense network of
towns and cities (including the former capital city of Lagos), is the home of
the Yoruba-speaking peoples, whose cultural identity has been able to
embrace Christianity as well as Islam. Secondly, the so-called Middle Belt
across the median of the country, an area of riverine grasslands, plateaux
Steed and Westevlund
and mountains occupied by scores, if not hundreds of ethnic groups, is an

expanse where there is intense rivalry between the two world religions.
Historical background
From the eleventh century onwards, when the king of Takrur in Senegambia
became a Muslim, Islam in West Africa was closely connected with the
development of states such as ancient Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Initially
introduced to West Africa by Berbers and Arabs from the Sahara to the
north, Islam gained many converts among local trading communities. West
African societies fused elements of the new Muslim religion to their own
traditional beliefs, creating a form of 'mixed' Islam. Islam came to northern
Nigeria from two directions: in the eleventh century from the northeast, via
Arab and Berber merchants from North Africa and the Sahara, to the
kingdom of Kanem-Borno; and from the west in the late fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries, through the influence of Wangarawa-Dyula
traders, to the city kingdoms of Hausaland.
The first Muslims came to Nigeria via the trade routes from Tripoli in
North Africa, through the Lake Chad region, to the Kanem-Borno
kingdom. Some of these traders probably belonged to the Ibadiyya, a
branch of the Kharijite movement, and they may have entered this corner of
Nigeria, along with Shuwa Arabs, sometime during the eighth century. In
the eleventh century, a Muslim by the name of Hummay established the
Muslim dynasty of the Saifawa, which was to rule the Kanem-Borno state
for the next 700 years until 1846, when it was replaced by the present al-
Kanemi dynasty. By the late fifteenth century Islam was well established at
Gazargamu, the new capital of Kanem-Borno, with the ulama (sing. alim,
religious scholar) holding eminent positions in government. By this time
Quranic education was well developed and Borno had extensive ties with
other leading intellectual centres in the Islamic world. Borno's prestigious
heritage of calligraphy and Quranic expertise is still significant.
There seems to have been a Muslim group of traders from other parts of
West Africa in the great northern Nigerian Hausa city of Kano by the
middle of the fourteenth century, though it was not until a century later that
the first king of Kano converted to Islam. Before the sixteenth century Islam
in northern Nigeria was very much mixed with local Hausa religion. Until
this time Islam was chiefly the religion of the towns and the trading classes.
Quranic schools were opened, and literacy in Hausa or Fulfulde, using the
Arabic script, was gradually incorporated into the governmental structure
of the main Hausa kingdoms of Kano, Katsina and, later, Zaria. From the
fifteenth century on, these Hausa city states grew rich and powerful.
Regional trading networks led to the establishment of Hausa mercantile
colonies throughout West Africa, and the Hausa traders soon perceived the
commercial and social advantages of conversion to Islam. This trading
Nigeria
The new central mosque in the old city of Kano (photo: Roman Loimeier,
1987).
diaspora brought back a wealth of knowledge about Islam to the Hausa

heartland and facilitated the gradual acceptance of the new religion in the
Hausa kingdoms.
Hausa chiefs and kings began to rely on Muslim literati, the expanding
group of ulama, for the governance of their kingdoms, and Islamic
jurisprudence was gradually accreted to traditional legal customs. By the
sixteenth century a written form of Hausa, known as ajami, had evolved
from a modified Arabic script. By 1700 Islam began to generate
substantial support amongst all levels of Hausa society. The ulama were
divided in their response to the mixed form of Islam that continued to
develop in the Hausa kingdoms. Some believed in a long-term evolution
towards Islamic orthodoxy, while others pleaded strongly for reform and a
cleansing of Islam of local polytheistic customs. By 1800 Islam was well
established in the savannahs of West Africa, from Senegambia in the west
to Lake Chad in the east. In this region a number of reform movements, all
more or less characterised by militancy, were launched during the
nineteenth century. The motivation for these jihads ('holy wars') was to
purify Islam. The jihad movement in West Africa had connections with the
Islamist Wahhabi movement and the foundation of the Tijani Sufi
brotherhood in the Maghreb. The West African leaders of the reform
Steed and Westerlund
movements all had the similar aim of creating a theocratic state based on
the Islamic law, sharia.
Shehu (shaykh) Usuman dan Fodio, the celebrated Fulani scholar led the
jihad, beginning in 1804, and within six years all the major towns of the
Hausa kingdoms were ruled by Fulani Muslim emirs. Usuman dan Fodio
had studied under a North African Muslim alim, and he was aware of
Muslim reformist ideas in the wider world. The jihad resulted in a 'federal'
theocratic state, with extensive autonomy for emirates, recognising the
spiritual authority of the caliph or sultan of Sokoto. The Islamic character
of the caliphate, at least in the early years, was reinforced by a close
partnership and identification between the religious scholars, the ulama,
and the new military and political rulers. By 1810 most of the emirates,
such as Kano, Katsina and Zaria, were established, while others, for
example Ilorin and Nupe, were created later. In all, over thirty major
emirates were formed throughout the course of the nineteenth century.
Shehu Usuman dan Fodio retired in 1812 from politics and returned to
scholarship, and his son Muhammad Bello succeeded to the caliphate with
the Shehu's death in 1817. From the time of the Shehu, there were twelve
Sarkin Musulmi ('commanders of the faithful'), or caliphs, until the British
conquest of the caliphate at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The expansion of the caliphate through military conquest, especially to
the south, into the so-called Middle Belt region, led to the forceful
incorporation of numerous ethnic minorities and non-Muslims into the
emirates of the Islamic polity. By a series of military outposts and frontier
fortresses, the caliphate perceived itself as the 'territory of Islam' (dar al-
islam), confronting the 'territory of the infidel' (dar al-kufr). Non-Muslims
could be enslaved in order to work on the Hausa-Fulani aristocracy's
plantations around the great northern cities, or to be exported to the slave
markets of the Middle East. The demand for slaves was a major reason for
the caliphate's expansion into non-Muslim areas to the south. It has been
estimated that slaves comprised between a quarter and a half of the
population of the emirates. The jihad was essentially a reform movement to
purify an already semi-Islamised society rather than forcibly convert non-
Muslims. This can also be illustrated by the fact that there continued to
exist large groups of non-Muslim Hausa, known as Magazawa, living in
sparsely populated areas of a number of emirates. The imposition of sharia
law provided a unity to socio-economic life in Northern Nigeria. Islamic
education and literature in Arabic, Fulfulde and Hausa languages
developed quickly. One of the most distinguished literary personalities in
the caliphate was the daughter of Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, Nana Asma'u
(1793-1865). Not only an accomplished poet, she devoted herself to the
cause of education for Muslim women. Her contribution was of wide
significance and she continues to be a source of inspiration to the present
day.
Nigeria
Islam in Yorubaland before the 1804 jihad has been little researched,
with only the barest outlines known. From the beginning of the seventeenth
century southwestern Nigeria was dominated by the Oyo empire. In
exchange for firearms the kingdom sold war captives as slaves for the
Atlantic trade. Through its strategic commercial position, the Oyo kingdom
was also in contact with Hausa Muslims to the north. Slaves were sold to
Muslim traders in exchange for horses, which were used to increase its
military strength. Muslim traders lived in distinct wards in the city of Oyo,
and their worship attracted in particular Yoruba traders to Islam. Towards
the end of the eighteenth century the Oyo empire reached its greatest
strength but soon after began to weaken. In 1817 pastoral Fulani, Hausa
slaves and Muslim Yoruba converts began to revolt in the northern part of
the Oyo kingdom, around the major town of Ilorin, which was proclaimed
a new emirate of the Sokoto caliphate. This Muslim-supported rebellion
sounded the death-knell for the Oyo empire, which had finally disintegrated
by 1836, plunging Yorubaland into a series of internecine civil wars which
lasted intermittently until nearly 1900.
There was much hostility towards Islam in the southeastern part of
Nigeria, caused by the Sokoto caliphate's annexation of Ilorin and northern
Yorubaland. However, Muslim traders gradually began to re-establish
themselves in the commercial world of Yoruba cities, and this led to the
development of Yoruba Islam, integrated into traditional society. Islamic
education, divination, healing and open-air preaching were some of the
methods that Muslims used to gain converts. The expansion of Islam
amongst the Yoruba reached a high point around 1900, by which time, for
example, half the population of Lagos were Muslims. Islam became well
integrated in the Yoruba peoples' traditional culture and has maintained a
special character which in many ways is different from Islam in Northern
Nigeria. Yoruba Muslim women are, for instance, very independent and
sharia does not have nearly the same strong position that it has in the north.
The widespread adherence to local Yoruba culture has subsumed modern
religious affiliation to Islam and Christianity.
When British colonial rule was established, Muslims in Nigeria did not
develop any co-ordinated response to defend themselves. Some Muslims in
Northern Nigeria responded by using the traditional Islamic hijra
('emigration') tactic, in the same way that the Prophet Muhammad did
when he left Mecca and went to Medina. There were also armed revolts,
many inspired by Mahdist and millenarian expectations. Other Muslims
decided on cultural and spiritual hijra, in other words a policy of non-
involvement with Europeans, the colonial administration and Western
education. The Bamidele movement in Ibadan during the 1930s is an
example of this kind of opposition. Many Muslims saw Christianity as the
underlying fabric of both the Western and secular culture that the British
colonialists introduced, and felt it to be incumbent upon themselves to resist
60
this foreign encroachment. On the whole, however, most Muslims accepted

the colonial take-over and the majority of Muslim leaders co-operated with
the new authorities who, in turn, recognised the traditional emirate
leadership. Once conquest had been achieved and apprehension of the
'Islamic peril' of Mahdism had subsided, the colonial powers were faced
with the problem of reaching an accommodation with their new Muslim
subjects. There was little evidence of a well thought through colonial policy
towards Islam, and consequently, imperial responses were often based on
the expediency of each situation. Essentially based on pragmatism, the
British established a system of 'indirect rule'. There were too few colonial
administrators proportionately to the numbers of Northern Nigerians for
Britain to govern single-handedly.
The nineteenth-century emirate structure was utilised by the British
colonial administration and became the main African example of the
policy of 'indirect rule'. The Muslim emirs established a close working
understanding with the British administration and were allowed to keep
most of their local power. Many emirs were suspicious of Christian
missions and banned them in their own emirates. These decisions were in
most cases accepted by the colonial administration. This colonial modus
vivendi gave Islam significant prestige. The ethnic minorities of Northern
Nigeria and the Middle Belt gained social and economic benefits by
converting to Islam, and this was especially so for those communities who
lived in peripheral areas near Muslim centres. What the Sokoto caliphate
failed to achieve by conquest in the nineteenth century, in converting
Middle Belt societies to Islam, was accomplished during the colonial
period.
European predictions over the decline of Islam were widely off the mark.
Under European colonialism Islam progressed more quickly than in pre-
colonial times. It has been estimated that the number of Muslims in tropical
Africa doubled during colonial rule. There are many reasons for this
expansion. Urbanisation and the greater social and geographic mobility
facilitated the expansion of Islam. The building up of an infrastructure
helped, for example, Hausa traders to extend the range of their commercial
networks. Migrants from Hausa communities travelled south to Yoruba
towns and established 'strangers' quarters', which contributed to the
expansion of Islam. Seasonal migrant labour was another cause of this
expansion, as foremen and plantation overseers were often Muslim.
However, backwardness in Western education meant that Muslims were
ill-equipped for direct involvement in the apparatus of the colonial state
and its successor, independent Nigeria. In this respect the Christians with
their mission schools had the advantage. The social and economic
conservatism as a characteristic of Nigerian Islam is reflected in the
Muslim reactions to the early nationalist movement, which became
dominated by Christian Nigerians from Southern Nigeria. The emirs and
Nigeria
their courts were afraid to loose their privileges. In conclusion, the absence
of a comprehensive system of Western education in large parts of Muslim
Nigeria meant that Christian Nigerians held the initiative in the
development of popular nationalism.
Sufi orders
The influential orthodox tradition has certainly helped make Nigerian
Islam of particular importance in Black Africa, but there is a wide range of
Islamic groups and identities in Nigeria. This diversity has been most clearly
illustrated by the Sufi orders or brotherhoods. The most important
brotherhoods in Nigeria are the Qadiriyya and the Tijaniyya. The authority
of shaykhs has traditionally been immense, and adherents regularly give
them notable presents. Pilgrimages to the shrines of saints and praise
singing to the Prophet Muhammad are other controversial attributes of the
orders. The margin between Sufism and orthodoxy is however not
necessarily clear-cut. In the Qadiri order in particular there are many
Muslims who have great regard for the sharia and who strive for an
'unadulterated' Islam. Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, whose jihad led to the
establishment of the sharia-based Sokoto caliphate, belonged to the
Qadiriyya.
The British suspected the Tijaniyya in particular of having revolutionary
tendencies and estimated the Qadiriyya to be a somewhat less serious
threat to colonial rule. The colonial government was always extremely
suspicious of Sufi shaykhs or marabouts and of the activities of Sufi
teachers. As many of these were ambulatory, it was difficult to control their
influence. For much of their history there has been tension and rivalry
between the Qadiriyya and the Tijaniyya. During recent decades, however,
many of the differences between them have been set aside and they have
begun instead to cooperate. This has largely arisen from the need to
maintain a united front in order to face the challenge from new Islamist
groups. Even before the advance of the modern Islamist groups in the
1970s, Ahmadu Bello, Premier of Northern Nigeria 1954-66, had created
a religious movement called Usmaniyya and one of its purposes was to
bring together the two large Sufi orders. After Bello's death - he was
murdered in 1966 - divisions between the two main Sufi brotherhoods
resurfaced.
A schism occurred within the Tijaniyya in the 1920s, when Ibrahim
Niass (d. 1975), from Kaolack in Senegal, established his own branch of the
order, sometimes known as the Reformed Tijaniyya, eventually resulting in
major repercussions in Nigeria. Ibrahim Niass gained a large following
across the breadth of the West Africa region, and many think of him as the
single most important personality in twentieth-century West African Islam.
He maintained extensive international contacts and more than anybody else
strengthened ties between West African Muslims and the wider Islamic
world, at a time when colonial governments were attempting to reduce such
contacts. In Nigeria Ibrahim Niass and his anti-colonial and socialist ideas
were opposed not only by the colonial authorities but also by the Sokoto
caliphate. Tijaniyya attempts to recruit potential followers from the
Qadiriyya caused much resentment and tension. In Zaria, Katsina and
Kano the Tijaniyya successfully gained new followers at the expense of the
Qadiriyya. By the late 1950s this rivalry resulted in riots which entailed
some loss of life. Today the Tijaniyya have more adherents than the
Qadiriyya in Northern Nigeria, particularly in the countryside. However,
the Tijanis are also more divided among themselves.
Education
The twentieth century has seen progressively large numbers of Nigerian
Muslim students coming to study in the universities and religious centres of
North Africa and the Middle East. Particularly attractive has been the
University of al-Azhar in Cairo. During the colonial period the British tried
to control the influx of Islamic ideas, often by screening Arabic and Islamic
books and papers. Nigerian students in Islamic countries sometimes
changed their religious perceptions of Islam, and when they returned home
they were dismayed by the lack of orthodoxy in the Islam of their own
communities. For example, the puritan Wahhabiyya revival movement
reached Nigeria and other parts of West Africa in the 1930s through
Muslims returning home after pilgrimage to Mecca. The Wahhabis
condemned moral laxity, Sufi brotherhoods and Muslim magical practices,
which were often disseminated by West African marabouts.
The challenge of Western education and the response of Muslims to
new educational opportunities is arguably one of the most important
issues that have faced Muslim communities during the twentieth century.
It was even more of a critical subject with regard to the education of
Muslim women. In Northern Nigeria, with its own Islamic scholarly
tradition, new forms of Western education were not popular and there
were difficulties when the colonial administration attempted to apply
Western educational norms to Islamic teaching traditions. The main
problem for Muslims, quite understandably, was the perceived link
between Western education and Christianity. Most modern schools were
run by Christian missions, who expected their pupils to be open to the
Christian message. As indicated above, emirs requested the colonial
government to prevent Christian missions from proselytising to the
Muslim population of Northern Nigeria. The British accedence to this
request was based on the policy and practice of 'indirect rule'. When the
Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) was allowed into Kano city in
1929, this was conditional on its concentrating its work on the Christian
Nigeria
groups who had come from the south of the country. By the end of the
colonial period there were very few Muslims in Northern Nigeria who had
basic competence in English.
It was a deliberate policy by the British administration and the emirates
to prohibit Christian evangelisation in Muslim areas. Because of this there
was a very slow development of Western education in Northern Nigeria.
Many colonial administrators thought that an orderly, if slow, development
of Islamic culture was more suitable than access to modern education and
Christianity. British officials developed their administration in Muslim
areas in conjunction with established rulers, such as the emirs and the
ulama. Muslims educated in the traditional Quranic schools were employed
as clerks, policemen and district village heads. The British also accepted
Islamic law, which was recognised over wide areas as it was easier to
administer than the various local laws and customs.
In southwestern Nigeria, Muslims were better informed about the
education provided by Christian mission schools and were, in many cases,
attracted by Western education. The colonial government in Lagos gave a
measure of assistance to modern Muslim education, but the support was
hardly on the scale needed in order to satisfy demand. Instead Yoruba
Muslims formed various societies whose task was to provide Muslims with
a modern education which did not conflict with Islamic values. The most
famous of these Muslim educational organisations, the Ansar-Ud-Deen
Society, founded in 1923, had by 1960 over 50,000 members and ran
numerous training colleges and secondary schools, as well as over 200
primary schools. Linked with this expansion and integration of Western
and Islamic education was the development in southwestern Nigeria of a
modern Islamic culture. The first Muslim printing press was established in
Abeokuta in 1933, and by 1952 the town had a total of sixteen Muslim
presses. These ventures by Southern Nigerian Muslims illustrate the need
that many felt for a modern expression of Islam. Partly in order to improve
their educational opportunities, Yoruba Muslims appealed for assistance to
the Ahmadiyya movement in Pakistan. The Ahmadis, viewed with
scepticism by many other Muslims, responded by sending their first
missionary, Abd-ur-Rahim Nayyar, to West Africa in 1921. The Ahmadi
involvement in Nigeria was, and remains, controversial.
By the time of independence, many Northern Nigerian Muslims were
hampered from participating in the technological development of the
country by their hesitant response to Western education as well as by lack
of opportunities for such modern education. This imbalance in educational
attainment between the south and the north of the country has contributed
to the serious regional tensions that the federal republic has experienced.
Most Nigerian Muslims have realised that they cannot afford to ignore
modern education, unless they wish to put themselves at a permanent
disadvantage in relation to Nigerian Christians.
A girls' class in a modern Qadiri school in Kano (photo: Roman Loimeier,

1987).
Islam and politics

With the creation and development of political parties, there soon occurred
a clear division of loyalty and support from each of the three administrative
regions of the colonial government of Nigeria. Simply put, the Western
Region was the home of the Action Group (AG) and backed by the Yoruba
people, and the Eastern Region and its largest ethnic group, the Igbo,
supported the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC).
The large Northern Region was geographically, religiously and politically
divided between the dominant Northern Peoples' Congress (NPC), the
Nigerian Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and the United Middle Belt
Congress (UMBC).
It was particularly in the extensive Northern Region that religion became
a matter of political importance and tension. Within the northern Muslim
population, the traditional establishment controlled the NPC, while
Muslim reformers, radicals and those generally at odds with the Clite of
the emirates chose to support the NEPU under the leadership of Aminu
Kano (1920-83), one of the greatest Muslim scholar-politicians of
twentieth-century Nigeria. Divisions between traditional and radical
groups of Muslims not only affected the political parties and doctrines,
but also contributed to an increase in antagonism between the Qadiriyya
Nigeria
and Tijaniyya. Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of the Northern Region, led the
NPC and sought to consolidate the authority of the traditional Muslim
establishment in the north of the country. For a number of years he went on
pilgrimage to Mecca twice a year and frequently travelled in West Africa
and Arab countries, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia; he developed
close contacts with the Muslim world and in 1963 became the vice-
president of the Muslim World League.
Within Nigeria Ahmadu Bello sought to reform and unite the Sufi orders,
and tried to extend the frontiers of Islam to non-Muslim areas. For both
purposes he instigated in 1962 the founding of the Jamaatu Nasril Islam
(Society for the Victory of Islam), and the following year set up an Advisory
Committee on Islamic Affairs, whose forty-six members were recruited
from leading Northern Nigerian Muslim teachers (mallams).Ahmadu Bello
contributed to the revival of interest in the great nineteenth-century jihad
leaders, Shehu Usuman dan Fodio and Muhammad Bello. As Premier of the
Northern Region he attempted to use Islam as a unifying force in the
enormous region. In the 1960s he led a number of conversion campaigns,
particularly among ethnic communities in the Middle Belt area. The mainly
southern-based Nigerian press depicted these campaigns as Ahmadu Bello's
own jihad, while the northern Christian churches were alarmed by the use
of political power to achieve conversion to Islam.
In connection with the coup d'e'tat in January 1966 many political
leaders were murdered, including Ahmadu Bello and the Federal Prime
Minister Tafawa Balewa, and Nigeria had its first military government.
After the second coup of July 1966, the country was ruled by General
Yakubu Gowon, until his overthrow in 1975. The new military govern-
ment's most difficult problem was the secession of the Igbo-dominated
Eastern Region of the country, which proclaimed itself the new country of
Biafra. This attempt at secession caused the Nigerian civil war between
1967 and 1970, which ended with victory for the federal government in
Lagos and the safeguarding of the federation. A crucial contributory factor
of the civil war was the massacre of thousands of Igbo Christians living in
the northern half of the country, and the exodus of more than 1million Igbo
back to their crowded home areas in Eastern Nigeria. To many, the
massacres were seen as the beginning of a jihad waged by Islam on
Christianity, and this perception of events was adopted by Biafran
secessionist propaganda. To the Biafrans, the civil war was also a religious
war against the perceived threat of Islam. Even though half or a majority of
the federal army were Christian, Biafran propaganda sought to portray the
federal forces as Muslim oppressors who were determined to Islamise the
entire country. Following the defeat of Biafra, Gowon's policy of
reconciliation between the Igbo and other Nigerians was widely admired.
In 1963 the federal republic was composed of four regions. In 1967 the
Gowon government split up these regions and instead created twelve states.
The number of states has been successively enlarged by later military

administrations, and currently (1998) there are thirty-six states, as well as
the new federal capital territory of Abuja. This division has adversely
affected the authority and power of the traditional Muslim establishment to
rule the former Northern Region, itself based on the nineteenth-century
Sokoto caliphate. Today, the northern half of the country is divided into
nineteen states plus the Abuja capital territory. The murder of Ahmadu
Bello did not mean the end of attempts to maintain the Muslim klite's
traditional political influence. Some of the younger Muslims who will
preserve the legacy of Ahmadu Bello have come together to create an
informal network of modernising aristocrats, technocrats and other
professionals and politicians. Members of this network are popularly
known as the Kaduna Mafia, although this does not imply a criminality.
One of the leading members of this group, Ibrahim Dasuki, was appointed
in 1988 to be the eighteenth Sultan of Sokoto, until he was deposed in 1996
by the then military ruler of Nigeria, General Sani Abacha. However, since
Ahmadu Bello's death it has been hard to maintain an Islam-based
traditional political unity for the northern half of the country. Structural
administrative changes notwithstanding, a major reason has been the rapid
growth of Christianity amongst many of the peoples of the Middle Belt area
in the southern half of the old Northern Region.
Between 1978 and 1985 many Northern Nigerian towns and cities were
shaken by the armed insurrections led by Mohammed Marwa Maitatsine
and his Yan Tatsine movement. He had a long history of fomenting Islamic
unrest in Northern Nigeria, and in 1962 he was deported from Kano to his
native Cameroon. His followers, numbering a few thousand, mainly came
from semi-Islamised areas of the Middle Belt or were foreigners from Niger,
Cameroon and Chad. To a large extent they were indigent migrants to
Nigerian urban centres, alienated from the mainstream of Nigerian life
through poverty and relegated to a marginal status as refugee foreigners.
After the return of Maitatsine to Nigeria and under his leadership, this
marginal group waged a jihad against the Muslim majority who did not
accept their teachings. Perhaps inspired by the 1979 siege of the Kaba
mosque in Mecca, in 1980 the Yan Tatsine group attempted to capture the
Kano central mosque, leading to the loss of at least 4,000 lives including
innocent civilians, Maitatsine and other insurrectionists. After his death,
groups of Maitatsine followers who had escaped from the Kano bloodbath
attempted various smaller uprisings in other cities: the most serious
incidents causing widespread loss of life occurred in or near Maiduguri
(19821, Yola (1984) and Gombe (1985).
It is perhaps no coincidence that the unrest started in 1978 (in
Maiduguri) and culminated in the 1980 Kano uprising, as this period
corresponded with the beginning of a new century according the Muslim
calendar - the fifteenth century AH (after hijra). There is a widespread
Nigeria
belief, especially in Sufi Islam, that a mujaddid (reformer or renewer) will

arise each century to purify and revitalise the faith. This belief no doubt
inspired Maitatsine to regard himself as the mujaddid of the century
beginning AH 1400. Extreme deviation from normal everyday activities
and societal norms are millenarian characteristics. Millenarian movements
have arisen a number of times before in Northern Nigeria. As late as 1965,
for example, Abubakar Bawanke from Toranke near Sokoto proclaimed
himself to be the Mahdi and spiritual heir of the Prophet Muhammad,
which led to violent disturbances with the Nigerian police. However, the
type of Islam that Maitatsine preached was a very special mixture of
traditional Muslim conceptions and local African elements. There is enough
proof to believe that Maitatsine relied on various 'pagan' beliefs in his
teachings. Some of the movement's victims, for example, were murdered
because it was thought that their organs would give Maitatsine's followers
certain 'magical' powers. To describe Yan Tatsine as a 'fundamentalist'
Islamic movement, a common description in the Nigerian mass media, is
consequently misleading.
Since 1983 to the present (1998) Nigeria has been ruled by military
government under a succession of army generals. In 1993 there was an
attempt to return the country to civilian rule. General Ibrahim Babangida,
who led Nigeria 1985-93, allowed two political parties to contest civilian
elections held in 1992-93. The effect of this was that one party was viewed
as being controlled by the powerful Muslim northern klite, while the other
was seen as representing predominantly 'southern' and Christian interests.
Although both candidates for president were Muslim, these elections were
thought to have been won by Chief Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba millionaire
businessman, from the Social Democratic Party, widely thought to be the
'southern' party. However, this election result was annulled by the
Babangida military government, and since 1994 Chief Abiola has been
held in detention without trial. The reason commonly given for this aborted
return to civilian rule was that the 'Kaduna Mafia' and other influential
northern Muslim military and civilian groups could not countenance the
passing of political power from the North to the South and into the hands
of such a strong leader as Abiola.
Islamist groups
The Islamist movement has grown stronger in Nigeria than in other
countries of Black Africa. This is partly due to the fact that Sufism is not as
strong in Nigeria, as for example it is in Senegal and Somalia. Moreover,
Nigeria has its own theocratic heritage dating from the time of the Sokoto
caliphate, a source of deep inspiration for the country's Islamists. Pan-
Islamic consciousness is common, and many Nigerian Islamists have
widespread international contacts. This Islamist network has contributed
extensively to the building and running of many new mosques and other
Islamic institutions, such as schools, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and
banks, that have been established in Nigeria during the last few decades of
the twentieth century.
There are today a large number of Islamist organisations in Nigeria,
most locally based but some organised nationally. Of particular significance
are the Muslim Students' Society (MSS) and Izala. The MSS was founded
already in 1954 but only later did it become radicalised. Today the society
has branches mainly at hundreds of universities and colleges, and it is very
active in organising Islamic activities at educational institutions. The MSS
also actively propagates through producing radio and television pro-
grammes and the dissemination of Islamic literature. The society co-
operates with numerous international Islamic organisations and has drawn
inspiration from developments in Iran after the 1979 revolution. In some
cases militant action, for example physical attacks on non-Muslim students
and against Muslim students accused of drinking alcohol, has lead to the
temporary closure of a number of universities.
In 1986 a new organisation, the Council of Ulama (CU), was created by
present and past members of the MSS and their sympathisers. Many CU
members are university teachers, such as Ibrahim Sulaiman at Ahmadu
Bello University at Zaria, one of the foremost proponents of Islamisation in
Nigeria. Sulaiman is one of a number of Islamists who have undertaken
intensive research on the Sokoto caliphate. Many members of the MSS and
CU are sharply critical of Jamaatu Nasril Islam, which is held to be both an
'official' and an 'irrelevant' organisation which has betrayed the heritage of
Usuman dan Fodio and the Sokoto caliphate. A smaller and more radically
Islamist group is the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, lead by Ibrahim al-
Zakzaky, who has repeatedly been imprisoned. Since the members of this
movement are strongly inspired by the Iranian revolution, Nigerian mass
media [erroneously] refer to them as 'Shiites'.
Izala was created in 1978, and its full name, Jamaatu Izalat al-Bida wa
Iqamat al-Sunna, announces that its members reject innovation and instead
work for the preservation of the Sunna. Until his death in 1992, the leading
representative of Izala was Abubakar Gumi, who had been born in a small
village in Sokoto province in 1924. Gumi received a good Islamic education
and became a very successful and respected religious scholar (alim), which
made him influential in prominent Muslim circles in Northern Nigeria. He
developed good contacts with Ahmadu Bello and in 1960 became his
adviser on religious questions. Two years later Gumi was appointed Grand
Kadi (judge), the highest Islamic legal position in Northern Nigeria. After
Bello was assassinated in 1966, Gumi lost his protector but gained a greater
freedom to articulate his own Islamist viewpoint. Gumi's most important
concern was to try to unite Muslims politically. In his view, the
'sectarianism' of the Sufi brotherhoods was the greatest hindrance to the
Nigeria
longed for co-religionist unity. In 1972 he published a large didactic work

on orthodox Islam and its foundation in the sharia; however, as this tome
was published in Arabic, its Nigerian readership was limited to religious
scholars. To spread his ideas wider, Gumi published in 1978 a small book in
Hausa, Musulunci da abinda k e rushe shi (Islam and the things that lead to
its corruption or destruction). After the book's publication the conflict
between Gumi and the brotherhood leaders widened and even degenerated
into violent confrontation among ordinary Muslims in the towns and
villages of Northern Nigeria.
Yan Izala, as Izala members are called, powerfully attack those religious
elements in Sufism that they feel are contrary to the Quran and the Sunna.
As important is their criticism of the Sufi social system. Young Muslims in
particular have supported Izala's hostility to the fees paid to the shaykhs
and against the high cost of bridewealth. As an alternative to the shaykhs'
Quranic schools, Izala has established a large network of modern schools.
The disruption and schisms that have been caused by Izala's uncompromis-
ing attitude and actions, have led to a more acute conflict than the earlier
disharmony between the Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya. Izala has started or has
led a process where the young are in conflict with the old, women against
men and the poor against the well-established. For the weaker groups, the
young, women and the poor, Izala offers a new way of life and a new
conception and legitimacy of leadership. This opposition to the dominance
of the Sufi shaykhs and traditional ways of life is interpreted as a struggle
against non-Islamic forces.
The Sufi leaders of the Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya have vigorously rejected
these attacks and, putting to one side disputes among themselves, they have
formed a common front in their counterattack against Izala and other
Islamist forces. The Sufis have denounced Gumi and his followers on many
accounts: for interpreting the Quran too independently; for inciting
children and youth to rebel against their parents; for encouraging women
to disobey their husbands; for ridiculing the emirs; for falsifying the Sunna;
and for trying to control the mass media for evil purposes. One of the
leading Sufi strategists in this struggle against Izala, the Tijani shaykh
Ibrahim Saleh, developed close relations with General Ibrahim Babangida,
Nigeria's military ruler and president between 1986 and 1993, and Saleh
was widely held to be the president's personal marabout.
The Tijani shaykhs have been the target for Izala criticism, more than
their Qadiri colleagues. This difference can be explained partly because the
former are geographically more widely spread than the latter, and partly
because the Qadiriyya had historic links with the Sokoto caliphate, which
Izala members and other Islamists respect even though Usuman dan Fodio
and his closest followers belonged to the Qadiriyya. Gumi in fact claimed,
without providing clear evidence, that Fodio had left the Qadiriyya before
he died; this assertion has hardly been believed, and the tremendous
Nasiru Kabara (1925-96), leader of the Qadiriyya in Nigeria, leaving his

house in the old city of Kano to celebrate the birthday of the founder of this
brotherhood (photo: Roman Loimeier, 1987).
influence of the famous jihad leader among Nigerian Muslims is so

widespread that too great an attack on his order would be counter-
productive. The Izala struggle against the Tijaniyya has had a greater effect,
partly because this order is split into different competing factions and partly
because they have more controversial teachings than the Qadiriyya.
Because of the disputes with Izala large numbers of Tijanis in certain
areas, for example in Kaduna, have left the order. In some areas Tijani
activities have practically ceased, and many of the order's mosques have
either been abandoned or taken over by the Yan Izala. However, defectors
from the Qadiriyya have been much more limited in number.
Nigeria
With the death of Abubakar Gumi in 1992, Izala lost its natural and
charismatic leader, and the unity of the movement was weakened. This
background of dissension among Muslims and divisions between Islamic
associations has made it easier for Christians to win many elections for
local government during the last few years. This has led to efforts to reduce
conflict between different Islamists and the Sufis. For example, leading
representatives from the Council of Ulama, a much broader organisation
than Izala, have been engaged in reconciliation efforts.
Issues of conflict
One of the immediate reasons for the creation of the Council of Ulama was
the national turbulence caused by Nigeria's entry into the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1986. The Babangida government's
decision to join the OIC, as well as the secrecy surrounding it, brought
about a wave of sharp protests from Christian leaders, churches and other
organisations. Before such united criticism from Christians, Muslims were
acutely aware of the importance of unity. President Babangida pleaded the
economic advantages of OIC membership, but Christians accused him of
religious favouritism and pointed out that one of the OIC's aims was to
work for Islamic solidarity between member states. Many critics argued
that membership conflicted with Nigeria's constitution, which stated that
no religion shall be given official status. Babangida replied that the
country's entry into the OIC did not mean that Nigeria would become an
Islamic state. He pointed out that Nigeria was not the only 'secular' OIC
member. In the aftermath of the OIC dispute and the resultant acrimonious
tension between Muslims and Christians, the president created a committee
of mediation, the Advisory Council on Religious Affairs, with both
Christian and Muslim members appointed by the president. The
committee's commission was to forward dialogue, consultation and
increased understanding between the different religious groups. The
members however found it difficult to agree on their work, even though
militant Islamists and Christian fundamentalist groups were not repre-
sented on the committee.
In the middle of the 1980s the question of the hajj, the pilgrimage to
Mecca, was also a burning subject of debate. Many Muslims were
dissatisfied with the restrictions and the control exercised by the state, while
Christians perceived the hajj as yet another example of the state favouring
Islam. Certain restrictions on the numbers of pilgrims had already been
drawn up during the 1960s, but they were not rigorously implemented, and
the numbers quickly increased to over 100,000 in 1977. The government
demanded that this number should be halved, and the federal state
governments were apportioned different maximum numbers of those
allowed to perform the pilgrimage. In 1975 the military government had
created the Nigerian Pilgrim's Board with the aim of managing the practical
and logistical problems involved in pilgrimage. Earlier, for example,
transport and lodging had been up to individual initiative, but the hajj
became increasingly under official control. At the beginning of the 1980s a
special 'presidential allowance' for additional places was introduced, and
the numbers began again to rapidly increase until the middle of the 1980s
when President Muhammed Buhari drastically reduced the numbers
permitted. Critics felt that the quota of reserved places for the president
was used by political favourites. By becoming an Alhaji (male pilgrim) or an
Alhaja (female pilgrim) a Muslim could gain great prestige. It could even
enhance an individual's employment possibilities. Because of the prestige
that a pilgrim's title could give, even Christians in the 1980s who had
returned from pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem designated themselves
respectively as RP or JP.
Part of the official argument for limiting the numbers of pilgrims was
economic. Significant sums of public money were spent on federal, state and
local government levels for pilgrimage administration, and enormous sums
of foreign exchange were taken out of the country each year because of the
hajj. Some Nigerian pilgrims have also been accused of involvement in
international drug smuggling and other criminal activities, which has
resulted in them being imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. An important reason for
government control of the pilgrimage, albeit not publicly acknowledged in
Nigeria or in other African states, is the fear that the Islamist 'contagion'
will further invade the country. Islamists from all over the world meet
together at Mecca and important international contacts and networks are
established. Some pilgrims also return with Wahhabi literature which they
distribute in Nigeria. It is hardly surprising that in particular it has been
Islamists in Nigeria who have criticised the government's intervention in
pilgrimage affairs. The Islamists stress that it is every faithful Muslim's duty
to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime, provided that
there is no reasonable obstacle, such as inadequate economic resources.
They feel that secular authorities such as the Nigerian government have no
right to limit or hinder individuals from following the precept of their
religion. Some critics think that there should be an international Muslim
organisation, Universal Hajj Council, with representatives from across the
world, which should manage and facilitate the performance of pilgrimage.
One of the most important questions of conflict during the recent
decades has been about the position which should be accorded to the
sharia. During the colonial period Islamic law covered all parts of the law in
Northern Nigeria, including criminal justice, even if punishments such as
amputation and stoning were forbidden. With only a few exceptions, the
British did not change the legal heritage derived from the Sokoto caliphate.
During most of the two first decades of independence there was no major
legal change in Northern Nigeria. It was only after 1979 that some
Nigeria
important changes were implemented. The question of Islamic law on a

federal level came into focus. Islamists who wish to turn Nigeria into an
Islamic state feel that the sharia should be practised on a federal level. The
Council of Ulama's deputy chairman, Ibrahim Saleh, declared that there
was no doubt that Nigeria would one day become an Islamic state based on
the sharia. Ibrahim Sulaiman has sharply criticised those Muslim leaders
who are prepared to compromise over the issue of the position of Islamic
law.
Before the inauguration of the Second Republic there was a long and
stormy debate on sharia. The constituent assembly in 1976 had proposed
that there should be a sharia federal court of appeal under the leadership of
a chief mufti (scholar learned in Islamic jurisprudence) and that every state
that wished should have a Islamic court of appeal at state level. Lateef
Adegbite, the first president of the Muslim Students' Society, was one of the
prominent Muslims from Southern Nigeria who supported this proposal
and who stated that Southern Nigerian Muslims had for too long been
denied the right to have their affairs judged according to Islamic law.
However, there were many Southern Muslims, particularly from Yoruba-
land, who pleaded for a compromise to solve this intractable conflict
between Muslims. There was also a small group of Northern Muslims who
were in favour of a compromise, partly because they feared that Abubakar
Gumi would be appointed Chief Mufti if the original proposal was
accepted. The end result was a compromise which allowed for the creation
of a special bench with Muslim jurists in the High Court, whose task would
be to scrutinise those cases sent from the state court of appeal. The
controversial question of the status of sharia arose again at the end of the
1980s when plans for a new constitution for the expected Third Republic
were discussed. This time too, those Muslims who wished to see the
creation of a federal Islamic court of appeal did not succeed in getting a
majority in favour of the proposal. In both debates, at the end of the 1970s
and ten years later, the military authorities were very active in making sure
that the religious divisions did not go out of control.
Only from the 1940s were Christian missions able, in theory, to operate
throughout Northern Nigeria. This evangelistic expansion to a large extent
corresponded with the migration of Christian southerners to work in
northern towns and cities, and these educated migrants ran much of the
modern governmental, commercial and communication administrations.
Before the 1966 massacres it was particularly the Igbo who dominated
church life in the northern cities. After the civil war there developed a more
localised Christianity, mainly by northern Christians from the Middle Belt.
The increase in the numbers of Christians from among the many Middle
Belt ethnic communities has been exceedingly fast since the 1960s. In the
last few decades a number of riots and disturbances have flared up between
Christians and Muslims. This antagonism is naturally not just based on
religious rivalry but also involves economic, ethnic and political issues.
However, the violent disturbances in Kaduna State in 1987 and in Kano
1991 have primarily been based on religious confrontation. The 1987
outbreak resulted in the burning of seventy-five churches and the death of at
least twenty-five people. In the 1991 Kano uproar it was reported that over
300 people were killed after demonstrations against the arrival of a
'fundamentalist' Christian preacher. The city and state of Bauchi
experienced two outbreaks of riots, in 1991 and 1992, between Christians
and Muslims, and both conflicts were rooted in local ethnic animosity.
During the 1980s and 1990s religious antagonism between Christian and
Muslim students has also arisen in a number of Nigerian university and
college campus cities such as Ibadan, Sokoto and Zaria. These confronta-
tions in part reflect the anxiety caused by the increase in contact between
Muslims and Christians. Neither Christianity nor Islam are now confined to
particular areas of the country. Religious tension has a clear connection
with the growth of uncompromising Muslim and Christian activism. It has
been suggested that there has recently occurred an 'Islamisation' of
Christianity in Northern Nigeria, with Christians demanding equal funding
for Christian pilgrimages and the incorporation of Christian canon law into
the constitution, as the counterpart to state Muslim pilgrimage organisa-
tions and the importance of sharia in the country.
Literature
A broad and stimulating introduction to Nigeria's past, that discusses the
role of Islam, is Elizabeth Isichei's A History of Nigeria (London: Longman,
1983). The significance of Sokoto in the Fulani empire is expertly recounted
in Murray Last's The Sokoto Caliphate (London: Longman, 1967). Mervyn
Hiskett's The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman
Dan Fodio (2nd edition, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994) is
an excellent biography of the outstanding leader of the Fulani jihad, and
information on Usuman dan Fodio's significance for Nigerian Muslims
today can be obtained, for example, from the two books by Ibrahim
Sulaiman, A Revolution in History: The Jihad of Usman Dan Fodio
(London: Mansell, 1986), and The Islamic State and the Challenge of
History: Ideals, Policies and Operation of the Sokoto Caliphate (London:
Mansell, 1987). Islam's development in the southwest of Nigeria is the
subject of T.G.O. Gbadamosi's The Growth of lslam among the Yoruba
1841-1908 (London: Longman, 1978). For understanding the background
of Tijani Sufism, see Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya (London: Oxford
University Press, 1965).An exceptionally good local study on the politics of
Islam and Sufi adherence is that by John N. Paden, Religion and Political
Culture in Kano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). The
position of women in Muslim society is the subject of Barbara J. Callaway's
Nigeria
Ivluslim Hausa W o m e n in Nigeria: Tradition and Change (Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1987). In Jean Boyd's book, The Caliph's Sister:
Nana Asma'u 1793-1865: Teacher, Poet and Islamic Leader (London:
Frank Cass, 1989), the life and work of a daughter of Usuman dan Fodio is
presented. The growth of modern Islamist groups is given by Peter B.
Clarke and Ian Linden in their Islam in Modern Nigeria: A Study of a
Muslim Community in a Post-Independence State (Mainz: Griinewald,
1984). Klaus Hock's Der Islam-Komplex: Z u r christlichen Wahrnehmung
des Islams und der christlich-islamischen Beziehungen in Nordnigeria
wahrend der Militarherrschaft Babangidas (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1996) is a
fine and detailed study of Christian-Muslim relations. A thorough and
expert account of Islamism and the conflict with the Sufi orders is provided
in Roman Loimeier's recent book, Islamic Reform and Political Change in
Northern Nigeria (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997).
Chapter Three
Senegal
Eva Evers Rosander and David Westerlund
Senegal has a reputation in the West for being a democracy and one of the
most politically stable countries in Africa. It was the first African country to
liberalise its political life by, for instance, legalising political parties and
allowing a free press. Senegal's good reputation has earned it a great deal of
development aid from Europe and the United States. In recent decades Arab
countries have also offered money and other gifts for the building of,
among other things, mosques, hospitals and schools. During this time,
moreover, Islamist donors have pleaded for a pure and unified religion in
Senegal and opposed the Sufi orders' more popular or syncretistic forms of
Islam. Yet, in the otherwise turbulent African continent, Senegal stands out
as a politically and religiously relatively quiet country, where a secular state
co-exists with powerful Sufi orders, small groups of Islamists and a
minority of Christians who to a certain extent collaborate with the Muslim
majority.
What kind of democracy do we actually find in Senegal? While some
critics argue that it is still in practice a one-party system, others seem to find
its specific pattern of interaction of religion and politics intriguing and
puzzling. Many conclude that the old and predominant Parti Socialiste
(Socialist Party), which competes with a few other parties until now left
without a fair chance in elections, is not manifesting a fully acceptable
model of democracy. Nevertheless, the country is exceptional because of the
elaboration of a peculiarly effective institutional network for the assertion
of an authentic statehood over most of the national territory, which
involves rural masses as well as elites, through the intermediary auspices of
the Sufi brotherhoods or orders (Ar. turuq, sing. tariqa). Sufism in Senegal is
a bewildering mixture of piety, commercialism and politics. Particularly in
discussions about democracy, it is important to draw attention to the Sufi
leaders, or marabouts, and their crucial position between the state and
society. This link is semi-covert or informal and therefore very difficult for
outsiders to grasp. The Sufi orders constitute what amounts to a religiously-
based civil society, the social foundation of the Senegalese state. The
marabouts co-exist with the state and the Islamic movements in Senegal.
This relatively peaceful co-existence of the secular state and the Sufi orders
Senegal
may continue as long as the Senegalese state maintains its economic

capability to hand out allowances to marabouts and some other Islamic
leaders and is able to keep them integrated in the political game. The
sustainability of the orders is, moreover, wholly dependent on the
organisation of succession. Thus, there are certain weak points which in
the future may affect the apparently stable current situation.
In Senegal more than 90 per cent of the population of about 7 million is
(Sunni) Muslim. Approximately half a million are Christians, and other
religious minorities are mainly adherents of indigenous African religions.
The Christians, mostly Catholics, remain largely influenced by the French
culture and way of life. Many of them have studied in France or in French
schools in Senegal. They live in cities like Dakar, Thies and St Louis as well
as in the Casamance Province in the southwestern part of the country. The
main ethnic groups are the Wolof, Fulbe and Serer. Other, less numerous
peoples, are the Toucouleur and Djola. Wolof is the dominating language,
even among other ethnic groups, and the Wolof constitute more than one
third of the Senegalese population. Thus, their influence over religion and
culture is considerable.
From the eleventh century onwards, Islam was spread along the shores of
the Senegal river by Muslim traders. The Toucouleur in particular were
early influenced by Islamic culture and traditions. Through this trade, and
the missionary activities which Arabs and Berbers who came to the region
were involved in, other ethnic groups also became influenced by Islamic
beliefs and customs. Many Arab and Berber men married African women of
the region that today constitutes Senegal. Conquests and political treaties
were other reasons for the spread of Islam. Some local political leaders
converted to the new religion, but only rarely did their subjects follow their
example. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries several Islamic
reform movements contributed to an increased Muslim influence in
Senegal. However, such movements were urban and therefore attracted
only small numbers of participants. They almost entirely lacked support
from the rural masses. One of the best known reform leaders of the
seventeenth century, Nasir al-Din from Mauretania, was defeated by Wolof
kings after a long struggle. Nonetheless, the reform efforts resulted in the
establishment of enduring institutions such as Islamic schools. At the same
time they caused divisions which in turn facilitated the French colonisation
of the region.
In the seventeenth century the first French settlements were established,
and the French initially competed with the British for control over the
coastal areas. The real colonising occurred during the nineteenth century,
when the French made massive efforts to penetrate the interior parts of
Ewers Rosander and Westerlund
Senegal. This was the time of several fairly important reform or jihad
(effort, 'holy war') movements. One famous leader was Umar al-Futi, who
had studied religion in Arab countries and made the hajj, the pilgrimage to
Mecca. Umar al-Futi was a member of the Tijaniyya and claimed he had
istikhara (mystical knowledge). He championed ijtihad (new interpretation
of the Quran and Sunna) and had a profound interest and belief in the
promotion of the worldwide Muslim community (umma).When, according
to al-Futi, preaching was not sufficient to purify Islam and to unify the
believers, he took to the jihad of the sword. His attacks were directed
against Muslims who 'mixed' Islam with indigenous African religions as
well as against the French colonisers.
Umar al-Futi was one of several jihad leaders who claimed to be the
mahdi (divinely guided leader, 'Messiah'). Most of the Mahdi revolts were
sporadic and short-lived. The different initiatives of the reformists were not
well coordinated and local leaders resisted them forcefully. Besides, the
French punished revolters very severely. Yet, even if the effects of the jihad
movements were limited, they left a heritage of ideas about the universal
Islamic community and an increasing respect for the Sunna. As they were
not only military but also intellectual movements, they promoted literacy.
To a great extent they contributed to the spread of Sufism, which soon
became the predominant form of Islam in this geographical area. The
expansion of the Sufi orders was to a certain degree a reaction to
colonialism and represented an Islamisation with strong nationalistic
features.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the French openly
manifested an aggressive attitude to Islam. Gradually, however, they
adopted a more pragmatic view and showed an increased willingness to
make compromises. The French colonial regime conceived of 'Arab Islam'
as fanatic, intolerant and aggressive and preferred more Africanised forms
of Islam - 'l'islam negrifii'. French scholars such as P. Marty and V.
Monteil wrote several books about this 'black' or 'African' Islam; and
during some periods the French colonialists forbid pilgrimages to Mecca in
order to protect Senegalese Muslims from becoming 'contaminated' by the
Arabo-Islamic 'infection'. For similar purposes a special corpse of French
officers, specialising in Muslim affairs, was founded at the beginning of
the twentieth century. These officers collected detailed information about
religious practice, and on each important marabout they had a dossier.
The French supported those marabouts who were prepared to collaborate,
and they realised that Senegal could not be controlled and reigned without
the help of the marabouts. The leaders of the main Sufi orders - the
Tijaniyya, the Mouridiyya and the Qadiriyya - were particularly
privileged. They participated at important colonial receptions and
ceremonies. Furthermore, the French colonial administration offered them
great material privileges in the form of land concessions and financial
Senegal
resources as gifts or loans. Religious leaders who had a benevolent attitude

to the French could even get the costs for the pilgrimage to Mecca paid by
the colonisers as well as receive contributions for the construction of
mosques.
The French motive for this interest in Senegalese Sufism and its leaders at
the beginning of the twentieth century was related to agricultural changes
of great significance. More than any other Sufi leaders in Senegal, the
marabouts of the Mouridiyya concentrated their efforts on peanut
production, and the production of peanuts was a top priority for the
French. It is true that the colonial process of modernisation was initiated
mainly in the cities, but through the peanut cultivation the rural regions
also became affected by the modern capitalistic economy. With the help of
their disciples, talibb, the marabouts dedicated themselves energetically to
the production of peanuts, benefitting from the favours of the French
administration. The acquisition of new areas for cultivation attracted
numerous disciples and increased the income of the marabouts. The
disciples worked without any claims for payment or regulated working
hours, and the French exported the peanuts to Europe, where they made
considerable profits. As a result of the collaboration between the French
and the marabouts, the lqtter supported the French rather than the Muslim
Turks when the First World War started in 1914. They publicly prayed for a
French victory and served the French by helping them to find Senegalese
soldiers to recruit. However, French ambitions to promote an assimilation
policy in Senegal was neither consistent nor successful. Even though a small
number of 'assimilated' Senegalese were offered limited political rights - in
1914 Senegal sent its first representative to the deputy chamber in Paris -
the great majority of the people was deprived of any participation in
political life, and the few marabouts who officially were politically active
had no clear profile.
When, after the end of the Second World War, the Catholic Lkopold
Senghor started organising a political movement, he successfully looked for
support among leading marabouts. Consequently, he encouraged the
French to continue their financial support for the construction of mosques
and Islamic schools. The marabouts preferred moderate political leaders
like Senghor rather than more radical intellectuals with a French university
education who disapproved of the conservatism of the marabouts. A third
political force, opposed to Sufi shaykhs as well as to radical French-
educated intellectuals, was represented by some staunchly anti-colonial
reformist Muslims who in 1953 formed the organisation Union Culturelle
Musulmane. In criticism of these forces who were critical of the marabouts'
collaborative tendencies, and in order to strengthen their own political
influence, the marabouts organised themselves in different associations such
as the Conseil superieur des chefs religieux (Superior Council of Religious
Leaders).
The character of Sufi Islam

Since the great majority of the Senegalese Muslims are members of Sufi
orders, this essay will concentrate on the characteristics of Sufism. Due to
the interest shown by numerous Western and Senegalese scholars, especially
from political science, the best-documented order is the Mouridiyya, which
will also be in particular focus here. According to the American political
scientist Lucey Creevey, the number of Mouridiyya disciples is around 2
million, while the members of the Tijaniyya may be in the region of 3
million. The most important of the smaller orders in Senegal are the
Qadiriyya and the Layenne. Sufi piety is largely charismatic and emotional.
Religious doctrines lack systematisation and are seldom codified. In
particular the greatest leaders, who are called caliphs (khalifs) and are
found at the top of the more or less hiearchically organised systems, have a
special blessing or spiritual power called baraka in Arabic (barke in Wolof),
which contributes to giving them a mediating role between God and
humans. Baraka is a hereditary and predominantly male resource, although
exceptions can easily be found, as will be shown later in this essay. There
exists a chain of baraka which connects the different generations of
marabouts with their disciples. Ideally, the disciples are ranked socially as
well as religiously in terms of religious merits. However, not only pious and
ritual acts but also economic achievements in the form of financial
contributions to the marabouts and caliphs are meritorious.
In Senegal, as elsewhere, Sufism is largely mixed with local beliefs and
practices. Belief in jinns (spirits mentioned in the Quran) is combined with
belief in the existence of local spirits. Regional cults of saints, usually male
marabouts, and faith in miracles characterise the orders, whose attitude
towards regional variations and local beliefs has been extremely flexible
and tolerant in Senegal. The great success of Sufism can partly be
interpreted as a need to 'popularise' the message of Islam. As will be
shown in the sections on Mouridism, the relations between the marabouts
and their disciples are of great importance not only for religious but also for
social and economic reasons.
Originally the Sufi orders had their stronghold in the rural areas. Even if
this may still be so, the rapidly growing cities and the increasing migration
to urban areas have caused significant changes. Thus, marabouts are
nowadays found in great numbers in the cities as well as in the countryside.
Often they have one home in a rural village, which is also the sacred space
and goal for the annual pilgrimage of the marabout's disciples, and one
home in cities like Touba, Dakar, Kaolack or Thi2s. The top leaders of the
orders, the caliphs, are chosen among the male family members. Succession
fights are not unusual and reveal splits within the orders. Normally,
however, these splits are concealed from the disciples. As leaders for huge
groups of believers, the caliphs have a politically important position, and
Senegal
their relation to the state officials is characterised by a mutual

interdependence.
While the institutions of the state reach a limited group of people, mainly
in urban areas, the marabouts are found in virtually all parts of the country.
Good relations with the marabouts are, therefore, of great importance for
the politicians. The shaykhs can, for example, contribute to increasing the
efficiency of the payment of taxes without actually participating in it. The
religious leaders can also legitimise the representatives of power, while
simultaneously avoiding becoming too closely allied with the leading
politicians. After independence (1960) the ministers of the government and
persons close to them have, just like earlier colonial officials, contributed
financially and in other ways to the building of mosques and to the
marabouts' and their sons' studies abroad. Now, as earlier, gifts of land
from the state to the marabouts are also of great significance. In the post-
colonial period the shaykhs' great support for the dominating Socialist
Party has had a decisive significance for the political development of
Senegal. The French political scientist Christian Coulon underlines the
marabouts' role as a stabilising factor promoting continuity in Senegalese
politics. In the battle between Senghor and his radically socialist prime
minister Mamadou Dia in the early 1960s, most Sufi leaders, and
particularly the Mouridiyya Khalif Falilou Mbacki., supported the Catholic
Senghor rather than Dia, who was a Muslim. Dia had his best support from
Tijani marabouts. The competition with Dia did not last long, however. In
1962 he was arrested, accused of having organised a coup.
The relationship between Muslims and Christians has been relatively
peaceful and harmonious. The strength and influence of Sufism are
probably the main reasons behind the continued good relations. Lately
some deterioration has been noticed, however. This is due partly to new
Islamist tendencies and partly to the political conflicts in the Casamance
region. Some Senegalese Christians have criticised the membership of
Senegal in the Organisation of the Islamic Conferense. In recent years not
only adherents of the indigenous African religions but also the Senegalese
Christians have in increasing numbers converted to Islam as a result of
Muslim missionary efforts.
More than the other Sufi orders, the Tijaniyya assert the importance of
education. The principle of ijtihad is stressed, and the order presents itself
as rational. A great number of Quranic schools for boys and girls as well as
higher educational institutions have been established. As early as at the
beginning of the twentieth century, Malik Sy (d. 1922) developed in
Tivaouane, in western Senegal, something like a folk university. Sy is one of
two particularly important families within the Tijani order of today. The
other family is Niass, and its centre is in Kaolack, southeast of the Sy centre,
Tivaouane. Compared to the Mouridiyya, the Tijani order is less
hierarchical. An ideal of equality is promoted, and social progress is
Evers Rosander and Westerlund
The tomb of Limamou Laye, the founder of the Layenne brotherhood, in

Yoff, Senegal (photo: Roman Loimeier, 1991).
legitimised by religion. Through Ibrahim Niass' efforts a radically socialist

branch of the Tijaniyya developed. Inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and
maintaining close contacts with Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah, Niass
(d. 1975) travelled widely and recruited followers in other African
countries, such as Nigeria, too.
The Qadiri order in Senegal has to a large extent been lead by Moorish
rather than black African families. Many of the Qadiri marabouts are
Mauretanian and frequently reside in Mauretania, which limits their
influence with the Senegalese state. Furthermore, the order is divided into
various factions and not very vigorous. Yet some Qadiri shaykhs have
become famous as outstanding healers. The Layenne order was founded in
the nineteenth century by Seydina L. Laye, a healer who was perceived of as
a Mahdi by his followers. For that reason he was fought by the French in
spite of the fact that he abstained from all forms of violence. The Layenne is
a small and ethnically quite exclusive order, whose members are mainly
Ltbou, a small group of Wolof-speaking people who live on the Cap Verde
peninsula and south of it. The kind of Islam which the members of the
Layenne practise is heavily influenced by the traditional Ltbou religion.
Laye did not know Arabic and, like the Mourids, the Layenne Muslims do
not sing their religious songs in Arabic.
Senegal
A wood-painting in Dakar depicting a meeting between Amadou Bamba,

the founder of the Mouridiyya, and the French (photo: Roman Loimeier,
1991).
The Mouridiyya
This order was founded by Shaykh Arnadou Bamba (1850-1927), who,
from 1889, was actually a member of the Qadiriyya. According to various
accounts, he received many revelations from God, urging him to build a big
mosque in Touba. As a charismatic religious leader with a clear anti-
colonialist message he was repeatedly forced into exile by the French. In
1907, in his Mauritanian exile, he started to recite a new litany of prayers
(wird). This year is regarded as the foundation year of Mouridism - now
the most rapidly expanding tariqa in Senegal.
No-one knows exactly how to define the spheres of power and influence
within which the Mourids act and negotiate. Their contacts with the
government and the financial leaders who control the main capital flows in
Senegal are mostly informal and hidden from direct insight. The order
demands obedience, subjection, discipline and hard work from its
members. Central moral values for a member are to be not only good,
peaceful and generous but also industrious. This means that the leaders can
mobilise their disciples in a moral idiom for their purposes, be it in the
interest of the leaders themselves and their disciples or to the benefit of the
goverment or some other central power. When a marabout gives an order

(ndigeul), it is an almost sacred duty for the disciple to obey. Njebbel, or
njebbelu, is the vow of obedience and subjection to the marabout that the
male disciple pronounces as a sort of initiation ritual. Without this vow, one
cannot be considered as a proper disciple. No women are supposed to
pronounce the njebbel, although there are a few exceptions. The
exceptional female cases usually concern women of maraboutic families.
The shaykh expects total submission and obedience from his disciple.
The relation between the marabout and his disciple is hierarchical and yet,
as mentioned earlier, in a sense reciprocal. The disciple is actually waiting
for and, as it seems, longing for occasions to manifest his obedience to his
marabout. The ndigeul, the maraboutic order, to his disciple offers this
opportunity for the latter to make a public manifestation of his
unquestioned obedience. It may be a demand to clear up a forest by
cutting down the remaining trees and bushes to prepare land for peanut
cultivation. It can also be an order from the supreme leader, the khalif
ge'ne'ml, to vote in the elections for a particular politician, whom the leader
wants to support. The majority of the shaykhs have disciples in the
Senegalese countryside as well as in the cities. They all contribute in
different ways to the marabout's commercial activities, providing him with
capital through their work in his fields, through gifts of money or through
their trading activities under his guidance in other countries around the
world. Today, when the modern sectors of the economy seem to have failed
to expand in African countries, this informal religio-economic sector,
closely associated with international migration, prospers. It can perhaps be
seen as a contemporary extension of the old trans-saharian trade.
Maraboutic prosperity has a divine dimension for the disciples. A shaykh
with much money has much baraka - he is blessed by God. A wealthy and
powerful marabout also has much to share with his followers, both in terms
of material support and spiritual power. The marabout's white Mercedes
and his driver confirm this belief in the mind of his disciples. The disciple
contributes to this prosperity through his work and donations of money.
Yet he does not work for paradise in the Weberian sense of a 'Protestant'
ethic. He does it for his shaykh, who channels baraka to the disciple.
Within the Mouridiyya there exists a subdivision, Bai Fall, whose profile
differs somewhat from Mouridism in general. The model of the male
members is Shaykh Ibra Fall, Shaykh Amadou Bamba's first and most
famous disciple. He was always completely loyal to his master, whom he saw
as his task to watch over and to defend with arms if necessary. Ibra Fall's
charismatic personality attracted many followers who became a kind of holy
soldiers in the development of the Mouridiyya in the early decades of the
twentieth century. The religious meetings of the Bai Fall can be very intense
and emotional, as the participants enter into djeul (trance). The Bai Fall
marabouts are known for their polygynous marriages. Through marriage
Senegal
strategies they form influencial networks. This is the case with many
shaykhs, but the Bai Fall in particular are famous for having many wives.
Shaykh Ibra Fall formed a 'school' of his own, characterised by a very
particular life style. The young Bai Fall disciples live together in small
groups; they owe nothing and survive through begging money and food in
the streets, sharing everything they get between themselves. Their only
'payment' is prayers. As they are supposed to do the heaviest physical work,
including the defense of their leaders with the use of arms if need be, and
are in charge of the preparation and transportation of food for the big
feasts, they neither have to fast during the month of Ramadan, nor to pray
five times a day. This is not well-viewed among the members of the other
brotherhoods, nor among the Islamists, who consider such exceptions from
the pillars of Islam as heretical.
Gender relations
From a male point of view, Mourid women are comparatively invisible in
the religious practice and not considered to be disciples in a strict sense.
They are not allowed to declare their vow of obedience to their marabouts
nor to sing the qasaids, the holy songs based on the Quran and written by
Amadou Bamba. Ideally, a woman should relate to her husband as the man
to his religious leader in terms of subjection and obedience. The women's
main task in the countryside is to provide food for the men who work in the
maraboutic fields and to help prepare food for the main religious feasts.
They also pay annual visits to shrines and attend the main pilgrimages.
Whatever they do in a Mouridiyya context - work for and give money to the
marabouts, pray, learn about holy men and women, go on a pilgrimage or
visit a shrine - they confirm and strengthen their identity as female Mourids.
Some women are also formally, and in the eyes of the men, highly
esteemed and significant, worthy of respect and adoration. These women
are called sokhnas and are the daughters and wives of great marabouts. The
female title sokhna corresponds to serigne, the term for a leading male
shaykh. Just like their male counterparts, some of the sokhnas may have
disciples and give vows of obedience to the caliph. This is, however, most
unusual. One example is Sokhna Muslimatou, well-known in the 1960s for
her distinguished position as sister of the caliph of that time, Falilou
Mbacki., the son of Shaykh Amadou Bamba. She lived on her estate in
Diourbel and had her own disciples, who were both male and female.
Today Sokhna Magat Diop in Thi2s holds a similar position. She inherited
her baraka from her father Serigne Abdulaye Niakhep, an eminent Bai Fall
marabout. Sokhna Magat's father chose her to take over after him as a
religious leader, because he had no sons. She is in close contact with the
caliph in Touba and pronounced her vow of obedience to him. Like Sokhna
Muslimatou she has her own disciples, some of whom live on her estate.
Others visit her annually to show her their deference and to give her the
addiyya, the money collected for her by her disciples. However, on those
occasions she does not speak publicly. Her son talks to the disciples who
have come to the house to see her.
The female marabouts or sokhnas receive young girls whose parents
have left them to grow up in a certain sokhna's household, to be educated
by her and to work for her. All the girls carry the same name as the sokhna
and stay with her until they reach marriageable age. It is the female
marabout who chooses the husbands for the girls and helps them to arrange
and finance the weddings. The sokhnas sometimes act as teachers of
religion and Arabic, or they trade or engage themselves in agricultural
production, all depending on their family background, where they live and
on their own personal interests. One wife of a well-known marabout not far
from Touba cultivated the land that she had inherited with the help of her
disciples, but she was also the owner of a few public telephone kiosks, a
mill for the pounding of millet in Touba and two lorries that she hired out
on demand. All this property was managed and made profitable by her
disciples who carried out her orders. They did not receive any determined
wages for their services and work. The disciples' payment is said to be
spiritual and material at the same time, and this is the same for both men
and women. Ideally, they work for paradise when working for the
marabout, who also sees to it that the disciples do not suffer materially.
The Magal
The pilgrimage to Touba, the magal, is the greatest and most important
manifestation of the Mouridiyya. In addition to its central religious role, it
has a considerable political significance. It is celebrated each year on the
eighteenth of Zafar (the second month of the Islamic year), the date when
Shaykh Amadou Bamba was exiled from Senegal by the French. During the
magal the pilgrims visit the main mosque, the tomb of the founder of their
order and the houses of the supreme marabouts, who belong to the Mbackt
family and constitute the core group of the Mouridiyya. All the pilgrims try
to get a glance of the current khalif ge'ne'ral. The disciples leave their gift of
money with the shaykh to whom they 'belong' and stay there overnight,
eating and resting, praying and listening to religious songs for one or two
days.
A new organisation of young Mourids called Hizbut Tarkhiyya (Le
partie de l'tltvation spirituelle, association for spiritual elevation) has a key
role in connection with the magal. This association was formed in the mid
1970s by Atou Diagne, who lives in Touba with his four wives, one of
whom is the daughter of Abdou Lahad Mbackt, the former caliph. In
several ways the members of Hizbut Tarkhiya have modernised Touba. For
instance, they have built a library and they have their own radio station,
Senegal
A car rapide, full of protective 'magic', in Touba, the centre of the

Mouridiyya (photo: Roman Loimeier, 1991).
which they use during the magal. It is a very powerful organisation with
considerable economic resources, and Atou Diagne has become one of the
most influential men in Touba. The members are well educated disciples. In
addition to those who are still students, there are, for example, medical
doctors, engineers, technicians, computer specialists and traders. Their
mission, like that of other disciples, is to obey the orders of the caliph and
to serve him. Although they are modern and well educated, they essentially
defend the same values as did Shaykh Amadou Bamba. Among other
things, they are opposed to the system of secular schools inherited from the
colonialists, and they regard Serigne Touba (i.e., Shaykh Amadou Bamba)
as 'a gift from God'. Their main task is to organise the magal, which in their
view is the raison d'ztre of the Mouridiyya. The members of the association
are in charge of all the food preparations for the visitors. In 1997 they
prepared, among other things, about 3,000 chickens, 300 oxen, 1,500
goats, three camels and many tons of rice and vegetables. 'Nothing is big
enough to honour Shaykh Amadou Bamba', said Atou Diagne.
In West Africa, Islam and economic activities are traditionally closely
linked. Today the tendency among the marabouts is to change from local
groundnut cultivation to national and international import and export.
From the rural areas to the city of Dakar, as well as further to European
countries and more distant continents, these trading shaykhs travel and
activate their disciples' networks, celebrating improvised magals and
creating new business contacts. The local Mouridiyya entrepreneurs are
investing in sectors of low capital intensity, such as small trade, and, in the
case of the entrepreneurs with access to more capital, trade particularly in
electronic household utensils, real estate and transport.
Dara and daira

From the very beginning of Mouridism it has been possible to replace
religious education for the rural disciples with agricultural work. In this
respect Mouridism differs considerably from the more education-oriented
Tijani brotherhood. Mouridism was, and largely still is, associated with the
rural areas of Senegal and with the Wolof people. The language of the
Mourids is Wolof, and most of their marabouts in the countryside do not
know French, the language of the former colonialists and the new urban
elite.
Dava is the term for a religious school for the sons of the disciples of a
certain marabout as well as for a rural place where the boys live and work
for the shaykh in his fields of groundnuts and millet. The Mourid farmers,
who live in villages 'owned' or controlled by the shaykhs, certainly have a
social pressure on them to send their sons to the daras, as well as to
contribute with their own labour once a week in the maraboutic 'Wednesday
field'. The farmers are linked to the marabout in several ways: many have
come to the village as landless peasants, receiving their field from the hands
of their shaykh; others were offered their land by the shaykh or by his father
after having spent some years themselves as young boys in the dara. The
boys usually work and study in the daras between the ages of 7 or 8 to
between 12 and 15. The daughters stay at home or live in the households of
the sokhnas. Life in the dara is tough - the imam who teaches often uses
harsh educational methods, and the agricultural labour is heavy. Also, the
sanitary conditions are very poor. Clothing and food provided by the
marabouts are sometimes deficient, and the general standard of living is low.
The hardships are thought of as a way to prepare the young boys for future
material shortcomings compensated for by a religious conviction, a firm
Senegal
belief in Mouridism and obedience to their spiritual leaders. The marabout

decides when a boy can leave the dara and return home. Later in life the
marabout will find a wife for the boy and pay his wedding costs, including
the bridewealth, and provide him with a field for his own cultivation. If the
boy emigrates, he will still remain in contact with his shaykh. The
marabouts put pressure on the Senegalese state in order to obtain access to
new land - mostly protected or classified forests - for cash crop cultivation
and distribution to their disciples. As a result of these demands, large areas
have become deforested. Soil erosion and a lowered level of the subsoil
water are other consequences of the ruthless exploitation of land.
Dairas are primarily associated with urban forms of Mouridism.
Nowadays, however, not only daras and 'Wednesday fields' but also dairas
are found in the countryside. The dairas, which are religious associations
devoted to a certain marabout or to the caliph himself, have an important
function in urban political as well as religious life. Members of the dairas are
mostly grown-up children and grandchildren of urban migrants. The
members of an association are divided according to age group and
sometimes according to sex. Many dairas are based on profession, others
on vicinity, while some may be associated with a certain handicap such as
blindness. Yet others may have nothing else in common except the
marabout. Thus, people from different ethnic and social groups as well as
migrants from various regions of Senegal can be found among the members
of one and the same daira in a town. In a rural village, by contrast, all the
daira members come from the same section of the village, obeying the same
marabout, who usually lives nearby. The urban daira is a place to meet and
an association to join for the disciples who cannot work regularly for their
marabout in his fields. They contribute weekly or monthly sums of money
(addiyya) as a gift to their shaykh or to the caliph. Occasionally, these urban
dwellers are also mobilised to work for a short period on the maraboutic
fields through the pronouncement of an ndigeul, the maraboutic order.
In the weekly meetings religious songs are sung, issues related to the
daira and its marabout are discussed and sums of money are collected. The
two leading persons of the daira, the president and the treasurer, are often
the only representatives of the daira who have any contact with the
marabout except for the visit during the magal. Their shaykh knows their
names and receives them in his house in the countryside or in Touba. The
marabout has no lists of the members, however, who may vary over time,
since the urban population is highly mobile, always in search of jobs
wherever they can be found.
The international Mouridiyya network

The social scientist Victoria Ebin has studied what she calls the informal
sector of the Mouridiyya-controlled market place of Sandaga in Dakar. She
Euers Rosander and Westerlund
states that a key reason for the success of the commercial activities of the
Mouridiyya in Dakar is the network they have created and maintain with
the emigrant communities of Senegalese disciples. She refers to the disciples
who live in large international urban centres and who trade 'en grosse' in
cosmetics, shoes, gold, electronic household utensils and other items.
Emigration from Senegal has taken the Mourids around the world, to cities
like New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Torino, Milan, Rome, Paris, Toulouse,
Lyon, Hong Kong, Berlin, London, Madrid and Yaoundi.. In the 1970s most
Senegalese emigrants went to France, while in the 1980s Italy and the
United States, especially New York, became centres for Senegalese Mourid
migration. In France the stereotype of a Senegalese migrant used to be that
of a blue collar man, usually doing unskilled work. In Italy and the United
States he was, and still normally is, a street vendor. Even today many
migrants begin their careers in the new country by selling cheap goods in the
streets. Most of the emigrants are men, but recently women have started to
go abroad to earn more money. The disciples who migrate to cities, where
well-organised Mouridiyya communities exist, will normally be taken good
care of and are helped to start in some of their established enterprises.
The emigrants live very closely together. They organise weekly meetings
in their dairas. Some of them have jointly started their commercial careers
by pooling their resources to be able to buy wholesale goods for retailing.
For the merchants who remain in Dakar the migrant communities in the
United States and Europe are a great asset. In New York a group of traders
expanded their activities and formed an organisation called The Senegalese
Murid Community of Khadimul Rasul Society (Khadimul Rasul is another
name for Amadou Bamba). In various ways the marabouts adapt to the
prevalent financial situation, and they have markets and disciples in
Senegalese rural and urban areas as well as abroad. The development from
dara to daira, and further to national and international markets, is smooth
and efficient, since the Mouridiyya institutions actually co-exist and
cooperate. Wherever they live, the disciples seek security, work and a
religious framework for their endeavours.
Islamist tendencies
Since the 1970s Islamist organisations have appeared in Senegal which
oppose the Sufi forms of Islam and favour the establishment of an Islamic
state with sharia, the universal Islamic law, as its basis. The Islamist revival
manifests itself not only in political demands. Meetings for praying and
singing, conferences, new publications as well as substantial educational
efforts are all important aspects of this revival. As in other Muslim
countries, a great proportion of the members of the new Islamist
associations are young people, among whom students and other intellec-
tuals are well represented. However, not only Islamists but also other
Senegal
reform-minded intellectuals, some of whom belong to the Sufi orders, are

critical of certain aspects of Sufi Islam. They criticise the marabouts and
their misuse of power and money. In the eyes of Islamists and other critics,
the shaykhs have become degenerated and corrupt.
The previously mentioned reformist organisation Union Culturelle
Muselmane (UCM) has recently become somewhat more radical. Its
principal leader, Shaykh Touri., has on different occasions expressed the
need for an Islamic state in Senegal. Like other Muslim radicals, Touri:
criticises not only Sufism but also Western secularism. The UCM wants to
promote and introduce Islamic education in public schools. Currently, the
teaching is in French, and Islamic, and other religious teaching is normally
lacking. The UCM has been fairly successful in terms of recruiting female
members, particularly from the middle class. Despite its Islamist tendencies
some of this organisation's leaders, for example Ahmed Lyane Thiam, have
had good contacts with, and in some cases also been members of, the
leading Socialist Party.
In 1979 a militant Islamist organisation was created by the so-called
Ayatollah from Kaolack, Ahmed Khalifa Niass. In his view, obeying an
authority other than God was shirk, polytheism, and to separate religion
from politics was against Islam. Niass' Party of God, Hizboulahi, was
however forbidden since political parties based on religion are not allowed
in Senegal. The government's repressive actions against Niass and his
supporters, who had close contacts with Libya, showed that even in Senegal
Islam is a politically sensitive issue. Other Islamist associations, which have
been formed during recent decades, are Al-Fallah, or Harakat al-Fallah
(The Salvation Movement), and Jamaatou Ibadou Arrahman, or Jamaat
Ibad ar-Rahman (the Community of God's Servants). Associations such as
these oppose the secular character of the Senegalese state and plead for the
creation of an Islamic republic. One of the sources of inspiration for, among
others, the members of Al-Fallah is Wahhabism, the Arab reform movement
which has influenced many current Islamist groups in the Muslim world.
Jamaatou Ibadou Arrahman was formed by UCM-supporters who wanted
a more radically Islamist alternative.
Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidati (Association for Male
and Female Students) is a religious organisation created by the Tijani
marabout Moustapha Sy. Although it is mainly oriented towards the
Senegalese youth, it has the character of a political movement which
attracts people from all parts of the country and is a good example of the
blending of Islamism and Sufism. It has borrowed from Islamist groups both
in terms of contents and rhetoric, but it has emerged as a mass movement by
using its base as a Tijani movement. It is a maraboutic movement influenced
by modern reformism, or Islamism, rather than the reverse.
The new religious associations in Senegal publish many periodicals and
other publications as well as produce cassettes and programmes in the
broadcasting media. Le Re'veil Islamique is the name of a UCM journal,

and Etudes Islamiques is another well-established and quite prestigious
journal, which was started in 1979 by Shaykh Toure. In 1983 two other
Islamist periodicals, Wal Fadjri and Djamra, appeared for the first time.
Wal Fadjri is published by Muslims who are influenced by Ahmed Khalifa
Niass. Niass' own journal, Allah Akbar, was outlawed shortly after its first
issue had been published in 1978. Djamra is published by an organisation
with the same name and is concerned primarily with moral and educational
issues. Thus, themes like prostitution, alcoholism, drug problems and
homosexuality, which are interpreted as the result of secularism and
decadent Western influences, are often discussed in Djamra.
Islamist groups in general have a great interest in education, and they
support Quranic schools in the countryside, the introduction of religious
classes in public schools and urban institutes for higher teaching and
research. One example of the latter is the Institut Islamique, situated close
to the main mosque in Dakar, which was inaugurated in 1979. However,
not only Islamists but also marabouts have dedicated themselves to the
spread of religious education and language training centres, and more new
schools are opened by them than by Islamists. Even though Sufis and
Islamists normally oppose each other, there are also examples of
cooperation. In particular, the marabouts sometimes need to recruit
Islamist-inspired teachers to their schools, as they themselves often lack
sufficient educational qualifications.
With regard to gender issues, leading Islamists like Shaykh Tour6 have
attacked both Western liberal endeavours to achieve gender equality and
the conservative attitudes of the Sufi leaders. Toure argues that equality
between the sexes is a basic idea within Islam. People should neither be
valued on the basis of sex nor because of 'secular' achievements but
according to their moral behaviour. In criticism of the marabouts' religious
legitimation of polygyny, which is associated with the idea that the more
wives a marabout has, the more descendants will inherit his baraka, Tour6
stresses monogamy as the 'truly' Islamic ideal. In 1972 a new family law,
Code de la famille, was introduced in Senegal with the purpose of
improving women's position and creating a more homogeneous legal
system. The law was bitterly criticised by the marabouts. However, all the
important Muslim leaders and organisations agreed in condemning the new
family law because of its several deviations from Islamic law (sharia). The
new family law stipulated, among other things, that men could no longer
divorce their wives simply by pronouncing the Muslim divorce formula
(talak). Each divorce case had to be tried in court. Since the law improved
the status of women in several respects, Muslim critics called it the 'Code de
la femme' (the woman's law), and the Catholic President Senghor was
accused of forcing secular and Western ideas upon the Senegalese people.
As a result of the vehement criticism, however, people were allowed to
Senegal
choose which legal code they wished to follow, the new one or the sharia.
Since it is normally the men who make the choice, the effects of the Code de
la famille in terms of gender equality have been relatively limited. While the
Islamists have continued to argue that the new law should be abolished, the
marabouts nowadays mostly seem to ignore it.
The continued support of the Senegalese government for the great
marabouts shows that the representatives of the state still regard Sufism as
an ally in their endeavour to counteract the Islamist 'politisation' of Islam.
Simultaneously, the government tries to 'disarm' leading Islamists by
offering them attractive and well-paid administrative posts. Several
Islamists have, for example, become ambassadors in Arab states. To a
limited extent, measures have also been taken to satisfy the Islamists'
demand for teaching time for the Arabic language and Islam in public
schools. However, Islamism seems to be a very marginal threat to the
current political and religious system in Senegal. Sufism still constitutes by
far the strongest Muslim force. The Islamists are somewhat alienated from
the popular culture and cannot, unlike the marabouts, provide a whole
social and religious 'welfare system' for their followers and sympathisers. In
that respect, neither the Islamists nor the state can be compared to the
marabouts who continue to wield their considerable influence over the
majority of the Senegalese people. Concerning the present relationship
between the Sufis and the state, Dona1 Cruise O'Brien in a recent review
article entitled 'The Senegalese Exception' (1996) concludes that:
The viability of the state still rests above all on the Sufi brotherhoods,
extending government authority to the countryside. Sufi Muslim
hierarchy thus underpins secular democracy in Senegal, and that
hierarchy has been effective because it includes its own (concealed)
democratic component. It is this relatively intricate mechanism which
provides the Senegalese exception in terms of statehood, the logic of
the 'Wolof model' of brotherhood intermediation with the state. The
intermediary power of the marabouts, Montesquieu style, has
protected zones of autonomy, and relative liberty, for the Sufi
clienteles. Hierarchy has protected liberty, in twentieth-century
Senegal as it did in ancien rkgime France.
O'Brien sees the hierarchical system represented by the marabouts as a
mechanism for doing business with the state, for learning to live with it.
The more the pressure for democracy, the more this hierarchical model will
be threatened. Yet if the younger disciples reject the maraboutic orders as
far as politics is concerned and ignore instructions to vote for the governing
Socialist Party, then the marabouts will certainly lose weight in dealing with
the government. In this case what O'Brien calls 'real democracy in Africa,
as distinct from the democracy of Western sermons addressed to Africa' will
appear and may lead to an urban anarchy of drugs and violence which can
provoke demands for renewed authoritarianism. Still the grip of Sufism

over both the Senegalese people and its government prevents such
tendencies to spread unrestrainedly.
Literature
There are a great deal of good scholarly publications on Islam and Muslims
in Senegal, written particularly by political scientists. A classic work is
Christian Coulon's book Le marabout et le prince (Islam et pouvoir a u
Se'ne'gal), Institut d7Etudes Politiques de Bourdeaux, Centre d'Etude
d'hfrique Noire, Skrie Afrique Noire I1 (Paris: Editions A. Pedone, 1981).
On the historical role of marabouts, see also L e temps des marabouts:
Itine'raires et strate'gies islamiques en Afrique occidentalde fran~aise zi
1880-1960, eds. David Robinson and Jean-Louis Triaud, Hommes et
socitti.~,46 (Paris: Karthala, 1997). The role of women is discussed in
Christian Coulon's essay 'Women, Islam and Baraka', pp. 113-33 in
Charisma and Brotherhood in Africa, eds. Donal Cruise O'Brien and
Christian Coulon (Oxford: Clarendon and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988) and in Eva Evers Rosander's 'Women and Muridism in
Senegal', pp. 147-77 in W o m e n and Islamization, eds. Karin Ask and
Marit Tjomsland (Oxford: Berg, 1998). A fine classical study of the Tijani
brotherhood is Jamil Abun-Nasr, T h e Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order i n the
Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). Some valuable
books about the Mouridiyya are Tidiane Sy's La confre'rie se'ne'galaise des
mourides: U n essai sur l'islam a u Se'ne'gal (Paris: Prtsence Africaine, 1969),
Donal Cruise O'Brien's T h e Mourides of Senegal: T h e Political and
Economic Organisation of a n Islamic Brotherhood (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971) and Jean Copans' Les marabouts de l'arachide: La confre'rie
mouride et les paysans d u Se'ne'gal (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1988). An
interesting article about the commercial strategies of the Mouridiyya is
Victoria Ebin's 'A la recherche de nouveaux "poissons" - strategies
commerciales mourides par temps de crise', Politique Africaine, 45 (1992),
pp. 86-101. The expansion of Sufism into urban areas is treated, for
example, in Donal Cruise O'Brien's essay 'Charisma Comes to Town',
pp. 135-55 in Charisma and Brotherhood i n African Islam, eds. Donal
Cruise O'Brien and Christian Coulon (Oxford: Clarendon and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988).
An overview of Islam in contemporary Senegal, which includes, among
other things, a discussion of Islamist groups, is Moriba Magassouba's book
L'islam a u Se'ne'gal: Demain les mollahs? (Paris: Karthala, 1985), and a
more recent presentation of the Islamist opposition to secularism is found
in Roman Loimeier's essay 'The Secular State and Islam in Senegal',
pp. 183-97 in Questioning the Secular State: T h e Worldwide Resurgence
of Religion in Politics, ed. David Westerlund (London: Hurst and New
Senegal
York: St Martin's Press, 1996). In Islamic Society and State Power in

Senegal: Disciples and Citizens i n Fatick (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), Leonardo A. Villalon provides a detailed analysis
of the situation in one town. This study, and some other new books on
Senegal, are discussed by Dona1 Cruise O'Brien in the review article 'The
Senegalese Exception', Africa, 66:3 (1996), pp. 458-64.
Chapter Four
Tanzania
Abdulaxix Y Lodhi and David Westerlund
Tanzania had more than 30 million inhabitants in 1995. Although the

population growth is high, the country is - like most countries in Africa -
sparsely populated. The population consists of a large number of ethnic
groups. The great majority of these are speakers of Bantu languages. The
largest ethnic group is the Sukuma, spread south of Lake Victoria. South of
the Sukuma live the Nyamwezi who, culturally and linguistically, are
closely related to their northern neighbours. Tanganyika became indepen-
dent in 1961 and three years later formed a union with Zanzibar called
Tanzania. The official language of the Union is Swahili, a Bantu language
with a large number of Arabic loan words. The traditional speakers of
Swahili have also been influenced linguistically and culturally by Persians
and Indians. The old colonial language English is still very important in
trade, commerce and higher learning.
It is difficult to estimate the total number of Muslims in the country.
According to the 1967 population census, about one third of the population
was Muslim, one third Christian and most of the remaining third were
followers of traditional religions. The reliability of the statistics has, for
good reason, been questioned and there are no up-to-date statistics at hand.
The question of the percentage of Muslims and Christians is a politically
sensitive issue in Tanzania, as in many other African countries. The
statistics provided by Christian and Muslim organisations are biased and
notoriously unreliable. It is apparent that the number of Muslims and
Christians has been increasing at a high rate during the past decades, but it
is hard to determine which of the two religions has increased more rapidly.
The earliest concrete evidence of Muslim presence in East Africa is the
foundation of a mosque in Shanga on Pate Island where gold, silver and
copper coins dated 830 were found during an excavation in the 1980s. The
oldest intact building in East Africa is a functioning mosque at Kizimkazi in
southern Zanzibar dated 1007. It appears that Islam was widespread in the
Indian Ocean area by the fourteenth century. When Ibn Battuta from
Tanzania
The sultan's palace in Zanzibar (photo: David Westerlund, 1977).
Maghreb visited the East African littoral in 1332 he reported that he felt at
home because of Islam in the area. The coastal population was largely
Muslim, and Arabic was the language of literature and trade. The whole of
the Indian Ocean seemed to be a 'Muslim sea'. Muslims controlled the
trade and established coastal settlements in South East Asia, India and East
Africa.
Islam was spread mainly through trade activities along the East African
coast, not through conquest and territorial expansion as was partly the case
in West Africa, but remained an urban littoral phenomenon for a long time.
When the violent Portugese intrusions in the coastal areas occurred in the
sixteeenth century, Islam was already well-established there and almost all
the ruling families had ties of kinship with Arabia, Persia, India and even
South East Asia owing to their maritime contacts and political connections
with the northern and eastern parts of the Indian Ocean. At the end of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries the coastal Muslims
managed to oust the Portugese with the help of Omani Arabs. These Arabs
gradually increased their political influence until the end of the nineteenth
century when European conquerors arrived on the coast of East Africa.
During the time when the Omanis dominated the coast politically, the
spread of Islam intensified in the interior of East Africa also. Trade contacts
with peoples in the interior, especially the Nyamwezi, increased in
importance and places like Tabora in Nyamwezi territory and Ujiji at
Lodhi and Westevlund
Lake Tanganyika became important entrep6ts in the ever-increasing trade

in slaves and ivory. Many chiefs, even in parts of Uganda, converted to
Islam and cooperated with the coastal Muslims. Trade served to spread not
only Islam, but also the language and culture we call Swahili. Before the
establishment of German East Africa in the 1880s the influence of the
Swahilis or coastal people was mainly limited to the areas along the caravan
routes and around their destinations.
The great expansion of Islam in the interior of Tanganyika began during
the German colonial era. After having conquered the coastal area the
Germans began hiring coastal Swahilis as civil servants, thus creating a
cadre of literate people who accompanied the Germans into the interior.
These subordinate administrators, akida, and Muslim soldiers are an
important feature in explaining why Islam spread so much faster in the
areas controlled by the Germans than in territories occupied by the British
(Kenya and Uganda). The Germans established a government school system
along the coast with Swahili as the language of instruction, in contrast to
the missionary schools in the interior which used the vernaculars.
Even if many Muslims cooperated with the Germans, there were also
large groups who did not benefit from colonial rule and who were more or
less openly opposed to it. These groups were primarily found in the poorer
sections of the rural population and were attracted to the activities of the
Sufi orders. Several orders were active during and after the German era, the
most important being the Qadiriyya and Shadhiliyya. Many Sufis played an
influential role in the Maji Maji uprising (1905-07) against the Germans.
The name Maji Maji refers to powerful water (Sw. maji, water) which was
thought to give protection against the German weapons. The traditional
African ideas of Kinjikitile, the leader of the uprising, were to an extent
intertwined with Sufi ideas. Though our knowledge of Sufi expansion in
German East Africa is limited, the fact remains that Sufi influence was an
important factor in the expansion of Islam.
After World War I, when the British took control of Tanganyika, the
growth of Islam decreased somewhat. The British system of local
government, 'indirect rule', favoured local chiefs rather than Muslims
from the coast. Ever-increasing missionary activities as well as the
establishment of Christian schools promoted the employment of Christians.
Muslims were gradually alienated from the administration and the political
scene. From around the time of World War I1 the influence of reformist and
anti-colonial movements increased, and during the 1950s Pakistani Muslim
preachers regularly visited eastern and southern Africa to promote Muslim
renewal and to revive political consciousness among Muslims. This was a
reaction to colonial oppression and the increased Christian influence in
society. Muslims thus exerted great influence over the independence
movements. When the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) was
founded in Dar es Salaam in 1954, coastal Muslims played an important
Tanzania
role. Even in spheres where Islam played a minor part Muslims were able to
hold strategic positions in TANU. The Christian reactions to the
independence movement were mixed; many local and Western church
leaders discouraged their followers from joining the movement.
Islamic denominations
The great majority of the Muslims in Tanzania are Sunni. Most of them
follow the Shafii judiciary tradition, though the Sunni of Indo-Pakistani
origin are generally Hanafi, and some of them are loosely organised into a
branch of the Qadiri order introduced by the 'Bawa', alias Shaykh Ahmad-
shah Qadiri Bukhari of Cutch, India, who has been regularly visiting East
Africa since 1958. Small groups of Yemeni origin belong to the Maliki and
Hanbali schools. The Shiite minority, mostly of Asian origin, are Imamites,
Ismailis who follow the Aga Khan, and the Bohra. The latter are also
known as Mustali Ismailis and have their seat in Bombay. The Muslims of
Omani origin constitute a special case, most of them being Ibadiyya, a
moderate branch of the Khariji movement. A small but active Ahmadiyya
group is also present in the country. Some researchers claim that three-
quarters of Tanzania's Muslims are Sufi. Even if it is impossible to get the
exact figure, the fact remains that several scholars, such as J.S. Trimingham,
have failed to appreciate the importance of Sufism in this part of Africa.
The variation of beliefs and religious practices among the Sufis is
considerable. Not only in the interior but also along the coast, Islam shows
many local African characteristics. Local practices and beliefs are often very
obvious. In the interior it is sometimes hard to distinguish the dividing line
between Islam and the indigenous religions. Prayers, the fasting month of
Ramadan and other principles of official Islam are seldom strictly adhered
to. The knowledge of Arabic is very limited. Both religiously and culturally
the Muslims of Tanzania have a strong local African identity. What is
known as 'African Islam' is characteristic of these people as well of
Muslims in other parts of East Africa.
The Shiite Muslims of Asian origin constitute an exception. Many Shiites
came to East Africa during the colonial era and many of them are relatively
well-to-do and live in a somewhat secluded way. The Ismaili followers of
Aga Khan in particular have concentrated on establishing schools,
hospitals, libraries, building societies and guest houses as well as engaging
in industrial development. Before the radicalisation of socialist politics in
Tanzania following the Arusha Declaration in 1967, large amounts were
invested in Aga Khan Industrial Promotion Services and Ismaili Holding
Companies. It is difficult to estimate the number of Shiites in Tanzania, but
they constitute a small minority living mainly in the larger towns and cities.
A large number have emigrated to North America and Western Europe
during recent decades. As opposed to the Ismailis, the Imamites have,
Lodhi and Westerlund
through the Bilal Mission, been active among black Africans but with little
success in terms of conversions. Like the followers of Ahmadiyya, Imamites
and other Shiites have issued or distributed a considerable number of
publications. Due to economic and other reasons most of the Sunnis have
encountered difficulties in this respect.
Sufism is represented by several orders, but their work and organisation
remain largely unknown. The largest brotherhood in Tanzania is the
Qadiriyya which is divided into many independent branches. The origin of
this order in this part of the Muslim world is connected to the Somali
Shaykh Uways bin Muhammed who, having been invited by the sultan,
arrived in Zanzibar in the 1880s. Shehu Awesu, as Shaykh Uways is called
in Swahili, paid several lengthy visits to Zanzibar and initiated many
disciples into his order, who afterwards spread it to the mainland as far as
the Congo area. One of the most renowned leaders of the Uwaysiyya
branch of the Qadiriyya was Shaykh Zahur bin Muhammed who lived in
Tabora between 1894 and 1908 where he laid the foundations of the
brotherhood by teaching newly converted Muslims the typical Sufi
'chanting' feature which in Swahili is called dhikiri (Ar. dhikr, remem-
brance). His successors then officially established the brotherhood in
Tabora and began initiating new disciples. Further east in Bagamoyo, north
of Dar es Salaam, the Qadiri order started its activities in 1905. Under the
leadership of Yahya bin Abdallah, of slave origin and generally known as
Shaykh Ramiya, this brotherhood expanded in the area around Bagamoyo
and Tanga and further north. In the west Ramiya's influence was felt as far
afield as Ujiji at Lake Tanganyika.
The Shadhili brotherhood, which came to East Africa from the Comoros,
did not start expanding until the end of the German colonial period. It was
chiefly through the efforts of Husayn bin Mahmud from Kilwa that
Shadhiliyya spread throughout East Africa. He exerted great influence and
Shadhiliyya, unlike Qadiriyya, did not divide into different branches. The
number of Shadhiliyya disciples is, however, smaller than Qadiriyya. The
only order founded in East Africa is Askariyya, established around 1930 in
Dar es Salaam by Shaykh Idris bin Saad. Like Shaykh Husayn his first
contacts were with Qadiriyya. The Askari order is represented in cities like
Dar es Salaam, Morogoro in eastern Tanzania and further south in Songea,
among other places, but the number of members is presumably rather low.
Its doctrines are kept secret from outsiders.
The fact that the position of a Sufi Muslim is not primarily based on
book-learning but on personal piety has attracted the masses to Sufism. In
Tanzania there are numerous examples of shaykhs who have volunteered to
live their lives in poverty and to share in the simple day-to-day activities of
their disciples. They also take part in dhikiri-gatherings and the celebration
of the birth of Muhammad (Sw. maulidi, Ar. mawlid), which is particularly
important to Sufi Muslims. The birth of Muhammad is celebrated as a
Tanzania
national holiday in Tanzania. Another illustration of Sufi egalitarianism is

that their leaders to a great extent have been black Africans, unlike the
erudite urban ulama (scholars), traditionally of Arab origin. Many Sufi
shaykhs can be strikingly learned like the ulama and highly valued because
of their erudition, but they first and foremost possess a divine quality called
baraka. Through their charisma they can bring about wonders, heal the
diseased and act as intermediaries between God and men.
One may claim that it was above all through Sufism that Islam was
Africanised and 'nationalised'. Its non-dogmatic standpoint and openness
towards indigenous African beliefs and practices encouraged local
adaptation. In comparison with the more alien and bureaucratic Zanzibar
sultanate the orders were able to establish more informal and local
structures. Through the Sufi shaykhs was provided a 'close centre' as well as
personal relationship with the leaders. The African character of the orders
and their extensive organisation also furthered the growth of the nationalist
movements. Many Sufi shaykhs became 'natural' advocates in TANU, and
after the collapse of colonial rule in 1961 Sufi Muslims continued to a large
degree to support the socialist policies in Tanzania.
Islam in society
Mainly on account of the leading role of the Catholic president Julius
Nyerere several Western researchers have underestimated the importance of
the Muslims in shaping Tanzanian socialism in the 1960s. Because of the
Christians having better access to higher education they became over-
represented in the administration. However, Muslims constituted a
majority in TANU, called CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi means the
Revolutionary Party) after the 1977 merger with its sister party ASP
(Afro-Shirazi Party) on Zanzibar. After the introduction of the one-party
system, CCM was the major political factor in societal change. The
socialism of Tanzania bears many similarities to Islamic socialism, and
Nasserism in particular influenced many Muslims in Tanzania.
The few Muslims who turned against the socialist politics were mostly of
Asian origin. Some of the Muslim resistance was initially channelled
through the East African Muslim Welfare Society (EAMWS), which was
founded in Mombasa in 1945 by the then Aga Khan with the aim of
promoting Islam and raising the standard of living for East African
Muslims. Asian Shiites, especially Ismailis, dominated and financed the
organisation, but Aga Khan recommended that all Muslims regard this
welfare society as an organisation with pan-Islamic ambitions. When its
headquarters were moved from Mombasa to Dar es Salaam in 1961, the
Nyamwezi chief and TANU opponent Abdallah Fundikira, regarded as
Nyerere's principal political rival in the 1960s, became the president of the
organisation. EAMWS concentrated on building schools and mosques,
providing scholarships and spreading literature. There were also plans for
founding an Islamic university in Zanzibar or Mombasa, but these were
never realised. However, the Muslim Academy founded in Zanzibar in the
early 1950s continued to exist as a training college for teachers of Arabic
and Islamic education until it was closed down by the autonomous
Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar in 1966. In regard to this it is
interesting to note that several times since January 1993 Zanzibar had
announced plans for a separate Islamic University, which has now been
founded. There are plans also for high schools connected to the University
of Dar es Salaam; and since the middle of the 1970s the Muslim Academy
has been reopened, a new Muslim secondary school has been built and
Arabic has been adopted as the third official language of Zanzibar.
Because of the pan-Islamic tendencies and the capitalist-oriented
leadership of EAMWS, pro-TANU Muslims opposed it. The organisation,
it was claimed, constituted a threat to the ruling party. The antagonism
culminated in 1968, when the organisation was declared illegal in
Tanzania. Other Muslim organisations were also dissolved. Instead the
pro-TANU Muslims, with several leading Qadiriyya shaykhs playing
important roles, formed with the support of TANU the new national
organisation Baraza Kuu la Waislam wa Tanzania (Tanzania Supreme
Islamic Council), Bakwata, whose constitution was in large part a copy of
the TANU constitution. Because of its close connections with the ruling
party and many leading Muslim politicians' interference in Bakwata's
activities, the role of the organisation has been controversial. Its
achievements have been limited due to poor finances. Criticism of Bakwata
increased during the 1980s, when opposition to the socialist politics of
Tanzania grew and liberalisation began. Under internal Muslim pressure
and international Islamic tendencies, Bakwata has recently become some-
what more defined. The organisation has arranged lectures on Islam in
different parts of the country, and in 1987 it called on the government to
reinstall the system of courts that existed in colonial and post-colonial
times. With this clearer profile international Islamic contacts are on the
increase. Some Arab countries have financed new mosques, schools,
scholarships, dispensaries and provided teachers for the newly established
schools.
For a long time the question of schools and Islamic education has been
Tanzanian Muslims' main concern. They had few equivalents to the mission
schools whose activities not only spread Christianity but also led to a higher
educational level among Christians. The decision by the TANU government
to nationalise the schools in 1969 was therefore warmly welcomed by
Muslims. The Islamic schools which have been founded lately in a political
climate more favourable to private initiatives, for example Kunduchi
Islamic High School in Dar es Salaam, seem to have an uneven standard but
constitute an interesting development for the Muslims of Tanzania.
Tanzania
The proposal to reinstate separate Muslim courts is very controversial.

Under the slogan 'Don't mix religion with politics!' the governments of
Tanzania have endeavoured to 'privatise' Islam or marginalise the effects of
Islamic law. An example of religious conflicts involving legal matters is the
discussions about a government proposal to introduce a new marriage law
which was presented in 1967. The implementation of the law in 1971 was
preceded by two years of intense discussions. In particular the position of
sharia in the judicial system of the country was debated. Before 1971
Muslims, as well as Christians and Hindus, followed their own marriage
and divorce laws. Traditional judiciary systems of the different ethnic
groups practising customary law were also in force. In addition, one could
marry monogamously in a civil marriage. To counteract religious and ethnic
exclusivism in favour of increased national consciousness, the government
presented its aim in its 1969 White Book to create more uniformity in the
sphere of family law. The other important aim was to improve the position
of women. One of the tangible proposals was that the minimum marital age
for boys was to be eighteen and for girls fifteen. The fifteen-year limit for
girls was presented with reference to UN recommendations. According to
sharia, puberty decides when a girl is marriageable.
The proposal that caused the most serious debate was the idea that a
man who wanted to marry a second wife had to get permission from his
first wife. The proposal that would forbid men to punish their wives
corporally was also met with some resistance as well as the installation of
an obligatory reconciliation agency for couples on the verge of divorce. If
the agency failed to reconcile the parties concerned the husband in a
Muslim marriage would legally be able to pronounce the divorce formula
talaka (Ar. talaq). Many Muslims who took part in the discussions opposed
the idea of creating a more unified marriage law, especially where the
proposed marriage law was in conflict with sharia. Since family law is a
central part of the Islamic law, any change which does not conform to it is
particularly sensitive and controversial. Despite the criticism from the
Muslims the government's proposed law was passed in 1971 with only
minor changes.
The proposals of Bakwata in 1987 to reinstate separate Islamic courts is
only one example which demonstrates that the question of the position of
sharia in Tanzania is still a burning issue. In 1988 Sofia Kawawa, leader of
the Tanzania Women's Union, UWT (Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania,
closely affiliated to CCM), came under fire after having publicly criticised
Islamic rules that she felt were oppressive to women. According to Sofia
Kawawa, polygyny should be forbidden and women should have the same
rights of inheritance as men. Her statements caused protest and some
riots. A group of young Muslims wrote an open letter which demanded
that the secular regime refrain from interfering with religious matters. In
Zanzibar two men died in the riots against the leader of the UWT. The
Muslim president Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who a few years earlier had
succeeded the Catholic Nyerere, hurriedly explained that Kawawa had
expressed her personal views and not the views of CCM or the
government. Mwinyi saw no need to change the law, while Kawawa
and other Muslim women continued to argue against certain Islamic laws.
In some of her statements in 1990 Kawawa claimed that polygyny helped
to spread AIDS.
In questions concerning for example polygyny, Muslim critics such as
Kawawa have gained some support from the Christian quarter. Christian
criticism to some degree is, however, part of a wider propaganda campaign
against Islam. It may be noted that many Christian men, especially outside
the circles of leadership, actually have defended polygyny, albeit with
reference to traditional African cultures rather than to Christian belief.
This was especially obvious during the parliamentary debates preceding
the legal changes in 1971. Many Christian men and women also support
female circumcision which is practised rather widely, even by fourth or
fifth generation Christians, although it is forbidden by law. Female
circumcision does not exist among Tanzanian Muslims other than those of
Somali origin, and a mild form of it is practised among the few Asian Shia
Bohra.
The relationship between Muslims and Christians has by and large been
harmonious in Tanzania. A certain tension has certainly existed under the
surface, but it has seldom led to open conflict. In his valedictory address in
1985, Nyerere stressed the fact that the risk of religious conflict in Tanzania
has been greater than ethnic strife. According to him large religious conflicts
have been avoided not least because most Muslims have placed national
interests ahead of religious concerns. Lately however, a tendency toward
increasing conflict between Muslims and Christians has been discerned in
Tanzania. One of the reasons for this is growing Christian fundamentalism.
To many fundamentalist Christians, Islam is considered the arch-enemy,
particularly since communism is no longer perceived as a threat.
New organisations and tendencies

New Islamic organisations have also added to the increased polarisation
between Christians and Muslims. Few of these organisations are officially
registered. More rigid Islamist groups spreading propaganda for the
surrection of an Islamic government in Tanzania are few and small, but
less far-reaching signs of revitalisation of Islam are evident. Zanzibar
constitutes a special problem with its deeply rooted Islam, and some
Muslims who emphasise the importance of Islam want to see the Union
dissolved. This is also desired by some Christian fundamentalists on the
mainland, particularly the unregistered Democratic Party led by the Rev.
Mtikila.
Tanzania
One of the Islamic congregations which has more or less openly criticised
the 'official' Bakwata is Warsha ya Waandishi wa Kiislam (Islamic Writers'
Workshop). Warsha was founded in 1975 as a unit within Bakwata, its
main concern being educational issues. The unit had many young and well-
educated members, some of whom were Shiites. This radical group was
supported by the Bakwata secretary general, Shaykh Muhammed Ali, and
demanded Islamic education alongside secular subjects in the Islamic
secondary schools run by the organisation. Muslims faithful to the regime
argued that this went against the secular foundation of the state, and after
some conflict the Warsha group was excluded from Bakwata in 1982 and its
members were forbidden to work at Bakwata institutions. The young
Warsha members have however continued to strive for their goal. In their
simple headquarters at Dar es Salaam's Quba mosque, courses are arranged
and literature is published. One of the Swahili publications, Uchumi katika
Uislamu (economy in Islam) has attracted attention due to its severe
criticism of the Tanzanian socialist system ujamaa, which they consider
communist. Most of the publications, however, deal with the Pillars of
Islam, for example Sala with the official prayer (Ar. salat) and Falsafa ya
Funga ya Ramdhani with fasting during Ramadan. Warsha is also trying to
reform the old and mosque-based Quranic schools where education still
consists largely of memorising parts of the Quran.
Another organisation is Baraza la Uendelezaji Koran Tanzania (Tanzania
Quranic Council), Balukta, whose 1987 constitution states that its main
aim is to promote the reading of the Quran and the spreading of Islam
through financial and material support to Muslim schools. The organisa-
tion is also making an effort to establish and run Islamic centres and
institutes for Islamic higher education. Other constitutional aims within the
educational field are, for instance, publishing and conferences. Business
projects like hotels and restaurants have also been announced. Holders of
positions of trust are expected to have a sound knowledge of Islam.
Compared to Warsha, characterised by its young members, Balukta seems
somewhat old-fashioned. In April 1993 some Balukta members under the
leadership of its president, Shaykh Yahya Hussein, were involved in attacks
against butcheries selling pork in Dar es Salaam. Three slaughterhouses
were destroyed and some thirty people, including Hussein himself, were
arrested. The background to this is that the rearing and slaughtering of pigs
has become common in religiously mixed areas and some Muslims have
reacted strongly.
The Dar es Salaam University Muslim Trusteeship is another organisa-
tion which strives to protect Muslim interests in higher education. It has
produced statistics which point to the much publicised under-representation
of Muslims at the universities and in the administration. A parliamentary
commission of inquiry has also come to a similar conclusion, followed by a
report of the Roman Catholic Church of Tanzania in 1992 which confirms
The mosque at the university of Dar es Salaam (photo: David Westerlund,

1977).
the political and educational imbalance between Christians and Muslims. A

book in 1994 by Aboud Jumbe, a former president of Zanzibar, further
describes the dominance of the Christians and the underprivileged position
of the Muslims in the country. The members of the Trusteeship try to
promote a better understanding of Islam as a way of life. Another
organisation, Baraza Kuu la Jumuia na Taasisi za Kiislam (Supreme Council
of Islamic Organisations), founded in 1992, has a strikingly large number
of university employees among its membership. This new council is trying
to take over the leading role of Bakwata as a unifying organisation for all
Muslims in the country, and its activities are closely monitored by the
government.
Islamic renewal in Tanzania has been supported by organisations
abroad. The World Council of Mosques, with its headquarters in Jeddah,
has opened an office in Dar es Salaam to facilitate its work in Tanzania. It is
claimed by some Christian groups that some foreign organisations have
supported minor domestic Islamic movements which aim to change the
country into an Islamic state. The Iranian revolution has inspired some
Tanzanian Muslims, among others Khamis Muhammed, who is the editor
of the Islamic magazine Mizani. In a 1990 interview he said that the Islamic
Revolution should be followed by all Muslims in the world. Khamis
Muhammed has also been influenced by, and has written about,
Tanzania
Wahhabism. Embassies of some Islamic countries have in different ways

tried to support the radicalisation of the Muslim forces in Tanzania. Some
Muslim heads of state have also supported the Muslim aspirations.
Through the embassies, means have been provided for the building or
renovation of several mosques, Muslim secondary schools, hospitals and
clinics. Favourable loans have been given through these channels to
Muslims engaged in commercial activities. However, the activities of the
embassies has caused divisions among Muslim groups within the country.
Nonetheless, personnel and financial contributions from the Middle East
and Asia to Muslim activities in Tanzania remain much less than those from
Christian organisations from Western countries involved in church and
missionary activities.
In connection with a visit by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury in
1993, President Mwinyi, adhering to the secular stance towards religious
issues of his predecessor Nyerere, complained about some extremely
religious individuals abusing freedom of speech to create chaos in the
country. Archbishop Carey talked about the fundamentalist threat.
Zanzibar's becoming a member of the Organisation of Islamic Conference
(OIC) was heavily criticised by Christian leaders, who argued that this
contravened the secular constitution of Tanzania. The sharp criticism and
the risk of a dissolution of the Union resulted in the Zanzibari government's
decision to leave OIC. O n some occasions, as in connection with the
government crisis in Zanzibar in 1988, the year when the demonstrations
against Sofia Kawawa, took place Mwinyi and other representatives of the
regime have pointed to Muslim groups in Zanzibar and in exile who,
despite the great autonomy of the island state, dispute the Union. One of
the controversial groups is the Pemba-based Bismillahi who want a
referendum on the Union between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania. A
visitor to Zanzibar soon realises that Islam is not only a private matter,
although the authorities nowadays are less concerned with, for example,
public eating and drinking during Ramadan, which have become more
common because of the influx of tourists and Westerners.
For many years, elements critical of the regime, among others Warsha
and the magazine Mizani, issued propaganda for a multi-party system.
However, when Tanzania introduced multi-partyism in 1992, it was
understood that all parties should have a national profile and that religion
and ethnicity must not constitute the basis for new parties. Muslims in
particular were warned not to use the multi-party system for religious
purposes. Apart from the usually limited political demands, Muslim
revival in Tanzania, as in other parts of Africa, has been noticeable in the
growing number of mosque-goers and in the increased popularity of
Islamic-style clothing. In the propaganda activities some Christian
influences are discernible. Public Muslim sermons are being held in streets
and squares. The practice of inviting foreign 'revivalists', spreading tracts
and pamphlets, as well as putting stickers on vehicles and distributing

cassettes and videos has become more common among Muslims.
Literature
A classical study of Islam in Tanzania and other parts of East Africa, albeit
somewhat out-of-date, is J. Spencer Trimingham's Islam in East Africa
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). The historical development of
Islam on the East African littoral is well described in Randall L. Pouwel's
Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam in the East
African Coast, 800-1 900, Africa Studies Series, 53 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987). An outline of the history of Islam in the coastal
areas is found in some of the chapters of Lena Eile's thesis Jando: The Rite
of Circumcision and Initiation in East African Islam, Lund Studies in
African and Asian Religions, 5 (Lund: Plus Ultra, 1990). The status of
Muslims at the beginning of this decade is described by Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi
in his article 'Muslims in Eastern Africa - their past and present', Nordic
Journal of African Studies, 3:l (1994), pp. 88-99, and by Aboud Jumbe in
his controversial book The Partner-ship: Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union - 3 0
Turbulent Years (Dar es Salaam, 1994).
The question of Arab influence in Zanzibar is treated in A.Y. Lodhi's
article 'The Arabs in Zanzibar from the Sultanate to the People's Republic',
Journal: Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 7:2 (1986), pp. 404-18.
Sufism is briefly described in Franqois Constantin's essay 'Le saint et le
prince: Sur les fondements de la dynamique confrkrique en Afrique
centrale', pp. 85-109 in Les voies de l'islam en Afrique orientale, ed.
Franfois Constantin (Paris: Karthala, 1987), and more thoroughly treated
in August H. Nimtz's book Islam and Politics in East Africa: The Sufi Order
in Tanzania (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980) whose
main focus is on the political importance of the Qadiri order. A broader
account of the political importance of Islam and other religions is found in
David Westerlund's Ujamaa nu Dini: A Study of Some Aspects of Society
and Religion in Tanzania, 1961-1 977, Stockholm Studies in Comparative
Religion, 1 8 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1980). The
political role of Islam is also described in Imtiyaz Yusuf's more recent thesis
Islam and African Socialism: A Study of the Interactions between Islam and
Ujamaa Socialism in Tanzania (Temple University, 1990). Although Frieder
Ludwig's monograph Das Model1 Tanzania: Zum Verhaltnis zwischen
Kirche und Staat wahrend der ~ r Nyerere a mit einem Ausblick auf die
Entwicklung bis 1994 (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1994) focuses on church-
state relations, it also contains much information on the role of Muslims in
Tanzanian politics.
The relationship between Muslims and Christians in Tanzania (and
northern Nigeria) is discussed in Lissi Rasmussen's Christian-Muslim
Tanzania
Relations in Africa: The Cases of Northern Nigeria and Tanzania

Compared (London: British Academic Press, 1993) and, with special
focus on the political aspects of this relationship, in Frieder Ludwig's essay
'After Ujamaa: Is religious Revivalism a Threat to Tanzania's Stability?',
pp. 216-36 in Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence
of Religion in Politics, ed. David Westerlund (London: Hurst, and New
York: St Martin's Press, 1996).
Chapter Five
Southern Africa
Abdulkader Tayob
Until recently, observers were generally unaware of the Islamic presence in

southern Africa. It was assumed that Islam in its southern spread stopped
somewhere around Lake Malawi, and little was known about the arrival of
Muslims in the slave hulls of colonialism and during nineteenth-century
international trade in sugar, gold and British-manufactured goods. This
obscurity changed dramatically when groups of Muslims joined anti-
apartheid demonstrations in the 1980s, which the international media
beamed across the world. Since then, Islam has taken its small but
influential place in the media mosaic of southern Africa. Sometimes
Muslims are important social and political leaders in the region, sometimes
they emerge as champions of dramatic campaigns. This chapter is an
attempt to delineate the features of Islam in southern Africa, with a special
focus on South Africa. It begins with a brief historical outline of Islam in the
different countries, followed by a more extensive treatment of the
contemporary religious map and challenges facing Muslims in South Africa.
Islam in southern Africa consists of a number of communities which
together constitute a broad Islamic presence in the region. In spite of the
'universal nature' of Islam, a nature which Muslims espouse and experience,
plural identities are deeply inscribed in religious institutions and rituals.
Muslims in the south African region are a cosmopolitan group consisting of
a variety of ethnicities, language groups and social classes. These were
formed by a combination of willing and unwilling immigrants during
various periods of colonial rule and apartheid, and more recently, indigenous
peoples who converted to Islam. Produced in the history of the region, these
identities are historically unequal. The economic support by Indians of
mosques, in alliance with a particular religious outlook, dominates Islam in
southern Africa, but other identities continue to thrive. Ironically, the
particular history of South Africa, especially its apartheid conundrum, gave
concrete shape to an Islamic universalism with two broad tendencies. One
supported the nation-building exercise of the new South Africa, the other
espoused an exclusivist Islamic position. Both, in one way or another, placed
relationships among local communities, the nation and the international
Muslim umma (community of Muslims) under the spotlight.
Southern Africa
South Africa
Muslims first arrived on the southern tip of Africa in 1658 from the
Indonesian archipelago. For the next 150 years, a steady stream of political
exiles, convicts and slaves from the islands of South East Asia and some
parts of India established the foundations of what came to be called the
Cape Malays. Shaykh Yusuf, a political exile banished to the Cape in 1694,
has become a founding symbol for this first Muslim community in South
Africa. Muslims were only allowed to establish mosques and schools during
the nineteenth century. Since then, however, they have become one of the
most significant groups in Cape Town. A second distinct group of Muslims
arrived from India from 1860 onwards as British-indentured labour on
sugar plantations, and a little later as independent traders, merchants and
hawkers. The latter contributed to the building of mosques, schools and
cemeteries, and have since lived mainly but not exclusively in the northern
and eastern regions of South Africa. Muslims from further north,
particularly Malawi but also Zanzibar, form the third component of Islam
in South Africa. Although less influential than either the Malays or Indians,
they have also contributed to the particular ethos of Islam in southern
Africa. Finally, conversion has formed another distinct group within South
African Islam. During the nineteenth century, the Cape Town region
witnessed significant conversions which were assimilated into the Cape
Malay community. Missionary activity since the 1950s has led to a more
distinctive and notable presence of African indigenous Muslims in the
townships of South Africa. They constitute the fourth visible group within
the heterogeneous Muslim presence in South Africa.
South African Muslims represent only 0.2 per cent of the total population.
While Muslims themselves put their numbers at close to 1 million, the last
government statistics, published in 1991, record only 324,400. Nevertheless,
Muslims in South Africa are a highly visible urban group concentrated in the
major cities of Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. They are now well
represented in government, and professions such as medicine, accountancy
and law. The economic base in the past was business and trade among
Indians, and building and craftsmanship among the Cape Malays. They have
come a long way from being slaves, indentured labourers and hawkers.
Muslims from Malawi have been economically less successful as labourers in
factories, farms and forestry. In 1922, the Jamiatul Ulama Transvaal was
formed to represent the aspirations of imams and religious scholars. Since
then, similar associations have followed, representing different regions and
religious orientations. These have played a significant role in promoting
Islam. A number of welfare and youth groups also serve the community and
express a variety of orientations among Muslims. Sometimes, they represent
particular political approaches, for instance the Claremont Muslim Youth
Association of 1957 or the Call of Islam of 1983.
Tayob
The role and position of Muslim women in South Africa needs to be

mentioned separately. In the Western Cape, they contribute significantly to
the economic well-being of the household. This was also the case in Durban
and Johannesburg, but most often in the context of family businesses in
which women's contributions were not clearly reflected and acknowledged.
Most Muslim homes do not strictly define gender spheres, but men and
women gravitate respectively around living rooms and kitchens. The
religious sector does not reflect this more liberal social space, however.
Women experts in religious sciences are rare. Some leaders like Mawlana
Yunus Pate1 in Durban have recently established finishing schools for young
girls. Presented as a bulwark against the moral decay of society, fathers are
encouraged to remove girls from government schools and enrol them in these
special religious establishments. The schools ensure the social reproduction
of the subservient Muslim woman. In the western Cape, there exists a more
egalitarian understanding of women's rights within Islam. Women play a
large role in religious organisations including anchor persons in community
radio stations, women's movements and more traditional Mawlud (mawlid,
the birthday of Prophet Muhammad) organisations. However, under the
tutelage of the powerful mosque imams and the dominant interpretations of
Islam, a more egalitarian approach to women's position in South African
Islam is severely limited. The overwhelming majority of religious leaders
have resisted any explicit change for what women may do inside Islam, even
as Muslim women make progress outside the mosques.
Botswana
A small group of Indians constituted the first Islamic presence in Botswana
in 1890, but were restricted by colonial authorities to urban areas. As the
history of Botswana moved from one urban centre to another, the Muslims
created successive Islamic centres out of them. Now the capital city of
Gaborone represents the centre of Islam in Botswana, and a magnificent
mosque built in 1982 exemplifies and celebrates this fact. Malawian
Muslims first made their appearance in Franciston in the 1950s from where
South African mining companies recruited labour from the rest of Africa.
Many Malawians have settled permanently in the country and continue the
Malawian traditions. There were not many conversions to Islam until the
1970s when Libya employed Shaykh Ali Mustapha of Guyana with the
specific purpose of attracting converts in prisons and townships. Botswana
Muslims now represent 0.3 per cent of the total population.
Zimbabwe
Islam in Zimbabwe also illustrates the dominance of Indian institutions, but
Ephraim Mandivenga reminds us in his book that the Varemba were
Southern Africa
A shop in Ramotswa, Botswana, which was used for Muslim festival

celebrations such as Id al-Adha from about 1900 to 1966 (photo: James
Amanze, 1998).
probably the first Muslims in the country. They are the descendants of long-
established contact between Africans of the interior and Swahili Muslims
on the east coast of Africa. In the Zimbabwe region, this presence dates
back to the seventeenth century. The Varemba still adhere to clearly
identifiable practices like circumcision and abstention from pork as well as
the use of a number of Arabic personal names. This people came to the
attention of the Muslims in the 1960s, who initiated a successful conversion
campaign thereafter. One of the most prominent of the religious leaders,
Shaykh Adam Makda, founded the Zimbabwe Islamic Mission in 1977,
with assistance from Saudi Arabia. Malawian Muslims arrived in the
country from 1890 onwards as farm- and mine-workers, and have tried to
maintain their identity against considerable odds. While most of their
mosques were funded by Indian support, mosques within mines were built
with monthly subscriptions. Moreover, the Zimbabwe Council of Imaams
(established 1975) represents religious leaders of mosques serving mainly
Malawian Muslims. These fledgling Malawian associations mentioned
briefly by Mandivenga are unusual for southern Africa. In Zimbabwe,
Tayob
Indians arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century. In addition to

their support for missionary work, they built mosques and prayer halls and
determined the major ethos of Islam through their religious leaders. In 1945
the Pakistan Muslim Youth Club was the first among many other modern
organisations which expressed the social and political aspirations of
students and youth and followed, more or less, the pattern of South African
organisations.
Swaziland
Islam in Swaziland began in 1963 with the first Malawian workers in
asbestos mines. The Malawian practice of Islam attracted followers, and
soon Malawi-Swazi communities took shape in a few small towns. Islam
was recognised by the Swazi king as a religion in 1972, and Muslims have
since joined the national Good Friday celebrations to pray for him. Islam in
the major cities of Mbabane and Ezulwini was mainly the preserve of South
African and Indian immigrants. The Ezulwini Islamic Institute outside
Mbabane was built in 1981; other urban institutions have since
complemented and unfortunately overshadowed the humble beginnings
of Islam in this small country.
Lesotho
Not much is known about Muslims in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
However, one of the pioneers of Islam in Durban, the great Soofie Saheb (d.
1910), established a mosque in the country at the turn of the century which
has given rise to a unique Muslim community in Butha Buthe. This is an
African community which is Muslim but speaks an Indian language.
Unfortunately, no study exists on this community.
The Texture of Islam

Islam in the religion is thus represented by a number of ethnic and linguistic
groups. What is, however, even more interesting is how these divisions are
reflected and maintained by symbolic systems within Islam. I turn first to
the Indian hegemony which dominates the region. This domination is
financial in principle, but articulated in the organisation of the mosques,
and the dominance of a particular religious outlook. From the early
nineteenth century, Indian traders contributed enormously to the building
of mosques in almost every town. In Indian neighbourhoods, in particular,
no cost was spared in materials and luxury, and committees consisting
usually of influential traders manage the mosques. In the 1960s, mosque-
building in South Africa was accompanied by an upsurge in daily religious
observance, often preceded by the call to prayer from a powerful public
Southern Africa
address system. The motivation for this particular religiosity may partly be
explained by the pressures placed by the apartheid system on communities
facing mass removals. However, seen from within the Muslim community,
it is important to note the role played by religious leaders who promoted
and shaped the particular ethos in the mosques. Thus, in the Gauteng
region of Johannesburg, the Jamiatul Ulama Transvaal guided the believers
towards a strict Hanafi Deobandism, in reference to the founder of one of
the Sunni law schools, and its revival in India in the nineteenth century. In
addition to daily prayer, the observance of Islamic dress, for both men and
women, became more prominent. The religious scholars, however, not only
relied on their preaching and teaching to promote Islamic observance.
Another Indian-inspired mass movement, the Jamaat al-Tabligh, popu-
larised the authority of the scholars and their particular interpretation of
Islam.
The ethnic orientation of the scholars and the mosques was unmistak-
able. In the name of the sunna (normative practice or exemplary behaviour)
of the Prophet, the dominance of Indian culture, from the Urdu language,
and to a certain extent Gujarati, to clothing and cuisine, dominated the
mosque ethos. The overt message was a universal Islam, but the ethos was
unmistakably Indian. The scholars and mass movement together provided a
coherent worldview within which Indian ethnicity and culture was nurtured
and legitimated. During the height of the apartheid era, it provided a self-
evident manner in which to be an Indian Muslim in Transvaal and Natal.
This very peculiar reading of Islam, including both financial support and
religious orthodoxy, also became a package for export and propagation. It
prevailed upon and threatened other interpretations of Islam. For example,
the Mawlud celebration of Malawians (commemorating the Prophet's
birth) was devalued, and the Afrikaans used by Cape Muslims was
peppered with Urdu and Gujarati phrases. The Hanafi Deobandism of the
middle-class traders and religious scholars was countered in Kwazulu-Natal
by the Barelwi tradition, also originating in India. In South Africa, in
particular, the Barelwi tradition celebrated the great Sufi saints who lived in
the past, and built Islamic practices and identities around them. The most
prominent of these saints in South Africa were Badsha Peer (d. 1885) and
Soofie Saheb (d. 1910) who was buried in magnificent tombs in Durban. In
contrast to the Deobandi Hanafis, the Barelwi tradition legitimated
different class and ethnic groups among Indians.
Like the Indian ethos, even if not as influential, other interpretations of
Islam also defined and constructed identities through deep, idiosyncratic
perceptions and ritual practices. The examples of mosque-building and
leadership models in the Cape become clear in relation to contrasti~lg
Indian and Malawian traditions. Support for mosque construction among
Indians took the form of donations, often in the conviction that one would
benefit directly from every person performing worship in a mosque one has
Tayob
The shrine of Shaykh Yusuf in Faure outside Cape Town (photo:

Abdulkader Tayob, 1997).
helped to build; or, that building a mosque on earth would be rewarded

with a house in heaven. In the Cape, this specific religious motivation was
rarely used for soliciting donations. Monies were accumulated over a longer
period of time through a variety of fund-raising activities such as dinners
and community fairs. Furthermore, artisans from the community usually
provided their services during weekends at minimal or no cost. Both
communities built mosques, but the social actors, traders on the one hand
and fund-raisers and builders on the other, defined a different social and
symbolic space in the making of a mosque. Such differences inscribed subtle
and explicit boundaries among Muslims in South Africa. In spite of any
religious teaching to the contrary, an Indian Muslim could not really
become part of a Cape Malay mosque and vice versa.
Conceptions of authority also defined boundaries within Islam in South
Africa. For example, Cape religious leaders were trained either in the city or
in the Arab world. Moreover, when they assumed leadership in the
mosques, they constructed and reinforced that authority on the basis of
educational and ritual services to the community. In addition to the usual
leadership during prayer times, imams would also be expected to organise
religious classes, preside at the naming of a new-born child and perform the
final rites at a burial. In contrast, Malawian Muslim leaders were trained in
Southern Africa
Malawi itself or in Zanzibar, and played a very prominent role in leading

their communities at the head of celebrations for the birthday of the
Prophet, or sometimes as herbal or spiritual healers. Malawian commu-
nities in South Africa were scattered throughout the country, and the imams
could not establish models of authority around daily worship or regular
education. In contrast to the Cape tradition, thus, Malawian leaders
maintained leadership through the annual celebrations in an Islamic
calendar, or at the service of individual needs. Both Cape Malay and
Malawian Muslims were led by highly visible religious leaders. In each case,
the leaders were constituted through different patterns of authority, thus
producing different Muslim moral subjects.
Clearly, the Muslim umma of southern Africa was a rich tapestry of local
communities defined and reinforced by rituals and symbols. This pluralist
nature of Islam has been noted in a number of other contexts as well, most
notably by Michael M. Fisher and Mehdi Abedi in their seminal work on
the discourse of Iranian Islam (Debating Muslims, 1990). The celebration
of local discourses of Islam should not preclude an appreciation of a
universal Islamic discourse. Often, the two stand in tense relationship to
each other. In South Africa, in fact, such a universal discourse of Islam
emerged within the context of apartheid. When apartheid emphasised the
geographical origins of the various Muslim communities, their ethnicities
and language preferences, some Muslims found shelter in the religious
forms of these identities. Youth in Cape Town and Durban, and to a lesser
extent Johannesburg, however, appealed to the supra-national character of
Islam against the classification of apartheid ideology. The notion of an
international race-less Muslim identity was posited against the classification
of 'Malay', 'Indian' or 'African' in the context of a South African obsession
with race. Not all Muslims were persuaded by this religio-political rhetoric,
but youth groups at universities adopted Islam as an identity, and later also
as an ideology with which to resist apartheid. The emergence of a cross-
cultural, united Islamic discourse in such a specific context is particularly
instructive for illustrating the tensions between Islamic pluralism and
universalism.
In South Africa, they help us to understand the challenges facing
Muslims in relation to the local, national and international Islamic senses.
Here, the supra-national discourse of Islam gave rise to two trends, not
clearly distinguishable when first espoused. Firstly, it created an Islamist
discourse in South Africa which held tenaciously to the uniqueness of Islam
as a culture, civilisation and ideology. This tendency, most eloquently
advocated by Achmat Cassiem in the Cape, has decried democratic
developments in South Africa from an Islamic ideological point of view.
Cassiem consistently opposed apartheid, and spent many years either
banned or in jail. Since the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran,
moreover, he couched that resistance to apartheid, and now the new
Tayob
democracy, in Islamic terms. Moreover, he now heads an Islamic Unity

Convention (established 1994) which represents a number of organisations
and bodies, particularly in the Western Cape. His discourse shares a basic
affinity in style and form with international Islamist rhetoric in many other
parts of the Islamic world. However, his has taken shape in the political
praxis of South Africa. Cassiem has inherited an international Islamism
which was first articulated and developed in response to South African
politics. The parochialism of the international discourse was inscribed in its
geographical location, and in its political character.
The prospects for Islamist rhetoric in post-apartheid South Africa have
been illustrated in the emergence of the anti-crime campaign called People
against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD).Hurtled onto world media when
it attacked and killed a well-known drug lord in Cape Town in August
1996, PAGAD used the Islamic symbols of unity, martyrdom and
retribution to gain support for an anti-crime and anti-drug campaign.
Desperation against rampant crime guaranteed them instant support from
all South Africans. Their insistence on brandishing only Islamic symbols
and their promise to solve the problems 'with Islam', however, naturally
restricted their support. The intractable and difficult problems of drug
distribution, demand, territory and rehabilitation could not be solved with
promises and slogans. For over six months, however, Muslims were
engulfed in a drama in which they thought Islam was going to solve the
problems of crime in South Africa. The rise of PAGAD illustrates the
possibility of mobilising Muslims on social and political issues around
universal Islamic symbols. PAGAD, however, also showed the serious
limitations of such exclusive Islamic symbols both in their restriction to
Muslim peoples, as well as in their inability to deal effectively with the
problems thus identified.
Cassiem and PAGAD have not been the only inheritors of the discourse
of Islam against apartheid. The Call of Islam (founded 1984) and the
Muslim Youth Movement (established 1970) also opposed apartheid, but
wholeheartedly supported the new nation. For these groups, Islamic
identity did not mean that they had to reject South African patriotism, nor
did it mean that they could not identify with international Islamic issues.
However, their commitment to the new nation was explicit and uncondi-
tional, and articulated in religious terms. In South Africa, the writer's own
work Islamic Resurgence in South Africa (1995) has analysed the historical
roots of this trend, while Farid Esack's Quran, Liberation and Pluralism
(1996) sets forth its particular hermeneutical trajectories. Esack argues that
Islamic teachings of the universal umma and teachings on relations with
other religions must be interpreted contextually. The different history and
experience of Muslims in the modern world demands that the received
notions of non-disbelievers, women and the struggle for justice be re-
visited.
Southern Africa
This attitude to the nation was also present in other southern African
countries, like the Swazi celebration of the king on Good Friday, and the
support and participation of key Botswana Muslim leaders in national
politics. In these countries, however, a national Islamic discourse has not
been articulated. This unarticulated acceptance of the nation was also
present among most Muslims in South Africa, who participated enthusias-
tically in the democratic elections, and have since entered government
service in greater numbers than ever before. They articulated neither an
International Islam nor a South African one like Cassiem or the Call of
Islam respectively. Often, they paid homage to the former and thanked God
for the latter.
National politics has not been the only source for international Islamic
consciousness. In the past twenty years or so, other world events have also
contributed to the emergence of an international Islamic discourse. A few
examples will suffice to illustrate its importance for South African Muslims.
Since the oil boom in the Middle East made it possible for Saudi Arabia to
build an extensive infrastructure for pilgrimage, a greater number of South
Africans have made this trip than ever before. During apartheid, in fact,
special arrangements were made for South Africans to participate in this
event in spite of South Africa's isolation. In 1979, the Islamic revolution in
Iran contributed in no small measure to a greater awareness among
Muslims of Islam's international breadth. The media's coverage of Muslim
communities, particularly crises such as the war in Bosnia and Somalia, and
the natural disasters in Bangladesh, has also led to greater awareness of the
predicament of the umma. South Africans have responded to these crises by
offering humanitarian aid and supplies. By acting together in support of a
world crisis, or going together as South Africans on pilgrimage, Muslims
have become aware of, and involved in, an international community.
The international consciousness of Islam has, mirror-like, contributed to
a greater awareness of a South African Muslim community. Going together
on pilgrimage or contributing to the alleviation of crises created a South
African awareness. The Bosnian example, which exemplified international
umma consciousness to a great extent, also revealed a South African
Muslim consciousness and its place in the greater South African nation.
When South African Muslims supported Bosnia and sent a mobile hospital
to Bosnians in the throes of a genocide, some Muslims criticised this
dramatic gesture. In particular, they decried the fact that Muslims had a
similar obligation towards poverty and disease at home. The relief effort for
Bosnia was highly successful, however, but it did not completely ignore the
criticism. A project of similar hospitals in the rural areas of Kwazulu-Natal
also received the support of Muslims. During the past ten years, the
boundaries of a national Muslim consciousness have started to be shaped in
other ritual acts as well. Muslims have begun to adopt a national strategy
for sighting the new moon for announcing the end of Ramadan and the
Tayob
beginning of the month of pilgrimage. Various other attempts, not least the
deeply Islamist Islamic Unity Convention, focused on the national
consciousness of being Muslims in South Africa.
There are basically two interrelated challenges facing Muslims with
regard to the nation. Firstly, the nation as an entity is only affirmed
unconsciously or in terms of ritual practice. Hence, the practice of
celebrating an Id festival on a single day signifies the national character of
such a process. Similarly, the organisation of hajj (pilgrimage) facilities in
Mecca for South Africans emphasises the national boundaries of Muslims.
In either case, however, the nation has no place in contemporary Islamic
discourse. In fact, it is often discredited in the name of an international
discourse of unity. The challenge for Muslims lies in reconciling practice
and theory, as well as reconciling national being with a supra-national
Islamic consciousness. The second challenge arises as a result of the first. In
the absence of a recognition of national boundaries in Islamic discourse, it
is difficult to propose structures and mechanisms to deal with national
issues. As a result, acts of national significance and importance are often
taken as extensions of local power hegemonies or ritual preferences. Hence,
for example, when traders offer to help build mosques in townships, they
manifest Islamic national unity as well as Indian religious hegemony by
insisting on a particular religious ethos. Even the national sighting of the
moon revealed key anomalies. Its acceptance by the general community was
a measure of how Muslims regarded themselves as being part of one
community. However, for the Id al-Adha (festival of sacrifice) about
fourteen mosques in Cape Town insisted on celebrating the occasion in
terms of ritual procedures in Mecca. Consequently, national issues were
forced to follow discourses of Islamic law and their representatives in
specific mosques. In the absence of the nation in the discourse, the parochial
hegemonies set the terms of the national agenda for Islam.
The conundrum of southern African Islam is reflected in a number of
other social and political issues and events as well. South Africa's new
constitution makes provision for a pluralist legal regime. The new
constitution recognised the injustice perpetrated against marginalised legal
cultures, and adopted legal pluralism in matters of personal law. For
Muslims, this represented the recognition of Islamic practices after years of
denial and rejection of their marriages, testamentary wishes and obligations
to their progeny. However, the new constitution also demanded that all
laws be evaluated in terms of the Bill of Rights. Conservative religious
scholars welcomed the recognition of Islamic law but refused to accept the
provision of the Bill of Rights. Faithful to a literal interpretation of Islamic
law, they pointed out possibilities in the new constitution by insisting that
the provision of freedom of religion overruled the provision of gender
equality in the Bill of Rights. In 1998, nevertheless, it appears that these
leaders are prepared to accept the demands of the constitution and the Bill
Southern Africa
Two imams in Cape Town (photo: Muhaymin Bassier, 1991).
of Rights. Without this national category imposed by the state, Muslim

discourse was not able to propose models for how Islam would relate to
issues of national significance.
In recent years, the popularity of Sufism across the variety of Muslim
identities added another dimension to Islamic life. Sufi orders and teachers
have emerged across the divisions and begun to attract many followers.
The teachers and the orders are the familiar ones like the Qadiris and
Chistis from India, but also the Ba Alawiyya and Alawiyya of Mecca and
Algeria respectively, and the Maryamiyya of the European convert Frithjof
Schuon. Texts on Sufi healing, dhikr ('remembrance', Sufi worship) and
contemplation have become extremely popular. In one sense, such a turn
towards an order or a teacher confirmed the need to belong, adding to the
existing Islamic identities rooted in ethnic, sharia (Islamic law) and class
Tayob
identities. O n the other hand, the turn towards Sufism was also a turn of
the individual towards his or her personal experience. The importance of
personal experience may provide a re-orientation for many individuals
frustrated with the challenges in post-apartheid South Africa, once
performed by ethnically restricted religious institutions. The inner
dimension of Sufism would appear as a legitimate alternative to the ethnic
and linguistic boundaries drawn by legal and political structures and
entities.
Symbols of identity pervaded Islamic life in South and southern Africa.
Whether they were rituals inscribing ethnic identity, laws preserving the
Muslim subject, or women bearing the burden of a pure Islamic past,
identity seemed to be a major factor in the Islamic presence in this part of
Africa. Over the past 350 years, identities took shape in the patterns of
religious authority and rituals, inscribing the historical experience of
diverse groups. These religious practices have had a definite impact on
people's sense of the world. At the same time, however, the rituals and
symbols were themselves subject to change. In modern southern Africa as
elsewhere, Muslims were not simply the objects of ritual adherence. In the
context of apartheid and liberation, a universal Islamic identity became a
powerful counter-force to race and ethnicity. This encounter engendered a
challenge to existing identities and gave rise to political mobilisation during
and after apartheid.
As Muslims approach the end of the twentieth century, it is clear that the
context of the new South Africa with its progressive constitution is already
forcing Muslims to respond anew. In the absence of a nation-centred
discourse, the powerful institutions (mosques, ulama bodies and conven-
tions) are likely to approach the challenges from the angle of the particular
interests they represent. Hanafi, Shafii, African, Iranian, or progressive,
these approaches were developed in the context of apartheid. Some of these
were conservative, preserving the existence of the community, while others
were iconoclastic, challenging the political philosophy of South Africans.
Either they were intensively conservative and inward-looking, or they were
extremely combative. Both were the products of apartheid and resistance to
apartheid. It seems that Muslims need a bold orientation towards the new
state and the new democracy in the country. Such an approach will give
greater meaning and integrity to the fact that most Muslims participated
and voted in the new elections. It will also help Muslims to approach their
institutions, their relations with the state and the outside world, with
greater integrity, creativity and dignity. With the rise of Sufism and militant
Islamic discourse, Muslims are being offered the more familiar and
convenient options of marginalisation, rhetoric and inner development.
Given the rich history of Islam in Africa in general, and South Africa in
particular, it is comforting to note that these will not be the only
alternatives.
Southern Africa
Literature
Achmat Davids, The Mosques of Bo-Kaap: A Social History of Islam at the
Cape (Cape Town: The SA Institute of Arabic and Islamic Research, 1980)
is a pioneering study of the first mosques established in Cape Town, South
Africa. The study focuses on the establishment of these mosques and their
leadership structures. In the book Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism:
Towards an Islamic Perspective of Inter-Religious Solidarity against
Oppression (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997), Farid Esack has
explored the unique interpretation of the Quran within the struggle of
apartheid. His work reflects some of the notions developed particularly
within the Call of Islam and the Muslim Youth Movement. M. Shamiel
Jeppie's 'Historical Process and the Constitution of Subjects: I.D. Du Plessis
and the Re-invention of the "Malay"' (Honours Paper, University of Cape
Town, 1987), exposes the construction of the Malay identity by Afrikaner
ideologists. It is a study which unpacks the notions of race and religion in
apartheid and anti-apartheid discourse. Islamic Resurgence in South Africa:
The Muslim Youth Movement (Cape Town: UCT Press, 1995), by
Abdulkader I. Tayob, is a monograph on the Muslim Youth Movement
which traces the emergence and development of a new paradigm of Islamic
thought and practice among Muslim youth in South Africa. This study
locates Islamic political thought in the context of religious leadership.
The following are some of the few studies of the position of Islam in the
countries around South Africa, which contain useful information and
contexts of the arrival of Muslims and the establishment of institutions:
Peter Kasenene, Religion in Swaziland (Braamfontein: Skotaville, 1993);
Saroj N. Parratt, 'Muslims in Botswana', Journal of African Studies, 48:l
(1989), pp. 71-81; Ephraim Mandivenga, Islam in Zimbabwe (Gweru:
Mambo Press, 1983); J.N. Amanze, Islam in Botwana: Past and Present
1882-1 995 (unpublished manuscript, 1995).
Part Two
Asia
and
Oceania
Chapter Six
Turkey
Svante Cornell and Ingvar Svanberg
The events from 1994 to the present day have accentuated the inherent
difficulties of the Turkish state's relationship with religion. First of all,
religion has re-emerged in the open in society in a way unseen since the
republic was proclaimed in 1923. The tension between secularists and
Islamists in the political sphere has increased, and polarisation seems on the
increase throughout society. Deeper in society, the sectarian fragmentation
of Islam is possibly growing, and certainly more publicised than ever. The
Turkish public, which on the whole - this is especially true for the secular
establishment - has a poor knowledge of Islam both generally and in
Turkey, is suddenly exposed to extensive media coverage of the activities of
Islamist groups. Moreover, the existence of a non-Sunni minority of Alevis
which may coinpose up to one third of the population of the country was
news to many Turks, not to mention foreigners. As mainly foreign observers
are warning of an Islamic revolt or a development of the Algerian type,
Turks are quick to explain that Turkey is not Algeria. However, there is a
very poor awareness of Islam in Turkey, as well as in Europe, although
scholarly interest is increasing. In Turkey, this ignorance has led to the
spontaneous support for the military-led efforts to suppress religious
radicals and conservatives, which many secularists adopt without
questioning its virtues and drawbacks.
Since 1923, Turkey has been a heavily Western-orientated secular republic.
The role of Islam in society has varied with the political leadership of the
state. However, in general it can be said that the main tendency has been a
constant pressure from large parts of the population to lend more
importance to Islam, whereas this has been resisted by the secular elite, a
policy warranted by the strongly secularist army. In terms of history,
Turkey's relation to Islam can be called a U-turn. Turkey is the main
successor state of the Ottoman Empire, which was based not on an ethnic
identity but on the religious identity of Islam. The sultan of the empire was
also the caliph, the spiritual leader of all Muslims in the world. By contrast,
Turkey
the republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk in 1923 was based on the
concept of Turkish ethnicity and staunchly rejective of religion.
However, the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish
Republic cannot be termed a 'U-turn' of the 1920s. The Westernisation of
the Ottoman Empire began in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Throughout the century, the empire had suffered an increasingly rapid
disintegration, with not only its European parts but also subsequently its
Middle Eastern provinces rising up in nationalist rebellions, eagerly
supported by its numerous enemies; and nationalism was a concept the
Ottoman Empire was particularly ill-fit to tackle. It recognised minorities -
but only religious minorities - through the millet system, whereby the
religious minorities had a significant level of autonomy. As an answer to
these developments, an awareness grew in the empire that it had lagged
behind the West. An urge for modernisation emerged, as the empire was
seen to be in rapid decay. This urge for modernisation was paralleled by a
movement which saw reform as necessary not only in regard to the state
and military but also to the entire society. A national project was necessary
to prevent the total dissolution of the empire. Among the military klite, a
movement known as the 'young Ottomans', or later 'young Turks',
emerged, which sought a thorough transformation of the society and state.
Ziya Gokalp, the author of Tiirk~iiliigiinEsaslari (The Essence of Turkism),
is often credited as one of the earliest and most influential theorists of
Turkish nationalism. His motto was 'Turkify, Islamise and Modernise', a
blueprint for a modern Turkish identity, still heavily coloured by Islam.
However, inspired by European practices, Gokalp also promoted the
separation of Islam from the state. This illustrates the fact that
modernisation in Turkey since the times of the Ottoman Empire has been
equated with Westernisation.
The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of confusion,
where the social structure of the empire was challenged by refugee flows and
a generally chaotic external environment. As nationalist, separatist forces
among minorities were strengthened, Islamic militancy increased among the
Muslim population; and as tensions between religious groups grew, Russia,
France and Great Britain claimed a role as protectors of religious minorites
in the empire - a notable humiliation for the sultan. Furthermore, with the
dismantling of the European parts of the empire, large refugee flows of
Muslims from these areas were migrating to the Anatolian heartland, which
increased the Islamic demographic character of Anatolia, which until then
had been largely multi-cultural. The official Islam of the empire was Hanafi
Sunni. The religious hierarchy was strict and represented a normative
Sunnism, which guided education and the judiciary. Sufi orders were viewed
with suspicion and resisted by the state. Nevertheless, their strength
increased during the last decades of the empire. This was particularly true
for the Naqshbandi, Qadiri, Bektashi and Rifai orders.
Cornell and Svanberg
Kurdish-speaking Muslims in a Central Anatolian village (photo: Ingvar

Svanberg, 1990).
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was heavily influenced by the young Turk

movement, but he differed from it, and from Ziya Gokalp, in one decisive
respect - he saw Islam as one of the main obstacles in Turkey's
Westernisation and modernisation - leaving 'modernisation' and 'Turkifi-
cation' from Gokalp's motto, two paths on which Ataturk capitalised. The
Ottoman empire was thus transformed into a modern, secular nation-state:
the Turkish republic. With the proclamation of the republic, the sultanate
was abolished, and so was the caliphate in March 1924. The educational
system was immediately affected, and religious education was successively
abolished in the country. Atatiirk was also very suspicious of Sufi orders,
which he saw as potentially subversive, and prohibited them from
operating. This was unsuccessful, however, largely due to the secret and
Turkey
underground nature of these associations. Hence the orders hibernated and

have recently seen a resurgence. Atatiirk's reforms have often been
interpreted as an attempt to eradicate Islam from Turkish society, which
is far from the truth. Even more far-fetched are comparisons with Albania's
Enver Hoxha period or Stalinist Soviet Union.
Turkey under Ataturk was not an atheist regime. As Ilber Ortayli has
rightly observed, Turkish leaders have always been buried with religious
funerals, as opposed to the leaders of the French revolution or Bolshevik
Soviet Union. Religious holidays were always observed, and mosques have
always existed. Atatiirk's objective, though, was clear: to prevent religion
from being used for political purposes. To this end, the Directorate for
Religious Affairs, Diyanet I5leri Bagkanligi, was founded with the aim of
ensuring a state monopoly and control over religious affairs, and to
subordinate the mosques to the state, thereby pre-empting anti-state
propaganda. Similarly, theological faculties were introduced at universities.
Ataturk's brand of Turkish nationalism was in retrospect a masterpiece of
nation-building. It was not based on ethnicity as such, but was inclusive of
all nationalities and minorities residing within the territorial boundaries of
the republic. According to the parole Ne mutlu Turkum diyene, 'happy he
who calls himself a Turk', whoever was willing to take part in the nation-
building process was welcome to do so. To a remarkable extent, considering
the ethnic and cultural melting pot that Anatolia was, Atatiirk succeeded in
his endeavour. The one and only exception was the 'feudal' Kurdish society
in the southeast which remained unintegrated, whereas Kurds all over
Turkey were assimilated into a Turkish identity. The official history-writing
sought to stress the link to Central Asian nomadic tribes, and to minimise
the historical links to the Islamic world as well as the Byzantine heritage. As
a corollary, the centre of gravity of the Islamic world moved from Istanbul
towards the Arab heartlands of the Middle East, which was going through a
re-Islamisation. Hence Kemalism sought to give primacy to nationalism
over religion, and Turkish identity came to be associated with language and
territory instead of religion. This necessitated a gigantic effort in terms of
popular education. As Anatolia was heterogeneous in terms of language
and culture, the 'second army' of teachers would socialise the young into a
strong Turkish national identity. However, this task proved to be more
difficult than expected. The country became increasingly divided between a
secular klite and a conservative rural mass. Social change proved
distinctively slower than political change.
Hence, as multi-party democracy was permitted in 1946, the first free
elections led to the victory of the Democratic Party which eased the harsh
restrictions on religious life. This amounted to an Islamic revival. In the
1970s a religious party emerged in parliament, and reached the government
through coalitions, which extended Islamic influence in the state. During
the 1980s, Ozal's liberal policies toward religion led to the building of
Slaughtering a sheep in connection with the Id al-Adha festival in a suburb

of Istanbul (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1979).
thousands of mosques and religious schools (Imam-Hatip). Finally, the

1990s saw the dramatic increase in popularity and power of the Welfare
Party (Refah Partisi), which culminated in it becoming the senior partner in
a coalition goverment in the summer of 1996. Before moving to the role of
religion in Turkish politics today, however, it is necessary to see the
structure of Islam in the country.
Religion and political culture in Turkey

Despite the clearly secular character of Turkish society, this image is blurred
in certain respects. To the foreign observer, a striking relationship between
Turkey
the concepts of 'Turk' and 'Muslim' is present. In this context, it is
interesting to note than when confronted with a foreign practitioner of
another religion, Turks, including Islamists, have no prejudice but are only
interested in learning about foreign religious practices. On the other hand,
Turkish converts to Christianity, especially, are viewed as traitors and
persecuted to an extent which has forced most of them to leave the country,
according to the observations of several Catholic and Protestant priests.
This circumstance seems to fit badly with the generally secular and tolerant
character of the Turkish society, particuarly as it is not paralleled in many
Muslim societies. Indeed, many states with Muslim majority have no
difficulty harbouring linguistically similar but religiously differing mino-
rities. Examples are the Christians in Indonesia or in Palestine, or the
Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh. In Turkey, however, there seems to be
a reigning paradigm that a 'Turk' is by necessity a 'Muslim' - and indeed,
99 per cent of the population are nominally Muslims. Non-Muslims are not
viewed as Turks, even if they are Turkish citizens.
This attitude is interesting in historical view as the Ottoman Empire
never was a fully Islamic state, but rather a flexible system able to respond
to the needs of a multi-religious empire. As Ilter Turan has noted, 'Turk'
designates an ethno-linguistic characteristic of the political community.
Further, he notes that the concept of 'Muslim' is not related to whether
the person is a believer or not, but to an Islamic ancestry, hence a cultural
tradition. Even with the creation of the secular republic, perhaps even
strengthened by it, the religious appartenance was a necessary condition
for membership of the political community. This factor is one which
should be recalled when analysing the Islamisation of Turkish society.
Indeed, although it might seem paradoxical in view of recent events, this
tendency was strengthened and given official sanction by the military
coup in 1980. As the military were determined to crush left-wing
extremism and weaken right-wing nationalism, it encouraged the
moderate increase of Islamic observance. This has been called a
'Turkish-Islamic synthesis'.
Sufism
Sunni Islam is the majority form of Islam in Turkey, thought to be the belief
of 70 to 80 per cent of the population. The bulk of the remaining 20-30 per
cent is made up of by the Alevis. Smaller religious minorities are, in
particular, Greek Orthodox (2,500), Armenians (40,000), Assyrian
Christians (10,000) and Jews (19,000-26,000). Within the majority
religion, Hanafi Sunni Islam, the importance of Sufi orders is not to be
underestimated, notably not in politics. The main Sufi order is the
Naqshbandi, in Turkish Nakshibendi. The Naqshbandi order posed from
the early years of the republic a direct threat to the state. In fact, Sufi orders
were banned largely due to the identification of the Shaykh Said rebellion of
1925 with the Naqshbandiyya.
The Naqshbandi order differs from many other Sufi orders in its relative
lack of mysticism. Rather, it is characterised by sobriety and discipline. It is
known for an 'inward-looking attitude' which differs significantly from
smaller groups like the Aczmenci, whose zikr (Ar. dhikr) forms of prayer are
characterised by a significant level of mysticism. Simultaneously, as far as
activism is concerned, the Naqshbandis are more active than other Sufis.
This is the case precisely because other Sufi brotherhoods are largely
interested in achieving closeness to, or even unity with, God by mystical
means on an individual level. The Naqshibandis, on the other hand, follow
the teachings of the Prophet more strictly and are more susceptible to
politicisation. As the sociologist Serif Mardin argues, 'the Naqshibandiya
order has always been alert for opportunities to use power for what is
considered the higher interests of Muslims'. It has also always had elaborate
instruments for political mobilisation. The Naqshbandi order, moreover, is
not a homogeneous unit. It is split into several wings, and this
fragmentation is not totally counteracted even by its leaders. Rather,
initiative by local leaders is encouraged and is one of the strengths of the
order. The main sections of the order, believed to be followed by 2.5 million
people, are the reportedly statist and nationalist Mensil (the aim), which is
active in western Turkey; Carsamba (Wednesday), active mainly in Istanbul
and in organising religious education; and Iskender Pasha, reportedly
critical of Erbakan, in central and western Turkey, which aims to infiltrate
the administration in order to Islamise it.
During the twentieth century the Naqshbandi order in Turkey has been
represented by two main figures. One was Mehmet Zahid Kotku, a follower
of the powerful nineteenth century Shaykh Ziyaeddin Giimushanevi.
Kotku's circle in the 1960s included a number of key figures in Turkish
society of later decades, including the Islamist leader Necmettin Erbakan
and president Turgut 0zal's brother Korkut 0za1, as well as Hasan Aksay
and Fehmi Adak. Kotku died in 1980 and was succeeded by Esat Cosan, a
high-ranking professor of theology. The second main figure was Bediuzza-
man Said Nursi (1874-1960), who established relations with the Young
Turks during the early part of the century. Nursi was, thus, very politicised
to begin with, a circumstance which changed later, as he abandoned
politics, believing that in any case religious mobilisation would have direct
political consequences. Nursi was a travelling preacher, who realised that
traditional theology was not relevant enough. He developed an interest in
science and capitalised on education as the key to his movement. Said Nursi
interpreted the Quran in the light of modernity in his Risale-i-Nur (the
Epistle of Light). Through this work, which is also disseminated through
audio tapes, his teachings are spread. Associating with modernity, however,
did not mean accepting the secular republic. In fact, Rainer Herrmann
Turkey
illustrates the Turkish contradiction between Ataturk, the seculariser and
Westerniser of the country, and Nursi, the representative of 'the believing
countryside'. Nursi was, then, the founder of the Nurcu, and a constant
source of unease for the secular state, which led the government to send him
into years of internal exile. The Nurcu has today developed into a
brotherhood of its own, separate from the Naqshbandiyya. One main
difference lies in the perception of modernity and science. In fact, the Nurcu
has become known as an order advocating the union of Islam with
modernity. This does not prevent it from being anti-capitalist, promoting
Islamic social justice in its place.
The so-called Fethullahis, founded and led by Fethullah Gulen, is the
clearest focus within the Nurcu movement. Fethullah Gulen, as Rainer
Herrmann states, one of the most powerful figures in the Turkish society, is
a person whose photograph did not appear in the media until 1994. He is
widely known as Hojaefendi in Turkey. Gulen's understanding of Islam,
inherited from Said Nursi but altered, preaches allegiance to the state and
support for democracy, modernisation and even closer relations with
Europe. Allegiance to the state, however, does not necessarily mean
allegiance to all principles of Kemalism. Further, Giilen's Islam is different
from that of the Naqshbandiyya by being nationalistic, explicitly
advocating a Turkish Islam. It should also be noted that Gulen implicitly
claims descent from the Prophet himself, although he prefers not to address
the issue openly. Gulen publicly proposes a more liberal version of Islam,
emphasising rather the need for societal consensus. Hence he displays no
enmity towards Alevis, and regards the issue of women's wearing of
headscarves as 'peripheral'. For Gulen, Islam is not static, but rather a
religion in evolution.
In 1971 Giilen was apprehended and put on trial for his activities. In his
biography, he expresses surprise that he, who had always preached
obedience to the state, was tried along with subversive extremists.
Politically, Gulen has traditionally supported the largest party on the
centre-right, except for a short period in the 1970s when he lent support to
the National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi) of Erbakan. During the
military coup of 1980 and its aftermath, Gulen continued his preacher
travels throughout the country, although he was officially wanted by the
authorities. From 1983 onwards, he had increasingly close relations with
Turgut Ozal and his Motherland Party (MP). During 0zal's time as prime
minister, Gulen opened innumerable schools and study centres all over
Turkey, also investing in the media, to a degree that he today commands,
among other things, one of the largest-selling newspapers in the country,
Zaman, and a private television channel, Samanyolu TV. With the death of
0za1, Giilen moved closer to the True Path PartyIDogru Yo1 Partisi (DYP)
of Tansu Ciller. Ciller, concerned over the increasing popularity of
Erbakan's Welfare Party, wanted to ensure Giilen's support for her party.
1995 was the year Gulen chose to go public. He hit the headlines of most
major newspapers, gave interviews, appeared on state television and met
with all major political leaders, including those on the left. The military,
nevertheless, remained wary of Gulen. In the 1980s the army was purged of
'Fethullahis' and the military warned of the strength of his followers,
estimated then at 4 million. In 1995 he was again investigated by the state
security court. The military suspects Giilen of planning to establish an
Islamic state, based on sharia (Islamic law), but for the time being applying
taqiyya (concealment), the primarily Shiite practice of dissimulation in a
hostile environment, an accusation that has also been directed against
Erbakan whenever he has pledged allegiance to the republic.
What, then, are Gulen's aims? What kind of a society does he want for
Turkey? If one is to trust his own words, and those of most secular
observers, Fethullah Gulen wants a modern, pluralist society open to the
West but which does not suppress or ignore 'Anatolian' traditions, where a
modern, Turkish Islam is dominant. Naturally, once in a dominant position,
Gulen might change his rhetoric, but on the ideological level, the Nurcu
form of Islam is distinctively more apt for a conciliation with the secular
state than is the Naqshbandi. However, in practice, Naqshbandiyya
elements have infiltrated the state to such a degree that a glorified president
and at least one prime minister have been known to be very close to the
order. Nevertheless the Islamisation of the state has been kept in
controllable proportions.
Other brotherhoods and movements

Besides the two major currents, less important Sufi orders exist, most of
them with uneasy to conflictive relations with the state. A strictly radical
and militant order active mainly in the 1950s was the Tijaniyya (Ticani),
which earned fame by destroying Ataturk's statues all over Central
Anatolia. This order found its supporters among the urban lower class as
well as the rural population which saw Kemalist reforms as atheistic and
corrupt. However, the order's leader, the lawyer Kemal Pivaloglu, was
subsequently apprehended and incarcerated, after which the Tijanis seem to
have totally disappeared from public life.
Another, more important group is the Siileymanli movement. Founded
by Suleyman Hilmi Tunahan (1888-1959), a son of a Naqshbandi shaykh
who immigrated from Silistria in Rumania in the 1930s. The Suleymanli
movement is profoundly radical and comes close to the original meaning of
the term 'fundamentalist'. It accepts no other writings or norms than the
Quran and the Sunna, and hence seeks to reinstate sharia. The Suleymanli
movement is seen in Turkey as extremely anti-intellectual and opposed to
science, as it is in outright opposition to public schools, including the
religious education given by the Directorate for Religious Affairs, and seeks
Turkey
to forbid civil weddings, to replace the Latin alphabet with the Arabic, and
to consider Turkey a country of jihad ('holy war'). Moreover, the order is
profoundly suspicious of other Islamic organisations (particularly the
Nurcu), seeing them as non-Muslim. This suspicion towards outsiders, the
rumour goes, leads members to change the formulation of the greeting from
selam aleykiim (peace be upon you) to sam aleykiim (curse be upon you).
The Siileymanli movement spreads through an organisational system on a
par with the Naqshbandiyya or Nurcu. The founder, Tunahan, instructed
every disciple to open a Quranic school wherever he settled in the country,
and to ensure that five further were opened. This has led to the order
growing enormously not only in Turkey but also, for instance, in Germany,
Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Since
Tunahan's death, the order has been led by his son-in-law, Kemal Kagar, a
former parliamentary deputy.
Another, less-known order is Isik~ilar(followers of the light, or the
enlightened). Like the Siileymanli, Isikgilar emanated from the Naqshban-
diyya, and polemises against secularism. Moreover, its founder Abdiilhakim
Arvasi paid special attention to strict Sunni belief and therefore polemises
against Shiism, Wahhabism and reformist tendencies within Islam.
Istanbul is the centre for another order, the Khalwatiyya Jerrahi (Halveti
Cerrahi) order which attracts many Western converts. Musafer Ozak
travelled all over Europe and in the United States and founded Khalwati
circles. Traditionally, the Khalwati order has been very influencial on the
Balkan peninsula and during the twentieth century many members have
been initiated into the order in tekkes (convents) located in Macedonia.
Most famous are the whirling dervishes of the Mevleviyya, which have their
tekke in Konya.
In the last few years, a hitherto unknown group which has surfaced
publicly is the Aczmenci. The Aczmenci are originally a part of the Nurcu,
but in comparison to the Fethullahis they are distinctively more radical.
Like many other orders, the Aczmenci drew their main support from eastern
Turkey. It has been militantly opposed to Turkey's relations with the United
States and has been accused of the murder of secularists. The order gained
fame during 1995-96 very much due to the televised apprehension of their
leader, Miisliim Giindiiz, undressed with a young woman. Giindiiz and an
associate, Ali Kalkanci, who later was found to be a fraud, were blatantly
exposed in national television. The young woman in case, Fadime Sahin,
explained in a live broadcast how youngsters like herself were attracted to
the order, and fooled into believing that having sexual intercourse with
leaders 'would bring them closer to God'. As this scandal was unveiled, the
Aczmenci mystical forms of worship, including collective head-shaking, one
form of the zikr rites which aim at causing a state of trance, were shown on
video recordings of those rites. Furthermore, connections between senior
members of the Welfare Party such as the Istanbul mayor Recep Tayip
Turkey
treat Alevism under Islam and those that do not. Among the former, one
finds views that see Alevism as
a) the true form of Islam, the other forms originating in the Umayyad
dynasty being untrue and divisive, a view taken by certain Alevi
religious leaders;
b) a form of Islam separate from Sunnism, either as a Turkish religion
based on Islam or as a 'Turkified' belief (these views emphasise the
difference towards Sunnism);
C ) a form of belief uniting Islam with Turkish identity;
d ) a part of Sunni Islam, either as 'a Turkmen form' of Sunni, or as a Sufi
order within Sunnism;
e) a heretic belief which can and must be brought back to the original
belief;
f ) an Anatolian cultural synthesis which comes close to the core of Islam;
g) a form of Islam different from Sunnism or Shiism, although with its
roots in the latter, but with increasing differences since the sixteenth
century;
h) a syncretistic belief with its origin in Islam;
i) a non-Islamic belief created by Jews to divide Islam;
j) a Kurdish philosophy rather than religion; and
k ) an Anatolian religion in its own right.
From the outline above, it seems clear that defining Alevism is a difficult
task, far beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it is safe to say that
there are strong arguments for its inclusion within Islam. The Alevis accept
the basic Islamic creed: 'There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his
Messenger'. At the same time, many elements of Alevism are alien both to
Sunni and Shia Islam. For example, Alevis have no mosques but community
houses, cemevi; do not pray five times a day but only when they feel the
urge or need; do not practise the pilgrimage to Mecca; do not fast during
Ramadan; women do not bear veils; worship and prayer are carried out by
men and women together; initiation rites contain alcohol, similar to the
Christian communion; do not apply sharia; do not seem to view the Quran
as God's word. The Alevi perception of the sharia is particularly interesting.
In principle, sharia is the law to be followed by everyone. However, through
initiation the individual Alevi can reach a higher Sufi religiosity, whereby
the dogmatic elements of sharia do not have to be obeyed to the letter.
Mystics can reach two higher levels, marifet and haqiqat (truth), which
imply union with God.
Closer studies indeed give the impression that Alevism is a syncretistic
belief proper to Anatolia with elements of both Islam and Christianity but
also of Zoroastrianism and Central Asian Shamanistic traditions. Due to
their dubious identity and suspected heresy against Islam, the Alevis have
faced and still face many difficulties in the Turkish society. The 'Alevi
problem' surfaced in the spring of 1995, for example, after violent riots in
the Istanbul district of Gaziosmanpasha. However, the same publicity had
not been given to previous suppression of, or violence against, the Alevis. A
recent example was the hotel arson in July 1993 which resulted in the death
of thirty-seven leftist intellectuals, mainly Alevis, in Sivas in Central
Anatolia. The main target of the Islamists who organised the fire was the
late Aziz Nesin, a then 78-year-old writer who has allegedly translated
excerpts of Rushdie's The Satanic Verses into Turkish. Nesin miraculously
survived the fire, but an aggravating factor was that the local mayor, a
Welfare Party member, did not act to prevent the demonstration which led
to the arson, nor was the fire brigade sent in immediately. In the late 1970s,
amid the general violence throughout Turkey, hundreds of Alevis were
killed in riots in Kahramanmarash and Corum.
However, the suppression of the Alevis is a centuries-old phenomenon.
As early as the sixteenth century, an Alevi mystic, Pir Sultan Abdal, led a
rebellion against the Ottoman state and was executed. He is still seen as a
central figure, and a statue of his was to be raised in Sivas the day after the
1993 arson. In fact, the Alevis were blamed for supporting the Shiite
Persian empire against the Ottomans, and were unwillingly incorporated
into the Ottoman Empire in 1514. During republican times, the Alevis
wholeheartedly supported Ataturk's reforms and may have been the most
loyal population group on which Ataturk could count. Since then, they
have mainly supported the Republican People's Party, which Atatiirk
founded. In the 1950s, as the Democratic Party opened the gates of Sunni
renewal, the Alevis felt threatened and rallied around the Republican
People's Party, which they perceived as a guarantor of their rights. With the
polarisation of Turkish society in the 1960s, and particularly in the 1970s,
the Alevis came to be identified with the left, and as the main basis for
extreme-leftist organisations. Alevis can be thought to have been attracted
to communist ideas partly because of their historical opposition to the state
as such, as well as their quest for an identity among Alevis that had recently
moved to the urban areas and lost contact with their community. The
military were ambivalent in the confrontation between leftist, pro-Soviet,
Alevi recruited groups and extreme-rightist Sunni groups with a heavy
religious influence. In the end, fear of the Soviet Union led to a crack-down
concentrated on destroying the leftists, while the rightist groups were
allowed to continue. This fear of communism also prompted the coup
makers to create the 'Turkish-Islamic' synthesis, including obligatory
religious education in schools, which was intended to prevent communism
from spreading in the young generation.
The religious revival sponsored by the state had no place for the Alevis,
however. The Directorate for Religious Affairs, which has been the financial
sponsor of, among other things, new mosques and imams, although not
theoretically designed only for the Sunni majority, has not profited the
Turkey
Alevis. O n the contrary, mosques have been built in Alevi villages whereas
Alevi community houses and religous leaders are not supported by the state.
Religious life, then, especially since the 1980 coup, has been monopolised
by the Sunni majority. This has led to a situation where the Alevis, who
traditionally have not been prone to mobilisation around their religious
community, are becoming increasingly frustrated, in particular as the state's
negligent and occasionally hostile attitude showed no tendency to change
until recently. Alevi frustration reached a peak when, in conjunction with
the trial of the perpetrators of the Sivas arson, the state security prosecutor
charged Aziz Nesin with having acted in a provocative manner, an
accusation which set a precedent both legally and socially, and was utterly
explosive. The situation seemed to improve in the middle of 1997, however,
with the coalition led by Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz openly stating that
one of its aims was to ameliorate the situation of the Alevis, including the
financing of study centres and university activities related to Alevism.
One can only become an Alevi by birth, a fact which distinguishes the
faith from most others. However, the Bektashi order is closely related to
Alevism and a gateway for non-Alevis who share their beliefs. The
Bektashis have been termed the intellectual superstructure of the Alevis, and
were also active during Ottoman times. In particular, the Bektashi order
was responsible for the religious education of the Christian-born children
raised to serve in the Ottoman bureacracy through the devshirme ('blood
tax') system. In the Hatay province along the border to Syria, and in the
provinces of Adana and Iqel, there is an Arabic-speaking population of
Nusayrites, calling themselves Alawites. Their number is estimated at
around 200,000. They regard themselves as separated from the Alevis of
Turkey by better knowledge of the doctrines and an emphasis on the divine
aspects of Ali. There are several orders within the Nusayri group. Most
important are the Haydariyya and Kilaziyya.
Islam in Turkish politics

Islam can be said to have disappeared from the political sphere with
Ataturk's consolidation of power. However, it staged a come-back in 1950.
After the Second World War, Turkey's firm Western connection encouraged
it to democratise society. Hence Celal Bayar, a former prime minister, broke
out of the ruling Republican People's Party and formed the Democratic
Party. As this party appealed to rural interests and traditional values, it
captured power by a landslide in the first free election in 1950. As a result,
Ismet Inonu resigned from presidency and was succeeded by Celal Bayar,
who named Adnan Menderes as prime minister. The one-party regime of
the Republican People's Party between 1946 and 1950 occurred immedi-
ately after the Second World War, which, although Turkey had not
participated, had inflicted additional hardships on the population, in the
form of rationing and taxation. The regime further attempted to fulfil

Ataturk's ideals and embarked on a process of transferring the functions of
religious communities and leaders to new, civilian institutions. The
overwhelming effect of the aftershock of the U-turn, or to use a term from
another context, the great leap forward, of Turkish society also led to a
reaction and an increasing distance between ruler and ruled.
Centre-right parties have been in power in Turkey for the better part of a
half-century of multi-party democracy. During this time, they have
managed to transform the role of religion in society. The Democratic Party
government had a mixed record. Its popularity increased due to its easing of
restrictions regarding Islam, but huge agricultural subventions and other
economic policies led to an economic debacle. As the regime's popularity
started dwindling compared to that of the Republican People's Party, the
government tried to resort to authoritarian measures, making even the fatal
mistake of asking the military to help suppress the Republican People's
Party. The response was a coup in May 1960 staged among others by
Alparslan Turkes, a coup which has been called the Colonels' coup in
contrast to the 1980 Generals' coup. The military intervention was based
mainly on defence of the secular state, against the far-reaching religious
reforms initiated by the Democratic Party, but also against the emerging
authoritarian attitude of the civilian leaders. The military felt the need to set
an example, executing Menderes and two other ministers, but not Bayar
who was spared due to old age.
The 1960 constitution, enacted to replace the 1923 one, was significantly
more liberal and democratic than its predecessor - or for that matter, than
its successor. In fact the 1960 constitution was the most democratic
blueprint for social structure Turkey has ever had. The question is whether
Turkish society was prepared for it. In retrospect, it would appear that it
was not. After 1960, politics continued to polarise between 'left' and 'right'.
Notably, the rise of the left led to a reaction from the right, and instability
in the political sphere translated into violence throughout society. In the end
this led to the 1971 military ultimatum and a slight revision of the
constitution. The 1970s only meant a worsening situation, with chronic
political instability, where the smaller parties, religious and nationalist, had
a disproportionate influence as neither of the two larger parties in
parliament, the centre-left Republican People's Party and the centre-right
Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, the continuation of the Democratic Party) ever
achieved a majority. Hence the extremist parties were necessary for
coalition building, and consequently all governments of the 1970s had a
rightist element, which was pro to the religious revival.
The first outright religious party was founded in 1967 by a group of
Islamically oriented politicians within the Justice Party, the latter already
under the leadership of Siileyman Demirel. In 1969, Necmettin Erbakan,
one of the students of Kotku, was thrown out of the chairmanship of the
Turkey
chamber of commerce, perceived as a political threat by Demirel. In spite of

this, Erbakan applied for membership of the Justice Party and wanted to
run for parliamentary elections the same year. As Demirel vetoed Erbakan's
candidature, the latter stood as an independent and was easily elected. This
was a great victory for Kotku, who had been looking to establish an Islamic
party and had capitalised on believers' disappointment in Demirel. As an
informal section of the Justice Party centred around religious figures had
formed in 1967, a good number of parliamentarians were in favour of
Kotku's plans. In January 1970, Erbakan and seventeen colleagues founded
the National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi), which claimed to be
founded on the heritage of the Ottoman Empire and of Atatiirk's war of
liberation as well as on the just order preached by Islam.
However, the military ultimatum of 1971 led to the closure of the recently
founded National Order Party. Erbakan fled to Switzerland, fearing a fate
similar to that of Menderes, but was asked to return by the military, mainly
as he was useful as an instrument in weakening Demirel's standing in the
right. Hence in October 1972 the National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet
Partisi) was founded, although Erbakan did not assume the role of leader
until the 1973 elections. These elections can be termed the breakthrough of
political Islam, as the National Salvation Party received over 11 per cent of
the votes. Still, the rise of the Islamists was not among the principal factors
in Turkish politics of the time. Rather, it remained a peripheral factor as the
country was hit by an economic and social crisis in the aftermath of the
invasion of Cyprus in 1974, which was executed by a coalition government
led by Biilent Ecevit. Ecevit, chairman of the Republican People's Party, had
staged an electoral success by re-orienting the left to a more standard social
democratic rhetoric, gaining 33 per cent of the votes. However, Ecevit
lacked a majority in parliament and could not form a government until the
beginning of 1974 - with Necmettin Erbakan as his coalition partner. This
coalition was one of necessity, and as the political scientist Elisabeth
Ozdalga quotes an Islamic writer of the time, it resembled a dish made out
of honey and garlic, original but not particularly tasteful.
The economic and social crisis of the country only deepened with the loss
of foreign aid and the increasing political and social instability. Erbakan
managed to enter a new coalition in 1977 with Demirel and the
nationalists, but his influence remained limited. The real struggle in Turkey
was that between the extreme left and the extreme right. This controversy
spilled over into street violence throughout the country which in its heyday
claimed over twenty lives a day. The political instability with short-lived
governments meant that the state power necessary to keep order was
absent. This led to the military intervention of 1980, which was greeted
with relief by the population. As mentioned above, the military adminis-
tration saw the extreme left as the most dangerous threat to the republic,
and to counteract the rise of leftist forces hoped that a moderate revival of
religion would counterbalance this tendency. Hence religious education was

made obligatory in schools and the 'Turkish-Islamic synthesis' was born.
The man to carry it into practice turned out to be Turgut Ozal. He was
an engineer and economist of Kurdish origin who had been a candidate for
the National Salvation Party in the 1970s. Ozal managed to win the trust of
the military authorities and was allowed to found an independent party, the
Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) in time for the first free elections of
1983. In contrast, the Welfare Party, the continuation of the National
Salvation Party, was not allowed to appear, and many of its supporters took
a Motherland Party ticket instead. 0 z a l engineered the Turkish economic
boom of the 1980s, and was known as a taboo-breaker in all fields except
one: religion. Coming from a family close to the Naqshbandiyya, Ozal paid
considerable attention to religious issues and, not unlike Menderes in his
time, sponsored the Islamic revival of the 1980s. Unlike Menderes,
however, Ozal worked wonders with the economy, which might be one
reason for the military toleration of his overtly pro-Islamic activities.
The representation of Islamic interests within the Motherland Party led
to difficulties for the Islamists in organiseing themselves into a separate
party. Hence the Welfare Party received less than 5 per cent in the municipal
elections of 1984. Another reason, naturally, was that Erbakan was banned
from politics like all major political leaders, including Demirel and Ecevit.
This ban was only lifted by a referendum in 1987, and immediately the
Welfare Party won over 7 per cent of the votes in that year's parliamentary
election - but did not gain representation in parliament, as a 1 0 per cent
threshold had been adopted in order to prevent small parties from playing
the role they had played in the late 1970s. By now, the strategy of the party
had changed. Both the National Order Party and the National Salvation
Party had used a clearly religious discourse, which was still defended by
traditionalists within the Welfare Party. However, this discourse was not
particularly attractive to new voters, and was too abstractly ideological to
bring the party beyond an electoral support of 10-12 per cent.
In the 1980s, however, the Islamist leaders started to deal increasingly
with worldly issues, such as administration and economics. At the same
time, the party created a country-wide organisation which was neither
challenged nor parallelled by any other party. Moreover, the party adopted
a political agenda based on the concept of just order, adil diizen. O n closer
scrutiny, the concept of an Islamic social justice shows clear socialist
undertones, notably in its criticism of the society created by the secular
parties. The aim of this new image was clear: to create a popular
movement, not an klite party with an ideological base. This process has
proven fruitful, but has also blurred the identity of the party, and come
under criticism from the traditionalists. Hence the party has won
tremendous support from the urban poor, a support which it has earned
by truly humanitarian actions, which in turn have been made possible by its
'Unwarranted influence'. According to this drawing in an Islamist journal,
the United States has used satellites in order to spread its anti-Islamic
propaganda in Turkey.
continuous flood of money from abroad, in particular Saudi Arabia.

However, the party has also lost some of its most traditional, sharia-
orientated electorate. Nevertheless, in political terms the gain is many times
larger than the loss and represents a slide which is difficult to depict in
right-left-terms. In fact it brought the Welfare Party ideology closer to the
left, but not to the centre-right.
The 1990s brought the boom of the Welfare Party. In the 1991 election,
it engaged in an electoral alliance with the extreme-nationalist National
Labour Party under the legendary Alparslan Tiirkeg, in order to overcome
the 10 per cent threshold. Eventually the alliance obtained 1 7 per cent of
the vote and sixty-one seats in parliament. The breakthrough was the 1994
municipal elections, in which the Welfare Party unexpectedly came to

power in the municipal administrations of, among other cities, Ankara,
Istanbul, Konya and Adana. This success showed with great clarity how the
Welfare Party's popularity was based on the urban poor. Interestingly, the
urban poor, especially recent migrants from the countryside, had
historically been ardent supporters of the left and had been the cornerstone
of Ecevit's success in the 1970s. The transformation and division of the
centre-left can thus be seen as a primary reason for the Welfare Party's
popularity. Indeed, the left has increasingly assumed the urban avant-garde
identity, Kemalist and modern, but not in conjunction with the interests of
the urban poor, who would be the most logical supporters of social
democracy. Furthermore the competition between three centre-left parties
in the early 1990s, now 'only' two, has increased the disillusionment of the
electorate with the left. However, the result of this development is, in a
sense, that the Welfare Party, as Ersin Kalaycioglu and Ilter Turan have
remarked, can be termed a party of the 'new left'.
The 1995 elections can be viewed in this light: a further loss of strength
for the left and a leap forward for the Welfare Party. The two centre-left
parties captured approximately 25 per cent, the Welfare Party over 21 per
cent, and the two centre-right parties 40 per cent. In comparison with the
late 1970s, it becomes clear that the Islamic growth has not occurred at the
expense of the centre-right, as might be thought - the latter, as throughout
republican history, commands about 40 per cent of the electorate - but the
centre-left, whose support has hovered around 35 per cent, is now down to
ten percentiles. This amounts exactly to the increase in support of the
Islamic current: about ten percentile units.
The left in Turkey can be thought to have drawn its support from three
main groups: first, the intellectual left, whose number must be relatively
small though increasing as the middle class grows; second, the Alevi
population which remains loyal mainly to Ecevit, including rural as well as
urban, wealthy as well as worse-off elements; third, the (mainly) urban poor
of Sunni denomination. This last group of former sympathisers of the left
have clearly been the nucleus of the electoral success of the Welfare Party.
This fact is corroborated by an opinion poll among Welfare Party voters:
Political Self-Identification of Welfare Party Voters, 1997
Political self-identification Percentage

Muslim
Muslim Democrat
Democrat
Nationalist
Liberal Democrat
Source: Cumhuriyet, 24 October 1997.
145
Turkey
The table above suggests that half of the Welfare Party sympathisers clearly
defined their political identity as Muslim. This corroborates the accepted
view that the core Islamist support group hovered around 10 per cent of the
population. However, it is the other half, those who describe themselves as
Muslim Democrats (a term which deliberately parallels West European
Christian democracy), that brought the Welfare Party to its position as the
largest party in parliament and to power in the summer of 1996.
Once in power, the Welfare Party dropped most of its professed
ambitions to revolutionise the state. Erbakan did sign several military
agreements with Israel, probably in order not to alienate the military at an
early stage, although before the elections Welfare Party officials had harshly
criticised cooperation with Israel. However, once in power, the Islamisation
of the state started. This had already occurred in the municipal
administrations under Welfare Party control after the 1994 elections and
had led to widespread protests from the secular establishment. As the level
of Welfare Party domination in the coalition government, which was
formed with the True Path Party (Dogru Yol Partisi, the heir to Demirel's
Justice Party) led by Tansu Ciller, increased, the military took up its role as
watch-dog of the secular republic. In February 1997, after a pro-sharia
demonstration in the Ankara suburb of Sincan, growing resistance to the
Islamist-led government led to a mass movement orchestrated from military
headquarters and supported by the secular establishment to oust the
Welfare Party from power. In a remarkably well-planned flow of events
during the spring of 1997, the government was finally forced to resign in
August. Furthermore, the Welfare Party was banned by the constitutional
court in January 1998 for agitation against the secular republic. Apparently,
Kemalist forces have now secured their hegemony in Turkish politics.
However, the question is what will become of the genuinely popular
movement that was the Welfare Party? The Welfare Party has indeed been
abolished, but this does not mean that political Islam has been defeated in
Turkey. The Islamic renaissance remains a fact, and some voices fear that
the Islamist quest for power will be transferred from the parliament to the
streets, and that Turkey would see a new era of near civil war as in the late
1970s. Others maintain that the Welfare Party will be resuscitated under a
new name with a more centrist perspective, and will become a true Muslim
democratic party like the Christian democratic parties of Western Europe.
As this would lead to the alienation of extremist elements in the party, it
would mean that the problem of religious extremism would persist or
perhaps even increase. However, if this were to be the case, the extremist
elements would be more of an irritation in society than a direct threat to the
republic as the National Salvation Party and Welfare Party were perceived
to be.
From another perspective, the Naqshbandi variant of political Islam can
be said to have failed to consolidate its position in Turkish politics. During
Cornell and Suanberg
Ozal's era it acquired a significant position behind the scenes; and during
Erbakan's time it achieved this position in the open, but through its
impatience it failed to sustain its position and experienced a substantial set-
back. Meanwhile the Nurcu movement is growing in strength and can be
expected to profit from the failure of the Welfare Party, as Gulen's model
constantly has been to seek accommodation with the secular state, not to
act against it either openly or subversively. If the military is interested in
perpetuating the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, it would seem logical for it to
use Giilen as a partner. Perhaps this can be the solution to the severe
troubles regarding Islam's place in Turkish society and politics. Yet some
observers doubt Fethullahis' real aims. Is the rhetoric of accommodation
with secularism only a case of taqiyya? Is it, in other words, a tactic of
dissimulation which will be reversed once the movement's power has
increased? The answer to this question falls beyond the scope of this
chapter, but the problem remains that Turkey has to find a way of
reconciling the secular identity of the state with the Islamic traditions
espoused by substantial sectors of its population. A perhaps simplistic
approach, which nevertheless makes a great deal of sense in the conceptual
sphere, was proposed by the political scientist Bassam Tibi: 'In Turkey there
is a contradiction between Secularism and Islamism. If you manage to
remove the "isms" from the two terms, you may have come a long way in
solving the contradiction'.
Literature
For a general introduction to the political, cultural and social development of
Turkey, see Turkei, ed. Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck,
1985). The ethnic diversity is discussed in Ethnic Groups in the Republic of
Turkey, ed. Peter A. Andrews (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1989); Ingvar
Svanberg, Kazak Refugees in Turkey: A Study of Social and Cultural
Persistence, Studia Multiethnica Upsaliensia, 8 (Uppsala: Almqvist and
Wiksell International, 1989);and Denying Human Rights &Ethnic Identity:
The Case of Turkey (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992). The role of
Islam in contemporary Turkey is dealt with in Islam und Politik in der Turkei,
eds. Jochen Blaschke and Martin van Bruinessen (Berlin: Express, 1985);
Binnaz Toprak, Islam and Political Development in Turkey (Leiden: Brill,
1981); Islam in Modern Turkey, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I.B. Tauris,
1991);Sencer Ayata, 'Patronage, Politics, and the State: The Politicization of
Islam in Turkey', The Middle East Journal, 50:1 (Winter 1996), pp. 26-37;
Eli Karmon, 'Radical Islamic Political Groups in Turkey', Middle East
Review of International Affairs, 4 (January 1998); Rainer Herrmann. 'Die
Drei Versionen des Politischen Islam in der Turkei', Orient, 37:1 (1996)
pp. 35-86; and Rainer Herrmann, 'Fethullah Giilen - Eine muslimische
Alternative zur Refah-Partei?', Orient, 37:4 (19961, pp. 619-30.
Turkey
In recent decades the interest in the Alevis has increased considerably.

Some anthropologists have studied Alevi segments of the Anatolian society,
while others have focused on their ideology and impact on contemporary
society. See Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Vom Revolutionaren Klassenkampf
zum "Wahren" Islam: Transformationsprozesse im Alevitentum der Tiirkei
nach 1980 (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1992); Alevism in Turkey and
Comparable Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East in the
Past and Present, ed. Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi (Leiden: Brill, 1997); and
Ilhan Ataseven, The Alevi Bektagi Legacy: Problems of Acquisition and
Explanation, Lund Studies in History of Religions, 7 (Lund: Almqvist and
Wiksell International, 1997).
Sufi Orders are presented in Serif Mardin, 'The Nak~ibendiOrder in
Turkish History', in Islam in Modern Turkey, ed. Richard Tapper (London:
I.B. Tauris, 1991) and The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in
Ottoman Turkey, ed. Raymond Litches (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992). The Nurculuk movement is described by Ursula Spuler, 'Zur
Organisationsstruktur der Nurculuk-Bewegung', pp. 423-42 in Studien zur
Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen Orients: Festschrift fur Bertold Spuler
zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, eds. Hans Roemer and Albrecht Not (Leiden:
Brill, 1981); Paul Dumont, 'Disciples of the Light: The Nurju Movement in
Turkey', Central Asian Survey, 5 (1986), pp. 33-60; and Serif Mardin,
Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediiizzaman
Said Nursi (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989). N o
systematic study of the Siileymanli movement exists. Most information is
still fragmentary and anecdotal. A brief but useful account is found in Altan
Gokalp, 'Les fruits de l'arbre plut6t que ces racines: Le Suleymanisme',
pp. 423-35 in Naqshbandis: Cheminements et situation actuelle d'un ordre
mystique musulman, eds. Marc Gaborieau, Aleksandre Popovii- and
Thierry Zarcone, Varia Turcica, XVIII (Istanbul and Paris: Institut Fran~ais
d'Etudes Anatoliennes d'Istanbu1, 1990).
Chapter Seven
Turkic Central Asia

Roberta Micallef and lngvar Suanberg
Until 1991 the region which comprises the five now independent republics
Kazakstan, Kirghizstan (Kyrgyzstan), Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan was known as Soviet Central Asia. Since independence the
Central Asians have had to find new ways of thinking of their relationship
to their own nationals and to one another as well as to the world at large.
Consequently Central Asian interest in the region's history and culture is
flourishing. The focus of this chapter is Islam in the Turkic republics of
Kazakstan, Kirghizstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Kazakstan, which according to the traditional Soviet classification
system did not belong to Central Asia, was formally declared to be part of
that geographic region in the 1993 Central Asia Summit. The Kazak
president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, actively fought for the maintenance of
some form of the Soviet Union, but after Russia, Ukraine and Belarus
established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on December 8,
1991 Kazakstan had no choice but to declare its independence, which it did
on December 16, 1991. Shortly thereafter, on December 21, 1991,
Kazakstan joined the United Nations. President Nazarbayev still (1998)
remains in power. Independent Kazakstan is the largest Central Asian
Republic with an area of roughly 3 million square kilometres. Largely made
up of steppe-lands with mountains to the east and to the south, Kazakstan
also has pasture lands to the north which, in the twentieth century, have
been cultivated mostly by Russian and Ukrainian farmers. Kazakstan is an
important producer of cereals and has a major mining industry. As it
straddles China and Russia, it is of considerable geopolitical significance.
To the south, Kazakstan borders Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kirghizstan
and to the east the Caspian Sea. The Kazak capital was until the autumn of
1997 Almaty (Alma Ata) when it was replaced by Aqmola in the northern
part of the country. The republic has severe environmental problems and
the health situation is alarming in many areas. The Kazakstani population
of 1 7 million is far from homogeneous. According to the 1989 census it was
made up of 39.7 per cent Kazaks and 37.8 per cent Russians. This vast
number of Russians as well as proximity to Russia have made the
repatriation of Kazakstan into a larger Russia a recurring theme for the
Turkic Central Asia
ultra-nationalist factions in Russian political circles. Also Germans,

Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Belarussians and other peoples live within the
borders of Kazakstan, although as many ethnic Germans are immigrating
to Germany, their number is on the decrease. Due to the Sino-Soviet
conflict at the beginning of the 1960s, Kazakstan took in a large number of
Uighur and Kazak refugees from China, thereby increasing the Muslim
population. Finally there are also some smaller ethnic groups, such as
Caucasians, Crimean Tatars, Koreans and Kurds, who are the descendants
of those exiled to Kazakstan during Stalin's reign in the 1930s and 1940s.
Kirghizstan, a mountainous republic dominated by the mountain chain
Tian Shan, borders China to the east, Tajikistan to the south, Uzbekistan to
the west and Kazakstan to the north. Kirghizstan was a Soviet Socialist
Republic from 1936 until 1991. The smallest of the five Central Asian
republics with 198,500 square kilometres, Kirghizstan has a population of
4.3 million. Ethnic Kirghiz comprise 48 per cent of the population,
Russians 26 per cent, Uzbeks 1 2 per cent and Tatars 2 per cent. Koreans,
Germans, Dungans, Uighurs and a few other minorities also reside in the
republic. The capital of Kirghizstan is Bishkek, which has a population of
570,000. The Kirghiz speak a Turkic language related to Kazak and Uzbek.
However, the Kirghiz klite, like many of the Central Asian klites, is heavily
concentrated in the cities and Russified.
Uzbekistan is a composite of different parts of the former governate of
Turkestan, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva. The country
became a Soviet Socialist Republic in October, 1924 and remained so until
August 31, 1991 when it declared its independence. Uzbekistan borders all
of the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union as well as
Afghanistan. To the west and north it borders Kazakstan, to the east
Kirghizstan and Tajikistan, to the south Afghanistan and to the southwest
Turkmenistan. Its capital is Tashkent and other major cities are Samarqand,
Bukhara, Andijon and Namangan. The country boasts the largest army and
internal security force in Central Asia.
Uzbekistan is rich in natural resources, but it is for the most part 'white
gold', cotton, which is the basis of Uzbekistan's fortune and misery. Cotton
production has caused much environmental damage. Several ecological
catastrophes have occurred lately, including the shrinking of the Aral Sea by
one third which has resulted in severe changes in the climate and serious
health problems. Most tragic are the developments in Karakalpakstan
which lies in the delta of the Amu Darya and has been an autonomous
republic within the boundaries of Uzbekistan since 1936. The environ-
mental damage to the Aral Sea has had a devastating impact on the local
fishing and agricultural industries. The dimensions of the environmental
catastrophe are made obvious by the rates of child mortality and longevity
which are as high and low respectively as the worst cases among Third
World countries.
Micallef and Svanberg
Uzbek girls in Samarkand (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1990).
Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, made his career within the
old Communist Party. Since independence it calls itself a socialist party.
Opposition parties such as Birlik (Unity), Erk (Independence) and the
Islamic Renaissance Party, which came into being before independence,
have been banned or effectively silenced. In a referendum held on March
26, 1995 the Uzbeks approved a three-year extension of Karimov's
presidency to the year 2000 in order to synchronise future parliament
and presidential elections. According to Uzbek sources 99.6 per cent of the
voters participated in the referendum which was arranged in the old Soviet
style. Since Karimov was the only candidate, the voters' sole alternative was
to protest against him by crossing out his name. The majority of
Uzbekistan's nearly 20 million inhabitants are Uzbeks, but there are also
1.6 million Russians, 1 million Tajiks, 800,000 Kazaks and 500,000 Tatars
Turkic Central Asia
as well as other peoples who are descendants of peoples exiled by Stalin in

the 1930s and 1940s. The relations between the Turkic Uzbeks and Persian
Tajiks are complicated, especially in the two important southern cities of
Samarqand and Bukhara where the population has traditionally been
bilingual and often identified itself as Tajik. Uzbekistan has an old and
relatively large Jewish population. Currently, however, many Jews are
emigrating to Israel and the United States.
With an area of 488,000 square kilometres, Turkmenistan borders Iran to
the south, Afghanistan to the southwest, Uzbekistan to the north and west,
Kazakstan to the north and the Caspian Sea to the east. Its population of
approximately 4 million includes over 400,000 Uzbeks, about 400,000
Russians, 250,000 Kazaks and finally about 50,000 Azeris and Armenians
respectively. Across the borders in Iran and Afghanistan lives a population of
some 2 million Turkmens. Three-quarters of the Turkmen lands are deserts. In
agricultural zones, however, Turkmenistan produces rice and cotton. Like
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan relies on the Aral Sea for irrigation and has
contributed to the ecological damage wreaked on the Aral Sea. Once one of
the poorest republics of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan is now on its way to
becoming prosperous thanks to the discovery of natural gas and petroleum
reserves. Since independence it has had the fastest developing economy
among the Central Asian republics. Turkmenistan celebrates its independence
on October 21. Its capital is Ashgabad and President Saparmurat Niyazov
Turkmenbashi, who originated from the ranks of the Communist Party. O n
December 16, 1991 the former Communist Party was renamed the
Democratic Party of Turkmenistan and on May 18, 1992 a new constitution
with increased presidential powers was passed. This constitution seems
somewhat contradictory in its description of citizens' rights. For example,
opposition parties cannot be registered because they might damage 'the health
and morals of the people'. O n June 21, 1992 Niyazov - the sole candidate -
was re-elected for a period of 1 0 years with 99.5 per cent of the votes.
Central Asia's first encounter with Islam occurred as early as the seventh
century when the Umayyad Arabs conquered this region. Islam rapidly
superseded other religions, and Islamic customary law took firm root.
Although many traditions of pre-Islamic Turkic culture were preserved,
most of the Central Asian Turkic peoples became Muslims during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. Over the centuries Central Asia was
conquered by many different rulers such as the Mongols under the
leadership of Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century and Tamarlane in the
fourteenth century who more or less managed to control the entire region.
Sufism and Jadidism

An alternative approach to social organisation and a locus of resistance to
foreign hegemony, Sufism has played an important role in Central Asian
Micallef a?zd Svanberg
history. It was via Sufi missionaries in the fifteenth century that Islam was
first introduced among the Kazaks and Kirghiz. Moreover, Sufism played an
important role in the resistance to the Russians during both the Tsarist and
the Soviet eras. The most influencial Sufi brotherhoods in Central Asia are
the Yasavi and the Naqshbandi, which also have branches throughout the
Muslim world. The Yasavi order was founded in the mid-twelfth century by
Ahmad Yasavi, who is regarded as the first Turkic mystic. He is credited
with popularising, spreading and implanting Islam in Central Asia. The
founder of the Naqshbandiyya is Baha al-Din Muharnmed al-Buhari (1318-
89) from present-day Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The followers of this
brotherhood praised God with mental or spoken recitations of litanies,
worked on their relationship with God as individuals and their ability to
concentrate on God whether they were in a crowd or alone. Sufism left
several doors open for modernisation in the nineteenth century. Thus, many
of the members of the Jadid or modernisation movement were Sufis.
By 1890 Russia had completed its conquest of Central Asia. At that time
the Russian empire stretched from Poland in the west to the Pacific Ocean
in the east, reaching the Black Sea and the borders of Turkey and
Afghanistan in the south. Since it was just emerging from feudalism, Russia
was seen not only as a great power but also as a backward country. Russia
was only just beginning to become industrialised. As part of the Russian
empire, at the turn of the century Central Asians saw the changes taking
place both in Russia and in Europe, encountering European economic,
political and cultural ideas. Perhaps more importantly they also came into
contact with other Muslim subjects of the empire, such as the Crimeans and
Caucasians. Questions such as whether they should accept Russian ways or
not became important, as did the issue of whether or not they should follow
the reform movements that had started in the Ottoman empire and the
Jadid or reform movement that was begun in the Caucasus in the 1880s by
Ismail Bey Gasparali, known as Gasprinskii in Russian and most Western
sources.
Gasparali (1851-1914), a Crimean Tatar who had been educated in
Europe and had worked in Istanbul and Paris, began to publish a
newspaper, Terjuman, in 1883. For him Islam was a cultural and political
entity, a defence against the West. At the same time, he advocated the
adoption of Western institutions such as secular education, women's
emancipation, and commercial and industrial enterprises. The movement,
which initially was an effort to improve the education standards of the
Muslim subjects of the Russian empire, spread rapidly. Gasparali opened
the first usul-u Jadid (new method) school in 1884. His aim was to increase
the standard of education of teachers and to create a literary language that
could be understood by every Turk, from those living 'along the shores of
the Bosphorus to those living in Kashgar'. Gasparali argued also that
Muslims must borrow from the West to revitalise their intellectual and
Turkic Central Asia
social lives. While Islam could remain a philosophical and theological

system, Muslim peoples had to become part of the modern technologically
oriented civilisation. He visited Central Asia to spread his ideas, and by the
1890s usul-u Jadid schools were being opened in Central Asia and
Uzbekistan. Many of the Central Asians who had been active in promoting
reform in the education system joined his movement becoming the Central
Asian Jadids. Jadidism became a political movement, even though the
Jadids did not all share the same political views. Besides, the Jadids faced
opposition from the qadims (supporters of the old methods) who were often
supported by the ulama, the religious scholars.
Initially the Jadids and the Russian revolutionaries found that they could
help one another. The Bolsheviks felt that they had found their allies in this
small group of local intelligentsia who were receptive to the idea of modern
technology to improve the lot of their people. The Jadids' opposition to the
low status of women, and their efforts to modernise the education system at
first seemed to afford ground for collaboration with the Soviet regime.
However, when the Jadids realised that the communist aim was to destroy
Islamic beliefs, and the Bolsheviks discovered that the Jadids were
interested in nationalism rather than class war, discord became inevitable.
Islam in the Soviet era

In the early days of the Soviet era many of the Central Asian intelligentsia
cooperated with the Soviet Communist Party, aiming at ethnic equality and
independence. Sultan Galiev was one of the most important Muslim leaders
who chose to cooperate with the communist leaders on these grounds. He
presented a secular Muslim socialism which suggested that a national
revolution must precede class war. The Russian Communist Party resisted
any attempt at organising a Muslim national identity while at the same time
attempting to cooperate with the Muslims in order to gain their support.
Sultan Galiev became a trouble spot for the Communist Party which was
striving for a homogenous Soviet Communist Party and preferred that any
revolution begin in Europe rather than Asia. Thus Galiev was thrown out of
the party in 1923 and sent to a labour camp in 1928, after which he
'disappeared'. For Central Asians, socialism was a tool rather than the end
goal. It provided the 6lite with a technique for underground activism, mass
action, a way of gaining foreign support and a possibility of equality even if
independence could not be achieved. They realised how mistaken they had
been in their assumptions shortly after integration in the Soviet Union
In 1924, when the Soviet government carved out the five republics that
form contemporary Central Asia, the regime also instituted a campaign of
secular education in local indigenous languages. In 1927 Central Asian
communist organisations, under the supervision of two party members
from Moscow, launched the khujum (attack) movement which aimed at
counteracting traditions linked to Islam and in particular to 'liberate'

Muslim women.
In the 1920s feminist activists in Russia were attacking traditional
customs relating to marriage and the status of women. Couples could marry
or divorce by sending in registration cards. Children born out of wedlock
were granted the same rights as offspring of married parents, and abortion
was legalised. O n paper these laws became effective throughout the
country, making traditions sanctioned by Islam such as polygyny and child
marriage 'crimes based on custom'. Mosques were closed or converted to
sports arenas or depots and wagfs (religious foundations) were liquidated.
Although fluctuations did take place in tolerance toward Islam in general,
religion was only permitted under the strict supervision of the authorities.
Between 1937 and 1939 most of the leading Central Asian Jadids and
intellectuals lost their lives in the Stalinist purges. Islam in general and the
Sufi brotherhoods in particular were not spared Stalinist attacks. They were
assaulted in the name of the new ideology, atheism. Consequently the Sufi
brotherhoods developed a new field of interest, 'saving Islam from Marxist
pollution'. The Soviets attacked Sufi shrines which were places of
pilgrimage. The regime discouraged pilgrimages and established anti-
religious museums on holy sites. It took several years, however, before the
Sufi opposition could be stymied. However, by 1936 even the two
strongholds in the Caucasus and the Ferghana Valley of Turkestan had
been crushed, although in many cases the population kept Sufi traditions
alive as a type of parallel Islam co-existing with the official Islam which was
open to manipulation by the regime. During the Stalinist era the Qadiri
brotherhood emerged in Central Asia. This brotherhood came with the
Chechen and Ingush who were deported by Stalin to the area during World
War 11. Women have sometimes reached leadership positions in Sufi groups,
and this is especially true in some branches of the Qadiriyya. This old
brotherhood gained a foothold in Kazakstan and has continued to grow
since 1945.
With the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, the Soviet Union entered a
new historical period. This party congress, the first one after the death of
Stalin, closed a three-year interim period of successional struggle and
marked the onset of Khrushchev's predominance. Khrushchev delineated
Stalin's crimes against the Communist Party and Russian national interest
at this congress. In his speech, Khrushchev, then first secretary, emphasised
that Stalin and the cult of the individual had been wrong. While
Khrushchev's policies were assimilationist, his relations with the national-
ities in the Soviet states were again marked by ambiguity and contra-
dictions. During his years as president, concessions were made to the
Muslims and other non-Russian minorities, especially in the areas of
linguistic policy and historiography. However, a strong anti-religious
campaign was carried out from 1954 to the end of Khrushchev's reign in
Turkic Central Asia
1964, involving the deregistration of religious leaders and the destruction of

mosques.
By 1968 the Brezhnev group had tightened its control within Russia.
Stalin's image was refurbished and a centralised planning system
emphasised the military and heavy investment. Intellectuals were arrested,
deported or declared insane when they questioned governmental policies.
However, Brezhnev did allow the nationalities to delve into their own
cultures in ways that would not have been possible even in Khrushchev's
time. The late 1960s were characterised by a wave of de-Russification in
such areas as language, cadres and history. Native historians and artists re-
emphasised the ancient roots of their communities and their cultural debt to
traditional Islamic, especially Arabic and Persian, influence, while down-
grading the Russian contribution. In much literature the individual Soviet
republic replaced the Soviet Union as the object of patriotic loyalty.
Muslim national identity

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s had a
dramatic impact in reviving Central Asian Islam or rather bringing Islamic
practices into the open. Underground groups and private prayer circles
emerged and began to build mosques and criticise the established Muslim
hierarchy. For the most part, from the Russian era to the end of the
Gorbachev era, the structure of official Islam had remained the same. The
Muslims of Central Asia were divided under four spiritual boards led by a
mufti of Central Asia and Kazakstan in Tashkent, considered the biggest
jurisdiction and established on October 20, 1943. The Muslims of
European Russia and Siberia were to turn to the Muslim Spiritual Board
in Ufa, Bashkiria for guidance. The third spiritual board was in charge of
the Muslims of northern Caucasia and Daghestan and located in Machatj-
Qala in Daghestan. While the first two spiritual boards followed the Hanafi
tradition, the Daghestan board was Shafii. The fourth was the Muslim
Board of Baku which guided the Muslims of Transcaucasia who were
Shiites of the Jafari tradition as well as Sunni Muslims of Abkhazia. The
spiritual boards directed the activities of the few existing mosques, made
decisions in questions concerning theology and ritual and printed religious
material and journals. Religious organisations were not supported by the
state but rather financed by gifts, donations, book sales and fees for various
activities.
While the state could control official Islam it could not control what
came to be known as unofficial Islam, the Sufi brotherhoods and the beliefs
of people. Muslim rituals were regularly practised, perhaps most obviously
those surrounding funerals. Even party members and 'atheists' were buried
according to Muslim rites. Interestingly, in many cities throughout the
Soviet period there continued to be separate burial places for Muslims,
From the interior of the Tel~ashayakhmosque in Tashkent (photo: David

Thurfjell, 1998).
Christians and Jews. In 1989 the only Muslim religious institutions

functioning officially were a madrasa (seminary) in Bukhara, a religious
academy in Tashkent and a small number of registered mosques. By 1990,
however, dramatic changes had taken place. Muslims now printed
previously banned Islamic literature and simple pamphlets that described
how to pray. Saudi Arabia sent 1million Qurans to Central Asia, and there
was a boom in Quran publishing as the holy book was translated into local
languages. In February 1990 Muslims demanded the resignation of the
mufti Shamsuddin Khan Babakhan, the chairman of the Muslim Board for
Central Asia in Tashkent. They accused him of womanising and deviations
from Islam. He was forced to step down. At the same time the qadi (Islamic
judge) of Alma Ata, Radbek Nishanbai, had himself elected grand mufti of
Kazakstan, thus creating a separate Kazak Muslim Board. The other
Central Asian republics followed suit, and now each Central Asian
republic has established a religious council, a muftiyat or kaziyet, which
manages or supervises the religious life of the Muslim citizens of the
nation.
Furthermore, a boom in the building of new mosques has taken place
since independence. By October 1990 there were a total of fifty new
mosques in Kirghizstan compared to fifteen in 1989, thirty in Turkmenistan
Turkic Central Asia
Islamic literature for sale outside the Barak Khan madrasa (Islamic college)
in Tashkent (photo: David Thurfjell, 1998).
compared to five before, forty in Tajikistan compared to seventeen before

and ninety in Kazakstan compared to thirty-seven before. In Tashkent city
there were thirty new mosques compared to just two in 1989. While in
1987 there were only 260 mosques in the region, by 1992 the number had
grown to roughly 5,000. Since independence from Moscow over 10,000
pilgrims from Uzbekistan have made the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), a
substantial increase when seen in the light of those twenty who made the
annual pilgrimage during the Soviet period. In 1997, around 3,000 Uzbek
pilgrims were expected in Mecca. However, fearing 'Islamic fundamental-
ism', the Uzbek government shut down two Tashkent rnadrasas in February
1997, thus eliminating all openly functioning religious schools in the
capital. In December 1997, the Uzbek government charged so-called
Wahhabis with the murder of four militia men in the city of Namangan in
eastern Uzbekistan. The Wahhabi is one of many religious groups who
appeared to spread their word after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Wahhabis are also active in other Central Asian states. The Uzbek
government responded to the murders by arresting hundreds of people,
mostly those involved in or interested in the Wahhabi movement. However,
the murders seem more consistent with local mafia activities then with the
actions of Wahhabi sympathisers.
Micallef and Suanberg
The new nationalism could sometimes be manifested in the contem-

porary Islamic culture of Central Asia. In the town of Turkistan in
Kazakstan, a new mosque was opened in 1996 and named after the old
Communist Party leader Dinmukhamad Kunaev, who had been removed
from office by Gorbachev in December 1986. In the Gok Tepe fortress,
forty kilometres to the west of the capital Ashgabad in Turkmenistan, the
Saparmurat Haji mosque, named after the current autocratic Turkmen
president, was completed on independence day in October 1997. It is the
largest mosque in Central Asia, and it stands together with a memorial to
the memory of the Turkmens who were killed fighting Russian troops in
the late nineteenth century. Since the final Gorbachev years, mausoleums
have been restored and continue to attract increasing numbers of pilgrims,
and since independence Central Asians have been celebrating and
exploring their Sufi heritage. O n September 17, 1997, celebrations were
held to commemorate the 675th anniversary of the birth of Bahauddin
Naqshband, the medieval Sufi teacher who now has followers across the
Muslim world. The manifestation was supported by the mufti of Tashkent
and the Uzbek government, both of which understand the importance of
such events that transcend political views and ethnic differences. The
mosque complex just outside Bukhara, which was the site of the
celebrations, functioned as a 'museum of atheism' during the Soviet years
and was renamed a shrine in 1989. It was well attended by members of the
international Muslim community. A second such event was the declaration
of 1993 as the 'Yasavi year' for the entire Turkic world. The founder of the
Yasaviyya, Ahmad Yasavi, is buried in Turkistan, and the declaration of
1993 followed the signing of a protocol between Turkey and Kazakstan
regarding the restoration of the saint's mausoleum in Turkistan. Moreover,
a Turkish-Kazak university, named after Yasavi, has been established in
Turkistan. At a meeting with six of the university trustees, the Turkish
minister Namik Kemal Zeybek stated that this university had 17,000
Anatolian Turkish and Kazak students. They have access to modern
technology and the university may well be the best equipped in the Turkic
world.
O n an individual level three surveys commissioned by the United States
Information Office conducted in Kazakstan, Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan in
1992 and 1993 found that the Central Asians' response to Islam was multi-
faceted. While half of the Kazaks and Uzbeks and four-fifths of the Kirghiz
claimed faith in Islam, only one in five Uzbeks and Kirghiz acknowledged
participating in religious services at a mosque or prayer house every month.
However, of the surveyed about half the Kazaks and seven-tenths of the
Kirghiz agreed that Islam should play a larger role in their countries. But
the proportion of those who agree completely with this proposal is much
less, approximately one-fifth of the Kazaks to about two-fifths of the
Uzbeks.
Turkic Central Asia
Naqshbandi students in Samarkand (photo: David Thurfjell, 1998).
Islamic revival?
Islam has emerged as one of the most important elements of national
identity formation in Central Asia. It is also hoped that Islam will act to
counterbalance the national-ethnic tendencies in the region. However, it is
most likely that religion will be a component of a national identity rather
than a force to unify Central Asia under the banner of Pan-Islam. How this
interest and pride in an Islamic heritage will manifest itself in the future is a
complicated question. In a sense, it would be inaccurate to describe the
current interest in Islam in Central Asia as Islamic revival since Islam in
Central Asia never died out. While official Islamic institutions may not have
been able to function during the Soviet period, David Tyson demonstrates,
in a well-documented article based on field work, the important role played
by shrines and shrine pilgrimage in Turkmenistan in sustaining popular
Islam. Pilgrimages to shrines play an important role in many Muslim
societies with large rural populations. The pilgrimage tradition generally
remains outside the control of the government, and traditional Islamic
shrine worship and pilgrimages provided and continue to provide a space
for popular discussion that is difficult to monitor.
Another aspect of informal Islam which survived Soviet attempts at
combating Islam even if in weakened form, are the otins, or the female
Muslim dignitaries who oversaw the daily basis of the lives of other women
believers. The otins were traditionally in charge of teaching women the
Quran. In the newly formed women's madrasas in Kokand and Bukhara,
otins have been called upon to supervise female students while they teach
Chagatay Turkish, the former written language of Central Asia, and the
rudiments of Quranic exegesis, the actual teaching of the Quran remains in
men's hands for the moment. A new group of otins who have travelled to
Mecca and received special religious training have emerged and hope to re-
Islamicise the female population. As their work takes place not just in the
classroom but also in the neighbourhood and in the home, this group is
another one that is difficult to supervise and control.
Just as in the Soviet period, official Islam is now strictly controlled by the
government. Religious political parties have been banned in all Turkic
Central Asian republics. Although the president of each of these republics
proclaims himself as a faithful Muslim, each one of them has also
proclaimed his intention of maintaining a secular system of government.
Karimov, for example, opens parliament sessions with prayers, peppers his
speeches with quotes from the Quran and has been on the pilgrimage to
Mecca. He has also enlisted Uzbekistan in the Organisation of the Islamic
Conference. Yet he has stated that Uzbekistan, like Turkey, will not tolerate
'Islamic fundamentalism'. To emphasise the secular nature of the
government, in June 1995 Karimov passed a resolution granting more
money to the Russian Orthodox Church in Uzbekistan. Kazakstan has
actively attempted to avoid religious conflicts and substantiate its secular
nature. For example in October 1995, the Kazak president Nazarbayev
stated that Islam and Christianity are the two flanks of Kazak spirituality.
The Kirghiz have also embraced Islam but in a cautious and limited way. In
late 1992 the Kirghiz president Akayev promoted the inclusion of this
statement in the new constitution's preamble: 'The people of Kirghizstan,
while adopting the constitution . . . proclaim their adherence to universal
moral principles, national traditions, and the spiritual values of Islam and
other religions.' By 1994 the Kirghiz government nevertheless felt it
necessary to curtail Islamic activity. Niyazov, the president of Turkmeni-
stan, has also pursued similar strategies regarding Islam. On the one hand
he has actively promoted Islam as part of the cultural and moral heritage of
Turkmenistan, while actively curtailing political activity based on Islamic
tenets or ideology on the other. By 1993 the Turkmen government was
totally in control of the official religious establishment.
Foreign policy
All Central Asian republics have established relations with Arab and other
Muslim states but not exclusively with such states. They are very interested
in developing contacts with Europe and the United States and there have
Turkic Central Asia
been many joint cultural projects with Turkey. All republics discussed in
this chapter have chosen to switch their alphabet to the Latin script rather
than maintaining Cyrillic or changing to Arabic. Israel has established
contacts with all the new republics and is participating in several
agricultural and environmental projects. The Kirghiz president Akayev
caused confusion in January 1993, when he claimed to support the
Palestinian demand for an independent state and at the same time agreed to
open up diplomatic representation in Jerusalem after being offered a
suitable property. Eventually Akayev stated that he would open an embassy
in Israel only after the conflict in the Middle East had been resolved.
Good relations with neighbouring states has been a foreign policy
priority for all the Central Asian states. Kazakstan, which shares a 1,700-
kilometre border with China, has made a special effort to foster
cooperation with that country. In May 1994 Nazarbayev visited China
and signed an agreement concerning transborder railroads. More sig-
nificantly, for the first time China agreed to formalise a border with a
neighbour officially acknowledging the Chinese-Kazak border. Kirghizstan,
which shares a 1,000-kilometre border with China, aims to sign a similar
agreement. Turkmenistan, which shares a border with Iran and Afghani-
stan, but is also very rich in natural resources, is concerned with keeping
'fundamentalism' in check while exploiting its resources.
Whether they actually share a border with Russia or not, all Central
Asian states have been very concerned with maintaining good relations with
this country, while preventing Russian intervention in their internal affairs.
They have cooperated in CIS agreements and institutions which, however,
have not produced any concrete results. Nazarbayev, the president of
Kazakstan, is quoted as having lamented 'participating in nine CIS meetings,
at which we signed over 100 documents that nobody intends to implement'.
Kazakstan and Kirghizstan have chosen to participate in a customs union
with Russia, while Uzbekistan is considering membership of the union.
However, few real steps have been taken to lower tariffs on imports.
Kazakstan, which has a considerable Russian minority, has been wary of the
extreme right-wing Russian talk concerning the colonising of Kazakstan. In
1993 Turkmenistan became the first Central Asian state to sign an
agreement with Russia allowing the local Russians dual citizenship. Russia
would like to see such an agreement signed with all the Central Asian states.
Some effort at promoting cooperation within Central Asia has also taken
place. After 1991 there were plans to open the 'Great Silk Road' and to act
as a bridge between Europe and Asia, but these plans are yet to be fulfilled.
Kirghizstan, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan founded a Central Asian Union in
1994 to strengthen their political, economic and cultural ties. The
presidents of the three states, Askar Akayev, Islam Karimov and Nursultan
Nazarbayev met in July 1997 to discuss security in the light of the fighting
in Afghanistan and to find ways for increased cooperation.
Micallef and Suanberg
Political parties
In 1993 there were six political parties in Kazakstan, but for the most part
they supported Nazarbayev's policies and only differed in minor details.
While Nazarbayev does not have a political party, the Kazak Peoples' Unity
Party has accepted him as their leader and they are seen as a centrist party.
Of the parties to the left and right of KPUP the significant ones are the
Kazak Peoples' Congress Party led by the international anti-nuclear activist
and poet Olzhas Suleymanov. The Socialist Party established from the
remnants of the old Communist Party is seen as a centre-left party. While
there are some Kazak nationalist parties, a Russian nationalist party called
Edintsvo, established in 1991, was banned in 1992. In Kirghizstan by 1994
there were seven official political parties. They represent centre-left, left,
radical nationalist and mildly nationalist views.
At the time of its independence Uzbekistan had an interesting political
arena with openly active opposition parties. Since then any meaningful,
organised political opposition has been banned, although the Uzbek
constitution which was accepted in 1992 includes many democratic
principles. In 1991 the Democratic People's Party replaced the old
Communist Party and although for the most part opposition was
suppressed, Erk (Freedom), under the leadership of Muhammed Salih
was allowed to participate in the elections but only received about 1 2 per
cent of the votes. Erk was banned on December 9, 1992 and it now
functions in exile. The most important political opposition came from
Birlik (Unity), which was established in May 1989 by intellectuals. Its
platform was nationalist, secular but still religious and based on language
law reform. However, Karimov was able to co-opt much of Birlik's
platform and its members were defined as a social movement in 1991.
Another important political party is the Islamic Party which was promptly
banned. A legal opposition party with no members in the parliament is the
Vatan Taraqqiot Partiyasi (Fatherland Progress Party), which was
established in May 1992.
For many centuries, Central Asia was the centre of Islamic philosophy,
art, science and religious interpretation. During the Soviet period religion
was combated and any religious observation or activity that was allowed
was strictly controlled. However, on an individual level as well as on an
unofficial level, people maintained their religious traditions and rituals,
especially when it came to events such as births, circumcisions, marriages
and burials. Today each Central Asian state has claimed Islam as part of its
national heritage and for the most part its national identity, even though the
leadership of each state is strictly committed to secularism and the
separation of state and religion. In fact, since 1991 all religious parties have
been banned in Central Asia. In contemporary Central Asia official Islam
continues to be under strict government supervision, and when any Islamic
Turkic Central Asia
movement is perceived as a threat or a locus of opposition, the leadership

does not hesitate to suppress it. Nevertheless, Sufism and the unofficial
elements such as shrine pilgrimages largely continue to elude government
control.
Literature
For a general introduction to the history of Central Asia, see Central Asia:
130 Years of Russian Dominance, ed. Edward Allworth (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995); Det nya Centralasien: Fem forna
sovjetrepubliker i omvandling, eds. Bo Petersson and Ingvar Svanberg
(Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1995); and Ahmed Rashid, The Resurgence of
Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism? (London: Zed Books, 1994). The
development of national identity in contemporary Kazakstan is dealt with
in Ingvar Svanberg, 'Kazakhstan and the Kazakhs', pp. 318-33 in The
Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States, ed. Graham Smith
(London: Longman Inc., 1996) and Ingvar Svanberg, 'In Search of a
Kazakhstani Identity', Journal of Area Studies, 1994:4, pp. 113-23, while
the situation of Uzbekistan is discussed in Gregory Gleason, 'Uzbekistan:
From Statehood to Nationhood?', pp. 331-60 in Nations and Politics in the
Soviet Successor States, eds. Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Cassandra Cavanaugh, 'Historio-
graphy in Independent Uzbekistan: The Search for National Identity',
Central Asia Monitor, 1994:1, pp. 30-32. The situation of Kirghizstan is
described in Gene Huskey, 'Kyrgyzstan: The Politics of Demographic and
Economic Frustration', pp. 398-418 in Nations and Politics in the Soviet
Successor States, eds. Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras (Cambridge: Cambridge
Edward J. Lazzerini discusses the Jadid movement in 'Beyond Renewal:
The Djadid Responce to Pressure for Change in the Modern World',
pp. 151-66 in Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and
Change, ed. Jo-Ann Gross (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992). See
also Sergei Poliakov, Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural
Central Asia (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992). A very useful overview on
Islam in the Soviet Union is given in Aleksandre Bennigsen and S. Enders
Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide (London: Hurst, 1985).
Official Islam is discussed in Bhavna Dave, 'Inventing Islam and an Islamic
Threat in Kazakhstan', Transition, 18-24 (October, 1995), pp. 22-25;
Arthur Bonner, 'Islam and the state in Central Asia: A Comparative Essay',
Central Asia Monitor, 1995:6, pp. 27-36; and Alma Sultangalieva,
'Religion in Transition: The Kazakstani Experience', Central Asia Monitor,
1996:6, pp. 28-31. Aspects of folk religion in Kazakstan are dealt with in
Contemporary Kazaks: Cultural and Social Aspects, ed. Ingvar Svanberg
(London: Curzon Press, 1999); Richard Dobson, 'Islam in Central Asia:
Chapter Eight
Iran, Afghanistan and

Tajikistan
Bo Utas
The three republics Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan have much in

common. All three are dominated by speakers of Iranian languages, mainly
variants of Persian, and they share much of a long history, having belonged
more often than not to the same state. The modern Islamic Republic of Iran
is the largest of the three republics, covering about 1,648,000 square
kilometres, followed by Afghanistan with 650,000 and Tajikistan with
143,000. The populations are proportionate to the areas with around 65
million in Iran, possibly around 20 million in Afghanistan and about 5.5
million in Tajikistan. The population growth in Iran and Tajikistan was
until recently as high as above 3 per cent a year, among the highest in the
world. After almost twenty years of war and interior chaos the population
situation in Afghanistan is quite difficult to survey. Millions of the
inhabitants of that country probably still remain in exile, especially in
Pakistan and Iran.
Common to the three countries is a considerable ethnic fragmentation,
with many ethnic groups represented in two or all three of the countries.
For Iran and Afghanistan there are no reliable numbers regarding the
various ethnic groups, but for Tajikistan there are quite detailed and fairly
accurate census reports from the Soviet era, the last from 1989, recording
linguistic and ethnic belonging. The table below gives a general overview of
the supposed ethnic composition, based on linguistic criteria, of the three
countries (situation of 1992). The figures for Iran and Afghanistan are
based on very rough estimates by this author, and in the case of Tajikistan,
the figures are from the last Soviet census of 1989.
The religious situation is also common to Iran, Afghanistan and
Tajikistan, insofar as they are completely dominated by Islam. In Iran
and Afghanistan close to 100 per cent of the inhabitants would regard
themselves as Muslims, whereas the Central Asian areas that today include
Tajikistan were homogeneously Muslim until the last century. At present
the great majority of the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Tatars, Kirghiz, Turkmens and
Kazaks that live in Tajikistan, that is close to 90 per cent of the population,
would regard themselves as Muslims. Islam has a very long history in all the
Iranian cultural areas, which include the three republics under discussion
166
Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan
their new religion, but from the beginning of the Abbasid reign a conversion
of broad bands of people started. The Sasanian state religion, Zoroastrian-
ism, which had dominated most of the region, seems to have been in a state
of decay during this period. Our sources depict it as a rigorous system of
legal regulations with a religious superstructure that had petrified into
bigotry. Zoroastrianism seemed to have had comparatively weak power of
resistance to Islam, but many other religions were represented in the region,
especially various Eastern Christian denominations, such as Nestorians and
Monophysites, as well as Manichaeans and, in the eastern parts, Buddhists.
Even if this is little studied and difficult to prove, it is probable that
elements from those pre-Islamic religions live on as substrates in local forms
of Islam. Thus Islamic, and perhaps especially Shiite, law seems to be
influenced by Zoroastrian regulations and conceptions of purity, and
Sufism, the Islamic form of mysticism, by Manichaean and Buddhist
monasticism.
In Central Asia, the Turks soon became zealous champions of Sunni
Islam. Especially in areas bordering with non-Islamic peoples they
developed the militant tradition of ghazi, fighter for the religion, which
accompanied them on their way to Asia Minor, where such Turkish ghazis
were to lead the attacks on the remnants of Christian Byzantium. As early
as in the tenth century the Turks emerged as a leading force within the
Eastern Caliphate. They first entered Iranian territories as nomads and
traders but soon attained special importance as soldiers, initially as slaves
and mercenaries but soon rising in rank to generals, governors and even
monarchs. The last genuinely Iranian or Persian dynasty in Eastern Iran
(including present-day Afghanistan and Tajikistan) was the Samanids, who
from their capitals, Samarkand and Bukhara, ruled over an east-Iranian
state which the Tajikistan of today likes to see as its own forerunner.
Around the year 1000 CE, the Samanids were replaced by the Turkic
Ghaznavid dynasty, which made Ghazna (in present southeastern Afghani-
stan) their capital, and from there Sunni Islam was brought into India.
From the Ghaznavid era up to our own century almost all the ruling
dynasties of this region were of Turkic origin, the most important exception
being the Mongolian 11-Khans who conquered Baghdad in 1258 and put an
end to the original Sunni caliphate. The Turkic dynasties were generally
militantly Sunni, while their Iranian-speaking subjects often professed
themselves adherents of various forms of Shiism, both the now dominant
Twelver school and denominations of Seven-Imam Shia, especially
Ismailiyya. The conflict between these two doctrines runs like a red thread,
at times visible, at times invisible, through the religious history of this
region. There was, however, one religious manifestation in which the
difference between Sunni and Shia played only a minor role - that was
Sufism. This form of mysticism had its roots in the original, Arabic Islam,
but it was in Eastern Iranian Khorasan and Mavaraonnahr (Transoxania,
than Iran, and its special position as a buffer zone between the expanding
Russian and British empires kept it screened off from the outer world.
When we enter the twentieth century, Iran and Afghanistan thus exist as
reasonably independent entities, but Iran is in a deep political and economic
crisis and is effectively divided into a Russian and a British zone of interest.
Due to its inaccessible position, Afghanistan in its internal structure
remained relatively unaffected by the colonial powers, but Great Britain
kept its formal control over Afghan foreign policy until 1917. The borders
of both Iran and Afghanistan had been drawn by those same colonial
powers with due regard to their own strategic interests. Tajikistan entered
the twentieth century as a backward province of the ossified Emirate of
Bukhara, which in its turn stood under Russian control, although it was not
formally dissolved until after the October Revolution. After various
reorganisations, a Soviet Tajik Autonomous Republic was set up in 1924.
It is obvious that the difficult political, cultural and social situation in which
the three countries found themselves at the beginning of the twentieth
century has been formative for the development of Islam there in later
decades.
Iran
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Twelver Shiism thus became the
dominant form of religion in Iran. Today about 80 per cent of the
population embrace this creed. It is above all Kurds, Baluchs and
Turkmens who profess themselves adherents of Sunni Islam, while
Persians, Azeri Turks and Arabs are generally Shiites. According to very
uncertain estimates some 65 per cent of the Iranian Kurds are Shafii
Sunnites, while 80 per cent of the Baluchs and 95 per cent of the Turkmens
are Hanafi Sunnites. The rest are Shiites, apart from some quite small
Kurdish groups that belong to very special sects, like Ahl-i Haqq (Kakayi)
and similar extreme Alid groups. To this a number of small non-Islamic
groups should be added: Armenian and Syrian ('Assyrian') Christians,
Zoroastrians, Jews and believers of the Bahai religion which developed out
of Islam in the end of the nineteenth century. Due to the political sensitivity
of the matter there are no reliable estimates of the number of Bahais in
Iran, but at least up until the Islamic Revolution in 1979 they must have
been quite numerous.
On the ritual level, the difference between the Shiites and Sunnites of
Iran is relatively small. There are some minor divergences in the call to
prayer and the praying postures. In religious law, that is the interpretation
of sharia, the differences are greater. The Shiites follow their own legal
school, nowadays called the Jafari rite after the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq.
It differs from the various Sunni schools, for example the Shafii and Hanafi,
inter alia in family law. This concerns, for instance, regulations governing
inheritance and marriage (e.g. the special Shiite rules for temporary
marriage, so-called muta or, in Persian, sighe). A more important difference
is, however, found in the structure of the religious leadership. The Sunni
groups in Iran are comparatively small and dispersed and lack a structured
leadership. Their theologians (ulama) and religious functionaries (mullas)
have only a local influence. There is no national hierarchy.
Twelver Shiism, on the other hand, as early as in the sixteenth century
developed a complicated hierarchic system of religious leadership.
Following the example of the actual founder of the dynasty, Shah Ismail,
the Safavid Shahs had very exclusive pretensions. The original role of the
family as leaders of a Sufi order based in Ardabil, at the southwest corner of
the Caspian Sea, was developed into a charismatic leadership first of all
over the Qizilbash, but soon extending to all Shiites. This was based on an
alleged kinship with the family of the Prophet through the first Imam, that
is Ali. The aspirations of the Safavid Shahs to a nearly divine status
necessarily clashed with the conceptions and interests of the Shiite
theologians. At the time of the reshaping of Iran by Shah Ismail, these
theologians had to a considerable extent been called in from abroad
(especially from Bahrain and Lebanon), since Iran at that time had no
developed Shiite theologian traditions of its own. From the outset they were
thus dependent upon the Safavid rulers, but as their position in Iranian
society was strengthened, they were able to turn against the role of the
Shahs as the supreme leader of the religion.
The Shiite theologians of Iran at an early stage became divided into two
schools, one called akhbari ('the traditionalists') and one usuli ('the
fundamentalists'). The former maintained that the theology should be
founded on all the material that theologians and jurisprudents had worked
out through centuries, while the latter school wanted to go back to the usul,
that is 'foundations, principles', of Islam, taken as the Quran and the
examples of the Prophet and the Shiite Imams. During the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries the usuli theologians gained the upper hand. They
attached greater importance than did the others to the so-called ijtihad, that
is authoritative reinterpretation of the law through the leading jurispru-
dents (mujtahzds). In principle they refused to acknowledge the legitimacy
of secular power, which means that they represented a more radical
political attitude than the traditionalists. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century, leading usuli theologians joined forces with liberal and secular
groups in resistance to the corrupt and powerless Qajar rule with its
increasing dependence on foreign powers. The Iranian 'awakening' which
gained momentum around the turn of the century thus had both Islamist
and secular instigators, two groups with widely differing aims. The liberals
published journals, generally in exile, while the theologians made use of the
religious law and the deep-rooted Islamic sentiments of the population. The
latter fought Qajar power with legal decisions (fatwas), as for instance the
opposition to a British concession for the trading of tobacco, which led to

the so-called tobacco boycott, forcing the Shah to retreat and cancel the
concession.
The alliance between radical theologians and secular liberals finally, in
1906, compelled Muzaffar ud-din Shah to accept a constitution and the
election of a parliament (majlis). However, the political euphoria proved
shortlived. With active support from the colonial powers, Great Britain and
Russia, the Qajar regime was soon able to quench the budding democracy.
An American economist, Morgan Shuster, adequately termed this process
The Strangling of Persia in the title of a book he wrote about his frustrating
experiences as financial adviser to the state. After the failure of this
democratic experiment the radical theologians went their own way. Many
of them emigrated and settled at the Shiite shrines in Iraq, especially in
Najaf. Among the theologians active there we find Muhammad Husain
Naini (d. 1936), who elaborated an advanced theory for an Islamic system
of government. When Khomeini was exiled in 1963, he came, after a short
stay in Turkey, to Najaf where he held his famous series of lectures on
'Islamic government' (hukumat-i islami). Naini and Khomeini both base
their arguments on the strict Shiite conception that religious as well as
secular leadership of the Islamic community, the umma, belongs to the
twelve Imams, who in their esoteric tradition have kept the full knowledge
of God's intentions towards man. After the twelfth and last Imam,
Muhammad al-Mahdi, in 941 had entered the 'greater occultation', only
the most prominent of the jurisprudents of each epoch are capable of
leading the society, including leadership in its secular aspects, in the way
foreseen by God. This is what Khomeini termed vilayat-i faqih, 'the
government of the jurisprudent'.
The specific hierarchical order which prevails in Twelver Shiism
stipulates how these 'most prominent jurisprudents' are elected. In principle
they are found among the muitahids who have reached the rank of a maria-i
taqlid, 'object of emulation' (i.e. an absolute spiritual authority whom all
believers are obliged to follow). They receive the title of Ayatollah, properly
ayatullah al-uzma, 'the greatest sign of God'. Such a marja reaches his
position through an informal process, in which he is spontaneously chosen
as spiritual leader by an adequate number of adherents. These theologians
traditionally have their base in the city of Qum, 150 kilometres south of
Tehran. There they run their respective theological seminars (hauze),which
are not only centres for theological education but also for administration of
the considerable economic resources that are put at the disposal of each
marja through the religious dues (khums, 'fifth', i.e. of income above what
is necessary for the subsistence of one's own family) given to him by his
adherents for distribution for altruistic purposes. A marja may reside also in
some other important Iranian city, as for instance Mashhad (place for
pilgrimage through the shrine of the eighth Imam, Astan-i Quds-i Razavi)
Symbolic scourging during the Ashura celebration in Isfahan (photo: Franz

Wennberg, 1994).
suppressed. This is combined with a strong distrust of worldly power and a

devotion to the religious leaders that give the latter a far stronger position
than that of the Sunni ulama.
Since Muharram, like the fasting month Ramadan, is a month of the
Islamic lunar year, which is eleven days shorter than a solar year, the
Muharram Passion moves over the solar calendar. In 1978 the tenth of
Muharram fell on the eleventh of December. That day millions of people
marched through the streets of Tehran shouting out their grief over the
martyrdom of Husain together with their hatred against Yazid, the
Umayyad caliph who had given the order for the massacre of Husayn
and his troop. In politico-religious propaganda, the Shah had already been
identified as the Yazid of our time, and the processions thus turned into a
gigantic political demonstration. The Shah, who watched the processions
from a helicopter,' obviously lost the last of his courage and left Iran one
month later, on January 11, 1979.
When Khomeini and his followers landed at the airport of Tehran on the
first of February the same year and were met by huge masses of people, he
was presented with the task of putting into practice the Shiite usuli theories
about an Islamic system of government. A revolution which had been
brought about above all through a mobilisation of broad strata of the
people by exploiting the traditional Shiite hatred of all worldly supremacy
was to be transformed into a system of government, in which the religious
leaders themselves had also to represent the secular power. It can be
maintained that neither Khomeini nor his successors actually succeeded in
bringing about this reversion of the ideological poles.
The non-Shiite religious groups in Iran were naturally little-attracted by
this politicised Shiism. The new constitution is expressly based on Twelver
Shiism, although its Article 1 2 also guarantees a broader religious liberty:
The official religion of Iran is Islam, and its law school is the Jafari
tradition of Ithna ashari [Twelver] Shiism. This principle is eternal
and unalterable. The other law schools of Islam, among them Hanafi,
Shafii, Maliki, Hanbali and Zaidi, are regarded with full respect, and
the followers of these law schools are free to exercise their religious
rites in accordance with their own religious legal system. The law
schools are officially recognised for teaching and education and for
personal affairs (marriage, divorce, inheritance and framing of wills)
and legal cases with reference to these in the courts of law; and in each
region where the followers of any of these law schools form a
majority, regional regulations within the areas of competence of the
councils shall be formulated according to that law school with
preservation of the rights of the followers of other law schools.
In spite of this reassurance there was much unrest among Sunni Kurds,
Baluchs and Turkmens when this constitution had been approved, and
Khomeini felt obliged to promise improvements in the protection of the
rights of religious minorities. However, such changes were never brought
about. In this context it should be noticed that the constitution also
guarantees Zoroastrians, Jews and (Eastern) Christians the liberty 'within
the jurisdiction of the law to perform their religious services and act
according to their cannon as far as their personal status and religious
teachings are concerned' (Article 13).
Even within the Shiites of Iran there are antagonisms which find their
expression in religious terms. The large Azarbaijan-Turkish minority,
which not only dominates the northwestern provinces but also constitutes a
considerable part of the population of Tehran, to a great extent regarded
Ayatollah Kazim Shariat-Madari, the main competitor of Khomeini, as
their maria. In December 1979 and January 1980 severe disturbances broke
out in Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azarbaijan, whereafter the leaders of
the politically dominant Islamic Republican Party succeeded in having the
Republican Party of the Muslim People of the Azarbaijanis banned. Later
on Shariat-Madari lost all real influence, when he had to make a televised
public apology for contacts with the dismissed and later executed foreign
minister Qutbzade. Similarly, the Tehran regime neutralised the leader of
the Shiite Khuzistan Arabs, Shaykh Khaqani, by taking him to Qum and
isolating him there.
The interior of the Khomeini mausoleum still under construction south of

Tehran (photo: Franz Wennberg, 1994).
It is still far from clear what influence the present Islamic regime of
Iran will have on long-term religious development. The politicisation of
the official religion seems to lead to quite disparate reactions in various
social classes. The poor, in towns as well as in villages, and especially
those who in the propaganda are called mustazafin, 'the destitute', and
those who send their sons to serve in the Revolutionary Guards
(pasdaran), have every reason to feel solidarity with both the religious
and the political aspects of the new order, but a large part of the middle
class and those of the upper class who have not emigrated are probably
taken aback by what they regard as a hypocritical use of religion.
Although the society appears to have become vigorously Islamised, as
seen for instance in the fields of law and education, in the lively
participation in the congregational Friday Prayers, rather strict compli-
ance with to the rules for public dress of women, prohibition of alcohol,
of eating and smoking in the daytime during the fasting month and so on,
it remains uncertain how far this really means a religious activation on a
deeper level of Iranian life. Paradoxically, it is possible that the new order
rather contributes to a modernisation and, in the long run, perhaps also
secularisation of Iran, and this more effectively than the Shah's many
Westernisation programmes.
Afghanistan
More than 99 per cent of the population of Afghanistan are Muslims. The
proportions of Sunnites and Shiites are the reverse of that in Iran. Close to
80 per cent of Afghans are estimated to be Hanafi Sunnites, while about 18
per cent are considered to be adherents of Twelver Shiism and somewhat
less than 2 per cent Seven-Imam Shiites, that is Ismailis. It is often difficult
to distinguish between Sunnites and Shiites, because the latter have
traditionally been able to resort to so-called taqiyya, that is simulated
adherence to the dominating creed for the sake of personal safety. While in
Iran the group that defines the country is Shiite Persians, it is the strongly
Sunni Pashtuns (the 'Afghans' in a narrow sense) that have upheld the
political system of Afghanistan since its appearance as an independent state
at the end of the eighteenth century. More than 98 per cent of the Pashtuns
are Sunnites. Only a couple of small tribes (Turi and Bangash) on the border
to Pakistan are Twelver Shiites. O n the other hand, about half of the
Persian-speaking part of the population (Farsiwans, Tajiks, Hazaras and
Aimaks), who live in the west, central and north provinces and in the
capital, Kabul, are Twelver Shiites. About 5 per cent of the Persian-speakers
living in the central mountains north of Bamiyan and in the mountainous
province Badakhshan in the northeast, are Ismailites, as are the small
groups in the extreme northeast who speak Pamiri languages. The Uzbeks,
one of the largest groups in the northern provinces, and the smaller groups
of Turkmens (in the northwest), Baluchs (in the south) and the Kirghiz (in
the northeast) are probably more or less completely Sunni. In the towns
there are also small groups of Hindus, Sikhs and Jews, although most of the
latter seem to have left the country in recent years. The eastern province of
Nuristan was Islamised as late as the end of the nineteenth century. Earlier
the Nuristanis had an indigenous religion and were called Kafirs ('infidels')
by their Muslim neighbours.
Sunnism appears in Afghanistan in a quite traditional form. Especially
among the Pashtuns it has a strong admixture of tribal customs, that may
differ rather much from what is actually stipulated in Islam but still is
regarded as true Islam. Segregation between men and women is strongly
prescribed. Only for a few decades before the coup d'itat of 1978 and
among the upper classes (and to some extent among nomads and farmers)
unveiled women could be seen. The Afghan veil (purda) is heavier than the
type common in Iran (chadur), completely covering the body, with only a
grid in front of the eyes. Local religious functionaries (mullas or maulavis)
take care of the ceremonies that regulate private life according to
traditional customs. A secularisation of the teaching and the legal systems
had started before the coup d'itat in April 1978. The new, Marxist leaders
wanted to accelerate these programmes, but since their policies quickly led
to immediate and widespread opposition and soon to civil war, which in its
177
I ~ a n Afghanistan
, and Tajikistan
turn led to the Soviet invasion and more unrest, war and confusion, the
trend towards secularisation has probably been reversed in most places,
insofar as any organised social activity has been at all possible.
The Sunnite theologians (ulama) of Afghanistan have never held a
position that could compete with that of the Shiite leaders in Iran. Sunni
Islam has no counterpart to the Shiite hierarchy with a marja at the head.
Throughout the history of Islam, Sunni theologians as a rule have been
content to confirm the legitimacy of the secular power, as long as the
continued existence of Islam was not threatened. This has also been the case
in Afghanistan. The rough-handed unifier of the state, Amir Abdurrahman
(reigned 1880-1901), personally controlled both the theologians and
central dogmatic matters. He exploited this systematically in his attempts at
unifying the country. For the same purpose Nader Shah in 1932 formed an
Association of Theologians (Jamiyat-i ulama) which has, since then,
supported every new ruler, including the more or less Marxist regimes of
Nur Muhammad Taraki, Hafizollah Amin, Babrak Karmal and Najib.
During the civil war and the Soviet invasion much of this traditional
order was overthrown. It is true that there were always theologians around
who were prepared to support the regime in power, but many others went
into exile and joined the various resistance movements. A prominent
example of this is Burhanuddin Rabbani, a professor of theology at Kabul
University who became the leader of the resistance organisation Jamiyat-i
islami-yi Afghanistan (The Islamic Association of Afghanistan), later to
become the interim president of the country after the fall of the communist
regime. His colleague Abdurrasul Sayyaf became the leader of the
organisation Ittihad-i islami, which was especially favoured by Saudi-
Arabia. In spite of this, such traditional theologians did not play a major
role in the religiously motivated mobilisation of the greater part of the
Afghan population for the war against the communists and their Soviet
backers. Instead, at the beginning of the war there was another type of
Islamic intellectual who took the lead, young people who had received a
semi-westernised education. Some of them were, for instance, technicians
who had studied at the polytechnic high school in Kabul, which was
founded by the Russians. Typical representatives of this new type of Islamist
politicians are Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, leader of the radically Islamic Hizb-i
islami (The Islamic Party), later prime minister in the attempt at forming a
post-communist coalition government, and Shah Masud, the almost
legendary resistance leader in the Panjshir region northeast of Kabul. In
principle Shah Masud always belonged to the party of Rabbani, but he has
been quite independent in his political activities. In the coalition
government he was first minister of war but was forced to retire and
return to his base in Panjshir.
Among the Sunnites of Afghanistan the Sufi orders have had a
considerable influence for hundreds of years. They are led by more or less
charismatic leaders, affiliated to one of the main orders, Naqshbandiyya,
Qadiriyya, Chistiyya or Suhravardiyya. These shaykhs have a broad register
of functions stretching from the teaching of advanced esoteric ideas and
meditation practices to aspects of popular religion centred around saint
worship, shrines and healing. At least until the end of the 1970s the vast
majority of the population had some kind of relationship to such a pir or
shaykh. The inner circle of an order, the proper Sufis, take part in the
ceremonial meditation exercise which is called zikr (Ar. dhikr) which
through rhythmical movements, special techniques of deep inhalation and
continuous repetition of certain holy phrases may lead to states of ecstasy.
The activities are centred in the residence of the pir, called khanaqah, which
also houses the venerated tombs of his ancestors and to which his adherents
come at least once a year in order to show their allegiance. Traditionally the
more important pirs ran Quranic schools, perhaps the most important
popular teaching institutions before the introduction of a Western type of
secular school system in the middle of the twentieth century. Before the
coup d'ktat of 1978 these Quranic schools had lost most of their
importance, but it is not impossible that they have received a new relevance
in some of the provinces during the chaotic years that followed.
The influence of a Sufi pir on his followers is similar to that of a Shiite
marja. He is an example to follow, and his authority may in many instances
be absolute. During the heyday of Sufism in Iran and Central Asia, for
instance under the Timurids in the fifteenth century, the leading pirs also
wielded great political influence. In Iran these potential centres of power
were crushed by the Safavids, leading to the near extinction of the orders in
the areas where they had full control. Only in Kurdistan in the west and the
areas that later became Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the east did the
traditional Sufi orders remain undisturbed. In Afghanistan they have
continued to play an important political role up to the present day. The
leading Naqshbandi and Qadiri families were allied to the royal family
through strategic marriages, and consequently they were harshly persecuted
after the coup d'ttat of 1978.
The leading shaykhs of the Mujaddidi family, who belong to the
Naqshbandi order, were executed soon after the coup, but one of the
surviving members of that family, Sibghatullah Mujaddidi, founded one of
the resistance organisations based in Peshawar: Jabha-yi najat-i milli-yi
Afghanistan (The National Liberation Front of Afghanistan). A member of
the Qadiri Gailani family, Sayyid Ahmad, also founded a resistance
organisation: Shuray-i inqilab-i islami va milli-yi Afghanistan (The Islamic
and National Revolutionary Council of Afghanistan). However, neither
Sibghatullah Mujaddidi nor Ahmad Gailani was an active Sufi leader before
the coup. Mujaddidi, who was regarded a supporter of the Muslim
Brotherhood, was the leader (Imam) of the Islamic community in
Copenhagen and Gailani was a businessman in Kabul. Still both could
The Mazar-e-Sharif mosque in northern Afghanistan, where the caliph Ali

is said to have been buried, surrounded by holy doves (photo: Bo Utas,
1978).
count on a certain amount of support from the traditional adherents of their

respective families. The active pirs who survived the persecutions and
stayed on in the country were often able to assist local guerilla groups. In a
few cases they even seem to have been active as guerilla leaders themselves,
but the Sufi orders above all acted as flexible and well-ramified informal
organisations that could inspire people to fight against foreign invaders and
against a political order that was seen as a deadly threat to all traditional
values, in short what was regarded as 'true Islam'.
The Shiites were also active in the fight against the regime in Kabul. The
Shiites of the central mountain region, the Hazaras, at an early stage made
themselves independent under their traditional secular and religious
leaders. However, this leadership was soon challenged by radical groups
that were supported by Iran and wanted to start an Islamic revolution
against a system that they regarded as feudal. In time, and probably
depending on shifts in Iranian Afghanistan policy, these antagonisms were
smoothed out and during later years this region, Hazarajat, has upheld a
reasonably united independence. The Shiite resistance movements in central
and western Afghanistan were thus to a great extent dependent on Iranian
support while the Sunnite resistance, with its five major exile organisations
in Peshawar, depended primarily on Pakistan and through it on help from
the United States, Saudi-Arabia etc. This heavy foreign involvement in the
politics of Afghanistan has also contributed to the fragmentation of the
country and the difficulties in establishing some kind of stability after the
fall of the last communist government, that of Najib, in 1992.
The relatively small Ismaili minority has generally isolated itself from its
Muslim brethren, especially as these often do not regard the Ismailis as
genuine Muslims. Little is known about their religious life and ceremonies.
For instance, they do not have mosques but congregational meeting places
(iarna'at-khana). Historically they belong to the Nizari group, but they have
in recent times joined the Khojas, the Ismaili faction that regards the Aga
Khan as its spiritual leader. During the civil war they achieved a certain
political weight, since the strategically important roads which run from
Kabul to the north and the Soviet borders pass through their territory.
Consequently they were treated well by the communist regime, and the
militia they organised was regarded as its ally until it, in a crucial phase
close to the fall of Najib, joined the troops of Shah Masud together with the
Uzbek militia of Dostam Khan.
The state of Afghanistan has few cohesive elements and rather weak
historical traditions on which to base a feeling of national identity. The
ethnic group that dominates the state politically, the Pashtuns (the true
'Afghans'), have a strong ethnic identity of their own which they have tried
to transfer to the country they have chiselled out: Afghanistan, the land of
the Afghans. However, half of the Pashtuns (the 'Pathans') live in the
northwestern province of Pakistan, outside the state of Afghanistan, and the
more than 50 per cent of the inhabitants of the country that belong to other
ethnic groups have not been eager to call themselves Afghans. Therefore
Islam is of great importance in the attempts at creating a national feeling of
belonging. Through the political development during the last centuries the
dominant form of very traditional, Sunnite Islam has come to demarcate
Afghanistan quite clearly from its neighbours: from Shiite Iran in the west,
from British India, ruled by 'Kafirs' (infidels), in the east and south, and
from the equally 'Kafir' Russian or Soviet Central Asia in the north.
This national identity, based on a traditional form of Islam, was
probably the greatest spiritual asset of Afghanistan during the long war
against the Soviet invaders and the regime that was supported by them. The
Islamic identity has certainly been strengthened by war and hardships, but
at the same time the ideas about what Islam is or should be have changed in
ways that are not easy to grasp even for the believers themselves. At the
beginning of the 1970s Afghanistan was still a relatively isolated buffer-
state, when it was thrown open to influences from the whole world. A new
generation of leaders introduced political interpretations of Islam inspired
by the Muslim Brothers, the Wahhabis, Mawdudi and Khomeini and
others, that despite all pressures from the outside may remain alien to a
majority of the population. This has provided an avenue for new and
desperate attempts to formulate the true Islamic identity of Afghanistan, for
a time lighting a star of hope, as in the first enthusiasm that met the
advancing Taliban, but in the end adding confusion to confusion. It would
be a fair guess that most Afghans remain uncertain about the true character
of the religion they have fought so hard for twenty years to protect.
Tajikistan
About 90 per cent of the population of Tajikistan consists of what is often
termed 'ethnic Muslims', that is peoples that before the Russian conquests
in the nineteenth century were homogeneously Islamic and that in their
private lives have upheld Muslim customs. These are people that speak
Iranian (Tajik and various Pamir languages) or Turkic languages (Uzbek,
Kirghiz, Turkmen, Kazak, Tatar etc.). Their percentage of the population is
rising quickly, partly because of their high birth rate, partly through the
emigration of citizens of European origin, mainly Russians, Ukrainians and
Germans. In 1989 the population growth rate of Tajikistan was as high as
3.22 per cent, the highest figure in all of what was then the Soviet Union.
The proportion of Russians in the population has decreased continuously
from 13.3 per cent in 1959 to about 6 per cent today.
Insofar as they are at all aware of their religious identity, the majority of
these ethnic Muslims would regard themselves as Hanafi Sunnites. A
smaller group, consisting mainly of the Pamir peoples in the uppermost
valleys of the river Oxus, are Ismailites, that is adherents of Seven-Imam
Shiism. The census of 1989 also registered around 15,000 Jews, some of
them so-called Chala, Jews that were converted to Islam by the rulers of
Bukhara at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
centuries. The Jewish colonies of Central Asia have a long history. Jews
have probably lived there since pre-Islamic times. During recent years they
have, however, emigrated in great numbers.
When, after the October Revolution, the Emirate of Bukhara was finally
liquidated and the Autonomous Tajik Republic was erected in its eastern
parts in 1924, the borders were drawn in such a way that the Persian-
speaking Tajiks were separated from their old capitals, Samarkand and
Bukhara. These cities were incorporated in the Uzbek Soviet Republic, and
their importance as political, cultural and religious centres was system-
atically reduced. On the whole, the Soviet authorities treated the Muslims
of Central Asia quite high-handedly, and a lengthy rebellion broke out
which was not finally crushed until the middle of the 1930s. The insurgents,
whom the Russians called 'basmachi', a Turkish word for robber, were to a
great extent recruited among the adherents of the Sufi orders, and they were
strongly motivated by Islam in their fight against the atheistic Soviet system
which they regarded as a threat to their traditional way of living. They
Tajik pilgrims in Samarkand (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1990).
found shelter in the inaccessible mountainous regions of Tajikistan, but in

the long run they could, of course, not keep up their isolated struggle
against the well-equipped Soviet army. Due to the Sovietisation of Central
Asia and the Basmachi rebellion considerable numbers of people, especially
Uzbeks and Turkmens, fled to Afghanistan where they still live and are
known as muhajirin, 'refugees'.
The new administration of Tajikistan, which was completely dominated
by Russians, systematically repressed all official expressions of Islam.
However, the Soviet power did set up a nominal Islamic organisation,
which for Tajikistan meant that it came under the so-called Spiritual
Directorate in Tashkent. This directorate was led by a mufti chosen and
controlled by the central power, and under him Tajikistan had a similarly
officially appointed Islamic judge (qazi, Ar. qadi), but this official religious
organisation was rudimentary. There were hardly more than ten official
mosques in the country and not a single school for training religious
functionaries. For the whole of Soviet Central Asia there were only two
theological seminars, one in Bukhara and one in Tashkent. Religious
literature, and especially the Quran, was not made available to believers but
only to limited scholarly circles.
The Naqshbandiyya and the Yasaviyya (Yesevi) are the indigenous
orders of Central Asia. The latter was founded by a Turk from Yasi
(nowadays called Turkistan, a town in south Kazakstan) known as Ahmad
Yasavi (d. 1166), and it achieved a vast influence especially among the
Central Asian Turks. The Naqshbandi order, on the other hand, had its
original centre in Bukhara and was, from the outset, particularly active
among the Persian-speaking urban population. This order was first known
as Khajagan, but in the fourteenth century it was reformed by Baha al-Din
Naqshband (d. 1389) and became known as Naqshbandiyya all over the
Muslim world, where it has become extremely widespread. Into the
twentieth century this order has also played an important political role in
many countries, for instance through the branch called Khalidiyya in
Kurdistan. The Qadiri order, too, has been active in Central Asia.
These old Sufi orders were integrated in networks that were spread right
across the Muslim world. They were often dynamic organisations that
played a leading role in the local cultures. When, from the eighteenth
century onwards, Central Asia was cut off and isolated, these international
networks broke up and the local orders stagnated. They lived on under the
leadership of pirs (in Central Asia often called eshan) who were gradually
removed from their learned traditions and whose activities became
dominated by a type of popular religion that centred on the veneration of
holy places and tombs of saints, so called shrines (mazar or ziyarat). In
Tajikistan, without access to religious literature and subject to persecution
from the Soviet authorities, the Sufi and Islamic educational traditions
became extremely impoverished. The Sufi orders and their eshans
constituted the mainstay of religion among wide bands of the population.
This obviously meant a serious lack of reliable knowledge about Islam,
something which became obvious when around 1990 the religious practice
was set free.
In the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan around Christmas of 1979, many
of the soldiers that were used in the first round were of Central Asian origin,
among them many Tajiks. This was necessary for logistic reasons, but it is
likely that the Soviet leaders also had assumed that these 'ethnic Muslims'
would be more acceptable to their brethren south of the Oxus river than
European soldiers. The result rather turned out to be that the experiences of
the Central Asian soldiers in Afghanistan strengthened a budding tendency
to reject the Soviet system. The contacts with a more living and struggling
From the Nouruz (new year) celebrations in Dushanbe (photo: David
Thurfjell, 1998).
Islam inspired a revival of this religion in Central Asia also. Qurans and
other religious books in the banned Arabic writing were smuggled into the
Soviet Union on a huge scale. In official Soviet media, reports of problems
with the so-called atheistic propaganda became increasingly common.
In October 1980 the Tajik party newspaper Kommunist Tadzhikistana
reported on the inefficiency of the anti-religious propaganda in the province
of Kurgan-Tappa and complained that not even lectures, film-shows and the
activities of the Kolkhoz clubs had succeeded in turning the interests of the
Tajiks away from Islamic family rituals (including the paying of bride-
wealth), shrines, mullas and eshans. From other regions there were reports
that even intellectuals and party members continued to run their family
affairs according to Islamic rite and that public funds were embezzled to be
used for the upkeep of shrines and other holy places. It became clear that the
masses of the people, despite more than sixty years of atheist propaganda,
regarded Islam as a main constituent of their national or ethnic identity.
Together with Islam, the native language, Tajik (a variety of Persian),
and the literature which had been written in that language for more than
1,000 years was seen as a mainstay of Tajik identity. In this context the
writing system also had an important symbolic value. After the Tajik-
Persian literature had been written with the Arabic alphabet for 1,000
years, the Soviet authorities in 1927 introduced a new alphabet based on

Latin orthography. In 1940 it was forcibly substituted with a writing system
based on the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet. Although the divisive language
policy that the Soviet authorities pursued in Central Asia checked a
threatening Uzbekisation of the Tajik language and Tajik culture, the new
writing reform meant that the living connections with the indigenous
cultural heritage were cut.
When the nationalistic movements gained momentum with the begin-
ning disintegration of the Soviet state at the end of the 1 9 8 0 ~language
~
questions acquired a considerable symbolic importance. After lively
discussions, the Supreme Soviet of the Tajik Soviet Republic in 1989
passed a language law which gave the Tajik language (in the text also called
farsi, i.e. Persian) the status of the only state language. Not only the Russian
population reacted against this but also large parts of the Tajik bureaucracy,
'nomenklatura', which saw the language law as a threat against their
interests. From then on, Russians also had to learn Tajik in order to pursue
their interests in the republic. The religiously minded regarded this as a first
victory, but from their point of view an important step remained to be
taken, the reintroduction of Arabic writing. It was not difficult to find
support for this idea, since at least among the less well-educated the Arabic
alphabet is supposed to be an almost magic symbol of Islam. 'Arabic [that
is, the script] is our religion', is one symptomatic saying. The pressure from
religious groups finally became so strong that the parliament made a
declaration of principle favouring the transition to Arabic script. However,
no serious steps were taken in that direction.
In 1989 the nationalistic forces formed themselves into a popular
movement called Rastokhez ('Resurrection'), which was registered as a
political party in 1990. The activists of this party belonged to progressive
circles within the intelligentsia and were mainly of a secular bent. The
struggle between the Communist Party and the opposition groups escalated
and in February 1990 serious disturbances broke out in the capital,
Dushanbe. Demonstrations were dispersed by the military and an unknown
number of people were killed. Martial law was declared, and under these
circumstances, under strong government control, a new Supreme Soviet
(that is parliament) was elected which became dominated by the
communists. At the same time the Islamic activists founded a party of
their own, but this was banned by the Supreme Soviet.
The unrest continued and Islamic groups became increasingly prominent
in political demonstrations, especially against the previous Communist
Party Secretary Rahmon Nabiev who was elected president by the new
parliament. As a result Nabiev was soon forced to resign. When it became
clear that the Moscow coup d'etat of August 1991 had failed, Tajikistan
declared itself independent under the name of the Republic of Tajikistan. In
October of the same year, the Islamic Party was legalised under the
designation the Islamic Revival Party. This party included a broad spectre
of political tendencies, from liberal democrats to Islamists who advocated
the establishment of an Islamic Republic. Its programme was, however,
only mildly Islamist, speaking for a change of the constitution in
accordance with the rules of the Holy law (sharia) and for a strengthened
role of Islam in culture and education.
There were presidential elections in November 1991, but the opposition
to the old party establishment proved to be divided, not only between
secularists and Islamic activists but also between groups from various
geographical regions. The old party organisation won an easy victory and
Nabiev was re-elected president. Islamic circles started violent demonstra-
tions and Nabiev was once again forced to resign in September 1992. An
alliance of Islamic and so-called democratic troops took control of the
capital, but Russian troops were sent in (in order to protect the Russian
population it was said) and have since then been the guarantors of the
Tajik regime. The pro-communist Imonali Rahmonov was reinstated as
president and an uncertain peace was established. This situation has
perpetuated itself: a semi-independent nomenklatura type of government
in Dushanbe, propped up by Russian troops, and continual unrest in rural
areas, especially in the east (for instance in Garm), generally based on a
religiously motivated mobilisation. The main religious leaders, among
them the once official Soviet Qazi (qadi) of Tajikistan, Turojonzoda, have
generally been in exile (especially in Iran). Negotiations have led to
various peace agreements, but a real national reconciliation is hardly
within sight.
The political development that has been summarily sketched above
depends on many components, social, economic, geographic, religious etc.
Not having any real historical state tradition of its own to fall back on
when the Soviet system collapsed, Tajikistan is suffering from strong
disintegrating tendencies. Leaders and party factions from the various
regions compete with all means at their disposal. This is often depicted as a
competition between 'northern Tajiks' (from the Khojand area) and
'southern Tajiks' (from the province of Badakhshan), but as a matter of
fact there are many more regional factions, such as the Kurgan-Tappa
group against the Kulobis. The Islamic and Islamist formations also have
various regional connections, but they are, moreover, influenced from
abroad. In part they are connected with the various parties and groups that
are engaged in the power struggle in Afghanistan and who at times
probably assist their fellow-believers in the north with military support. In
part it is a question of other Islamic states eagerly competing with each
other for influence over the development of Tajikistan. In particular Saudi
Arabia and Iran seem to continue there the indirect confrontation they
started in Afghanistan. Propagandists of Saudi-Arabia, so-called Wahhabis,
stress the Sunni character of their message to the rather unknowing
Sunnites of Tajikistan, while partisans of Iran hold that country up as a

brother in language and historical culture and a unique example of a
radically Islamic state. The two competitors have probably given
considerable economic support to various Islamic Tajik formations. A
great number of mosques, schools and seminaries have been built with the
assistance of those foreign interests.
The potential for Tajik Muslims to orient themselves in the new world
which has opened up to them must be rather limited. All organised forms of
Islam were suppressed over more than seventy years, and prior to that
indigenous religious traditions were isolated and impoverished. Tajikistan
thus lacks both theological competence and real lay knowledge about
Islam. The unofficial proponents for Islam from the Soviet era, probably
often associated with the Sufi orders, may easily lose their position in
competition with new populist leaders and propagandists financed from
abroad. Both the Wahhabi and Shia-Iranian ideologies have quite a
negative attitude to the Sufi orders. In the present labile position of
Afghanistan, Islamic and pro-Iranian agitation could potentially be quite
successful. Unfortunately it has been witnessed in many instances that it is
easier to stir up and exploit religiously based nationalistic feelings than to
control them and form them into constructive politics.
Literature
There is a rich, if not always reliable, literature on religion and politics in
Iran, particularly after the revolution of 1979. An interesting account of the
history of Iran is Fred Halliday's Iran: Dictatorship and Development
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). Iranian Shiism is well presented in Yann
Richard's Le shiisme en Iran: Imam et rkvolution (Paris: Maisonneuve,
1980) and L'islam chi'ite: Croyances et idkologies (Paris: Fayard, 1991).
Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985) provides a good background to the
recent developments in Iran, while Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah:
Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1985) is a
well-informed but somewhat biased account of the life of Khomeini. A
more recent work on the Islamic republic is Ervand Abrahamian,
Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1993).
There are many studies of the recent political development in
Afghanistan, but fewer on religious issues. Louis Dupree's Afghanistan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd edition, 1980) is a general
introduction to the country. A political overview is found in Anthony
Hyman, Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964-91 (London:
Macmillan, 3rd edition, 1992). Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) is a translation of Olivier
Roy's study of the role of Islam in recent political development,
L'Afghanistan: Islam et modernite' politique (Paris: Seuil, 1985). A more
recent work in this field is Asta Olesen's Islam and Politics in Afghanistan
(London: Curzon Press, 1995). Bo Utas' article 'Notes on Afghan Sufi
orders and khanaqahs', Afghanistan Journal, 7:2 (1980), pp. 60-67,
provides information on Sufi orders that is otherwise hard to find.
There is not much literature specifically on Tajikistan. However, Muriel
Atkin's The Subtle Battle: Islam in Soviet Tajikistan (Philadelphia: Foreign
Policy Research Institute, 1990) is a comprehensive study on Muslims in
this country. Some valuable information on Islam in Tajikistan can also be
found in books on Muslims in the Soviet Union, such as Shirin Akiner,
Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1986); Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quequejay, Les
musulmans oublie's: L'islam en Union sovie'tique (Paris: F. Maspero,
1981); and Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Mystics and
Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union (London: Hurst, 1985). A recent
broad work on Tajikistan is Tajikistan: The Trials of Independence, eds.
Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Frkdkric Grare and Shirin Akiner (London:
Curzon Press, 1998).
Chapter Nine
China
Justin Ben-Adam
Since the early 1980s, China has followed a liberal and pragmatic approach
to religious and cultural affairs among its over 18 million Muslim peoples
in the hope of encouraging stability and undermining nationalist move-
ments. With the fall of eastern European communism in 1989-90, however,
such stability has declined in the face of escalating Muslim ethnic
nationalism. In 1989, China's Muslims took to the streets of Beijing and
other major cities calling for the death of Salman Rushdie and protests were
conducted against the book Xing Fengsu (sexual customs), written by a
Han author who slanders the Islamic faith. In response the government
halted mosque construction and closed many Islamic schools. In April
1990, Turkic Muslim Uighurs and Kirghiz in Xinjiang rioted to protest
these anti-Islamic actions and over birth control policies causing the
government to airlift troops to intervene for the first time since the
Tiananmen protests in Beijing in 1989.
China's disaffected Muslims have increasingly resorted to violence and
rioting. In 1992 and 1993, a bus bombing in Urumchi and a bomb blast in
Kashgar claimed nine lives; and in 1995, Uighur worshippers rioted in
Khotan against police mistreatment. The government in 1996 extended its
'Strike Hard' anti-crime campaign by cracking down on Muslim 'national
splittist' (separatist) groups which resulted in a grave series of protests in Ili
during 1997 (one protest involved upwards of 5,000 people), where over 30
Muslim protesters were killed when police opened fire. Some Uighurs
responded by derailing a train filled with ethnic Hans, then bombed three
buses, killing twenty-three people, in the capital Urumchi to coincide with
the state funeral of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Some days later, Uighurs
in a daring move struck Beijing by bombing a city bus in the capital's busiest
shopping district. Muslim terror had struck China's leadership in their own
nest. By 1998, the Muslims of China, and particularly the Turkic Muslims
of Xinjiang, had become China's greatest security concern, surpassing even
Tibet.
This chapter focuses on China's two largest Muslim minorities, the Turkic
Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang and the Huis (Tungans or Chinese Muslims)
found throughout China. While these two ethnic groups are religiously and
Ben-Adam
culturally distinct, their lives within the Chinese state are remarkably similar.
Both ethnic minorities did not exist before the emergence of modern China
and are in fact creations of the modern Chinese state. Yet, they trace their
contact with, and history in, China to about the same time, the seventh to
ninth centuries. Both have been influenced by contacts with cultures beyond
China's borders and both show tremendous diversity if not divisions within
their present identities. The Huis and Uighurs have a history of interaction
which has defined, and continues to shape, notions of who they are as
Muslim peoples. Today, both share the same distinction of causing the
Chinese government tremendous concern.
The majority of the over 18 million Muslims of China live in Xinjiang
and are speakers of Turkic dialects that are mutually intelligible to one
degree or another. The 7.2 million Uighurs are the majority population of
Xinjiang, China's northwesternmost province. The Huis, also known as
Tungans, a non-Turkic people, are the largest of China's Muslim
nationalities who number 8.6 million throughout China and 682,900 in
Xinjiang, according to the 1990 census. The Huis, who trace their ancestry
to Arab Muslims but who are seen by most Turkic Muslims as Han converts
to Islam, are found in nearly every county in all of China's provinces. The
Huis have moved into Xinjiang in large numbers since the nineteenth
century and have formed an intermediary position between the Hans,
whose population in Xinjiang has grown from 250,000 to over 6 million
since 1949, and the Uighurs. In Xinjiang, many Huis are bilingual and live
in close proximity to the Uighurs.
The over 1.1million nomadic Kazaks, whose kin live across the Xinjiang
border in Central Asia's largest country Kazakstan, also play a strong
political role in Xinjiang. The other Muslim nationalities of China are
relatively small. In Xinjiang, the nomadic Kirghiz (141,900) who have kin
in Central Asia's most democratic country Kirghizstan, are culturally and
linguistically related to the Kazaks. The small number of Uzbeks (14,500)
in Xinjiang, whose kin live in Central Asia's most politically powerful
country Uzbekistan, are most culturally and linguistically similar to the
Uighurs as they are sedentary agriculturists who are heavily involved in
trade. The other minor Muslim ethnic groups of Xinjiang include the Tatars
(4,900), a Turkic people, and the Tajiks (33,500) who are Persian speaking
and distantly related to those in Tajikistan. Three other groups found
primarily in the northwest province of Gansu are Turkic peoples who speak
a combination of Turkic, Mongolian and Han Chinese dialects and include
the Bao'ans (12,200), Salars (87,700) and Dongxiangs (373,900).
Making Islamic nations in China

Although neither the Huis nor the Uighurs existed as nationalities prior to
the twentieth century, it is ironic that it was the Huis who were intimately
involved in the definition of the Uighur people in this century. Although the
Huis and the Uighurs are Muslims, there is a long history of animosity
between them because the Chinese historically utilised Hui troops and
officials to maintain their rule in Xinjiang. The Turkic Muslims viewed the
Huis as allies of the Han Chinese administration and thus as the enemies of
the Turkic Muslim peoples. Although this enmity and opposition helped the
Turkic Muslims envisage themselves as a single group, the Chinese
government gave this group its name, the Uighurs.
While scholars consistently trace the ethnic origin of the Uighurs to the
Uighur Empire (745-840) located in northwestern Mongolia, it was not until
the mid-1930s that the Chinese government, from the top down, defined the
modern Uighurs as oasis-dwelling Muslims of Xinjiang. Prior to 1935, the
name Uighur was not associated with Islam. Moreover, during the 500 years
between 1450-1935, the name Uighur ceased to be used as an ethnic label.
The identity became an historical undercurrent, part of a symbolic repertoire
that was redefined when the occasion presented itself in 1931. At that time
ethnic violence, caused by government disaffection, plunged Xinjiang into
profound ethnic turmoil. Hui armies from neighbouring Gansu province
invaded, and the rebellion against the Chinese government spread to the
southern rim of the Tarim Basin. The violence set the local Turkic population
in opposition to the Han Chinese and to the Huis. By the end of 1933,
Chinese authority in the region had virtually collapsed.
Chinese government officials, with the aid of Soviet advisors, defused the
tense inter-ethnic climate by applying the ethnic classification system used
in Soviet Central Asia. The Chinese defined the oasis dwellers of Xinjiang as
Uighurs under this process and the other significant ethnic groups were
defined as Kazaks, Tungans (Huis), and Hans. The Chinese government's
classification effectively drew a map within which the Uighurs already saw
themselves living. However, the use of the term 'Uighur' veiled over a whole
host of internal differences among the oases of the Tarim Basin.
In history, the large distances separating the individual Uighur oases
effectively held them in isolation from one another. Thus, Uighur oases
maintained separate and strong local identities despite their common
religion, language and culture. For example, Kashgar, historically the most
Islamically volatile oasis, came under the strong Islamic influence of
Samarkand and Bukhara to the west. The southern oasis of Khotan came
under the Buddhist influence of India. The highly secular northwest steppe
oasis of Ili was oriented toward Russia and has been a political threat to
Chinese control, and the Turpan oasis in the east has been focused towards
China throughout its history. This Turpan region for five centuries prior to
1450 was called Uighuristan and provided scholars, scribes, administrators
and advisors to Genghis Khan.
The definition of the Huis is as much or even more of a puzzle than that
of the Uighurs. The Huis have been defined by a process of elimination, one
Ben-Adam
that left them as the most numerous of the Muslim minorities of China.
This was not an accident. Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China,
delineated five peoples of China including the Han people, who make up 91
per cent of China's population today - the Tibetans, the Manchus, the
Mongols and the Muslims (Huis). This Hui grouping did not distinguish
between the ten Muslim minorities of China today. Under the communists,
Turkic nationalities and other mixed linguistic peoples such as the
Dongxiangs, Bao'ans or Salars were defined as non-Hui peoples. By default
the remaining peoples, those Muslims who were a minority within their
own majority, peoples such as Muslim Tibetans, Muslim Hans and Muslim
Mongols were defined as Huis. While many Huis claim descent from Arab
Muslims who lived in China over 1,000 years ago, Turkic Muslims perhaps
more accurately view them simply as Hans who converted to Islam and
who feel closer to their fellow Chinese-speaking Han people than they do to
their Muslim brothers. It has indeed been in China's best interest to define
the Huis, China's closest ally among the Muslim minorities and who are
most culturally and linguistically similar to the Hans, in a way that makes
them the most numerous of China's Muslim peoples.
The Huis are not considered an ethnic nationality anywhere in the
overseas Chinese communities outside China. In the Republic of China on
Taiwan, Huis are considered Hans who practice Islam. What then explains
the communist's definition of the Hui? It is clearly Han orientalism. The
Huis, as believers in a foreign religion, are exotic members of the Chinese
society. This is not the case for Chinese Buddhists because although
Buddhism is also a foreign religion, it became an intrinsic part of China's
identity. It must be asked why then are the Huis defined as a separate people
and the Chinese Jews or Chinese Christians are not separate nationalities in
modern China. In fact, Chinese Jews, distinguished for wearing blue skull-
caps, were once defined in terms of their traditional white skull-cap wearing
Muslim brothers as lan-mao Huihui, meaning 'the Muslims who wear blue
hats'.
The answer to this question lies in the meaning of the word Hui itself.
Historians relate the word Hui to 'Huihui', the Chinese name used over
1,000 years ago for the ancient Uighur people. It should be clarified that in
Central Asia, including Xinjiang, the Huis are known as Tungans
(Dungans) because the Russian word Hui refers to a sexual organ.
Nevertheless, the Chinese character for Hui, which in the modern Chinese
language means 'to return', is a key to our understanding. The character for
Hui is a box within a box. The box symbolises a nation, and thus the
character for Hui indicates a nation within a nation. The character is most
suitable for the Huis because for the most part those who convert or
become Muslims in China do not separate themselves from Chinese society.
Instead they occupy a niche within society. The character 'Hui' may also
symbolise the internal quest to find the kingdom of God within oneself.
The decorated prayer hall of the mosque at Ox Street (Niu Jie) in Beijing,
where Arabic calligraphy is combined with traditional Chinese
chrysanthemum patterns (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1986).
The Huis almost always resemble the society within which they live, be it
Han, Tibetan, Mongol. They are like the Niujie mosque in Beijing, which is
Chinese in form on the outside and Islamic on the inside. It is important to
note that, likewise, the Huis, particularly the majority that resemble the
Hans, do not view themselves as opposed to Chinese cultural values as do the
Uighurs. Instead the Huis maintain a different internal life by rejecting pork
and alcohol consumption, and by practicing Islam. For this Han exterior and
Muslim internal practices they have also faced mistrust, not only by the
greater Han society, but by other Muslims such as Turkic and Arab peoples.
In the terminology of the Chinese Muslims, those that mistrust the Huis view
them as bugou qingzhen, not sufficiently pure and true.
The term qingzhen, literally 'pure and true', is akin to hula1 or kosher in
the sense that it refers to those aspects that contribute to a spiritually whole
Muslim life. Food, restaurants and lifestyle are all referred to as qingzhen.
Some scholars see the term qingzhen turning the tables on Confucian
society by claiming that Islam is the pure and true faith, not Confucianism.
However, qingzhen is more correctly viewed as a justification to
Confucians, one that attempts to make the faith acceptable to the
Confucian tlite. Similarly, the Chinese Jews justified their faith to Chinese
Ben-Adam
society in completely Confucian terms. Qingzhen is also an assertion to

Arab and other Muslims that the Chinese Muslims are true believers. Such
an assertion still must be frequently made when Huis go on hajj
(pilgrimage) to Mecca. Uighurs claim that during the hajj the Huis are
seen as bugou qingzhen by their co-religionists.
The anthropologist Dru Gladney, an authority on the Huis, has used
qingzhen as an analytical trope to understand the purity (qing)of Hui belief
and the truth (zhen)of their ancestry. But the reverse is more appropriate.
Precisely, the Huis are concerned with the purity (qing) of their ancestral
lines and the truth (zhen) of the faith that one holds within. Ancestries,
peoples that maintain genealogies know, are constructed and manipulated
by each generation. So the 'truth' of one's ancestry is not as important as
maintaining the 'purity' of one's relations, that is Muslims versus Hans.
Qingzhen can also have different interpretations. The word qing can be
read as 'clear', so it could also mean 'one must see through the outside of
the person, the Han-like exterior, to see the truth of a Hui's heart and
convictions'. The term qingzhen is most likely a product of the zealotry of
the Han convert to Islam. It is a fervent assertion to Chinese society and to
Muslims around the world that though they may look bugou qingzhen on
the outside, internally their ancestry is pure and their belief is true.
Muslim identities behind the veil

The modern definitions of the Uighurs and Huis veil the great diversity
within the societies of these two Muslim peoples. Within the Huis,
communities vary from those religiously observant to those that are
considered Huis simply because they do not use pork in the ritual worship
of their ancestors or because the Chinese traditional genealogies they
maintain reveal their distant Muslim backgrounds. For the Uighurs,
traditional aspects of Uighur society that have existed since 840 go
unrecognised by the current definition of the Uighurs, for example it does
not account for strong local oasis identities. Most importantly, both the
Uighur and Hui identities obscure the very different strategies that each
locality historically employed to respond to political, social, economic and
geographical forces.
Historically, contacts across the borders of Xinjiang were much more
frequent and important than those between the oases themselves. In the
past, people covered the distances between oases so slowly that the oases
populations remained isolated from one another. This historical legacy of
oasis division carries over into local conceptions of Uighur identity today;
Uighurs identify themselves according to the oasis in which they live. In the
modern period, the Chinese government weakened the relations between
individual oases and the peoples and cultures lying outside today's borders
by radically turning Xinjiang's focus inward. The most important changes
after 1949 were communist China's policy of cutting Xinjiang's cross-
border ties, linking Xinjiang's economic development with China, and
sending millions of Hans to Xinjiang to help in that development. For the
first time in their history, the inhabitants of the Xinjiang oases were
completely isolated from their historical, religious, kin and economic ties.
The imposed internal focus became a crucial factor in the coalescing of the
modern Uighur identity.
The opening of the borders in 1985 reversed the focus of the oases, once
again turning their economic, political, social and cultural ties from
Urumchi and China to their neighbours across the borders. When China
opened Xinjiang's borders in 1985, foreign business, trade and tourism
began to develop along traditional oasis lines. In the 1930s many Uighurs
from Hami (Qomul), Turpan and Khotan fled to India and settled in
Pakistan. Many are now re-establishing trade relationships with their cross-
border kin there. Uighurs from Soviet Central Asia visit relatives and a
small number of Pakistani merchants conduct business in Kashgar. Japanese
tourists flock to Turpan to see the Silk Road and make Buddhist pilgrimages
to religious sites. Many young Uighur donkey-cart drivers who take
Japanese tourists on bumpy rides to historical sites startle their guests by
speaking to them in near-fluent Japanese.
Delegations from Turkey now visit Xinjiang, inspiring pan-Turkist
aspirations and the growing Islamic movement in Xinjiang. Uighur officials
who appear on television seemingly are able to discuss issues with their
Turkish counterparts without the aid of interpreters. In 1992, a railroad
from Xinjiang was connected to the Kazakstan border and Aeroflot flies
from Urumchi's airport. There have been numerous trade, technical and
cultural exchanges from the Central Asian republics. In Xinjiang depart-
ment stores, western Central Asians stare, wide-mouthed and in disbelief at
the teeming shelves. Xinjiang is helping Central Asian republics build light
industries that are in short supply there. Uighurs in Urumchi are studying
Russian intensively to take advantage of better ties with Russia and the
Central Asian republics. Han Chinese, on the other hand, think it best to
study English because they see little hope for Russia and hope to go to the
West instead.
In a comprehensive study on the Huis, Dru Gladney describes the
tremendous diversity of the Huis by concentrating on four specific
communities. According to the Hui charter of origin, they are descendants
of foreign Muslim merchants, militia and officials. However, it is ironic that
only those Huis who live along the southern coast of China, who no longer
practice Islam and are the most assimilated, maintain lineage records that
preserve their families' distant origins. The most religious Huis who live in
the predominantly Muslim Gansu and Ningxia provinces that lie near
Xinjiang, do not maintain genealogies and thus cannot prove deep Islamic
roots. Such differences are not surprising when one considers the influence
Ben-Adam
of geography and cultural interaction which historically has had a profound

effect on the communities now defined as Hui.
Ancestry written in stone

In the city of Quanzhou in Fujian lives a Hui community that is so
assimilated into the local Han culture that they do not practice Islam but
claim Hui ethnicity because they can trace their foreign Islamic ancestry
through 1,300-year-old tombstones. Lineage records also preserve this
historical connection. Because of their non-Islamic practice, the government
first classified them as Hans, but reclassified them in 1979 as Huis because
of their historical ethnic claims. Most Huis do not maintain genealogies, as
this is more commonly a southern Han practice. Thus, the assimilation to
Fujian Han culture saved the memory of Muslim ancestry for the Huis
there. The same is true for the 5,000 Uighurs who live in Mao Zedong's
Hunan province. Their founding ancestor, an Uighur military commander
from Turpan stationed in Beijing, was sent to Hunan in the mid-1300s, with
the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. Though they do not resemble
the Uighur Turks nor practice Islam, the genealogies they maintained
following Han custom preserved their identity for over 600 years.
Of all of China's minority ethnic groups, the Huis are the most
urbanised. In cities such as Beijing, where Huis live among Hans who are
nearly identical to them culturally and linguistically, they focus on what can
be called a qingzhen lifestyle, which differentiates them from the Hans.
Food, namely pork abstention, is what most separates the Huis from the
Hans. The Hui have a profound revulsion of pork, the principal meat
consumed by Hans, and pork, as opposed to alcohol or cigarettes, is the
main taboo for the urban-dwelling Huis. Urban homes of the Hui have little
to distinguish them from Han homes except perhaps for an Islamic
calendar. As urban Huis and Hans are indistinguishable in dress, Han
beggar children frequently besiege foreign visitors to Beijing's mosques,
who assume them to be Muslims. Mosque caretakers frighten these children
away and accuse the Han children of exploiting Muslim charity.
Very little historical documentation is presented of Hans embracing Islam
to become a non-Han people. Perhaps this is because those that embraced
the Islamic faith were considered Hans who worshipped Islam and not a
people apart. The historical records of the Uighur embrace of Islam,
however, is extremely well documented; it took nearly 500 years for most to
become Muslims. The first Uighur embraced the faith in Kashgar around
950, and the last holdouts were the Uighurs in Turpan as late as 1450. In
contrast, it is likely that there was a blurring between the boundaries
separating Hans and Chinese Muslims especially over the past 1,300 years
of contact in urban areas. Today in China it appears that a Hui who ceases
to be a believer is still a Hui and not a Han, but this might not have been the
case before the communist take-over. We do not know whether non-
practicing Huis will become Hans after several generations, especially
among those who intermarry or who do not maintain genealogies. There are
Hans who do marry into Hui families in order to gain power and trade
connections among entrepreneurial families. Some Han men find it easier to
embrace Islam in urban areas such as Beijing since most urban Hui men do
not practice Islam with much devotion if at all.
Outside urban locales where Huis live in the midst of Hans, in rural
areas Huis have created for themselves isolated ethnic enclaves making
what could be called 'qingzhen islands in a pork infested sea'. Such enclaves
replicate the nation within a nation symbolised by the Chinese character for
Hui. Some of these communities have been designated as 'Hui autonomous
villages' where Huis maintain their identity through intra-enclave
endogamy, an extremely unusual practice among Chinese Muslims who
prefer to increase their kinship, social and economic networks through
outmarriage. Unlike the southern communities, Muslim families in Hui
villages outside Beijing are unable to trace their ancestral origins prior to
four or five generations ago. However, to maintain the belief that their
community has had an uninterrupted descent from Hui ancestry, they
engage in endogamy by not marrying daughters to non-Hui. Most
surprisingly, they do marry with others of the same surname, a practice
taboo in Han society. These Huis prefer close marriage with their relations
though they prohibit intermarriage with anyone that is a close relative
within five generations.
Islamisrn and Sufism

The region of China where Islamic 'fundamentalism' is on the rise is the
northwestern provinces of Ningxia and Gansu, where geography has been a
strong force in determining Islamic identity. In these communities there is
very little record of foreign Muslim ancestry, but their Hui identity is
fervently expressed in Islamic practice. Thus, these Huis principally
interacted for many hundreds of years with Turkic Muslims who
maintained that the Huis were not sufficiently Muslim. Thus these Huis
have needed to demonstrate their Islamic piety to outside Muslims through
fervent practice. Some consider the Hui religious conservatism here to be
the result of Han conversion to Islam and attribute the Islamism they
display to the zealotry that converts typically exhibit.
Such communities have also been greatly influenced by Sufi orders from
areas west of Xinjiang. When various Sufi teachings spread from the Middle
East through Central Asia, Muslims in the northwest accepted various
schools of teaching as a strategy to identify with Muslims from outside
China and thus increase their Islamic prestige in comparison with Turkic
Muslims in Xinjiang. Though these Muslims could not trace their family
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ancestry to foreign Muslims, they could trace the lineage of their Sufi
practices to the Islamic heartland of the Middle East. These communities
are now also conceiving of themselves in more international religious terms
by soliciting closer ties with foreign Muslim countries to secure loans for
economic development projects. The Chinese government also exploits
these more religious Huis by sending them as representatives to Muslim
nations to help improve Chinese relations with the Muslim world.
The Sufi orders spread from Central Asia into Xinjiang in the early
fifteenth century. Sufism's influence only arrived to the Hui communities in
China in the late seventeenth century. Sufi institutions or menhuan, which
are economic, social, religious and political in nature, were built around the
descent groups of early Sufi leaders, those who achieved saintly status.
Tombs of Sufi saints were treated as shrines, centres of religious veneration
and activity. The strongest of the Sufi paths emphasising the veneration of
saints that influenced both the Uighurs and the Huis was the Naqshbandi
order, founded in Central Asia in the fourteenth century. After gaining
ascendancy in Xinjiang among the Uighurs in the fifteenth century, this
order spread among the Hui communities in Gansu through the influence of
Kashgar leader Appaq Khoja (d. 1694). The Qadiri order was one of the
earliest to appeal to the Hui communities of China. This brotherhood
combined ascetic mysticism with non-institutionalised worship. Its focus on
the tombs of saints rather than on mosques, emphasised self-cultivation
through the paths of meditation, poverty and celibacy to achieve a mystical
experience of the oneness of Allah within each believer. As such this de-
emphasised the five pillars of traditional Islam that called for fasting,
pilgrimage to Mecca, alms and recitation of the shahada (creed) in favour of
a mystical inner search.
The Naqshbandi order was committed to social reform through political
action leading them into conflict with Manchu-ruled China. The Jahriyya
branch of the Naqshbandiyya, which utilised vocal meditation in their
dhikr ('remembrance', worship), particularly resisted Qing rule advocating
Islamic militarism and organising armed uprisings against them. Jahriyya
rebellions against the Qing led to the Yakub Beg rebellion 1864-77 which
expelled the Chinese government from Xinjiang. The Khufiyya branch,
which found its greatest influence in Ningxia, utilised silent meditation in
their dhikr and bodily swaying during voiced chanting. It emphasised the
veneration of saints and active participation in society rather than ascetic
retreat.
Throughout their history, members of the various Sufi orders have worn
distinctive attire to differentiate themselves. They do so either through
wearing specific skull caps or by shaving the sides of their beards. Those
that join a particular Sufi order will remain highly loyal to that order. Sufi
orders, with their high degree of organisation and extensive networks, have
provided unity and a strong collective response when faced with social
crises. It can be argued that Sufi orders have, in fact, allowed for the
economic and political survival of Huis and Uighurs throughout China.
Islam communist style - the Xinjiang example

As part of the Chinese communists' desire to improve relations with
Muslim countries, the government actually encourages Muslim party
officials to participate in religious events, justifying its policy by asserting
that such events are part of ethnic 'tradition' and separate from religious
beliefs that contradict communist doctrine. As part of this policy, the
government even provides financial support for members of the Muslim
party ilite so that they may be able to make the hajj to Mecca, considered
by intellectuals to be linked more to ethnic cultural tradition than to
religion, and thereby increase their prestige and influence at local level. The
Chinese government has dramatically reversed its earlier attempts at
cultural subversion. The communists have concluded that a controlled
'revival' of cultural and religious affairs would encourage stability and
economic development among Muslims and at the same time undermine
Muslim nationalist movements and anti-government protests. Religious
freedoms have brought about the reopening of mosques and a flurry of
mosque construction. Religious leaders again officiate at Islamic weddings,
and the Quran and other Islamic texts are once again sold openly.
In Xinjiang, Islam permeates all realms of Uighur life - political, social
and economic. In fact, the term Muslim (Musulman)is not only a reference
for a religious person, but is used to refer to all native Central Asians. Thus,
to call oneself an Uighur is also to accept Islam. Even Uighur intellectuals
who are against Islamic traditionalism and its resurgence consider
themselves Muslim and take part in Islamic cultural practices. Here there
is a clear symbiosis between national and religious identity. Although Islam
separates the Uighurs and Hans, both religiously and ideologically, Chinese
liberalisation policies related to religion have fostered positive sentiments
toward the Chinese government among Turpan Uighurs. This reaction
contrasts markedly with that of Uighurs in Kashgar who, over time, have
tenaciously held to anti-Chinese sentiments. Kashgar Uighurs have less land
for grape and cotton cultivation and have therefore not experienced the
same economic growth. Although the Chinese government plays up the
Islamic threat in Xinjiang, there is only one volatile Islamic centre that
historically incited many rebellions against Chinese rule. This is the oasis of
Kashgar. Even today anti-Han sentiment is still stronger in Kashgar than in
any other Uighur oasis mainly as a result of its religious tradition.
In general, Islamic life in the south, particularly in Kashgar, is more
conservative. Women, for example, are completely veiled in brown cloth, in
contrast to women in Turpan, who wear only head-scarves. In addition,
precisely because of the strong anti-Chinese sentiment in Kashgar, the
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The resurrection sura from a Chinese translation of the Quran, published in

1981.
Chinese government has regulated religious education and mosque

construction more strictly. In contrast, the Chinese view Turpan citizens
as more trustworthy than those of oases to the south. Chinese officials
appear to believe that the growth of Islam in Turpan, a historically quiet
region, is less likely to produce anti-Chinese disturbances than in the
western oases.
Muslim rituals influence all realms of Uighur life. The most powerful
ritual for Uighur males is circumcision, which takes place at the age of
seven, when children are old enough to understand at least some of the
religious significance of the ritual. The Islamic ritual calendar also
reinforces a strong Islamic identity at the local level. By and large, the
older Uighur generation is more devout, observing all the events and
requirements of the Islamic ritual calendar. In contrast, a number of
younger Uighurs, those under forty, do not observe the month-long fast
during Ramadan, but their numbers are diminishing as Islam gains in
popularity. As a result of Islam's growth, the influence of the more
conservative elders at the village level has also grown. Increasingly, Uighurs
decorate their homes and restaurants with posters depicting religious rather
than political themes. Religious posters, such as those depicting Mecca, are
sold only in Urumchi and Kashgar, since Urumchi is central to all Muslim
minorities in Xinjiang and Kashgar is the Uighur Mecca. The posters
reinforce consciousness of the Muslim symbols and spur their mission to
multiply the followers of the faith.
The strong local oasis identities in Xinjiang, so characteristic of the
region prior to the 1930s, have puzzled Central Asian scholars. It is clear,
however, that the geographic isolation of the oases from one another has
caused them to develop their own internal oasis culture based on the unique
ways they celebrate different occasions and rituals within Uighur culture
and Islamic and folk religious practice. In Turpan, there is a resurgence and
strengthening of Islam resulting in the increase in power of mullas, the local
religious leaders. Mullas, in new positions of influence, have taken the
opportunity to voice their fervent opposition to certain Uighur social
practices that have gained popularity in the villages, particularly the
drinking of alcoholic beverages and mixed-couple dancing to waltzes and
fox-trots. Mullas have threatened to refuse Islamic burials for those who
allow such 'un-Islamic' behaviour.
Islamic education in Turpan has increased and, consequently, so has the
prestige of local mullas. Outside the mosques, Qurans and other Islamic
books and pamphlets of various complexity are sold. Some of the
pamphlets use illustrations to teach people how to wash and pray, others
list all the saints and holy people mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New
Testament and the Quran. In general, there are materials sufficient to
educate and reinforce the understanding of the followers of Islam in China.
Before many Uighur children enter elementary school they receive
instruction on saying Islamic prayers. If a child is educated for only five
years in secular schools, he or she will normally be sent to schools run in the
home of a religious leader for an additional three years of Quranic
instruction.
Although the government has laws against the Islamic education of
minors, which includes those under eighteen years, children between ages
thirteen and eighteen attend small Quranic schools. Uighur officials look
the other way at these violations, reluctant to be viewed negatively by
fellow Uighurs, and Han officials do not want to enforce unpopular laws in
a region that has been historically calm and stable. A large factor
influencing the growth of Islamic education is the cost of secular education.
Students throughout Xinjiang who attend secular colleges now have to pay
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tuition. Furthermore, since the government no longer places all graduates,

students are no longer guaranteed employment. Thus, Uighur peasants do
not consider secular education, specifically college education, a viable
option for their children, further contributing to the rise in prestige of
Islamic education.
Folk religious practice

While the traditional Islamic practices differ to a slight degree among the
oases of Xinjiang, the degree, type and frequency of folk religious practices
vary tremendously. Such practices are widely conducted among the Uighurs
and serve to foster a strong and unique religious identity. Outside of
orthodox Islamic ritual, these folk practices permeate most Uighur rituals.
They deal mainly with warding off jinn (evil spirits). In Uighur villages it is
common to see pouches wrapped in coloured thread hanging from
branches. These are called qonchaq and are used to ward off jinns. Mullas
instruct people who suffer from illness or bodily pain to place qonchaq in
trees. Uighurs believe that misfortune is caused by spirits of people who
have died, sometimes at a young age because of a jinn-caused illness. The
most orthodox religious leaders are opposed to qonchaq and other amulets,
called tomar and koz monchaq, that protect against the evil eye. Tomar are
triangular leather pouches with Islamic prayers written on paper inside.
Koz monchaq are round black plastic balls, the size of cherry pits, with
white dots all over them. They are worn by children and sewn into women's
garments to ward off the evil eye.
Uighurs today also use fire to ward off jinns. Fire is used in childhood
rites, wedding ceremonies and cemeteries. During the bii~hiik toy, the
swaddling ceremony of a newborn infant, a religious leader waves a flaming
stick above the baby to purify it and to ward off jinns. Some Uighur families
place an unsheathed knife in the crib of their baby for the same purpose.
Fire is also used during the wedding ceremony. When the bride is brought
from her parent's home to the groom's home a fire burns in the road and the
vehicle carrying her drives over the fire. In some ceremonies, when the bride
is transported by a horse-drawn cart, the cart is led around the fire seven
times, seven being a holy Muslim number. A fire is also placed in a ladle
inside the entrance to the groom's home, and the bride steps over this upon
her arrival.
The incorporation of folk religious practices in Uighur life-transition
rituals is seen clearly during death and birth rituals. In cemeteries, jars of
paper and medicine are burned on top of, or near, tombs in Uighur
cemeteries to appease the spirit of the dead. Jars of medicines ineffective in
treating patients before they died are used indicating familial intentions to
have tried to their best ability to bring health to the deceased when he or she
was still alive and, once dead, to restore health to the spirit of the deceased
in the afterlife. After a child's birth, parents bury the newborn's afterbirth in
the mud wall of the house but never tell the child where. Uighurs in Turpan
believe that if the afterbirth is simply disposed of or buried in the ground, the
child's eyes will always be cast down. Likewise, if the afterbirth is buried too
high in the wall, the child will constantly look upwards. Thus, it is buried at
adult eye-level and, because of Turpan's arid environment, the afterbirths
dry and do not rot. The afterbirth is called hamra, meaning companion, and
is seen as the constant companion of an individual through life. Hans were
surprised and considered such a practice a waste since they know it to have a
health benefit and so make the afterbirth into medicine or simply eat it.
Ethnic Borders
The home, mosque and to some extent food establishments are ethnic
borders that are rarely crossed by Hans, Uighurs and Huis. These social
borders may appear invisible from the outside, but they become salient in
structuring inter-ethnic social, religious and commercial interactions. Hans
and Uighurs rarely mix socially at each other's homes. Because Hans eat
pork, Uighurs will not eat in their homes. Hans feel uncomfortable being in
Uighur homes as they feel their lack of knowledge of Uighur social customs
may offend their hosts. Furthermore, Hans in general do not like the taste
of mutton which is the staple meat eaten by the Uighurs. Hans rarely eat at
Uighur food restaurants, believing that the Uighur restaurants are not as
clean as Hui ones. While Uighurs will eat at Hui restaurants, they never buy
meat from a Hui butcher, mistrusting its purity. In fact, mistrust of Hui
religious observance gave rise to teacher protests in Turpan in 1989. Two
Huis were hired by Han officials to manage the Muslim dining hall at the
Turpan Teachers Training Academy, but Uighur teachers refused to eat,
mistrusting the purity of the food.
While marriages between Uighurs and Huis are rare, marriages between
Hans and Uighurs are almost unheard of. In Turpan, Uighurs hold
weddings on Sundays and Huis hold weddings on Saturdays, enabling each
to attend the other's weddings. Hans only attend Uighur and Hui weddings
in the capacity of work supervisors. Their visits are generally short,
obligatory appearances. The rare instances of marriage between Hans and
Uighurs have occurred mostly among students who had gone to China
proper for their education. These Uighurs are invariably disowned or told
not to return to Xinjiang. Children of mixed Han and Uighur parentage,
known in Mandarin as erzhuanzi, and in Uighur as piryotki (from Russian)
are stigmatised; they are not allowed to attend Uighur funerals, have
difficulty finding marriage partners, and are confronted with mistrust
throughout their lives.
The Huis have been an integral part of the political map of Xinjiang
since the mid-nineteenth century. Although the Uighurs and Huis are both
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Muslim, there is a surprising separation in their religious practices. Huis

pray in separate mosques and maintain separate Islamic schools.
Furthermore, they revere different Islamic saints. While the chief Islamic
festival for Huis is Roza Heyt, the end of the Ramadan fast, the hajj
pilgrimage festival Qurban Heyt remains the chief festival for the Uighurs.
Huis have lived in Turpan in large numbers for over seven generations and
have been the central vehicle for fostering positive Uighur sentiments
toward the Hans.
Sharing Islam with the Uighurs and the Mandarin language with the
Hans, the Huis are the ideal cultural intermediaries between the two. For
the most part, relations in Turpan between Huis and Uighurs have been
good. Huis show respect for Uighur customs and society. Huis also serve as
intermediaries for Uighurs and Hans in Mandarin language instruction at
Uighur schools. Both Hui and Uighur school teachers serve to ameliorate
inter-ethnic tensions in their roles as agents of acculturation for the Chinese
state. Hui teachers in Uighur schools stress the importance of being a good
student of the Chinese nationality, emphasising citizenship in the Chinese
state.
The intermediate status of the Huis in Han-Uighur relations some-
times results in ethnic tensions. It is not unusual for Huis, Hans and
Uighurs to have difficulty distinguishing themselves from one another.
This is especially so whenever Uighurs encounter Huis and assume they
are Hans. Although the Hans and Huis often speak the same language,
some Hans feel that Huis are dishonest and fear that because Huis are
Muslims they might turn on Hans. Uighurs, on the other hand, express
this same view but in reverse: they fear that the Huis will side with the
Hans with whom they share both language and culture. Uighurs use the
expression tawuz (watermelon) to refer to the Huis because they wobble
between siding with the Uighurs on one issue and with the Hans on
another. Some Uighurs even claim that the Huis are actually half Han and
thus impure in their Muslim observance, as Hans do not practice the
Islamic faith.
The increasing economic opportunities in Turpan have resulted in
positive sentiments of the Uighur peasantry toward the Chinese government
and Han Chinese in general. Peasants are relatively pleased with the
religious, economic and cultural changes introduced by the government and
are optimistic about the future. This attitude is a stark change from years
past caused by the heavy influx of Han Chinese to the region beginning in
the early 1960s. The majority of Hans in Xinjiang settled outside Uighur
areas, and the ensuing division of towns into Uighur and non-Uighur areas
exacerbated misunderstandings. Hans claim this settlement pattern allowed
the Uighurs to continue their way of life without Han interference. To many
Uighurs, however, this pattern was perceived as an encirclement. Uighurs
increasingly saw the Han Chinese as their opponents.
An Uighur anti-drugs poster.
Uighur perceptions of Han Chinese as the oppressor who are always in

dominant positions over the Uighurs changed since 1987 as an estimated
250,000 'self-drifter' Hans have poured into Xinjiang each year to look for
work. Han 'self-drifters' enter Xinjiang on their own without official
government permission in search of economic opportunity and many are
hired as day workers by Uighurs. The traditional Han perception of
Xinjiang as a bitter and cruel place has changed dramatically. Hans in
China proper perceive Xinjiang as the land of plenty and opportunity. They
believe there is much money to be made there. In general, Uighur peasants
in Turpan do not harbour the strong resentment toward Hans found
among Uighurs in other oases. Instead, they see themselves on the same
socio-economic level or on even a higher level. Some of the new Han
immigrant 'self-drifters' are so impoverished that they roam Uighur
translated into Uighur in 1988 and 1989, was a best seller in the region.
This fascination with Hitler does not appear related to Uighur anti-
Semitism. Many Uighurs, like most people throughout China, view Jewish
people in a positive light and admire Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Henry
Kissinger. Though Uighurs may express admiration for Jews, considering
them the 'sons of Israel' (bani Israil), or disdain, viewing them as the
'enemies of God' (Hudaning diishmani), few Uighurs are aware of the
atrocities the Nazis committed against Jews and other groups including
gypsies and homosexuals.
Uighur intellectuals have created various historiographies of their people
and for this region, some of which have proven to be popular while some
have not. The Uighurs are manipulating history to create Uighur ethnic
identity and unity. In attempts to claim a grand past, they use elements from
myths and legends, treating these as historical facts. Some Uighurs have
redefined their history through the adoption of collective myths which tell
of Uighur superiority over Hans. Symbolic formulations and mythologies of
origin and descent are socially constructed ideologies by which the Uighurs
confront the Chinese state. Some of these myths, involving the early origin
of the Uighurs, maintain that they settled in the Tarim Basin before it
became a desert over 8,000 years ago. In these stories, ancestors of the
Uighurs moved to the northwest Mongolian steppe when the Tarim Basin
became desiccated and then returned to the oases with the fall of the Uighur
Empire in 840 CE. Such Uighurs claim to have a civilisation that is 3,000
years older than China's which gives them the rightful claim to their own
independent homeland.
Kashgar intellectuals have attempted to stir the nationalistic sentiments
of Uighurs by disseminating information about ancient historical figures
from Kashgar such as Mahmud Qashqari, the eleventh-century scholar, and
Satuq Bughra Khan, who in the tenth century became the first Xinjiang
Turkic leader to embrace the Islamic faith. But it was found that neither
figure became a symbol strong enough to embody the nationalist spirit of
Kashgar. A different approach was developed by Kashgarlik Turghun Almas
in his 1990 book Uighurlar (The Uighurs). Turghun Almas' book claimed a
6,000-year history for the Uighurs and had a stylised wolf motif on its cover,
a blatant pan-Turkic symbol. One week after the book reached the book
stores in February 1990 it was banned and removed. Turghun remains
under virtual house arrest in a weary and broken condition. The book's
popularity soared as it passed secretly from reader to reader. The
government reacted by distributing a pamphlet, entitled 'The One Hundred
Mistakes of Turghun Almas' Uighurlar', throughout Xinjiang. However, the
government's efforts achieved the opposite of their intended one. Many
more Uighurs were exposed to Turghun Almas' ideas than could have been
possible by obtaining copies of the original banned book and many Uighurs,
Huis and even Hans found Turghun's historical account very compelling.
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Dancing Uighurs in Xinjiang (photo: Justin Ben-Adam, 1989).
Such constructions of mythologies and ideologies like the Uighur

fascination with Hitler are best understood as passive forms of resistance
and as symbolic means of confrontation. Uighurs feel powerless in
Xinjiang. Though the Xinjiang province is officially called the Xinjiang
Uighur Autonomous Region, Uighur autonomy is questionable. Given the
immigration of millions of Han Chinese, Uighurs are quickly becoming a
minority nationality within their own province. While there are periodic
riots and fist fights between Uighurs and Hans, resistance against Chinese
government control generally is passive, often taking the form of verbal
attacks, such as jokes and curses, against the government and Hans. One
Uighur denigrated the significance of Han Chinese culture for the Uighurs
by pointing to the example of the Great Wall: 'The Chinese take immense
pride in the Great Wall. But think of it. It was built to keep us Uighurs out.'
Besides passive verbal attacks, few other means of protest have been
viable for the Muslims in China. Written protests lead to arrests, marches
are broken up, riots are swiftly cracked down upon and can result in deaths.
Some have found that the use of bombs in Xinjiang and in Beijing are an
effective means of letting others become aware of, if not share, their pain.
Perhaps such terrorist tactics will drive the communist leadership into the
more peaceful arms of the much abused Tibetans and their spiritual leader,
the Dalai Lama, who preaches compassion in exile. But as Uighur
separatists resort to bus bombings of daring and lethal proportions, the
Chinese government may realise that even more liberal policies for its
Muslim peoples, including symbolic confrontations and the changes they
bring, are preferable to a reign of Muslim terror.
Literature
For a bibliographical survey, see Raphael Israel, Islam in China: A Critical
Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994). A classical
study of Chinese Muslims is Marshall Broomhall, Islam in China: A
Neglected Problem (London: Morgan and Scott, 1910). See also Donald
Daniel Leslie, Islam in Traditional China (Belconnen, ACT: Canberra
College of Advanced Studies, 1986) and Barbara L.K. Pillsbury, 'The 1300-
Year Chronology of Muslim History in China', Journal: Institute of Muslim
Minority Affairs, 3:2 (198 I ) , pp. 19-29. Cultural perspectives of Muslim
ethnic identies are discussed in Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic
Nationalism in the People's Republic of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1991); Wang Jianping, Concord and Conflict: the Hui
Communities of Yunnan Society (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell
International, 1996); Justin Jon Rudelson (Ben-Adam), Oasis Identities:
Uyghur Nationalism along China's Silk Road (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1998); and Linda Benson and Ingvar Svanberg, China's
Last Nomads: Culture and History of China's Kazaks (Armonk, NY: M.E.
Sharpe, 1998). Dru Gladney has recently also published Dislocating China:
Muslims, Minorities and Other Sub-altern Subjects (London: Hurst, 1997).
See further Dru Gladney, 'The Ethnogenesis of the Uighur', Central Asian
Survey, 9:1 (1990), pp. 1-28, and Justin Rudelson, 'Uighur Historiography
and Uighur Ethnic Nationalism', pp. 63-82 in Ethnicity, Minorities, and
Cultural Encounters, ed. Ingvar Svanberg (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic
Studies, 1992). Muslim and non-Muslim relations in China are dealt with
in Raphael Israeli, Muslims in China: A Study in Cultural Confrontation
(London: Curzon, 1980); Barbara Pillsbury, Cohesion and Cleavage in a
Chinese Muslim Minority (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1973); Linda
Benson, The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in
Xinjiang 1944-49 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1990); and Jonathan
Lipman, 'Hans and Huis in Gansu, 1781-1929', in Violence in China:
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Essays in Culture and Counterculture, eds. Jonathan N. Lipman and Stevan

Harrell (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). Sufism and
minor Muslim groups are discussed briefly in Raphael Israeli, 'The
Naqshbandiyya and Factionalism in Chinese Islam', pp. 575-87 in
Naqshbandis: Cheminements et situation actuelle d'un ordre mystique
musulman, eds. Marc Gaborieau, Aleksandre Popovik and Thierry
Zarcone, Varia Turcica, XVIII (Istanbul and Paris: Institut Franfais
d'Etudes Anatoliennes d'Istanbu1, 1990); Fran~oiseAubin, 'La Chine',
pp. 261-67 in Les voies d'Allah: Les ordres mystiques duns l'islam dds
origines a aujourd'hui, eds. Alexandre Popovik and Gilles Veinstein (Paris:
Fayard, 1996); and Raphael Israel, 'Is there Shi'a in Chinese Islam', Journal:
Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 9:2 (1988), pp. 49-66.
Chapter Ten
South Asia
Ishtiaq Ahmed
South Asia covers more than 4 million square kilometres, consisting mostly
of the land mass of the Indian subcontinent and some islands in the Indian
ocean. Currently there are five states on the mainland. These are Pakistan,
India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. The island states of Sri Lanka and
the tiny Maldives also belong to South Asia in an ethno-cultural and
geographical sense.
Although Muslims are to be found in all parts of South Asia, most of
them are concentrated in its northwestern (Pakistan) and northeastern
(Bangladesh) zones. Out of an estimated total population of 1,274 million,
Muslims make up some 360 million. The overwhelming majority are Sunnis
who can be distinguished between, on the one hand, the preponderate
Hanafi school of orthodox rites which entered South Asia in the wake of
successful invasions launched from the northwest by Muslim armies and,
on the other hand, the almost imperceptible growth of the Shafii school
along the Malabar coast in southern India and in Sri Lanka. Its origins can
be traced to small colonies established by Arab traders and sailors who
spread their faith among local people and intermarried with them. It also
established itself in the Maldives. A significant Shia minority is also to be
found, dispersed mainly in the northern and northwestern parts of the
subcontinent. The Sunni are divided into several subgroups. Sunni-Shia
hostility has been a regular feature of South Asian history, but even among
Sunni subgroups considerable doctrinal disagreements exist. Such conflicts
can at times result in violent confrontations between zealots of the various
organisations. There are also religious entities such as the Ahmadiyya and
Zikris which in recent years have been attacked by the orthodox ulama
(Muslim scholars) for holding views allegedly outside the pale of Islam
altogether, notwithstanding their own claim to being Muslims.
South Asian Islam presents a variegated and complex structure, formed
and tempered in the context of the historical process. It possesses typical
features of the core Arabic-Islamic ethos as well as specific South Asian
peculiarities and innovations. The echo of the contemporary worldwide
Islamic revival has indeed reverberated throughout South Asia. Common to
such a revival is greater conformity to Islamic practices, rites and rituals
among the younger generation. An overall radicalism seems to have been
taking place since the 1980s. However, since the Muslims in the region live
in different states they have to relate to the Islamic revival in the light of
their own concrete sociopolitical conditions. Furthermore, given the class,
ethnic, linguistic and religious subdivisions that obtain among them the
Islamic revival carries quite different implications for these subgroups and
strata. N o uniform or standard social and political objectives can therefore
be assigned to the Islamic revival, notwithstanding its manifest salience
among the Muslims of South Asia.
Well before the advent of Islam in the Arabian peninsula in the early
seventh century, Arab traders and sailors had been in contact with India.
Such contacts however remained peripheral, occasional and undramatic.
The second pious caliph, Umar bin Khattab (ruled 634-44), is reported to
have emphasised the importance of spreading Islam in India. The first
Muslim armed incursion into India, however, took place half a century later
during the Umayyad period (660-750). An Arab army arrived on the
western coast of India near present-day Karachi in 711 with the intention of
chastising the Hindu ruler of Sindh, Raja Dahir, who allegedly had been
harassing Arab merchant vessels returning with their cargoes from Sri
Lanka and beyond in the East. Dahir was defeated and many of his subjects
embraced Islam. Sindh and southern Punjab were conquered by the Arabs
and remained attached to the caliphate based in Damascus and later
Baghdad. However, it was the Turco-Afghans who, from the eleventh
century onwards, launched successive waves of invasions on the sub-
continent from the mountain passes in the northwest. By the early
thirteenth century the important city of Delhi had fallen to the Muslims.
Thereafter for the next 650 years Muslim dynasties dominated the Indian
subcontinent, particularly in the northern, northwestern and northeastern
regions. The last Muslim dynasty to rule northern India was the fabled
Mughul empire (1526-1 857).
The Muslim community that evolved in South Asia comprised both local
converts and the continuous stream of migrants who abandoned their
homes in Central and Western Asia and headed for India either as a part of
invading armies or as fugitives from wars and famines. A Muslim ruling
klite known as the ashraf evolved in the process which included largely
Turkic-speaking central Asians, Afghans, Persians and a body of people
considered holy because of alleged descent from the Prophet Muhammad
and his companions, the Sahaba. Upper-caste Hindus who became Muslims
were accorded respectable status and in due course assimilated into the
ashraf. Most of the conversions to Islam, however, came from the lower
castes and peripheral tribes. Such conversion did improve the social
South Asia
standing of these lower strata in comparison to their inferior and degraded

status within the caste system, but the ashraf also kept their social distance
from these converts. Muslims of India were thus divided into the so-called
ashraf and ordinary Muslims called aam log. It is important to note that
despite the conversion of many indigenous peoples to Islam it remained a
minority religion in South Asia. For example, on the subcontinent, only one
in four Indians was a Muslim by the time the British established their rule.
Although more than 80 per cent are converts from Indian stock, those
claiming to be of a distant foreign descent number many more.
In the precolonial period, the sharia was invariably the formal basis of
public law, although most rulers were despots who could exercise
considerable arbitrary powers. The stronghold of orthodox Islam were
the ulama, who acted as custodians of the sharia and public morals.
However, the enforcement of sharia was limited largely to urban centres as
the precolonial state lacked the structural capability to govern the whole
society in an integrated or totalitarian sense. In northern India, typically, a
segmentary, decentralised socio-political order with a Muslim ruler at the
apex and a loose descending power hierarchy constituted of lesser Hindu
and Muslim princes, chiefs, caste leaders and tribal headmen presided over
the mass of peasants, craftsmen, artisans and other categories of working
people. The Muslim upper classes considered themselves as the proper
representatives of chaste Islamic culture. They spoke Turkish, Persian or,
later, vintage Urdu, in contrast to the vernacular languages used by ordinary
Muslims. The vast majority of the converts to Islam continued to practise
many of their earlier beliefs and customs alongside a popular version of
Islam. Customary law based on caste and tribal traditions was observed
locally by the peasant-converts in their internal affairs. The state rarely
interfered with such practice.
,Sufi orders are believed to have played a significant role in the
propagation of Islam in South Asia. It is not uncommon to come across
tribes and castes who trace their conversion to Islam in a distant past at the
hands of some Sufi saint (usually called shaykh or pir). Four main Sufi
orders, originating in the heartland of Islamic mysticism - the region
between Iraq and Central Asia - have been active in the Indian
subcontinent. Among them the most successful was the Chisti order
(founded by Muin al-Din Chisti who died at Ajmer in 1236). The other
three were the Qadiriyya (founded in Baghdad by Abd al-Qadir Jilani who
died in 1166), the Suhravardiyya (founded in Baghdad by Umar al-
Suhravardi who died in 1234), and the Naqshbandiyya (founded in
Turkestan by Baha al-Din, called Naqshband, the painter, who died in
1389). There are also to be found indigenous orders and movements.
Usually conquest and consolidation of political power by Muslims in a
territory preceded the missionary work of the Sufis. Some Sufi orders, such
as the Chishtiyya, introduced quite novel methods of expressing their
message which mainstream ulama and the nobility usually looked down
upon - dance, music and ecstatic physical gestures and movements.
Pantheistic ideas, more in tune with the ancient Indian philosophical
tradition and local mystical cults, also entered into Sufi literature and
practice. Some individual Sufis became openly non-conformist and a few
defied the will of the state. However, such deviations from orthodox dogma
were not the main form of Sufism. The more normal relationship between
Sufis and the state was one of mutual support and interdependence. The
established Sufis received substantial support, including liberal donations in
land and money, from rulers. The Suhravardiyya in particular were known
for working in close association with the state and combined worldly riches
with their proselytising activities. The Naqshbandiyya were strict followers
of the sharia, while the Qadiriyya were more liberal. Each order had its
own hierarchy of masters and saints. The disciples, called murids, were
taught skills purported to cleanse the soul of temptations and base desires
and to prepare it for higher spiritual attainments. The various members
constituted a network. South Asian orders were linked to networks and
movements obtaining in other parts of the Muslim world. Although
mainstream Sufism remained doctrinally a part of the Sunni creed, Shia
ideas were incorporated by some tendencies and movements.
The Sufi tradition retained its vitality during the heyday of Muslim
civilisation in South Asia. Later, when the European powers wrested power
away from the Muslim ruling class the decline and pessimism which beset
Muslim society in general also affected the Sufi orders. In its degenerate
form Sufism became simply a trade in charms, talismans and other magical
formulae.
The majority of South Asian Shias belong to the Ithna Ashari (the
Twelvers). The coming to power of the Safavids in Persia at the beginning of
the sixteenth century greatly enhanced Shia influence in the Indian
subcontinent. From that time onwards, rivalry between the Shia Persian
nobles and the more numerous Sunni Turkish and Afghan nobles was a
recurring feature of court intrigues and conspiracies. Some Shias also
succeeded in establishing their own states in different parts of the
subcontinent. However, nowhere did the Shias form a majority; only one
in thirteen Muslims was a Shia during the British period. Minor Shia
subgroups such as the Ismailis and Bohras also won converts, mainly
among the trading Hindu castes of the western coast. In Sri Lanka and the
Maldives there was virtually no Shia presence.
Several mystical movements emanated within South Asian Sufism which
acquired heterodox features and characteristics. Among them the Mahdawi
movement founded by Sayyid Muhammad Jaunpuri (1443-1504), a
prominent Sufi mystic, was the most significant during the precolonial
period. In 1499 Jaunpuri proclaimed himself as the Mahdi (the idea of the
Saviour, called Mahdi, is a cardinal doctrinal belief of the Ithna Ashari, but
South Asia
the idea has also existed in Sunni societies and from time to time some
individual has come forward claiming to be the Mahdi). He travelled to
various parts of the subcontinent to preach his mission. He extolled a life of
hard work and austerity and criticised the pompous lifestyle of the Muslim
upper classes. People mostly from the lower ranks were attracted to his
charismatic personality and radical ideas. Subsequently the Mahdawis
came into conflict with the Mughul state which ordered severe action
against them. Some of them sought refuge in faraway Sindh and
Baluchistan. The present-day Zikri community in Baluchistan is an off-
shoot of the Mahdawi movement.
In the precolonial period, whenever the state in Muslim societies has
been perceived to have deviated from its Islamic character some form of
censure has sooner or later ensued from the orthodox establishment.
Despotic sultans, who in personal conduct might have violated sharia, were
nevertheless constrained to demonstrate their adherence to it in public.
Rarely did a ruler defy such strictures. Thus the Mughul Emperor Akbar
(ruled 1556-1605) tried to consolidate his vast empire on a composite
Indian basis rather than on an exclusive Islamic one. He abolished the poll-
tax, jizya, in 1564; Hindus of the warrior Rajput caste were encouraged to
join the imperial army; Rajput princes were placed in positions of
command; he himself married Rajput princesses; and to crown it all he
founded a new composite religion called Din-i-Ilahi (Divine Faith). These
drastic measures greatly perturbed the orthodox establishment. Later, Shia
influence at the Court of Emperor Jahangir (ruled 1605-27), increased
significantly.
Under these circumstances, Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi (1564-1626) of the
puritanical Naqshbandiyya began a campaign against the declining Islamic
standards of the Mughuls. He also condemned the prevalent practices of
many Sufis which he alleged were borrowed from Hinduism. Such activities
led to his incarceration on the orders of Jahangir. Sirhindi's warnings found
reception in the policies of Emperor Aurangzeb (ruled 1658-1707). The
Sunni establishment regained its influence at the court. In 1679 the jizya
was reimposed and Shia cultural practices were curbed. However,
Aurangzeb came to power at a time when the Mughul empire was in a
state of overall decay and exhaustion. The restoration of orthodoxy at the
centre only provoked rebellions and breakaway attempts in the peripheral
regions of the empire. Aurangzeb's protracted military engagements against
the Sikhs in Punjab, Hindu Marathas in the Deccan and the Shia states of
Bijapur and Golcanda in the south occupied most of his long reign. His
death hastened the disintegration of the empire.
Shah Waliullah (1702-63) emerged as an outstanding reformer at a time
when Muslim power seemed to be on the wane irreversibly. After
completing his education in the classical Islamic sciences of jurisprudence
and theology, Waliullah travelled to the Hijaz, the Islamic holy land, where
the cities of Mecca and Medina are located. During his sojourn he came
into contact with the contemporaneous reformist movements prevalent in
Arabia. After spending fourteen months there he returned to India and
started predicating a return to the original purity of Islam. Deeply distressed
by the growing power of the Hindu Marathas and Jats, Waliullah began to
search for a Muslim prince or warlord who could revive Muslim power. He
failed to find one close at hand. He therefore decided to invite the Afghan
Ahmad Shah Abdali to invade India. Abdali launched several invasions on
India between 1747-69. His raids, however, showed little regard for
Muslim solidarity. Instead, looting, plundering and killing both Muslims
and non-Muslims remained his main concern. The Mughul state was meted
severe blows. Waliullah's hopes for a revival of Muslim power were
therefore dashed completely.
It was in the religio-cultural sphere that Waliullah achieved profound
influence. He translated the Quran into Persian - a rather radical act at that
time. He advocated egalitarian economic reforms, because he believed that
without economic justice the social purpose of Islam could not be fulfilled.
He rejected the traditional position that the Islamic legal system was
complete and therefore fresh ijtihad (application of independent judgement
in interpreting the Quran and Sunna) was not required. He decried the
contemporary ulama for their elaborate rites and rituals which he
denounced as un-Islamic accretions. However, like so many other earlier
reformers in Muslim history, Waliullah was haunted by an idealised version
of the pious caliphate, the salaf tradition as some have called it. The
principle of back-to-the-book or rather back-to-the-pious-caliphate put him
in the class of restorers rather than innovators. More interesting is the
political legacy he bequeathed to future generations of Indian Muslims. O n
the one hand, he continued to preach, in the tradition of Sirhindi,
exclusiveness of the Muslim community from the Hindu majority, but on
the other hand, he deviated from it by adopting a more conciliatory attitude
towards Shias. The peculiar type of communalism which he prescribed
sanctioned separatism from Hindus but co-operation with Shias.
The period of British colonialism

Shah Waliullah expended most of his energies and intellectual prowess on
looking for ways and means of halting the decline of Muslim power in
general and of the Mughul state in particular. He could not, however,
anticipate the true magnitude of the emerging challenge posed by the
various European powers which were gradually expanding their influence
in the distant coastal areas of western, southern and eastern India. This task
was left to radical ulama of the later period. The British East India
Company was able to drive out other European competitors from the
subcontinent by the early nineteenth century. In 1757 the British had
South Asia
defeated the Mughul governor of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula. Thereafter
nothing could stop their further expansion. It took, however, another 100
years before the whole of the mainland was conquered.
The early nineteenth century was a period when the British were rapidly
expanding their power in northern India. Sayyid Ahmed of Rai Bareli
(1786-1831) emerged as a militant Islamist who aspired to establish an
Islamic polity, based on the model of the pious caliphate, throughout the
length and breadth of India. He was joined by Waliullah's son Shah Abdul
Aziz, who was a leading scholar of Islam in his own right. Earlier, Aziz had
issued a fatwa (ruling of a leading Muslim scholar on a point of law or
doctrine) that India had become a dar al-barb (enemy territory; lands
outside the jurisdiction of Islam) under British domination.
Ahmed visited Mecca and Medina in 1822. It left him deeply impressed
by the Wahhabi movement on the Arabian peninsula, both in terms of its
fiercely monotheistic ideology and emphasis on armed struggle. However,
he never categorically called himself a Wahhabi. Rather he retained his
formal Hanafi affiliations, but sought to advance puritanical monotheism
within such a framework. The appellation Wahhabi was attached to his
teachings by his critics. The established traditional ulama strongly
disapproved of his iconoclastic approach to contemporaneous Islamic
practices and beliefs steeped in saint-worship and elaborate rites and
rituals, many of which were adaptations of local and regional folk culture.
Upon his return, Ahmed started recruiting men for the impending jihad
(struggle in the way of God; striving for justice; holy war, in this case
purported to liberate Muslim territories). The call to jihad was heeded by
many Muslims from different parts of the subcontinent who flocked to his
sermons and joined his army. Patna in northeastern India became the
headquarter of his activities. His preparatory campaign was largely
secretive. Much of it was conducted in areas controlled by the British.
However, Ahmed took the controversial decision of launching jihad (effort,
'holy war') against the Sikhs of Punjab rather than the British. He justified it
on the grounds that whereas the Sikhs were allegedly suppressing the
Islamic religion and persecuting Muslims, the British did not interfere with
their religious affairs. This rather peculiar doctrinal argument was severely
criticised by the traditional ulama. Some of them even suggested that
Ahmed was a British agent, because the British authorities did not try to
stop his soldiers from passing through territories under their control on
their way to northwestern India and Punjab. No solid conclusive proof of
Sayyid Ahmed's complicity with the British has ever been furnished by his
detractors, but the controversy continues to figure in doctrinal debates.
In any case, Sayyid Ahmed launched his jihad against the Sikhs in 1826.
He travelled to the north where Pukhtun tribes joined him. Several battles
took place between the Sikhs and the Islamist militants, but the former
could not be defeated. In 1831 Sayyid Ahmed and many of his close
associates were slain at Balakot; hence the title Shaheed (martyr) was added
to his name by his followers. Ahmed's death proved to be a major setback
to the movement, but Islamic militancy persisted for a long time. In Bengal,
especially, peasant uprisings against oppressive landlords took puritan
Islamic overtones reflective of Wahhabistic monotheism. The British
maintained strict surveillance over the 'Wahhabis' in all parts of the
subcontinent.
Haji Nisar Ali, alias Titu Mir (1772-1831), is believed to have met
Sayyid Ahmed either at Calcutta or in the Hijaz. He became a disciple of the
latter and began to preach puritanical Islam to Muslim peasants in his
district, many of whom had only nominal allegiance to Islam. Along with
an Islamic consciousness the peasants learnt to organise themselves against
oppressive landlords who ruthlessly exploited them. Among the landlords
were also British Indigo planters. Gradually, armed confrontations began to
take place between Titu Mir's followers and the landlords. Some initial
success scored by the peasants made the movement popular on an
expanding basis until thousands had joined it. Some Hindu lower castes
also joined the struggle. Amid the threat of a growing peasant insurrection
the British sent an armed contingent equipped with heavy weaponry such as
field canons. In the battle which ensued the poorly-equipped peasant army
of Titu Mir was defeated. He, along with fifty of his followers, fell fighting
on the battlefield.
In the early nineteenth century, another returnee from Hijaz, Haji
Shariatullah, initiated a parallel reform movement in another district of
Bengal. This movement came to be known by the name of Faraizi which
was derived from farz which means obligatory duty. It implied strict
literalist observance of the Quranic injunctions. The social goal of the
Faraizi movement was equity and justice and it encouraged the
predominantly Muslim peasantry to resist their oppressive landlords, most
of whom were Hindus. Upon Shariatullah's death his son, Muhsinuddin,
popularly known as Dudhu Miyan (1819-60), continued to lead the
Faraizis. He preached the radical doctrine that, in Islam, land belonged to
God and therefore no one could claim private ownership of land. Dudhu
Miyan also managed to organise an army of several thousand peasant
militants which presented tough resistance to the landlords and the British
Indigo planters. The British authorities deployed armed police to quell the
rebellion. Both Muslim and Hindu landlords supported the British. Dudhu
Miyan and sixty-five of his poorly armed followers were overwhelmed and
arrested and the movement disintegrated under severe repression. In their
long-drawn struggle the Faraizis had established their own courts and
devised novel methods of non-cooperation and civil disobedience against
the British.
The decline of the Mughul empire was indicative also of a general
intellectual decay and stagnation which beset the Muslim community. The
South Asia
traditionalist ularna practised a type of Islam which was based heavily on

reverence for past authority. Saint-worship, both of dead masters and living
pirs, was a prominent feature of the anti-intellectual implications of
traditionalism. The rise of 'Wahhabi extremism' and later the emergence of
the puritanical, but moderate, Deoband school were perceived of as serious
threats by the traditionalists. Largely in reaction the traditionalists also
embarked upon a process of greater doctrinal and organisational
consolidation. This task was undertaken by Ahmed Raza Khan (1856-
1921) born in the northern Indian town of Bareli; hence the popular
designation of Barelwis, deriving from his town of birth, acquired by his
followers. Ahmed Raza Khan did not agree with the radical ularna that
India under British suzerainty had become a dar al-harb. He had a positive
attitude to the tolerant religious policy of the British and suggested that
India remained a dav al-islam (abode of peace, where Islamic law prevailed
and Islamic faith was not suppressed). The Barelwis remained largely
passive during the freedom struggle. They were supported by the landlords
and pirs who generally sided with the British. Until just before the end of
the colonial period, the Muslim League mobilised them for the campaign
for Pakistan. As the group with the largest following among Muslims the
Barelwis proved an invaluable asset to the separatist project of the modern
educated Muslim klite.
In 1857 a popular uprising broke out among the Indian soldiers of the
British East India Company. Many Hindu and Muslim princes with
grievances against the colonialists also joined the popular movement. The
old Mughul Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, long since reduced to a
figurehead, was proclaimed leader of the struggle. The ularna reiterated the
ruling that India was a dar al-harb and gave the uprising the status of jihad.
However, many native rulers remained loyal to the British. The participa-
tion of the people was sporadic and disorganised. Consequently the British
were able to crush the insurrection. The general feeling among the British
was that Muslims were the main culprits. The old Muslim aristocracy of
northern India had to pay dearly in terms of loss of life, material
possessions and influence.
On the other hand, popular participation in the uprising convinced the
British that fundamental reforms had to be introduced to assuage Indian
opinion. In this regard, a drastic change of policy occurred because the rule
of the Company was abolished and India was placed directly under the
Crown. Further, it was decided to associate more Indians in the managing
of the huge empire. Modern education, including the learning of English
and other liberal and scientific subjects, was to be made available to the
upper classes. Unlike the Muslim aristocracy which had suffered consider-
able repression at the hands of the British and was therefore negatively
disposed towards them, many sections of the Hindu upper castes took
advantage of the new opportunities.
Rapprochement between the British and Muslim upper classes was
delayed for several decades after the 1857 confrontation. While most ulama
remained hostile, Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1817-98), a scion of the old
Muslim aristocracy of northern India, who had worked in the Company's
judicial services and saved many British lives during the uprising, worked
indefatigably to win over British sympathies towards the Muslims. He
realised that Muslims had a bleak future ahead of them in India if they did
not acquire a modern education. For doing that, good relations had to be
cultivated with the new rulers. With the British he argued that Muslims
were not the main culprits in the uprising and that British policy had also
played a role in bringing about estrangement between them. Also, he
pointed out that it was important for the British to extend their favours to
Muslims who were an important community in India. With the Muslims Sir
Sayyid pleaded that India under British rule was not a dar al-harb, because
the colonial state did not interfere with the religious affairs of Muslims. His
efforts led to a thaw in the otherwise cold and unfriendly relations between
them. In 1886 Sir Sayyid established the Muslim Educational Conference. It
was followed by the founding of a college at Aligarh where Muslim
students, mostly from upper-middle-class backgrounds, came to receive
modern education based on the Cambridge University system.
Sir Sayyid's most ambitious attempt at reform was one aimed at
reconciling Islam with modern science and reason. He argued that Islam
was a faith based on reason. Therefore there could not be any conflict
between the laws of nature and Islamic faith. This audacious standpoint
was rejected by the ulama. Some even accused him of heresy. Surprisingly
none of his followers maintained this radical stance on religion. It therefore
failed to serve as a complete modernist reform of Islamic theology and faith.
Politically, Sir Sayyid continued to argue in the separatist mould of Shah
Waliullah. He warned Muslims to keep away from the Indian National
Congress (1885) which he dubbed as a Hindu organisation. On the other
hand, his rationalistic approach to Islam encouraged Sunni and Shia
modernists to relegate dogma to the background and instead emphasise a
communal identity based on Islamic culture and past grandeur.
In 1867, an orthodox Sunni seat of learning was established at Deoband
in northern India. The Deobandi ulama adhered to rationalism but one
deriving from classical scholasticism which had prospered during the great
days of the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258). They sought neither complete
rupture with the traditional-historical Islam that the Wahhabis stood for
nor complete, unflinching conformity to it as was the case with the
Barelwis. Politically the Deobandis conformed to the anti-British approach
of the radical ulama, and many of them were involved in clandestine anti-
British movements. Consequently, the Deobandis held in contempt the pro-
British policies of Sir Sayyid and his followers. They argued that patriotism
was not inimical to Islam. Rather defence of watan (homeland) was a
South Asia
higher calling for Muslims. Later, when the freedom struggle led by the
Indian National Congress (1885) assumed a mass character, the Jamiyat-i-
Ulama-i-Hind (Party of the Islamic Scholars of India), formed by leading
Deobandi ulama, preferred cooperation with the Congress in the struggle
for the liberation of India. They rejected the separatist movement which the
modern-educated followers of Sir Sayyid, organised in the Muslim League
(1906), launched in the 1940s.
South Asian Muslims have always retained a keen interest in the larger
Muslim world, especially in the affairs of Western Asia and other parts of
the Middle East. The dismemberment of Ottoman Turkey after the First
World War at the hands of the European allies created great consternation
among Indian Muslims. They formed the Khilafat Committee in 1919 (an
organisation for the preservation of the Ottoman caliphate) to plead the
case of Turkey with the British government. Anti-imperialist Hindus also
extended the support to the Khilafatists. Mahatma Gandhi was elected as
one of the leaders of the Khilafat Committee. It was a time when radical
ulama of various schools of thought joined ranks and took part in a major
manifestation of the anti-colonial feelings of all the communities of India.
Many disturbances took place and a delegation was sent to England to
plead the case of Turkey, but the British government remained unmoved.
Some Muslims despaired at British insensitivity and apathy, and started
propagating that since India was a dar al-barb, Muslims should undertake
hijra (emigration) to dar al-islam. Several thousand people responded to the
call. They sold their properties and other belongings and embarked upon a
journey to neighbouring Afghanistan in 1920. Although initially the Afghan
government showed sympathy for the Muslim refugees, it could not offer
economic and other facilities on such a large scale. It also feared further
influx from India. It became clear that most of the refugees were not wanted
by the Afghans in their country. In these circumstances, most of them had
no choice but to return to India. They came back heart-broken and
disillusioned. Some young men crossed into Soviet Central Asia and later
became pioneers of the communist movement in India.
The abolition of the caliphate by the Turks themselves in 1924 rendered
the Khilafat issue obsolete and left the Indian activists confused and
perplexed. In political terms, the Khilafat and Hijrat movements provided
avenues for radical ulama to enter the era of mass politics in the modern
period. It is interesting to note that the modern-educated Muslim elite
showed little enthusiasm for these movements. The future leader of the
Pakistan movement, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, even expressed disapproval of
religious radicalism.
The Muslim upper classes were wary of the Indian National Congress's
claim that it alone represented all Indians irrespective of their religious
faiths and cultural affiliations. The Muslim League (founded 1906) was,
therefore, established by Muslim professionals of landowning and
bourgeois backgrounds as a reaction to the growing power and influence of
Congress in national politics and the growing economic power of the Hindu
middle classes. The Muslims were encouraged by the British to organise on
a communal basis. Until the end of the 1930s, the Muslim League remained
a party of the gentry which concerned itself mainly with questions about a
share in employment and representation in government services and
legislative bodies for Muslims. It was only in the early 1940s that the
Muslim League started campaigning earnestly for a separate Muslim state.
In order to achieve such an end it had to mobilise mass support among
Muslims.
The ideologue of a separate Muslim national state was the scholastic
poet-philosopher, Allama Iqbal (1878-1938). He studied at Cambridge,
was called to the Bar in that country and acquired a doctorate from
Germany in Persian metaphysics. He was an ardent supporter of ijtihad
which he believed each generation of Muslims was entitled to exercise to
deal with their contemporaneous problems. However, Iqbal subscribed to
the traditional standpoint that religion and state were inseparable in Islam.
Also, despite a strong sympathy for social and economic justice, Iqbal
remained somewhat unconcerned about women's rights and emancipation.
As regards the idea of a separate Muslim state, he wanted the Muslim
majority areas of northwest India (he did not mention the Muslim majority
areas of East Bengal in his scheme) to be organised into either a separate
independent state or in some loose union with the rest of India. He was
convinced that development of the sharia in the light of modern ideas could
serve as the ideological and legal basis for egalitarian change in Muslim
society.
In the 1937 provincial elections the Muslim League did not campaign for
a separate Muslim state. It only asked the Muslims for a mandate to
represent them at the centre. At that time, the regional parties in the
Muslim-majority provinces were able to win most of the seats. On an
overall basis, however, Congress emerged as the triumphant party. The
Muslim League was completely routed. In March 1940 it proclaimed the
creation of a Muslim state in the Muslim majority regions of the
subcontinent. That decision was to prove a turning point in its fortunes.
In 1942 Congress launched the Quit-India Movement with the aim of
winning independence immediately. The British acted swiftly and sternly by
imprisoning Congress leaders and activists. On the other hand, Jinnah and
the Muslim League extended a hand of cooperation in the war effort, which
concretely required helping the government recruit soldiers into the army in
areas where it enjoyed influence. Thereafter the British facilitated the
growth and expansion of the Muslim League, which from 1944 onwards
rapidly established itself in the Muslim majority provinces where previously
regional parties had held sway. From such a vantage point, and while
Congress was practically absent from the political scene, it began
South Asia
propagating the idea of Pakistan. The vision which was projected of a

future Pakistan was one based on Islamic values of justice and equality.
These proved very attractive to the Muslim intelligentsia who went about
soliciting support for the Pakistan demand.
Already in 1942 Britain had committed itself to a withdrawal from
South Asia once the Second World War was over. Therefore when, in the
winter of 1945-46, elections were held, the Muslim League contested the
elections from a platform demanding the creation of Pakistan while
Congress contested from the opposite platform of keeping India united as a
single state. The Muslim League conducted a patently communal campaign.
It could mobilise also important dissenting voices in the otherwise pro-
Congress Deobandi camp, such as Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Shabbir Ahmed
Usmani, to its cause. It was able to mobilise Barelwi ulama, pirs and young
students in their thousands to propagate the idea of Pakistan. A patently
communal propaganda was conducted. Not only Hindus and Sikhs were
demonised but also Muslims who were opposed to the Pakistan scheme
were condemned as renegades and traitors to Islam. Fatwas were obtained
which made support for Pakistan a religious duty for Muslims. Some fatwas
went so far as to prohibit proper Islamic burial for Muslims who did not
support the Pakistan demand.
Such tactics proved immensely effective. The Muslim voters gave a clear
verdict in favour of Pakistan. British India was partitioned in mid-August
1947 into the two independent states of India and Pakistan. It is important
to point out that the provinces of Bengal and Punjab were also divided on a
religious basis: the eastern portions of Bengal and the western portions of
Punjab had Muslim majorities and were therefore separated and allotted to
Pakistan. The partition was attended by communal massacres in which
Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs suffered great loss of life and property. While
most of the Hindus and Sikhs left their ancestral homes in West Pakistan,
in East Bengal more than one-fifth of the population continued to consist
of Hindus, while more than 30 million Muslims continued to live on in
India.
Pakistan
On August 14, 1947 Pakistan became an independent Muslim state. It
consisted of the Muslim-majority zones in the northwestern and north-
eastern regions of the subcontinent, which came to be called West and East
Pakistan. They were separated from each other by more than 1,500
kilometres of Indian territory. In December 1971 Pakistan broke up after
many months of civil war between the Pakistani army and the Awami
League-led resistance movement of the people of East Pakistan. Henceforth
East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Pakistan was left only with her
territories in the western part.
Ahmed
Punjabi Muslims in Lahore (photo: Ishtiaq Ahmed, 1982).
The current population of Pakistan is estimated at 132 million. There are

four provinces: Baluchistan, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Punjab
and Sindh. According to official statistics, Muslims make up more than 96
per cent of the total population. Although figures are not available
regarding the divisions among Muslims, Sunnis of various subgroups are
estimated to be between 80-85 per cent, while the Shias, including the main
Ithna Ashari and the minor Ismaili and Bohra groups make up 15-20 per
cent of the Muslim population. The Christians (largely to be found in
Punjab and Karachi) and Hindus (almost all to be found in Sindh province)
together make up slightly over 3 per cent, while the Ahmadiyya (who
describe themselves as Muslims but are officially classified as non-Muslims
since 1974) are given as less than 200,000 (the Ahmadiyya themselves claim
to number many more).
The areas comprising present-day Pakistan were the first to be conquered
by the Muslims entering the subcontinent from the northwestern mountain
passes and sea routes. Except for a brief Sikh interlude when Ranjit Singh
(1799-1839) established the Kingdom of Lahore, it was unbroken Muslim
rule which obtained in this region until the British annexed it. Baluchistan
and the NWFP, being adjacent to Western and Central Asia, have always
had closer cultural and ethnic affinity with those regions. However, much of
Punjab and Sindh belong more properly to the South Asian ethno-cultural
The modernists who led the movement for Pakistan had argued that
Indian Muslims formed a separate nation and that Islam prescribed a
distinct way of life. This ideology of Muslim nationalism was put forth to
justify the demand for an independent state of Muslims. In the 1945-46
election campaign anyone who declared that he or she was a Muslim and
had been so entered in the census records was admitted into the Muslim
League. Thus support for Pakistan was sought from Sunnis, Shias and also
the controversial Ahmadiyya community.
Once in power, the modernists had to define the relationship between
Islam and the state. They were ill-prepared for such a task. The supreme
leader of the Pakistan movement, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, who had played the
pivotal role in ascribing credibility and legitimacy to the religious basis of
nationhood and on that basis brought about the division of India, made an
unexpected speech on August 11,1947, i.e. three days before independence,
to members of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in which he proclaimed
that Pakistan should be a secular democratic state. He never again repeated
such a commitment although he lived for another year. After his death on
September 11, 1948, secularism and Jinnah's speech became the slogan of
marginal elements - liberal and left-leaning politicians, academics and
oppressed minorities - hoping in vain to give the ruling klite a bad
conscience for its drift towards greater theocratisation of state and society.
The second position was put forth on March 7, 1949, by Prime Minister
Liaqat Ali Khan in the Objectives Resolution. It proclaimed that
sovereignty over the entire universe belonged to God. The authority of
the chosen representatives of the people of Pakistan was to be limited by
God's will. Democracy was to be practised within Islamic limits. The rights
of minorities were also to be defined in the light of Islamic injunctions. The
resolution was couched in populist terminology which could appease a
broad spectrum of opinion. Most importantly, definite constitutional
supremacy was accorded to God's sovereignty with all the various
implications and vagaries inherent in the concept. The modernists could
not agree upon a formula for power sharing. Consequently, there were
frequent changes of government. It meant also that constitutional
developments were slow and unstable. The Objectives Resolution, with
minor changes, has been the preamble of the 1956, 1962 and 1973
constitutions. During the Zia period it was made an integral part of the
constitution.
The 1956 constitution declared Pakistan an Islamic republic and the
president was required to be a Muslim. The government was to appoint a
commission which was to advise the government on bringing the laws of
Pakistan into line with the Quran and Sunna. On the other hand a bill of
fundamental rights was also included which assured protection of all the
usual fundamental rights upheld by liberal theory, including the freedom of
belief and conscience, to the people of Pakistan. The 1962 Constitution
South Asia
deleted the appellation 'Islamic' and declared Pakistan simply as a republic.

However, the ulama protested against such a change and in 1963 Pakistan
was renamed as an Islamic republic. An Islamic Advisory Council and an
Islamic Research Institute were to be established to assist the government in
making existing laws conform with the Quran and Sunna. The president
was required to be a Muslim. The 1973 constitution adopted during the
period of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto went even further in terms of Islamisation.
Not only the president but also the prime minister had to be Muslims. Their
oath of office required an explicit declaration that they believed in the
finality of the prophethood of Muhammad. Such a requirement meant that
only qualified Sunnis and Shias could contest and hold such positions.
Pakistan was created under heavy debt to Islam. The modernist formulae
of Islamic democracy failed to satisfy the more theocratic aspirations of the
ulama. Consequently the ulama of the various Sunni subgroups began
clamouring for the creation of a true Islamic polity. The Shias, being a
minority, showed less enthusiasm for such an idea because it implied
hegemony of Sunni interpretations of the Islamic state. Most centrally the
ulama insisted that only male Muslim citizens should have full political
rights in Pakistan. Further, they held that any version of Islamic democracy
put forward by the modernist leadership of the Muslim League was
unacceptable if it did not acknowledge the supremacy of the sharia.
Restrictions on the participation of women in public life and in politics
were also demanded.
Abul Ala Mawdudi and the Jamaat-i-Islami

The main architect of the Islamic state model in Pakistan has been the
leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami (Party of Islam), Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-
79), who wrote over the course of half a century, beginning as a journalist
and distinguishing himself as a skilful essayist on Islam. Mawdudi was born
at Aurangabad in the Deccan in southern India, but it was from Pathankot
in present-day Indian East Punjab that in 1941 he launched an organised
political movement and founded the Jamaat-i-Islami. Mawdudi opposed
the nationalist movement led by the Congress. He was equally dismissive of
the Muslim League's scheme of a Muslim homeland, asserting that Muslims
could not get involved in a freedom struggle which was based on secular
nationalism. However, upon the creation of Pakistan, Mawdudi moved to
Lahore in the Pakistani West Punjab and set up his headquarters. His most
successful early achievement was the compilation in 1951 of a twenty-two-
point programme about Islamisation of Pakistan. The leading ulama of all
the different Sunni subgroups and the Ithna Ashari Shias were signatories of
the programme. Such unusual consensus was meant to demonstrate that,
notwithstanding doctrinal differences, a common programme of Islamisa-
tion was acceptable to all schools of thought.
Mawdudi theorised in the typical restorative tradition of so many earlier
Islamist purists: the pious caliphate model of state and society had to be
resurrected in both spirit and action if a just order were to prevail on earth.
His sympathies for puritanical Sunni Islam were well known. Many
considered him to lean heavily towards Wahhabism and Deobandi ideas,
but Mawdudi remained an eclectic scholar within the broad Hanafi
framework. On approach to doctrine, Mawdudi inherited the mantle of
Waliullah and preached ijtihad in, what he described were, unoccupied
areas (i.e. issues on which the sharia was silent). However, on questions of
economic and social justice, Mawdudi did not share Waliullah's radical
views. Rather he supported the traditionalist position that no limits could
be set on private property if it had been acquired through proper means;
this applied also to agricultural land.
Mawdudi advanced a totalitarian vision of the Islamic state. Through
the agency of such a state all sectors of life were to be brought into
conformity with the sharia. Western democracy, female equality and a
territorial basis of citizenship were to be rejected. Only deserving Muslim
male adults were to be assigned key positions in the state machinery. On the
other hand, there were to be no special privileges for any caste, class or
race. All senior officers, including the head of state, were to be answerable
for their conduct to the Muslim electorate and could be tried in a court of
law for misconduct. Women were to be allowed limited participation in
political life. On female matters they were to be consulted in law-making.
Non-Muslims were to be provided with protection for their life and
property on equal terms with the Muslims. They could be represented in the
legislature, but on the basis of separate electorates.
Mawdudi has been one of the most influential ideologues of the Islamic
state in recent times. His prolific writings have been translated into Arabic
and several other languages and his influence in popularising the doctrinal
Islamic state model in the Muslim world, including the volatile Middle
East, has been huge. His authority as a bona fide Sunni theorist makes him
far more acceptable than Ayatollah Khomeini to the predominantly Sunni
societies, even though the latter uniquely effected the current worldwide
Islamic revival by successfully demonstrating in Iran that an Islamic state
can be installed through mass agitations and revolutionary struggle.
Not only did Mawdudi write extensively, but also established under his
leadership the best-organised political party in Pakistan, the Jamaat-i-
Islami. Based on restrictive, hierarchical membership the Jamaat confers
full membership only on its most devoted and consistent supporters. The
interesting thing to note is that its performance in elections has been
extremely poor. It has never won more than four seats in the national
parliament, but has exercised a powerful ideological influence over the
Pakistani state. One explanation for this great imbalance between lack of
popular support but considerable influence on the state can be found in the
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peculiar position it has enjoyed in Pakistani politics. Regarding its limited

appeal, it can be asserted, that since, on the one hand, all mainstream
political parties in Pakistan, even moderate ones such as the Muslim
League, have been sectarian or communal parties, the Jamaat-i-Islami is one
among many other parties claiming to work for the Muslim or Islamic
good. On the other hand, its puritanism is not accompanied by a radical
position on socio-economic issues. Therefore Mawdudism holds an
attraction only for narrow sections of the population such as the
moderately educated intelligentsia, middle-range landowners and upwardly
mobile peasant-proprietors-sections most susceptible to puritan morals as
well as acquisition of material goods.
As for its considerable influence on the state a number of internal and
external factors combined to place it in such a position. Since Pakistan was
officially committed through its various constitutional commitments to
creating conditions for a full realisation of the Islamic way of life,
Mawdudi always held the initiative in pointing out in a learned and
consistent manner what Islam prescribed for the concretisation of such a
commitment. From the mid 1960s onwards, class struggles and regional
conflicts sharpened in Pakistan. The rise of Islamic socialism under the
leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in West Pakistan and regionalism under
Shaykh Mujibur Rahman in East Pakistan greatly perturbed the Pakistani
ruling circles and the ulama. At that time, Maoist ideas were fast gaining
ground in many parts of the Third World. In South Asia, militant peasant
movements inspired by Maoist ideas and led by revolutionary Marxists
emerged in different countries. Pakistan itself was fast coming under the
sway of Bhutto's radical rhetoric. There was also a visible increase in
peasant- and working-class actions and disturbances. Under such circum-
stances, Mawdudi's version of an Islamic state appeared as the most
formidable ideological weapon which the ruling circles could wield against
the radical forces. Therefore some of his fundamental ideas were
incorporated into official ideological proclamations. Thus an ordinance
issued by the military government of General Yaha Khan in 1969 declared
Islam exclusively as the Ideology of Pakistan. With the coming to power of
General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq in 1977 Pakistan had a person in power
who shared Mawdudi's vision of Islam.
Mawdudi died in 1979. With his departure the most able exponent of the
Islamic state theory in Pakistan was gone, but his influence continues to be
considerable on subsequent ideological debates. As for the Jamaat-i-Islami,
it went through a period of internal leadership struggle. Nobody could
command the same authority and prestige in the party as Mawdudi.
Moreover, disagreements over strategy and policy led to some amount of
factionalism among various regional and ethnic cliques present in the party.
Although somewhat weakened it continues to function as an influential
political party in Pakistan.
Recent Islamisation policies in Pakistan
The government of Z.A. Bhutto (1972-77) was toppled by General Zia ul-
Haq (1977-88). Zia declared unequivocally his intention to Islamise
Pakistan. He visualised a social order in which all sectors of life including
administration, judiciary, banking, trade, education, agriculture, industry
and foreign affairs were regulated in accordance with Islamic principles. In
1979 the Zia government announced the imposition of the Hudud
Ordinance, i.e. punishments laid down in Quran and Sunna for the
offences of adultery (death by stoning); fornication (100 lashes); false
accusation of adultery (80 lashes); drinking alcohol (80 lashes); theft
(cutting off the right hand); highway robbery (when the offence is only
robbery, cutting off hands and feet; for robbery with murder, death either
by the sword or crucifixion). Interestingly enough apostasy, which
traditionally had been part of Hudud law, was not included in the Hudud
ordinance. In 1984 a new Law of Evidence was adopted which reduced the
worth of the evidence of a female witness to half that of a male witness in a
court of law. In 1985, two members of the Jamaat-i-Islami moved a so-
called Shariat Bill which sought to establish the supremacy of the Quran
and Sunna in a substantial manner in the constitutional and legal systems
of Pakistan. Sunni-Hanafi interpretations of the Deobandi variety were to
be the standard norm and practice. Most central to the bill was the
creation of Shariat courts. Hudud offences were to be placed within the
exclusive jurisdiction of such courts. Against judgments of Shariat courts
there could be no appeal in a higher court. The bill was adopted in a
revised form in 1986. Economic and fiscal matters were originally
exempted from the competence of the Shariat courts, but some judges
have rejected such limitations. The Shias and Barelwis expressed strong
reservations against the Deobandi bias present in the formulations of the
Bill.
In the economic field, banking reforms were introduced which ostensibly
eliminated 'interest' but replaced it with 'profit'. Zakat (an annual alms tax
of 2.5 per cent levied on wealth) was imposed on the Muslim citizens.
However, the Shias refused to pay zakat to the government of General Zia
ul-Haq as it was Sunni in its orientation and therefore could not claim zakat
from them. The government initially dismissed the Shia demand. It resulted
in widespread agitation by the Shias. Finally they were exempted from
paying zakat.
The ideology of Muslim nationalism contained immanently a confes-
sional bias. Constitutional theocratisation of the state proceeded gradually.
Islamisation under Zia became more comprehensive and tangible. For
women, minority groups and non-Muslims such developments have carried
many disadvantages. Although Sir Sayyid pioneered the cause of Muslim
modernism and established educational centres for such a purpose, it was
South Asia
mostly upper-middle-class men who could benefit from his reforms. Thus it
was only a very small number of Muslim women who had attended college
or university prior to independence. The various governments that came to
power in Pakistan before the Zia regime had gradually expanded
educational facilities for women. Consequently some had started working
as doctors, nurses, teachers and in various other capacities. Among legal
measures purporting to improve the situation of married women was the
promulgation of the Muslim Family Law Ordinance of 1961 which made
polygarny difficult. Under General Zia, however, several measures were
undertaken to impose an Islamic behaviour pattern on women. In 1980 a
circular was issued to all government offices which prescribed a proper
Muslim dress for female employees. Wearing of a chadur (a loose cloth
worn to cover the head) was made obligatory. A campaign to eliminate
obscenity and pornography was also announced, but it assumed more the
form of a campaign against the general emancipation and equal rights of
women. Leading Muslim theologians known for their antipathy to female
emancipation were brought on the national television to justify various
restrictions on women.
As the general situation of women deteriorated some of the educated
women of the larger cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad brought out
demonstrations demanding a stop to the anti-women campaign. The
elections of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister in 1988 despite rabid
opposition by many ulama exposed the hollowness of sterile Islamisation
campaigns. However, neither Benazir Bhutto (1988-90) nor the succeeding
present government of Nawaz Sharif has removed the laws and other social
restrictions imposed during the Zia era against women. The general climate
has undoubtedly hardened for women in Pakistan.
The Shias of India were wary of the idea of Pakistan as it portended
domination by the Sunni majority. However, Mohamed Ali Jinnah and
many other leading members of the Muslim League were Shias. They were
able to placate Shia fears with promises of basing Pakistan on non-sectarian
Islam. In contemporary Pakistan, Shias are dispersed in society at all levels
and in all regions. Among major landowners, industrialists, bankers and the
civil and military apparatuses, Shias are prominently represented. Recruit-
ment from some Shia localities in Punjab is quite substantial in the army.
Moreover, on the klite level there is considerable assimilation among Sunnis
and Shias. O n the mass level Sunni-Shia theological differences have always
tended to rupture into ugly brawls and violence. This problem has
worsened in recent years.
After General Zia ul-Haq came to power, Pakistan acquired clearly
Islamist Sunni overtones. On the other hand, the Shias were emboldened by
the coming into power of Khomeini in neighbouring Iran in early 1979.
Thus assertive and at times provocative Shia behaviour in Pakistan could be
noted. The power politics of the Gulf region also impinged upon the intra-
Muslim tension in Pakistan. For several decades now, Shia Iran and her
Sunni Arab rivals have been involved in a power struggle to establish
hegemony in the Gulf region. The Iranian revolution added an ideological
dimension to the power game. Most notably it meant fierce competition
between Iran and Saudi Arabia to try to lead the Muslim world. However,
both Iran and Saudi Arabia - Islamist and very rich - nevertheless represent
two opposite and mutually hostile types of doctrine: Shiism is heterodox
while Wahhabism is vehemently critical of the veneration of saints
prevalent among traditional Sunni societies.
At any rate, more than 1 million Pakistanis work in the Gulf region, and
the Pakistani armed forces have been involved in the defence and security
arrangements of Saudi Arabia and several other minor Arab emirates. Both
Iran and Saudi Arabia have considered it important to cultivate support in
Pakistan. The Iraqi regime, notwithstanding its secular pretensions, has also
sought to cultivate a lobby among Sunni ulama. In the 1980s, on the one
hand, the Iranian-Saudi ideological and power competition and, on the
other hand, the Iraq-Iran war, intensified the efforts of these actors to seek
greater support in Pakistani society. Consequently in the late 1980s large
sums of money, leaflets, books, audio and video cassette-tapes poured into
Pakistan, projecting one or the other point of view. Such propaganda
offensives have been backed by the influx of weapons of a quite
sophisticated nature. The result has been the formation of militias bearing
such belligerent names as the Sipah-i-Sahaba (the militia devoted to the
Companions of the Prophet, a Sunni outfit) and the Sipah-i-ah1 al-bayt
(militia devoted to the Family of the Prophet, a Shia outfit) later renamed
Sipah-i-Muhammad (the militia devoted to Prophet Muhammad). These
and several other extremist outfits indulge frequently in terrorist attacks
against one another. Pakistan is currently serving as the battle ground for
Middle Eastern proxy wars, albeit so far on a small scale.
The notion of a separate homeland for Muslims in Muslim-majority
areas of British India contained inherently the likelihood of non-Muslims
being treated as second-rate citizens of the Pakistani state. The founder of
Pakistan, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, denied such a possibility. His early
successors also believed that non-Muslims could be accorded almost all
political and civil rights available to the Muslim citizens. However, the
Ahmadiyya controversy clearly showed that people considered as non-
Muslims by the state could not be proper citizens of Pakistan. As mentioned
earlier, the belief in the promised or awaited Imam has held a popular
attraction in all Muslim societies. A claimant to such an office was Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), born at Qadian in the Punjab. Although
Mirza began his religious career as a keen Sunni debater who confronted
both Christian missionaries and Hindu reformers with clever doctrinal
arguments, he later staked a claim to being a prophet and made several
other controversial pronouncements which were not easily reconcilable
South Asia
with mainstream Sunni doctrines. He made unambiguously pro-British

statements, especially ruling out jihad, in the form of armed struggle, as a
legitimate means of opposing the colonial power. In his various commu-
nications with the colonial authorities Mirza resorted to sycophancy and
appeasement. The ulama accused him of being an impostor and a British
stooge.
Mirza won converts mainly in Punjab. After his death, the Ahmadiyya
movement went through a period of internal rift and conflict. It culminated
in a split and two groups emerged: the main group, with its headquarters
currently at Rabwa, regarded Mirza as a prophet, and the minor Lahori
group acknowledged him only as a reformer. The pro-British policy was
continued by the Ahmadiyya. Classically this was illustrated during the
First World War by the distribution of sweets by the Ahmadiyya at Qadian
in 1918 to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at Baghdad and the
fall of that city into British hands. In return the Ahmadiyya received
government protection and patronage. Many were recruited into the army,
including the higher level commissioned services. The influence of the
Ahmadiyya elsewhere in South Asia was marginal.
It should be pointed out that the Ahmadiyya were not alone in adopting
a pro-British position. Almost the whole Muslim landowning class of
Punjab and elsewhere, which included powerful pirs, rendered many
services to the British during peace time and during both World Wars. These
included active help in getting soldiers recruited into the imperial army
from areas in which they had influence. The Ahmadiyya probably earned
the wrath of the ulama because of fundamental doctrinal deviations from
orthodox doctrines. Additionally the Rabwa group pursued an active and
disciplined missionary policy both in South Asia and abroad. Such activities
were perceived as threats to Islam by the ulama.
Some prominent Ahmadiyya of the Rabwa faction, among whom Sir
Muhammad Zafrulla Khan was the best-known, played a leading role in
the struggle for the creation of Pakistan. Sir Zafrulla had subsequently been
made the first foreign minister of Pakistan by Jinnah. In the early 1950s the
Ahmadiyya controversy again cropped up. The ulama alleged that the
Ahmadiyya were misusing their official positions to spread their faith
among Muslims. Statements by the head of the Rabwa-based Ahmadiyya
Mission, Mirza Bashiruddin, indeed suggested that he gave orders to
Ahmadiyya officers to spread their faith in Pakistan, particularly in
Baluchistan. The ulama demanded that the government declare the
Ahmadiyya non-Muslims and, in accordance with the ideological require-
ments of an Islamic state, remove Ahmadiyya from important positions.
Most concretely it was demanded that Sir Zafrulla should be removed from
the post of foreign minister. In 1953 a violent disturbance broke out in
Punjab against the Ahmadiyya. Not only the ulama but also cadres and
officials of the provincial Muslim League government were guilty of
fomenting riots in which Ahmadiyya property was looted, their homes
burnt and many were killed. The central government imposed martial law
and the trouble was crushed. The Ahmadiyya issue receded into the
background for some years, but in 1974 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hoping to
wrest away a popular issue in Punjab from the ularna, took the initiative in
getting a bill passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan declaring the
Ahmadiyya non-Muslims. During the 1980s many restrictions were placed
on their religious freedoms and there was a new wave of violent attacks on
them. They are today a persecuted group in Pakistan.
Conversions to Christianity took place in the areas which comprise
present-day Pakistan largely after the British had annexed Punjab and
Sindh in the 1840s. Most conversions took place from among the poorer
sections of society, particularly from among the untouchable Hindu
castes. A number from middle-class and tlite families also embraced
Christianity. At the time of the partition of India, Christians who
belonged to the Pakistani areas accepted the new state as their homeland.
In fact some of their local leaders in Punjab cooperated with the Muslim
League during the campaign for Pakistan, because Jinnah and other
modernist Muslim League leaders had in their public utterances
dissociated themselves from traditional theocratic ideas of the ulama.
The policy of nationalisation of important sectors of the economy begun
by Bhutto in the early 1970s also included the takeover of some of the
missionary-owned educational institutions in Punjab. However, as these
schools and colleges were practically the only places where Christians
could find employment they opposed such nationalisation. Demonstra-
tions and protest marches were organised against the takeovers. The
protesters were beaten up and fired upon by police and some casualties
occurred. Staff were forcibly evicted from their homes and property
owned by the missions was confiscated.
Thereafter the Christians were not heard of again in mainstream politics
until General Zia ul-Haq embarked upon his Islamisation policy. In 1985
the system of separate electorates was reintroduced in Pakistan (it had been
inherited from the colonial period and was formally abolished in 1956
when the first constitution came into force). General Zia, in compliance
with traditional Islamic law, wanted to separate the primary Muslim-
Pakistani nation (that is a nation entitled to equal rights) from the non-
Muslims. This reform was welcomed by some Christian leaders and the
Catholic Church as it assured the minorities representation while in the
general electorates they tended to be ignored. However, the more radical
sections of the Catholic and Protestant communities expressed their
opposition to it, alleging that separate electorates excluded them from the
Pakistani nation and gave constitutional sanction for discrimination and
segregation.The apprehensions of the Christian radicals seem to have been
borne out by subsequent experience. In the late 1980s several acts of
South Asia
violence were carried out by fanatical sections of Muslim society against

Christians. At least one murder and many cases of burning of churches and
Christian property were reported in the early 1990s. Under the Blasphemy
Ordinance of 1986 a Christian, Gul Masih, was sentenced to death by a
Pakistani lower court in October 1992 for allegedly having made
derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.
In Sindh some half a million Hindus remained after partition. Very few
Hindus were to be found elsewhere in West Pakistan. After the riots in the
earliest years after independence Sindhi Hindus preferred to lie low and
avoid attracting political attention as their religious links with India place
them in a vulnerable position in Pakistan. Communal attacks against
Hindus began to occur in the mid 1980s as the overall ethnic situation in
Sindh deteriorated. Following the destruction of the Babri Mosque at
Ayodhya and the brutal killings of Muslims which accompanied it, a fierce
reaction took place in Pakistan. Destruction of property and temples took
place all over Pakistan, and Hindus were killed and injured in their
hundreds, mainly in Sindh but also in Baluchistan. Although the
government officially urged the people to exercise restraint, some ministers
were responsible for whipping up mass hysteria through crass demagogy
and other such devices. Mobs of angry protesters marched on to Hindu
temples and destroyed them. Ironically most temples in Punjab were no
longer in use as places of worship simply because there were no Hindus
around to use them. Impoverished, homeless Muslim refugee families from
1947 had been residing in some of them. The net result of the mob fury was
that these people were left without a roof over their head.
As regards the minor religious minorities such as the Parsees, Sikhs and
Buddhists, they have also been adversely affected by the increasing
theocratisation of Pakistan. In the Gilgit and Chitral regions are to be
found Ithna Ashari Shias, Ismaili Shias and Sunnis. Here the competition to
win converts between Iran, the Isinaili mission headed by Prince Karim
Agha Khan (based in Europe), and the Zia government backed by the
Saudis, led to several clashes in the 1980s. The tiny community of some
4,000 of the Kalash Kafirs of the Chitral Valley were in particular subjected
to aggressive conversion onslaughts during the Zia regime. Some ularna
demanded that all non-Muslims should be declared dhirnmis and made to
pay jizya (poll tax). Such a drastic demand has not received serious
attention from the state thus far.
Notwithstanding the considerable differences between the modernist and
the ulama's visions of the Islamic state, what all notions of an Islamic polity
contain inescapably is a logical link between membership in the Islamic
community and citizenship rights in the state: the true believer has to be
differentiated from the hypocrite, the heretic and the non-believer. Such an
in-built bias imposes several disabling limitations upon Pakistan's prospects
of becoming a democratic state and society.
Ahmed
Muslim pilgrims gathering in prayer and remembrance outside the tomb of

the Sufi saint Muin al-Din Chisti in Ajmer, hoping for blessings and
intercession (photo: Ron Geaves, 1998).
India
India is constitutionally a secular, democratic state. The total population of
India is estimated at 967 million. Some 82.6 per cent of the population
consists of Hindus including the high castes, the low castes, and casteless
and tribal peoples. The Indian Muslim population is some 127 million or
12 per cent of the total. However, except for the State of Jammu and
Kashmir, where Muslims make up more than 66 per cent of the population,
they are a minority in all other Indian states. The greatest concentration of
Muslims is in the Kashmir Valley, where they constitute more than 94 per
cent of the population, and in a district of Mallapuram in Kerala in
southern India where they form a majority. In some towns and cities of the
largest and politically most important State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) Muslims
form a significant part of the population. There is an urban bias in the
composition of the Muslim population: 30 per cent are town-dwellers as
compared to their overall proportion of 12 per cent of the total Indian
population. The overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims are Sunnis (85-
90 per cent). The Barelwi group is the largest, although the Deobandis have
enjoyed greater prestige with the Indian government because of the support
South Asia
they gave to the Congress movement during the freedom struggle against
the British. The Ahl-i-Hadith denomination is also to be found as small
groupings among orthodox Muslims. The followers of the Shafii school are
to be found along the Malabar coast. The Ithna Ashari Shias are found in
all parts of northern and northwestern India, but are concentrated mostly in
the Lucknow district of UP. Smaller Shia communities consisting of Ismailis
and Bohras are located on the west coast, mainly around Bombay.
The creation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim state was a devastating
blow to the overall position of Muslims who stayed behind in India. It
greatly angered the Hindus for whom the whole subcontinent was an
indivisible cultural whole wherein were located their ancient roots.
Moreover, Muslim entrepreneurs and the intelligentsia of northern India
migrated to Pakistan leaving a largely poor and uneducated Muslim
population behind. Consequently Muslims were severely handicapped in
competing for the opportunities that development brought about. At the
beginning of 1981, out of a total of 3,883 Indian Administrative Service
Officers only 116 were Muslims. In the Indian Police Service there were fifty
Muslims out of a total of 1753. In other lower-grade services the same
under-representation was to be found. Employment in the private sector
was much worse. Such under-representation does not make sense in terms of
Muslim incompetence alone; discrimination in practice surely exacerbates
the overall inability of Muslims to find employment. Muslim ownership in
the production sector is limited to small-scale production. Since the mid
1970s many Muslim craftsmen have been able to make substantial gains
from business and employment opportunities in the Arab countries. It has
been suggested that increasing anti-Muslim violence in the 1980s has been
concentrated in those towns and cities which have undergone economic
development and where Muslims have fared well. The police sent to control
the situation are known to have joined the attacks on Muslims.
In recent years Hindu nationalists have sought to highlight the alleged
wrongs done against the Hindu community and its religion by the Muslims
between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. The classic allegation is
that in 1528 the founder of the Mughul empire, Zahiruddin Babur, had a
mosque built at Ayodhya in northern India on the exact spot where the god
Rama is believed to have been born thousands of year ago. Such a claim has
been rejected by more serious Indian historians. Some even doubt the
historical existence of Rama. At any rate, a campaign to dismantle the
mosque began in real earnest in 1986. On the other hand Muslims
organised themselves to defend the Babri mosque. Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi tried to placate the inflamed feelings on both sides by, on the one
hand, allowing the Hindus to pray inside the mosque, and on the other, by
recognising Urdu as the second official language of UP.
The Hindu nationalists, however, intensified their campaign for the
destruction of the mosque. It culminated in hundreds of thousands of
extremists from different parts of the country coming to Ayodhya in early
December 1992. They easily overpowered the small police force, climbed
onto the mosque and demolished it in a few hours. Brutal mob attacks on
Muslims occurred all over India. Suddenly India was in the midst of
perhaps the most serious communal conflict between Hindus and Muslims
since the partition. The Hindu fundamentalists intend to destroy some
3,000 other such mosques built allegedly on Hindu temples and holy places.
Indian Muslims have generally supported secular parties, and until the
mid 1970s they formed a vote bank for the Congress Party. Thereafter the
Muslim vote split because Congress was no longer perceived as a consistent
protector of minorities. Communal riots against Muslims intensified during
the 1980s. It was not simply the cumulative effect of communal conflicts
which adversely affected the position of Indian Muslims. The peculiar
working of the Indian political system has inadvertently enhanced their
isolation. Given the strong sense of group affiliations, especially in the rural
areas, most people relate to the political process not as individuals but as
part of socio-cultural blocs and groups. Caste, religion, sect, ethnic group,
all serve as rallying points for aggregating group interests and making
demands on the political system. Important in this connection are local
community leaders who bargain the support of their group with different
political parties in return for promises of specific facilities and concessions
to their group. For religious minorities such group bargaining only
strengthens communal isolation.
The pro-Congress Deobandi ulama of the Jamiyat-i-Ulama-i-Hind
extracted significant concessions on Muslim issues from the Congress-led
post-independence government of Prime Minister Jawahar La1 Nehru,
which in the longer run tended to hinder the integration of the Muslims in a
larger modern Indian citizenry. Among them the most crucial was the
preservation of the Muslim Personal Law in its traditional form. Thus while
the Indian government made some radical modernist changes in the Hindu
religious affairs, such as conferring the right on the so-called Untouchables
to enter Hindu temples, passage of the Hindu Marriage Act, and so on, the
Muslims were permitted to practise their own traditional personal law
which upholds the superior position of men in family matters.
In 1985 the problem of Muslim personal law for modern society and
equal citizenship rights was highlighted when Shah Bano, a middle-aged
Muslim woman, who had been divorced by her husband, M.A. Khan,
sought economic support from her former husband. According to Indian
law, as a citizen of India, she was entitled to financial support in case she
had no economic means of her own. She filed a petition in the Madhya
Pradesh High Court which ruled in her favour. But her ex-spouse took the
plea that in Islam no such permanent financial responsibility devolved upon
the man beyond the limited period of idat (period of probation of three
months following divorce so as to establish if pregnancy had occurred prior
South Asia
to dissolution of marriage). Khan appealed in the Indian Supreme Court

against the judgment, but his pleas were rejected. Meanwhile, the case
assumed great political significance as the Muslim community led by the
ulama and other conservative leaders including Sayyid Shahabuddin,
president of the influential All-India Muslim Majlis-i-Mushawarat (Muslim
consultative assembly), took to the streets and protested vehemently against
the alleged intrusion into the internal domain of Muslim social life by the
Indian state.
Many modern Muslims including academics, lawyers, jurists, members
of parliament, women activists and political workers came out boldly in
favour of the judgment. Arguments were put forth by both sides of Muslim
opinion, but the conservative forces greatly outnumbered the modernists.
The whole episode turned into a great manifestation of Islamic
traditionalism. Unwilling to antagonise the large Muslim vote bank Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi went along with the traditional standpoint, and a
special law exempting Muslims from the general divorce law was passed.
Given the exposed and vulnerable nature of the Indian Muslim
community, any apparent sign of Muslim strength can antagonise Hindu
nationalists. There is a widespread belief in India that the Muslim
population is increasing more rapidly than others because of early
marriage. Indian Muslims have also had some advantage in finding
employment in the Gulf region. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have taken a
keen interest in the affairs of the Muslim community in India. Substantial
economic aid is given to Muslim religious organisations for the building of
study centres, Quran schools and the upkeep of mosques. Such aid, given
mainly to ulama and groups supportive of these countries, has helped
bolster the position of conservative Muslims vis-a-vis modernist Muslims.
These changes have been perceived as threats by Hindu parties. Even the
national press has from time to time commented negatively on the growing
Islamic assertiveness among Indian Muslims.
In this context, the question of conversions to Islam are of particular
significance. In the past, the Hindu social order, sharply divided into two
virtually separate social categories, on the one hand, the so-called twice-
born upper three castes and, on the other, the unclean low castes and
Untouchables, functioned more or less as two separate societies.
Historically conversions to Islam, Sikhism and Christianity had come
largely from the lower ranks. This had not been seen by caste Hindus as a
major loss. However, the growing religious nationalism of the early
twentieth century and the post-independence need for votes in the
democratic process rendered the question of numbers and numerical
strength crucial for politics. Upper caste Hindu nationalists have therefore
been confronted by a dilemma. On the one hand, they resent the upward
mobility of the lower castes, which has been facilitated through the system
of fixed quotas introduced soon after independence by the Nehru
A placard on the island of Diu exhorting national unity instead of religious
disintegration (photo: Christer Lagvik, 1992).
government and later expanded; on the other, if the low castes show a
willingness to embrace another religion it creates panic among the Hindu
nationalists because it means a loss in terms of numbers. Embracing
another religion by the low castes has not only been viewed with dismay by
Hindu nationalists, but even the secular sections of society have reacted
with concern and bewilderment. This problem became forcefully manifest
when some Dalits (the so-called Untouchables, also called Harijans)
embraced Islam in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in 1981. Several
Hindu nationalist parties and organisations demanded that a law be
imposed which would prohibit provision of economic benefits and other
alluring promises by foreign missionaries (Christian, Muslim and others) to
South Asia
Indians with a view to converting them to their faith. Some state

governments have enacted such restrictions, but thus far such a law has
not been adopted by the central Indian parliament.
In the late 1980s a powerful separatist movement emerged in Kashmir
among the Muslims. It led to a major confrontation involving violence and
terrorism on a large scale between Indian police and paramilitary forces and
Kashmiri separatists. The situation has been aggravated by covert Pakistani
backing of the Kashmiri militants. In retaliation Hindu extremists have
intensified anti-Muslim propaganda in other parts of India.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh emerged as an independent state on December 16, 1971. The
founders of the new state initially declared it to be a secular democratic
state. Gradually, Islamic features have been added, but constitutionally it
continues to be a democracy. The current population of Bangladesh is
estimated at 125 million. Of these 85.3 per cent are Muslims, almost
entirely Sunnis. Upper caste Hindus constitute 6.8 per cent, and 6.6 per cent
belong to the low-caste and casteless categories. Buddhists, Christians and
others make up the rest of the population. Ever since the sixteenth century
the eastern region of Bengal was called Vanga and the western called
Gauda. The eastern region was predominantly of Mongoloid extraction
whereas West Bengalis were largely of mixed Aryan stock. Although for
more than 500 years both regions were under Muslim rule, conversions to
Islam took place largely in East Bengal where Buddhism had a large
following.
In 1204 a Turkish adventurer, Ikhtyaruddin Bakhtyar, led the first
Muslim incursion into Bengal. He founded a kingdom which included
portions of western and northern Bengal. It was however not until the last
decade of the thirteenth century that eastern and southern Bengal were
penetrated by a Muslim power. It took another 200 years before the whole
of Bengal was conquered. In the long drawn-out struggles for expansion
different Turkish and Afghan factions competed with one another besides
fighting the Hindu rulers in the region. Later the Mughuls defeated all other
powers and annexed Bengal to their empire.
In much of Bengal the caste system was practised with great rigidity by
the Hindu upper castes. The lower castes and the large Buddhist peasantry
were therefore subjected to various cruel and oppressive forms of
degradation. Sufism entered Bengal as a liberating force. Many early Sufis
active in Bengal promoted social reform. Their monasteries provided
sanctuary where ideas of human equality and solidarity were encouraged.
Consequently many oppressed Hindus and Buddhists eagerly entered the
fold of Islam. All the major Sufi orders were active in Bengal. Typically the
more innovative Sufis tried to blend their teachings with local cultural
traditions. However, Bengali Muslim society was typically marked by the
division between ashraf and a m log. The ashraf spoke Persian and wrote in
Persian or Arabic. Common Muslim converts spoke Bengali in everyday
life. Although it was predominantly Sunni Islam which spread in Bengal,
old Hindu customs and traditions continued to be observed by the masses.
During the seventeenth century some Shia influence also appeared when
fearful Shias sought refuge in Bengal from the growing Sunni orthodoxy at
the court of Aurangzeb. Few significant local conversions to Shiism took
place, however.
The reformist-militant movements of Titu Mir and the Faraizis in the
early nineteenth century imparted a strong sense of Islamic identity to
significant sections of the Bengali Muslim peasantry. In the peculiar class
structure of Bengal, Muslims were generally the poorer community while
landlords were often upper caste Hindus. The first partition of Bengal took
place in 1905 when Lord Curzon divided it into West Bengal (predomi-
nantly Hindu) and East Bengal (predominantly Muslim). The Hindus
lamented it, but Muslims soon realised that there were some advantages in
it for them. The Bengali nationalists, who were almost entirely Hindus,
began a massive campaign against the partition. It included terrorist attacks
upon the British and the Muslims. In 1911 the government annulled the
partition under pressure from the Hindus and the Congress Party. The ghost
of the 1905-11 confrontation continued to haunt the two communities. In
the 1945-46 elections the Bengali Muslims voted in favour of separating
from West Bengal and joining Pakistan.
Much to the chagrin of the Bengalis, in March 1948 Governor-General
Mohamed Ali Jinnah declared in a public speech at Dhaka that Bengali
shall be the sole national language of Pakistan. Now, Bengali was not only
the mother-tongue of more than 5 5 per cent of united Pakistan's
population, but also a highly developed language which had been in
official usage for a long time. Jinnah's speech provoked angry demonstra-
tions by Bengali students. The language question was to become the
centrepiece of emergent Bengali nationalism. In the economic sphere also,
Bengali grievances began to mount. The flight of Hindus to India did
provide opportunities for the Bengali Muslims to advance into lower- and
medium-range professions and economic activities. However, the top
positions in the bureaucracy and army remained in the hands of West
Pakistanis. Similarly, big business and industry located in East Pakistan was
owned by the West Pakistan bourgeoisie. The period 1955-65 saw Pakistan
make impressive strides in industrial development, mostly in light consumer
production. However, East Pakistan's share in the economic wealth was
much less than its contribution to it. The Awami League led by Shaykh
Mujibur Rahman appeared as the main representative of Bengali
separatism in the late 1960s. Thus when in 1970 the first general elections
were held in Pakistan the Awami League made a clean sweep of the polls
South Asia
and won 160 out of 162 seats for East Pakistan in the 300-member Pakistan
National Assembly. It was therefore entitled to form the government at the
centre. However, President Yahya Khan refused to hand over power to
Mujib. This brought forth massive strikes and disturbances in East
Pakistan. On the evening of March 25, 1971 the army launched a military
operation against perceived targets of a growing insurgence. Thereafter
followed several months of bloodshed and debauchery at the hands of the
army. Hindus, students and trade union activists were particular targets of
the army. Several million Bengalis fled to India. Thousands came back
trained to fight the army. They wreaked their vengeance with equal
barbarity. Thousands of West Pakistani armed and civilian personnel, their
families and Bengali and Bihari collaborators were killed. On December 3,
the Indian army intervened in support of the Bengali resistance. By
December 17, 1971 the Pakistan army had been defeated.
Although Bangladesh has the usual subdivisions of the Hanafi school of
orthodox law and rites, and traditionalist ulama of the Barelwi brand and
pirs abound in large numbers, this does not mean that they enjoy the same
degree of prestige as in Pakistan. There are several reasons for this:
population growth in one of the most densely population countries in the
world has resulted in fragmentation of landholdings; the continuing
influence of the reformist movements of the last century created a stronger
social base for puritanical and egalitarian Islam; dispossession of the major
Hindu landlord class who fled to India in 1947 and land reforms after
independence resulted in the liquidation of large-scale landlordism.
Consequently the conservative social order upon which typically the pir-
cum-landlord structure thrives had been effectively undermined. Moreover,
the overall prestige and influence of the ulama had seriously been
undermined during the liberation struggle against Pakistan. The East
Pakistan branch of the Jamaat-i-Islami and some other ulama supported the
Pakistan army. They had therefore been thoroughly discredited in the new
state.
Notwithstanding the initial declaration of Bangladesh as a secular-
democratic people's republic, the influence of Islam in politics has gradually
been growing. There are various reasons for this. Relations between
Bangladesh and India became strained after the assassination of the founder
of Bangladesh, Shaykh Mujibur Rahman, in 1975. Disputes arose between
the two countries on several economic and political issues, but the most
serious was one about proper sharing of river waters. Consequently the
religious perspective on politics found a revival in Bangladeshi politics. The
government of General Ziaur Rahman (1975-81) began emphasising the
Islamic cultural identity of the state. In 1977 the constitution was amended
and instead of the commitment to secularism it was stated that trust and
faith in the Almighty Allah alone was to be the basis of all actions. In 1988
Islam was declared the state religion. These changes facilitated cultivation
of good relations with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Bangladesh began to
receive economic aid and Bangladeshi workers were permitted in
substantial numbers to seek work in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.
The governments of General Ershad (1982-90), and Mrs Khalida Zia
(1991-96) continued to emphasise the Islamic identity. Gradually relations
with Pakistan were also normalised.
Bangladeshi Muslim women have traditionally not been observing the
purdah (seclusion of women) as strictly as is common in many other parts
of South Asia. Most wear the sari or a flowing skirt covering the legs.
Although the rate of literacy is very low among women an increasing
number are now receiving a modern education. The Muslim Family Laws
Ordinance of 1961, adopted during the Pakistan period, still applies,
making polygamy difficult and conditional. However, the general Islamic
revival has also hit Bangladesh and its typical concerns have been questions
about Islamic morality and piety, which in turn have meant calls for making
the female population conform more strictly to traditional Islamic
requirements of segregation. The state has not thus far gone along with
such demands.
Bengali Hindus constitute the main religious minority of Bangladesh.
They are dispersed throughout the country both in the rural and urban
areas. In 1947 Hindus made up some 23 per cent of the population of East
Pakistan. In 1951 the Hindu percentage had dropped to 22 per cent. By
1961 it declined to 1 8 per cent. Hindus kept migrating to India because of
an increasing sense of insecurity resulting from recurrent communal riots.
During the 1971 civil war, the Pakistan army particularly targeted the
Hindus in its cleansing operations. This resulted in a massive flight to India.
The delayed census held in 1974 (that for 1971 could not be held because of
the civil war) reported the Hindu population as only 13.5 per cent. Thus a
decrease of almost 5 per cent occurred because of the civil war. The 1981
census gives the Hindu population as 12.1 per cent. Therefore the trend of
Hindus migrating to India has continued. Attacks on Hindus increased
dramatically after the 1992 Babri Mosque incident at Ayodhya in India.
Retaliatory attacks resulting in destruction of Hindu temples, and acts of
arson, looting, rape and killing against Hindus took place in Bangladesh. It
led to a new wave of migration of Hindus to India.
As regards Christians and other minorities dispersed in the society, very
little is known. The tiny Buddhist tribal communities of the Chittagong Hill
Tracts have many grievances, largely of econon~icnature, against the state
and the Bengali majority. They especially resent the encroachment on their
forest habitats by Bengali plains-people and through various government
developmental schemes. Additionally, the attempts of the Bangladesh
government to propagate Islam in their area with the help of Saudi funds is
perceived as a serious threat to their cultural autonomy and identity. An
armed conflict between the Bangladesh government and the tribal people
South Asia
resulted in thousands of deaths during the 1970s and 1980s. Nothing much
has been heard during the 1990s, but a final peace accord has not yet been
agreed.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is a democracy which acknowledges a special relationship
between Buddhism and the island. The total population of Sri Lanka is
estimated in excess of 18 million. The largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka is
the Sinhalese who make up 74 per cent of the total population. Sinhalese
are overwhelmingly Buddhists. The second group is the Tamils. They are
classified as two distinct groups: Sri Lankan Tamils who have been on the
island since time immemorial and the so-called Indian Tamils who were
brought from southern India to work as indentured labour on the
plantations in the nineteenth century. Together the Tamil population
constitutes 18.2 per cent of the total population. The Tamils are
predominantly Hindus. There are significant Protestant and Catholic
minorities among both Sinhalese and Tamils. Muslims constitute some
1.3 million or 7.4 per cent of Sri Lankan population. Known as the Moors,
Sri Lankan Muslims traditionally trace their presence to the settlements
established by Muslim traders and emigrks in the very early period of Islam.
These settlements were located on the northeast, north and western coasts
of Sri Lanka. Currently significant Muslim minorities are to be found all
over the country, but are concentrated in the eastern districts of Amaparai
(41.5 per cent), Trincomalee (28.9 per cent), Batticalo (23.9 per cent) and
Mannar (26.6 per cent) in the north. All these are Tamil-dominated areas.
There are also some Indian and Malay Muslims settled on the island. Sri
Lankan Muslims subscribe to the Sunni-Shafii branch of orthodox Islam.
Their mother tongue is almost invariably Tamil. A Muslim klite consisting
mostly of gem merchants is concentrated in the capital Colombo.
A violent ethnic conflict has been raging since the late 1950s in Sri Lanka
between the Sinhalese and mainly Sri Lankan Tamils. During the 1980s, the
level of violence escalated drastically. While the Sinhalese insist upon
keeping Sri Lanka a unitary state the Tamil extremists have gone beyond
demands for regional autonomy and declared the creation of a separate
Tamil homeland as their goal. Inevitably the various other communities on
the island have been affected by the violence around them.
The strategic location of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean rendered it an
important element in inter-coastal trade between Europe and the Far East.
Arabs were already engaged in such trade in the pre-Islamic period. After
the rise of Islam the sea-trade in the region came to be dominated by Arabs
who established permanent trading posts on Sri Lanka. Those early Arabs
maintained close contacts with the Arab world until the fall of the Abbasid
caliphate in 1258. Thereafter they turned towards the Muslims living along
the Malabar coast of southern India. Their numbers grew naturally, as well
as through an influx of Muslims from India and conversions of the local
population to Islam. Although some petty Muslim chiefdoms existed during
the mediaeval period, Muslims have not historically displayed any ambition
to establish an Islamic state. O n the whole, Muslims benefited from the
religious tolerance of the Sinhalese kings and the local population of pre-
colonial times. Some Muslims have prospered as gem merchants, but most
work as subsistence farmers.
The arrival of the Portuguese in 1505 greatly worsened the position of
the Moors in Sri Lanka. The Portuguese were not only trade rivals of the
Arabs, but entertained a profound hatred for the Islamic faith. As they
expanded and consolidated their hold over the island they made every effort
to destroy the flourishing trade of the Muslims and used force to convert
them to Christianity. In response the Muslims sided with those local princes
who resisted the Portuguese. Notwithstanding considerable hardship the
Muslim population resisted successfully the proselytising zeal of the
Portuguese. The loss in material terms was considerable, however. The
Dutch who succeeded the Portuguese in 1658 were also hostile towards the
Muslims, although the latter had sided with them against the Portuguese.
The Dutch tried to drive away Muslims both from international trade as
well as from the internal retail trade sector. Also restrictions were imposed
on certain social and religious ceremonies of the Muslims, and Muslim
merchants from India were denied residence rights on Sri Lanka.
Consequently when the British sought to establish their power on Sri
Lanka the Muslims supported them. The new colonial power did not hurt
the interests of the Muslims. However, when the English introduced modern
education in the new colony, the Sri Lankan Tamils especially but also
Sinhalese took advantage of the new opportunities offered by the missionary
schools. The Muslims stayed away fearing that education in such schools
might endanger their children's faith in Islam. On the other hand, a more
active and positive interest was taken in the economic opportunities offered
by the British. Consequently Muslims entered the plantation economy, the
communication and transport sector, and the packing and fishing industries
as contractors and middle-men. It was however in the gem industry that the
Moors continued to hold a leading position.
The apathy towards modern, English-medium education shown by the
Muslims inevitably affected them adversely in terms of communication and
political influence in relation to the colonial government. The traditional
Quran schools known as the maktabs and madrasas imparted a basic
knowledge of traditional Islam and helped maintain a sense of separate
religious identity, but it enhanced the isolation of the Muslim community
from the rest of society. In the late nineteenth century some leading
Muslims such as M.C. Siddi Lebbe, Arabi Pasha (an exile from Egypt),
I.L.M. Abdul Azeez and Wapichi Marikar joined forces to rectify the
South Asia
situation. In their view, the acquisition of modern education was imperative

for Muslims to keep pace with the changes underway and to partake
effectively in the economic and political spheres. At first Muslims paid little
heed to these initiatives, but the modernisers persisted with their efforts.
Eventually attitudes changed and a modern-educated intelligentsia among
Muslims also began to evolve. By the turn of the century a modern-
educated political tlite emerged among the Moors which demanded
representation in the Legislative Council.
Earlier in 1888 a controversy raged between Tamil and Muslim leaders
over the question of the exact ethnic origin of the Muslims. Sir
Ponnambalam Ramannathan, a Tamil leader, asserted that the Muslims
of Sri Lanka were merely Tamils converted to Islam. The implication of
such an assertion was that Muslims should assimilate into Tamil society and
give up claims to special identity. This position was challenged by I.L.M.
Abdul Azeez who stressed the Arab ancestry of the Muslims. Beginning in
1889, Muslims were nominated to represent their group in the Legislative
Assembly. Later, separate electorates were introduced for the minorities and
Muslims were elected on that basis in the expanded Legislative Assembly.
On the other hand, the fairly peaceful relations between Muslims and
Sinhalese suffered a setback at the beginning of the twentieth century when
rising Sinhalese nationalism began to blame non-Sinhalese and non-
Buddhists for the ills of Sinhalese society. In 1915 anti-Muslim riots were
instigated by Sinhalese nationalists, especially against the coastal Moors
who were recent arrivals from South India.
The Donoughmore Commission (1927-28) arrived from Britain to study
the problems of communal representation and to suggest changes. It
recommended universal adult franchise, but rejected the principle of
communal representation. Universal suffrage was instituted in 1931, but
because the Muslim community was dispersed in society it was a loser under
the new system of joint electorates. Only one Muslim candidate was elected
under the new system to the first assembly, and in the elections to the second
assembly none was elected. Meanwhile the British had been preparing Sri
Lanka for self-rule. In 1944 Lord Soulbury arrived as the head of a new
constitutional commission whose task was to prepare the framework for an
eventually self-governing Sri Lanka. Leaders of the Sri Lankan Tamils
pleaded before the Soulbury Commission for a 50-50 share in power
between the Sinhalese and the rest of the minorities. Muslim leaders did not
support such a demand and instead sought to align themselves with the
Sinhalese in national politics. On the other hand they demanded separate
electorates. The Soulbury Commission rejected such a demand. It prescribed
a unitary form of government based on the Westminster model. Although it
expressly forbade discrimination against minorities a bill of rights clearly
defining the rights of individuals and minorities was not included. The
constitution was adopted and enforced in 1947.
The Colombo-based Muslim leadership continued in the post-indepen-
dence period to align itself with the Sinhalese. The Sinhalese responded by
including some Muslim ministers in the government. Amid the intensified
ethno-nationalist hostilities of the 1980s between the Sinhalese and Tamils
the Muslims also reviewed their Islamic identity. Partly such identity was a
reflection of the exposure of many Sri Lankan Muslims to Arab culture.
From the 1970s onwards Sri Lankan Muslims had been seeking employ-
ment in the Gulf region in large numbers. Those who stayed there a few
years returned home groomed in Islamic culture and practices. Alienated
from the growing Sinhalese-Tamil polarisation, and frequently exposed to
brutal attacks from both sides, Muslim youths were easily attracted to the
Islamic discourse of the returnees from the Arab countries. Consequently,
congregational offering of prayers became more widespread, and the Friday
prayers in particular were attended in large numbers. Organisations such as
the Moors Islamic Cultural Home and the Islamic Secretariat have been
trying to propagate chaste Islamic habits among the young. Such
developments have led to discussions about communal solidarity. In this
regard the wealthy Muslims have been severely criticised in community
discussions for neglecting welfare obligations towards the poor. Particularly
evading the alms tax, zakat, has been made a major issue in the discussions.
The escalation of ethnic conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils inevitably
dragged the Muslim community into its sphere. The policy of Sinhalese
colonisation in the east and north also hurt the Muslim population living
there. Consequently, as Muslims became politicised, both Sinhalese and
Tamil extremists intensified their terrorist activities against them. In
response the Muslims established their own militias and began to organise
defence committees. However, as most of them were settled among Tamils
the main confrontation took place between them and the Tamils. The policy
of ethnic cleansing which the Tamil separatists have been pursuing since
1988 in the north and east led to considerable loss of Muslim life and
property. Therefore Muslims have been demanding the creation of a
Muslim province or council in the east and north.
Prior to the colonial intervention Sri Lankan Muslims practised the
sharia in their communal matters. The Portuguese period was one of
general suppression of Muslims and this applied to their laws too. The
Dutch compiled a code of Muslim Law, which was then approved by
Muslim headmen and recognised by the Dutch judicial system. The Code
covered inheritance, succession, marriage and divorce. The British
recognised the Code and later undertook a revision of it in 1806. The
revised code was applied under an Ordinance of 1852. The present-day
Muslims continue to be governed by the Code of Muslim Law, although
some reforms such as compulsory registration of marriages and divorce
were subsequently added to reduce the abuse of traditional law by men. On
the whole, Sri Lankan Muslim women are freer than their counterparts on
South Asia
the subcontinent. Because of the strong Tamil element in the Muslim

community and the absence of a sovereign political power among Muslims,
the pressures towards conformity to orthodox purdah are less effective.
Education among Muslim women is limited although a few Muslim girls'
colleges and training institutions do exist.
Maldives
The tiny Maldives republic in the Indian Ocean consists of more than 1,000
coral islands which together make up only 298 square kilometres of dry
land. It is, however, a very densely populated state. Its population of
260,000 is predominantly of Sinhalese and Tamil extraction with some
intermixing with Arab settlers. Until the middle of the twelfth century,
Buddhism was the main religion of the people. In 1153 the king converted
to Islam and made his followers embrace the new faith. It is believed that a
Moroccan traveller, Abu Barakaat Yusuf al-Barbary was responsible for this
conversion. He introduced the Maliki branch of Sunni Islam. Another
version credits Sheikh Yusuf Shamsuddin of Tgbriz, a renowned scholar, for
the conversion of Maldivians to Islam. At any rate, the Shafii branch had
prevailed in the Maldives for a long time. The language spoken by the
people is Devehi, an Indo-European language related to Sinhala. Although
Maldives is a traditional Muslim society its cultural ethos bears a heavy
imprint of Sri Lankan culture.
Since the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century to the
Maldives, European influence has existed - not continuously but intermit-
tently - on the islands. In 1887 the Maldives became a British protectorate
but retained internal self-government under a sultan. In 1965 Maldives
became independent and in 1968 a republic. Under the 1968 constitution the
president is elected by popular vote for a five-year period. The legislative
assembly, the Majlis, consists of forty-eight members and serves also for five
years. Forty of its members are elected and eight are nominated by the
president. In recent years the president, Mamoon Abdul Gayoon, has
assumed rather absolute powers notwithstanding the elective nature of his
position. In doing so he has been flirting with Islamic symbolism to
legitimatise authoritarian modifications in his approach to politics.
Literature
For a general historical account of mainland South Asian Muslims prior to
independence, see Mohammad Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1967). See also Ram Gopal, Indian Muslims: A
Political History (1858-1947) (Lahore: Book Traders, 1976) and Muslim
Self-statement in India and Pakistan 1857-1968, eds. Aziz Ahmad and
G.E. von Grunebaum (Wiesbaden: 0. Harassowitz, 1970). For the recent
period before independence, see Wilfred C. Smith, Modern Islam in India
(Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1963). See also Peter Hardy, The Muslinzs
of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). For a
historical account of the role of the ulama in northern Indian politics, see
Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, Ulema in Politics (Karachi: Mareef, 1974). See also
Ziya-ul-Hasan Faruqi, The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan
(Lahore: Progressive Books, 1980). Contemporary Muslim communities in
South Asia are described in Muslim Communities of South Asia: Culture,
Society and Power, ed. Triloki Nath Madan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995).
Sufism in the Indian subcontinent is discussed in Shuja Alhaq, A Forgotten
Vision: A Study of Human Spirituality in the Light of the Islamic Tradition
(London: Minerva Press, 1996). For a statement of the modernist approach
to Islam, see Sir Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious
Thought in Islam (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1960) and for a
statement of the Islamist (fundamentalist) approach to Islam, see Abul Ala
Mawdudi, The Islamic Law and Constitution (Lahore: Islamic Publica-
tions, 1980).
An introduction to Islam in contemporary South Asia is given in Islam in
Asia: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Philippines,
Malaya, ed. Asghar A. Engineer (Lahore: Vanguard, 1986), pp. 113-226;
Andri: Wink (ed.), Islam, Politics and Society in South Asia (Delhi:
Manohar, 1990); and Katherine P. Ewing, Shariat and Ambiguity in South
Asian Islam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988). The role of Islam in
ethnic politics and separatism of South Asian Muslims is discussed in
Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia
(London and New York: Pinter, 1996). For an analysis of the discussion on
the Islamic State in Pakistan, see Ishtiaq Ahmed, The Concept of An Islamic
State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1987). See also Leonard Binder, Religion and Politics in
Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961); Report of the
Court of Inquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II to Enquire into the
Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1954);
Kalim Bahadur, The Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan (Lahore: Progressive
Books, 1978); and David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the
Making of Pakistan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). For the
Islamisation of law in Pakistan, see The Application of Islamic Law in a
Modern State, ed. Anita M . Weiss (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1986). Khawar Mumtaz and Farida Shaheed, Women of Pakistan (Lahore:
Vanguard, 1987), discusses the women question in Pakistan.
A study of the post-independence situation of Indian Muslims is found in
Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslims since
Independence (London: Hurst and Company, 1997) and Balmukand R.
Agarwala, The Shah Bano Case (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1986).For
a general discussion on religion and politics in India, see Religion, State and
South Asia
Politics in India, ed. Moin Shakir (Delhi: Ajanta Books, 1989). On Islam in
Bangladesh, see Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengali Muslims, 1871-1 906: A
Quest for Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981). See also Islam in
Bangladesh: Society, Culture and Politics, ed. Rafiuddin Ahmed (Dacca:
Itihas Samiti, 1983) and Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the
Bengal Frontier, 1204-1 760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
Chapter Eleven
Indonesia and Malaysia

Sven Cederroth
In both Indonesia and Malaysia, two Southeast Asian countries with

almost the same official language and a similar Malay culture, Islam is the
predominant religion. In Indonesia, which has more Muslims than any
other country and where more than 90 per cent of the population are
Muslims, Islam has no official position. In principle all recognised
religions are equal. In pancasila, the five principles which make up the
constitution of the Indonesian republic, the first point refers in general
terms to belief in God, without mentioning any specific religion by name.
With reference to pancasila, the Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP),the
political party that is seen as the Muslim alternative in Indonesian
politics, was some years ago even forbidden to use the kaba, the sacred
black stone of Mecca, as its symbol. In Malaysia, where only somewhat
more than 50 per cent of the population are Muslims, Islam is
paradoxically the official state religion; and by being classified as
bumiputra, sons of the earth, the native population, that is the Muslim
Malays, have all kinds of privileges. Under the influence of a large number
of orthodox mission groups, known as the dawa-movement, the position
of Islam in Malaysian society has steadily become strengthened during the
last two centuries. The two dominant Malay parties, the United Malays
National Organisation (UMNO) and the Persatuan Islam se-Malaysia
(PAS), Pan Malayan Islamic Party, almost seem to compete to satisfy
Islamic demands. Nowadays, Muslims who are caught drinking alcoholic
beverages or who neglect to fast during Ramadan, the Muslim fasting
month, may be punished. In Kelantan, one of the states of the Malaysian
federation, PAS attempted a few years ago to introduce hudud, the
Muslim penal code.
What are the reasons for Islam in these two culturally and linguistically
closely affiliated countries assuming such radically different roles in social
and political life? Is Islam understood in the same way in both countries or
could it be the case that the religious forms of expression, despite the
common designation, look quite different? To be able to answer these
questions, it is necessary to take a closer look at the social role of Islam in
the two countries.
The Indonesian archipelago

Whenever Indonesia is discussed it is necessary to remember that this is a
large and heterogeneous country. The archipelago that stretches from the
Asian continent in the north to Australia in the south consists of more than
12,000 large and small islands. Of these, some 300 are inhabited by an
ethnically, linguistically and culturally heterogeneous population of some
200 million people. Almost two-thirds of the total population live on the
island of Java, which, however, only occupies some 8 per cent of the total
land area. This means that while the Javanese are crowded together on their
extremely densely populated island, the remaining third of the population is
thinly spread across many almost empty islands. This demographical
imbalance is only one of many easily visible paradoxes in this divided
country. The number of languages, for instance, is high and it is not
uncommon to encounter several different languages on one and the same
island. On the small East Indonesian island of Alor, for example, there are
no less than eight clearly distinguishable languages and some seventy
dialects. Across the entire archipelago there are at least 250 languages and a
great number of dialects.
From a cultural point of view, similar conditions persist too. With its
more than 360 different ethnic groups, Indonesia is one of the world's
ethnically most divided countries. In the jungles of the inner parts of the
larger islands we still come across nomadic hunters and gatherers. Among
these, some groups such as Kubu on Sumatra and Punan on Kalimantan
belong to the Veddic race and represent the scattered remains of the oldest
inhabitants of the islands who are believed to have migrated into the
archipelago some 8-10,000 years ago. In the Javanese sultanates we find an
old, culturally complex civilisation, with elegant forms of artistic
expression, which began to flourish more than 1,000 years ago and which
has produced several large empires. Between these two extremes there is a
world of cultures so rich and varied that it is hardly imaginable. Over the
course of millennia all the main world religions have at one time or another
taken root and flourished. Beneath, however, there has always been an
original Indonesian, animistic cosmology according to which every living
being has a soul and which postulates the existence of a large number of
spirits that affect human beings. All these various belief systems have
influenced each other in many different ways and created a great number of
original forms of religion, many of which are still alive and flourishing.
In many cases, what is formally called Islam is a far cry from more
orthodox religious doctrines and shows varyingly strong influences, not
only from the original animistic beliefs but also from Buddhism and
Hinduism. During recent decades a stricter version of Islam has grown,
especially among sectors of the urban population, although it is still a
minority that adheres strictly to more orthodox religious tenets. On the
Ceremonial rice-pounding during the celebration of the Prophet

Muhammad's birthday on the island of Lombok (photo: Sven Cederroth,
1987).
nationalistic resistance movement developed in Indonesia. In this resistance,

the Muslims played an important role and the first nationalistic mass
movement, the Sarekat Islam (SI) that was founded in 1911, had a Muslim
character. During the first decade, the SI grew quickly until it comprised
several million members and became the core of the anti-colonial resistance
movement. The rapid growth, however, also led to divisions within the
movement, and in 1921 it was split into two parts, one pan-Islamic, the
other socialistic. After the division, the SI rapidly declined, and from the
remnants of its two wings two political parties emerged, one a nationalist
party under the leadership of later on President Sukarno and, the other, a
communist party.
Cederroth
After the decline of the SI, the Muslim wing of the resistance movement
was represented mainly by two groups, the Muhammadiyah and the
Nahdatul Ulama (NU). The former group can be characterised as pietistic
and modernistic. It strives to reform Indonesian Islam in such a way that
while the teachings are those of the Quran, they are interpreted in a modern
way. In contrast to SI, the Muhammadiyah has never become a true mass
movement, but has always had its primary basis among the urban middle
classes and among intellectuals. The NU, on the other hand, finds most of
its support among conservative farmers in the rural areas. In its ideology,
the NU departs from the Islamic tradition, as it has developed on Java, and
it can therefore be described as pietistic and tradionalistic. The movement
has harshly criticised Muhammadiyah because of its lack of understanding
for specifically Javanese traditions. Both movements still exist and are
important forces in contemporary Indonesian society.
At independence, the Muslim forces worked hard to reach their goal of
having the new nation proclaimed an Islamic state. The nationalists around
Sukarno realised, however, that such a declaration would cause rifts that
might be impossible for the young nation to overcome. As an alternative the
above-mentioned, vaguely worded, pancasila doctrine was therefore
introduced. The, until now, only completely free elections that have been
held in Indonesia took place in 1955, and it was widely expected that the
Muslim parties would win a majority. However, the Islamic parties gained
less than half of the votes. The results of this election are also interesting
because it represents the first, and so far the only time, that we have seen an
official indication of the strength of the different tendencies within
Indonesian Islam. The result was that the parties representing a Javanised
Islam, mainly the NU, together gained somewhat more votes than the more
orthodox Muslim parties.
After the 1955 election, the influence of the orthodox Muslims
diminished radically, while the strength of the Communist Party grew
rapidly. During the first half of the 1960s, the party challenged president
Sukarno and the nationalists in an intense power struggle. This period, now
known as Orde Lama, the Old Order, ended with the coup d'ttat on
October 1, 1965 and the subsequent massacres on known communists and
their sympathisers. To a large extent it was the youth organisations of the
Muslim parties who, together with the army, bore the main responsibility
for the bloody pogroms. With the Communist Party now eliminated, there
were great expectations among many orthodox Muslims that there would
be a renaissance for Islam in Indonesian politics. It soon turned out,
however, that the new president, Suharto, was also eager to restrict the
influence of the Muslim forces. During the long rule of President Suharto -
he remained in power more than thirty two years after the events that put
him there - Islam has all but disappeared as a political alternative in
Indonesia. The elections that have been held have been free and universal,
but only three strictly controlled parties have been allowed to contest.
Among these, the government-controlled party, Golkar, has always won a
comfortable majority, while the other two parties have played the role of a
democratic hostage. They are not allowed to work freely, and, as mentioned
above, the Muslim party is not even allowed to appear in its true form.
After the fall of Suharto in May 1998, the party system has been reformed,
and many old and new parties now appear ready to contest in the upcoming
elections scheduled to be held in 1999.
Currents in Indonesian Islam

In order to understand the situation that has been outlined above, it is
necessary to take a somewhat closer look at the various currents of
Indonesian Islam. In doing so, let us begin with the old Islamic syncretism,
the Agami Jawi.
When Islam replaced Hindu-Buddhism as the official religion, it was as a
pawn in the power struggle between various petty kingdoms. Before the
arrival of Islam, mystical speculation had played a prominent part in the
courts, and the acceptance of Islam did not abolish this practice - it just
meant that it took on an Islamic character. To justify the king's position as a
divine ruler, the royal genealogies during the Hindu time had usually been
constructed so as to show a god, usually Shiva, as the founder of the
dynasty. When Islam took over as the official religion, Shiva was replaced
with Nabi Mohammed, the Prophet Muhammad, in the royal genealogies.
However, that was about as far as it went and adat, the old customary law,
rather than sharia, the Islamic law, continued to determine relations
between people and regulate right versus wrong.
In an attempt to characterise the central elements of this court culture,
on Java known as priyai, it may be appropriate to start with some words
about emotions. In the priyai philosophy one finds a conviction that
harmony with oneself as well as with the surrounding world is the primary
thing for which everyone must strive. In order to achieve this harmony, the
individual must first of all learn to control his or her feelings. A Javanese
who aims at some refinement may never show any lack of self-restraint. Not
only are bursts of fury a mortal sin, but also spontaneous manifestations of
joy and other public expressions of an inner emotional life are looked upon
with great displeasure. To hide all emotions and show a calm face is
therefore the ideal, and white lies are fully accepted as long as they
contribute to the achievement of harmonious relations. It is only when this
has been achieved that the prerequisites for living a happy life have been
reached. To obtain this desired harmony, the priyai culture allows the
individual two roads, an inner and an outer.
The inner road consists of mystical practice. O n Java many books about
mysticism which teach different procedures have been published. These
Cederroth
Mourners at a funeral in the village Bayan on the island of Lombok (photo:

Sven Cederroth, 1985).
books are widely read, especially among priyai intellectuals. The most
important purpose with all Javanese mysticism seems to be to train the
individual to accept the unavoidable with patience and without being upset.
Thus, happiness and unhappiness are considered to be inseparably
connected to each other and when one has accepted unhappiness and
learnt to live with it, it is no longer a problem. The individual may
disconnect his or her inner emotions from the shattering events of the outer
world and create the conditions necessary to reach the final goal - rasa. This
concept is not easy to define exactly but refers to a feeling of direct and total
affinity with the universe and the forces controlling it.
The second, outer road to the kind of harmony that is a prerequisite for
reaching rasa can be seen as complementary to the inner road. Its purpose is
to prevent shattering emotions by building a protective wall around
everything that is potentially upsetting. This state of things is reached by
formalising social life in such a way that it is easy to anticipate - that is, all
human relations have to be regulated by a strict etiquette. The Javanese are
intensely status conscious, and the social distance between two persons is
very clearly indicated, not only through the etiquette but also in the language
spoken. A person of lower rank humbles herself or himself when she or he
socialises with someone from the tlite and when addressing that person, she
or he does it with utmost politeness, using a careful, wrapped up and
indirect language. The Javanese language can be spoken in several different

ways varying from a simple and rough everyday language to a refined,
ritualised way of talking. Which of the different language levels is chosen
depends partly on the situation but mainly on the relative position of the two
actors in the status hierarchy. Especially when two persons whose positions
are more or less equal meet, a very careful and subtle searching takes place
with the intention of determining the status of the other person vis-a-vis
one's own. It is only when this has been done that it becomes possible to
determine an adequate language level for communication with the other
person. Tightly linked to this persistent striving for inner and outer harmony
there also exists a refined form of art which, with a subtle symbolism,
dramatises and enhances the basic values of the priyai culture. It is above all
in the popular shadow-play theatre with its eternal struggle between good
and bad that these values are clearly expressed. In these plays the syncretistic
vein of the Javanese is also clearly visible since the legends recited are taken
entirely from the classical Indian Hindu eposes Mahabarata and Ramayana.
The kind of syncretism that has been briefly described above is part of the
culture of the klite and belongs to the so-called large tradition. This old court
culture is still alive, and it is probably no exaggeration to say that it has had a
decisive influence on the shaping of the modern Indonesian state. Many of the
leading statesmen, including President Suharto himself, have a priyai
background, which has heavily influenced his style of leadership. However,
also among ordinary Javanese, such as the farmers in the thousands of
villages, we come across another form of syncretistic tradition. This 'little
tradition', on Java known as abangan, consists of a balanced integration of
animistic and Hindu elements which have been thinly coated with a varnish
of Islamic beliefs. It would be a mistake, however, to view the syncretistic
religion of the Javanese farmers merely as a somewhat diluted and coarsened
image of the large tradition. Rather, it contains many unique elements, one of
the most apparent being animistic beliefs about the world as animated and
inhabited by a large number of spirits of various kinds. These may influence
the lives of men for good as well as for bad, and it is therefore important to be
able to control the spirits and protect oneself against the evil ones. For the
syncretistic Javanese, the spirit realm is an absolute reality which often and in
many different ways influences people's daily lives. By referring to the spirit
world, answers can be provided to unexpected, shocking or otherwise
inexplicable events.
In the Javanese villages there is a category of diviners known as dukun.
These are ordinary villagers who, by different means, are able to
communicate with the spirit world. Some of them are said to possess
supernatural powers which they have acquired by means of fasting and
meditation. In trance such persons can communicate with the spirits and
induce them to assist themselves and their friends or attack and destroy
enemies. Diviners are often employed to find out the underlying reasons for
Cederroth
Mosque for wetu telu (syncretistic Muslims) in Bayan (photo: Sven

Cederoth, 1985).
a sickness and to assist in curing it. Thus, most often diviners attempt to aid
their fellow beings, but there are also evil ones who specialise in 'black
magic' and use their magical powers to harm instead of help. Depending on
how deeply a dukun has penetrated into the supernatural world, he or she
may possess different degrees of knowledge and magical ability. A diviner
may employ his ability to fight another diviner, whereby the one with
superior magical knowledge and power will defeat the other. Such battles
are not physical but are fought entirely by spiritual means. If a sick person
believes that his or her illness is caused by a spirit which is controlled by an
evil dukun, he may turn to another diviner and request him to fight against
the first mentioned dukun. If the latter defeats the adversary, the person
who has employed him will recover.
A central element in the syncretism of the little tradition is found in the
communal meal, known as slametan. Generally speaking, farmers are less
attracted by mystical speculation and by the subtle symbolism of the
shadow plays, which are both essential elements of the large tradition.
However, within the little tradition the communal meal fulfils a similar
function of focusing and organising essential values by controlling emotions
and behaviour. A slametan can be arranged for almost any conceivable
purpose but is perhaps most frequent in connection with life crises of some
kind. Basically, a slametan consists of a joint meal accompanied by a prayer,

but it can be more or less elaborated depending on the wish of the person
sponsoring the ceremony.
Many syncretistic Javanese, priyai as well as abangan, have experienced
a great threat from more orthodox Muslims who criticise their behaviour
and try to induce them to adopt other, more properly Islamic customs. It
was in particular during a period for some years following the coup d'etat
in 1965 that this threat was specifically acute. As a part of the fight against
a perceived communist threat, a decree was issued in 1966 which stated
that all Indonesians must practice an approved religion. Since Agami Jawi,
the Javanese syncretism, was not among the approved religions, orthodox
Muslims saw this as an opportunity to attack the Islamic syncretists. Faced
with this threat, many syncretists have felt the necessity to join forces in
more solid organisational forms. The various mysticist groups have
therefore joined together and hold yearly congresses in which thousands
of people participate. In 1984, the number of registered mystical groups
amounted to no less than 353. The exact number of adherents is not
known, but one of the groups, Sapta Darma, claims to have 10 million
members.
Syncretist Islam on Java can be seen as an example of how earlier
patterns of belief and local customs have been woven together with Islamic
beliefs and practices into a uniquely Javanese interpretation of Islam. A
close examination of Islamic documents will show, however, that this form
of Javanese Islam deviates quite considerably from what has been
prescribed by the Quran, the Sunna and the sharia, the Islamic law. Ever
since Islam was first introduced on Java there have been persons who have
reacted against local traditions influencing Islamic practice and who have
adhered to a more pietistic lifestyle. But it was not until the end of the
nineteenth century that such persons were able to influence the develop-
ment of Indonesian Islam in a more significant way.
This gradual change of the religious climate was caused, above all, by
two factors. Firstly, about 100 years ago communications with the Arab
world started improving, which made it possible for a growing number of
Indonesians to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca. There they met with
Muslims from other parts of the globe and were exposed to more orthodox
interpretations of the religion. This exposure to the surrounding world went
hand in hand with the growth of a new social class, mainly consisting of
merchants in the cities. This new class was neither priyai-aristocrats nor
peasants but represented an entirely new stratum in Javanese society. For
the merchants, syncretistic Islam was identified with obsolete feudal
conditions and was therefore seen as a threat against their activities.
Pietistic Islam with its emphasis on individual responsibility was a suitable
alternative, and the merchants proved themselves to be highly susceptible to
the pietistic dogmas and practices.
Cederroth
Not all pilgrims came from the new emerging social classes, however.
Even in the rural areas, pietistic Islam gained new adherents, above all
among the leading land owners. This group was less radical and more
bound to traditional modes of life than were the merchants. The two
tendencies within orthodox Islam became organised in two movements,
Muhammadiyah and Nahdatul Ulama. The former, which is mainly urban-
based, was established in 1912 in Yogyakarta by Haji Ahmed Dahlan, the
son of a batik merchant. In 1890, Dahlan went to Mecca where he studied
for several years, and after returning to Yogyakarta he founded
Muhammadiyah. The stated aim of the organisation was to improve
educational standards, above all in religious education. The organisation
also aimed at spreading its modernistic ideas to the population by
publishing books and pamphlets. The basic philosophy of Muhammadiyah
is that the character of the individual can be improved through education.
According to Muhammadiyah, each individual can determine his or her
own fate, and the organisation therefore stresses the importance of
diligence and hard work as a means for the individual to improve her or
his chances in life. Throughout its existence Muhammadiyah has striven for
a high quality education and modern pedagogical methods. In the schools
of Muhammadiyah the students are taught not only religion but also other
subjects, and the curriculum is quite similar to that of the public schools.
Muhammadiyah strives for the achievement of a personal religious
experience, in contrast to the routinised religion which, according to
Muhammadiyah, is characteristic of Nahdatul Ulama. As already
mentioned, NU has its strongest footing in the Javanese countryside, and
in contrast to Muhammadiyah, this movement cares for specifically
Javanese traditions. This has given rise to many conflicts between the two
organisations. An example is the Javanese custom to visit the graves of one's
ancestors, decorate these with flowers and burn incense. This is a
syncretistic custom that is accepted by NU but which has been condemned
by Muhammadiyah as representing a Hindu survival which has no place in
Islam. Moreover, in contrast to Muhammadiyah, the NU maintains that the
destiny of each individual is predetermined by Allah and cannot be
influenced by human endeavours.
Patterns of cleavage in contemporary Indonesian Islam

Today, NU has some 25-30 million members and is thereby by far the
largest religious organisation in the country. During most of its existence,
from 1926-84, the NU was organised as a political party. Even though the
movement never succeeded in achieving all its goals, it has nevertheless
influenced the development of the country in many ways. During the entire
Sukarno era, the NU took a very cautious line, by and large supporting
government policies. In exchange for this support, the NU achieved many
advantages, such as control of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. After the

shift in power, which brought Suharto to power and established the New
Order regime, the NU expected new advantages in exchange for its active
assistance in the nationwide fight against communism. Suharto, however,
had other ideas, and he neither supported nor cooperated with NU. This
forced the party to ally itself with other Muslim groups in a new united
Muslim party, Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (PPP), the United Develop-
ment Party. Until today this party has never won more than some 25-30 per
cent of the votes and has thus failed to establish itself as a forceful
opposition to Golkar, the governing party.
After devastating internal conflicts, the NU finally, in 1984, decided to
withdraw from PPP. Instead it has now established itself as a social
movement and pressure group. Its role is very similar to the contemporary
role played by Muhammadiyah. The decision to withdraw from PPP
coincided with a shift of power within the organisation, whereby a liberal
'progressive' faction under the leadership of Abdurrahman Wahid took
over. Wahid is convinced that a prerequisite for Islam to retain its attraction
is a contextual interpretation of the religion, that is, it must adapt itself to
changes in the surrounding society and be responsive to modern methods,
techniques and knowledge. During the years following his election, Wahid
established himself as a forceful critic of the Suharto regime and its lack of
democratic disposition. Among other things, he criticised Suharto for
having made too many concessions to militant Islamic modernists. For
instance when the regime supported the establishment of Indonesia's first
Islamic bank, Wahid protested and instead he led the NU into a cooperation
with Summa bank, which is owned by a Christian Chinese. Wahid fears
that the Muhammadiyah modernists are gaining too much influence which
will eventually lead to grave conflicts with other Muslim currents as well as
with adherents of other religions.
In October 1990, the weekly magazine Monitor published the results of
a popularity survey, which placed the Prophet Muhammad in an
unimpressive eleventh position. This angered many Muslims, and there
were large demonstrations outside the office of Monitor. The government
submitted to the pressure, banned the magazine and jailed the publisher
who was subsequently sentenced to a five-year prison term for blasphemy.
Alone among influential Muslim leaders, Wahid condemned this attack
against the freedom of the press. In an interview he said that the incident
clearly showed that democracy had very shallow roots in Indonesia. Partly
as a reaction against these events, Wahid, together with a group of
likeminded, later established the organisation Democratic Forum. This
pressure group has been regarded with great suspicion by the authorities
which have tried to thwart its activities. In March 1992, just before the
election, Wahid called upon NU members to demonstrate their support for
pancasila and for Islam as a democratic social power. More than 2 million
Cederroth
participants had been expected, but due to harassments from the

government a mere 200,000 joined the demonstration. The following day
Wahid wrote a letter to President Suharto in which he warned about the
consequences of the current development. If it continues like this, Wahid
wrote, the present state will be replaced by an Islamic state.
Islam in Malaysia
Compared with neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia is a small country with a
population of some 1 7 million people. The present nation-state consists of
two separate parts, West and East Malaysia. The former part of the country,
which is politically as well as economically dominant, consists of a
peninsula, the southernmost part of the Asian mainland. East Malaysia,
which is poorer and less developed, is made up of the northwestern part of
the island of Borneo.
Before the arrival of Islam, the Malay population had a cosmology very
similar to the one prevalent in the archipelago and which can be
characterised as a mixture of animism and Hinduism. The daily life was
regulated by a set of rules known as adat. This customary law has very deep
roots in Malay society and controls virtually all human relations, from
private life to political conditions. There is a Malay proverb that is widely
known and which reads as follows: biar mati anak, jangan mati adat -
'never mind if the child dies, as long as the adat lives on'. The Malay adat
rules gave the feudal rulers an enormous power and a means to crush all
attempts to revolt. Even after the formal acceptance of Islam, the Malays
continued to adhere to their adat. In many fields, although far from all, the
adat and the Islamic law collide with each other. Over a long period of time,
and to a certain extent still today, pre-Islamic norms and values had a
bigger influence on the development of the Malay culture than had Islam.
The result was a syncretistic mixture of Islamic as well as non-Islamic
practices which until quite recently was dominant in Malay Islam.
There are a number of different theories about when and from where
Islam first came to Malaya. Most researchers seem to agree that this
happened somewhere around the thirteenth century and that later on the
fifteenth century Malacca sultanate was of central importance for the
spread of Islam in the region. This sultanate was strategically situated at the
straits of Malacca, whereby it was able to control trading in the whole
region. At this time, Malacca had only one serious rival, the Javanese
Majapahit empire, with which there was competition for power and
influence. In Malacca, where Islam was accepted around 1450, Sufi teachers
held prominent positions and from Malacca Sufi ideas and practices spread
widely.
The Portuguese, who dominated Malacca for more than 100 years after
1530, followed a strictly anti-Islamic policy and did whatever they could to
prevent further spread of the Muslim religion. When, in 1641, the Dutch
succeeded in defeating the Portuguese, they chose a more tolerant policy of
religion and attempted to cooperate with the Islamic Malay sultanates.
About 150 years later there was a new shift of power in Malaya, when the
British became the new colonial masters. In an agreement made between
the sultans and the British, the latter promised not to interfere in matters
pertaining to Malay customs and religion. Later practice would show,
however, that the British nevertheless intervened in several areas which
affected both the Malay culture and Islam. It was mainly in three important
fields that the British policy proved to be of decisive importance for the
future development. Firstly, and above all, since the Malay labour reserve
was insufficient to cover the needs of the British, many foreign labourers,
principally Chinese but also Indians, were imported to work as coolies in
the tin mines and on the plantations. These immigrants lived in separate
communities and were never integrated into the Malay society. A census
carried out in 1921 showed that the Malays had now become a minority in
their own country. Secondly, the British offered only a very limited group of
Malays - mainly the aristocracy - admittance to higher secular education,
while ordinary Malays only had access to elementary religious education.
Thirdly, the British introduced their own administration of justice in
Malaya with the result that the domestic Muslim legal system, based on the
sharia, was relegated to a secondary place.
During the colonial period a large number of radical changes took place
which resulted in new economic conditions, immigration, urbanisation, the
establishment of a modern administration and a secular education policy.
These new conditions contributed to the fact that the Malays now began to
see themselves as a separate ethnic group in relation to other such groups.
Thereby the insight grew that the Malays, as a group, had been treated
unfairly, and now occupied a backward position in many respects. Towards
the end of the nineteenth century, a movement rose among engaged,
educated Muslims with the aim of correcting these bad conditions. This was
a predecessor to what would later be known in Malaya as Islamic
reformism, a movement which shows close affinity with the Indonesian
modernists in the Muhammadiyah movement. The reformers were inspired
mainly by the Arab world. Many Malay Muslims had studied in Mecca,
Medina or Cairo where they had been influenced by reformistic ideas which
they later brought with them back home to Malaya.
Just like the Indonesian modernists, the Malaysian reformers maintained
that it was important to adapt Islam to the demands of the modern world.
To achieve this it was necessary to return to the sources, particularly the
Quran and Sunna, and gain new insights and strengths from a study of
these. The Muslims had to be educated and taught to understand their own
religion and the demands it put on their lifestyle. First of all it was necessary
for the Malays to stop a number of non-Muslim activities such as the
Cederroth
consumption of alcohol and dancing. According to the reformers, it was

above all the Malay concern with their adat which had previously
corrupted Islamic practices. Ideas such as these were propagated and
spread among the Malays, mainly through a number of influential
newspapers and journals. During the period before independence, and
especially during the 1920s and 1930s, Islamic reformism was an active and
important force in the transformation of Malay society. During these years
an influential reformist group named Kaum Muda (the young group) was
active. Their leaders were mainly non-Malay Muslims from the Arab
world, India and Indonesia. The explicit aim of the young group was to
purify Malay Islam by removing all Hindu-influenced remains and to fight
against the feudal elements in Malay society, particularly the almost
unlimited power of the sultans.
The impact of Kaum Muda as well as other reformers was restricted,
however, by a number of factors. Most important among these was the fact
that the battle for independence came to be fought more with ethnical than
with religious overtones. Many Malays also reacted against the fact that
there were mostly non-Malays among the leaders of the Kaum Muda
reformers. In opposition to the Kaum Muda and their radical demands,
native Malays created the Kaum Tua (the old group). They stressed
ethnicity, and formed a category of 'pure Malays' (Melayu jati), in contrast
to the immigrants, irrespective of whether these were Muslims or not. As a
consequence of this attitude, the overriding demand in the fight for freedom
centred on arguments about the land of the Malays, which should not be
lost to non-Malays, rather than on abstract Islamic, universalistic and
humanistic principles. Much of what the Islamic reformers had fought for
during the first half of the twentieth century now disappeared, or was at
least suppressed, when Malay leaders with strong ethnical and nationalistic
inclinations took over the leadership of the independence movement.
In 1946 the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)was created
and their policy can be summarised in the catchphrase Hidup Melayu!
(long live the Malays). Thus, UMNO's main political demands lay in the
satisfaction of Malay ethnic interests, to work for a betterment of their
economic, social and cultural position in society and to make sure that
Malays would come to dominate in the political life of the nation. Thus, it
was the Malay ethnic and nationalistic forces, in collaboration with the
ruling klite, the sultans and conservative Kaum Tua members who at the
time of independence opposed the growth of an Islamic political
alternative.
Political parties
When Malaya reached its independence in 1957, UMNO was the leading
political power. Its ethnic-nationalistic policies meant that Islam was not
A sharia court in Kuching (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1995).
given a prominent place in the constitution of the new nation. The policy of
UMNO was directed towards the building of a nation rather than on the
building of Islamic institutions. Although Islam was declared the official
religion of the state its role was mainly ceremonial, not political. Islamic
legislation was the responsibility of the sultans in each of the states of the
federation. At the same time it was clearly stated in the constitution that all
legislation that went against the federal law was automatically invalid. In
practice this meant that if any of the states tried to implement a more far-
reaching sharia-based legislation this was immediately invalidated by the
federal constitution. Nevertheless, the sultans held a very powerful position
and they also stood above the law. Thus, whatever they did they could not
be taken to court. Sharia-based laws were applied only in the sphere of
family law and were restricted to laws determining conditions for marriage
and divorce. In all other cases the civil law had precedence.
As a reaction against the limited place given to Islam in the policy of
UMNO, the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party, PMIP, later renamed as Persatuan
Islam se-Malaysia, PAS, was created in 1951. This party has a Malay-
nationalistic basis too, but with a greater emphasis on Islam as an
important element of Malay identity. Most of its adherents come from the
conservative rural population, and the party has concentrated on questions
which are of importance for the rural Malays, such as the question about
Cederroth
religious versus secular education. PAS often accuses UMNO of being too
devoted to worldly and materialistic goals. As a consequence of this profile
it is no wonder that PAS has been most successful in states such as Kelantan
and Trengganu, where rural Malays constitute a large majority. Impressed
by the successes of the dawa movement over the past two decades, PAS has
now strengthened its Islamic identity even further at the expense of Malay
nationalism. In this endeavour catchphrases such as semangat keislaman
mengatasi semangat nasionalisme, 'the power of Islam will defeat the
nationalism', have been used. With regard to the unlimited power of the
sultans, PAS has kept a low profile, but carefully, and in indirect terms, the
party has criticised non-Islamic habits such as exaggerated materialism,
gambling and liquor consumption.
After independence in 1957, UMNO continued a very nationalistic
policy. The first major crisis caused by this policy concerned the relations
with Chinese-dominated Singapore which, to begin with, was part of the
Malaysian federation. Within UMNO as well as PAS there had been great
scepticism about the incorporation of Singapore since there were fears in
both parties that it would weaken the position of the Malays in the new
nation. Therefore, when the Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew questioned the
clause in the constitution which regulated the special rights of the Malays,
Singapore was asked to leave the federation. After the withdrawal of
Singapore the ethnic conflicts increased rapidly in Malaysia. The Chinese
reacted with great bitterness against Malay demands for special treatment
and all kinds of privileges. After an election in May 1969 the antagonism
had grown to such an extent that it resulted in a wave of violence in which
many people were killed or wounded, above all among the Chinese. As a
result of these riots, the Malays became even more persistent in their
demands for economic equality. As a response the government introduced a
policy of reconciliation, known as the New Economic Policy. The aim was
to increase the Malay share of the economy to at least 30 per cent within a
twenty-year period. To reach this goal, the bumiputra (sons of the earth),
the native Malays, were given exclusive rights and advantages in many
economic fields, while admission for Chinese and Indians was severely
restricted.
This new policy, however, did not lead to the results that the government
had expected. The many privileges given to the Malays, and especially to
rural Malays, in the fields of economy as well as education, not only served
to increase their economic welfare but also gave rise to an Islamic recovery.
In order to meet the increasing Islamist challenges against their policy,
UMNO successively took a more and more benevolent attitude towards
their demands. During the first five years following the riots UMNO mainly
limited itself to supporting demands which strengthened Islam as an
institution promoting a Malay identity. Government regulations such as the
introduction of fines for Malays who were caught drinking liquor in public
places or neglected to fast during the month of Ramadan all contributed to

a strengthening of the identification between Islam and Malays. However,
towards the middle of the 1970s a new power began to emerge on the
political scene in Malaysia. This was the so-called dawa movement which
in a very forceful way has succeeded in building upon and making use of
this Malay-Muslim identification.
The dawa movement

The concept of dawa means to propagate for Islam, to do missionary work
and make converts. However, as the concept has been used in Malaysia, it
refers to movements which primarily aim at fellow Muslims, demanding
that they take their religion more seriously and practice the religious norms
in their daily life. The Malaysian dawa movement is not uniform. On the
contrary, it consists of many quite disparate groups. Among these there are
three main movements that have become well-known on a wider, national
scale and which therefore are selected here as representative of the entire
phenomenon. The three are Darul Arqam (the house of Arqam), named
after a friend and protector of the Prophet Muhammad, 'the mission
organisation' Jemaat Tabligh (Jamaat al-Tabligh) and, finally, the Angkatan
Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM),the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement.
The first mentioned of the three movements, the Darul Arqam, is also the
most radical. Thus, it has most uncompromisingly challenged the religious
and political establishment. The founder and leader of the movement, Ustaz
Ashaari Muhammad, is a well-educated and very charismatic person, who
comes from a religious family. He is a forceful and popular orator who has
written many books and pamphlets. Ustaz Ashaari Muhammad demands
absolute obedience towards Allah and his Prophet, wants to strengthen the
brotherhood of all Muslims, emphasises the importance of a Muslim
education and finds it essential that the Muslims gain economic
independence. He has also shown tendencies towards a kind of Sufi
mysticism, manifested for instance in Mahdi expectations. It has even been
maintained that Ustaz Ashaari considers himself to be the Mahdi and that
he is trying to create for himself a position similar to that of Ayatollah
Khomeini in Iran.
To be able to realise their ideals, the members of Darul Arqam have
established a large number of communes all over Malaysia in which the
members live and work. In these communes, the movement has established
its own ideal society built entirely upon the founding fathers' ideas on how
an Islamic social system should be organised. The movement strives to
establish an egalitarian society where all property is jointly owned. Ustaz
Ashaari Muhammad calls upon his followers to reject all Western material
luxury and to live an ascetic life in the spirit of the Prophet. In the Darul
Arqam communes, polygamy is the rule rather than an exception. The
Cederroth
surrounding world is seen as hostile, and the communes are therefore
characterised by a negative attitude towards outsiders. To avoid being
dependent on the surrounding society, the members of the communes try to
become self-supporting, producing themselves everything they need for
their survival. In August 1995, the government finally cracked down on the
Darul Arqam movement, placing Ustaz Ashaari Muhammad under a kind
of house arrest, and attempted to dissolve the communes.
The second of the three movements, the Jemaat Tabligh, is not a native
Malaysian organisation. It was established in 1925 in India, where its
headquarters is still situated. In contrast to the strict organisation which
characterises Darul Arqam, Jemaat Tabligh is very loosely organised. The
aim of the movement is to revive the Islamic spirit, and it makes use of a
large network of voluntary missionaries who work in a completely idealistic
way and often far away from home. They visit people in their homes and
try to convince them to devote their lives to Islam. The missionaries, who
are always men, work in pairs, and when they arrive in a new place they
first of all try to establish a base in a neighbourhood mosque, after which
they walk from house to house inviting men to participate in their meetings
in the mosque. Jemaat Tabligh has a very low social profile and does not
publish any literature. It is therefore difficult to determine exactly the
ideology of the movement. Individual members seem to have varying
opinions on most questions. In line with this liberal attitude it is maintained
that theirs is the most democratic of all dawa movements; there is no formal
hierarchy and no official leadership. Because of its low socio-political
profile, Jemaat Tabligh is not seen as a threat either by the government or
by traditional religious leaders.
The third dawa movement, ABIM, is the largest and best-known of the
three. It began in 1971 as a student organisation and recruited its first
leader, Anwar Ibrahim, directly from the University of Malaya. It soon
became clear that he, just like Ustaz Ashaari Muhammad, was an inspiring
orator, with an ability to adapt his message to his listeners and easily attract
their attention. Today there are ABIM groups in all the Malaysian states,
but the organisation still has its strongest base in the universities and among
the urban middle class. ABIM attempts to convince the Malays that Islam is
a superior alternative to Western materialism. To spread its message, ABIM
publishes a number of journals, and the organisation has established a
number of schools in which an alternative higher education is provided.
The curriculum of these schools contains all the ordinary 'secular' subjects
but, in addition, there are also a couple of specifically Islamic subjects.
According to the ABIM view, science is part of the legitimate Islamic
tradition, at least as long as it does not conflict directly with religious
values.
In its official declarations, ABIM has appeared as the least Malay-
nationalistic of all the dawa organisations. In a 1979 speech which
Aids information, condemned by West Malaysian ulama, in Kota Kinabalu,

East Malaysia (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1995).
attracted much attention, Anwar Ibrahim asserted that racism and

colonialism are unknown to Islam, and the fact that these were nonetheless
present in Malaysia was due to Western influences. In a much publicised
incident in the same year, a group of ABIM students in England claimed
that the New Economic Policy was incompatible with the development of a
harmonious multi-ethnic society in Malaysia. However, this official ABIM
policy is not always in harmony with the actions of its members. Many of
the ABIM student groups, for instance, are openly anti-Chinese in their
proclamations as well as in their actions. With regard to the question of an
Islamic state, ABIM has taken a very cautious stand. In principle, the
organisation is in favour of the establishment of such a state. In practice,
however, the ideals have never been translated into official policy, and the
movement has carefully avoided any indication of how such a society could
be established and what it should actually look like.
As already mentioned, ABIM has often criticised the government. In
1981, members proclaimed, for instance, that the government was 'un-
Islamic' and that corruption was a serious problem among the political
tlite. The government has taken this criticism seriously and has often
counterattacked. For some time, public sale of ABIM's journals was, for
Cederroth
instance, forbidden. However, when Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad became

prime minister in 1981, he decided to try another tactics. Within a short
time he had succeeded in convincing Anwar Ibrahim to join UMNO and
accept a ministerial post in the government, where he has now advanced to
become deputy prime minister. In defence of his new political career, Anwar
has claimed that he will thereby have a position which makes it possible for
him to push Islamic questions, work against corruption and defend Malay
interests more effectively. For some time it seemed as if his defection would
cause a split within ABIM since PAS sympathisers threatened to withdraw.
In September 1998, Anwar was dismissed by Mahathir and was accused of,
among other things, corruption and homosexual activities. The arrest of
Anwar and the subsequent trial have lead to a severe political crisis in
Malaysia.
Within the Malay society there is a sharp dividing-line between the
conservative rural population and the more radical urban masses. It is
above all among the latter that the dawa movement has made deep inroads.
The urban Malays, who are in most cases first - and in other cases not more
than second - generation immigrants from the rural areas, have been
exposed to radical changes in the form of a rapid industrialisation and a
penetrating Western influence. Thereby, many people have lost the footing
they had in their traditional religiosity. In such a situation, the dawa groups
offer an attractive alternative by providing the confused town-dweller, or
student, a set of values which can give her or his life a new meaning. In the
rural areas the changes have, so far at least, not been as thorough; here the
population has, by and large, accepted their traditional ulama and
continued to give their political support to UMNO or PAS. In many
Malay villages, thus, there still exists a traditional, syncretistic Islam with
magical and mystical overtones. The question now is whether the dawa
groups will be able to spread their message more effectively among the rural
population as well.
Patterns of cleavage in contemporary Malaysian Islam

In sum, it can be concluded that Malay society is caught in a cleavage
between two currents, both of which can be traced back to colonial times.
The deepest cleavage is found with regard to the view of power and its
legitimacy and the role of Islam in social life. Somewhat simplified, we have
a first current, represented by the UMNO, which stands for a secularised
apparatus of power and supports the sultans and the originally feudal
power structure represented by them. The advocates of this current are
usually labelled bumi-Malays, that is, persons who support the nationalistic
bumiputra policy, the aim of which is to give many advantages to these
'sons of the earth' in order to achieve economic equality with the Chinese.
A bumi-Malay is willing to cooperate, politically as well as economically,
with non-Malays and non-Muslims but always aims at using these alliances
to favour Malay interests. Within this broad category there are several
different groupings. One is represented by the technocrats who support the
use of Western capitalism and technological development as long as it is in
the interest of the Malays. Another current within the category of bumi-
Malays is represented by the conservative royalists.
The second current, which is opposed to the above-mentioned pragmatic
view, is represented by PAS. The PAS supporters demand a strengthened
religious leadership and want to isolate the Malays from the other ethnic
groups. They are also Malay nationalists but are not prepared to cooperate
pragmatically with other groups as a means of achieving their goals. Their
ultimate goal is the establishment of an Islamic state. In this context it is
important to point out that what has been said here in no way implies that
the bumi-Malays are antireligious. On the contrary, UMNO and its
leadership frequently make use of Islamic symbols and programmes. To a
certain extent this Islamic 'bumiputerism' is a strategically conditioned
response to the criticism from PAS and the dawa movement, but it certainly
also represents an honest opinion. Thus, both currents primarily aim at
satisfying nationalistic Malay interests, and for this purpose they both make
use of Islam, albeit with different emphases. In Malaysia religion is largely
used politically, and paradoxically the Malays are both united and divided
by their common religion.
The Islamic advance since the 1970s, represented primarily by the dawa
movement, must be seen in the light of the prolonged cleavage between the
two main currents in the Malay society. The questions that have been raised
by the dawa movement touch upon a number of basic, and still unresolved,
questions about the role of secular power and authority as well as about
Malay relations with other ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic society. By
raising these questions the dawa movement has challenged the bumi-
Malays and thereby also the entire political establishment. In the cultural
field, the dawa movement has again brought to the fore the old debate
about the relationship between Islam and adat.
Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia: a brief comparison

The above description clearly shows that the position of Islam in the two
countries of Indonesia and Malaysia differs quite considerably. In Malaysia,
Islam has been identified with the Malays and with Malay culture to such
an extent that when a non-Muslim converts, he or she also at the same time
becomes a Malay (masuk Islam/masuk Melayu), irrespective of any earlier
ethnic attachment. As a result of this close identification with the politically,
although not economically, dominant ethnic group, Islam - rather than
other components such as language or customs - has been used as the
primary instrument for creating a Malay identity. In Malaysia, the ethnic
Cederroth
cleavages deeply divide the society, and they are now expressed primarily in
terms of religious affiliation. Instead of being a universalistic power, Islam
in Malaysia has been utilised as a means of legitimating ethnic
particularism. Both the main Malay parties, UMNO as well as PAS, refer
to Islam as a way of legitimating their claims to power. The only difference
between them is found in the balance between special treatment for the
Malays, on the one hand, and the emphasis on the creation of Islamic social
institutions, on the other.
Thus, in the political power struggle between ethnic groups in Malaysia,
Islam has become a contributing factor in the creation of deep and
seemingly unbridgeable gulfs in the society. In Indonesia, the development
has been quite different. Here, Islam and politics have effectively been kept
separate by reference to the pancasila constitution. Its first principle, belief
in God, is so general and unspecified that no ethnic group can oppose it. A
permanent argument in favour of the Indonesian so-called pancasila
democracy, with its emphasis on religious tolerance, harmony and
consensus, has been the necessity of creating and maintaining good
relations between the various ethnic groups. Critics have seen this as
nothing but manipulation by centrally placed and powerful Javanese
interests as a means of maintaining Javanese dominance over the other
ethnic groups. Seen from the viewpoint of the critics, it is not an
unreasonable argument, but given all the latent tensions that exist in
Indonesia, the country would most probably have been torn apart long ago
if the religio-political development had been allowed to follow the same
course as in Malaysia.
In contrast to the Malaysian situation, Indonesian Islam has therefore, at
least for the time being, almost no political role. Due to the doctrine about
the dual function (dwifungsi), the military has a great influence. By playing
the two groups, the military and the orthodox Muslims, against each other
President Suharto succeeded throughout his long reign in neutralising both
groups. As discussed above, there are now signs indicating that the
proponents of more orthodox Islam are gaining a larger influence at the
expense of the other groups. In March 1998, Suharto was re-elected as
president for another five-year term and his present flirtation with orthodox
Muslims has been interpreted as nothing but another manoeuvre in the
continuing power struggle aimed primarily at neutralizing some of the
military influence. Only two months later, Suharto was forced to resign and
in the present period of reforms, orthodox forms of Islam have gained a
new vitality. It must also be remembered that in Indonesia, syncretistic
Islam, in its classical priyai form as well as in the form of more recent
mystical organisations, is infinitely stronger and better-organised than is the
case in Malaysia. As long as Suharto, himself a priyai aristocrat and former
general, remained in power, there were no decisive changes in the balance of
power. If, in the future, the modernists will gain greater political influence,
not only Christians and Hindus, but also representatives of the syncretistic
currents, will forcefully oppose all attempts to introduce an Islamic state in
Indonesia.
The question may be asked why Islamic modernism has had such a
relatively limited influence in Indonesia as compared to Malaysia. A
decisive reason is probably found in the fact that in Malaysia Islam has been
identified with an ethnic group which has been forced to vie with other
strong groups for political and economic influence. In such a situation Islam
offers a ready-made cultural and political alternative which is perfectly
suitable as a means of demarcating one's own group and strengthening its
morale against other groups. On Java, on the other hand, the position of
Islam has been completely undisputed. Furthermore, the influential
Javanese aristocracy has to a large extent been heavily influenced by
syncretistic beliefs and practices. In the absence of a political role for Islam,
Indonesians have been free to devote their energies to mystical speculation
about the relation of humans to God and their place in the universe.
Literature
A broad and general introduction to Javanese culture and religion can be
found in Koentjaraningrat, Javanese Culture (Singapore, Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1985). A thorough, albeit quite disputed
presentation of the different forms of Javanese Islam, is Clifford Geertz'
T h e Religion of Java (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960). The Muhammadiyah
movement has been described by Mitsuo Nakamura, T h e Crescent Arises
O v e r the Banyan Tree (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University, 1983) and by
James Peacock, Purifying the Faith: T h e Muhammadijah Movement in
Indonesian Islam (Menlo Park, CA: BenjaminICummings Pub., 1978). See
also H.M. Federspiel, 'The Muhammadijah: A Study of an Orthodox
Islamic Movement in Indonesia', Indonesia, 10 (1970), pp. 57-79. A
discussion about Nahdatul Ulama and its role is found in an article by its
present leader Abdulrahman Wahid, 'The Nahdatul Ulama and Islam in
Present Day Indonesia', in Islam and Society in Southeast Asia eds. T.
Abdullah and S. Siddique (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
1986) and in S. Jones, 'The Contraction and Expansion of the "Umat" and
the Role of Nahdatul Ulama in Indonesia', Indonesia, 38 (1984). Javanese
mysticism is presented by Niels Mulder, Mysticism and Everyday Life in
Contemporary Java (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1978) and by
Harun Hadiwijono, M a n in the Present Javanese Mysticism (l3aarn: Bosch
and Keuning, 1967). See also Antoon Geels, Subud and the Javanese
Mystical Tradition (London: Curzon Press, 1997). On the relationship
between Islam and adat, see the article by Roy Ellen, 'Social Theory,
Ethnography and the Understanding of Practical Islam in South-East Asia',
pp. 50-91 in Islam in South-East Asia, ed. M.B. Hooker (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
Cederroth
1983). On the political role of Indonesian Islam, see Ruth McVey, 'Faith as
the Outsider: Islam in Indonesian Politics', pp. 199-225 in Islam i n the
Political Process, ed. J.P. Piscatori, (Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge
University Press, 1983). See also Robert Hefner, 'Islamizing Java? Religion
and Politics in Rural East Java', Journal of Asian Studies, 46:3 (1987),
pp. 533-54.
There is a lack of a really good introduction to Islam in Malaysia, but
much has been published on the subject of Islam and ethnicity. Two works
that can be recommended are Hussin Mutalib, Islam and Ethnicity in
Malay Politics (Singapore, Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990) and Raymond Lee, 'The Ethnic Implications of Contemporary
Religious Movements and Organisations in Malaysia', Contemporary
Southeast Asia, 8:l (1986), pp. 70-87. A thorough work describing the
political role of Islam in one of the Malaysian states is Clive Kessler, Islam
and Politics in a Malay State: Kelantan 2838-1 969 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1978). A more general volume on the same theme is John
Funston, Malay Politics in Malaysia: U M N O and PAS (Kuala Lumpur:
Heinemann Educational Press, 1980). Some implications of the dawa
movement are discussed in Judith Nagata, T h e Reflowering of Malaysian
Islam (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984) and in
Chandra Muzaffar, Islamic Resurgence i n Malaysia (Petaling Jaya: Fajar
Bakti, 1987). O n this subject, see also Zainah Anwar, Islamic Revivalism
in Malaysia: D a k w a h A m o n g the Students (Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk
Publications, 1987).
Chapter Twelve
Australia and New Zealand

Michael Humphrey and William Shepard
The stories of both Australia and New Zealand and of their Muslim
communities are stories of immigrants. Indeed, they represent the furthest
geographical reaches of both European and Muslim emigration. British
settlement began with a penal colony in Australia in 1788 and today all but
the 1-2 per cent who are Aboriginal Australians are descended from
immigrants. British settlement began in New Zealand in the 1820s and
1830s but even previous inhabitants, the Maoris (now about 13 per cent of
the population), came from elsewhere some centuries ago according to their
traditions. The Muslims came later in both countries and form only a small
proportion of the population, about 0.83 per cent in Australia and only
0.37 per cent in New Zealand. Thus they have faced the problems of being
cultural minorities, benefiting from the multi-culturalism that has devel-
oped in recent years, especially in Australia, and suffering from the
backlashes, again particularly in Australia.
Australia
Muslims first arrived in Australia during the mid nineteenth century as part
of the colonial transmigration of labour in the development of the British
Imperial system. The early Muslim migrants were from southwest Asia and
were recruited to assist in the development of the vast arid Australian
interior to serve in transportation as camel train drivers. While usually
collectively referred to as 'Afghans' their actual ethnic and tribal origins
were more diverse, coming from the North West Frontier, Baluchistan and
Punjab regions of contemporary Pakistan. No permanent community
survived from these early migrants although traces of their presence can be
found in religious and community culture. The oldest mosque in Australia,
a corrugated iron building in the mining town of Broken Hill dating from
1891, is a material expression of their presence as is the railway train called
'The Ghan', a reference to the term used to describe the caravanserai they
inhabited on the outskirts of outback towns.
The establishment of more permanent Muslim communities dates only
from the 1950s. This coincides with the major period of mass migration to
Humphrey and Shepard
Australia and the diversification of the origins of Australian people. The

post-1947 migration programme had originally sought to increase the
population by 1 per cent annually from the British Isles, in keeping with the
policy established at Federation to preserve Australia as a 'White'
(European) society. However, these immigration targets could not be met
from Britain alone and recruitment quickly expanded to include the entire
Mediterranean. Post-war Muslim migration was a product of the
diversification of immigration sources. The most rapid increase in Muslim
migration occurred after 1970 and produced a distinct geographical
concentration of Muslim settlement in Australia's two largest cities, in
Sydney (50 per cent) and Melbourne (23 per cent).
The expansion of immigration intake to include the Mediterranean
produced a distinctive pattern of migration often referred to as 'chain
migration'. Family and community ties were the basis for the recruitment
of new migrants as well as social support in the process of settlement on
arrival. Chain migration consequently helped produce a very family- and
community-centred social life. Village associations have been a
ubiquitous expression of settlement amongst Mediterranean migrant
communities.
Muslim migration and settlement after the 1950s followed the same
pattern of recruitment and settlement from the Mediterranean. The first of
these large 'community' migrations were the Turkish Cypriots in the 1950s
and 1960s. They were followed by Turkish immigrants between 1968 and
1972. The largest Muslim community, the Lebanese, established itself
principally after 1970 and especially after the outbreak of civil war in 1975.
According to the 1991 Census the Turkish and Lebanese Muslim
communities represent the largest communities with 14.5 per cent and
17.4 per cent respectively out of a total population of around 146,600.
More recently the number of Indonesian (3.2 per cent) and Malaysian (1.4
per cent) Muslims as well as Bosnian Muslims (3.5 per cent) has also
grown. The heavy concentrations of Muslim immigrants in New South
Wales and Victoria reinforce this picture of concentrated communal
settlement.
Distribution of Muslims by State
New South Wales 77,825 (52%)

Victoria 49,617 (34%)
Western Australia 8,227 (6%)
Queensland 5,605 (4%)
South Australia 3,092 (2%)
Australian Capital Territory 1,862 (1%)
Tasmania 1,623 (1%)
Source: 1991 Population Census
279
Many of the much smaller communities such as those from Fiji and
South Africa also re-established communal life based on separate national
or ethnic associations and mosques. This formation of the Muslim
community through diverse sources of migration and with strong
attachment to family and community has created a very multi-cultural
Islam focused on distinct ethniclnational groupings. Australian Muslims
have their origins in every continent and from many ethnic and racial
backgrounds constituting a truly international community of believers.
The multi-cultural character of Australian Islam is evident in the
membership of the peak Islamic organisation in Australia, the Australian
Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), a federal organisation comprised of
national and state committees. To be eligible for representation on the state
committees, societies and organisations must have a minimum membership
of 100 and be registered as a charitable organisation. AFIC was established
as the peak Islamic organisation in 1964 and was built from the top down
largely through the efforts of mainly Muslim professionals from diverse
origins - Pakistan, India, Burma, China, Egypt. The multi-cultural diversity
of AFIC becomes most apparent at state level where community
associations and Islamic societies constitute the representational basis for
membership. Given their strong ethnic, sect and national origins it is here
that the tension between an Australian Muslim identity and ethnic identities
are played out. State councils have explicitly tried to eliminate sectarian and
national names from the constitutions and societies; for example, Lebanese
Muslim Association, Sydney Turkish Islamic Society, Pakistan Islamic and
Urdu Society. While never ethnically exclusive, language and ethnic culture
certainly continue to shape the character and congregation of most
mosques and community associations.
The ethnic diversity of Australian Islam is matched by its sectarian
diversity. Most minority Islamic religious denominations have a presence in
Australia. Given the relatively small size of the Muslim community
(150,000) this diversity is notable. The most numerous are the Sunnis
followed by the Shias. Smaller communities include Alawites, Druse,
Ahmadiyya and Ismailis.
The range of activities AFIC undertakes also points to its distinctive
immigrant origins and character. These include representations to overseas
governments, organisations and individuals on behalf of Australian
Muslims, assistance with the immigration of religious leaders, nomination
of Muslim marriage celebrants to the Federal Attorney General's Depart-
ment, administration of Islamic schools, religious instruction for Muslim
youth, publications, subsidies for the salaries of some religious leaders and
the certification of halal meat slaughtering in Australian abattoirs for meat
exporters to international markets in Muslim countries. These activities
draw it into liaison with a range of government departments involved with
national as well as international affairs.
H u m p h r e y and Shepard
At state level AFIC councils have become more directly involved in the
everyday spiritual and material needs of Muslim communities. For
example, the Islamic Council of NSW advertises on its Internet website
that it provides services in the areas of education, employment and
training, community development, youth and recreation, information and
community liaison and housing. Many of these services are provided as
adjuncts to state government programmes or as special services in part
supported by government grants for the delivery of migrant services. For
example the 'Islamic Religious Programme' organises religious education
classes for Muslim pupils in government schools and the Islamic Council
of NSW Employment and Training Centre case-manages long-term
unemployed Muslim migrants in conjunction with state government
employment programmes such as the 'Jobskills Programme'. Similar
specialised services linked to state government agencies are conducted in
areas such as health, counselling, welfare assistance and immigration
matters. It was also at the level of the state councils of AFIC that matters
such as the right to bury the dead according to Muslim rites was
negotiated. The Islamic Council of NSW, for example, had to negotiate
with the Funeral and Allied Industries Union of NSW to be allowed to
bury their dead without a coffin.
While AFIC has established itself as the national coordinating body, the
actual organisation of religious life has largely been founded in local
community life. Paralleling the experience of many minority immigrant
communities, religious organisation and practice has emerged out of the
everyday spiritual and ritual needs of individual believers. The impetus for
the development of religious life has grown out of the spiritual as well as
social needs of local communities linked by ties of origin rather than being
the product of bureaucratic or state organisational initiatives.
Requirements for ritual life as well as basic immigrant needs such as
housing, work and information about state welfare services and benefits
were the social context in which religious life re-established its communal
focus. Migrant settlement was a major concern of mosque associations as it
had been for many minority immigrant churches. Mosques, as congrega-
tional centres, provided a focus for the dissemination of information and
services. For Muslims this has particularly been the case since the 1980s.
Government agencies came to see the mosque as an important point of
connection with new communities they neither understood nor had access
to. Consequently Australian politicians and bureaucrats supported the
establishment of specialised welfare and educational services around them.
In the case of the Lebanese Muslims, government agencies saw the mosque
as an organisational focal point which transcended the rivalry between
proliferating village, social and political organisations, all of which sought
government recognition on the basis of their claims to represent specific
ethnic constituencies.
The establishment of mosques was generally an indication of the

consolidation of community organisation and development. Mosque-
building marked a stage in the development of social and religious life.
Communities would organise themselves in social and cultural associations
based on their communities of origin - for instance village or town
associations - which subsequently expanded to serve as ad hoc mosques.
This transition from associational to congregational use at times led to
conflicts over mosque building in the suburbs. What from the perspective of
community members appeared to be a natural step of social and cultural
consolidation was regularly regarded by non-Muslim residents as a sign of
the infiltration of an alien religious culture into suburban life and a
disregard for the normal local government procedures for urban develop-
ment applications.
Suburban controversies over mosque building have highlighted the
locally based character of Muslim religious organisations. It has been local
associations and not AFIC national and state bodies which have initiated
mosque building developments. It is local Muslim communities which have
done battle with Municipal Councils and the Land and Environment Court
to establish the right to have a place for religious congregation. Each
community has had to establish itself in its own suburban environment.
With this strong communal focus and the solidarity engendered by the
struggles to build mosques it is not surprising that many associations have
been reluctant to drop distinctive nationallethnic markers from their names
as a condition of membership in AFIC.
However, the local character of religious organisation has sometimes
contributed to instability in religious leadership. The associational basis of
Muslim communities has meant that the appointment and dismissal of
imams has largely remained in the hands of the mosque community itself.
This is in direct contrast to minority churches where communities are sent
clerics by a central administrative body. This has occasionally led to the
politicisation of the position of imam in some of the larger ethnic
communities. The most notable case was the contest over mosque
leadership at the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney. From its establishment in
1976 until the late 1980s the spiritual leadership at the Imam Ali Mosque
was also a contested position. The first two imams were successively
challenged and ousted by imams introduced from overseas by different
sections of the Lebanese Muslim community. The contest was intensified by
the political backdrop of the Lebanese civil war and the emergence of more
Islamist Sunni and Shiite movements in Lebanon. These struggles over local
mosque leadership were transformed into contests to secure international
sponsorship and financing of mosque building to maintain influence and
support in local immigrant communities.
The principal exception to this pattern of locally grown organisations is
the case of the Turkish immigrant mosques which have remained closely
tied to the Turkish government religious ministry which provides salaried

imams (hojas) and funds for mosque building. The pattern amongst Turkish
communities has been to recruit a hoja from the Turkish Diyanet I~leri,the
department overseeing religious affairs in Turkey. However, the involve-
ment of the Turkish state in appointing a hoja in the community has not
altogether avoided politicising immigrant religious leadership. Turkish
mosque communities divided along factional lines based on their
identification with different political movements in Turkey.
Another feature of immigrant life which has tended to reinforce the local
community character of immigrant Islam is the legal capacity of imams in
matters of marriage and divorce. Imams have emerged as an important link
between two distinct legal traditions, the Islamic and the Australian civil
law. Their Islamic legal credentials derive from their knowledge of sharia
(Islamic law) and, in some cases, their recognised legal capacities under
national legal systems. Their legal capacity in Australian civil law derives
from their official recognition as Australian marriage celebrants by the
Federal Attorney General's Department.
Community perception of the legal capacity of imams is largely
determined by the status of Islamic law vis-a-vis civil law in their countries
of origin. In a case like Lebanon, where religious law held exclusive
jurisdiction in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance, the immigrant
community often assumed imams could fulfill the same religio-judicial role
in Australia. Thus if an imam was able to marry according to Islamic law
(and conduct a parallel marriage ceremony under Australian civil law) then
surely he could also witness a divorce or even effect a valid judicial
separation. If an imam can draw up a pre-nuptial agreement which specifies
an amount of bridewealth (mahr) then surely he can ensure its enforcement
if the marriage breaks down.
This dual legal capacity can place imams in a difficult position balancing
a limited judicial capacity with respect to marriage under Australian law
with community expectations of having broader legal capacities under
Islamic law. Conflicts of legal expectations occur over the minimum age of
marriage, the capacity of an imam to effect a religious divorce and the
capacity to enforce bridewealth (mahr) agreements.
In the interplay between these religious and secular legal traditions there
is a mutual reinforcement of legal authority. The state ensures marriage is
registered according to its laws by making imams civil celebrants and
imams become celebrants to bolster their religious and legal authority in
turn. The Australian secular state helps affirm the claims to religious
authority through the recognition of imams as marriage celebrants. To be
legally empowered to conduct and register a valid Islamic and Australian
marriage at the same time affirms the religious authority of the imam in the
community. In fact the state can actually be used to enhance a claim to
religious authority by conferring the status of marriage celebrant. In the
Muslim immigrant community there is not just one route to be recognised

as having religious authority. One can either be recognised as learned in
religious matters because of qualifications or be attributed religious
authority through piety and selfless dedication to the needs of Muslim
migrants - having an open door to individuals or families with problems. A
recent controversy over conflicts in the role of the imamlcelebrant and the
legal tangles which can result was recently highlighted in the case of an
Alawi celebrant in Sydney.
An imam then must not only be knowledgable in religious matters but
have the capacity to resolve the difficulties of immigrants operating between
different cultural and legal worlds. His reputation as a 'trouble-shooter' in
the practical problems of everyday immigrant life is often as important as
respect for his religious learning. The ability to manage the crises of family
life - marital conflict, divorce and death - with respect to the law, as a
counsellor and the practical matters of welfare services and support is an
essential part of gaining community respect. This makes the position of
imam a demanding and difficult one as he must negotiate the transition of
Muslim immigrants moving between very different cultural and political
worlds.
Mosque comlnunities have also become an important arena for
negotiating the changing status of Muslim immigrant women. The new
demands on women as mothers, workers, and community members have
seen the development of special organisations and services catering to the
needs of women. These include representative organisations such as The
Muslim Women's Association as well as crisis centres such as Islamic
women's refuges where women involved in serious domestic conflicts can
go for support and assistance. The refuges were established to provide
Muslim women alternatives to the mainstream women's refuges which were
often regarded as culturally compromising, and beyond the reach of the
usual family, community and religious networks to intervene. In the Islamic
women's refuges the space for negotiation and cooling off was at least
possible, with greater prospects that the imam might be able to preserve the
marriage.
Women's organisations have become the focus of education and health
campaigns originating from mainstream government agencies. In one
notable case a Shia Muslim women's organisation in Sydney - A1 Zahra
Muslim Women's Association - became the focus for an education and
poster campaign about HIVIAIDS awareness. The campaign broached
issues about sexuality and health traditionally difficult to raise in public.
The participation of these women's associations in such pressing public
issues represents innovative social responses to the demands placed on
individuals and cultures in migration.
The question of women's status and behaviour remains a very important
area of domestic and community regulation. In many ways Muslim women
-1
Yu mdc our W p p d
7
../
.-
5
An HIVIAIDS Muslim poster designed by a group of women in Sydney

(courtesy of the Multicultural HIVIAIDS Education and Support Service,
Camperdown, New South Wales, 1997).
in Australia confront the problem of being made cultural icons by their own
communities with all the burdens that this implies. In a social environment
which strongly advocates the equality of opportunity and rights of all
Australian women, Muslim communities are constantly under the scrutiny,
if not criticism, of the dominant society over their alleged attitudes towards
women. The dominant culture uses the image of Muslim women as
oppressed to criticise Muslim culture and make them a focus for
intervention, a practice which dates back to the nineteenth-century colonial
enterprise of cultural devaluation and justification for intervention. A
Muslim woman in hijab (head scarf) is the emblematic image for
regarded as oppressive - for instance specific legislation against the practice

of clitorodectomy.
The live sheep and cattle shipping trade to the Middle East which caters
for Muslim Arab consumer taste for freshly slaughtered halal meat has even
contributed to reinforce negative images of Muslims. Animal rights
campaigners have severely criticised this trade on the grounds of cruelty
caused by overcrowding or by the rejection of livestock cargoes on health
grounds and the subsequent suffering caused to these shipbound animals.
The need to deal with government regulatory bodies over particular
religious needs and permission to carry out traditional rites as well as the
attention such practices receive in the media have contributed to shaping a
sense of Australian Muslim identity. Muslim spokespeople are frequently
called upon to explain these rites, to clarify what is and what is not 'Islamic'
practice and belief. Challenging Muslim stereotypes in the press has become
the focus of many organisations. One organisation, the Australian Arabic
Council, has made monitoring the press its primary concern. It rewards fair
and informed reporting on Arab and Muslim communities through an
annual media award.
The experience of discrimination as immigrants has engendered a
greater consciousness of being part of a global Islamic culture. Fear in the
West of Islamic radicalism and the impact of events such as the Salman
Rushdie affair, the kidnapping of Western hostages in Lebanon and the
Gulf War frequently expresses itself as fear of Muslims at home. The
tendency to blame Muslims living in Australia for events overseas reminds
Muslims that they are part of a global religious culture; that despite all
their efforts to be good Australian citizens and their right to be treated
equally and without prejudice, fear of Islam projected from very different
worlds and political environments can jeopardise their best efforts and
intentions.
New Zealand
The Muslim community in New Zealand is much smaller than that in
Australia, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the total
population. It is, nevertheless, a vigorous and growing community which
has more than doubled numerically in the last five years. The past twenty
years have seen an almost ten-fold increase and striking organisational
progress. According to the 1996 census there were 13,545 Muslims resident
in New Zealand, representing 0.37 per cent of the total population of about
3.6 million. By comparison, the 1991 census counted 5,772 Muslims,
representing 0.15 per cent of the New Zealand population. The majority
live in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, but there are also organised
communities in at least five other cities and Muslim student associations at
most of the universities.
Fijian Indians, that is, descendants of Indians who migrated to Fiji to

work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, constitute the
largest ethnic group among New Zealand Muslims. Between 1879 and
1916 over 60,000 Indians came to Fiji as indentured labourers to work on
the plantations. About 12.6 per cent of these were Muslims. The indentures
were cancelled in 1920, and while Muslim community organisation soon
developed politically, Muslims were identified as Indians and after
independence in 1970 were associated with the Indian political party.
Although the Indians make up about half of the population of Fiji, the
independence settlement assured the political dominance of the ethnic
Fijians. When a predominantly Indian party came to power by election in
1987 it was immediately ousted by a coup d'ttat led by a Fijian military
officer. In the aftermath of this a number of Indians emigrated from Fiji.
There is a strong Ahmadiyya presence among Muslims in Fiji, but there is
little evidence of Ahmadi activity in New Zealand. Fijian Indians, along
with other South Asians (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi), probably account
for over half the community although other ethnic groups have certainly
increased in proportion in the most recent years. Only about one fifth of the
Muslims in New Zealand have been born in the country according to the
1996 census. There are also perhaps 1,000 overseas university students at
any one time, some of whom come with their families and make significant
contributions to local groups while they are in the country, and a small but
active group of Western converts.
The roots of the present community go back to a handful of Gujarati men
who arrived after 1906 and opened shops but mostly did not bring their
families until after the Second World War. While a few Muslim families came
from Turkey and the Balkans after the Second World War, these seem to have
made less effort to maintain their ethnic and religious identities. Significant
Muslim growth began in the late 1960s. A period of liberalised immigration
about this time made it possible for a small number of professional and
white collar workers, mainly South Asians and Fijian Indians, to come,
although the majority of Muslim wage earners are probably 'blue collar'
workers or shopkeepers, especially in Auckland. As of 1991, the median
income of New Zealand Muslims was only slightly below the average for the
country. The 'chain migration' phenomenon appears evident in New
Zealand as in Australia, but New Zealand has never encouraged mass
immigration in the manner that Australia did just after the Second World
War.
The recent dramatic rise in numbers has resulted partly from political
events elsewhere. The 1987 coup in Fiji caused a considerable influx and
more recently around 1,000 refugees from Somalia have been admitted to
the country, with more expected. Some have also come from Bosnia. The
Somalis currently are the largest Muslim ethnic group in two centres,
Christchurch and Hamilton. The other major factor is that changes to the
From the ceremony for laying the foundation stone of a new mosque in
Hamilton (photo: Anisur Rahman, 1997).
association has also begun in Hastings but its current status is uncertain. In
1989, due to the growth and spread of the Auckland Muslim community,
the South Auckland Muslim Association was founded and since then two or
three other semi-independent centres have developed in other parts of the
city. There are three purpose-built mosques in New Zealand and
construction of a fourth has just begun. Other groups have converted
facilities at this stage.
Depending on numbers and resources, the associations provide for the
main religious services, including salat, prayers and activities for Ramadan
and the main festivals, as well as basic religious teaching, Arabic instruction
and various social activities. Some organise the provision of halal food.
Most or all of the associations have marriage celebrants and burial space in
a local cemetery. Some have separate women's groups and organise youth
activities, including sports. Many have 'usrah' groups, informal small
groups usually meeting in homes. The associations in Auckland and
Wellington have full time paid teachers (imams), but policy control is
largely in the hands of 'lay' leaders in these associations as well as in the
others. Outside financial assistance, from sources in such countries as Saudi
Arabia, has been necessary both for the buildings and for paying imams. In
recent years the Auckland community has established two day schools, one
at elementary and one at middle level.
The associations make some effort to publicise Islam in the larger

community and in several centres have had a variety of more or less formal
contacts with churches. Steps are currently being taken in Auckland to form
a Christian-Muslim Council along the lines of the existing Jewish-
Christian Council. When some people objected to the plans to build a
mosque in Hamilton, both Church groups and Maori groups gave crucial
support in the debate that took place in the pages of the local newspaper.
Very important for some New Zealand Muslims is the activity connected
with the Tabligh movement, Jamaat al-Tabligh, which was begun by
Muhammad Ilyas in India in the 1920s and has since spread around the
world. Its primary concern is to encourage regular practice of the very basic
religious obligations and it relies heavily on trained 'lay' volunteers who
travel about, both within the country and internationally, meeting with
local Muslims and preaching their message. Organisation is quite loose, but
there is usually an amir (leader) for a given area or group of activities. Since
1979 there has been an annual national gathering. While some criticise it as
being a conservative force and too associated with Indian ethnicity, its
informality, use of 'lay' leadership and emphasis on the basics make it well-
suited to the New Zealand situation, where there are few trained teachers
and basic identity is still a concern.
The world-wide Islamic resurgence has influenced New Zealand in
various ways. For some it has increased their Islamic identity in comparison
to their ethnic one. There is a greater concern about such matters as
segregation of the sexes and increased use of hijab by women. There is also
an increased desire to manage affairs by the Islamic method of shura
('consultation') rather than by Western-style majority rule and balloting,
which many feel encourage disruption and disunity. Shura as interpreted
here seems to involve something like concensus decision-making and a
strong role for the leader.
Among issues that have arisen within the community recently have been
the propriety of celebrating Mulid al-Nabi (mawlid,the Prophet's birthday)
and the acceptability of drinking Kava, a Fijian drink which is evidently
considered by Muslim authorities in Fiji to be intoxicating and thus
forbidden. The imam in Wellington has spoken out against both; other
leaders appear to agree with him on Kava but not necessarily on the Mulid.
Other on-going debates relate to the need, felt by some, to develop a
distinctly New Zealand approach to Islam. Some, for example, feel the
mosques and centres should be constructed mainly as places for prayer and
other specifically Islamic activities while others would prefer to see
buildings that suggest greater openness to the surrounding community.
Some have criticised the dominance of ethnic customs at Muslim functions,
as is illustrated by an exchange that took place some years ago on the pages
of the newsletter of the Wellington association. One writer, a Western
convert, stated: 'Becoming a Muslim does not mean that you have to sit on
the floor and eat rice and curry'. Another, a Pakistani, responded:
'Becoming a Muslim does not mean that you have to sit on the floor and
eat rice and curry, I am not so sure. However, what I am sure of is that to sit
on the floor like a Muslim and eat rice and curry is better than biting (as
dogs do) ham sandwiches or standing or drinking and driving and smashing
everything that comes in the way including one's self'. This sort of exchange
would be less likely today, but it illustrates the fact that one cannot easily
draw the line between cultural and moral concerns.
New Zealand associations are not divided along ethnic or sectarian lines,
mainly because of the small number of Muslims generally, and the
extremely small number of non-Sunnis. Ethnic feelings are not absent,
however, and may manifest themselves in the internal politics of the
associations and in issues concerning certain celebrations and customs
(members of one ethnic group will sometimes say that those of another
group confuse their ethnic customs with Islam). Although some have felt a
stronger Islamic identity in recent years, as noted above, there is evidence
that ethnic sensibility has also been increasing, mainly because of the
increasing numbers of people from different groups. So far, the leaders have
been able to contain the potential tensions involved; what the future holds
remains to be seen.
In 1979 a national organisation, the Federation of Islamic Associations
of New Zealand (FIANZ), was formed to help coordinate the activities of
the local associations and also to coordinate financial requests and other
dealings overseas. FIANZ has assisted in fund raising for the local mosques
and centres and in coordinating relations with overseas organisations such
as the Muslim World League, the World Association of Muslim Youth, and
the Regional Islamic Dawah Council of South East Asia and the Pacific
(RISEAP). It also selects candidates to attend overseas conferences and
meetings, holds Quran recitation competitions, distributes books, videos
and other literature and arranges visits by overseas speakers. Particularly
important has been its halal certification service. New Zealand began
sending meat to the Middle East in 1975 and increased its sales
dramatically when the revolutionary government in Iran began to accept
sizeable shipments. In the process, a considerable number of New Zealand
abbatoirs shifted to halal slaughter. Sales to Iran have decreased in recent
years but have been replaced by sales to other Muslim countries. FIANZ is
one of two certifying agencies in New Zealand and sole certifier for the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In 1993 FIANZ set up a
consultancy company, AMANA, to be its business arm. One of its goals is
to make New Zealand Muslims less dependent on donations from overseas
for major projects.
Of the nineteen seats on the FIANZ executive council, two are reserved
for women (other women are sometimes chosen as representatives of local
associations). Since about 1991 there has been a very active women's group
at the national level, the Islamic Women's Council of New Zealand, which
holds an annual conference and sponsors youth camps for girls.
Neither FIANZ nor the local associations have taken a prominent role in
relation to the economic, social and legal problems faced by immigrants,
preferring to let such matters be handled in a low-key and informal matter.
The writers believe that one or two cases relating to time-off for salat have
been taken to the government's Human Rights Commission, but do not
know that the associations have been formally involved. Neither have they
formally sponsored immigrants, although they have offered advice to
sponsoring organisations and have given help to immigrant families after
their arrival. They have been more active in some cases of negative publicity
and hostility arising out of events overseas such as the Rushdie Affair and
the Gulf War. On at least three occasions FIANZ has taken legal action
against the media and it sponsored or participated in several public forums
on the Rushdie Affair. Members of IMAN, in Wellington, have intervened
in some cases where material deemed derogatory to Muslims was being
used in the state schools.
In the early 1980s a leader of one of the recently formed associations said
that its main purpose was 'to keep them Muslim'. This will always be a
concern, given the small proportion of Muslims in New Zealand, but both
institutionally and otherwise the community has grown beyond merely this
concern and its leaders generally express optimism for the future. A few
years ago some in New Zealand expressed the hope that the community
would shift from being 'Muslims in New Zealand', that is an immigrant
community surviving in an alien environment, to being 'Muslims of New
Zealand', that is developing forms of Islamic expression appropriate to the
local society and interacting significantly with that society. In the case of
New Zealand the community is still very much in the mode of 'Muslims in
New Zealand', probably more so than five years ago, given the size of the
recent influx in relation to the size of the community and the problems they
face. It will take time and suitable circumstances to become 'Muslims of
New Zealand', but significant steps have been taken and the institutional
basis has been laid. The same issue may be raised for Australia. There, too,
the Muslims appear to be mainly 'Muslims in Australia' but because of their
larger relative and absolute numbers, their more developed institutions and
their higher profile, both positive and negative, they have probably moved
further along the path toward becoming 'Muslims of Australia'.
Literature
Much of the information in this essay is based on personal communica-
tions and the authors wish to express their appreciation to the members of
the Muslim communities of both countries, and others, who have taken the
trouble to provide information. Islam in Australia is dealt with in Gary
Bauma, Mosques a n d Muslim Settlement in Australia, Bureau of

Immigration and Population Research (Canberra: AGPS, 1994); Michael
Humphrey, 'Religion, Law and Family Disputes in Lebanese Muslim
Communities in Sydney', pp. 183-98 in Ethnicity, Class and Gender in
Australia, eds. Gillian Bottomley and Marie de Lepervanche (Melbourne:
George Allen and Unwin, 1984); Michael Humphrey, 'Community,
Mosque and Ethnic Politics', Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Sociology, 23 (1988), pp. 233-45; and Michael Humphrey, 'Is this a
Mosque Free Zone? Islam and the State in Australia', Migration Monitor,
12:3 (1989), pp. 12-17.
Middle East Research and Information Association (MERIA) has
published Islamic Communities in NSW (Sydney: TAFE, 1984). Other
studies of Australian Islam are Laura Nader, 'Orientalism, Occidentalism
and the Control of Women', Cultural Dynamics, 2:3 (1989), pp. 323-55;
Wa'el Sabri, 'A Model of Community Development within the Arabic
Muslim Community in Sydney', unpublished MA essay in sociology at
University of New South Wales, 1997; and Greg Sheridan, 'The FitzGerald
philosophy', The Weekend Australian, June 4-5, 1988, p. 21.
Not much has been written on Islam in New Zealand. Census figures
from 1991 are available in New Zealand Now: Asian New Zealanders
(Wellington: Statistics New Zealand, 1995). For a historical survey and
details concerning the various communities within New Zealand as of
about 1991, see William Shepard, 'Muslims in New Zealand', Journal:
Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 16: 2 (1996), pp. 211-32, and
Christopher Van der Krogt, 'Islam', pp. 181-213 in Religions of new
Zealanders, ed. Peter Donovan (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1990).
Useful information and a helpful perspective is presented by Qamer
Rahman, 'Muslim Women in New Zealand: Problems and Prospects', Al-
Nahdah, 16:l-2 (January-June, 1996), pp. 34-35. For an overview of
Islam on the Fiji Islands, see Ali Ahmad, 'Muslims in Fiji: A Brief Survey',
Journal: Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 3 (1981), pp. 174-82.
Part Three
Europe and the

Americas
Chapter Thirteen
Bosnia and Herzegovina

Kjell Magnusson
Before the war in Bosnia, few Westerners were aware of the existence of an
indigenous Muslim population in southeastern Europe. Islam was usually
regarded as a problem associated with migration or political relations
between the West and the Middle East. In fact, about 10 million inhabitants
of the Balkans are of Muslim origin. The largest group is to be found in
former Yugoslavia, where about 5 million, or one fifth of the population,
are Muslims. Others are living in Albania, 3.5 million (70 per cent of the
population), Bulgaria, 1.4 million (10-15 per cent), Greece (150,000) and
Rumania (50,000). The figures are not exact and do not necessarily refer to
actual religious identification.
If Balkan Muslims are ranked according to ethnic origin the following
picture emerges: Albanians (5-6 million), Bosnian Muslims (2.3 million),
Turks (1.5 million), RomaIGypsies (500,000), Bulgarian-speaking Pomaks
(180,000), Macedonian-speaking Torbeshi (100,000-200,000) as well as
smaller groups of Slavic- and Greek-speaking Muslims. In terms of
territorial dominance, the largest concentrations of Muslims are found in
Kosovo (90 per cent), Albania (70 per cent), the Sandiak province in Serbia
and Montenegro (50 per cent), Bosnia and Herzegovina (45 per cent) and
Macedonia (30 per cent).
The Islamic presence in southeastern Europe is the result of five
centuries of Ottoman rule, beginning towards the end of the fourteenth
century and lasting until 1913. Balkan Muslims are Sunni of the Hanafi
school of law, although an important role has been played by Sufi orders,
notably the Bektashiyya. In Albania it is estimated that 20-25 per cent of
the Muslims are Bektashis, and in Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as in
Bosnia, the Bektashiyya and other orders still have followers. Ottoman
rule was to have far-reaching effects on the history of the Balkans. First, a
social and political system developed which differed radically from feudal
society in Western Europe. Second, a specific Balkan culture evolved,
partly isolated from major currents in European thought, and generating
an ambivalent attitude towards 'Europe'. Third, and as a consequence of
these factors, the process of nation-building among both Christians and
Muslims was affected.
297
Bosnian Muslims
The Muslims of Bosnia illustrate perhaps more clearly than other ethnic
groups the unusual complexity of nation-building among the southern Slavs.
Although Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins and Bosnian Muslims speak the same
language, religious and cultural differences were sufficiently important to
serve as a basis for the formation of distinct national identities. This was to a
large extent due to political circumstances during the nineteenth century, but
is ultimately a result of prolonged foreign domination and the characteristics
of social and cultural processes in the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires.
In the Ottoman Empire, citizens were categorised according to religious
affiliation. From the point of view of the Turks, society was made up of
Muslims, Jews and Orthodox, Catholic or Armenian Christians. This principle
of classification was a consequence of an Islamic world-view and the lack of a
Western concept of religion. There was no clear distinction between a religious
and a secular sphere, between state and religion, but society-culture-religion
was understood as a unified whole, subject to the Islamic law, sharia. As sharia
could not be universally applied, since a majority of the inhabitants of the
Balkans were not Muslims, the Turks' solution was to allow the conquered
peoples a considerable degree of autonomy. They retained their own legal
system and were represented politically by their religious leaders.
This social order, which is usually referred to as the millet system, meant
that different socio-religious groups, or millet, lived together, or rather side by
side, and gave rise to a specific multi-ethnic culture where the cities became
meeting grounds of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Every group lived in its
own residential area or mahala, where it preserved its language and lifestyle.
People prayed to their God in Hebrew, Arabic, Church Slavonic or Byzantine
Greek, but met in the market place and the streets of artisans. In Balkan
towns and cities, Turkish, Greek, Judezmo, Albanian or Slavic dialects were
spoken, and, irrespective of ethnic origin, many people were multilingual.
As a rule the Turks did not actively engage in missionary activities and
therefore a majority of Greeks and southern Slavs maintained their original
culture and religion. A notable exception is Bosnia, where a large part of
the population converted to Islam, according to one theory because of their
Bogomil heritage, according to another primarily for social and economic
reasons. Whatever the case may be, the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina
are descendants of these Serbo-Croatian-speaking converts. During Otto-
man rule they were regarded by themselves and others as 'Turks' or, rather,
people of 'Turkish Faith'.
Westernisation
The occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1878
was a turning point for the Muslims. They were confronted with the
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lifestyles of modern European society, and the question of their ethnic

identity was suddenly brought to the fore. As long as the Ottoman Empire
and the millet system prevailed they had no reason to identify themselves as
anything but Muslims. However, the rise of Serb and Croat varieties of
modern nationalism during the nineteenth century made the identity of the
Muslims a complex and pressing issue. As in other similar situations several
alternative options were initially available. Muslims belonging to the
modern segments of society often identified themselves as Serbs but more
often as Croats, as both Croatia and Bosnia were parts of the same political
framework, and Zagreb was a major cultural centre.
Between 1878 and 1918 the Austrian authorities consciously tried to
popularise the idea of a Bosniac nation and a Bosniac language. This policy
was, however, not very successful, as Serbian and Croatian identities were
already available to Orthodox and Catholic Bosnians, while for a majority
of the Muslims the traditional adherence to Islam was still the primary
identification. In addition, since the characteristic feature of Bosnia was its
Islamic heritage, the term Bosniac practically referred only to Muslims,
especially as the oriental aspects of Bosnian culture were perceived as alien
by nationally conscious Serbs or Croats.
The Austrian occupation initiated a process of dramatic cultural and
political change. The Muslims lost their privileged position, and Islam was
reduced to a minority religion in a predominantly Christian state. The
Austrians interfered even in purely religious matters, for example by
introducing a new hierarchical and church-like organisation, and creating
the position of reis-ul-ulema as the religious head of Bosnian Muslims. The
state also took control of the important religious foundations, the vakuf
(Ar. waqfl. These policies, as well as insensitive missionary activities of the
Catholic Church, gave rise to strong opposition and the decades around the
turn of the century were dominated by a Muslim struggle for religious and
cultural autonomy, which was finally achieved in 1909.
As a consequence of the political changes, a great number of Muslims
left Bosnia and Herzegovina and moved to areas still controlled by the
Ottoman Empire. According to some estimates, about 150,000 Bosnians
emigrated to Turkey between 1878 and 1914, which resulted in a significant
change of the ethnic structure in Bosnia. The census of 1879 reported a
Muslim population of 448,613 or 38.7 per cent of the inhabitants. In 1910
there were 612,137 Muslims, but their share of the population was only
32.3 per cent.
Yugoslavia: Religion and Nation

In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia only Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were
recognised as founding nations of the new South Slavic state, and the
position of the Bosnian Muslims was initially quite difficult. Immediately
299
after the First World War there were cases of harassment and persecution,
and the agrarian reform particularly affected the Muslims, since practically
all landowners in Bosnia and Herzegovina were Muslims, and the Muslim
farmers were discriminated against. The most drastic change, however, was
that Bosnia and Herzegovina no longer existed as a political and
administrative unit. The Muslims concentrated their efforts on preserving
Islam and the religious institutions, while trying to obtain some degree of
autonomy. Their political party, Jugoslovenska Muslimanska Organizacija
(the Yugoslav Muslim Organisation, JMO), under the competent leadership
of Mehmet Spaho, skilfully used the rivalry between Serbs and Croats to
improve the position of the Muslims.
In 1930 the government established the Islamic Religious Community,
abolished the religious-cultural autonomy of 1909, and, like the Austrian
authorities, took control of the vakuf foundations. Another important step
was to move the function of reis-ul-ulema to Belgrade. However, due to the
key position of J M O in Yugoslav politics, in 1936 the Islamic Religious
Community managed to inaugurate a new constitution, which re-
established religious autonomy. The community regained its control of
the vakuf foundations, reis-ul-ulema moved back to Sarajevo, and the
Muslims were allowed to keep considerable parts of the sharia-based family
law. There were also Islamic educational institutions both on secondary
school and university level, in addition to several hundred Quranic primary
schools.
During World War 11, Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed by the
Croatian Ustasha state. Muslims were officially regarded as 'the flower of
the Croat nation' and a monumental mosque was established in the centre
of Zagreb. Parts of the Muslim population sympathised with the fascist
regime and a Muslim SS-unit, the Handiar division, was organised. It
should be pointed out, however, that Islamic religious leaders at a very early
stage publically condemned the Ustasha atrocities and genocidal policies
against the Serbs. There were also strong sympathies among the Muslims
with the communist-led partisan movement. Bosnia and Herzegovina
became the central battle ground in a cruel civil war between Serbs, Croats
and Muslims. Nowhere else were people killed on a such a scale or in such a
shocking manner. At the same time Bosnia symbolised the possibility of a
life together. Under the slogan Brotherhood and Unity the partisans
managed to mobilise Bosnians of all ethnic groups, and it was logical that
the post-war Yugoslav federation should be proclaimed in the town of Jajce
in 1943.
In Tito's Yugoslavia the Muslims of Bosnia in many respects occupied a
specific position. At first, Islam as a religious community was seriously
affected by the antireligious policies of the socialist regime. The Muslim
infrastructure, in which the vakuf foundations played a key role, providing
education and welfare, was dismantled. Land and buildings were
Magnusson
confiscated, the Quranic schools and higher institutions of learning were

closed, the Muslim press was silenced, sharia abolished and the veil
forbidden. When the resistance was broken, the Islamic Religious
Community, due to its relatively weak organisational structure, became
the most tightly controlled of all religious institutions.
After Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union in 1948 and the creation
of a specific brand of self-management socialism during the 1960s, the
position of the religious communities improved substantially. Because of
Tito's aspirations to become a leader of the non-aligned movement, the
Muslim population, as well as the institutions of Islam, were given a
special role in foreign policy. Yugoslav ambassadors in Muslim countries
were generally recruited among Turks, Albanians, Macedonian or Bosnian
Muslims, and the mosques of Sarajevo were always visited by prominent
guests from the Islamic world. Taking advantage of these developments,
the Islamic Religious Community gradually consolidated its position.
More than 600 mosques were built or reconstructed all over Bosnia and
Herzegovina, mostly financed by the believers themselves. The medrese
(As. madrasa), religious secondary schools, started to function again and a
Muslim theological faculty was solemnly opened in 1977. In addition, a
great number of Bosnian Muslims studied at Islamic universities, such as
the famous Al-Azhar in Cairo. As a result, the Islamic Community was
strengthened by a new cadre of well-educated imams and other
syllabification functionaries. A case in point is the famous Bosnian
politician Haris SilajdiiS.
Nation-Building and Secular Nationalism

Bosnia differed from other Yugoslav republics in one very important
respect. There was no Staatsvolk constituting a majority of the inhabitants
and making its imprint on society and culture. Instead three ethnic groups,
Serbs, Croats and Muslims, were supposed to share political power.
Immediately after the war several options, including partition, were in fact
considered, but the communists chose to create the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, partly because of the strong Muslim segment, partly in order
to curb Croat and Serb rivalry and territorial aspirations. Between the two
World Wars the Yugoslav Communist Party - on Comintern's order - had
advocated the dissolution of Yugoslavia and issued statements that might
indicate that the Bosnian Muslims at least potentially were a distinct people
or nation. The dominant view within the party, however, was that the
Muslims of Bosnia constituted a religious group, which due to specific
historical circumstances possessed certain characteristics of an ethnic
group. It was generally expected that they would finally assimilate.
However, it was very difficult even for a secularised Muslim to become a
Serb or a Croat, as these identities were ultimately based on religious
boundaries. Moreover, from a Serb or Croat perspective, Bosnian Muslims

were, and to a considerable extent still are, a kind of traitor, who adopted
the religion and culture of the invading Turks and were on the wrong side
during the glorious wars of liberation which constitute the national myths
of Serbs and Croats. Thus, at the same time as Croats and Serbs claimed
that the Muslims were actually part of their own national corpus, they
despised them. This meant that the process of assimilation which began in
the late nineteenth century involved only a minority, and in the absence of a
secular identity the only viable option for many Muslims who left the
Islamic tradition was to become 'Yugoslavs'.
In the Arab- or Turkish-speaking Muslim world it is possible to construct
a national identity based on language and perhaps pan-Arabic or pan-
Turkish ideologies. This alternative was not available in Bosnia, as the high
culture of Serbocroatian-speaking Muslims during the Ottoman period was
not indigenous, but part of a universal Islamic civilisation. While the Slavic
dialect was used in everyday life, the literary languages of educated
Muslims were Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Bosnian culture before the
Ottoman conquest, on the other hand, was Christian, and a matter of
dispute between Croats and Serbs. The ambiguous status of Bosnian
Muslims was reflected in the post-war censuses. In 1948 it was possible to
declare oneself as 'Serbian Muslim', 'Croatian Muslim' or 'Nationally
Undecided Muslim'. A majority, almost 800,000 individuals, or 90 per cent,
chose the latter alternative. In 1953 there was another option: 'Undecided
Yugoslav', and in 1961: 'Muslim - Ethnic Affiliation'. When Yugoslavia
during the 1960s had given up any plans to establish a common Yugoslav
(ethnic) identity, and was transformed into a highly decentralised
federation, Bosnian Muslims were finally, in 1969, recognised as a state-
building people, or nation, on the same level as Serbs, Croats, Slovenes,
Macedonians and Montenegrins. This was confirmed by the constitutional
changes in 1974, but as early as in the census of 1971, the category
'Muslims' (in a national sense) was introduced.
The Bosnian Communist Party was controlled by a coalition of Muslims,
Serbs and Croats, where an important role was played by certain Muslim
families or 'clans'. These secularised Muslims within the party actively
pushed for a recognition of the Bosnian Muslims. The new nation was given
the name Muslimani, i.e. Muslims, and the recognition started a process of
nation-building where the history and culture of Bosnian Muslims was
strongly emphasised. As the communists wanted to downplay the religious
dimension as much as possible, there was a clear tendency to stress the
(possible) Bogomil origin of the Muslims, which at least indirectly implied
that the Muslims were actually the dominant nation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The communists might have expected that by chosing the
term Muslim, they would neutralise the socio-cultural and political role of
Islam, but the effect was rather the reverse. In Serbo-Croatian the only way
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to distinguish between Muslims in an ethnic and religious sense was to use

capital 'M'. As ethnic identity in this case would be inconceivable without a
religious basis, it more or less automatically followed that those who did
practice Islam were, after all, more genuine Muslims than others. This was
further accentuated as cultural institutions, which in other parts of
Yugoslavia had a strong national and symbolic function, in Bosnia and
Herzegovina were supposed to be the common property of three nations.
However, while Serbs and Croats had 'their' academies of sciences and
cultural foundations in Zagreb and Belgrade, the only Muslim analogy
were the Islamic institutions. Moreover, in the Islamic world it was
impossible to apply the distinction between religion and nation, and it is
hardly a coincidence that the Islamic Religious Community in 1969
changed its name to the Islamic Community.
The new attitude towards the Muslims coincided with a general
modernisation of Bosnian society, which acquainted a growing number of
Muslims with an industralised and urban environment, as well as higher
education. Their share of the membership in the Bosnian Communist Party
rose dramatically during the 1970s, and they were increasingly employed in
the state apparatus and other power structures. Between 1971 and 1981 the
number of Muslim communists grew three times, which meant that in the
1980s they were represented according to their share of the population. In
addition, due to rapid population growth and extensive Croat and Serb
migrations, the Muslims finally became the largest ethnic group in Bosnia.
After World War I1 they constituted 30.8 per cent of the population, the
Serbs 40.5 per cent and the Croats 22.2 per cent. In 1991 the situation was
completely different. Now, 43.7 per cent of the population was Muslim,
31.3 per cent Serbian, and 17.5 per cent Croatian, and a Muslim majority
was a likely prospect.
The demographic changes, and the political and religious mobilisation of
the Muslims, worried both Croats and Serbs, in particular the latter. Serb
intellectuals started to refer to a Stalinist-type 'Islamic socialism' which had
allegedly conquered Bosnia, and many well-known personalities left
Sarajevo. The accusation was partly correct, in the sense that the Bosnian
regime was one of the most conservative and dogmatic in Yugoslavia. Using
the delicate balance between religious and ethnic groups as a pretext, the
Republican Communist Party reacted severely against anything that might
be labelled ethnic hatred or nationalism. Statements or activities which in
Croatia or Serbia were hardly controversial, might lead to imprisonment in
Bosnia. This, however, affected all religious communities, especially Islam.
The Sarajevo Trial

After the revolution in Iran the Bosnian leadership grew visibly nervous and
started a campaign against 'clero-nationalist' tendencies in all religious
communities. The offensive culminated in 1983 with the infamous trial of

thirteen Muslim intellectuals in Sarajevo. They were accused of having
conspired against the socialist order with the purpose of creating an Islamic
state ('Islamistan') in Bosnia. Among the prosecuted were engineers,
economists, lawyers, teachers and religious scholars, including two women.
The main suspect, Alija Izetbegovi?, the current president of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, of which he served
almost six. The accusations focused on the Islamic Declaration, a treatise
written by Izetbegovii. in 1970, and published in Arabic, Turkish and
English, but not (until 1990) in Serbo-Croatian. Inspired by the declaration,
the offenders had allegedly formed a secret organisation, which tried to
spread its message during seminars at the Faculty of Islamic Theology, as
well as in certain mosques. The group had also been in touch with foreign
governments (Iran).
The trial, which rested on a weak legal foundation, was a traditional
political performance of the communist type. Harmless circumstances or
events were treated as stages in a conspiracy; discussions with relatives or
friends were interpreted as enemy propaganda, and meetings in private
homes were defined as the creation of a secret organisation. In his defence,
Izetbegovi? argued that Bosnia or Yugoslavia were not even mentioned in
his essay, and that he explicitly declares that an Islamic state can only be
established in a country where Muslims constitute a majority of the
population.
A large number of people were interrogated or arrested, and those
involved later said that it was more or less chance that decided whether one
would be prosecuted or called as a witness. The sentences, which were
unusually severe, were widely criticised, both in Yugoslavia and abroad,
and relations with Muslim countries seriously deteriorated.
The Islamic Declaration

In terms of genre, the Islamic Declaration is a religious and moral-political
essay which, in a broad sociological perspective, passionately discusses the
predicament of Islam and Muslims in the contemporary world. The general
point of departure is that Muslim peoples live in a situation of moral decay
and humiliating stagnation. In order to change these conditions a return to
Islam and the Quran is necessary. However, a renewal is blocked by two
forces: the 'clerics' and the 'modernists'. Ulama, the class of learned
scholars, represents a degenerate Islam, which has turned religion into
form without content, while modernist intellectuals try to popularise a
Westernised culture which is foreign to Islam and the intimate feelings of
the broad masses. The Muslim masses, therefore, lack the leaders and ideas
which would awaken them from their lethargy, and there is a tragic
distance between the intelligentsia and ordinary people. What is needed is
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a new brand of Muslim intellectuals, reborn in the spirit of their own

tradition.
The ultimate aim of the spiritual revival is to establish an Islamic order,
which according to Izetbegovii: encompasses two dimensions or elements:
society and state. Without a society where people practice Islam, there can
be no Islamic state. An Islamic state which does not rest on a living faith
would be a hypocrisy, and could not exist without violence. This means that
a mere political usurpation of power would only be a continuation of a
situation which has led to the present crisis. On the other hand, says
Izetbegovii:, the Islamic society must be protected by an Islamic state.
Islamic renewal does not mean a denial of the rational aspects of modern
society. Science and technology cannot and should not be ignored, but must
be used in a proper way. Contrary to other religious and philosophical
systems Islam offers a comprehensive vision of history and the world, which
will overcome the contradictions of modern society.
For Izetbegovii: the Islamic order represents a more profound type of
democracy. It is an expression of authentic freedom, because individual
actions and society as a whole correspond to the essential character of the
people, i.e. Islam. A true Islamic society can therefore never be coercive,
although on the surface it might be different from the ideals of Western
democracy. A society based on a genuine understanding of the Quran and
an Islamic education will have certain consequences, though. Alcoholism,
prostitution or pornography cannot be allowed. Neither can one accept
that cultural norms and lifestyles opposed to the spirit of Islam are openly
propagated. There must, says Izetbegovii:, be a 'congruence' between the
message of media and mosque. An important issue concerns the position of
non-Muslim minorities in an Islamic society. Their rights must be respected,
to the extent that they do not harm Islam, and the declaration stresses that
this is a consequence of the traditional tolerance towards Christians and
Jews, which existed in the Ottoman empire.
The Young Muslims

It is sometimes argued that one should not dwell too much on the Islamic
Declaration, since it was written some twenty-five years ago, and
Izetbegovii: today has adopted a different position. This overlooks both
recent statements by the president and the fact that there is a continuity in
Izetbegovik's views which goes back to his youth and involvement in the
association of Young Muslims, a movement which has hardly been noticed
in the West.
This organisation was formed shortly before the outbreak of the Second
World War, as a reaction against the general conditions of Muslims in the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Young Muslims strived for a renewal of Islam
and were convinced that a religious renaissance was essential to the
integrity and independence of Bosnian Muslims. To achieve this it was

necessary to form a movement of dedicated young people who would
initiate a process of re-education and serve as examples of true Muslims.
During the war they were active within the El Hidaje, the association of
imams, or the humanitarian organisation Merhamet. On ideological
grounds they were against both the Ustasha state and the communist
partisans. In particular, they opposed the partition of Bosnia, which was a
consequence of the formation of an autonomous Croatia in 1939.
After the war the Young Muslims continued their activities, and
unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate Preporod, an organisation loyal to the
regime. In 1947 ten Young Muslims were brought to trial and sentenced to
long prison terms, accused of having conspired against the socialist order.
One of the leaders of the movement was Alija Izetbegovi?, who was
sentenced to three years imprisonment by a military court. After this serious
set-back, the resistance was radicalised and the organisation started to
function as a highly conspirative network. For some time the Young
Muslims succeeded in keeping their activities secret, but in 1949 the
authorities finally managed to uncover the organisation. At a second trial
four leaders were sentenced to death for allegedly having planned terrorist
activities. It is estimated that several thousand followers were affected by
repression in some way or another, which means that the Young Muslims
represented the most widespread ideological protest against the Yugoslav
communist regime.
Religion and Politics in Bosnia

The Legacy of the Young Muslims is in many respects noticeable in today's
Bosnia. When the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, was formed in March
1990, the nucleus consisted of former Young Muslims, their relatives, or
persons who had supported Izetbegovik in the 1970s and had been involved
in the trial and persecutions of 1983. Although SDA had a neutral name
and political programme, it was nevertheless a strictly Muslim party with
an unmistakable religious orientation. In a very short time it grew into an
impressive movement among Serbocroatian-speaking Muslims, not only in
Bosnia and the Sandzak region, but also in Kosovo and Macedonia. The
meetings during the Bosnian election campaign in 1990, with prayers,
religious music, green flags and participants in oriental dress, were powerful
manifestations of the religious and cultural identity of Bosnian Muslims.
Although religion played an important role during the election
campaign, and SDA definitely was the 'most religious' of all major political
parties in former Yugoslavia, it should be stressed that Izetbegovit
repeatedly denied any plans to form an Islamic state. He even rejected a
(secular) Muslim national state. Throughout the political crisis in 1990 and
1991 he advocated a 'civic state' and a 'multi-ethnic society'. The latter
Magnusson
Preveo
BESIM KORKUT
SARAJEVO, 19 8 4
The cover of a Kroatian translation of the Quran.
concept has caused some confusion among Western observers, who have
tended to interpret it within their own frames of reference. It should be
made quite clear that when Izetbegovit and his political associates are
referring to a multi-ethnic society, they do not mean a society where
ethnicity - or religion - would be unimportant. On the contrary, a multi-
ethnic Bosnia was - given the circumstances - the only way to guarantee the
preservation and further development of a Bosnian-Muslim identity. For
precisely this reason Izetbegovit tried to prevent the dissolution of
Yugoslavia right to the very end.
Developments during the war illustrate this very clearly. Whatever
Croats or Serbs might think, the war has finally completed the process of
nation-building among Bosnian Muslims, who are now officially defined as
Bosniacs. Moreover, 'Bosniac' is increasingly becoming synonymous with

'Bosnian', and political leaders often refer to the Muslims as 'the majority
nation' of Bosnia. As far as religion is concerned, Izetbegovii. has stated
very clearly that in the future, Bosnia will be a society where Islam naturally
plays an important role. For him a Bosnian identity without Islam is
unthinkable, which does not mean that Islam has to become a state religion,
or that other world views or religions should be banned.
Religious Beliefs and Practices

It has generally been taken for granted that the role of religion in Bosnian
society is negligible. A common remark is that the Bosniacs are European
Muslims who do not have much in common with Islamic 'fundamentalists'.
It is certainly true that Bosnian Muslims live in Europe, and that Serb and
Croat propaganda about 'fundamentalist' conspiracies is exaggerated. On
the other hand, it seems that the constant insistence on the idea of a highly
secularised Bosnia says more about Western ambivalence towards Islam
than about actual conditions in Bosnia. Albeit on a different scale, Muslims
in Bosnia are faced with the same basic issues that confront all Muslim
societies: How to formulate an ethnic identity different from religious
identification, or how to distinguish between religion and politics in an
environment where this was traditionally not being done? This has been the
dilemma of Muslims in Bosnia over the past 100 years.
The question about the influence of Islam in Bosnian society cannot be
answered unequivocally, as there is a lack of detailed and reliable surveys,
of the kind available in, for example, Slovenia and Croatia, where
sociologists of religion since the 1960s have investigated religious attitudes
and practice. However, data from empirical research, as well as other
sources, seem to indicate that Islam does play a significant role in Bosnian
society. In the Yugoslav census of 1953, citizens were able to state their
religious affiliation or to identify as non-believers. In Yugoslavia as a whole
about 12 per cent of the population classified themselves as atheists, but
regional and other variations were considerable. The percentage of atheists
was larger among groups belonging to Orthodox Christian culture
(Montenegrins 39.5 per cent, Serbs 15.8 per cent, Macedonians 15.8 per
cent), than among those with a Catholic background (Slovenes 10.3 per
cent, Croats 10 per cent). The decidedly lowest number of non-believers
were to found, however, among the categories 'Yugoslavs' (mainly Bosnian
Muslims), 4 per cent, and 'non-Slavs' (most of whom were Albanians), 3.3
per cent. A decade later (1964) a comparative sociological investigation
was undertaken in all Yugoslav republics and autonomous areas. The
percentage of believers was greatest in Kosovo (91 per cent) and Bosnia
and Herzegovina (83.8 per cent), i.e. areas with a large Muslim
population.
Magnusson
Unfortunately there are few recent studies on a Yugoslav level. To the

extent that they exist they are often questionable from a statistical point of
view. One example is a survey from 1990 according to which the
proportion of believers would be 28 per cent in Bosnia, compared to 6 7
per cent in Kosovo. It turns out, on closer inspection, that Muslims
constitute only 28 per cent, and party members more than 50 per cent of
those interviewed, which in both cases drastically differs from the actual
situation, and thus influences the results. If one compares religiosity and
confessional background, according to the same survey 62 per cent of the
Catholics, 60 per cent of the Muslims and 39 per cent of the Orthodox
regard themselves as believers.
According to a sociological survey conducted by the University of
Stockholm in the summer of 1996 on a sample of 3,200 inhabitants of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost 90 per cent of the Muslim respondents
identified themselves as members of the Islamic community. More than 80
per cent said they believe in God, whereas 2 7 per cent attended mosque
every week, and another 9 per cent at least once a month. It is true that
participation in religious activities is higher among Catholics (46 per cent
attend mass every week), but this investigation shows that religion was
more important among Muslims than is usually assumed. Moreover, due to
the overrepresentation of people with higher education, the religiosity of
Muslims is probably underestimated.
A common feature of Yugoslav investigations is the substantial variation
in religious attitudes and practice according to educational background, or
between rural and urban areas. The Bosnian sociologist Esad Cimii., who in
the beginning of the 1960s reported an average of 60 per cent believers
among Muslims in Herzegovina, found that such variations are particularly
high among the Muslims. In his well-known study of village and market
places in Western Bosnia, the American ethnologist William Lockwood
refers to a situation where practically all Muslim villagers practice Islam.
Perhaps, they do not pray the obligatory five times, but at least three, and
Ramadan is generally observed. His field studies were undertaken in the
1970s, and it is interesting to note that the Norwegian ethnologist Tone
Bringa in her recent book on a Muslim village near Sarajevo gives a similar
account. While there are variations in religious practice, most people's
identity is firmly grounded in Islam. Children are sent to the mekteb
(Quranic school), Ramadan is observed, people visit the mosque, and of
special importance are practices related to Sufism and Sufi orders.
Figures on intermarriage offer indirect evidence of the importance of
religion. Reports about the Bosnian conflict have almost unanimously
emphasised the presumably high percentage of people marrying outside
their own ethnic group. While it is true that there is a fairly high degree of
mixed marriages in urban areas, or in higher social strata, in general the
rate of intermarriage is surprisingly low. In Yugoslavia as a whole, during
A Muslim boy in Macedonia dressed up for a circumcision ceremony

(photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1984).
the post-war period there was an increase from 8.6 to 13 per cent. In Bosnia
the proportion was lower, about 12 per cent. Moreover, intermarriage was
more common between Croats and Serbs, than between Muslims and Serbs
or Muslims and Croats. That is, in Bosnia, as well as in Macedonia or
Kosovo, people of Muslim origin were less prepared to cross the cultural-
religious border. In other words, regardless of personal religiosity, religious
background acts as a powerful boundary mechanism.
Islamic Renaissance?
What is the role of Islam after the political changes in 1990, and, in
particular, after a devastating war, which has not only led to human losses
and ethnic cleansing, but to massive destruction of the religious and cultural
infrastructure? It is obvious that Islam is present in public life to an extent
which radically differs from conditions in socialist Yugoslavia. Religious
leaders usually attend official occasions, they frequently appear in the
media, and are generally treated with reverence. Another feature is that
religious holidays increasingly tend to acquire a semi-official character. In
this respect the situation is similar to that of Serbia or Croatia, where the
Catholic and Orthodox churches play a prominent role. In Bosnia this
Magnusson
tendency is particularly strong, due to the character of Islam as a socio-

religious system and the close relations between religious institutions and
the major political party. After all, the Bosnian president is a believer who
actively practices Islam, and in 1994 fulfilled the obligation of hajj,
accompanied by wounded war veterans on his pilgrimage to Mecca.
On the other hand, the religious renaissance might be understood as a
natural return to positions which Islam lost artificially and by force when
the communists took over in 1945. Therefore, the higher societal presence
of religion does not necessarily mean that the influence of Islam is
increasing on a more profound level. Fairly large parts of the middle strata
of Muslim society in Bosnia are certainly secularised, partly because they
were members of the Communist Party. This is confirmed by Alija
IzetbegoviC himself, who makes the sociologically plausible comment that
Islam is stronger in villages and larger cities and that peasants and
intellectuals are religious, whereas the middle classes are not. Therefore,
recent changes are probably alien to a substantial part of the urban
population, something which is reflected in the frequent disputes between
secular media and the Islamic press. In any case, official Islam has
strengthened its position as an institution. In 1993 the Bosnian Muslims
formed their own independent Islamic Community when Mustafa efendija
Cerii- was elected reis-ul-ulema and leader of the Bosnian rijaset (Islamic
authority). During the war Cerii- has emerged as a strong popular leader
who has stressed the social and political dimensions of Islam. Especially
during the tragic events of Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 he played a
very important role.
In spite of the war the Islamic Community has created a more vigorous
organisation and has also tried to improve education on all levels. Apart
from the theological faculty and the medrese in Sarajevo, there are four new
Islamic institutions of higher learning, the medrese in Tuzla, Cazin,
GraEanica near Visoko, and Travnik. Important changes have also occurred
as far as religious education of children and youth is concerned. In 1994
religion was introduced as a subject in Bosnian schools. It is confessional
and voluntary, but there seems to be a strong psychological pressure to
participate and according to news reports about 80-90 per cent of Muslim
children are enrolled. Islam is thus more noticeable in the media, and has,
moreover, media of its own. Besides the official organs of the Community
(Preporod, Islamska Misao, Mualim) the most important Islamic paper is
the weekly Ljiljan. Its former editor-in-chief, Diemaludin Latii-, was
sentenced to prison at the Sarajevo trial in 1983. The magazine is a
successor of Muslimanski Glas, which was the official organ of the SDA,
and although Ljiljan is independent it is no doubt very close to the ruling
party. It is here that Alija Izetbegovii- and other politicians give their most
important interviews. A specific feature of Ljiljan is its professionalism. In
journalistic terms it is simply of high quality. The general outlook is
modern, without the typical inward and traditionalist tone characteristic of

the religious press in (former) Yugoslavia. Besides, it is advocating a
vigorous national line, stressing the Bosniac cultural heritage and, above all,
religion. The general frame of reference is that of Izetbegovik: without Islam
there is no Bosniac identity. Another expression of these developments is the
publication of books, not only belonging to the corpus of Bosnian national
literature, or dealing with Bosnian history, but also purely Islamic works,
both in translation and by Bosnian authors. Recently a new exclusive
edition of the Quran was published.
An interesting aspect is the tendency to reaffirm the Sufi traditions in
Bosnian Islam. Already during the late socialist period Sufism played an
important role in the official magazine Preporod. This is even more so
today. The Sufi orders are being revived and traditional meetings, mevlud
(Ar. mawlid) are given wide publicity. It has even been said that officers and
commanders of the Bosnian army are not only influenced by Sufi traditions,
but are themselves, in some cases, shaykhs. In general there is a strong
religious presence in the army. Imams constitute a natural element in the
organisation, an equivalent to the political commissars in the former
Yugoslav Peoples Army, and many imams have participated - and died - as
soldiers or officers. Certain units make a point of cultivating Islam, such as
the 7th Army Corps, which at the parade after the victories in Western
Bosnia in 1995 greeted the president with 'Alahu ekber' (Ar. Allahu akbar,
God is greater). In fact, the Bosnian government has been criticised for
neglecting professional skills and giving too much importance to religious
and political (SDA) loyalty when appointing military commanders.
Within the framework of the Bosnian army there have also been
volunteers from Islamic countries, the well-known mujahidin. They
consisted of some 3,000 soldiers concentrated in the Zenica area,
expressing a strong Islamist position. Together with these soldiers, various
Islamist religious and humanitarian organisations worked in Bosnia during
the war. This sometimes caused problems not only in relation to the United
States or secularised segments of the population, but also led to clashes with
representatives of official Islam.
The dominant circles of the ruling party display a distinct Islamic
orientation. Several leading personalities, including the reis-ul-ulema and
sometimes the president, have expressed worries regarding moral issues,
such as women's clothes, mixed marriages, birth rates, the educational
system, or the marketing of pork meat in Sarajevo. A much-debated
incident involved the character of the celebration of New Year's Eve 1996
on Sarajevo television, which prompted President Izetbegovik to write a
public letter denouncing behaviour alien to the Bosnian-Muslim tradition.
Foreign journalists who initially described Bosnia as a secular society
have noted that, as the war continued, the social presence of Islam became
stronger. A common explanation is the war as such, that is in a situation
Magnusson
when people are labelled as Muslims and killed because of their ethno-
religious affiliation, when mosques are being destroyed and graveyards
flattened, they will identify as Muslims out of sheer self-preservation. At the
same time it is pointed out that refugees from Eastern Bosnia to a large
extent are behind the changes in Sarajevo. This actually shows that there
was a basis, that Islam did constitute a living reality among large segments
of the Muslim population. Without this basis Islam would hardly grow in
importance. The natural alternative would instead be secular nationalism,
which, incidentally, does exist.
It is very difficult to say anything definite about the degree to which
Islamist ideas are effective within the population at large. That they do exist
is clear, but we have no detailed knowledge about popular attitudes or
organisational structures. It seems as if such tendencies, at least until now,
have been channelled within the official Islamic Community, as well as the
Party of Democratic Action and its affiliated organisations. In an interesting
study of sermons during the Ramadan of 1992, Xavier Bougarel analyses a
variety of currents along the dimensions politicallnon-political and
conservativelrevivalist Islam. He concludes that a political, revivalist
version of Islam seems to have been strengthened during the war. In her
book Being Muslim the Bosnian Way, Tone Bringa makes the important
point that these developments have largely been influential in urban areas.
It seems unlikely that extreme Islamist tendencies will become dominant
in the Bosnian context. There have been tensions within the ruling party,
and when Prime Minister Silajdiii- left the government and SDA in 1996,
this was generally interpreted as a clash between 'fundamentalists' and
'Westerners'. It is doubtful whether this assessment is correct. The conflict
was primarily political, rather than religious, and concerned issues like the
role of the Bosnian army, the character of the Bosnian state and relations
with Croatia. It is, nevertheless, of considerable interest that SDA, with its
religious-national message, won an overwhelming victory in the first post-
war elections of 1996, while Silajdiii-'s new party, generally expected to be
popular among the urban and modern strata of Bosnian society, made a
rather poor performance.
The war in Bosnia was brought to an end by the Dayton Agreement in
November 1995. The major points of the agreement have not yet (1997)
been implemented, and the prospect of a unified, multiethnic Bosnia and
Herzegovina is uncertain. It is interesting to observe that Diemaludin Latii-,
writing in Ljiljan on several occasions, has a vision of the future which
seems to be a restoration of the Ottoman millet system. He advocates
selective use of modern technology and a return to authentic Islam, and
suggests that the major ethnic groups should live together, side by side,
governed by their own religious traditions. In his view, Bosnian believers of
all major religions have a common interest in defending moral and spiritual
values against the onslaught of a materialist and godless culture.
Literature
For a general introduction to the history of Muslims in Bosnia, see Noel
Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (London: Macmillan, 1994); The
Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina: Their Historic Development from the
Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia, ed. Mark Pinson
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Robert J. Donia and
John V.A. Fine Jr, Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (London:
Hurst, 1994); and Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a
Nation (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1996).
National and political currents among Bosnian Muslims during Austrian
rule are discussed by Robert J. Donia in Islam under the Double Eagle: The
Muslims of Bosnia and Hercegovina, 1878-1914, East European Mono-
graphs, 78 (Boulder, Co: East European Quarterly, 1981). A standard work
on socio-cultural change and Muslim identity in post-war Yugoslavia is
William Lockwood, European Moslems: Ethnicity and Economy in
Western Bosnia (New York: Academic Press, 1975). On the religious
situation, see Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and
Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1995); Michael Selss, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and
Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and
Xavier Bougarel, 'Ramadan During a Civil War as Reflected in a Series of
Sermons', Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 6:1 (1995), pp. 79-103.
For an extensive survey of literature on Islam and the Balkans, see
Alexandre Popovik, L'Islam Balkanique: Les musulmans du sud-est
europe'en dans la pe'riode post-ottomane, Balkanologische Veroffentlichun-
gen, 11 (Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universitat Berlin, 1986).
Comprehensive data on religious and cultural affairs are also found in
Smail Balic, Das unbekannte Bosnien: Europas Briicke zur islamischen
Welt (Koln: Bohlau Verlag, 1992). See also, from the perspective of political
science, Andreas Kappeler, Gerhard Simon and Georg Brunner, Muslim
Communities Re-emerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics,
and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1994). For data on religion, political attitudes and
ethnic identity, see Kjell Magnusson, Attitudes and Values in Bosnia and
Herzegovina: A Sociological Investigation (Stockholm: Centrum for
invandrarforskning, 1996).
Chapter Fourteen
Germany and Austria
In the spring of 1995, the German Booksellers' Trade Association

nominated the internationally renowned Oriental Studies specialist
Annemarie Schimmel for its annual peace prize. The Association cited
Schimmel's work as 'furthering the understanding and knowledge of Islam',
seeing its award as a 'symbol for the encounter rather than confrontation of
cultures, a symbol for patience, poetry and global culture that respects
difference'. The political power of such an award was dramatically
demonstrated after the prize-winner indicated in a TV interview a degree
of understanding for the occasionally vehement reactions within the Islamic
world to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Over the following few weeks,
Schimmel found herself at the centre of a heated public debate regarding her
entitlement to the award.
The affair polarised the intellectual, artistic and political worlds alike.
Although it was not possible to define any clear lines of demarcation, the
political right in German public life tended to support the awarding
committee's decision without reserve. On the other hand, several left or left
of centre intellectuals, politicians, women's rights activists and publishers
attempted to defame Schimmel and stop the award being presented. As far
as they were concerned, Schimmel's comments on the injured feelings of
Muslims put her under suspicion of being an advocate of Islamic
fundamentalism, and her pronouncements seemed to chip away at the
foundations of Western society and the universality of human rights. Over
and above this, the left had the impression that the winner of the German
Booksellers' Association Peace Prize was herself an Islamic fundamentalist
who supported the spread throughout Europe of a militant religion whose
goal was world revolution against the achievements of Western civilisation
- 'the Fifth Column on the march', as it was expressed by the leftist
politician and publicist Rolf Stolz.
The award of the peace prize to Annemarie Schimmel was, however,
not halted by these suspicions and accusations. The narrow view of a
dynamic world religion as mediaeval and threatening, and as the
antithesis to Western enlightenment and modernism, does seem to be
common in society at large. This was clearly acknowledged by the
Germany and Austria
president of Germany, Roman Herzog, in his eulogy at the award

ceremony:
It is no sweeping statement when I say that the associations conjured
up by many in connection with the word 'Islam' are things such as
'inhumane punishment', 'religious intolerance', 'oppression of wo-
men' and 'aggressive fundamentalism'. But this is tunnel vision, and
we must correct it.
It is not only events such as the conferral of a cultural award on a renowned
Oriental Studies expert that can provoke public debate on the relationship
between Islam and the West - religious symbols have the same potential.
When the president of the Islamic community in Austria in 1995 instructed
Muslim schoolgirls to wear a head-scarf during Islamic religion lessons, it
ignited a debate over domestic policy. Although the Education Ministry's
position was clear - namely, that religious education is the internal concern
of each of the officially recognised faiths - representatives from each of the
political parties grasped the opportunity to proclaim their attitude towards
Islam and Muslims in Austria in the full glare of the media spotlight. Aside
from careful and considered statements regarding the integration of
Muslims into society and remarks drawing attention to the right to
religious freedom, there were also voices that openly set a choice before
Muslims: assimilate or be excluded. It was above all the conservative,
Germanic-nationalist element in Austrian politics that tended to make the
connection between the Muslim minority and religious fanaticism.
There can be no doubt that the last twenty years have seen political
developments in some Muslim countries which have lead to a less than rosy
image of Islam in the West. A bestseller such as Betty Mahmoudy's Not
Without My Daughter perhaps owes its impressive success in Germany and
Austria to certain latent prejudices in these societies regarding the Islamic
world, and after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait which led to the Gulf War in
1991 it was even easier for military strategists to find a new threat to
Western interests. The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact at the end of the
1980s had taken away the threat to world peace and the search for a new
concrete enemy by influential political advisors and strategists such as
Samuel Huntington resulted in the prediction that future conflicts would
develop out of a clash of civilizations and, in particular, the Islamic 'threat'.
The Mediterranean regions, shaped as they are by both Islam and
Christianity, are steeped in centuries of common history which is
remarkable not just for its succession of wars and rulers but also for the
vast richness of its cultural achievements. This community of history -
insofar as it is present in the collective consciousness of the people - has,
however, not helped either the breaking down of prejudice or the creation
of tolerance of cultural and religious differences. As a result, Central
Europe is dominated by fixed, simplistic conceptions of the Islamic world in
Kogelmann
which national, ethnic and confessional differentiation is largely unknown.

Islam is generally equated with certain political Islamic movements, and the
word 'Islam' is all too easily used as a synonym for fanaticism. The danger
is that such simplistic and discriminatory preconceptions will be transferred
onto the millions of Muslims living throughout Europe, thus leading
inevitably to the exclusion of a religious minority from society at large.
Historical Background
In contrast to the main colonial powers of the nineteenth century, England
and France, both Germany and Austria have relatively little experience of
contact with the Islamic world or colonial rule over a Muslim society. The
smallness of the German states until their unification in 1871 prevented any
intensive contact with Islam. The Turkish Wars in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries brought perhaps a few thousand Muslim prisoners of
war, the so-called Beutetiirken (booty Turks), under German control, and
the expanding military power Prussia was able to raise at least some units of
Muslim cavalry in the nineteenth century. These early contacts between
Germany and the Islamic world were in themselves of little or no
significance for the history of Islam at large or, indeed, the history of Islam
in Germany, and the short period of colonial rule over a few Islamic areas in
East and West Africa had no consequences in that sense either. When the
Ottoman empire joined the German and Austro-Hungarian side in the First
World War, the Islamic question became important, however, at least for
the propaganda machinery of the military planners. German strategists
attempted to use the fact that the formal head of Sunnite Muslims, the
Ottoman Sultan-Caliph, was on their side to exercise some influence over
the Muslims serving under the Western Allies. However, the propaganda
campaign to portray the war as a holy Islamic war (jihad) was not aimed
simply at the front or only at Muslims serving with the British, French and
Russian forces; German authorities also attempted to indoctrinate Muslim
prisoners of war in specially created camps, in order to use them
themselves. This 'jihad made in Germany' was not particularly successful
in the final analysis, but some 15,000 Muslims came to Germany initially
and a rudimentary Islamic infrastructure grew up under the auspices of the
propaganda campaign, consisting of a mosque and the appointment of
imams.It barely impinged on ordinary daily life in Germany, however.
Austrian contact with the Islamic world developed along rather different
lines, caused by the proximity of the Ottoman empire. Although there were
early cultural and economic contacts between scattered Muslims around
the Danube and present-day Austria in the Middle Ages, the history of
Austro-Islamic relations is dominated by episodes of a war-like nature.
Traces of the horrific experiences of Austrians in the Turkish Wars can still
be found today in numerous folk tales. Inhabitants of Austria who lived
Germany and Austria
close to the border were faced with attacks by Turks from the fifteenth
century onwards, and the threat to the Habsburg dynasty was at its greatest
with the second siege of Vienna in 1683. The defeat of the Turks before the
gates of Vienna was a turning point for both the Austrian monarchy and the
Sublime Porte itself. The Ottoman expansion into Europe ended with this
defeat and from this point onwards the empire was increasingly on the
defensive against Christian Europe. The complete conquest of Hungary by
the Holy Alliance, formed by Austria, Poland and Venice, among others,
brought the dual Austro-Hungarian throne to the Habsburg dynasty and
eventually its rise to the top European stage. The Islamic threat to the
Christian Occident was thus repelled.
The Congress of Berlin in 1878 gave Austria rights to the occupation and
administration of the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
so the Habsburgs came into possession of a colony containing about 60,000
Muslims. The two provinces were annexed in 1908 before becoming part of
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire in 1918. The forty years under Austrian rule created a new situation
for those Muslims who had chosen not to emigrate to the Ottoman empire.
Before this time, Muslims under their caliphs had been in a privileged
position compared to the Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Now they
found themselves subjects of a Christian power.
It is difficult to assess what concrete effects the Habsburg reforms of
religious infrastructure, education or economy had on the lives and national
awareness of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the Austro-
Hungarian state was confronted with the new situation of having to come
to terms with the phenomenon of Islam. The administration of an area
settled by Muslims, the recruitment of Muslim soldiers and the presence of
Muslims in the heart of Austria necessitated a social and legal mechanism.
For the Muslims living in the multi-national Habsburg empire, the biggest
impact was that made by the Islam Law (Islamgesetz).Based on laws dating
from 1867 and 1874, which guaranteed individual religious freedom and
formalised legal recognition of religious groups and their relationship with
the state, the Islam Law was passed in 1912. This law referred to Muslims
of the Hanafi school of law within the Austrian half of the empire, placing
Muslims de jure on the same footing as the followers of other religions and
giving the teachings of Islam, as long as they were not contrary to it, legal
protection. This creation of religious equality did not, however, go hand in
hand with the creation of an Islamic community in Austria; it was only in
the second half of the twentieth century that the time was ripe for such a
step.
There was little contact between Germans or Austrians and Muslims
until the restructuring of Europe after World War I, and what contacts there
were had a clearly defined power structure. The strict conditions of the
Versailles Peace Treaty hindered any development of diplomatic relations
Kogelmann
between the Weimar Republic or the first Austrian Republic and Muslim
countries, most of which were under French or British colonial,
protectorate or mandate rule. In addition, at that time only a small number
of Muslims had settled in either Austria or Germany, although some Islamic
groups were found in Berlin and Vienna, partially as a result of the activities
of German and Austrian converts. These groups had a wide range of goals,
from the simple cultivation of Islamic culture to the creation of an
international network in the fight against the imperial powers that governed
the homelands. After coming to power, the Nazis either remoulded Islamic
groups so that they were acceptable to their own aims, or banned them
outright.
After the outbreak of World War 11, both the Wehrmacht and the SS
(Schutzstaffel) made attempts to continue the rather unsuccessful First
World War policy on Islam. The primary goal was, of course, to muster and
indoctrinate Muslim fighting units, especially the SS, in both the Soviet and
Yugoslav theatres of war, but the Nazi propaganda machine also made use
of prominent Muslims who were opposed to Britain and France, and this
lead to the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husaini, being in Germany from
late 1941 onwards. The Abwehr (secret service) agent, the Hungarian
Count Laszlo E. Almiisy - the central character in the film The English
Patient (1997) - even saw Amin al-Husaini as the future Caliph. Shakib
Arslan, a Druse leader, mentor of various nationalist movements in the
Arab world and a prominent enemy of France, was even given the dubious
honour of being elevated to the rank of honorary Aryan. But surely the
most absurd step taken in the name of the policy on Islam was the SS's order
to find places in the Quran that could be used in propaganda to indicate
that Hitler was the executor of Muhammad's prophecies.
The Arrival of the Gastarbeiter

The reconstructed industrial societies in Central and Western Europe which
grew up out of the rubble of the Second World War proved to be a powerful
attraction for people in the economically disadvantaged regions of Europe,
Asia and Africa and, because the requirements for cheap labour caused by
the booming economies could not be fulfilled from the native workforce
from the 1960s onwards, several European governments attempted to use
agreements and treaties to direct the stream of immigrants into specific
channels. Workers, hired by both government and private organisations,
looked for ways of earning a living in the rich north. As of the 1980s,
however, wars and political or economic crises played the greater role in
shaping international population movements and these became difficult to
channel.
The overwhelming majority of migrants to Germany and Austria came
from the Mediterranean basin. Neither country had any significant numbers
Germany and Austria
of aliens within its borders at the beginning of the 1950s - except the allied
occupation troops and other experts assisting in the creation of new
administrative structures, but the proportion grew sharply after 1960.
Germany signed an employment treaty with Italy as early as 1955 and
Greece, Spain, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and finally Yugoslavia
followed between 1960 and 1968. The Austrian recruitment of foreign
workers began in 1962 after initial resistance from the unions. Today,
shortly before the new millennium, the total number of legal and
statistically recognisable aliens living in both states constitutes about 9
per cent of the total population. The regional distribution of aliens is
uneven and concentrated chiefly on the conurbations. Unlike the United
States, Canada or Australia, neither Germany nor Austria see themselves as
immigrant countries; the immigration of foreign labour was originally seen
as temporally limited. The workers were intended to return to their native
soil after only a few years and make room for others to take their places
according to demand. They were not immigrants in the true sense of the
word but rather, subject as they were to the laws of supply and demand,
Gastarbeiter (guest workers).
In view of the native countries of the Gastarbeiter, a high proportion of
them were Muslims, although a direct link between nationality and religion
can be made in only a few cases; and even if the workers are nominally
Muslim, this tells us nothing about the degree of religiosity or the role that
Islam plays in their daily life. It can be said with relative safety that all the
roughly 28,000 Tunisians, 80,000 Moroccans and 35,000 Pakistanis
currently living in Germany are Muslim. Among the Turkish nationals,
by far the largest group of aliens, most, but by no means all, are Muslim.
Ethnic and religious minorities in particular have shown a willingness to
leave Turkey and there are, apart from Turkish Christians, a disproportio-
nately high number of Turkish Alevites in Germany and Austria. Little
concrete is known about this Shiite group or the contents of its doctrine and
there are only vague estimates that the proportion of the Turkish
population made up by them is between 1 5 and 25 per cent. Just as the
Sunnite Turks cannot be identified with any particular ethnic group, so the
Alevites are to be found among ethnic Turks as well as Turkish nationals of
Kurd or Arab origin. According to their own figures, there are about
600,000 Alevites out of a total of slightly more than 2 million Turkish
nationals living in Germany. It is even more difficult to identify Gastarbeiter
from modern Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) with particular ethnic or
religious groups. However, despite the ethnic cleansing, the repressive
measures aimed at Muslims in Kosovo and the Sandzhak, Islam is still the
third strongest religion in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising
about 12 per cent of the population and, as such, it is certainly not a small
percentage of the approximately 750,000 Yugoslav Gastarbeiter currently
working in Germany who are Muslim. There are even some members of the
Kogelrnalzlz
A Turkish restaurant in Berlin (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1980).
Greek Muslim minority among the some 350,000 Greeks living in

Germany.
The 1980s and 1990s saw different reasons for the immigration of
Muslims. Wars or social and economic problems caused hundreds of
thousands of Muslims to leave their homes and stream towards Central
Europe not as officially recruited ~astarbeiterbut looking for protection.
Thus a large proportion of the 60,000 Afghans, 110,000 Iranians and
55,000 Lebanese, not all of whom are Muslim, came to Germany as
asylum-seekers. The debate on domestic politics that raged in the Federal
Republic at the end of the 1980s, dominated as it was by fears of being
taken over by foreigners, riots directed against foreigners and wholesale
pre-judgements of asylum-seekers as frauds or economic refugees, led to a
drastic tightening of the asylum regulations. The stream of supplicants was
reduced to not much more than a trickle but, since the causes of such
migrations remain, thousands still hope to find a better life in Central
Europe, be it as asylum-seekers or as illegal immigrants risking life and
limb. After the outbreak of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992,
around 340,000 Bosnian refugees, mostly Muslim, were taken in by
Germany and about 70,000 by Austria. Aside from the Gastarbeiter, who
were the advance guard, ever more Muslim students, academics and
diplomats are settling in both countries. However, even though there are
Germany and Austria
several thousand Muslim students at German and Austrian universities,

numerous international organisations have opened branches in the cities of
the two countries and most Muslim countries have diplomatic contacts
with both, the largest group of Muslims is still formed by workers. The
ethnic, national and confessional make-up of the alien Muslim community
in Germany is generally comparable to that in Austria. In both countries,
the Muslims constitute an estimated 2.5 to 3.5 per cent of the total
population. This means that there are in Germany between 2 and 2.7
million Muslims, in Austria 200,000-300,000. Turkish nationals form the
largest group by far, followed by Muslims from the Balkans. Arabic- and
Berber-speakers from the Near East or the Maghreb are minority groups, as
are Iranians, Afghans and Muslims from the Indian subcontinent and black
Africa. The majority of all Muslims are Sunnites but there are minority
confessions such as the above-mentioned Alevites from Turkey, Shiites from
Iran and even a small minority who belong to the two - by many Muslims
seen as heretical - Ahmadiyya movements, Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam
(Qadian) and Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat-i Islam (Lahore). Thus multi-
lingualism, multi-culturalism and religious pluralism has become both
reality and the norm in Germany and Austria.
Few detailed facts can be given about the former German Democratic
Republic. It is certain that hardly any foreign nationals settled in East
Germany, either before or after the reunification. Naturally enough, what
economic, political and cultural contacts East Germany had with the
Islamic world were with the so-called socialist brother states. Training and
education programmes in both military and civil spheres necessitated short-
or long-term stays by Muslims from Syria, Iraq, South Yemen, Algeria and
the former Spanish West Sahara. However, they cannot have amounted to
more than a few thousand officers and specialists. Similar numbers of
students from the Near East and North Africa also came from countries
such as South Yemen, Libya and Algeria. The Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO), and other liberation movements, received generous
educational aid beside humanitarian and military support.
Societal and organisational issues

The dispersion of Muslims throughout Europe raises some fundamental
political, social and cultural questions which cannot be answered by either
the religious and social traditions of Islam or those of the European nations
themselves. On the one hand, European history is full of discrimination
against ethnic and religious minorities, including the physical extermination
of minority groups. On the other hand, there have been changes in the
relationship between Muslims and Europeans since the end of European
colonialism. Whereas a European minority previously ruled over a Muslim
majority in the colonies, nowadays a Muslim minority lives within a
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European majority. The Islamic legal tradition has developed a model

regarding Muslims and non-Muslims living together in one society.
However, this model assumes that the Muslims are in the majority and
are the ruling power, framing the laws and ensuring that jurisdiction
proceeds according to Islamic law. Of course, this situation does not exist in
Germany and Austria, where Muslims form a minority whose influence on
society's decision-making is small. It is possible that this situation could
make them uncertain about their legal position from an Islamic point of
view, but it seems that the majority of Muslim migrants have no difficulty in
disregarding the traditional regulations, which shows that many of the
Muslims living here no longer feel bound by Islamic law.
Western governments followed the economic impulses of the job market
throughout the 1960s and gave little thought to the social, cultural and
political effects for all concerned. The oil crisis in 1973 and the resultant
economic recession caused the German government to take steps to reduce
the immigration of foreign labour. Bonn called a halt to the recruitment of
labour from outside the European Economic Community (EEC), but this
failed singularly to achieve its aim of reducing the number of Gastarbeiter.
In fact, the numbers of Turkish nationals, the largest group of Muslims,
increased drastically from 900,000 to more than 1.3 million in the period
between 1973 and 1980. The main reason for this growth was the desire
among many of the Turkish Gastarbeiter not to be separated from their
families for a long time. Whereas the 1960s had seen mostly men alone
leaving home to try their luck in foreign lands for a limited period only, it
became clear in the 1970s that for many reasons the stay in those foreign
lands would be of longer duration than originally planned. The German
government reacted to the huge numbers of immigrants, mostly Turkish
women and children, with a more restrictive foreign policy. However,
measures such as financial support for workers from outside the EEC to
return home were effective only in the short term, and even reintegration
plans developed in Turkey and subsidised by Germany enjoyed only limited
success. The numbers of Muslims living in Germany and Austria continued
to rise, and today the third generation of 'children with a foreign passport' -
the official German designation - is growing up in both countries, largely
alienated from their ancestral homeland.
Turkish nationals, in particular, tend to view the country in which they
have worked for several decades, where their children and grandchildren
have grown up and now live, as the focal point in their lives. According to a
survey made by the Centre for Turkish Studies in Essen in 1992, 83 per cent
of the Turkish nationals living in Germany said they did not wish to return
to Turkey. Germany and Austria have become de facto immigrant
countries. A migrant who decides to settle for a longer period in Germany
or Austria must face a number of drawbacks. Foreigners must reckon with
numerous disadvantages on the housing and job markets and, even though
Germany and Austria
all are protected by laws, these laws allow nationals from the European
Union (EU) far more freedom than nationals from outside the EU. The
restrictive norms of the laws governing aliens in Germany and Austria are
thus applicable to Muslims, most of whom come from non-EU countries,
the thinking behind this legal framework being the fear of an uncontrolled
flood of immigrants.
Austria started to allow migration only within set quotas in 1992, and
five years later the Austrian parliament passed the so-called Fremdenrecht
(Rights for Aliens). Apart from a very limited immigration based on a quota
system and linked to economic demand, these Rights are essentially
concerned with the integration of aliens already living in Austria. This
means, among other things, a permanent right of residence after eight years
of legal residence and assured residency for second generation aliens who
have grown up in Austria. The most effective method of integrating foreign
nationals into society is, of course, to naturalise them, with all the rights
and obligations that entails, but both Austria and Germany define
nationality according to extraction (jus sanguinis), i.e., nationality is
decided by place of birth, as long as one of the parents possesses the
citizenship of the country in question. Whereas Austrian law permits
naturalisation after ten years of legal residency - and the resignation of
previous citizenship - German citizenship is harder to obtain. Until 1993,
an applicant had an automatic legal right to naturalisation only if married
to a German national, all other cases being decided by the authorities.
German law has offered a simplified form of naturalisation since 1991
which applies principally to young foreign nationals and aliens who have
been resident in Germany for many years. It is only since 1993 that this
latter group has had the right to naturalisation.
Naturalisation generally requires the resignation of original citizenship
to avoid cases of dual citizenship. However, the German authorities may
accept dual citizenship, for example if the renouncing of the original
citizenship is difficult or impossible. The surrender of citizenship sometimes
brings the loss of certain rights; in some states, only full citizens may
purchase property or inherit property or family rights. However, emotional
factors also play a certain role. The surrender of the original citizenship is
often felt as a loss of cultural identity and ultimately means the breaking of
all ties with home, and the willingness of non-EU aliens to surrender their
citizenship is accordingly low. Instead they try to obtain dual citizenship.
Although the German authorities do frequently accept this solution, there
are relatively few Turkish nationals who are willing to take this step. For
example, only 1.5 per cent of Turkish nationals became naturalised
Germans in 1995.
Apart from the legal issues, Muslims also have other problems
concerning their integration. Unlike Christian immigrants from southern
Europe, the majority of the Muslims were faced not only with social and
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cultural but also with religious alienation. The lack - at least initially - of a
religious infrastructure in the form of mosques and other Islamic institutions
only reinforced the feeling of religious and cultural deracination. The first
Muslim Gastarbeiter who came to Germany and Austria in the 1960s were
mostly single men who were housed by the companies that employed them.
They had little chance of coming into contact with the population of their
host country, housed as they were in men's hostels and isolated by linguistic
and cultural barriers. Just as the greater part of their private lives was spent
behind closed doors, so did little of their religious practices become known
to the world outside. Thus the native population had little or no chance to
find out about these practices and the details of the faith of this minority.
Certainly there was also little interest in doing so, and Islam as a
consequence - if it was recognised at all - in the 1960s came to be seen
in Germany as a Gastarbeiter religion, stigmatised by the low social status
of its practitioners. As the Gastarbeiter were not expected to stay long, there
was no need to delve any deeper into this virtually invisible religion.
As far as Muslim Gastarbeiter are concerned, the mosque is more than a
place for fulfilling one's religious duty; it is also a place of community and
preservation of identity, a piece of home in a foreign land. Apart from two
mosques founded in the 1950s by the Qadian branch of the missionary
Ahmadiyya movement in Hamburg and Frankfurt-am-Main, for a long
time there were hardly any sacred Islamic buildings in post-war Germany
that would have been regarded as such by the population at large. There are
a few representative buildings in the Islamic style in cities such as Munich,
Hamburg, Mannheim and Aachen which have developed into centres of
Islamic culture, but the majority of Muslim religious life takes place in
private apartments rented for this purpose, garages, old factory halls or
basements. The construction of a mosque or the conversion of another
building into one, is generally regarded with suspicion by the local
population and there is often a massive civil protest against projects of this
kind.
In Germany and Austria religious communities have three different
possibilities for organising themselves in a legal way. Most Muslim religious
groups in these countries are organised as registered societies (eingetragene
Vereine, e.V.). Aside from the status of a foundation (Stiftung),taken only
by a few large Islamic cultural centres, the law also offers religious
communities the possibility of recognition as institutions under public law
(Korperschaften des offentlichen Rechts). Until now, however, only
Christianity and Judaism are recognised in this form in Germany because
Islam fails to fulfil a fundamental prerequisite for recognition as a public
body, namely the existence of a representative umbrella organisation.
Despite several attempts, no organisation has yet managed to convince the
authorities that it represents all Muslims in Germany. Reflecting as they do
the national, ethnic and confessional interests of their members, the
Germany and Austria
differences between the various Islamic groups are too great for them to be
somehow covered by one umbrella organisation. In Austria, by contrast,
the Islamic community has been recognised as a public body since 1979.
The Islam Law of 1912 formed the legal basis of this recognition, and the
efforts of the Moslenzische Sozial Dienst (Muslim Social Service), supported
by sympathetic political and church circles, were instrumental in driving the
recognition claim through. As a result of the recognition of the Islamic
community as a public body, certain special rights and obligations arise.
Among the latter is the obligation to make all institutions and statutes
public, while the former include numerous tax advantages and the right to
air-time in the public media. The Islamic community in Austria also
possesses a range of legal organs, for example, on a national level, the Shura
Council, which functions as the highest organ in the community. As an
executive organ of the Shura Council, the Council of Elders deals with all
the important concerns of the community, such as the appointment of
imams.The foundation of an officially recognised umbrella organisation
could not, however, prevent the creation of a multiplicity of occasionally
competing Islamic associations in Austria.
Muslim Organisations
Stranded at the end of the Second World War, a number of Muslim refugees
settled in Germany immediately after the cessation of hostilities, primarily
in the south of the country, and - long before the first wave of Muslim
workers reached German shores - one of the best-organised Muslim
societies, the Geistliche Verwaltung der Muslimfliichtlinge (Muslim
Refugees' Spiritual Organisation), grew up in their midst. This organisation
has now taken on numerous humanitarian tasks as a result of the civil war
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as have several other organisations recently
founded with the purpose of representing Muslims in the Balkans. With
few exceptions, the majority of Muslim organisations have been formed
only within the past twenty years.
The Persian Shiites in Germany are relatively poorly organised on a
religious level, with the exception of the prestigious Islamic Centre in
Hamburg, which is funded by Iran, while the Alevites have an umbrella
organisation, the Vereinigung der Alewiten Gemeinden (Association of
Alevite Communities), with its headquarters in Cologne since 1994. In the
1990s there has been a dynamic development in Alevite organisations in
Germany as a result of confrontations between Sunnite and Alevite
Muslims in Turkey, the pressure Alevites feel is put on them by Sunnites in
Germany to assimilate and the general uncertainty among young Alevites
about their own religion. Afghan organisations have been largely
preoccupied with refugees. The broad spectrum of Islamic movements
found in the Near East and the Maghreb is only reflected to a small degree
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in Germany primarily due to the low numbers of people from these parts of
the Islamic world. However, a number of influential Islamic organisations
from the Near East are represented in Germany, such as the Islamisches
Zentrum Aachen (Islamic Centre in Aachen), affiliated to the Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood, and the Islamisches Zentrum Miinchen (Islamic
Centre in Munich), linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Both of
these organisations have been, or are, subject to political persecution at
home and, although they attempt to influence the ideological direction of
Islam in Germany, their priorities lie more in their homelands. Members of
the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) have very recently received
asylum in Germany as political refugees.
The numerous Turkish Muslim groups that are active in Germany - most
have their European offices in Cologne - are not concerned with the
problems of Turkish migrants to Germany alone but are also active in the
cause of political change in Turkey. The main object of many groups'
activities is to oppose the principle of secularism that is enshrined in the
Turkish constitution. Although there are many close contacts with Turkish
political parties, the Turkish organisations in Germany are at some pains to
present themselves as religious rather than political associations. There is a
low degree of organisation amongst Turkish, as well as other, Muslims
living in Germany and Austria. Only between 10 and 1 5 per cent of all
Muslims are members of an Islamic organisation, and most practise their
religion in private although they use the religious infrastructure provided by
the associations. The first Turkish-Islamic organisation to try to organise
various locally set-up mosques under a nationwide umbrella association
was the Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren (VIKZ, Union of the
Islamic Cultural Centres). The activities of the VIKZ started at the end of
the 1960s, and by 1990 the organisation had over 250 branches throughout
Germany. The religious principles of the organisation are generally
considered to be connected with the Siileymanli movement. This reformist
association began in Germany in the 1960s with Quran courses in which its
strongly mystical principles were propagated among Turkish Gastarbeiter.
In the 1970s and 1980s it often made the news as a determined opponent of
Muslims integrating themselves in Germany, but recently it has become
more open and signalled a readiness to talk with other Islamic associations
as well with the Christian churches and the state.
The Nurculuk movement (Islamische Gemeinschaft Jamaat un-Nur) has
likewise been active in Germany since the 1960s. It is a mystical reformist
movement that began in Turkey in the twentieth century. The members
attempt to reconcile the achievements of the modern age with Islam and, as
opposed to members of other Turkish-Islamic associations, they run no
mosques but only Islamic education centres (madrasas) in which readings
from the writings of the movement's founder Said Nursi play the central
role. The movement now has about thirty madrasas in Germany. With its
Germany and Austria
missionary activities, which include the production of numerous publica-

tions in the German language, it appeals principally to an intellectual
circle.
Among the best-known and most successful Turkish-Islamic associations
in Germany today is without doubt the Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli
Gorug (IGMG).This influential organisation is also known under its former
official Turkish name Avrupa Milli Goriig Teskilatlari (AMGT). It arose in
1975 out of a union of different mosque associations, the Turkischel
Islamische Union Europa (TurkishIIslamic Union of Europe), and is held to
work closely with the Islamic Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) (banned since
January 1998) of Necmettin Erbakan, prime minister of Turkey from 1996-
97. Officials deny any close links between the two organisations, but
members of the Erbakan family sit in the executive committee of IGMG.
According to Milli Gorug itself, some 539 mosques in Germany were
associated with this organisation in 1994, but other sources put the number
at 220. The umbrella organisation of IGMG as well as the regional and
local organisational bodies are divided into numerous subgroups with the
result that, for example, the especially well-developed women's section has
not only organisations for women and girls but also one for German female
Muslims. There were close contacts between IGMG and the Muslim
Brotherhood-controlled Islamisches Zentrum Koln until the middle of the
1980s, and ideologically there is a great deal in common between the two
organisations. However, the political demands of IGMG are directed
towards Turkey, and it rejects the Turkish constitutional principle of
secularism, propagating instead the idea of an Islamic state. In publications
for its members, IGMG opposes the political system in Germany although -
such radical statements notwithstanding - the leadership does in fact seek
contact with political and church representatives and declares itself open to
dialogue.
There was a split in the organisation in 1984 when Cemalettin Kaplan,
who had originally been sent from Turkey to ideologically strengthen the
Islamic Union of Europe, left that organisation and founded the Foderation
der Islamischen Gemeinden und Gemeinschaften (Federation of Islamic
Communities and Associations). Kaplan's uncompromisingly antidemo-
cratic and radically Islamic attitude was directed at Turkey and his
followers there were persecuted. The Federation controls about fifty
mosques in Germany, and after Kaplan had declared himself head of state
and caliph of the thus far fictive Islamic Republic of Turkey in 1992, his
model apparently being the Islamic Republic in Iran, he became known in
Germany as 'rhe Khomeini of Cologne'. The introspective leadership of
Kaplan's Federation has little official contact with other Islamic associa-
tions and rejects any sort of integration of Muslims in Germany and, as a
result, cooperation with the German state becomes superfluous. Since
Kaplan's death in 1995, there have increasingly been signs of a power
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struggle within the leadership which has, according to police reports, even
included the murder of dissidents.
Popularly known as Graue Wolfe (grey wolves), the Foderation der
Turkisch-Demokratischen Idealistenvereine in Europa (Federation of
European Turkish-democratic Idealists' Associations) is primarily an
ultra-nationalistic political organisation founded in 1978 which only
started to use Islam for its own purposes during the 1980s. According to
its own figures, it controls 180 associations, but suffered a blow when the
Union der Turkisch-Islamischer Kulturvereine in Europa (Union of
European Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations) separated from it in
1978 for personal and ideological reasons. The Union controls some 120
associations. Both organisations advocate a synthesis of Turkish national-
ism and Islam, but the Union stresses the Islamic element more. The goal of
both is to maintain the religious and cultural identity of the generation of
young Turkish people who are growing up in Germany and are thus
threatened by assimilation.
The Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Turkisch-Islamische
Union der Anstalt fiir Religion), better known under the abbreviation of the
official Turkish name DITIB (Diyanet ISleri Turk-Islam Birligi), came
relatively late onto the Turkish-Islamic scene in Germany. It is an offshoot
of the uppermost religious authority in Turkey, the Diyanet I~leriBagkanligi
(Directorate of Religious Affairs), which is under the direct control of the
prime minister. When the DITIB was founded in 1984 it manifested a
reaction by the Turkish government to the continuing success of Turkish-
Islamic associations in Germany. The DITIB sees itself as the official
representative of Turkish Muslims in Germany and, consequently, as the
most important dialogue partner for all church and state authorities. With
some 740 associations, it has become the largest Turkish-Islamic organisa-
tion in Germany, and its activities are coordinated by the religious attach&
of the diplomatic mission. All the imams in the DITIB-controlled mosques
are employees of the Turkish state, sent to Germany and paid by Ankara.
There were rumours at the beginning of the 1980s that these imams were
paid by the Saudi Arabia-based Islamic World League (Rabitat al-Alam al-
Islami), which was thus able to influence the authorities concerned with the
organisation of Islam in Turkey and also the Islamic infrastructure in
Germany. The DITIB imams come to Germany as a sort of Gastarbeiter for
a five-year period, usually unprepared for the problems faced by the Turkish
minority and with a patchy knowledge of German, and their task is to
educate the Turkish Muslims living in Germany in the official Islamic
doctrine of the Turkish state. However, the dependency of the uppermost
Turkish religious authority on the majority in the Turkish parliament has an
effect on the work of DITIB in Germany. During Necmettin Erbakan's one-
year prime ministership in 1996-97, there was thus an undeniable congruity
between DITIB and Erbakan's German power base, the Milli G o r u ~ .
Germany and Austria
Apart from the Islamic associations which were founded by and for
Turkish Muslims, Germany is home to a number of other organisations.
Two of these claim to represent the majority of Muslims to the German
state, church and other institutions. The Islamrat der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (Islamic Council of the Federal Republic of Germany),
founded in 1986, contains more than twenty independent Islamic
associations and groupings of Islamic associations, and its goal is to
coordinate the different views of these groups regarding the integration of
Muslims into German society and thus to present the German authorities
with a largely unified and consistent picture of Islam in Germany. The same
effort is made by the Islamischer Arbeitskreis (Islamic Working Group),
founded in 1986. Since 1994 the name of this organisation is Zentralrat der
Muslime in Deutschland (Central Council of Muslims in Germany).
Sufism
The doctrines represented by the Union of Islamic Cultural Centres, the
Nurculuk movement and the Alevites do indeed contain certain mystical
elements and their roots go back to Sufi brotherhoods (tariqa, pl. turuq).
They should, however, not be confused with them. The Sufi brotherhoods
apparently have not as yet played a significant role among the Muslim
immigrants in Germany and Austria. Naturally, members of a brotherhood
feel themselves tied to their tariqa even when abroad and maintain, as far as
circumstances allow, contact with fellow members in their countries of
origin. Little is known about Sufi brotherhoods and their influence upon
Muslims in Germany and Austria, but it is certain that they have managed
to establish Sufi centres in a few large cities, some founded and frequented
by immigrants, others founded by Europeans and recruiting European
members.
Inayat Khan, a famous musician of Indian origin and spiritual guide (pir
or murshid) of a branch of the Chishtiyya tariqa, was the first successful
Sufi master in the modern Western world. During a stopover on his way to
the United States in 1910 he was able to recruit at least a few followers in
Germany. Another Sufi brotherhood which gained some influence in
Germay before the First World War was the Bektashi tariqa. This Turkish
brotherhood also seems to have been introduced in Germany in 1910. Its
German mentor was the Baron von Sebottendorf who also founded the
occultistic and secret Thule Society, whose members were early supporters
of Nazism.
Sufi leaders have recognised and used the opportunities offered by the
increased interest in the esoteric in the Western world since the 1960s, and
above all since the 1980s, to spread their knowledge outside their habitual
spheres. Nowadays nearly every bookstore offers in its department for
esoteric literature Sufi-inspired books written by Sufi leaders like Titus
Burckhardt, Frithjof Schuon, Idries Shah or Reshad Feild. One of the
pioneers was the German Sufi shaykh Abdullah Khalis Dornbrach. He was
initiated to the Turkish Mevlevi tariqa, better known in Europe as the order
of the 'whirling dervishes' of Konya. Together with Dornbrach and his first
German disciple, Hussein Abdul Fattah, the Egyptian Sufi master
Mohammed Salah Eid founded in 1979 the Institute for Sufi Research in
Berlin. Eid himself was initiated into the Burhani, Rifai and Naqshbandi
brotherhoods. His clientele were not only Arab or Turkish Muslims, but
also German psychologists and psychotherapists interested in the Sufi way
of knowledge.
The 'Haus Schnede', a Sufi centre in Northern Germany, inaugurated in
1981, was managed by Abdul Fattah. With lectures and seminars on topics
related to Sufism 'Haus Schnede' in a short time became quite popular. The
Maktab Tarighat Oveyssi Shahmaghsoudi School of Islamic Sufism runs
three centres in Germany and one in Austria. This tariqa is, just like the
Nimatullahi Sufi brotherhood, of Iranian origin. Under their present master
Javad Nurbakhsh, a former professor of psychiatry in Tehran, the
Nimatullahi tariqa has flourished in- as well as outside Iran. In Germany
it manages at least one centre. However, the most successful Sufi
brotherhood in Germany and Austria seems to be the Naqshbandiyya.
The so-called Golden Sufi Centres in the United States and Europe belong to
the Mujaddidi branch of this brotherhood. Their leader Llewellyn
Vaughan-Lee, who holds a doctorate in psychology and lives in California,
regularly visits his German disciples, who are organised in meditation
groups. The Golden Sufi Centre offers lectures, seminars and retreats to an
interested public.
Through two main centres in Germany and one in Austria, the Haqqani
Foundation controls a number of smaller groups in most major cities. The
head of the Haqqani foundation is the mufti of Cyprus, Shaykh
Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani, who belongs to the Khalidi branch of
the Naqshbandiyya. As for most Sufi shaykhs, conversion to Islam is not a
prerequisite for attendance; most activities of the Sufi brotherhoods are
open to everybody interested in new spiritual inspiration. Thus, it is
impossible to give any reliable statement about the increase in the number
of converts. However, some of the Sufi brotherhoods have been very
successful in imparting new dimensions to the consciousness of their
predominantly middle- and upper-class clientele in the search for meaning.
The role of converts

The numbers of Muslims of German or Austrian nationality are difficult to
ascertain statistically, but estimates for Germany put the figure at between
50,000 and 100,000. These figures include both naturalised Muslims and
German converts. Usually the conversion is the result of marriage to a
Germany and Austria
Muslim partner, but ever more Germans are finding their way to Islam not
because of marriage but for other, wideranging motives. While most
Christian churches for a long time have been bemoaning shrinking
congregations, Islamic associations have seen a constant - if modest in
absolute terms - growth in the number of German members. Since many of
the converts are academics, their educational standards are above average.
Thus, they represent not only a quantitative, but also a qualitative gain for
the Islamic community. Best-known to the German public of the converts to
Islam is the former ambassador to Morocco, Murad Wilfried Hofmann. His
fame is not, however, based mainly on his Islamic articles and books but on
a television interview in which he made some comments on the flogging of
wives in Islam. After that interview, he was promptly denounced in the
media as an Islamic fundamentalist, and there was talk of 'Allah's Fifth
Column'.
Despite being only a small minority within the Muslim community, the
importance of the German converts should not to be underestimated. They
were active in founding Islamic associations in Germany and Austria in the
1930s, and today they have taken over important roles within the Muslim
community as mediators between cultures. For instance, the current deputy
director of the Islamic Centre in Munich is the German convert Ahmad von
Denffer who, as the author of numerous books and pamphlets, tries to
disseminate Islamic ideas in German society and is a keen participant at
many international conferences throughout the Islamic world. Because of
their connections in German or Austrian society, the converts are ideally
suited to articulate Muslim demands and desires. A number of these
converts have joined Islamic associations, and since 1976 there have been
regular meetings for German-speaking Muslims. The educational system is
seen by Muslims as inadequate for their children and, therefore, German
converts are actively involved in the opening of German-Islamic
kindergartens and schools as well as in the planning of curricula for an
Islamic religious education or even a general German-Islamic education.
German Muslim women frequently do not fit the stereotype of the
faithful and submissive wife who stays at home to look after their
husbands and children. Veiled or not, they are very active in Islamic
associatio~ls and do stand up for their rights. Of course, not all
associations offer women the opportunity to turn their conceptions of
religion into reality but some, especially the reformist movements, have
realised that a great deal of influence can be exercised on society by careful
support of the women's cause. Female Muslims, both German converts
and those born into Islam, with very different cultural backgrounds and
images of the Islamic way of life, meet each other, and the result seems to
be far less a clash of civilizations than the beginning of a process which
bears fruit for both sides involved. Their participation in Islamic
associations gives Muslim women the impression that there is also in
Kogelmann
Europe an Islamic route to emancipation, and it is not difficult to expose

the constitutionally enshrined equality of rights for men and women as a
fiction in European society.
Relations to non-Muslims
The last twenty years have seen the religious infrastructure of Muslims in
Germany undergo great changes. The Turkish-Islamic associations have
proved particularly successful in terms of meeting the needs of Muslims
through their close-knit network of mosques, and the development of such
organisations clearly shows that Muslims are able to adapt themselves to
their host country in the long term. Apart from religious instruction, the
associations offer pastoral support, assistance in the fulfilment of religious
duties such as the pilgrimage to Mecca, financial aid for the transportation
of the body in cases of death and many other temporal services. The
organisations appeal to a wide range of society through their education
programmes for adults, which include courses in German and computing,
and leisure activities for young people, ranging from summer camps to
martial arts courses. The associations are sometimes blooming economic
concerns which offer their clientele ritually pure foods from their own farms
or slaughterhouses in shops attached to the mosque, and their range of
services includes insurance and holdings in Islamic trading companies. In
addition to these economic activities, members' contributions and donations
as well as money from abroad help these Islamic associations to be
financially self-supporting. Moreover, Islamic associations try to counteract
the public's negative image of Islam in the face of growing xenophobia, and
many mosques have regular open days or give interested outsiders an insight
into Muslim life via guided tours. Some associations publish information
leaflets for the general public in addition to those for their own members,
and an important function of these associations continues to be the
representation of the Muslim community's demands and desires to the
authorities of the host country in question.
Since the majority of Muslims have settled permanently in their host
country, it is obvious that a social infrastructure needs to be built up in
addition to the religious one. Previously most immigrants envisaged at least
their burial in their homeland, but now, as the third generation of Muslims
grows up in Germany and Austria and their contact with the land of their
ancestors becomes increasingly tenuous, growing numbers of Islamic
associations are actively campaigning for the expansion of existing, or
the dedication of new, Muslim cemeteries. Indeed, the care of the elderly
will become a particular challenge for the associations as well as for the
host country itself. German kindergartens are largely under the control of
church authorities which try to influence the children in a Christian way
and refuse to employ non-Christian teachers. Thus, the Muslims' fears that
Germany and Austria
kindergartens have an insidious missionary function are strengthened. For

some time now the Muslim associations have been particularly active in
campaigning for an Islamic religious education in German state schools.
There is no doubt that the state school system is an important instrument
for the integration of Muslims into German and Austrian societies. Religion
is the only subject that the German constitution makes compulsory (i.e.,
religion must be offered in all schools). However, only bodies recognised
under public law may determine the confessional content of the teaching
and, as we have seen, the Muslim community is not recognised under public
law. Individual federal states have occasionally offered religious instruction
for Muslims in what is called 'native tongue additional lessons', but these
voluntary lessons are generally only for Turkish pupils.
The decision-makers in the various state education ministries quickly
realised that they could not influence this kind of religious instruction in
any way. A curriculum for an Islamic religious instruction has been
developed in North-Rhine Westphalia, which has been taken as a model by
other federal states and is now being used in some schools. There is,
however, a shortage of teachers able to teach the Islamic religion. The most
obvious solution would be to use Turkish teachers, but other, non-Turkish-
speaking Muslims are understandably against the lessons being in Turkish.
In addition, Turkish views of Islamic history differ from Arabic views, and
there may be differences between Sunnites and Shiites. The confessional, as
well as the linguistic and ethnic, variety within the Islamic community in
Germany itself, together with divisions within Islamic organisations over
the contents of the curriculum, form an obstacle to the creation of a
universal Islamic religious instruction.
The Islamic community in Austria has taken advantage of the fact that
religious instruction is the right of recognised churches and religious
communities and has conducted religious education since 1980. The Islamic
teachers are paid by the Austrian state and the pupils are provided with
appropriate materials; the lessons are held in German on account of the
different linguistic backgrounds of the children. This form of Islamic
religious education, based on a curriculum designed by the Islamic
community itself and approved by the state, guarantees the state that
Islamic religious instruction will not take place outside the school and
undermine the state school system.
The office responsible for defending the constitution in Germany
(Verfassungsschutz) has been watching the activities of Islamic organisa-
tions for a number of years. Until the mid 1990s, it considered the danger
posed by them to the constitution to be relatively small, but since 1997 it
has become obvious that the office has been taking the conceived threat
from such organisations as Milli Goriig or the Federation of Islamic
Communities and Associations ever more seriously, and it speaks of Islam
as a challenge for the twenty-first century. It cannot be denied that the
Kogelmann
influence of political and religious associations on Muslims living in Europe

has increased since the 1980s. Work-related migration necessarily results in
mature social structures being given up and identity-giving traditions being
lost. As both ethnic and religious minorities, Muslims occupy a distinct
social place in their host countries, and their identity is frequently
questioned. Religio-political associations plunge into this cultural disloca-
tion felt by Muslims in Europe and support their members both materially
and with wide-ranging social services. The new associations serve as
replacements for lost social contacts and they create a new identity. Yet,
even if religio-political associations have grown in influence in the
European Muslim community very recently and even if militant Islamic
groups have received abstract and material support, the majority of
Muslims do not dispute the secular organisation of European societies.
Rather, their understanding of Islam seems to be influenced by it and
corresponds to their fundamental desire for acceptance and integration.
However, their wishes also include the retention of their own religious and
cultural identity. A complete assimilation seems to them as Muslims and
immigrants to be neither desirable nor possible. What they demand is
equality within a pluralistic society and a framework that guarantees this
equality, placing their community on the same footing as the Christian and
Jewish communities. Above all, they want the populations of their host
countries to recognise that Islam is a religion in the same way the others are.
Literature
For general introductions to the situation of Islam and Muslims in
Germany, see Yasemin Karakasoglu and Gerd Nonneman, 'Muslims in
Germany, with Special Reference to the Turkish-Islamic Community',
pp. 241-67 in Muslim Communities in the N e w Europe, eds. Gerd
Nonneman, Tim Niblock and Bogdan Szajkowski (Reading: Ithaca Press,
1997); and Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, Muslime in Deutschland: Nebenein-
ander oder Miteinander (Freiburg: Herder, 1998). Concerning the situation
of Muslims in Berlin, see Hanns Thoma-Venske, 'The Religious Life of
Muslims in Berlin', pp. 78-87 in The N e w Islamic Presence in Western
Europe, eds. Tomas Gerholm and Yngve Georg Lithman (London: Mansell,
1988). For an account of the history of Islam in Germany, see Muhammad
Salim Abdullah, Geschichte des Islams in Deutschland (Graz, Wien and
Koln: Styria, 1981). On Austria, see Anna Strobl, Islam in bsterreich
(FrankfurtIMain: Peter Lang, 1997). For a study of interreligious dialogue
in Austria, see M. Kristin Arat, 'L'Islam en Autriche et le dialogue',
Islamochristiana, 18 (1992), pp. 127-73. A very sophisticated introduction
to the problem of Islam and state relations, with special reference to the
diaspora situation of Muslims in Europe, is offered by Babes Johansen's
'Staat, Recht und Religion im sunnitischen Islam - konnen Muslime einen
Germany and Austria
religionsneutralen Staat akzeptieren?', pp. 12-81 in Essener Gesprache z u m

Thema Staat und Kirche, eds. Heiner Marrt and Johannes Stuting
(Munster: Aschendorff, 1986).
On the situation of Turks in Germany, see Czarina Wilpert, 'Religion
and Ethnicity: Orientation, Perceptions and Strategies among Turkish Alevi
and Sunili Migrants in Berlin', pp. 88-106 in T h e N e w Islamic Presence in
Western Europe, eds. Tomas Gerholm and Yngve Georg Lithman (London:
Mansell, 1988) and Valkrie Amiraux, 'Les transformations de I'identitt
islamique turque en Allemagne', pp. 146-58 in Exils et Royaumes: Les
appurtenances au monde arabo-musulman aujourd'hui, ed. Gilles Kepel
(Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques, 1994).
Christoph Elsass focuses his interest on education, 'Turkish Islamic Ideals of
Education: Their Possible Function for Islamic Identity and Integration in
Europe', pp. 174-86 in T h e Integration of Islam and Hinduism in Western
Europe, eds. W.A.R. Shadid and P.S. van Koningsveld (Kampen: Kok
Pharos, 1991). Islamic and/or Turkish organisations are discussed by Hans
Vocking, 'Organisations as Attempts at Integration of Muslims in
Germany', pp. 100-11 in Muslims and Christians i n Europe: Breaking
N e w Ground, eds. Gi. Speelman, Jan van Lin and Dick Mulder (Kampen:
Uitgeverij Kok, 1993);see also Metin Gur, Tiirkisch-islamische Vereinigun-
gen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt-am-Main: Brandes and
Apsel, 1 9 9 3 ) ; and Bahman Nirumand, I m N a m e n Allahs: Islamische
Gruppen und der Fundamentalismus i n der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
(Koln: Dreisam-Verlag, 1990). For the political and religious attitudes of
the Turkish youth in Germany, see Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Joachim Muller and
Helmut Schroder, Verlockender Fundamentalismus: Tiirkische Jugendliche
i n Deutschland (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997).
Chapter Fifteen
France
Neal Robinson
'In 732, Charles Martel defeated the Arabs at Poitiers.' This snippet of
information, dutifully memorised by generations of French schoolchildren,
does justice neither to the extent nor to the duration of the Arab-Muslim
occupation of the territory which is now known as France. There were in
fact three separate waves of immigration in the course of the eighth, ninth
and tenth centuries. The first wave began in 716 when North African
troops, led by officers from Arabia, entered France via Spain. The invaders
took Narbonne in 719, making it a protectorate and converting the atrium
of the Christian basilica into a mosque. They rapidly overran the whole of
the southeast, pressing northwards well beyond Lyon into Burgundy, and
penetrating as far west as the outskirts of Toulouse. Reinforcements, who
arrived from Pamplona in 731, took Bordeaux and pillaged much of the
southwest. Charles Martel defeated them at Poitiers the following year and
went on to drive the Muslims out of Lyon, but Narbonne remained a
Muslim stronghold until 759.
The second wave of immigration began in 793, the invaders again arriving
overland from Spain. Narbonne was besieged and some of the towns in the
southeast were briefly reoccupied. However, Charlemagne retaliated by
invading Spain, and the emir of Cordoba made a truce with him in 810. The
third wave differed from the others in three respects: it lacked their religious
motivation, it affected Provence, and the invaders were sea-borne. Around
850, Arab pirates, who had raided the Provengal coast repeatedly during the
previous half century, settled in the Camargue and built a port which was to
serve them as a base for twenty years. A decade after it was destroyed, the
pirates constructed a second port much further east in La Garde Freinet.
From there, they raided Frkjus, Toulon, Antibes, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence
and Villefranche-sur-Mer. They also established two small forts inland from
the mountainous region between Toulon and Frtjus, which still bears the
name Massif des Maures ('the Moors' Massif'), and used them as staging
posts for expeditions to pillage the wealthy monasteries in the Alps. In 972,
they kidnapped Mayeul, the Abbot of Cluny, and held him to ransom. The
incident was swiftly avenged by the combined forces of Provence, Italy and
Byzantium, who subdued the whole of the Massif.
There were further maritime raids against Narbonne in 1019-20, but
they did not result in settlements. Nevertheless, throughout the Middle
Ages there was a Muslim presence in the south of France. It consisted of
isolated individuals, most of whom were traders but some of whom were
slaves. There was, however, a fourth wave of immigration in 1610. This
time the Muslims came not as conquerors but as refugees. They were
moriscos, the descendants of Spanish Muslims who had accepted baptism
in the wake of the Reconquista, but who had continued to practise Islam in
secret. The Inquisition discovered their existence and Philip I11 gave them
twenty days to leave the country. Although the majority fled to North
Africa, 120,000 settled in Languedoc-Roussillon and the Basque country,
principally in Narbonne and Btarn.
Between July 1095 and September 1096, Urban 11, the aged French pope,
toured the south of France canvassing support for a crusade to liberate
Jerusalem from the Saracens. The First Crusade was officially launched by
him at the Council of Clermont, in the Massif Central, on November 27,
1095. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to give a detailed account of
subsequent events. Suffice it to note that many French cities have historic
links with the crusades and those who led them. The crusader Kingdom of
Jerusalem was ruled successively by Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of
Boulogne and Fulk of Anjou; the theological justification for the crusades
was provided by St Bernard of Clairvaux; in 1190, King Philip I1 of France
set off from Vkzelay on the Third Crusade; and in 1270, another French
king, Louis IX, better known as St Louis, died in Tunisia on his way to the
Holy Land for the second time.
France's modern encroachment on the Muslim world began in 1637,
when she established a trading post in West Africa at the mouth of River
Senegal. That the town was given the name St Louis is an indication that the
crusading spirit was still alive. Between 1798 and 1801, Napoleon
Bonaparte occupied Egypt. Although the occupation was shortlived, it
resulted in a systematic survey of the country's historic monuments.
Moreover, the French initiated administrative reforms which set Egypt on
the path of modernity. French troops conquered Algeria between 1830 and
1857; Tunisia was made a French protectorate in 1881; and French West
Africa was colonised between the early 1880s and 1912, the year in which
Morocco was also made a protectorate. During the First World War, France
was an ally of Russia and Britain in the conflict with the Ottoman Empire
and Germany. In 1916, she secretly signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement with
Britain, laying detailed plans for dividing the post-Ottoman Middle East
into French and British spheres of influence. In accordance with this
agreement, in 1920 the League of Nations gave her a mandate to rule Syria
and the Lebanon. The Lebanon gained independence from France in 1941;
Syria in 1946; Tunisia and Morocco in 1956; Mali and Senegal in 1960;
and Algeria in 1962.
Robinson
Wherever the French went, they attempted to implant their language

and culture. The extent of their influence varied, however, from country to
country. In West Africa it was relatively superficial, but in Algeria it was
profound. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the area which now forms
the Algerian coast had been a stronghold of Latin Christianity, the home of
no less a figure than St Augustine of Hippo. Thus, when Algiers was taken
in 1830, the bells of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris rang out to celebrate
the triumph of Christendom. Although the southern part of Algeria long
remained something of a Wild West, the north soon came to be regarded as
an overseas extension of France. It was divided into three de'parternents
populated with European colonists who had full French citizenship; it
depended on the Ministry of the Interior rather than on the Ministry of
Colonies; and by the end of the nineteenth century it had its own elected
assembly and budgetary independence. The indigenous Muslims were not,
however, granted French citizenship unless they were prepared to
relinquish the sharia. The majority formed an underclass with 'Quranic
status', which meant that in civil matters they were subject to Islamic law
administered by padis (Muslim judges). Not that the French wished in any
way to foster Islam. The study of Arabic was discouraged and participation
in the annual pilgrimage to Mecca was subject to stringent conditions for
fear that the pilgrims might come under harmful external influences. In
1962, when Algeria became independent after eight years of conflict, only
a few thousand French colonists opted to remain and become Algerian
citizens - three-quarters of a million hastily moved to France. Many of
these so-called pieds-noirs ('black feet') experienced difficulties integrating
in French society and have continued to be hostile towards Muslim
immigrants.
Immigration from Muslim Countries in Modern Times

Early in the nineteenth century, a few of Napoleon's Muslim soldiers settled
in the RhGne Valley. Subsequently, around 1870, itinerant salesmen known
as turcos arrived in France from Algeria. Towards the end of the century,
there were about 800 Muslims living in Paris, most of them students. The
influx of Algerian workers began in 1900, and was followed a few years
later by that of Moroccans. In 1914, on the eve of the First World War,
there were about 30,000 North Africans in France. The war led to a
massive increase: 132,000, mostly Algerians, were recruited to work on
French farms and in factories, while a further 175,000 served in the army.
Some 25,000 died in action. After the war the majority of the survivors
returned home, with the result that there were only 100,000 North Africans
left in France in 1919. The number began to increase again the following
year, reaching 120,000 in 1924 and remaining relatively stable until the
1930s, when the recession led many to depart. After the Second World War,
Muslim immigrants in Toulon (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1972).
immigration was actively encouraged in order to meet the needs of

reconstruction and industrial expansion. Between 1954 and 1968 alone,
France welcomed more than 1 million North Africans. Most of them were
unskilled workers: a third were employed in the building industry and
another third in manufacturing cars.
Before 1962, the majority were Algerians, but after Algerian indepen-
dence the French government attempted to diversify the work force by
encouraging immigration from Morocco and Tunisia. In addition, in the
late 1960s, workers from West Africa, including Mali and Senegal, started
to come in larger numbers. Finally, the early 1970s saw the arrival of
Turkish workers, especially in Alsace. In 1974, however, in response to the
economic crisis caused by the oil embargo the previous year, an attempt was
made to suspend all immigration and to encourage voluntary repatriation
by offering grants of 10,000 F. When this met with a poor response, plans
were drawn up to repatriate 500,000 foreigners within five years,
principally by refusing to renew residence permits for Algerians. Because
of the combined opposition of the Council of State and one of the parties in
the conservative coalition, these plans were not implemented. Nevertheless,
the Bonnet law, which was adopted in 1980, introduced stricter control of
foreign residents and led to an increase in the number of expulsions,
especially of children born in France to Algerian parents.
Robinson
When the Socialist Party came to power in 1981, the new government
rejected this repressive policy and forbade the expulsion of foreigners who
were born in France or had arrived there before reaching the age of ten. It
also regularised the situation of 130,000 illegal immigrants. In addition, in
1983, it introduced ten-year renewable work permits. However, the socialists
fared badly in the 1986 elections, and Mitterand, the socialist president of
the Republic, was forced to call upon the conservative Chirac to be prime
minister. Bowing to pressure from the extreme right wing and overtly racist
Front National, which had polled an astonishing 9.8 per cent of the votes and
gained thirty-five seats, Chirac introduced a series of draconian measures.
These included making it more difficult for immigrants to renew their work
permits; rounding up illegal immigrants and forcibly repatriating them; and
proposing to expel young delinquents brought up in France.
The 1993 elections strengthened the position of the conservatives who
immediately proceeded to modify the laws on nationality. It had previously
been possible for foreign nationals to apply for French nationality for young
children born to them in France, thereby affirming their own intention to
settle and protecting themselves against expulsion. In any case, if they did
not do this, the children used to gain French nationality automatically on
reaching the age of eighteen. Now, however, as a result of the Pasqua law
(named after the minister of the interior), the children have to wait until
they are between sixteen and twenty, when they must declare their wish to
become French nationals. Since June 1997, France has had another
'cohabitation', this time with a conservative president and a socialist prime
minister, but it is too soon to tell whether the Pasqua law will be rescinded.
Figures for the number of Muslims currently living in France should be
treated with caution. Although the 1990 census does not mention religious
affiliation, it gives statistics concerning resident foreign nationals,
distinguishing between those born outside France and those born in France.
The figures for foreign nationals from Muslim countries are shown in the
table below:
Born outside France Born in France
Algerians
Moroccans
Turks
Tunisians
Senegalese
Malians
Iranians
Pakistanis
By adding up these figures, we arrive at a total of 1,700,000 nominal

Muslims of whom 461,000 were born in France. This total excludes illegal
341
immigrants; foreigners who have become naturalised; and Muslims from
the Comoro Islands. It also excludes the grandchildren of immigrants, for
under French law they automatically have French nationality provided both
their parents were born in France. In addition, we must take into account
the harkis - Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French army during
the War of Independence and were given French citizenship. In 1962, they
and their families numbered some 60,000, but it is estimated that that
number is closer to 500,000. Finally, there are about 30,000 French
converts to Islam. O n this reckoning, there must by now be well over 3
million Muslims in France. This grand total is, however, somewhat
misleading. Forty-eight per cent of the Algerian immigrants, 36 per cent
of the Moroccans and 31 per cent of the Turks all claim that they have no
religion; Senegal and Mali are not exclusively Muslim countries; and only
11 per cent of the Algerians attend places of worship.
Although Muslims are found in significant numbers in almost every
industrial town, they are especially in evidence in five regions. The highest
concentration is in Ile-de-France (Paris and its environs), followed in
decreasing order by Nord-Pas-de-Calais (especially in and around Lille and
Roubaix in the dipartement of Nord), RhGne-Alpes (especially in and
around Lyon in the dipartement of RhGne), Alsace-Lorraine (especially in
and around Strasbourg in the dkpartement of Bas-Rhin), and Provence-
Alpes-C6te-d'Azur (especially in and around Marseille in the dipartement
of Bouches-du-Rh6ne). Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and Turks live in
all these regions, but the highest concentration of Turks is in Bas-Rhin. In
contrast with the United Kingdom, where immigrants have populated the
derelict inner-city areas, in France they are more often in the banlieues -
run-down, high-rise estates in the outer suburbs.
Mosques and Prayer Rooms

Apart from archaeological evidence of an eighth-century mosque in
Narbonne (the converted atrium of the basilica, mentioned earlier), no
traces have survived of the places of worship constructed by the first waves
of immigrants. At the beginning of the thirteenth century a crusader built a
mosque at Buzancy in the Ardennes, in gratitude for his release from
captivity, but it is unlikely that it was ever used and it now lies in ruins. In
the seventeenth century there was a mosque in Marseille which was
frequented by corsairs who had been taken prisoner and forced to serve as
galley slaves on the king's ships. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
a room in the Chiteau de Versailles was set apart for the use of Ottoman
ambassadors who wished to perform the ritual prayers. During the First
World War, the government created prayer rooms in warehouses and
hospitals for France's Muslim troops, and imported imams from Algeria to
service them. Moreover, there was a purpose-built wooden mosque in the
Robinson
The Paris Mosque, inaugurated in 1926 (photo: Ingvar Svanberg,

1995).
military camp at Zossen which was subsequently moved to the colonial

garden at Nogent-sur-Marne. Between the two wars, the Muslim
immigrants were relatively lax in their religious observance. Hence there
was little call for places of worship, although employers sometimes took the
initiative in providing them; for instance, a wooden mosque was erected in
Toulouse.
Construction of the Paris Mosque began in 1922 and was completed in
1926. It was ostensibly built in recognition of the many Muslims who had
lost their lives fighting for France. However, the idea of establishing a large
mosque in Paris had been mooted long before the First World War, and the
real motive seems to have been the desire to give architectural expression to
the conviction that, by reason of its overseas territories, France was a great
Muslim power. The purchase of a prime site near the botanical gardens in
the fifth arrondissement was financed by the City of Paris, and the state
made a substantial contribution to the building costs. By law, however,
public money could not be spent on a place of worship. This problem was
circumvented by channelling funds through a charitable organisation based
in Algiers, on the understanding that they were intended for the creation of
a 'Muslim Institute' which would comprise Turkish baths, a shop and a
library, as well as a mosque. The mosque was inaugurated by Moulay
Youssef, the Sultan of Morocco; the lecture theatre was opened by Sidi
Mohammed al-Habib Pasha, the Bey of Tunis; a Persian prayer carpet was
donated by Reza Shah Pahlavi; and Muslims from many other countries,
including Egypt and Turkey, gave generous support to the project. From
1926-54, the Director of the Muslim Institute was Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit.
Although born in Algeria, he had close links with Morocco where he had
been both the Sultan's director of protocol and the French consul. His cieath
in 1954, only months before the outbreak of the Algerian War of
Independence, precipitated a crisis. He was succeeded, in accordance with
his wishes, by his nephew. The latter persistently refused to condemn the
Algerian insurrection. In 1957, the French government therefore inter-
vened, appointing an Algerian director who was more to its liking and
bringing the Institute under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. In
1962, when Algeria became independent, the registered office of the
charitable foundation was transferred to Paris. It continued to receive
subsidies from the French authorities until 1982. In that year, the Algerian
government gained control of the Mosque and assumed sole responsibility
for the running costs of the Institute. Since that time, successive Rectors of
the Mosque have striven to make it the unifying focus for all Muslims in
France, attempting to heal the divisions between Algerian immigrants and
harkis, and to gain the respect of Moroccans and Tunisians. To this end,
since 1985 they have organised and chaired a number of national
gatherings in other cities including Marseille and Lyon. More recent
developments will be discussed below in the section on Islam and the
Republic.
Even during the colonial period, many Muslims had an ambivalent
attitude to the Paris Mosque. As migrant workers, often from backward
rural areas, they were ill-at-ease in this sumptuous showpiece and would
have preferred a more modest structure situated nearer where they lived
and better suited to their needs. Nevertheless, for forty-three years it was
the only building in France to be officially recognised as a mosque apart
from the small edifice complete with minaret which was built for Senegalese
infantrymen in the military camp at Frkjus during the Second World War,
but which was closed after their departure. Then in 1967, the newly-
founded Association Culturelle Islamique opened the Belleville Mosque at
1 5 rue Belleville, in the north of Paris. In 1974, when the building was no
longer large enough to accommodate the worshippers, they met on church
premises as an interim measure. Eventually, in 1979, the association
acquired a large building near the Stalingrad me'tro station. The Stalingrad
Mosque, or 'Mosquke ad-Dawa' as it is officially called, is a disused cloth
warehouse which can accommodate 4,000 worshippers. Planning permis-
sion to replace it with a purpose-built mosque has been granted, but the
Mayor of Paris has so far refused to give the final authorisation. Members
of Jamaat al-Tabligh originally frequented the Belleville Mosque, but in
344
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1972 they moved to their own premises in Clichy and founded the
association Foi et Pratique (Faith and Practice). The association has since
opened several mosques of which the largest is Mosquke Omar in rue Jean-
Pierre Thimbaud at Belleville. It was opened in 1979 and can accommodate
1,500 worshippers.
The relatively late advent of these metropolitan rivals to the Paris
Mosque is hardly surprising. During the 1950s and 1960s, most of the
Muslims in France were migrant workers who intended to stay only for a
few years before returning home. If they practised their faith at all, they
were content to do so inconspicuously. It was not until the economic crisis
of 1973 that they began to demand prayer rooms. Because of the crisis, the
rent was increased in the state-run hostels where many of them lived. This
resulted in a rent strike at Bobigny, where the workers pressed for better
living conditions including the provision of facilities for them to perform
their prayers. The attempt to suspend immigration in 1974 resulted in
further protests and the demand for more mosques and prayer rooms.
Convinced that if they now left France they would not be allowed to re-
enter, the immigrants began to put down roots and to look for ways of
giving institutional expression to their faith. In 1976, the agitation spread
from the hostels where the immigrants lived to the factories where they
were employed, when Muslims successfully petitioned Renault for a prayer
room in the car factory at Billancourt. Then, in 1978, Citroen and Talbot
took the initiative in providing prayer rooms in their factories at Aulnay-
sous-Bois and Poissy. By 1990, Muslims had 1,035 places of worship
scattered throughout most of France, although there were none at all in the
dkpartements of C6tes-d'Armor and LozZre. These figures, given by the
minister of the interior in reply to a question addressed to him in the
National Assembly, deserve some comment. France is far from being a land
of over a thousand mosques. Apart from the Paris Mosque, there are only
four large purpose-built congregational mosques in the whole country: in
Mantes-la-Jolie, Evry, Lille and Lyon. The one in Mantes-la-Jolie was built
in the 1980s, but construction of the other three began after 1990. In
addition, there are a handful of large buildings which have been converted
into mosques, including the two in Paris, and a hundred or so that are of
more modest proportions. The remaining places of worship are prayer
rooms in hostels, blocks of flats and factories, with a capacity of between
eight and forty worshippers. They are serviced by some 500 imams, only 4
per cent of whom have French nationality.
Nationwide Associations
In 1939, in order to prevent the formation of organisations and parties
directly controlled by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the French
government prohibited foreign residents from forming associations without
the prior approval of the Ministry of the Interior. This law remained in
force until 1981, which explains why Islamic associations were rare before
that date but have since multiplied exponentially. On a national level, the
oldest association is the AEIF (Association des Etudiants Islamiques en
France) founded in 1963 by Muhammad Hamidullah, a Paris-based scholar
born in the Indian subcontinent. It caters principally for students from a
North African background who ascribe t o the views of Rached
Ghannouchi, the moderate Tunisian Islamist.
The UOIF (Union des Organisations Islamiques de France) was founded
in 1983. In 1986, there were only thirteen local associations of North
African Muslims affiliated to it, but now there are over 220, of which the
largest is the predominantly Tunisian GIF (Groupement Islamique en
France) based in Paris. Every Christmas since 1988, the UOIF has organised
an annual congress at Le Bourget. In 1996, it attracted 35,000 participants
over three days. The UOIF also controls a company called Euro-Medias
which makes and distributes videos of Muslim preachers in Arabic and
French, and in 1992 it opened a theological institute (Institut Europeen des
Sciences Humaines) in the NiZvre dbpartement to train imams equipped to
work in France. Ideologically, the UIOF is close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The FNMF (Fedtration Nationale des Musulmans en France) was
founded in 1985 by a French convert to Islam, but its leaders are mostly
Moroccans. It is backed by the Muslim World League and since 1993 has
run an 'open university' in the League's premises. With over 100 affiliated
associations, the FNMF is sufficiently powerful to challenge the Paris
Mosque's claim to represent Islam in France. Most of the local Turkish
associations are affiliated to the UIF (Union Islamique en France), which
was founded in 1983, or the FAIF (Federation des Associations Islamiques
en France) which broke away from it the following year. The local
associations representing West African Muslims left the FNMF in 1989 to
form the FNAIACA (Federation Nationale des Associations Islamiques
d'hfrique, des Comores et des Antilles).
French Perceptions of Islam and Muslims

The French have a habit of confusing race and religion. Thus, for example,
they are likely to refer to anyone from the Indian subcontinent as un hindou
(a Hindu), despite the fact that India has a large Muslim minority and
almost all the inhabitants of Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslims.
Similarly, they tend to use the words arabe (Arab) and musulman (Muslim)
interchangeably. Few outside Alsace are aware that most Turks are at least
nominally Muslims, and even fewer know that Islam is the religion of many
Malians and Senegalese. An added complication is that French people
usually think of all North Africans as Arabs, although half the Moroccans
and a third of the Algerians in France are actually Berbers. Hence, the non-
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Muslim French are for the most part unaware of the racial and linguistic
diversity of France's Muslim population.
Apart from the almost universal tendency to think of the Muslims in
France as an undifferentiated mass of (North-African) Arabs, perceptions of
Muslims and Islam vary considerably and are affected by factors such as
age, social class and educational background. Nevertheless, in the light of
newspaper and television coverage it is legitimate to speak of widespread
stereotypes. In the course of the present century, these have undergone a
series of modifications. In the 1920s, because of the way in which North
Africans had rallied to France's help in the First World War, Muslim
immigrants were generally considered to be likeable, intelligent and
patriotic. In the 1930s, however, because of the recession and because
France had to take a number of repressive measures to maintain order in its
North African territories, attitudes rapidly changed and the popular press
began to portray the immigrants as lazy, and inclined to criminality and
vice. During the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), when the FLN
(Front de Libe'ration Nationale) made Islam a rallying cry, the fact that
North Africans were Muslims was seen as a further reason for viewing them
with mistrust. Since 1962, there has been increasing resentment of 'Arabs'
desiring to live and work in France despite having fought so ferociously to
shake off the colonial yoke. Here, Moroccans and Tunisians, whose
countries gained independence relatively peaceably in 1956, tend to be
tarred with the same brush as Algerians, while the harkis, who sided with
France against the FLN, are simply forgotten.
During the Arab-Israeli conflicts in 1967 and 1973, the French
government criticised Israel's expansionist policy, but public opinion was
generally pro-Zionist and resentment of the 'Arab' presence in France
increased. Matters were made worse when, in the wake of the 1973 conflict,
the Arab oil-producing countries demonstrated their disapproval of Western
support for Israel by imposing an oil embargo on Europe and the United
States. As mentioned earlier, in France this caused an economic crisis which
prompted an attempt to suspend immigration and led in turn to Muslims
seeking to practise their religion openly and demanding the right to have
mosques and prayer rooms. It is widely assumed that these demands were
orchestrated by foreign agencies. There is an element of truth in this. For
instance, the Muslim World League, which has its headquarters in Mecca,
opened an office in Paris in 1977. It distributes free literature to local
associations and has helped finance a number of building projects. Moreover,
the construction of the mosque at Mantes-la-Jolie was heavily subsidised by
Libya, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and that at Evry by Saudi Arabia
and Morocco. Nevertheless, as indicated earlier, this is not the whole story:
the re-Islamisation of the long-standing immigrants, which began in the
1970s and continued through the 1980s, represents a fundamental change in
their attitude to the host society and their relation to it.
In addition to the desire for prayer rooms and mosques, there have been
increasing demands for the provision of halal meat and Muslim burial
grounds. Although both have met with local resistance, neither has caused
public outcry on the scale of that provoked in October 1989, when Muslim
girls attended school wearing Islamic headscarves. The practice, which
began with three girls at Creil on the outskirts of Paris and rapidly spread
throughout the country, was widely condemned as an attack on the
Republic, an affront to the dignity of women, and a threat to the secular
status of the educational system. In order to understand the intensity of the
hostility, it is necessary to see the headscarf affair in historical context. One
of the greatest blows to France's national pride to have occurred in living
memory was the loss of Algeria in 1962. In that year, in the final stages of
the conflict, schoolgirls and students in Algeria defied the French authorities
by veiling for classes. In addition, 1989 was the tenth anniversary of the
Iranian Revolution which had imposed the veil on Iranian women, and in
February that year Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, had
issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Finally, earlier in the 1980s, there
had been a clash between secularists and Catholics over the public funding
of Catholic schools. This had opened old wounds caused by the battle
between Church and State in the nineteenth century.
Only three weeks before the schoolgirls made the French headlines with
their Islamic scarves, the Algerian government had reluctantly legalised the
FIS (Islamic Salvation Front). Then, on December 21, 1989, more than
100,000 women demonstrated in Algiers against the upsurge of aggression
against Islam. Hence, although the Muslim schoolgirls in Creil were
Moroccans, the headscarf affair was perceived to be linkcd with the growth
of 'Islamic fundamentalism' in Algeria. Two years later, on December 26,
1991 the FIS gained an overall majority in the first round of the Algerian
elections. The Security Council refused to accept the results; the two leaders
of the FIS were arrested and, after being detained for five months, they were
condemned by a military tribunal to twelve years in prison. Since that time,
Algeria has sunk deeper and deeper into civil war and anarchy, but the
French government has continued to support the Algerian military junta.
With Algiers only an hour's journey by plane, there were understandable
fears that the conflict might spread to France. This eventually happened on
December 24,1994 when an Air France airbus, which had been hijacked by
the GIA (Groupe Islamique Arme) in Algiers, landed in Marseille. The plane
was stormed by French commandos who killed all four hijackers. Then on
July 11, 1995, two gunmen killed the imam of the Khaled Ibn el-Walid
Mosque in Paris. Two weeks later, on July 26, a bomb exploded in the St
Michel me'tro station killing eight people and injuring a hundred others.
Between then and September 7, there were two more explosions and two
unexploded bombs were defused. The security forces traced the incidents to
a group of North African youths in Lyon. The principal suspect, Khaled
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Kelkal, had no known links with the FIS or GIA, but had begun to practise
Islam a few years earlier while serving a prison sentence for stealing cars.
On September 30, millions of viewers saw television coverage of him being
hunted down and shot by the police. At the time of the bombings, over
2,000 Muslims were arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorist
organisations. Most of the suspects were eventually released without
charges being pressed. There were two more bomb attacks in October, but
after that the wave of bombings ceased, although over a year later on
December 3, 1996 there was a further explosion in Paris which killed four
people.
These incidents have increased public hostility towards Muslims, and in
many people's minds Islamic revival is now equated with violence. This
simplistic equation is sometimes encouraged by the media. During
Ramadan, Larbi Kechat, the Rector of the Stalingrad Mosque, gave a
television interview on the spiritual significance of fasting. Without his
permission, a brief extract from it was broadcast at peak viewing time on
February 27, 1997 as part of a programme on Islamist terrorist networks in
Europe, giving the misleading impression that he condoned terrorism.
Three weeks later, a bomb exploded outside the mosque causing extensive
damage; the security forces searched the building; and the Front National
distributed leaflets opposing the granting of planning permission.
The situation is not as bleak as the above chronicle of events makes it
appear. Non-Muslims from various walks of life have spoken out in support
of the Stalingrad Mosque and its Rector, proving that not all French people
are Islamophobic. In 1987, the Institut du Monde Arabe opened in Paris.
This prestigious institution, which has a fine library and organises
exhibitions and public lectures, is financed jointly by the French
government and the majority of the Arab states. It has done much to
improve French people's understanding of Arabic culture and Islamic
civilisation. The distinguished Catholic islamicist Louis Massignon (d.
1962) popularised the notion that Islam is an Abrahamic religion like
Judaism and Christianity, and it is largely due to his efforts that the
Catholic Church's official policy towards Muslims is now one of
cooperation and conciliation. In recent decades Church authorities in
France have allowed Muslims to use their premises and have been vocal in
opposing racism and discrimination. This has occasionally raised the
hackles of secularists, as for instance when the Archbishop of Paris
defended the rights of Muslim girls to wear head scarves but used this as a
pretext to remark on the need to reconsider the place of religion in schools.
Islam and the Republic

The status of Islam in France is affected by three pieces of legislation, none
of which was framed with Muslims in mind. The first and most ancient of
these is the Napoleonic Concordat of 1802. Under the terms of the
Concordat, Catholicism was recognised as the religion to which the
majority of the population adhered, and Catholic priests were paid by the
state, as were Protestant pastors and Jewish rabbis. The second is the 1901
law on the right of associations. Because of this, freedom of association is a
legal right subject to a simple declaration. The third is the 1905 law on the
separation of religion and state. Article 1 of this law guarantees freedom of
conscience and the free exercise of religion subject to certain restrictions in
the interests of public order, thus endorsing the earlier law on the right of
associations. Article 2, however, stipulates that, 'the Republic does not
grant recognition to, pay the salaries of, or provide subsidies for any
religion', hence annulling the Concordat of 1802. Nevertheless, the
Concordat is still in force in Alsace, because in 1905 this region was part
of Germany, and when it was reunited with France in 1918, it was
reinstated under the terms of the Concordat that had been in force when it
was lost to Germany in 1870.
The law of 1905 was the culmination of the long struggle between the
Church and State which had divided French society throughout the
nineteenth century. The law was intended to guarantee religious freedom,
not least for non-Catholics, by making religion a private affair and
excluding it from the public domain. In the case of state schools, this meant
that religious symbols such as crucifixes and statues were to be removed;
there were to be no classes for religious instruction, no religious assemblies
and no proselytising. On this basis, some school principals believe that
they are right to suspend Muslim girls who refuse to remove their
headscarves. That was the attitude of the headmaster in Creil who
provoked a national crisis by suspending three girls in 1989. After
deliberation, the Council of State decided to leave the decision in the hands
of the school principals but ruled that girls should not be suspended for
wearing scarves unless there was a health risk or evidence that they were
trying to proselytise. Most principals have chosen to avoid confrontation
and by 1993 about 2,000 Muslim girls were wearing scarves in class.
However, every autumn there have been problems in some schools. For
instance a Moroccan girl in Grenoble reacted to suspension by going on a
hunger strike, which culminated on February 5, 1994 with 1,500 Muslims
from all over the country attending a demonstration to draw attention to
her plight. On September 20, 1994 Franqois Bayrou, the conservative
minister of education, issued a circular declaring that pupils were
permitted to wear discreet signs indicating their personal religious
convictions but that ostentatious signs which constituted elements of
proselytism or discrimination were forbidden. The prime minister
subsequently confirmed that the small skull-cap worn by Jewish boys
was not an ostentatious sign but said nothing about the Islamic scarf. Some
principals interpreted this as giving them the green light to continue
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banning headscarves in their establishments. There have since been several

court cases and the problem is far from resolved.
The position of religious associations is equally unclear. Article 1 of the
law of 1905 permits their creation, but Article 2 denies them official
recognition. In practice, local authorities have differed in their interpreta-
tion of the law. Until recently, the majority have adopted a militant
secularist stance, refusing any institutional links with Islamic associations
and frequently blocking planning permission for mosques. On occasions,
this militant secularism has verged on persecution. For example, in August
1989, a prayer room in a disused factory at Charvieu-Chavagneux, twenty
miles from Lyon, was 'accidentally' demolished early one morning when
there were Muslims inside it. Some local authorities have, however, given
implicit recognition to Islamic associations by subsidising their cultural
activities and negotiating with their officials over matters of public concern.
There is, as we have seen, a precedent for the more generous
interpretation of the law of 1905 in the way in which the state indirectly
financed the building of the Paris Mosque. Despite the existence of this
institution, however, France has traditionally resolved problems with her
Muslim inhabitants by negotiating directly with their countries of origin,
rather than with the Rector of the Muslim Institute or other local
spokespersons. Nevertheless, in November 1989, Pierre Joxe, the socialist
minister of the interior, summoned the then Rector, Tedjini Hadam, along
with five other well-known Muslim figures of various persuasions, to a
meeting in which he charged them to reflect on the creation of a body with
which the state could liaise. These six became the kernel of CORIF (Conseil
de rkflexion sur l'islam en France) which was formed in 1990. Although
CORIF's fifteen members mirrored the diversity of Islam in France, its sole
raison d'2tre was that it had been willed into existence by the state.
Differences of opinion soon surfaced and little was achieved apart from
agreements on the demarcation of Muslim burial plots in public cemeteries
and the provision of halal food for Muslim soldiers. Some of the members
had Islamist sympathies and were suspicious of the Paris Mosque's close
links with the Algerian government. Their suspicions proved justified in
January 1992 when the Algerian Security Council, which had just annulled
the elections, announced that Tedjini Hadam was a member of the five-man
committee which it had appointed to run the country. He resigned from
CORIF, leaving it in disarray, but held on to his position as Rector of the
Muslim Institute until he was ousted by its committee.
In the run-up to the spring elections in France, the Mayor of Paris
authorised a large subsidy to pay for repairs to the Paris Mosque. After the
elections, the newly appointed conservative minister of the interior, Charles
Pasqua, decided that he had no use for CORIF and that he would put all his
weight behind the new Rector, Dalil Boubakeur. The latter responded
positively by taking two initiatives. First, he laid plans for an institute of
higher studies to train imams to work in France. The minister of the interior
and the minister of culture attended its opening on October 4, 1993, but as
yet it has attracted far fewer students than its rivals in the N i h r e and at the
office of the Muslim World League. Second, he created the CRMF (Conseil
reprtsentatif des musulmans de France). This body presented the minister
of the interior with a charter in January 1995, in which it explained who
the Muslims were and what they wanted. The charter is based on the
assumption that France is dar al-ahd (the land of contract or alliance) and
that Muslims should be good republicans and cooperate fully with the
secular state. Although bound to please the government, it is unlikely to
meet with more than a lukewarm response from those Muslims who belong
to associations which oppose the hegemony of the Paris Mosque.
In the present state of affairs, it is unrealistic to expect the fragmented
Muslim community in France to create a truly representative body capable
of entering into dialogue with the authorities. Within a generation,
however, the situation may be very different. By then, the scars left by
the Algerian War of Independence should have healed and the majority of
the Muslims in France will be French. In the meantime, the government is
understandably anxious to foster the emergence of a distinctively French
Islam. One card which it has not yet played, but which it might conceivably
play, is the extension of the Concordat to include Muslims. It could then
open a state-funded Faculty of Islamic Theology in Strasbourg, alongside
the existing Catholic and Protestant Faculties. The creation of such an
institution would help to counter the pervasive influence of North African
and the Middle Eastern ideologies.
Diversity of Belief and Practice

Although there is an extensive literature on Islam in France, the bulk of the
research has been undertaken by political scientists. Their primary concern
has been with institutional structures and the status of Islam in an overtly
secular society. The distinctive beliefs and practices of France's Muslims
have unfortunately attracted far less interest. These beliefs and practices
naturally vary from one ethnic group to another. For instance, in matters of
jurisprudence most of the North Africans and West Africans adhere to the
Maliki school, whereas the Turks are predominantly Hanafis. Similarly,
those who follow a Sufi tariqa (mystical path) are likely to belong to the
Alawiyya, Shadhiliyya or Qadiriyya if they are North Africans; the
Tijaniyya or Mouridiyya if they are West Africans; and the Naqshbandiyya
if they are Turks. However, the differences between generations are equally
striking and it is with them that I propose to conclude.
Most of the first generation Muslim immigrants came to France from
North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. There were two important currents in
North African Islam at that time: the reformist Islam of Abdelhamid Ibn
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A Muslim butcher's shop in Paris (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1997).
Badis (d. 1940), and popular religion with its emphasis on the intercessory
and healing powers of entombed saints and living holy men. The Paris
Mosque at times served as a vector for the thought of Ben Badis, but the
majority of the immigrants retained their attachment to elements of popular
religion. This was particularly true of their women folk, who often joined
them later. Even when they neglected the prayers, the women wore
headscarves out of respect for their husbands, fasted in Ramadan, and
obtained amulets from marabouts (Sufi leaders). The men at first found it
difficult to practise their religion in France, but have experienced a re-
Islamisation since the early 1970s.
In the 1980s, second generation North African immigrants prided
themselves on their secularism. They described themselves as beurs (part of
the vocabulary of verlan, a type of slang in which the syllables of a word -
in this case arabes - are transposed and deformed) and they rarely practised
Islam. The minority who belong to the middle classes are still, on the whole,
non-practising although many of them have internalised Islamic values.
Since 1990, however, there has been a noticeable shift in attitude and an
increasing number of young people now openly claim to be Muslims.
Although most of them have derived a rudimentary knowledge of Islam
from being brought up in Muslim households, their religion differs from
that of their parents in a number of respects. It has nothing to do with
preserving Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian identity. It eschews the wearing
of amulets, using the Quran for divinatory purposes, and other 'super-
stitious' practices imported from the North African rural setting. Most
important of all, it is not based on inherited traditions but is something
which they have consciously chosen.
The reasons for this change are complex. Undoubtedly, the dawa
activities of local associations have played an important part in Islamic
revival. Nevertheless, it is clear that in many instances their message is
heeded because it meets a deeply-felt existential need. The media portray
the high-rise suburban estates, in which the poorer immigrants live, as
violent places where crime and drug addiction are rife. Hence, city-dwellers
rarely visit them for fear of being attacked, and when youth from the estates
go into the cities their presence is resented. In addition, there has been a
marked increase in unemployment. Many second and third generation
immigrants thus feel doomed to a meaningless, ghettoised existence
characterised by ostracism and economic deprivation. In short, they have
lost faith in the republican myth of integration and social advancement.
Their Islam is therefore an Islam of the excluded. By becoming practising
Muslims, they acquire a sense of dignity and purpose. Through participa-
tion in local associations, they attempt to create a new Islamic community
which transcends ethnic barriers. If they have a sense of ethnic identity at
all, it is as 'Arabs' in the broadest sense, because they recite the Quran and
pray in Arabic, although their grasp of that language is often superficial.
The Islam of France's youth is one of ethical conformity rather than
social activism. Through it, they seek salvation from their own unstructured
lives and the moral chaos which they perceive around them. Nevertheless,
the puritanical zeal of new converts often gives way to a more flexible and
tolerant stance. For example, the initial desire to eat only halal food may
evolve into a minimalist and unostentatious avoidance of pork and alcohol.
Similarly, young women who wear the Islamic headscarf come to terms
with friends who observe very different dress codes. Most important of all,
strict segregation of the sexes, which was the norm alike for traditionalists
and earlier generations of Islamists, is frequently regarded as unnecessary
by France's young Muslims.
Although the media stigmatise women in headscarves as 'Muslim
fundamentalists', those who wear them do so for a variety of reasons. For
older women who are immigrants, it is a matter of keeping up traditions
and maintaining a link with their country of origin by doing as their
mothers and grandmothers did before them. For pre-adolescents and
adolescents between the age of twelve and sixteen, on the other hand, the
headscarf is often a passport to freedom, because wearing it reassures their
parents that they can be trusted outside the home. When these girls leave
school and become independent, as often as not they stop wearing it. In
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their case, it thus serves as a way of bridging the gap between home and
society. For other girls of this age, however, the headscarf is a cruel
imposition which their fathers or older brothers force them to wear against
their will. In their case, it aggravates the gap between home and society.
Finally, as a result of the media coverage of the controversy, still others
wear the headscarf as an attention-seeking act of bravado. With post-
adolescents between the age of sixteen and twenty-five, the motives for
wearing the headscarf are different again. In the majority of instances they
wear it to affirm their desire to be both French and Muslim. For them, it is a
sign of Islamic modesty which they are at liberty to wear. Paradoxically, this
attitude reveals that they have internalised the very republican values which
on the surface they appear to have rejected. For other young women of this
age, the headscarf is little more than a fashion accessory. Only very rarely
do post-adolescents wear the headscarf out of a desire to identify
themselves with radical Islamist groups which seek to impose Islamic law
on society.
Because of the bombs which were planted in France from July 1995
onwards, and the almost daily reports of atrocities in Algeria, there is a
widespread fear of radical Islamists infiltrating France and establishing
terrorist networks. There is, however, little evidence that this is happening
on a large scale. Young Muslims are often reluctant to condemn Algerian
Islamism, but this does not mean that they are willing to adopt the tactics of
the GIA. It is simply that they perceive the Algerian government as being
supported by French neo-colonialism, and that they suspect the media of
blackening the Islamists just at it blackens them. In most instances, their
own Islam is apolitical. They are seeking to give meaning to their lives in the
midst of the society which has rejected them, but they have not declared
war on society. Moreover, they are too preoccupied with their own
problems to become embroiled in those of their Algerian cousins.
Literature
This chapter was researched while the author was on study leave funded by
the British Academy Research Leave Scheme. For introductory surveys of
Muslims in France, see Annie Krieger-Krynicki, Les musulmans en France
(Paris: Maisonneuve Larose, 1985) and Jocelyne Cesari, Etre musulman en
France aujourd'hui (Paris: Hachette, 1997). Gilles Kepel, Les banlieues de
l'lslam (Paris: Seuil, 1987) is a magisterial if somewhat unsympathetic
study by a political scientist. See also the last section of his more recent
book, A l'ouest d'Allah (Paris: Seuil, 19941, pp. 205-319. Bruno ~ t i e n n e
(ed.), L'lslam en France (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1990) is wide-ranging
and interdisciplinary.
O n the colonial period and decolonialisation, see Jacques Frimaux, La
France et l'lslam depuis 1979 (Paris: PUF, 1991). The best general
introduction to immigration is Philippe Bernard, L'immigration (Paris: Le
Monde-Editions, 1993), but for a more detailed account of the present
conditions of France's immigrants, see MichZle Tribalat, D e l'immigration a
l'assimilation (Paris: La DCcouverte, 1996). The question of whether and to
what extent there is a place for Islam in republican France is explored in
detail in Bruno ~ t i e n n eLa
, France et l'lslam (Paris: Hachette, 1989), while
the specific issue of the wearing of the Islamic scarf in state schools is
examined in Franfoise Gaspar and Farhad Khosrokhavar, Le foulard et la
Re'publique (Paris: La Dtcouverte, 1995).
The standard work on the Paris Mosque is Alain Boyer, L'lnstitut
Musulman de la Mosque'e de Paris (Paris: Centre des Hautes Etudes sur
1'Afrique et 1'Asie modernes, 1992). For the full text of the Muslim Charter
with a commentary by the present rector, see Charte d u culte Musulrnan en
France, ed. D. Boubakeur (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 1995). Nation-
wide associations are put into European and global context in Antoine Sfeir,
Les re'seaux d'Allah (Paris: Plon, 1997), and local associations are discussed
in Jocelyne Cesari, Etre musulman e n France: Associations, militants et
mosque'es (Paris: Karthala, 1994). There are two recent studies of young
Muslims written by Muslim sociologists: Farhad Khosrokhavar, L'islam des
jeunes (Paris: Flammarion, 1997) and Lei'la Babes, L'lslam positif (Paris:
Ouvrieres, 1997). On the issue of how Muslim youths are occasionally
recruited by terrorist networks, see David Pujadas and Ahmad Salam, La
tentation d u Jihad (Paris: J-C. Lattts, 1995).
There is a dearth of studies on Muslims in specific localities other than
the Paris region, but see P. AAz, Le Paradoxe de Roubaix (Paris: Plon,
1996) and Franck Fregosi, 'L'islam en terre concordataire', H o m m e s et
Migrations, 1209 (1997), pp. 29-48. Sub-Saharan African Muslims in
France have received little attention, but the following articles are useful:
Alloui Said Abasse, 'Itintraires biographiques de quatre membres de 17i.lite
comorienne de Marseille: tltments pour une sociologie de l'islam
comorien', Islam et Socie'te's au sud d u Sahara, 9 (1995), pp. 99-116; A.
Moustapha Diop, 'Immigration et religion: les musulmans nkgro-africains
en France', Migrations Socie'ti, 15-6 (1989), pp. 45-57; A. Moustapha
Diop, 'Les associations islamiques sCnCgalaises en France', Islam et Socie'te's
a u sud d u Sahara, 8 (1994), pp. 7-15; and Victoria Ebin. 'Making Room
versus Creating Space: The Construction of Spacial Categories by Itinerant
Mouride Traders', pp. 92-109 in Making Muslim Space i n North America
and Europe, ed. Barbara Daly Metcalf (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996).
Chapter Sixteen
Britain
Ron Geaves
The Muslim presence in Britain is at least three centuries old and can be traced
to the activities of the East India Company which recruited seamen known as
'lascars' from the subcontinent. The sailors were often taken on board ship in
India for the duration of a single voyage. Consequently they found themselves
stranded in British ports while they searched for a passage home. Some of the
lascars formed relationships with British women and opened hostels and cafts
to serve the itinerant dockside communities. These shifting settlements of
seamen expanded considerably after the opening of the Suez canal in 1869
when large numbers of Yemenis and Somalis were recruited in Aden. The
Yemenis, in particular, began to open boarding houses in Cardiff and South
Shields and the Somalis settled in Liverpool. Numerically, the population of
these two communities is currently no more than 15,000, but significantly,
they were certainly the first permanent settlements of Muslims in Britain. The
Yemeni community is particularly significant as it focused its development
around the inspiration of a shaykh belonging to the Alawi Sufi order who
arrived in Britain in the early twentieth century. The centres or zawiyas of the
order began in the ports and spread inland to the Yemini communities in
Sheffield and Birmingham. This is the earliest evidence of a Muslim
community achieving cohesion and stability through organised religion.
In addition to the Yemeni community the principal centres of organised
Islam in the early part of the twentieth century were in Liverpool, London
and Woking. These small congregations of mainly subcontinent Muslims
were comprised of businessmen, members of the Indian aristocracy,
students and a handful of high profile converts. These centres of religious
activity often depended on the efforts of these individuals and tended to
disappear when they returned to their homelands or on their death. Jsrgen
Nielsen notes in his book, Muslims in Western Europe, that for a
considerable period the personal physician to Queen Victoria was a
Muslim. These prominent late-nineteenth-century Muslims were respon-
sible for the foundation of the first mosques to be established in Britain. In
1887 a Liverpool solicitor named Henry William Quilliam converted to
Islam whilst travelling in Morocco. Known as Shaykh Abdullah, he
organised prayers, the celebration of festivals, weddings and funerals,
Britain
The mosque in Woking (photo: Pia Karlsson, 1997).
religious evening classes, and a day school in a group of converted terraced

houses in Liverpool. He wrote several essays and pamphlets on Islam and
claimed to have personally converted 150 members of the British public.
The Ottoman sultan appointed him Shaykh al-Islam (the senior member of
the ulama, religious scholars, in a country) to Britain, and the amir (military
commander or governor) of Afghanistan provided him with the funds to
purchase a building to be used as the Islamic Institute in Liverpool.
The oldest mosque in Britain is the Shahjehan mosque built in Woking in
1889. The Hungarian orientalist, Dr Leitner, persuaded the ruler of the
Indian state of Bhopal to fund a complex which was envisaged to
incorporate a library, hostel and eventually a Muslim university. Only the
mosque and the hostel came to fruition. After Leitner's death in 1899 the
mosque fell into disuse but was purchased in 1913 by the Ahmadiyya
movement to be the centre of their missionary activities in Britain. The
English convert Lord Headley and a Lahore barrister, Khwaja Kamal-ud-
Din, who had come to England in order to challenge misconceptions of
Islam, were responsible for the re-emergence of the Woking centre, but they
were both increasingly criticised by orthodox Sunni Muslims for their
connections with the Ahmadiyya movement. However, the Woking Muslim
Mission sponsored the Muslim Literary Society and carried out welfare
work on behalf of widows and orphans of Indian Muslim soldiers who died
in the Second World War. Marmeduke Pickthall and Abdullah Yusef Ali,
who have produced two of the best-known translations of the Quran into
English, were both members of the Muslim Literary Society. After the death
of Lord Headley in 1932 the management committee of the mosque broke
all connections with the Ahmadiyya movement.
At the end of the First World War Lord Headley and other prominent
Muslims in Britain had discussed the idea of a central mosque in London. In
1928 the London Nizamiah Trust was established but progress was very
slow until the Second World War. Land was donated in Regents Park by
King George VI in return for a site in Cairo intended for a new Anglican
cathedral. In November 1944, the Islamic Cultural Centre was opened by
the King himself. In 1947, thirteen ambassadors from Muslim nations
created the Central London Mosque Trust to raise the funds to begin
construction. The foundation stone was laid in 1954 but funding problems
and disagreements over the design delayed the project. The mosque was
finally opened in 1977 and is considered to be the most prestigious mosque
in the country. However, by the time of its opening the Muslim presence in
Britain had been dramatically transformed.
The subcontinent Muslim communities

Along with populations from various parts of the Arab world, Iran,
Malaysia, Turkey, Cyprus, Morocco, East and West Africa who have
arrived in Britain as a result of political upheaval or as students and
businessmen, since the 1950s Britain has received tens of thousands of
Muslim immigrants from the subcontinent. They came in response to the
host nation's demand for cheap labour and to join their family members
already living in Britain. At first, only men seeking employment on offer in
manufacturing industries based in the cities and towns of the West
Midlands and northern England travelled to Britain. The first commu-
nities developed around the efforts of the early settlers who had worked in
the merchant navy during the Second World War. Philip Lewis, in his book
Islamic Britain, notes that by the beginning of the war seamen recruited in
the subcontinent formed 20 per cent of the merchant navy. A handful of
others had come to Britain inspired by the British presence in India to
better themselves economically and worked as market traders or travelling
salesmen selling cheap goods out of suitcases. These pioneer settlers had
often married British women and were in a position to assist the newly-
arriving migrants. They had all risked leaving their country of origin to
find work with higher wages, often intending to return home eventually.
In the early 1960s there was concern over changes in the immigration
legislation which was to tighten controls on entry to the country. Some of
the migrants had begun to invest their wages into cheap terraced
properties to accommodate their compatriots, but they were also
experiencing some loneliness and a sense of alienation. As a consequence
of these factors, the men began to reunite their families by bringing their
wives and children to Britain. Others returned to the subcontinent to visit
their families and returned with new brides. Once children began to be
born in Britain the reality of return became more and more unlikely and
therefore most have remained to form themselves into communities
established around their religion, places of origin and kin networks
(biradari).
It is difficult to determine exactly how many Muslims there are in Britain
today as the census does not have a category to distinguish people by
religion. Even if one should take the trouble to sift arduously through the
categories of ethnic origin in the 1991 census in search of Muslim
surnames, the results are likely to be highly inaccurate. Many will have
refused to identify themselves by ethnic origin as they strongly identify
themselves with a common Islamic identity. Others may not reveal their
presence on the census as their presence in the country is not legal. To
estimate the total Muslim population in Britain it is necessary to combine
information derived from the ethnic category with the country of birth
information for people who originate in Muslim nations. This will not
include Muslims born in non-Muslim nations such as India or the number
of converts amongst the Afro-Caribbean and indigenous white population.
The estimate of the total Muslim population in 1991 is shown in the table
below:
Country/Region of origin Population

Pakistan
Bangladesh
India
East Africans of Indian origin
Arab nations
African Muslims
Turkish CypriotstTurkey
Iran
Malaysia
Other Muslim countries
Total
These figures are calculated from those reproduced in Muslims in Britain: 1991 Census and
other Statistical Sources by Muhammad Anwar (Birmingham, 1993) and Muslims in Western
Europe by Jsrgen Nielsen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992).
It is clear from these figures that the dominant Muslim presence

originates from the subcontinent. Philip Lewis notes that in addition to this
numerical dominance it has to be taken into account that the subcontinent
communities are not merely resident in Britain but have formed permanent
communities where most of the members possess British nationality. As
with all the other subcontinent communities, the first notable Pakistani
presence appeared in the 1951 census. With the arrival of dependants
beginning in the 1960s, the population of subcontinent Muslim migrants
increased substantially. The figures shown below, which are derived from
the 1981 census calculated on the basis of the place of birth of the head of
the household, demonstrate this rapid growth of the Muslim population
from the subcontinent.
Census Population
Source: Jsrgen Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1992).
The significant figure, however, is not so much the total estimate but
the ever-increasing proportion of Muslims born and educated in Britain
as compared t o the proportion of migrants born in Pakistan and
Bangladesh. The percentages for this proportion of the population are
shown below.
Census Total population Proportion born in Britain

1951 5,000 -
1961 24,900 1.2%
1971 170,000 23.5%
1981 360,000 37.5%
1991 640,000 47%
Source: Muhammad Anwar, Muslims in Britain: 1991 Census and other Statistical Sources
(Birmingham, 1993) and Jsrgen Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
If the immigration laws continue t o make it increasingly difficult for

subcontinent migrants to enter Britain, this figure will increase to almost
100 per cent within the duration of one generation's lifespan as the first
generation migrants die, although parents are still seeking marriage
partners in their countries of origin.
The other significant statistic amongst those born in the subcontinent is
the diversity of regional place of origin. This is confined, however, to a few
well-defined regions. A survey carried out in 1974 showed the following
regional breakdown of subcontinent Muslims.
Britain
Pakistan Punjab
Kashmir
Karachi
N.W. Frontier
Other
Bangladesh (then East Pakistan)
India Punjab
Gujarat
Other
Source: College de France, 'Muslim Immigration and Settlement in Britain', Colloquium on

Islam in Europe Today (Paris: Association pour I'Avancement des Sciences Islamique, 1983).
Even these categories are too broad. The actual patterns of migration
indicate that the Kashmiris originated from the district of Mirpur and the
Punjabis came from the Cambellpur district. The majority of Bangladeshis
were from Sylhet and the district of Chittagong. There is also a smaller but
significant population of migrants from East Africa who had been brought
over from India in the nineteenth century by the British as indentured
labourers. The processes of chain migration have in reality limited the
actual places of origin to clusters of specific villages in the above places.
Although often defined inaccurately by the receiving culture as a
homogeneous minority usually labelled as Pakistani, the self-definition of
the subcontinent Muslims has tended to revolve around the customs and
beliefs inherited from these localised extended family groupings confined to
small areas of rural Pakistan, Bangladesh and, to a lesser extent, India. It is,
however, becoming increasingly difficult to pass on the values and
traditions of these villages of origin to a generation born and educated in
Britain who identify themselves as British Muslims. This cultural clash of
values that manifests itself across the generations is central to the various
dichotomies that Muslims in Britain need to resolve in order to form a
communal self-identity based on religious unity.
The growth of mosques

The strong sense of a shared faith enables individual Muslims to cope
with the difficult experience of living as a minority in Britain and it could
be argued that the universal symbols of Islam become even more powerful
in what is perceived to be a hostile environment by many of the Muslim
population. However, ethnic identity which also embraces all the symbols
of religion in order to affirm itself becomes an important factor too. There
can be no doubt that the Muslim migrants passed through a stage of
entrenchment in which ethnic identity was reinforced. This process can be
observed in the rapid increase in the number of mosques. Nielsen (in
Muslims i n Western Europe) states that the growth of mosques in Britain
Britain
Barelwi Muslims in Birmingham, followers of shaykh Sufi Abdullah from

Zindapir in Pakistan, on the occasion of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday
(photo: Ron Geaves, 1997).
itself in Britain. Virtually all the religious divisions prominent in Pakistan

have their localised expression in Britain: Deobandi, Barelwi, Ahl-i Hadith,
Ahl-i Quran, Jamaat al-Tabligh and the variety of organisations based on
the inspiration of Jamaat-i Islami have all been successfully transplanted to
Britain. Neither of the two largest movements, the Deobandis and the
Barelwis, have been able to organise themselves nationally in spite of the
fact that they claim the widest support amongst the subcontinent Muslims.
More significant to the development of the community is the fact that the
key movements and traditions have a history of mutual recrimination.
Indeed, even excommunication has characterised their relationship with
each other in the subcontinent and this has spilled over into Britain. There
have been conflicts over control of mosques and each movement proclaims
its brand of Islam as the only orthodoxy. This has resulted in the division of
some small communities since the different groups are intensely suspicious
of each other and do very little to integrate amongst themselves, all
retaining strong links with their parent organisations in the subcontinent.
Mosques and welfare organisations proliferated throughout the 1970s
and 1980s, each representing small subgroups within the community. Any
attempts to create umbrella organisations to represent the community on a
Geaves
The tomb and shrine of Pir Wahhab Siddiqui, a Naqshbandi shaykh buried
in Coventry (photo: Ron Geaves, 1997).
national level were relatively unsuccessful and this is reflected in the large
number of Muslim organisations in Britain. In 1986 it was estimated that
there were over 4,000, mostly concerned with local welfare. Tensions
between the universal and the particular are ever-present. Any move
towards establishing the kind of national organisation based on the
universals of Islam which would represent the whole community is likely to
be seen as a critique of traditional, localised values which many Muslim
migrants still hold dear as expressions of a former life in the villages where
they originated.
In this context Sufism has always been a major influence in the
subcontinent as well as other parts of the Muslim world although strongly
opposed by organisations which assert a more orthodox brand of Islam. In
particular, this has been the source of the conflict between Deobandis and
Barelwis. The major Sufi orders, Naqshbandiyya, Qadiriyya and Chish-
tiyya, are all influential at a local level in Britain amongst most of the
Muslim communities. The Sufi orders are found not only amongst the
subcontinent communities but are also influential in the Turkish,
Malaysian, West African and even some Arab communities. In the
subcontinent, the pirs, the charismatic leaders of the Sufi orders, have
always been the bearers of regional culture and language. They have taught
in the vernacular, and carried the message of Islam deep into the hearts and
minds of rural people who were often illiterate. There are many pirs
teaching in Britain and some of the prominent ones are resident in the
country and beginning to have large national followings.
This custom-laden version of Islam, upheld in Britain by the Barelwis,
emphasises popular devotion, the intercession of saints, baraka (the power
to bless), shrines, tombs of holy men, peculiar powers and miracles, singing
and dancing and, above all, the importance of the pirlmurid (master1
disciple) relationship. Asian food, candles, incense, rosewater offerings,
holy water and amulets are all used in religious worship. Any of these may
be used to cure the sick, secure the birth of male children, or protect the
worshipper from magical forces such as evil jinns (spirits of fire and air).
Obviously this form of Islam, unique as it is to the villages of the
subcontinent, evokes very powerfully for many migrants the feeling of
cherished places of origin. It is debatable in what form this strand of the
faith will survive beyond the generation of migrants that was born in the
subcontinent. Its powerful link with the villages of the migrants' past may
have no association for British-born Muslims, and they may well ally
themselves with the reformist critique of the Sufi tradition. Their need to
distance themselves from their parents' Asian origin and to assert their
British identity may leave them disenchanted with this folk form of Islam.
O n the other hand, the spirituality of the Sufi path may become attractive
for those seeking their fulfilment away from the materialist ethos of late-
twentieth-century Britain.
It must be remembered that prior to the creation of Pakistan in 1947,
Muslims had always been a minority in the subcontinent. Muslims in India
long regarded themselves as separate and distinct from other religious and
social groupings. The various movements mentioned above all developed
strategies to deal with living alongside a Hindu majority, and later to deal
with being ruled by the British. Essential to these strategies was the message
of return to the basics of Islam in order to revitalise the community, which
had found itself in danger of being relegated to a minor position. Many of
the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century theological/politica1 groups
such as Deobandi, Ahl-i Hadith and Ahl-i Quran emerged in the
subcontinent in response to the decline of the Muslim community and
the successful spread of European culture. The central tenet of their
message was a return to the fundamentals of Islam based on the Quran and
Sunna, and a stripping away of anything that was seen to be cultural
accretion or innovation. The influence of these groups has increased as a
result of the general resurgence of Islam throughout the Muslim world.
It is not surprising that these theological/politica1 movements have
become much more influential in Britain than have the locally organised
welfare organisations. The apparent emphasis on the universals of Islam,
the history of Islamic revival, and the fact that many of the first generation
Muslims have existing loyalties to one or other of them, has enabled them
to flourish in Britain. On the other hand, the ideas of the twentieth-century
ideological movements associated with Jamaat-i Islami and other revivalist
organisations are more likely to be attractive to young Muslims of both
sexes born in Britain. Perhaps even more attractive is the fact these groups
were formed partly in opposition to British colonialism and Western values.
Muhammad Anwar points out that the relationship betwen Muslims and
the indigenous population can best be understood against the background
of the colonial encounter, and the unequal economic and political power
relationships generated by colonialism both in British India and now in
Britain. If this is true, then the success of these groups must be attributed to
the fact they have developed historical strategies to cope with Muslims
being a minority ruled over by the British. The confrontation with British
colonialism and Western values has been transplanted to Britain from the
subcontinent by the economic processes of capitalism. The Muslim
minority of the subcontinent, once ruled by a British colonial minority,
now finds a part of itself to be an economically and socially deprived
minority in the land of its old rulers. The major difference here in the new
situation is that the old rulers are now the majority population.
It has yet to be ascertained whether any of these revivalist organisations
can really fulfil the expectations of British-born Muslims. One has to
examine critically their proclamation of a culturally-free emphasis on the
universals of Islam. This may have been true at the time of their foundation
and within the context of their creation, but they may now be too
embroiled in the history of subcontinent Muslim sectarian conflict to be of
any use in helping to create a unified British Muslim community. There is a
strong possibility that they are in danger of imparting divisions which
developed in the history of subcontinent Islam which could seriously
undermine any efforts they might make towards developing a truly native
version of Islam in Britain.
Very often the ideal of the umma (worldwide Islamic community) is seen
to be betrayed by any degree of integration with the host community. Some
Muslims go as far as to question whether a truly Islamic life is even possible
in the West when Muslims are in a minority. Up until now the mosques
have not responded positively to the challenge of modernity. This has
resulted in their inability to attract young people and a neglect of a public
participation of women in religious activities. It is amongst these two
groups that the search for identity is most acute.
The intergenerational conflict

Muslims in Britain are undergoing a crucial change of self-identity amongst
the British-born descendants of the original settlers. The first generation
migrants had used 'the Myth of Return' to legitimise continued adherence
to the values of the homeland, and to condemn any assimilation of British
cultural values as irrelevant and destructive. Most of the first generation
migrants come from rural areas in the subcontinent and were not educated.
They have tried to maintain a world outlook which is foreign to the values
of the receiving culture. Very often this has resulted in a conservatism that
even in the original homeland many would find rigid and old-fashioned.
The countries of origin have undergone considerable changes since the
departure of the original migrants to Britain, but they often continue to
hold an emotive attachment to the way things were at the time of
migration. This outlook can become idealised and mythologised; the values
brought over are not allowed to be challenged. Many migrants find it
difficult to understand their children who were brought up and educated in
Britain. Sometimes attempts to question or break away from the parents'
values is seen as corruption by the host nation's un-Islamic values and as a
move towards godlessness and the disintegration of the community. The
children can find it equally difficult to understand the beliefs and lifestyle of
their parents.
Despite their greater contact with the values of the indigenous culture
through the medium of education, the family still remains tremendously
important to the majority of young subcontinent Muslims. The concept of
izzat (family honour) acts as a powerful agent of reinforcement for the
passing down and maintenance within the family of the rules and customs
of the community. There are powerful emotive inhibitions against
disgracing the family or letting down the family honour. The most
important part of the sharia is family law, which insists that religious duty
governs personal relations. Consequently, izzat is maintained and sanctified
by a complicated pattern of behaviour evolved from Islam and the time-
honoured customs of the family's place of origin and social status. To the
older generation who find themselves struggling to maintain their ethnic1
religious identity as a minority group, izzat becomes of great significance.
Very often the particular and the universal have equal importance. Their
Islam is not only based on the study of Quran and Sunna, but has been
formed by the rites and ceremonies of family and village life. Religion is
indistinguishable from their way of life, and these traditions are zealously
guarded in the alien and often hostile environment of Britain.
There are signs that young Muslims in Britain are increasingly rejecting
both assimilation into the mainstream indigenous culture and the
ethnocentricity of their parents. Thus both generations are affirming the
values of religion. The earlier migrants use Islam to affirm their cultural
inheritance and allegiance to life in the subcontinent. Old customs and
traditions are reinforced by sanctifying them as prescribed by religion.
Increasingly, however, there are signs that the later generations are
developing a religious awareness which has little to do with ethnic
solidarity. An attempt is taking place to discover an Islamic identity based
on the universals of the faith. Some are beginning to believe that it is not
enough to be born a Muslim. For them religion has to be more than an
accident at birth, subservient to culture. It has to be founded on knowledge
and experience. Many young Muslims in Britain are confounding their
parents by their attempts to separate the essentials of the faith from cultural
or historical additions. Values cherished by parents as part of their cultural
and religious identity are now coming under attack, not from the expected
directions of the indigenous culture, but from their children who declare
them to be un-Islamic.
The impact on women

These changes are also having an impact on Muslim women. Many Muslim
women in Britain, although apparently not desiring to achieve the freedoms
won by British women, are questioning traditional images of Muslim
womanhood. These include gender roles, purdah (seclusion of women),
dress-customs, the issue of work outside the home, and certain kinds of
arranged marriage which are seen as typical to South Asian culture.
Initially, the arrival of Muslim women in Britain led to a consolidation of
ethnic identity. Ironically, this resulted in the women themselves facing
stricter rules on dress, purdah and employment than any other group of
Asian migrant women. The fragmentation of the traditional family, the
isolation created by fear of moral contamination from the receiving culture,
the prestige given to purdah as a mark of middle-class status, and finally the
climate of Britain, all had severe consequences for women. Purdah was not
only retained but strengthened in response to insecurity and the threat
perceived from 'immoral' Britain. In the process, purdah increasingly lost
its function as protection and became a prison. Many women have not
learnt to speak English, and it is not uncommon to see them using their
children as interpreters when out shopping. Unlike their husbands, who
come in contact with the indigenous culture through employment, or their
children (both male and female) through school, many older Asian Muslim
women have minimal contact with a world outside their immediate family
and close relatives.
There has been a lack of encouragement for women to organise and
participate fully in public religious life in Britain. In many Muslim
communities there has been outright rejection of South Asian female
participation in public worship and many mosques still have no facilities for
women. This is particularly the case with Deobandi mosques where there is
a rigid interpretation of the Hanafi school of law favoured in the
subcontinent. Women often find themselves the victims of South Asian
gender attitudes which are rigidly disguised as the strictures of Islam. As
with the boys, although taught to recite the Quran in mosque schools, they
do not understand the Arabic and are likely to accept that everything that
their parents say is according to Islamic prescriptions. The girls are often
brought up to be submissive and not to confront their parents or elders. In
many homes even dialogue and discussion by girls is discouraged as un-
Islamic behaviour. Thus any attempt by women to challenge cultural norms
concerning employment, dress, education, or marriage patterns is often
attacked on the grounds that these are unalterable tenets of Islam.
South Asian men may well be afraid of the impact of Western culture on
their wives and daughters, and can to some degree isolate them from
contact with it. They cannot, however, isolate them from Islam and recent
studies are showing that more young Muslim women are distinguishing
between cultural traditions and the central tenets of Islam. Many parents
and husbands have found that their religion itself is being used as an
effective weapon against certain forms of ethnic oppression, as some
women begin to redefine themselves and their role in society by studying the
fundamentals of Islam. These women have argued that it was men, and not
Islam, that had put them in a subordinate position. This new awareness has
come about not only because of the need for Muslim women to redefine
themselves in Britain but also because of an increased awareness of religion
brought about by the resurgence of Islam worldwide. Many daughters and
wives are arguing that there is no incompatibility between being British
citizens and Muslim women. Dress does not have to be Asian to be in
conformity with the prescriptions of the Quran. Many women are justifying
the pursuit of education and careers by reference to religious ideology,
arguing that their critics' understanding of Islam is outdated and narrow.
As devout Muslims, more and more young British-born women are
looking to the Quran and the Sunna of the Prophet for the answer to all
questions. Often they find that the teachings of Islam directly contradict
hallowed customs and traditions regarding the status and place of women
in society. They defend both Islam and themselves from the abuses of a
rigidly patriarchal society by arguing that the poor standing of women that
is often associated with Islamic prescription is a cultural accretion having
no basis in the Quran itself. On the contrary, they can claim that true Islam
is pledged to equality of the sexes, albeit respecting the essential differences
between them.
Others are discovering that the emancipation of women was apparently
a matter of importance to the Prophet. They refer to his wives, particularly
Khadija, who was a successful businesswoman, and Aisha, who became a
stateswoman in the early years of Islam's development. They claim that
1,400 years ago women were liberated by the establishment of Islam. They
were given inheritance rights, the right to keep their earnings, the right to
divorce and the right to retain their own surnames. Subsequently, they
argue, various cultures have superimposed their own variation of gender
inequality onto Islam as it spread through Asia.
The whole issue of the rights of Muslim women born in Britain is
beginning to centre upon the challenge Islam is posing both to ethnicity and
Westernisation. The opposition to uncritical acceptance of Western values is
central to the ideology of Islamic resurgence throughout the world. By
incorporating this into their view of British life, many young Muslim
women are able to feel both solidarity with the Islamic movement globally
and to develop a critique towards the dominant culture's attitude towards
them. At the same time they can utilise the revivalists' stance against
cultural accretion entering into Islam to defend themselves against attitudes
which often belong more to the traditions of the village than the teachings
of the Quran. This strategy enables young Muslim women born and
educated in Britain neither to feel torn between two cultures or to switch
back and forth between two opposed worlds, but to find a way forward
utilising their religion.
The dilemma of education

Having looked briefly at young people and women, it becomes apparent
that the issue of education is very important amongst Muslims in Britain.
Many Muslims feel uneasy about the presence of their children in British
state schools since it is the place where Muslim society and British society
most deeply interact. It is this interaction between values that leads
Muhammad Anwar to state that young Muslims are 'caught between two
cultures'.
If education is viewed as a means of cultural engineering, then it will
sometimes clash with an equally powerful form of socialisation that takes
place within the family. Parents themselves are often torn between their
loyalty to traditional value systems incorporating religious and social
authority on the one hand, and a desire to see their children succeed in the
educational system on the other. Distrustful of a Western secular society
which is popularly viewed as corrupt and blatantly sexually promiscuous,
they attempt to counteract this influence of school by nurturing their
children into the overarching belief system of Islam. This last will include
views of European culture, perceptions of education, the right behaviour
between the sexes and between the generations, as well as codes of moral
behaviour and appearance. All of these will be reinforced by the code of
izzat, which is likely to be imposed more on the girls than the boys. Women
are put under stricter surveillance after the onset of puberty as it is
considered that too much freedom will ruin a girl's reputation. Even British
teaching methods based on enquiry and the development of freedom of
thought is highly suspect.
The Quran or mosque school is used to support this framework of the
family and its values. Several nights a week the children will attend two-
hour sessions. They will be taught by rote the Arabic of the Quran, basic
religious instruction, and sometimes the mother-tongue of their parents.
Usually the instruction is by the imam (prayer leader or qualified religious
scholar), who is normally imported from the country of origin. Often he
will be suspicious not only of the influence of British secular education on
the children but also of the influence of their parents, whose knowledge of
Islam he may not trust.
The main purpose of the mosque school is to inculcate into the children
the awareness that they belong to a Muslim community. In fact, the
children's education at mosque schools will ultimately depend on the
calibre of the imam and the brand of Islam that he himself follows. Part-
time religious schools run alongside the English system of education was the
pattern under the British administration in colonial India. At the time it
considerably disadvantaged Muslim youth, and it will continue to do so. At
best it gives a very elementary knowledge of the faith; at worst it defeats its
own object by turning the children against their own religion. The extra
studying hours placed upon small children could well be to the detriment of
their education at school. It could also create a clash of values as described
by Anwar.
Some Muslims believe the solution to be the establishment of Muslim
schools which teach academic subjects alongside religious instruction in
Islam, and consequently there has been a proliferation of private schools in
British cities. Many Muslims are campaigning for these schools to be state
funded on the same lines as Jewish, Anglican and Roman Catholic schools,
and it can only be a matter of time before this right is conceded by the
British government.
The major religious movements are increasingly establishing dar al-
ulums (higher institutions of Islamic religious education) which provide
full-time religious education combined with a few core subjects from the
British curriculum. Essentially these schools are based on the subcontinent
Islamic curriculum which was established to train the ulama. The demand
for places in the dar al-ulums is growing rapidly especially amongst Muslim
parents with Deobandi sympathies. The major problem here is that there is
hardly any agreement on which 'Islam' should be taught. Muslims with
loyalties to Deobandi, Barelwi, Jamaat al-Tabligh and Jamaat-i-Islami
brands of Islam each want to teach their children according to their own
ideology, and consequently consolidate divisions within the community.
Many Muslims in Britain originate from the rural areas of the subcontinent
and received little informal education themselves. The education of girls
was not considered important as marriage was thought to be their destiny
and training in running a home is regarded as more important than formal
education. As a consequence the parents often expect girls to concentrate
on housework, cooking and looking after children, rather than schoolwork.
Many of the girls are sent to single sex schools to protect them from the
perceived sexual promiscuity of British culture. Despite this difference in
attitude and closer control of girls, many find that the school provides them
with opportunities to be more critical in their thinking, and to develop the
ability to differ with their parents. Many parents are not able to sympathise
or even be aware of the ethos of individual fulfilment and development
offered to both sexes in school since it is not a part of their cultural
background. This conflict of values has led many parents in Britain to
become more repressive. Higher education by girls is rarely achieved
without struggle although there are recent indications that more Muslim
girls are attending British universities. On the other hand, many religious
parents see that the solution is to provide girls with a dar al-ulum education
only. In the meantime there is considerable evidence that Muslim children
of subcontinent origin are not doing as well in school as they should be.
Young Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have a much higher unemployment rate
than either the indigenous population, or indeed any other minority group.
Status within British society

Any analysis of class in the Muslim community must take place on two
levels. Within British society Muslims are likely to be perceived as working-
class or even as an underclass. Their economic position has changed very
little in the last thirty years; the majority are still concentrated in the semi-
skilled and unskilled sectors of industry. Subcontinent Muslims, in
particular, suffer disproportionately from unemployment due to their
concentration in manufacturing industries and the continuation of racist
attitudes in job allocation.
The most noticeable change is in the growing number of self-employed
Muslims. This may reflect a shift away from focusing on the country of
origin and an acknowledgement that the future is in Britain. Money that
was once sent home to relatives in the subcontinent may now be used to
establish small businesses. Essentially these enterprises are set up to serve
the requirements of the growing communities. This is facilitated by the way
in which various migrant groups gathered together in relatively small areas
of particular towns and cities. These entrepreneurs concentrated on
providing goods and services that reinforced the ethnic identity of their
customers and this has resulted in a further closing of ranks amongst the
Muslim populations. As the community becomes more autonomous,
Muslim men and women can define their status within their own group.
Thus the class position thrust upon them by the indigenous community
becomes largely irrelevant in terms of self-esteem.
Amongst fellow-Muslims class status can be derived from several
sources. Community leaders are provided with considerable prestige based
on their education, their economic status, the length of time their family
has been in Britain (original settlers are well-respected as community
elders), the status of their family in the country of origin, Islamic
Britain
scholarship, and membership of voluntary organisations such as welfare
organisations and mosque committees. The membership of the latter is
likely to be dominated by those with high status in the community. The
committee which runs each mosque in Britain is usually controlled by
businessmen and the professional middle class. Very often these are also the
original settlers in the area. This control of the mosque will have important
consequences for the development of Islam in Britain. The firm grip of the
older generation is often resented by the generation born in Britain as the
latter feel that the issues which are important to the old people are not
relevant to them.
It is often in the interests of local Muslim entrepreneurs to maintain
ethnic identity and this has sometimes resulted in conflict with the imam if
he represents a movement attempting to promote Islam as a universal faith.
This conflict, however, can also happen in reverse. Sometimes the imam will
be entrenched in a more tradition-based form of Islam that is influenced by
Sufi beliefs and village practices. This may not please all the members of the
mosque committee. The bulk of the migrants were small landholders in
their place of origin, people who considered themselves a class above
landless labourers. In migrating to Britain they have not hesitated to take on
work as labourers in mills, factories and foundries. Despite this apparent
loss of status and their low position vis-a-vis the receiving culture, it can be
argued that all migrants improve their class position by the actual process
of migration to cities. This, in turn, has a radical effect on the kind of Islam
they practise, since religion can be used to improve standing in the Muslim
community. Thus British Muslim communities are likely to be in
considerable flux with regard to their religious position. These changes
are unequal in different parts of the community, and can generate
considerable tension and intercommunal rivalry.
The pull towards Islamic militancy

One of the options open to disenchanted British-born Muslims is to join
one of the numerous movements often described as 'fundamentalist'. Many
of these organisations are addressing the problems discussed above. Islamic
'fundamentalism' has to be seen as a protest movement promulgating an
ideology which evokes a response from those groups which are the most
acutely aware of the tensions presented by the contemporary world.
Although British, many Muslims still feel exploited by Western colonialism.
They also face unequal opportunities even though promised success if they
achieve the academic goals of education. Some of them can feel let down by
both the culture of their birth and the culture of their parents.
'Fundamentalism' attracts them because it is quintessentially modern; that
is to say, it constitutes a response to events and conditions in the present. In
Britain, the values of modernity call for increasing assimilation into the
cultural mainstream of the society into which the Muslims have settled. At
the same time, opportunities to do this on an equal footing are denied. On
the other hand the emergence of migrant communities which preserve
group solidarity by defining identity ethnically cannot offer very much to
young Muslims who firmly feel themselves to be British. Islamic revivalist
movements, in their affirmation of religious authority as absolute and
holistic, offer one solution to this dilemma. Although the establishment of
an Islamic state is clearly an unrealistic goal in a British inner city where
Muslims are a small minority, it should be apparent why it still remains the
ideal for some. In this context a variety of organisations have developed in
Britain but none has been able to provide a unified umbrella for this kind of
Islamic commitment. After the extensive publicity at the time of the
Rushdie affair several individuals were prepared to exploit the media's
tendency to sensationalise and stereotype the Muslim presence in Britain.
Foremost among these was Kalim Siddiqui who had been a journalist
himself. He had been a member of the little-known Muslim Institute in
London who throughout the 1980s identified with the cause of the Islamic
revolution in Iran. He had supported Ayotollah Khomeini's fatwa (an
opinion concerning Islamic law given by a member of the learned scholars)
calling for a death sentence on Rushdie, and in 1990 issued the Muslim
Manifesto which called for a parliament run on the lines of the Board of
Deputies which represents the needs of the Jewish community in Britain.
However, in spite of achieving considerable publicity and presenting himself
as a leader of the 'Islamic Movement' in Britain, Kalim Siddiqui did not
succeed in uniting even those Muslims who agreed with his ideology.
This ideology presents religion as not merely an individual commitment
entailing personal piety nor a group loyalty which requires the formal
ecclesiastical membership implicit in the arguments of secularisation
theorists but a complete way of life. The phenomenon of 'fundamentalism'
indicates that religion can be the corporate public action of religiously
motivated individuals to change the social system on behalf of what they
perceive to be their deepest spiritual loyalties. Thus for some Muslims in
Britain the concept of the umma becomes of central importance in their
religious ideology. It is able to provide some British-born Muslims with an
identity which transcends both their allegiance to nationality and the
culture of their parents. The indigenous culture which is so often
unaccepting of the Muslim presence can be opposed by the concept of
the umma used as a challenge to the overriding secular view of the world
dominant in Britain.
Before a clear direction for a uniquely British Muslim community can be
ascertained, it will be necessary to resolve the issues which have been the
subject of this analysis. The form that the community takes will be forged
out of the process of resolving these thorny problems. For most Muslims in
Britain, this is not a simple transformation. It is extremely hard for them to
find, in the midst of ethnic differences, a religious/cultural consensus which
is simultaneously based on Islamic principles and capable of encompassing
full participation in the cultural resources of the receiving culture. It is a
balancing act which, if not successful, could divide the community on
religious as well as ethnic grounds. Failure could lead either to extreme
forms of Islam with the community alienated from both the indigenous and
the migrant cultures; or else to assimilation into Britain's secular society,
thus reducing Islamic belief and practice to the private sphere.
In spite of the problems involved in dealing not only with major ethnic
and geographical divisions but also with the important regional, linguistic,
social and political differences within the major groupings, there are signs
that Islam is becoming the dominant mark of identity for the Muslim
population. This is not only the product of the shift from the villages of the
subcontinent to major urbanlindustrial centres of Britain but is also
influenced by the worldwide resurgence of Islam. Certainly there is evidence
that religious identity in the British Muslim community is becoming the
sharpest focus for establishing a sense of selfhood. The early migrants
experienced a sense of loss but the second generation often voice a protest
at a feeling of denial of self or confusion of identity.
Islam is, in one form or another, the heritage of all Muslims who have
come to live in Britain. Initially, the society they joined was virtually devoid
of all symbols of Islam. Many of these symbols have now appeared in
Britain and Muslims can observe the familiar outlines of mosques complete
with dome and minarets on the skylines of British industrial cities and take
pride in their achievements. Islam is now the second largest religion
practised in Britain and is there to stay. Along with the symbols have come
the controversies. The Islamic world is involved in the process of
rediscovering what it means to be Muslim; this too is the focus for British
Muslims. It is imperative to evolve and generate a new pattern of life which
is in harmony with the values and norms of Islam but which, in the context
of life chances, is based firmly in Britain. Many have already discovered
that minorities need distinctive or alternative systems of resources to give
them a greater degree of resistance. They are finding this in their common
Islamic identity, but the process will involve continuous bargaining and
negotiating between
(a) the British social, economic and cultural environment;
(b) the ideals and expectations of various components derived from the
countries of origin; and
(c) the ideational forces of orthodox Islam in its several forms.
There is clearly no one group or grouping which on its own has the strength
to impress itself on the majority of the Muslim population.
So far, there are no real indications that Muslims in Britain are following
that path towards complete assimilation that has already been trodden by
the majority of Britain's Catholics and to a lesser extent British Jews. Many
young Muslims claim that assimilation is not a genuine choice since the
indigenous white culture will always discriminate against them on the
grounds of colour. Integration is criticised by many in the receiving culture
as remaining separate. It is seen as a critique of the British 'way of life', and
very often it is. Some young Muslims see three choices being presented to
them by the receiving culture:
(i) to develop individuality and avoid group identity which would leave
them even more isolated than they are now;
(ii) to adopt the cultural norms of the indigenous culture; or
(iii) to be more subservient and obedient which is perceived to be a form of
internal colonialism.
Embracing Islam as a religious experience rather than a cultural heritage is
providing increasing numbers of young Muslims with an alternative to the
pressure to assimilate into British culture on the one hand, and on the other
to respond to parental persuasion to conform to various strands of
imported ethnic culture. Thus it can be seen that the situation is not a
straight choice between assimilation and integration. The indigenous
culture will have to come to terms with two major groups demanding the
right to integrate: one on ethnicIracia1 grounds, the other on purely
religious grounds. This can create considerable confusion. Both will call on
Islam to support their case, and it will not always be easy for the receiving
culture to distinguish between the two.
Literature
For an introduction to the development and growth of the Muslim
community in Britain see the relevant chapters in Jargen Nielsen, Muslims
in Western Europe: (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992) and
Philip Lewis, Islamic Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994).The former shows
the origins, present-day ethnic composition, distribution and organisation
of the community along with the political, legal and cultural contexts in
which the British Muslims exist. The latter explores some of the problems
facing the Muslim community after the Rushdie affair and the Gulf War by
focusing on the situation in the city of Bradford. A Muslim perspective of
the situation can be found in Mohammad Raza, Islam in Britain (Leicester:
Volcano Press, 1991).
A discussion of the choices of assimilation, integration and isolation
facing the Muslim communities is in the chapter by John Wolfe,
'Fragmented Universality: Islam and Muslims', in The Growth of Religious
Diversity, I, ed. Gerald Parsons (London: Routledge, 1993). The Rushdie
Affair and its impact on British Muslims are discussed in Malise Ruthwen,
A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam (London: Chatto
and Windus, 1990). An exploration of the relationship between Muslims
and the British state is found in Steven Vertovec, 'Muslims, the State, and
the Public Sphere in Britain', in Muslim Communities in the New Europe,
eds. Gerd Nonneman, Tim Niblock and Bogdan Szajkowski (Reading:
Ithaca, 1996). A similar area is covered at local government level by Jnrgen
Nielsen, 'Muslims in Britain and Local Authority Responses', pp. 53-77 in
The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe, eds. Tomas Gerholm and
Yngve Georg Lithman (London: Mansell, 1988).
The history of the various subcontinent Islamic movements at work in
Britain and an exploration of their possible impact on the development of
the community can be found in Ron Geaves, Sectarian Influences within
Islam in Britain (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1996). An excellent history of
the early Yemeni communities is explored in Fred Halliday, Arabs in Exile:
Yemeni Migrants in Urban Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 1992). The
incidence, motivations and impact of conversion to Islam in Britain is
explored in Ali Kose, Conversion to Islam: A Study of Native British
Converts (London: Kegan Paul, 1996). The importance of Sufism in the
development of the Muslim community is explored in a forthcoming book
by Ron Geaves, Sufis in Britain (Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 1999).
Finally, a statistical analysis of the Muslim populations can be found in
Muhammad Anwar, Muslims in Britain: 1991 Census and Other Statistical
Sources (Birmingham, 1993).
Chapter Seventeen
The Nordic Countries

Ingvar Svanberg
The Nordic countries are, according to sociologist David Martin's research,

among the most secularised in the world. Only a very small minority of the
population are regular churchgoers. Apart from participation in religious
activities, secularisation may also be defined by the role that religion is
allowed to play in society. The majority regard religion as a personal matter
of conscience that does not have any major social dimensions or
implications. There is certainly a prevailing Lutheran tradition that still
permeates the Nordic societies, but the concepts of being Swedish,
Norwegian, Finnish or Danish are more closely associated with democracy,
modernity and other non-religious concepts.
Since World War I1 Sweden, Denmark and Norway in particular have
experienced a religious revival in at least two different ways. Parallel with a
steadily decreasing religiosity in the traditional sense, new religions have
entered the scene. The more marginal variety has been the interest among
young people in various so-called sects, sometimes originating in the United
States, sometimes in India and other Asian countries. Satanism, Veganism
and Neo-Paganism are new elements on the religious scene. Of particular
importance is the spread of New Age ideas and practices. However, an
apparently more substantial change on the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish
religious maps has come with immigration from other countries and
cultural spheres.
As a result of this influx, well-established religious congregations such as
the Roman Catholic Church and the Mosaic congregations have
experienced an important revival and a substantial increase in the number
of active members. Other churches and religions have been established for
the first time as a result of adherents moving to Scandinavia. Today there
are congregations of various Oriental churches and Muslims, Buddhists,
Hindus and Sikhs exercise their religion within Nordic societies. These
congregations thus exist in environments where religion essentially is a part
of the private sphere. Religious practice has become individualised and its
symbolic values have become transformed.
In Finland the presence of Islam goes back to the nineteenth century - the
first Muslims came with the Russian army - while organised Islamic
activities reckons around fifty years in Sweden. In Denmark and Norway its
arrival is somewhat more recent. Its comparatively brief history, the
marginality of its followers and the lack of unity between the Muslim
organisations have all contributed to the low profile of Muslims in the
Nordic countries until ten to fifteen years ago. Since the mid 1980s the
Islamic presence in the Nordic countries has become increasingly notice-
able. The labour immigrants of the 1960s and 1970s have strengthened
their positions as minorities with an intensifying self-confidence. They have
also aged, and both the immigrant generation and their Nordic-born
children have become more interested in religious matters. Due to the influx
of refugees from so-called Third World countries in the 1980s and early
1990s, foreigners dressed according to Muslim practice can be seen in
public in almost every town and city in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Youth descending from the labour immigrants from Turkey of the 1960s
can also be seen in such attire. Even in Finland some people can be
identified as Muslims due to their dress code.
This new visibility, together with the on-going discussions around the
construction of mosques, religious schools and ritual slaughter, have caused
debates about the Islamic presence, or threat, as some people view it. Some
populist politicians - especially Mogens Glistrup in Denmark, who
nowadays also uses Internet to spread his islarnophobic messages - have,
together with the small Neo-Nazi groups, tried in vain to use this fear in
their political propaganda. Nevertheless, local resistance against mosque-
building has sometimes been very strong, and politicians have responded to
these public opinions despite the fact that religious freedom is granted in the
constitutions of the Nordic countries. On the other hand, the existing
mosque in Uppsala, the only one in the Nordic countries with a real minaret
and probably the northernmost purpose-built mosque in the world, is a
tourist attraction included in city tours. There is also a positive view of
Islam manifested in culture and music festivals and sometimes an
uncritically positive attitude among some intellectuals.
With the exception of Denmark, the Nordic countries lack a tradition of
having colonies. Despite a short period of ruling Tranquebar in India, the
Nicobars and some of the Virgin Islands, the Danish experience as a
colonial power is also restricted to Greenland and the Faroe Islands. In
contrast to other parts of Western Europe, the Nordic countries thus do not
have a long tradition of contacts with Muslims. However, exhibitions and
books on Islam, as well as some Muslims who present their religion for a
larger audience, sometimes stress that the Nordic countries have had a long
tradition of contacts with Islamic cultures. During the Viking Age, there
were frequent contacts with the Caliphate as a result of the Norsemen's
journeys to the south and east. A great number of mainly Abbasid and
Samidic coins with Arabic inscriptions have been found on the islands of
Oland and Gotland in the Baltic Sea, bearing witness to these contacts. In
his Risala, the emissary of the Baghdad Caliphate, Ibn Fadlan, gives an
exhaustive description of a Nordic chief's burial on the bank of the Volga in
922. Ibn Fadlan's description is perhaps the most important narrative
source concerning the pre-Christian Norsemen's customs and habits.
While Denmark allowed Jews and Catholics some religious freedom as
early as in the 1680s, the clergy at the same time was opposed to all kinds of
non-Lutheran believers in Sweden. In the Swedish Church Law of 1686 it is
stated that 'Jews, Turks, Morians and Pagans entering the country should
be informed about the right belief and baptised as Christians'. Once
baptised, however, they were permitted to settle in Sweden. In fact, a few
Muslims were baptised at the end of the seventeenth century. Some 'Turks'
were baptised in Stockholm, in Storkyrkan in 1672 and in the German
Church in 1695. During Sweden's period as a Great Power from the
accession of Gustavus I1 Adolphus in 1611 until the death of Charles XI1 in
1718, the Lutheran orthodoxy ruled out virtually all immigration of non-
Protestants to Sweden. However, an exception was made under Charles
XII, who in 1718 issued a royal letter permitting Muslim religious services
to be held within Sweden's frontiers. This permission related to Charles
XII's creditors from the Sublime Porte who were staying in Karlskrona. A
few early converts are mentioned in biographical literature. In the 1680s,
Johan Hjulhammar, sergeant of the Life Guards, converted to Islam. The
author and diplomat Gustaf Noring (1861-1937) from Malmo moved to
Constantinople and converted in 1884, simultaneously adopting the name
Ali Nouri. When the Turkish name reform was passed in the 1920s, he
added the family name Dilmes. The artist Ivan Agutli (1869-1917) was
another well-known convert, who assumed the name Abdul Hadi al-
Maghrabi. During many years he published a daily newspaper in Arabic in
Cairo. Contacts with Muslims were, furthermore, established because of
Swedish, Danish and Norwegian Christian missionary work in Islamic
areas. Attempts were made to convert, among others, the Bashkirs in Russia
in the 1890s, Muslims in northern Iran at the beginning of the twentieth
century, Uighurs in southern Xinjiang up to the 1930s, and continue among
the Pathans in Pakistan. These missions never met with any great success.
On the other hand, they increased knowledge and understanding of Islam,
at least among individual missionaries.
Needless to say, moving from one country to another cause strains and
doubts about basic assumptions and values. The essence of uprooting is the
challenging of the stability of the plausibility structure. In this context the
role of religion may be described as a tool to actualise the culture of the
native country and to make that culture plausible in a foreign environment.
Religion may serve to maintain a totality of beliefs and values. According to
the sociologists Albert Bartenier and Felice Dassetto, the relationship

between immigrants and religion can be discussed in different perspectives:
'national religion', i.e. transplanting religious congregations to the country
of immigration; 'indigenous religion', implying assimilation into congrega-
tions in the new environment; 'para-religion' in which the congregations act
as social and psychological aid organisations and intermediaries between
immigrants and the majority population; 'folk religion', i.e. the develop-
ment of non-orthodox religious behaviour in an emigration context; and,
finally, 'sect religion' with missionary activities on the part of various
'sects'. The Muslim adaptation to the Nordic societies demonstrates most
of these characteristics.
The contemporary presence of Islam in the Nordic countries is primarily
a result of post-war labour and refugee immigration. The Muslims arrived
as labour immigrants during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly from
Turkey, Yugoslavia and Pakistan. In the 1970s and 1980s many Muslims
arrived as asylum-seekers and refugees from the Middle East and various
African countries. Most Muslims are therefore first or second generation
immigrants. In the late 1990s there were around 80,000 organised and
practising Muslims in Sweden, 50,000 in Norway, 67,000 in Denmark and
10,000 in Finland. Muslims are found also in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
As mentioned above, the first Muslims of Finland migrated there as early as
in the nineteenth century, while the country was still under Russian rule.
Tatar soldiers and merchants spent varying periods i~ Finland. There is a
Muslim burial-place for soldiers on the islands of Aland that still bear
witness to their presence. After Finland became independent in 1917 some
Tatars remained in the country, and the first Islamic congregation was
established in Helsinki in 1925. In Finland, Muslims are therefore regarded
as an indigenous ethno-religious minority rather than as a recent immigrant
group as they are in other Nordic countries.
There are no exact figures on how many Muslims actually live in the
Nordic countries. No official registration of the population's religious
affiliation exists. Such statistics are probably impossible to gather. One
problem is the definition of the term 'Muslim'. Many emigrants from Turkey
and Iran in the Nordic countries regard themselves as secular, without any
close contact with Islamic traditions and the performance of religious
rituals. Well-educated citizens from Turkey and Iran, as well as many
nationalistic Kurds from these countries, do not want to be connected with
Islam, which they see as an expression of under-development and archaic
cultural traditions. Some Iranian immigrants have even protested about
being called Muslims in various contexts. In, for instance, the Persian-
Swedish periodical Hambastegi an editorial writer considered it a mockery
for Iranians, who risked their lives in the struggle for a democratic and
secular society in Iran, to be classified as Muslims in Sweden. A new concept
- introduced by some scholars together with immigration bureaucrats - in
Svanberg
this context is 'ethnic Muslim'. However, according to other scholars the

term 'ethnic Muslims' belongs to the category of meaningless terms of the
1990s, which have gained strong ground in administrative language use. All
those who have immigrated from Muslim countries or have parents from
these countries are regarded as Muslims. Using that method, it has been
calculated that 200,000 or even 300,000 Muslims live in Sweden. How
many of these people really are Muslims, that is, believe in God and the
Prophet Muhammad and carry out their obligations as believers is difficult
to say. Freedom of religion, however, must encompass the right not to be
called a Muslim, as well as the right to be a Muslim. The fact that everyone
who has roots in a Muslim country is automatically termed an 'ethnic
Muslim' is probably a hideous expression of the alienation mechanisms in
the Nordic countries. The only reasonable figures are registered members in
religious organisations.
Research on Islam
Although actual contacts with Muslims have been limited, there has been a
scholarly interest in Islam among historians of religion, philologists and
theologians in the Nordic countries over the centuries. The Swedish
diplomat Claes Rilamb (1622-98) was perhaps one of the first Westerners
to give a non-polemic description of Islam. Swedish contacts with the
Ottoman Empire also resulted in the acquisition of many Islamic objets
d'art, which may be found today in public museum collections. During the
eighteenth century, Cornelius Loos (1686-1738) and Michael Eneman
(1676-1714) were among those who contributed to the knowledge of
Islam. A unique map of Mecca that was brought to Sweden by Eneman in
1713 is still owned by the Uppsala University Library. One of the world's
oldest existing Quran manuscripts was brought back to Sweden by Jacob
Jonas BjornstHhl (1731-1779) and is still stored at Uppsala University
Library. Mathias Norberg (1747-1826), professor in Lund, presided over
several dissertations on Islam and Muslim belief. Herman Almqvist (1839-
1904), produced popular works on the Quran; and Johan Theodor
Nordling (1826-90), besides the exegesis of the Old Testament, also taught
the Quran. Carl Johan Tornberg (1807-77) produced important Arabic
manuscripts. He is also considered to be the most prominent Swede in the
field of Islamic numismatics. The university libraries at Uppsala and Lund,
and also the Royal Library in Stockholm, contain a large number of
Oriental manuscripts brought from Muslim countries in Western and
Central Asia. These manuscript collections are utilised by researchers
worldwide. Jacob Jacobsen Dampe (1790-1867) may be remembered as a
political martyr in Denmark, a victim of a justice scandal in Denmark, and
held for life as a prisoner on Christians@. However, he must also be
remembered for his doctoral thesis Conspectus et estimatio ethic^ Corani
(1812), which dealt with the ethical values of the Quran. A classic work is
the famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen's (1805-75) description
from 1842 of the religious dance of the Mevlevi dervishes in the Ottoman
Empire. The Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) let his famous
character Peer Gynt travel to North Africa, Timbuktu and Egypt to
5ncounter Islam in various ways and appear in the role as prophet. The
Aland islander Georg August Wallin (18 11-52) was an exceptional Arabist
of his time. He studied Bedouin nomads, lived among Arab town-dwellers
and was among the first non-Muslim scholars to undertake participant
observation as a pilgrim to Medina and Mecca. Eric Hermelin (1860-1944)
of Lund carried out the remarkable task of translating, in the 1930s, works
of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi and other Sufi authors into Swedish.
Hermelin's Rumi translations are being published in new editions, and still
arouse great interest. The works of Tor Andrae (1885-1947), professor of
history of religions and later bishop in the Lutheran Church of Sweden,
reflect an unusual understanding of Islamic philosophy and ideology. His
studies and biography of Muhammad have been translated into many
languages. During the 1990s, we have witnessed an increasing interest in
research on Islam in the Nordic countries. Today, wide-ranging research on
Islam in many disciplines of the humanities and social sciences is underway
at many Nordic universities. Recently a large number of books and scholarly
theses on various aspects of Islam and on Muslims have been published,
witnessing to the growing interest. Muslims are engaged in this research and
the expanding presence of Islam has boosted the increase in public interest.
Who are the Muslims?

Today, Islam is the largest non-Christian religion in all Nordic countries.
Most Muslims are immigrants from various geographical backgrounds,
although the number of local-born Muslims is increasing. The core group of
Muslims in Finland is the Mishar Tatars, who number some 900 persons,
according to recent estimates. They have their own prayer and community
premises at Fredriksgatan in the city centre of Helsinki. Others are living in
Turku (Abo), Tampere (Tammerfors)and Jarvenpaa. During the 1980s and
1990s Egyptians, Somalis, Bengalis and Kurds have emigrated to Finland.
Contact between the newcomers and the more secularised and integrated
Tatars is limited. Recent immigrants have therefore founded their own
congregations.
The first Islamic congregation in Stockholm was founded by a handful of
Tatars and Turks in the late 1940s. When the labour immigrants from
Turkey began to arrive in the mid 1960s the congregation increased and the
Islamic community started splitting up. The contemporary Muslims in
Sweden have disparate geographical, national and social backgrounds, and
there are many different ways of being religious. The Turks still constitute a
Svanberg
The Tatar mosque in Helsinki (photo: Ingvar Svanberg, 1998).
substantial part of the Muslim population in the country. They have to a

large degree continued to have their own congregations, some of them
sponsored by the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Isleri Bagkanligi)
in Istanbul. Those who are not members of congregations connected with
Diyaneti are members of new movements with Turkish background.
However, one must bear in mind that Turks of urban background are often
atheists or at least agnostics. Substantial numbers of Muslims originate
from Uganda, Kosovo, Iran, Eritrea, Somalia, Gambia, Bosnia, Morocco,
Pakistan, Iraq and Bangladesh. The largest concentrations live in Stock-
holm, Gothenburg and Malmo, although Muslims today can be found all
over the country.
Most Muslims in Denmark, as in Sweden, are labour and refugee
immigrants. The first Muslims arrived in the late 1960s. The labour
immigrants of Muslim background came primarily from Turkey, Pakistan,
Morocco and Macedonia. The largest group are of Turkish origin.
The demographic background of the Muslims in Norway is similar to

Sweden and Denmark. In the late 1960s and early 1970s labour immigrants
arrived from Turkey and Pakistan. Although the Turkish group is
significant, the Pakistani community already outnumbered them in the
1970s and is still the largest and most dominant Muslim group in Norway.
They are concentrated in Oslo and Akershus. Since the 1980s an increasing
number of refugees has arrived, including Muslim Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds,
Somalis, Bosnians and Kosovo Albanians. The largest concentrations of
these Muslims are found in and around Oslo and Drammen.
Although it is impossible to know how many converts there are, figures
nevertheless sometimes appear in various publications. On Internet the
following figures may be found: Sweden, 5,000; Denmark, 1,000-2,000;
Norway, 400; and Finland, 200.
Organisational structure
In Finland there are two national Muslim organisations: Finland's Islamic
Congregation (Suomi Islam Seurakunta) with mainly Tatar members, and
Finland's Islamic Community (Suomen Islamilainen Yhdyskunta) with
about 250 members of refugee background from the Middle East and the
Horn of Africa. It seems to organise both Shia and Sunni Muslims. A
smaller organisation is the Islamic Centre of Finland (Suomen Islam-
keskus), which has around 300 members. The newly established Helsinki
Islam Centre (Helsinki Islam-keskus) has mainly Arab and Somali
members. According to one source there are between fifteen and seventeen
Muslim prayer rooms distributed throughout the country.
In 1944, when there was a large influx of Estonian refugees to Sweden, a
handful of Mishar Tatars and a few other Muslims originating from the
Soviet Union came along with them. The formation of the first congregation
in 1949, the Turk-Islam Society in Sweden for Religion and Culture (Turk-
islamforeningen i Sverige for religion och kultur), is attributed to Ali
Zakerov, Osman Soukkan and Akif Arhan. The first meeting place for the
Swedish Muslims was the Kjellson's cafe on Birger Jarlsgatan in central
Stockholm. For many years the congregation remained relatively anon-
ymous, using public premises as prayer and meeting halls, although its
members developed their own institutions and rituals. The number of
Muslims was estimated at 500 in 1953. In 1959, the Swedish convert Bengt
Ismail Ericsson founded the Muslim Club and a small prayer hall in
Karrtorp, Stockholm. In 1964, another Swedish convert, Mohammad
Bashir ( = Goran Granquist), published a pamphlet about the history of
Islam in Sweden, probably the very first printed manifestation of Swedish
Islam.
Due to the Swedish traditions of popular associations (folkrorelser) and
a system providing the Islamic organisations with economic support from
Suanberg
the state, a kind of 'church structure' has developed. Islamic associations

have thus become incorporated into an organisational structure that
resembles that of Swedish free churches. There are several officially
recognised national Islamic federations in Sweden. The oldest national
federation is the United Islamic Communities in Sweden (Forenade
islamiska forsamlingar i Sverige). The government approved financial
support for this organisation in 1975. In 1997 it had thirty-nine
congregations with 21,900 members.
Political rather than theological differences among some of the Islamic
communities were the reason for the establishment of the Swedish Muslim
Federation (Sveriges muslimska forbund) by some congregations in the
larger cities. This national organisation was declared eligible for financial
support in 1983. In 1997 it included twenty-three congregations with a
total of 34,000 members. The Islamic Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
(Bosnien-Hercegovinas Islamiska Riksforbund) has nineteen associations. It
is not recognised by the authorities as a national federation by the
Commission for State Grants to Religious Communities (Samarbetsnamn-
den for statsbidrag till trossamfund). However, it cooperates with the
Swedish Muslim Federation. Many of the local Muslim associations
represent a single major ethnic group. There are, for example, associations
for Somalis, Gambians, Turks, Kurds and Albanians. Most of the
associations are, however, local organisations representing the Muslims in
a particular town.
In 1981 an additional nationwide organisation, the Union of the Islamic
Culture Centres in Sweden (Islamiska Kulturcenterunionen i Sverige),
appeared. It is an offshoot of the so-called Quran School Movement
(Suleymanli) in Turkey and has its roots in the Naqshbandi brotherhood.
The origin of this movement is still somewhat obscure. It grew strong in the
1970s among Turkish Gastarbeiter in Germany and had its first religious
centre in Cologne. The movement was apparently formed by Suleyman
Hilmi Tunahan (1888-1959), the son of a Naqshbandi shaykh, who settled
in Istanbul in the 1920s. The founder preached that, wherever he was
working, every brother should start one Quran class and provide for
another five to be opened. In the 1970s the movement made its
breakthrough in Europe, where it developed into a very hierarchical
organisation. At the outset it was particularly militant: its followers did not
want to cooperate with other religious groups. In the mid 1980s it existed in
Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, France, Denmark, Switzer-
land, Norway and Sweden. During recent years the members have changed
their approach and now work for more dialogue with the surrounding
community. In 1997 the Swedish members had eleven local congregations
claiming a total of 21,000 members. In Sweden, the movement has a very
clear church structure. Its leaders keep close contacts with the European
centre of the movement, located in Cologne. The Islamic Cultural Centres
are probably the best-organised Muslim organisations in Sweden. Their

leaders very often act as spokespersons for the Muslim community in the
mass media. They also have good contacts with authorities in Sweden.
Today, the organisation seeks contact with all areas of society. The
members collaborate with Christian organisations with regard to religious
issues, and they are eager to stress that they represent a Swedish
organisation.
A fifth organisation, the Islamic National Federation in Sweden
(Islamiska Riksforbundet i Sverige) has recently been established in Spinga,
near Stockholm. It claims to organise local congregations in five places in
central and southern Sweden. This federation lacks support from the
Commission for State Grants to Religious Communities.
It was not until 1972 that the Norwegian Muslim associations developed
an umbrella organisation similar to those in Sweden. The Norwegian
national organisation is called the Islamic Council. Before that the Muslim
associations were quite autonomous with little contact between them. The
first Muslim congregations in Norway were founded in the 1770s in the
Oslo area. The number has increased and in the early 1790s there were
nearly forty Muslim associations, more than half of which were located in
Oslo. According to a survey by Richard Natvig most congregations seem to
follow various ethnic or national groupings. Due to political or religious
differences the Moroccan community in Oslo is divided into Masjid
Attaouba, Masjid Hassan I1 and Center Rahma, the latter being oriented
toward the Jamaat al-Tabligh. The Sunni Turks in Drammen are members
of the Islamic Cultural Centre or the Turkish Religious Society. In Oslo they
are found in the Turkish Islamic Union and the Islamic Cultural Centre. The
cultural centres are probably branches of the Siileymanli movement.
Somalis, Yugoslavs and Kashmiris all have their own associations. In
Sarpsborg there is an association for Muslims from Uganda. As mentioned
previously, Pakistanis are the dominant group and they have established
numerous associations. Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat, founded in 1976,
with more than 5,000 members is the largest Pakistani association in
Norway. Outside Oslo, there are branches in Sandvika, Barum, Drammen,
Kristiansand as well as in northern Norway. It is a local association of the
international Barelwi movement. Another Pakistani Barelwi association in
Oslo is the World Islamic Mission of Norway with around 3,800 members.
Yet another international movement represented among the Pakistanis in
Norway is the Jamaat al-Tabligh with local associations in Oslo, where
their first association, Anjuman-e-Islahul Muslemeen, was created in 1977.
Other local al-Tabliq organisations are found in Drammen, Moss, Mandal,
Stavanger and Trondheim. Pakistanis also dominate the Islamic Cultural
Centre, founded in 1973 and one of the earliest Muslim religious
associations in Norway, although it also has North African members. It
reckons around 1,800 members. Moreover, there are two modern reform
Svanberg
movements among the Pakistanis in Norway with mostly intellectual

members. The Tulu al-Islam movement was founded in Delhi in 1938 by
Ghulam Ahmad Parwiz, which is represented by the association Basm-e
Tolu-e Islam in Oslo. In 1995 it had around 500 members. The other
Pakistani movement is Idara Minhaj ul-Quran, founded in 1980 in Lahore
by Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri. In 1994, this association had 2,500
members in Norway.
The Muslims of Denmark follow the same organisational pattern as in
Norway. Thus, they are organised mainly according to ethnic groups and
subdivisions relate to political or religious differences. The Turkish Diyanet
supports mosque associations with mainly Turkish members. In 1989 they
were, according to Jcargen Bak Simonsen, represented in Copenhagen and
nine small towns (Ishsj, Holbek, Slagelse, Farum, Tistrup, Hvidovre,
Hedehusene, Brabrand and Kcage). Diyaneti seems to control the majority
of the religious organisations used by Turkish immigrants.
There are a120 a couple of Islamic congregations in Denmark, in
Helsingsr and Arhus, belonging to Milli Goriig ('National View'), an
Islamic organisation with its headquarters in Cologne, Germany. Milli
Goriig was originally founded in 1975 in Germany. From there it has spread
to other European countries, including Denmark, Norway (Oslo) and
Sweden (Malmo). Apparently, it had close contacts with the now outlawed
Refah Partisi ('Welfare Party') in Turkey. Most members of the Milli Goriig
movement in Scandinavia are of Turkish background.
The Pakistanis in Denmark are divided into several Islamic associations.
The Muslim Institute on Vesterbrogade in central Copenhagen represents
the Barelwi movement. As is the case in Norway, some Pakistani
immigrants in Denmark are organised in the Minhaj ul-Quran movement
which is represented in Amager as well as in Ishsj, Gladsakse and Lyngby-
Tirbek. The Libyan Al-Dawa al-Islamiyya for furtherance of Islam is
present in Oslo and in Copenhagen. In Malmo the organisation supported
the building of the mosque financially.
Shia Muslims and Alevites

Sunni Muslims make up the overwhelming majority in all Nordic countries.
Muslims from Iran are, however, usually Shia Muslims, as are many from
Iraq and East Africa. In Sweden a federation for the Shia Muslims was
founded in the mid 1990s. Local Shia organisations are found in
Trollhattan in southern Sweden, where there is a purpose-built Shia
Muslim mosque, in Marsta north of Stockholm and in Jakobsberg, a suburb
of Stockholm. Organised Shia groups seem to be of Pakistani, East African
and Iraqi background. Jonkoping in southern Sweden also has a small
group of Muslims, mainly Gujarati-speaking Shiites from Uganda, who
have lived there since the 1970s. According to estimates the local Muslim
population amounted to 1,000 persons at the end of 1990. They have one
local organisation, but the Shiites and the Sunnites both have their own
prayer rooms. Because of the Uganda Muslims, the Shia proportion is
rather high, comprising almost 40 per cent of the Muslim community in
Jonkoping.
The Shia Muslims of Oslo have their own association, Anjuman-e-
Hussaini, founded in 1974, with members from Pakistan and other
countries. In 1995 it had about 700 members. Another Shia organisation,
Tawheed Islamic Centre, was founded in 1994 in Oslo. The members
originate from Iraq and south Lebanon. A third Shia organisation in Oslo,
Sader Islamic Centre, was founded in 1997. The Shia Muslims of Finland
are usually of Iraqi background and are mostly found in Turku (Abo).
A high percentage of Turkish immigrants in Uppsala have Kurdish as
their mother tongue. Many of them are Alevites with their origin in the
Kahramanmarash area of southeastern Turkey. Due to their labour market
within so-called ethnic business in Sweden many Alevites from Uppsala
have settled in other towns and cities as well. Kurdish-speaking Alevites are
also found in Denmark, particularly in Esbjerg and Roskilde. In Drammen
in Norway, the Turkish immigrants to a large degree consist of Turkish-
speaking Alevites from central Anatolia. Most of them came originally from
Demirkoyii in Konya district.
For a long time the Alevites did not develop any religious activity. In
Sweden and Denmark they instead stressed the national struggle for the
Kurds. The persistence of the importance of religious boundaries among
these Kurds, however, is shown by the fact that marriage across religious
boundaries is rare. One known case caused strong indignation within the
community and the couple had to leave for another country. However,
during the last few years there has been an increasing mobilising activity
among Alevi immigrants in Germany. After the Sivas massacre in 1993 this
activity gained momentum, and Alevites in many other countries began to
organise themselves into cultural organisations. In 1995 the Alevites in
Sweden formed their first organisation. This was achieved mainly by a
younger more educated Swedish-born generation, that has begun to
organise themselves. The organisation claims the number of Swedish Alevis
at around 5,000 people. A few Ismailis, originally from Pakistan, live in
Sweden and there is one Ismaili congregation established in Gothenburg.
Sufism
With the recently arrived refugees from Kosovo, Bosnia and Africa several
Sufi groups have come to Scandinavia, although our knowledge of them is
still very limited. However, organised Sufism has been present in Sweden
since the 1920s. In 1925 the universalistic Indian Sufi leader Inayat Khan
(1882-1927) visited Sweden and attracted some upper-class women in
Svanberg
Stockholm. In 1997 most members of Inayat Khan's Sufi movement in

Sweden where a handful of ageing women. There is also a branch of this
movement in Norway. Criticism against the Sufi movement from other
groups exists, and many Muslims see it as a pseudo-Sufi group.
In Gothenburg there is a group of converts called the Sophia Foundation.
These Sufi converts follow the teaching of Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, who was
born in Karbala, Iraq. After many years in England he became interested in
Sufism. He founded the Zahra Trust UK and published several books that
were translated into many languages. Haeri now lives in South Africa,
Mallorca and England. Around 1990 he met a Swede who invited him to
Sweden, which was the beginning of the Swedish Sophia Foundation. In
1997 there were about twenty members. The Gothenburg group is now
part of a worldwide Sufi network. They often travel to visit Sufis in other
countries. They also collaborate internationally with a group of Rifaiyya
under Shaykh Assaf in the United States. In 1998 this group opened a Sufi
centre near Gothenburg.
The interest in Sufism also prevails among New Age-influenced people,
and since the 1970s among the adherents of Baghwaan. Sufism has inspired
several Swedish intellectuals, and one of Sweden's foremost modern poets,
Gunnar Ekelof (1907-68), was among those who were keenly interested in
its wisdom. In his collections of poems Diwan over Fursten av Emgibn,
Sagan om Fatumeh and Vagvisare till underjorden - now also translated
into Turkish and Arabic - the reader can discern many influences from the
mystics of Sufism. The contemporary author Torbjorn Safve has taken the
full step of converting to Sufi Islam. He has also issued Sufi texts by Ibn al-
Arabi and others in Swedish translation. Several modern forms of music are
heavily Sufi-influenced; this applies both to arabesque music from Turkey,
which is widespread in certain circles, and to hip-hop, which has inspired a
whole youth generation.
Within the immigrant population several Sufi orders exist, although our
knowledge of their presence is still limited. The Naqshbandi order is active
among Turks in Stockholm as part of an international network. A
Naqshbandi shaykh is living in southern Sweden. Basm-e Naqshband has
around 600 members in Oslo. Other Naqshbandi groups seem to be active
among both Turkish and Pakistani immigrants in Norway. In the
Stockholm suburb Duvbo there is a Sufi-house owned by a group of
Iranian Nimatullahiyya headed by Nadir Kohani. In Norway Sufism plays
an important role among the Pakistani immigrants. The largest Muslim
congregation in Norway, Jamaat e-Ah1 e-Sunnat, has had imams who have
been recruited from Chistiyya and Qadiriyya. Another Oslo-based Sufi
0:ganisation is the Ghousia Muslim Society for Qadiri Muslims. In Turku
(Abo) in Finland there is a tiny group of Bektashi Sufis. Another Finnish Sufi
community is called Islam and Love (Islam ja Rakkaus). It was founded in
1994 in Helsinki, and now has about 30 members.
------ -----
The Ahmadiyya mosque in Hvidovre outside Copenhagen (photo: Ingvar

Svanberg, 1997).
The Ahmadiyya in the Nordic countries

In organised form the Ahmadiyya movement, which was established in
India 1889, has been active in the Nordic countries at least since 1956,
when the Pakistani Kamal Yousof came as a missionary. The movement
now has an active mission in all Nordic countries and a number of converts,
although most members seem to be of Pakistani or East African Asian
background. When Zia ul-Haqq seized power in Pakistan in 1977 many
Ahmadiyya members fled from the persecution to Western Europe, mainly
to England, but also to Germany and Scandinavia.
In Denmark, an Ahmadiyya mosque was inaugurated in Hvidovre
outside Copenhagen in 1967. This was the first proper mosque built in the
Nordic countries. In Norway, the first Ahmadiyya congregation was
founded in Oslo in 1974, and in 1980 the members converted a house into a
mosque, the Nor Mosque, at Frogner in Oslo. At present there are around
850 members in Norway. Most of them have a Pakistani background, but a
Norwegian convert, Truls Bolstad, heads the group. The community has a
local radio station in Oslo. The spiritual leader of the movement, the
Khalif, visited Gothenburg in 1975 in order to place the cornerstone for a
mosque and in the spring of 1976 the Nasir Mosque was dedicated. Today
Svanberg
there are Ahmadiyya congregations in five other Swedish places, among

others in Malmo and Stockholm.
Although they see themselves as Muslims, the Ahmadiyya supporters are
excluded from other Muslim communities and are not regarded by the
majority of Muslims as part of the Islamic community in the Nordic
countries. In Sweden, the authorities seem to accept this point of view and
never list Ahmadiyya among the Muslim organisations. In Norway
especially the conflicts have been rather fierce between Ahmadiyya and
non-Ahmaddiya Pakistani Muslims. In the 1960s, the movement published
the periodical Aktiv Islam in Swedish, and a Danish version is still
published in Hvidovre.
Quran translations
In Denmark Frants Buhl and Owe C. Krarup translated parts of the Quran
in the 1950s. A full translation, made by the Ahmadiyya convert A.S.
Madsen, was published in 1967. It has been reprinted several times,
although it has been criticised by many Danish Muslims. A Norwegian
translation was made available in part in 1952, while an unabridged
translation by the linguist and Arabist Einar Berg was published in 1980
and again in 1989. Parts of a new translation by the Shiite Trond Ali
Lindstad into Norwegian were published in 1996. The Norwegian
Ahmadiyya published a translation in 1996.
There are several complete translations of the Quran into Swedish. The
first was Fredrik Crustenstolpe's translation from 1843, followed in 1874
by Carl Johan Tornberg's. Still available in bookshops is Karl Vilhelm
Zetterstken's translation, which was published for the first time in 1917.
With its reverent tone, in archaic and Bible-influenced Swedish, it has been
considered one of the best translations. The internationally renowned
Swedish scholar H.S. Nyberg even argued that it was 'by far the best and
most accurate in any European language'. In recent years, there have been
new translations of the Quran into Swedish. Qanita Sadiqa, who is a
Swedish Ahmadiyya convert, assisted in a translation that appeared in
1988. In 1994 the Bilal Mission of Scandinavia published a Quran
translation by Jan ~ h l a n d e rAnother
. translation has been prepared by Knut
Mohammed Bernstrom, a former Swedish diplomat and convert residing in
Morocco. In April 1998 the Swedish government decided to subsidise the
printing of this translation into Swedish.
Islamic publications and institutions

During recent years, the Muslims of the Nordic countries have become
better organised and developed various institutions. Since the 1970s
Swedish Muslims have, for example, published several magazines. Nowa-
days, the most important Muslim journal in Sweden is Salaam, which is

published in Swedish by the Islamic Information Association in Stockholm.
The Muslim Youth Organisation in Uppsala (Muslimska ungdomsforbun-
det i UppsalaIMUFU) publishes MUFU-bladet, a periodical pamphlet.
Swedish Muslim organisations are also very active on Internet with their
own homepages and information bulletins both in English and Swedish. In
Finland there are two magazines, An-Nur and the simpler Al-Islam. The
Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat of Oslo has published the monthly
Tarjaman-e Islam in Urdu. The Shia convert Trond Ali Linstad publishes
the Muslim magasin in Norwegian, Arabic and Urdu. Both in Denmark and
Norway local radio broadcast stations exist, for example Radio al-Fatah in
Denmark and Radio Islam Ahmadiyya in Oslo.
An Islamic bank was founded in Denmark in 1983. It is used by various
Muslim organisations for economic transactions. The Islamic Relief
Organisation is active in Sweden, gathering money for Muslim relief work
in Bosnia and elsewhere. The civil war and genocide in Bosnia, where
Muslims were left unprotected by the Western world, became an important
catalyst for many Swedish-born youth with immigrant parents from
Muslim countries. They became increasingly engaged in relief activities as
well as in Muslim affairs in general.
Being a Muslim
Studies in various contexts such as schools, the work place and the military
service show that being a Muslim in the Nordic countries is relatively easy.
Employers and military officers allow Muslims to pray according to their
faith, and special food is served in mess halls and schools. The legal
traditions of the Nordic countries do not permit special legal regulations for
a particular religious group. Viewing religion as a private matter provides a
new perspective on religious life for many Muslim immigrants. In Germany
the selling of food classed as halal has prompted a rapid and very successful
establishment of Islamic business chains that provide various kinds of in-
group service, from different provisions (including halal bread!) to package
tours to Turkey. The people who are active in this process have been equally
important for the promotion of religious and political groupings. However,
this kind of Muslim entrepreneurship does not seem to exist in the Nordic
countries.
Today public opinion generally accepts the fact that certain articles of
food are forbidden for Muslims. Institutions such as schools and hospitals
have adapted to the need for special menus, not only for Muslims, but also
for vegetarians, or people with food allergies. Since pork products are
included in many food additives, however, it has become more difficult to
decide what food may be considered acceptable. The Swedish National
Food Administration (Svenska Livsmedelsverket) has, for example,
compiled a list of food additives that contain pork products as a guide for
Swedish Muslims and Jews. Major Swedish chocolate and candy factories
have also compiled such lists.
Halal meat is readily available in grocery shops runned by immigrants of
Turkish, Arab or Pakistani background. In Denmark there are halal
butcheries, while Sweden and Norway together with Switzerland are the
only three countries in Europe that do not allow religious slaughter without
preceding anaesthesia. Since 1929 and 1937, respectively, it has been
prohibited in Norway and Sweden to slaughter larger animals without
preceding anaesthesia. The demand for compulsory anaesthesia was part of
reforms aimed at protecting animals. However, an important part of the
argumentation centred on the distrust of 'foreign' habits. The debate about
kosher slaughter before the prohibition often contained anti-Semitic
elements. Slaughtering according to Jewish and Muslim tradition has been
discussed in the Swedish parliament several times, but the decision-makers
have been unwilling to change their attitude to the prohibition of such
slaughter.
Muslims in Norway and Sweden who demand halal meat therefore have
to rely on import products. Increasingly such meat is imported from
Denmark, New Zealand and Australia. In 1996 Denmark exported to
Norway and Sweden almost half of its produced halal meat (between 5,000
and 6,000 cattle and sheep). The Middle East is also a very important
market for the Danish meat industry, and around 90 per cent, or 10 million,
of the religiously slaughtered poultry were exported to the Middle East in
1996. However, as in many other countries allowing religious slaughter
according to Jewish and Islamic rules, there is also a polemical debate in the
Danish media about it.
Some Muslims in Norway and Sweden slaughter lambs themselves,
according to Islamic rules, especially around the Festival of Sacrifice (Id al-
Adha), although this is illegal. Since many of the Muslims come from rural
backgrounds, where people often slaughter themselves, they have the
necessary skills. There are also farmers who are willing to sell lambs to
them. In Sweden some of these illegal slaughters have been reported to the
police and some Muslims have been prosecuted. In the long-run the
familiarity with slaughtering will probably be lost. Having meat slaugh-
tered according to religious prescriptions is, however, not an imperative for
all Muslims in Sweden and Norway. In 1995 the Turkish Diyaneti issued a
fatwa (legal decision) allowing Muslims, obviously with Turks living in the
diaspora in mind, to slaughter after electric shocks have been used as
anaesthesia. In December 1996 a Muslim congregation in Stockholm
declared that they accepted anaesthesia with injections before the throat of
the animal is cut. Also a couple of Islamic organisations in Denmark have
approved stunning in an agreement with the Danish Livestock and Meat
Board.
Mosque issues
Debates about mosques are very similar in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and
Finland. Despite early plans, Danish Muslims have not been able to build a
mosque in Copenhagen due to protests from the surrounding people.
Attempts to build a city mosque in Oslo met with protests from various
Christian groups, feminists and others. It was not until 1995 a purpose-
built mosque was inaugurated in the Norwegian capital. In a report
published by the Democratic Audit of Sweden (Demokratir2det) in 1995, it
is stated that 48 per cent of the Swedish population claim to be against the
building of proper mosques, despite the constitutional law on freedom of
religion. The mosque appears to be a loaded symbol in a conflict between
acceptance or denial of a visible Muslim presence in Sweden. Reactions
have been forecast in Stockholm and Gothenburg, but feelings have been
voiced in many other parts of the country too. Nevertheless, four major
mosques - in Malmo, Trollhattan, Uppsala and the Ahmaddiya mosque in
Gothenburg - were built in Sweden before 1998. A former pentacostal
church has been transformed into a mosque in Vaster&. Moreover,
advanced plans for building projects exist in a number of places. Yet the
debates and stormy campaigns against planned mosques which have been
going on over the last decade imply that there is a hostile and xenophobic
updercurrent in all social strata. When a mosque was planned in Turku
(Abo) in Finland in 1997, an outcry similar to those in other Nordic
countries occurred.
One of the most frequently recurring arguments against mosques in the
Nordic countries is that they would cause more traffic, and therefore
increase pollution, noise and the need for parking space. Mosques and
parking spaces are regarded as intruders upon open green spaces and all
sorts of culture relics. Many react spontaneously and claim that a mosque
would be an alien element in their familiar local environment. Several
arguments reveal anxiety and ignorance about the multi-cultural society.
The most common reasons against the building of mosques are due to the
fact that people are frightened of or dislike Islam as a religion. This aversion
feeds on ignorance and misconceptions about Islam.
The Rushdie Affair and Radio Islam

In Scandinavia there were few public Muslim protests against Rushdie's
Satanic Verses and many Muslims felt uneasy only about the publicity it
caused. Approached by journalists, some Muslims commented upon the
Rushdie affair. Apparently without any deeper knowledge about the book
they condemned Rushdie. In Sweden, the matter became a kind of meta-
discussion among intellectuals, and the weak support Rushdie and his
freedom to write received from the Swedish Academy prompted three
Svanberg
Facilities for ritual washing before prayer in a suburban mosque outside

Stockholm (photo: Pia Karlsson, 1998).
famous Swedish authors to leave the Academy, a protest from which that
institution has not yet recovered. The Satanic Verses were sold openly in
Sweden and no special precautions were taken. One Muslim convert
reviewed the book quite negatively in a major newspaper. Another author,
who is a Sufi convert, had no understanding for the banning of the book.
However, the publishing house that published a Swedish translation of
Rushdie's book invited a Muslim organisation to write a book about their
beliefs and promised to market it. This book Islam: v2r tro (Islam: Our
Belief) includes general information concerning Islam, and the discussion
on Rushdie is very brief and unsophisticated. The book maintained that
Rushdie's book was offensive, but that it was difficult to understand the
content of the critical message. The hope was expressed that 'the problem
could be resolved peacefully', but that no notice had been taken of Muslim
demands.
The situation in Norway was more critical. In February 1989 an Islamic
Resistance Council was set up with the aim of stopping the publication of a
Norwegian translation of the Satanic Verses. Nearly thirty associations, the
first ever united attempt among Norwegian Muslims, took part in the
campaign. They tried to use the legal system to stop the book on the grounds
that it was blasphemous. In 1995 the Norwegian publisher was the victim of
an attempt on his life.
The broadcasts from Radio Islam in Sweden have been very provocative.
In the summer of 1987 this local broadcasting station in Stockholm began
to attract attention because many of its programmes contained extreme
anti-Semitic elements. In the late 1990s, Radio Islam is probably one of the
most active anti-Semitic and openly history-revisionist institutions in
Europe. Nowadays, it is very active on Internet. The rights of freedom of
speech guaranteed by the Swedish constitution gives the authorities very
limited powers to stop it. The Islamic messages in the broadcasts from
Radio Islam seem to be non-existent. It is difficult to know how Muslims
regard the programmes. However, the repudiations of them from various
Muslim organisations have been few or non-existent, although at least
some individuals have condemned them.
Circumcision
Muslim tradition expects that male children be circumcised. This takes
place in ritual forms, and the age varies according to local traditions within
the Islamic world. Probably circumcision is among the most tenacious of
Muslim practices and is even applied among secularised persons from
Muslim countries. Many immigrant Muslims in Scandinavia have been able
to arrange circumcision in connection with vacation trips to their countries
of origin. However, this is not possible for many refugee families, and in
Sweden there has been debate as to what extent hospitals should provide
circumcision service. Swedish Jews have already developed a tradition
around circumcision, and a Jewish doctor in Stockholm has for a long time
helped Muslims with the circumcision. In connection with the increasing
stream of Muslims, however, there are queues at hospitals, and there is an
ethical debate among doctors whether or not the performance of
circumcision is in accordance with good medical practice.
Since circumcision is not regarded as a medically motivated treatment,
many hospitals charge high fees. This would, however, not present a great
problem for practising Muslims, as some imams in Sweden have pointed
out. Even in Muslim countries there is a fee for circumcision, and in
connection with circumcision rather expensive feasts are often held. The
problem remains that many doctors refuse to do the operation, since they
Svanberg
regard it as an unnecessary cosmetic treatment. However, some private

medical doctors specialise in circumcision. A couple of unauthorised
circumcisions, performed by traditional specialists, have been brought to
trial in Sweden.
Lars Pedersen reports from Denmark that the option of having boys
circumcised has gradually disappeared from the hospital services in recent
years. This seems to be due to cuts in expenses.
Religious schools
Especially among social democrats, there has been an official resistance to
private schools in Sweden and Norway. In the political culture of Sweden
and Norway the official authorities have had the main responsibility for
education of children, while Danish politicians have stressed the rights and
responsibilities of the parents. The right of the parents to organise their
children's education has been granted by the Danish constitution since
1849. Despite this fact, Muslim independent schools in Denmark seem to
provoke the same debate and critique as in Sweden and Norway.
In 1992, a non-socialist Swedish government decided to change the
school system, thereby facilitating the development of independent schools.
Since then, a large number of so-called free schools have been founded. In
1997 there were around 350 such schools. Most of them are either
Christian or stress alternative pedagogical movements. However, some
Muslim schools have also been founded. The first such school in Sweden
started in Malmo in 1993. In 1997, there were a handful Muslim schools in
Sweden. The Foundation for the Islamic School (Stiftelsen Islamiska skolan)
at present has two schools, one in Uppsala and one in Stockholm. Some
local school boards have been reluctant to allow Muslims to open schools
within the new system. Despite the fact that the national board confirmed
the Islamic school A1 Elowm Alislamia in Orebro, the local authorities
refused to accept it. They regarded this school as a counterforce against
integration and the tolerance fostered in the public school system where
children of various social, ethnic and religious background meet each other.
An Islamic school was seen as a threat against integration. Resistance from
local school boards is also found in Malmo, Jonkoping, Botkyrka as well as
other places.
According to Lars Pedersen, Denmark has the highest percentage of
private, publicly funded, Muslim schools in Europe, followed by the
Netherlands. In 1995 there were fourteen Islamic schools in Denmark, the
majority of them based in the Arab and Pakistani communities. However, a
similar criticism exists in Denmark as in Sweden. The most common
argument is that the underlying motive behind the schools is to avoid
integration, and that the teaching does not promote an open, tolerant or
democratic mind.
At present (1998) there is no Muslim school in Finland, although one is

planned to open soon.
Literature
A general bibliography on Islam in Sweden and Norway has been published
by Wke Sander, 'Sweden and Norway', pp. 151-73 in Muslims in Western
Europe: An Annotated Bibliography, eds. Felice Dassetto and Yves Conrad
(Paris: UHarmattan, 1996). See also Oddbjsrn Leirvik, Islam i Norge:
Oversikt, med bibliografi (Oslo 1997).
Islam in Denmark is presented in a comprehensive work by Jsrgen Baek
Simonsen, Islam i Danmark: Muslimske institutioner i Danmark (Aarhus:
Statens humanistiske forskningrid, 1991) and in Mehdi Mozaffari, 'Les
musulmans au Danemark', pp. 357-84 in Cislam et les musulmans duns le
monde, I. L'Europe occidentale, eds. Mohammed Arkoun, Rtmy Leveau
and Bassem El-Jisr (Beyrouth: Centre Culturel Hariri, 1993). See also Lars
Pedersen, 'Islam in the Discourse of Public Authorities and Institutions in
Denmark', pp. 202-17 in Muslims in the Margin: Political Responses to the
Presence of Islam in Western Europe, eds. W.A.R. Shadid and P.S. van
Koningsveld (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996). Contemporary Islam in Sweden
is dealt with in Ingvar Svanberg, 'Les musulmans en Suede', pp. 384-419 in
L'islam et les musulmans duns le monde, I. L'Europe occidentale, eds.
Mohammed Arkoun, Rimy Leveau and Bassem El-Jisr (Beyrouth: Centre
Culturel Hariri, 1993); Leif Stenberg, 'Islam,' pp. 79-152 in Varldsreli~io-
nerna i manniskornas dagliga liv (Stockholm: Brevskolan, 1998); and Ake
Sander, 'Islam and Muslims in Sweden', Migration: A European Journal of
international Migration and Ethnic Relation, 8 (1990),pp. 83-134. A good
overview of the current situation in Norway is presented in Richard Natvig,
'Les musulmans en Norvege', pp. 423-33 in L'islam et les musulmans duns
le monde, I. L'Europe occidentale, eds. Mohammed Arkoun, Rtmy Leveau
and Bassem El-Jisr (Beyrouth: Centre Culturel Hariri, 1993). For a brief
account on Islam in Finland, see Harry Halkn, A Bibliographical Survey of
the Publishing Activities of the Turkic Minority in Finland, Studia
Orientalia, 5 1 : l l (Helsinki: Societas orientalis Fennica, 1979) and Ilkka
Kolehmainen and Marja-Leena Marjamaki, 'Tatarian Music in Finland',
Antropologiska Studier, 25-26 (1978).
For a full treatment of the discussions connected with construction of
mosques, see Pia Karlsson and Ingvar Svanberg, Moske'er i Sverige: en
religionsetnologisk studie av intolerans och ad mini strati^ vanmakt
(Uppsala: Svenska kyrkans forskningsrid, 1995). See also Ake Sander,
'From Musalla to Mosque: The Process of Integration and Institutionaliza-
tion of Islam in Sweden', pp. 62-188 in The Integration of Islam and
Hinduism in Western Europe, eds. W.A.R. Shadid and P.S. van Koningsveld
(Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991) and Kirsti Kuusela, 'A Mosque of Our Own?
Svanberg
Turkish Immigrants in Gothenburg Facing the Effects of a Changing

World,' pp. 43-55 in Religion and Ethnicity: Minorities and Social Change
in the Metropolis, ed. Rohit Barot (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993). Folk
religion among Norwegian Muslims is dealt with in Nora Ahlberg, New
Challenges - Old Strategies: Themes of Variation and Conflict among
Pakistani Muslims in Norway (Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society,
1990). Alevi immigrants in Norway have been studied by Ragnar Nzss,
'Being an Alevi Muslim in South-western Anatolia and in Norway',
pp. 174-95 in The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe, eds. Tomas
Gerholm and Yngve G. Lithman (London: Mansell, 1988). Studies of
Swedish Muslims have been published by Ingrid Lundberg and Ingvar
Svanberg, 'Turkish Voluntary Associations in Metropolitan Stockholm',
Migration: A European Journal of International Migration and Ethnic
Relations, 19/1991:2 (1992), pp. 35-76, and Ingvar Svanberg, 'Turkish
Immigrants in Sweden', pp. 215-27 in Turcs d'Europe . . . et d'Ailleurs,
eds. Marcel Bazin, Michel Bozdkmir, Altan Gokalp and Stephane de Tapia,
Les Annales de 1'Autre Islam, 3 (Paris: INALCO, 1996).
Chapter Eighteen
Russia and Transcaucasia

Svante Cornell and Ingvar Svanberg
The Russian Federation, founded in 1991 as one of the successor states of

the disunited Soviet Union, is the largest country in the world with a
population of some 150 million. Russia is officially a multi-ethnic and
multi-confessional state, although the ethnic Russians count for almost 82
per cent of the total population. There are no official records of religious
affiliation in contemporary Russia. Although pre-Soviet Russians usually
were Orthodox Christians, it is very likely that a large number of their
contemporary descendants are religiously indifferent. During the Soviet era
the Communist Party conducted an intensive anti-religious propaganda, the
nation was socialised in an atheist atmosphere and religious holidays were
replaced with secular festivals. Most of the churches, mosques, temples and
monasteries were closed down, the religious leaders were harassed and had
difficulty in acting openly, religious literature was almost impossible to
obtain and many people had to hide their religious affiliation. The anti-
religious ~ r o p a g a n d awas especially harsh during the Stalinist era in the
1930s, when many religious leaders were sent to prison camps or murdered.
However, during World War 11, both the Russian Orthodox Church and the
Russian Muslim organisations were able, to a limited extent, to re-establish
themselves and were again allowed to conduct religious services and act
openly in the Soviet Union. This new public presence continued after the
war.
Since the Russian Orthodox Church had to work within the Soviet
framework and under state control, many people nowadays distrust this
church for having been too closely linked with the Soviet communist
regime. Other Christian groups, such as Pentecostal and Baptist churches,
were illegal during the Soviet time and their followers were often victims of
persecution. Today Russia is experiencing a Christian revitalisation.
Lutheran and Orthodox churches are given back their premises, mon-
asteries are rebuilt and Christian festivals are celebrated again. The Russian
Orthodox Church is prospering in the new Russian Federation as an
important part of the new national identity for many Russians and non-
Russian minorities. However, in many places the Church has been
connected with ultra-nationalist forces. Although some handbooks report
that 85 per cent of the population are Christians, this must be taken with a
large grain of salt. Seventy years under Marxist control together with the
general modernisation caused a considerable secularisation. It is likely that
many people are non-believers. The communist regime also left a country
marked by political instability and unsuccessful economic reforms. This has
left room for mafia organisations, corruption and a very poor standard of
living. The ideological vacuum has only partly been replaced by traditional
religiosity. As in the West we can observe an increasing interest in various
kinds of new religious movement, often labelled New Age.
Like Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and indigenous religions belong to
the traditional religious heritage of Russia. The Buddhists are estimated to
number around 1 million in Russia. There are more than eighty Buddhist
communities, most of them found in Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia, where
Buddhism has a long historical tradition. Other communities are found in
major Russian cities - including Moscow, St Petersburg and Vladivostok -
and as small groups all over the country. Indigenous religions are found
mostly among minor ethnic groups in northern Russia and Siberia. Also
part of the Mari people, living north of the Volga knee in the very heartland
of Russia, still practise an aboriginal religion.
According to some estimates, the Muslim groups number nearly 10 per
cent of the population or 15 to 17 million people of the Russian Federation.
The famous Russian Islamist Gejdar Jemal even claims the figure of 30 per
cent, while a recent socio-demographic study sticks at 2 per cent, or 3
million citizens, in Russia that identify themselves as Muslims. Sociological
studies show unequivocally that believers are a minority among people
who, on ethnic grounds, are identified as Muslims. The strength of Islam
also varies regionally. As in the case of Christianity, a rediscovery of Islamic
roots has taken place in many parts of Russia, as well as in other Soviet
successor states. Thus, Islam has become an increasingly important part of
the national identity in many areas. Many ethnic groups within Russia are
again defined because of their religious background, although language
differences seem to play a major role as ethnic identifiers. Tatars, Bashkirs
and the various Caucasian peoples belong to these language-based groups.
A history of conquest and co-existence

Islam has a long tradition in Russia and Transcaucasia. During the Arab
conquest of eastern Caucasus in the middle of the seventh century, Islam
was imposed in the area. The Islamisation of what is today Azerbaijan and
southern Daghestan was rapid, and in the eighth century the majority of the
population was already Muslim. Between the ninth and thirteenth
centuries, Islam expanded along the trade routes. Along the Volga River,
Muslims have been present since the ninth century, and during the
mediaeval time Muslims penetrated as far west as into the regions that
today constitute Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. Their descendants are the
so-called White Russian Tatars still living in Eastern Europe. As a result of
this settlement in the fifteenth century, and of the immigration within the
Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus
and Poland today have their own native Muslim populations. Estonian
Muslims are probably mostly of Mishar Tatar background and settled in
the country during the nineteenth century and later. Lithuania has a small
Muslim population of White Russian Tatar origin, mainly located in
Vilnius. According to recent estimates they number around 3,000. The
oldest Muslim settlers in Belarus have the same background as the
Lithuanian and Polish Tatars. In addition there are many Muslims who
migrated into area during the Russian Empire and the Soviet period.
Apparently, there are more than 100,000 Muslims in the now independent
Belarus. The number of Polish Muslims, almost all of whom are of White
Russian Tatar origin, is estimated at 2,200 and distributed over seven
religious communities: Gdansk, Gorzow, Wielkopolskiego, Warzsaw,
Bohoniki, Kruszyniany and Bialystok.
During the Mongol period Sufi missionaries were important for the
distribution of Islam within the steppe region of southern Russia, north of
the Black and Caspian Seas. The Mongol Empire left several Muslim
khanates as its successors in the region. From the mid-fifteenth century the
young Muscovite State began to expand southward and eastward, and
Muslim territories were incorporated into the Russian Empire. The Kazan
khanate was conquered in 1552, followed by the Astrakhan khanate in
1556 and the Sibir khanate in 1598. Forcible conversion to Christianity
took place during this time. The Bashkirs continued to resist the Tsarist
armies, and they were not fully conquered until the late eighteenth century.
During the uprising of Pugachev in 1773 many Bashkirs and Tatars joined
his troops. After the defeat of the Bashkirs and the annexing of the Crimean
khanate, Russia began a new policy toward Islam within its borders. In the
1780s, the Muslim population was given the right to practice their religion
and were given the same rights as the Russians. Furthermore, a Muslim
Spiritual Assembly was established in Orenburg, which was later moved to
Ufa. The Tsarist authorities appointed the muftis, or chief judges of Islamic
law. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a university that became
important in the education of Muslims within the empire was established in
Kazan. After the conquest of the Tatar Khanates the Russian Empire
continued to expand towards Central Asia. During this period Islam
actually advanced within the Russian Empire. Tatar mullas (minor religious
leaders) and merchants became important, not only as leaders for the
Muslims in Russia, but also for spreading Islam into areas conquered by the
Tsarist troops.
After the Russo-Turkish war 1768-74, Russia began more seriously to
expand southward. The conquest of the Crimean Khanate in 1784 was
followed by extensive mass migration of Muslims to the Ottoman empire.

It was caused by a policy that must be described as a regular ethnic
cleansing. Christian peasants who moved in from the west replaced the
Muslim Tatars. These conquests and the pacification of the southern steppe
area of Russia opened up the road to annexing of the Caucasus and
Transcaucasia. However, the Russian army encountered resistance from
mountain warriors under Mansur Ushurma, a Chechen Naqshbandi shaykh
who had begun a holy war against the Russians in 1773. In 1785 the
warriors of Shaykh Mansur surrounded an important Russian force on the
banks of Sunia river and wiped out the whole army, probably the worst
deathblow that ever struck the army of Catherine 11. A few years later the
Russian troops crushed the Chechen warriors. Shaykh Mansur was
captured in 1791 and sent to prison in Schlusselborg where he died in
1793. He left behind a memory showing that resistance and gathering
around Islam was possible. Later generations of Chechens and other
Caucasians have found inspiration in the memory of the resistance struggle
of Shaykh Mansur and his troops. He represented the beginning of the Sufi
resistance to Russian conquest, which continued until the early twentieth
century and is known as the Murid movement.
Extensive mass evacuations, massacres and actual genocide among the
conquest peoples mark the expansion of Tsarist Russia towards the south
and the east. Especially affected were the many peoples of the Caucasus,
who also resisted the Russian troops most fiercely. The conquest of the
Caucasus was an extremely long and bloody campaign, marked by forced
and voluntary mass migrations, penal expeditions, attempts to divide the
mountain peoples, outrages from Russian Cossack troops, rivalry between
mountain and plains peoples and between Muslims and Christians. The
Russian offensive southward continued after 1791. Georgia was conquered
in 1801, Ossetia in 1806, Abkhazia in 1810, northern Azerbaijan came
under Russian control in 1813 and Armenia was conquered in 1828.
However, the mountain peoples continued to resist the Russians.
Another important Sufi leader, Imam Shamil from Daghestan, appeared
as a unifying figure for the Caucasian people in their resistance and, once
more, the Naqshbandi brotherhood led the struggle against the Russians.
Imam Shamil and his troops fought the Russians from 1824 for several
decades. In 1846 the Russians tried to subjugate the mountaineers by
extensive terror. Villages were burnt down, cattle were destroyed and
captives were deported as prisoners to other parts of Russia, but Imam
Shamil was not defeated until 1859. He spent his years as a prisoner of the
Russians in Moscow and Kiev, far from his mountain home. After being
released he conducted a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, where he died in
1871. Imam Shamil is probably the best-known Muslim hero of Russia, not
only among the Muslims mountain peoples of the Caucasus, but also
outside this region. His name has become a symbol for many people during
Caucasian Muslims using a car with Imam Shamil depicted on the door
(photo: Jens A. Riisnaes, 1990).
the last 100 years, and he is an important example for the contemporary
peoples of Daghestan and north Caucasus.
In the western Caucasus the resistance continued until 1864. Every
group that was defeated had to choose between full subjection under the
Tsar government or expulsion. Hundred of thousands of people were forced
to escape from their mountains and cross the Black Sea to ports of the
Ottoman empire. Many Circassians, Chechens, Lezgins, Ossets, Abkhaz
and Daghestanis chose to leave. According to recent estimates, about 1.2
Million Muslim Caucasians were forced into exile between 1855 and 1865.
Thousands of people died from hardship and epidemics. One Muslim
group, the Ubykhs, fiercely resisted the Russians. When they finally were
crushed the entire population had to leave their valley in the mountains.
They did not survive the exile and the whole ethnic group disappeared.
Their language is now extinct.
The Chechens also resisted the Russian troops but were finally defeated.
Around 40,000 Chechens chose to migrate to the Ottoman Empire and
another 20,000 were forced by the Russian authorities to leave in 1865. As
has been pointed out by the Norwegian Slavist Alf Grannes, the conquest of
the proud Muslim mountain peoples is a vast and colourful theme in the
Russian literature. The Russian colonisation of the Caucasus continued

after 1865. Muslim Ossets revolted several times, which caused new forced
migration. Revolts took place in Daghestan in 1877 and later also in
Chechnya. The Naqshbandi brotherhood continued to be anti-Russian and
they supported revolts against the Russians as late as in the early 1920s,
when Shaykh Uzun Haji inspired an uprising in Chechnya. The nineteenth
century was also a period when the Ottomans and Russians fought for the
loyalty of the Muslims of Russia. Just as the Tsar declared himself to be the
protector of all Christians living in Ottoman domains in this century, the
Ottoman leaders began to stress their position as the protectors of Muslims
living in Christian empires. The Ottomans followed the process of
Russification of the Muslims of Russia through secret agents, and the
Ottoman consulates tried to maintain their cultural and religious ties with
these Muslims and to protect their identities.
The Russians continued to use Islam and Muslim leaders to gain the
support of the Caucasians. In the Muslim areas which were directly under
Tsarist rule, Islamic organisations were supported and controlled. In 1887
the Russians passed new building regulations regarding mosques. Muslims
were free to practise their religion as long as they did not damage the
Orthodox faith. Only communities with 300 or more members were
allowed to build mosques, and these had to be maintained by each
com~nunityitself. Apparently the mufti of the Caucasus, Hiiseyin Efendi
Gayabov, was collaborating to the extent of aiding the Russians in
enforcing their policies. The Tsarist regime controlled the appointment of
muftis and local religious leaders. The government paid their salaries,
watched over their activities, and ensured that they were loyal to the
regime. Thus the Russians promoted the development of a Muslim
hierarchy, which was in turn controlled by them.
As a response to the attempts of Tsar Aleksander I11 to convert the
Tatars, but also due to the impact of modernist influence from the West, the
Jadid movement developed among the Kazan Tatars and soon spread into
other Muslim areas as well. The Jadidists stressed the need for education of
the population in order to develop their society. When, in 1905, Russia
granted religious liberty in the country, Tatars who had converted to
Christianity returned to Islam. They also began to do missionary work
among various neighbouring peoples, and many Chuvash, Maris and
Udmurts converted to Islam at the beginning of the century. At the
beginning of the Russian Revolution, Jadidists and Bolsheviks cooperated.
A Sufi brotherhood, the so-called Vaisovtzy, also cooperated and fought
alongside with the Russian Bolsheviks on the eve of the Revolution in 1917.
However, from 1928 the Soviet authorities began an anti-religious
campaign, which continued more or less intensively until the perestroika
of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid 1980s. Muslim intellectuals, including the
Jadids, were persecuted and murdered by the Bolsheviks. Due to events
during World War 11, an official Islam was again established in the Soviet
Union. However, Muslims kept a relatively low profile and were very
closely connected with the authorities. With the collapse of the Soviet
Union at the beginning of the 1990s, Islamic institutions were again able to
function and develop, this time entirely without state control.
In July 1997 the Duma of Russia passed a new Bill of religious freedom.
The bill caused some controversy, since it restricted the rights of new
foreign religious denominations to work in Russia. They had to prove that
their religion had been practised in Russia for at least fifteen years. This
affected many small religious entities, such as Bahai, Kadianism and the
Unification Church, and Russia was heavily criticised by the United States
senate, since it affected the possibility for many evangelical missionaries
from the United States to work within the country. The major religions of
the Russian Federation, the Russian Orthodox Church and Islam, were not
affected by the restrictions, and their leaders therefore also favoured the
bill.
A renewal of Islam
Most Muslims in the Russian Federation are Sunnites of the Hanafi school,
but in Daghestan the majority of the Muslims follow the Shafii school.
Pockets of Shia Muslims are found in Daghestan, especially among the Tats,
a small ethnic group speaking an Iranian language. Since the Sunnites and
the Shiites cooperated very closely within the Soviet Union, few differences
remained between them. The differences between Sunnites and Shiites are
nowadays little-known among common people. Due to the atheist policy of
the Soviet regime, most people have very little knowledge of the theology of
Islam. It has survived mostly as a kind of folk religion, and contemporary
Muslim leaders are working hard to restore Islam again in Russia.
In post-Soviet Russia, a renewal of Islam is manifest all over the country.
Several Islamic organisations and parties developed on the eve of, or after,
the communist period came to an end. Twenty per cent of all officially
registered religious organisations and associations in the Russian Federa-
tion are Muslim, and in 1997 the number of Muslim congregations was
estimated at 3,000. The Islamic Rebirth Party was founded in 1990 and had
its core members in Tajikistan, but branches were also reported in
Daghestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia. This party includes both Islamists
and more moderate members. A radical member of the party is Geydar
Jemal, an outspoken Islamist who is said to be closely associated with the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jamaat-i-Islami in Pakistan. He also
maintains close ties with rightist movements. Local Muslim political parties
are found in North Caucasus and in Tatarstan. An Islamic Cultural Centre,
headed by Abdul Vahed Niyazov, was founded in 1991 in Moscow aimed at
founding Muslim universities in Russia.
Although Russians have lived for centuries with their Muslim fellow-
citizens, strong anti-Muslim feelings have developed in recent decades.
Before the war in Chechnya in 1994-95, a poll conducted in St Petersburg
indicated that over 70 per cent of the young people felt resentment toward
Islam. Incidents have occurred many times during the 1990s. During the
war in Chechnya, the police and militia of St Petersburg and Moscow
harassed many Caucasians, and in October 1996, special interior ministry
troops raided a Moscow mosque and detained the worshipers. Some of
them were Chechens and Ingush, many of whom were beaten before being
released. A notorious move was the ordered expulsion from Moscow of
'persons of Caucasian nationality', which in reality meant all Muslims. It
was implemented by the city militia and the interior ministry forces, and this
major attack against human rights was seen as a way to blame the Muslims
for the many problems in the city. In November 1995 a regular pogrom on
Meskhetian refugees took place in Krasnodar Krai, when ultra-nationalist
Cossacks attacked and assaulted Muslim settlers in a small village. Hate-
groups and ultra-nationalist Russians also feed strong anti-Muslim
sentiments that affect the relations between Russians and Muslims in many
areas. Hostilities have become especially common in North Caucasus.
Sufism
Just as in Central Asia, Sufi groups are openly active in Muslim areas of
contemporary Russia. Although the Naqshbandiyya reached the Tatars in
the eigthteenth century - and a dissident branch, the so-called Vaisovtzy,
was founded in Kazan by Bahauddin Vaisov in 1862 - Sufism is probably
extinct in contemporary Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Our knowledge of
Sufi orders in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia is still very scant. Yet, it is
obvious that during the Soviet period they played an important role as a
counterbalance to the communist atheist influence and in the development
of a religious subculture and unofficial Islamic force in those regions. The
French scholar Alexandre Bennigsen even characterised the activities of the
Sufi brotherhoods as a dynamic, parallel Islam, which acted beyond the
control of the official and Soviet-supported Muslim spiritual directorates.
Despite the fact that the orders were illegal during the Soviet era, Soviet
sources claimed as late as in the 1970s that half of the population in the
North Caucasus, that is the Chechen-Ingush and Daghestan republics,
belonged to Sufi brotherhoods.
The current centres of Sufism in Russia are found in the Caucasus,
particularly in Ingushetia, Chechnya and Daghestan, but also in northern
Azerbaijan. Two brotherhoods are active in the region, the Naqshbandiyya
and the Qadiriyya. In the spring of 1997, the world leader of a
Naqshbandi branch, As-Sayyid Shaykh Mohammed Nazim al-Haqqani,
visited a Quranic Conference in Moscow. This visit gave him the
opportunity to meet with Naqshbandi scholars and shaykhs from various
parts of the former Soviet Union. On his return journey to Cyprus, he
visited Daghestan, which is one of the strongholds of Naqshbandiyya in
Russia. The Qadiri order is dominant in Chechnya and Ingushetia. It was
introduced into the region in the 1850s from Baghdad. The Ingush people
were converted by Qadiri missionaries only in the late nineteenth century. It
is believed that five branches of the Qadiri order are still active in north
Caucasus: the Kunta Haji in Daghestan and Chechnya, the Bammat Giray
in Chechnya, the Batal Haji in Ingushetia, the Chim Mirza in Chechnya and
Ingushetia, and, finally, the Vis Haji branch, which was founded in the
1950s when the then deported Chechens and Ingush were living in
Kazakstan. This new branch of the Qadiriyya has also found its way into
northern Daghestan, Muslim Ossetia and into the Kabardin territory.
According to a recent study by the American sociologist Susan Goodrich
Lehmann, interviewees from Sufi areas in Russia were much more likely to
report that they practised Islam than were the Muslims in areas were Sufi
brotherhoods were not active.
Modern forms of Sufism are also present in Russia. For instance, the
International Sufi Movement, founded by Inayat Khan in the 1920s, has its
Russian centre in Novosibirsk. However, no data are available on the
number of members. Also more New Age-inspired types of Sufism have
found their way to contemporary Russia.
Russia and Siberia

Muslims are found throughout Russia. Provinces such as Astrakhan,
Chelyabinsk and Orenburg have large percentages of Muslims in their
population, as have Penza and Ulyanovsk. Moscow, the capital of the
Russian Federation, is believed to have a Muslim population of around 10
per cent of the total population. Moscow's main mosque looks like a
Russian Orthodox cathedral. It is painted in blue and white in the
nineteenth-century neo-Baroque style. Also St Petersburg has an old
nineteenth-century mosque located in the centre of the city. New so-called
'cathedral mosques' are mushrooming all over the country and are today
found in many Russian cities. According to some sources, there were only
192 mosques in Russia in 1985. Ten years later the figures are closer to
2,500. Large Islamic centres with cathedral mosques, colleges and business
centres are reported from many places. For example, a main mosque has
been built in Samara, and another one has been built in Volgograd. These
construction projects have been made possible through foreign aid. Muslim
organisations in Russia have even used Internet to appeal to the Muslim
world for financial support in their efforts to reconstruct and develop the
Islamic heritage of the country. The new situation in Russia has opened up
the opportunity for the modernisation of the Islamic service on a broad
Cornell and Suanberg
scale. For instance, solemn sermons in connection with the Festival of

Sacrifice, Id al-Adha, are nowadays broadcast on major television networks
all over Russia. Still, however, the Muslims of the Russian Federation
remain far behind the various Christian organisations in the use of
television.
The administrative organisations of the Muslims in Russia are now being
transformed. During the Soviet era, the Muslims of European Russia, the
western Soviet republics and Siberia were administered under the Spiritual
Board of European Russia and Siberia. It was located in the city of Ufa in
Bashkiria. This organisation has survived, although the former Soviet-
appointed leaders have been replaced. Nowadays its leader or Shaykh-ul-
Islam, Talgat Tadjuddin, a Tatar born in Kazan in 1948 and educated at Al-
Azhar in Cairo, heads the muftiate of Russia and Siberia, and he is viewed
as the grand mufti of Russia. However, with the increasing autonomy or
independence of many areas, this spiritual board has been under pressure to
subdivide into smaller units. The Muslims of Tatarstan have developed their
own muftiate, although Talgat Tuadjuddin's organisation is found in that
republic too, and the two muftiates compete with one another. A Spiritual
Office of the Muslims of the Central European Russia was established in
early 1994 around the main mosque of Moscow. This muftiate covers
eleven regions with approximately 3.5 million Muslims living in or near the
capital, including the Muslims of the Russian exclave Kaliningrad. Mufti
Ravil Gainutdin was elected as its chairman. In the summer of 1997, the
Muslims of Siberia and Russia's Far East voted to establish their own
separate spiritual board for Muslims in these areas. It opened up its
headquarters in Tobolsk and Shaykh Nafiula Ashirov was elected as its
chairman and mufti of Siberia and Russia's Far East. Beside these, there are
several other muftiates in Russia, many of which compete with each other
over jurisdiction. There are now around eighteen muftiates in Russia. Most
probably, the Muslims of the vast area that constitutes Russia will subdivide
into further muftiates in the near future.
With the re-establishment of religious centres and new mosques the
demand for educated religious leaders or ulama has increased. The number
of religious leaders with any theological training was extremely low under
the Soviet era. Most local leaders had only a limited knowledge of theology.
Very few of them could even read the Quran, and many of them were not
officially recognised. To compensate for this shortage of theologically
trained leaders, the Spiritual Board of Moscow in 1994 opened a college
with a four-year programme to train such leaders.
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan

In 1920, Tatarstan was created as an autonomous republic within Russia.
During the eve of the final breakdown of the Soviet Union, the Tatar
parliament declared Tatarstan's sovereignty in the early autumn of 1990.

The contemporary republic of Tatarstan has a population of more than 3.7
million inhabitants, and about half of the population has a Muslim cultural
background. Separation of religion and state is part of the new constitution.
During the 1990s, Tatarstan has obviously reached far-reaching autonomy
with its own international contacts. In particular, it has oriented itself
towards Turkey, a country that has investments in Tatarstan and increasing
bilateral trade.
Today we can observe an increasing Tatar nationalism, not only in
Tatarstan but also among Tatars living in other parts of Russia and in the
Tatar diaspora spread throughout the world. The language is restored,
literature in the native language is published and Tatarstan encourages
Tatars outside the republic to immigrate. With this cultural revitalisation,
an increasing interest in the religious heritage has also developed. Most
Tatars are by tradition Sunni Muslims. Although during this century the
Tatars have been largely secular, there has been a religious revival in
Tatarstan since the perestroika in the late 1980s made it possible for
religious communities to function more openly. Institutional Islam has
increased considerably in Tatarstan since the mid 1980s. Many religious
organisations and political parties have been established in Tatarstan,
among them Saf Islam ('Real Islam'), the Marjani Society (1988), the
Bulghar National Congress (1990), and the Islamic Democratic Party
(1992).Moreover, former at least nominally Christian Tatar groups, such as
the so-called Kryashen Tatars that were baptised in the late sixteenth
century, are nowadays turning to Islam because of missionary activities in
the areas where they live. In 1998 the two major Islamic boards of
Tatarstan were gathered under the United Clerical Board of Muslims of the
Republic of Tatarstan. Mufti Gusman-hazret Ishkakov was elected chair-
man. Reports from Tatarstan claim that there were 700 Muslim religious
organisations in the area in 1997. An Islamic university is planned to open
in Kazan in 1999. Despite the increasing presence of Islamic institutions,
Tatarstan still has a quite secular character. Among those who characterise
themselves as 'believers', over two-thirds never visit mosques or even pray
at home. To most Tatars, Islam seems to be more a matter of national
identity than of religious conviction. As Goodrich Lehmann points out,
active religiosity in Tataristan is still confined to older rural women with
little education.
The neighbouring Bashkortostan is a republic with around 4 million
inhabitants, with the Bashkirs as a minority. The majority groups are Tatars
and Russians. It was founded as an autonomous republic in March 1920
and, when Tatarstan declared its sovereignty in 1990, Bashkortostan did
the same. Its current autonomy is dependent on Tatarstan. Governmental
authorities in both republics have suggested that Tatarstan and Bashkorto-
stan could become a unified state, although this would probably create
ethnic conflicts between the Tatars and Bashkirs. The common Muslim
heritage will not bridge the different national aspirations of the two ethnic
groups, nor will their common 'Turkic' roots. The Bashkir capital Ufa
played an important role and was the administrative centre for the Muslims
of European Russia and Siberia during the Soviet era. Nominally, it has
retained this position and is the location for the main muftiate of Russia.
The portion of Muslims is much higher in Bashkortostan, but they are
ethnically divided. However, the people of Bashkortostan also show the
same pattern as in the case of Tatarstan. There has been an increase in
Institutional Islam, but at the same time, active religiosity is still to be found
mainly among low-educated rural women.
Northwest of Tatarstan is the little known autonomous republic of
Chuvashia. Many of the Chuvash converted to Islam in the nineteenth
century, but there is very little information about the contemporary
situation. However, as in many other minority areas of Russia, we can
observe a cultural revitalisation and an increasing nationalism in
Chuvashia. The Chuvash are to a large degree russified, although a
renewed interest in their original language is noticeable. Moreover, it seems
that Muslim Tatars are conducting missionary work among the Chuvash in
order to convert them to Islam. The Chuvash National Congress also
encourages this activity. Mari-el is another republic bordering on Tatarstan
where a high level of conversion to Islam has been observed during the last
few years due to the missionary endeavours of Tatar preachers.
North Caucasus
While the Muslims of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and other places in Russia
and Siberia have for centuries lived in close contact with Christians, the
Muslims of Caucasus have always maintained close links with Islamic
centres of the Middle East. The Islamic revival in North Caucasus started
long before Michail Gorbachev's advent to power and can be traced back to
the 1970s. Admittedly, even in the heyday of Soviet atheism, Islamic
practices were never eradicated - above all they flourished in underground
Sufi forms. The Naqshbandi and Qadiri brotherhoods, which are strong in
the North Caucasus, became the focal point of Islam in the Soviet period, as
the authorities persecuted official religion. What happened in the late 1980s
was that religious practice became visible, in the end even encompassing
many members of the indigenous Soviet tlite. As Fanny Bryan has noted,
the Islamic opposition underwent a strategic change due to glasnost. It
became an active, aggressive movement against the system. Daghestan was
one of the main scenes of this revival. In 1989, the first religious
demonstrations took place in Buinaksk and Makhachkala, the capital of
Daghestan. The primary demand was the building of new mosques and the
restoration of old ones. Before 1989, there were officially twenty-seven
Carpet dealers outside the city wall of Derbent, Daghestan (photo: Jens A.
Riisnaes, 1990).
functioning mosques in Daghestan, while the estimated number in 1994

was over 5,000. The mufti of the Makhachkala spiritual directorate,
accused of collaborating with the state security agencies, was ousted by a
popular revolt in May 1994. It is believed that many of these revolts were
initiated and conducted by the powerful Sufi brotherhoods of the region.
Furthermore, the hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca has been renewed on a large
scale. Today, Arabic and Quran classes exist in the schools of Daghestan,
and political leaders, riding on the Islamic wave, have proclaimed their
intention of making Islam the state religion of the republic. The Islamic
wind is blowing in the politics of Daghestan, too. The leading Islamic-
Democratic Party decided to rename itself the Islamic Party, and its
leadership has become more religiously coloured.
As Vladimir Bobrovnikov has noted in a rare field study on Islam in
Daghestan, the Islamic revival has not taken place in a homogeneous way. It
has affected the northwestern part of the republic, populated by Avars,
Dargins and Kumyks, to a much larger extent than the central and southern
parts, chiefly inhabited by Laks, Lezgins and Tabasarans. The majority of
newly opened mosques and madrasas (Islamic colleges) are found in the
northern and western parts of the country. The fact that the Sufis have been
strongest in these areas is probably an important reason for these regional
differences. As we shall see in the next section, the religious movement, far
from being united, is divided along national lines, with each of the larger
peoples setting up a spiritual directorate, or muftiate, of its own.
Nevertheless, this tendency is counteracted by strong voices arguing for
unity in the name of Islam.
The Islamic revival in Daghestan is important, as it is instrumental in
tying the Daghestanis and other north Caucasians to the larger world of
Islam. In particular, the performance of the hajj plays this role. The pilgrims
who return to their native lands often work for the establishment of Islamic
education there. Moreover, as has been the case in other areas such as in
Turkey, their devotion entails a long-term objective of strengthening
religion, completely independent from the short-term political struggle in
the country - a strategy, which has seen considerable success elsewhere.
Open conflicts between so-called Wahhabis, that is Islamists of various
kinds, and Sufis have recently been reported. The 'Wahhabis' leader, Mullah
Bagaudin Muhammad, heads the Kizilyurt mosque. Repeated accusations
from the Daghestani authorities claim the 'Wahhabis' are paid agents of
foreign Islamic organisations.
In terms of identity, Islam - just as it has been in the past - might become
the unifying force of the north Caucasians. Whether this is seen as a positive
or negative development naturally depends on one's views on political Islam.
Russia is likely to counteract this tendency, and even to use it as a pretext for
re-establishing its hegemony over the region, reiterating its claim to be the
defender of Europe and Christianity in the face of an expansionist Islam. In
Daghestan, however, through its unifying power and in view of the fragile
multi-ethnic stability of the republic, Islam might become the main and
crucial element in sustaining multi-ethnic peace and stability in the future.
Chechnya has also been the scene of an Islamic revival. The Chechens
are, to an even greater degree than the Daghestanis, tied to the Sufi orders
mentioned above. The adherence to Sufism was strengthened during the
period of the Chechens' thirteen-year deportation to Central Asia during
and after the Second World War. In exile, the Chechens retained a
remarkable unity, compared to other deported peoples. They rallied around
the Naqshbandi and Qadiri brotherhoods, which provided an informal
mode of organisation where Chechen culture could be preserved, and was
naturally instrumental in maintaining and furthering the religiosity of the
people. In a deeper way, the independent-minded Chechens, while
embracing Islam, were drawn to the decentralised Naqshbandiyya, which,
at least in the version practiced in Chechnya, imposes few restrictions on its
members.
Nevertheless, Islam in today's Chechnya is different from that of
Daghestan with respect to its role in society. In Chechnya, the main
determinant of a person's identity is Chechen ethnicity. This is significant as
the north Caucasian rebellions against Russia in the nineteenth century and
Muslim graveyard outside a Caucasian village (photo: Jens A. Riisnaes,

1990).
even as late as in the 1920s were rarely confined to one sole ethnic group,
but were carried out as holy wars (ghazawat) in the name of Islam. In the
1990s, however, Chechnya's rebellion was a rebellion of the Chechen
nation, although certain Islamic elements were used by the leaders, and not
even the close kin of the Chechens, the Ingush, were part of it. Historically
too, the Chechen brand of Islam differs from that of the Daghestanis. The
Chechen lineage society's traditions have seldom been superseded by
Islamic traditions but rather preserved. This is particularly true for the
position of women in society. Women enjoy equal rights to men in cases of
divorce and can even reach the highest positions in the Sufi brotherhoods.
Traditional law, moreover, takes priority over Islamic law. This compara-
tively weak position of Islam was related to the fact that the Chechens were
not totally Islamicised until the nineteenth century - the last Ingush tribe
being converted to Islam in the 1860s, whereas Islam had come to
Daghestan as early as in the eighth century.
It was indeed under the rule of Imam Shamil, a Daghestani Avar, that a
theocratic state was introduced in Chechnya during the long rebellion
against Russia. This attempt at creating a centralised state was vehemently
opposed by many Chechens, which presented an obstacle to the unified
struggle against Russia. Nevertheless, in present-day Chechnya, Shamil's
image is untarnished and great respect for his principles can be observed.
Hence religiosity today is widespread, a fact which has only been enhanced
by the recent war. At the end of the war in August 1996, there were voices
calling for an Islamic state. Briefly, there were some instances of
implementation of Islamic law, but this quickly disappeared, and the
strength of the underlying secularised society became clear. Thus the fears
often expressed about a 'fundamentalist' state emerging in Chechnya are
highly exaggerated.
In 1998, thousands of people protested in the Chechen capital Groznin
against the increasing presence of Wahhabism in the country. Wahhabism
began to spread in Chechnya during the war, when Wahhabi volunteers
arrived from the Middle East. A Jordanian citizen, Emir Khattab, who set
up an Islamic Battalion in Chechnya, has become the leader of the Chechen
Wahhabis. Not only the mufti of Chechnya has been alarmed by the new
presence of Wahhabis in the country, but also the Chechen field commander
Salman Raduev, who organised the rally in Grozny, has demanded that the
authorities outlaw the movement.
Azerbaijan
In the Transcaucasus, the main Islamic grouping is the Azeri population,
estimated at a total of 25-30 million people, of whom 7 million live in the
former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, 300,000 in Georgia and the
remainder in Iran. The Azeris, very much due to their historical connection
with Persia, embraced the Twelver Shia version of Islam. With the Russian
and Soviet rule over the Transcaucasus, the Azeris under Russian control
became heavily secularised, an aspect which can be readily observed today.
Azerbaijan's first period of independence was between 1918 and 1920.
Significantly, there were hardly any signs then that the state was moving in
Islamic direction, despite the fact that the Azeri national consciousness was
in its incipient stage. The Azerbaijani Democratic Republic was in fact a
secular republic characterised by the building of the Azeri nation, where
Islam played a part as a component of national culture. It is interesting to
note that this state was the first republic as such to be founded in a Muslim
society - the Turkish republic did not see the light of day until 1923.
In Soviet times, the already weak Islamic identity was watered down
even further. It should come as no surprise if an Azerbaijani, asked whether
he is Sunni or Shia - there is a Sunni minority - answers that he has heard
these terms but does not know what they mean.
Since 1991, religion has re-emerged in public life, but no remarkable
religious revival has taken place. In a certain sense, the place of religion in
Azerbaijani society can be said to be similar to the case of Turkey (despite
recent events in that country), as opposed to Iran. In 1992, this orientation
was confirmed in what has been so far the only democratic change of
government in a Caucasian or Central Asian state. As the Soviet period

leader, Ayaz Mutalibov, was forced to resign, the intellectual Abiilfaz
Elchibey was elected president with slightly over 60 per cent of the votes.
Elchibey was heavily pro-Turkish, even Pan-Turkic, vehemently anti-
Iranian and a firm secularist. His coming to power showed the weakness
of Islam in Azerbaijan. When Elchibey was deposed after a year, he was
replaced by the old Politburo member Heydar Aliyev. Aliyev, in order to
improve relations with Iran and to diversify Azerbaijan's external relations,
tried to improve his Islamic credentials, even performing the pilgrimage to
Mecca. Nevertheless, this should not be seen as a deviation from
Azerbaijan's secular route, although Islamic sentiments do exist among a
minority of the population, and Islamic movements sponsored by Iran are
operating in Azerbaijan. The popular support of these groups remains very
limited. It should be noted that Islam is in a much stronger position south of
the Araxes river. The Iranian Azeris have a much more highly developed
Islamic consciousness whereas their national consciousness remains
relatively limited. Hence, in the case of a future unification of the Azeri
nation, it is likely that religion and its place in society would become a
major point of discord.
In the Russian Empire, and especially during the Soviet era, Islam in
Russia and Transcaucasia had to survive in relative isolation from the
Islamic currents in other parts of the world. The collapse of the Soviet
Union made it possible to re-establish contacts with brothers and sisters
abroad. With the opening of the borders to the outside world, Islamic
organisations and religious leaders have developed their own relations with
international Islamic bodies. The American leading personality of Islam,
Louis Farrakhan, has visited Russia several times. When he conducted a
world tour in the early spring of 1998, he also included visits to Muslims in
European Russia, Siberia and Daghestan. Prominent international Sufi
leaders regularly visit Muslim communities in Russia. Saudi, Egyptian and
Turkish Muslims and organisations, in particular, have established contacts
with various Muslim organisations in Russia. The Muslims of Russia still
cooperate to a large degree with their brothers and sisters in the Soviet
successor states of Central Asia. The well-organised and international
Ahmadiyya movement is also active, especially in spreading their own
Russian and other translations of the Quran. Other Russian translations
have appeared during the last few years too. For instance, a local printer has
published an edition for the Muslims of St Petersburg. Traditional Muslim
organisations in Russia fear that they may have difficulties in competing
with the much better-organised and better-off Ahmadiyya and try to
condemn its activities in the country.
During the Soviet era very few people were able to conduct their
pilgrimage to Mecca and other holy places. The Soviet government in the
1970s and 1980s sent only a handful of carefully chosen individuals. This
has now changed radically. The number of pilgrims has increased

drastically during the 1990s. Several planes leave the main Muslim cities
of Russia every year. From Azerbaijan it is also possible to reach Saudi
Arabia by bus, an opportunity taken by a few hundred pilgrims every year.
Literature
The presence and development of Islam in contemporary Russia is to a large
degree a blank spot in the scholarly literature. Our information on Islam in
Russia and Transcaucasia is therefore largely based on reports from local
and international news agencies and newspapers. Historical and demo-
graphic aspects of Islam in the Soviet Union are described in Alexandre
Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide
(London: Hurst, 1985). For general aspects of Islam in Russia, see also
Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National
Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the
Colonial World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979); Central
Asia and the Caucasus after the Soviet Union: Domestic and International
Dynamics, ed. Mohiaddin Mesbahi (Gainesville: University of Florida
Press, 1994); Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies, ed. Yaacov Ro'i
(London: Frank Cass, 1995); Gamla folk och nya stater: det upplosta
sovjetimperiet, eds. Sven Gustavsson and Ingvar Svanberg (Stockholm:
Gidlunds, 1992); and The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States,
ed. Graham Smith (London: Longmans 1996). Sufism in Russia is also
discussed in Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, 'Le Caucase', pp. 300-08 in
Les voies d'Allah: Les ordres mystiques duns le monde musulmans des
origines a aujourd'hui, eds. Alexandre Popovii- and Gilles Veinstein (Paris:
Fayard, 1996).
Specific works on Islam and its religious importance in the 1990s Russia
are few. The best overview is Uwe Halbach, 'Islam in RuiSland', Orient, 38
(1997), pp. 245-75. A recent comparative sociological study of five Islamic
autonomous republics of Russia has been published by Susan Goodrich
Lehmann, 'Islam and Ethnicity in the Republics of Russia', Post-Soviet
Affairs, 13 (1997), pp. 78-103. There are also a few studies dealing with
the specific situation in the Caucasus see especially Vladimir Bobrovnikov,
'The Islamic Revival and the National Question in Post-Soviet Dagestan',
The Keston Journal, 24 (19961, pp. 220-34 and Anna Zelkina, 'Islam and
Society in Chechnya: From the Late Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth
Century', Journal of Islamic Studies, 7 (1996), pp. 240-64. The modern
history of Islam is discussed in The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian
Advance towards the Muslim World, eds. Abdurahman Avtorkhanov and
Marie Bennigsen Broxup (London: Hurst, 1992). For a study of the recent
war in Chechnya, see Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: A
Small Victorious War (Basingstoke: Pan Original, 1997).
Chapter Nineteen
North America
Mattias Gardell
With the fall of the Iron Curtain an era in global politics came to an end, as
the Western world no longer could define itself in opposition t o
communism. During the past few years, we have witnessed a return to a
previous pattern in which the Occident seeks its raison d'dtre by placing
itself in opposition to Islam. The United States still portrays itself as the
defender of liberty against totalitarian barbarism, but the symbols of evil
are no longer taken from what Ronald Reagan called 'the Evil Empire' (i.e.,
the Soviet Union) but from the Muslim world. 'For a millennium, the
struggle for mankind's destiny was between Christianity and Islam; in the
twenty-first century, it may be so again', Pat Buchanan argues. 'For as the
Shiites (in Iran and Lebanon) humiliate us, their co-religionists are filling up
the countries of the West.' Far from being an isolated voice in the wilderness
of American far-right politics, Buchanan's cry is echoed by mainstream
Americans. Invited by Congress to give the 1990 Jefferson Lecture, the
distinguished American Islamologist Bernard Lewis presented the Islamic
challenge against the West as 'a clash of civilisations -the perhaps irrational
but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian
heritage'. A 1992 Pentagon report identified radical Islam as the sole
remaining threat against a United States-led New World Order. President
Bill Clinton's qualification that the West did not have problems with Islam,
only with its wing of violent extremists, was sharply rebuked by the
Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington. Describing Islamic civilisation as
inherently militarised and aggressive, Huntington in his 1996 study of the
changing face of global politics, The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order, urged the West to unite, maintain its global
military superiority and restrict Muslim immigration. Huntington con-
cludes with a dystopian thesis describing the end of Western civilisation if it
maintains its present multi-cultural, multi-religious orientation.
In the context of an emerging 'new cold war' between an American-led
Western world and Islam, it may be interesting to observe Islam as an
American religion with an American history of at least some 500 years.
Estimate of the number of Muslims residing in the United States varies
between 2 and 9 million. The huge discrepancy depends in part on the lack
of reliable statistics and in part on different definitions favoured by
researchers. Should one include 'cultural' Muslims or only religiously active
practitioners? Should Ahmadiyya be included or excluded? Should a black
hip hop teenager who calls himself 'God Islam' and claims a black Islamic
divine identity be disqualified as a heretic or be included in the statistics?
Many observers lean towards a middle ground, suggesting that American
Islam is well on the way to overtaking Judaism as the second largest religion
in the United States. The Muslim expansion in the United States is mainly
due to immigration, although a significant number of converts is found in
the African-American community. Again depending on shifting definitions,
the latter is estimated to make up for between 30 and 40 per cent of the
total Muslim American community. Among non-black American converts,
the most significant impact has been made by Sufi orders in the New Age
milieu. There are more than 1,300 mosques of all sizes dotted all over the
United States, although some seventy per cent of the Muslim population is
concentrated in ten states: California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey,
Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Ohio and Maryland.
Black Muslim Sailors, Scholars and Slaves

Islam has a long but hidden history in America. Some researchers trace the
first Muslims in the Americas to pre-Columbian times. Clyde Winters
argues that Muslims from Mali may have been the first to establish colonies
in the New World. Ivan van Sertima proposes a pre-Islamic African
settlement in Central America, and the historian Kofi Wangara finds it
likely that Islam made its first contact with the Americas through one or
two pre-Columbian expeditions sent out by the Mali emperor Abubakari I1
in the early fourteenth century. Wangara and Leo Weiner both argue that a
pre-Columbian African trade was established with the Americas and discuss
possible African, particularly Muslim Mandigoan, influences on Central
Amer-Indian language, religion and art. In a 1992 speech, the Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qaddafi supported the thesis of a pre-Columbian Muslim link
with the New World, adding that the continent was named after its
'discoverer' Amir Ka. Speculation aside, we find Muslims among the early
Spanish explorers. African Muslims, either enslaved or hired, worked as
navigators, guides and sailors for the Christian conquistadors. Some of
these Muslim pioneers opened new avenues to the New World. The first
known non-Indian to enter present-day Arizona and New Mexico was a
black Muslim known as Estevanico. Linguistically talented, he established
the first documented contacts with the Pueblo civilisations and became a
renowned healer among several southwestern Amer-Indian peoples.
The vast majority of African Muslims who arrived in what today is the
United States were not adventurers but captives, brought to the continent in
the holds of slave ships. Allen D. Austin calculates that 10 per cent of the
North America
slaves exported to the colonies were Africans. After the War of

Independence, the Muslims increased to an estimated 15-20 per cent, due
to the new Americans' preference for slaves from Senegambia, an area with
large Muslim populations. Some of the traded Muslims were well-educated
ulama (Islamic scholars) and fuqaha (Islamic jurists), while others were
ordinary members of the umma (community of Muslims). Most of these
Muslims fade into anonymity through the dehumanisation process of
chattel slavery, but a limited number of individuals emerge from the mist of
contemporary indifference to be tangible for later historians. These
individuals share a dramatic life-story with their anonymous co-religionists,
but they have managed to attract the attention of some philanthropist,
abolitionist, journalist or slave-owner who cared to put their story on
paper. A few outstanding Muslims wrote their own autobiographies, in
English or Arabic, for the world to know. Unfortunately, space limitations
exclude the possibility for them all to be animated here, but a few
exemplary voices from the past will illustrate the early presence of Islam in
North America.
Abdul Rahahman, a Fulbe military leader and well-educated Muslim
scholar, was ambushed in 1788, brought to the coast, and sold to a British
slave trader. He was sold to a Louisiana farmer who renamed him 'Prince',
because a Mandingo translator told of his royal family. Returning to his
masters after a brief period as a runaway, he was put in charge of the
farmer's cattle and made an overseer. Around 1807 Rahahman met an old
acquaintance, John Coates Cox, while in Natchez on an errand. Cox had
been given asylum and medical treatment by Rahahman's father, the
commander in the great city of Timbo. After having been restored to health,
Cox was safely escorted to the Gambia River, where he boarded a British
ship and sailed home. Although Cox's efforts to purchase and free
Rahahman failed, Prince became a local celebrity when Cox's story became
publicly known. Southern papers published his autobiography, and the
American Colonization Society (ACS) took an interest in him. Would not
this royal scholar be a perfect agent for this society, spreading the gospel in
West Africa? Rahahman wisely played his part in the game. When asked to
write in Arabic, Rahahman wrote, he said, the Lord's Prayer, to the
amusement of his audience. Under the guise of evangelising Africans living
under the Islamic yoke, he raised enough money to purchase his family's
freedom. To the disappointment of the ACS, Rahahman never abandoned
his faith. Upon reaching the shores of Africa, he openly resumed his Islamic
identity, and the Lord's Prayer proved upon examination to be the Fati, the
opening sura of the Quran.
On Selapo Island, Georgia, we find another Muslim slave, Bilali, who
was a Fulbe from Timbo and an Islamic scholar who must have completed a
high level of education in Islamic jurisprudence, judging from the
manuscripts he left behind. One document proved not to be the diary the
Gardell
researchers had expected to find but a series of excerpts from the Risala, a
legal treatise of the Malaki school, the Islamic legal school dominant in
West Africa. Furthermore, the excerpt dealt with the prescribed relations
between masters and slaves, which indicates that Bilali compared his
experience as slave in Christian hands with the substantially different
Islamic view on the subject. In 1813, during the second American war with
England, Bilali was entrusted with military leadership over eighty armed
slaves. He pledged to defend the island if attacked, and assured his master
that he could 'answer for every Negro of the true faith, but not for the
Christian dogs you own', a statement indicating a Muslim congregation in
the area. When he died many years later, Bilali was buried with his Quran
and his prayer rug.
Omar Ibn Said was born around 1770 in Futa Toro, a town by the
Senegal River. He worked as a teacher in Keba, west of the Niger, before he
was captured and brought to North Carolina. His owner treated him with
great cruelty, and Omar ran away into the woods. He was later captured
and imprisoned in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he astonished his
jailer by writing a succession of lines in 'strange characters' with coal on the
prison walls. The news of this remarkable inmate reached the governor's
brother, who purchased Omar and gave him a relatively better future.
Omar Ibn Said is then believed to have converted to Christianity, but some
signs indicate that this was either a fake conversion, as was the case with
Rahahman, or a blending of the two Abrahamic faiths. For instance, several
of the Christian texts written by Omar, such as the Lord's Prayer or the
twenty-third Psalm, are all preceded with the Bismillah, the introduction to
the suras of the Quran: 'In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful'.
Another slave, Job Ben Solomon, managed to write at least two complete
copies of the Quran from memory, which proves that the words of God
through his Prophet could be kept intact in the dar al-kufr (the abode of
unbelievers). But did Islam survive as an organised religion? Could Muslim
slaves establish an Islamic tradition, kept alive through the generations?
Was the rise of a black Muslim movement among southern migrants in the
northern cities in the 1930s the surfacing of a hidden tradition? Based on
the scant sources available, the writer's assessment is that this did not
happen. With the possible exception of isolated areas, the material suggest
that Islam in North America's slave communities slowly faded into a
memory. The Christianisation of African Muslims may have passed through
a syncretistic stage in certain areas. Reverend Charles Colcock Jones of
Georgia wrote in 1842 that slaves in his district 'have been known to
accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. "God", they say, "is Allah,
and Jesus Christ is Mohammed - the religion is the same, but different
countries have different names".' Unlike the situation in Brazil, northern
South America and the Caribbean, the slaves in North America (except for
South Carolina) were a minority population and the direct import from
North America
Africa was proportionally less in numbers. These combined factors explain

in part why the African religions, including Islam, did not survive to the
same extent in North America. The rise of Islam in twentieth-century black
America cannot be attributed to the surfacing of an unbroken, underground
tradition, although the existence of black Muslim slaves has a given role in
the rhetoric of modern black Islamic preachers.
An Islamic religious text, written by a Muslim slave, is for Imam Isa of
the Ansaaru Allah Community 'evidence that the first language of the black
slaves residing today in America was Arabic and that A1 Islaam was their
true way of life when in Africa'. This notion of Islam as an African religion
is a key factor in the Muslim revival in contemporary black America. When
black intellectuals in search for their roots rediscovered their African
heritage, they also encountered Islam. They found great Islamic civilisations
in West Africa and made note of the relatively harmonious integration of
Islam in the various local African cultures. In Islam, they found a faith
traditionally opposed to European expansionism, a creed in which blacks
often held leadership positions, and in which the archetype for wisdom is a
black man, Luqman the Wise, as is told in the thirty-first sura of the Quran.
The single most powerful symbol for the connection between Africa and
Islam is Bilal Ibn Rabah. He was a black slave of Abyssinian origin owned
by Ibn Khalaf of the mighty Ummayya clan in Mecca. Bilal was one of the
first Muslims recorded in history and was severely brutalised when his
master tried in vain to force him to become an apostate. Abu Bakr then
ransomed Bilal, who became a close companion t o the Prophet
Muhammad. Bilal had a melodious voice and became Islam's first
muadhdhin, the reciter of the call to prayer. This fact, that a black former
slave is the prototype for the Muslim call that five times a day resounds
from the minarets of the mosques, is given a tremendous symbolic
significance: it is the black man who leads humanity to God.
Black Islam
A significant feature of Islam in North America is the development of
distinct black Islamic theologies of liberation. Represented by a number of
competing black Muslim organisations, Islam has come to be a vehicle for a
separate national quest as well as an Afrocentric spiritual path for a
growing body of African-Americans. They all argue that Islam is the nature
of the black man, the pristine religion of Africa, and that black Americans
could be identified as the Chosen People. Characteristically, Black Islam
incorporates mystic elements from Christianity, Islam and Judaism,
interpreted racially to form the basis of a racial gnosis informing the black
man that he is divine.
The first movement to fuse black nationalism and Islam was the Moorish
Science Temple, established in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali, born Timothy
Gardell
A Muslim selling Islamic literature in Manhattan, New York (photo:

Kristina Gardell, 1987).
Drew (1886-1929). Presenting himself as an 'Angel of Allah', Ali claimed

to have made a pilgrimage to Africa where he obtained permission from the
King of Morocco to revert all African-Americans to Islam and their true
Moorish American nationality. The Moorish Science Temple combined the
legacy of populist black nationalist Marcus Garvey with the notion of Islam
as the old-time religion of the black man. Noble Drew Ali taught that the
aboriginal black culture was the cradle of civilisation. All the Muslim
prophets were black sages, and before its fall, the original Moorish Empire
was said to encompass all of Africa, Asia and the Americas in mythical
antiquity prior to the separation of the continents. Blessed by Allah as long
as it honoured its racial God and traditions, the Moorish civilisation
crumbled when it began to admire the gods and principles of the white
North America
man. Loosing racial consciousness, the black world was colonised and its
former leaders turned into inferior 'Negroes' or 'coloured' deprived of
knowledge of self and God. These tribulations were but material reflections
of a spiritual battle. To assist His Chosen People, God manifested in the
Moorish prophet Jesus who was then reincarnated in the prophet
Muhammad. Completing the quest of racial redemption, God then decided
to make North America His headquarters. Noble Drew Ali is thus Jesus
Christ and Muhammad Ibn Abdullah reincarnated, the third and final
carnal manifestation of Allah. In 1927, the Moorish Science Temple
published the Holy Koran, which is not to be confused with the Holy
Quran of the mainstream Islamic world. Ali claimed that its esoteric
contents had been kept secret by a Silent Brotherhood of Islamic sages until
the time appointed by Allah to free the secrets and deliver them to the black
Muslims of America. In fact, the theological part of the Holy Koran was an
abridged plagiarism of the Aquarzan Gospel oflesus the Christ published in
1907 by the Gnostic Christian, Levi H. Dowling, (1844-1911) slightly
altered to fit a black nationalist quest. The black man is, according to the
Moorish gospel, an eternal, infinite thought of Allah, temporarily in carnal
hide at the plane of things made manifest. As a seed of Allah, man's true
ontology is divine and his quest is to re-ascend into a perfected being as One
with Allah.
The racial gnosis combined with black separatist pursuits. Dressed in
Turkish and/or Northern African style, the Moorish Americans adopted the
Moorish flag, changed their names by adding an 'El' or a 'Bey' and carried
the Moorish national and identity card issued by Noble Drew Ali.
Following Marcus Garvey, identified as a 'forerunner' of Ali, a 'Moorish
Industrial Group' was established to achieve an independent black
economy. It operated small business ventures, like barber shops and
restaurants, and the Moorish Science Temple slowly became lucrative. In
1929, a number of top officials made considerable profits, selling religious
paraphernalia, and when Ali disapproved of further advancement in that
area he was challenged by the business manager and real estate broker
Shaykh Claude Green who ousted Ali from the Chicago headquarters. Five
days later, Green was butchered by a hit squad. The police arrested a
number of suspects, among them Noble Drew Ali, provoking several days
of racial unrest in the city. Perhaps brutalised in custody, Ali was ill when
released and died a few days later, on July 20, 1929. In the aftermath, the
Moorish Science Temple split over the issue of successorship into several
competing factions. Only two, led by Ali reincarnated in John Givens El
and Charles Kirkman Bey respectively, gained more than local following. In
1994, the El faction led by Shaykh Richardson Dingle El as Noble Drew Ali
111 had some thirty affiliated chapters while the reformed Kirkman branch is
reportedly larger, claiming more than a 100 temples in Black America. The
most successful of the new Moorish organisations was established in 1975,
Gardell
when the notorious 5,000-man-strong street gang Black P. Stone Nation

(renamed El Rukn) adopted a Moorish identity when its leader Jeff Fort
became Imam Malik when in prison. In 1987, police raided its South Side
Chicago headquarters mosque, confiscated an entire arsenal including an
anti-tank rocket. Charged with having established a 'terrorist connection'
with Libya, Imam Malik and two co-defendants were convicted for
conspiracy and weapon possession.
The single most important of the Black Islamic organisations is the
Nation of Islam, often referred to as the Black Muslims. The Nation of
Islam originated among southern migrants in the rapidly expanding inner
city ghettos of the industrial north. Founded during the Great Depression in
the 1930s by a mysterious prophet later identified as God in Person, it was
led by the Last Messenger of God, Elijah Muhammad (b. 1897) until 1975.
He was succeeded by his son Imam Warithuddin Muhammad (b. 1933),
who initiated a rapid transformation process aimed at merging the
movement with mainstream Sunni Islam. This period is known as 'the
Fall of the Nation' among the followers of Minister Louis Farrakhan (b.
1933), who heads by far the most successful of the various 'resurrected'
Nations that operate in black America. A former night club entertainer,
Farrakhan is the epitome of black preacher artistry, who, with inflamma-
tory rhetorical skill, has succeeded in making the Nation the centre of
radical black racialist aspirations. Under his leadership, the Nation of Islam
today enjoys a popularity unsurpassed in its history and black militant
Islam has become an integral part of a contemporary black youth culture
with its message rhythmically pumped out through popular hip hop stars.
Though constantly controversial, Farrakhan has made a remarkable
breakthrough in national politics after leading the greatest demonstration
in US history in the Million Man March of 1995. The Nation of Islam had
in 1997 established mosques and study groups in every state, and began its
expansion internationally, with chapters in Canada, the Caribbean,
England, France, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. Its weekly, the Final
Call, reported a circulation exceeding 500,000 copies an issue, and
Farrakhan could be seen on more than 100 television stations across the
United States.
The Nation teaches that the black man is not an inferior creature whose
future is necessarily as a welfare recipient in the black urban ghettos, but
the Original Man, in himself a locus of all the divine creative powers.
Blacks are 'gods of the universe'. In the Beginning of Time, a first emanation
of divine intelligence took the form of Primordial Man, who took the
colour from the black space out of which he emerged. The divine energy
and creative powers can only manifest themselves in man, and a succession
of Man-Gods took charge in creating the world as we know it. In the
original divine civilisation, the black Man-God mastered all disciplines
from mathematics to architecture, symbolised by the pyramids that were
North America
placed as a sign of this magnificent past, in itself containing parts of the

keys to unlock the secrets of the universe. What is in the Bible described as
the Fall of Adam represents an event of cosmic significance at which
mankind fell into its present beast-like state. 'God in His fallen state is man,
and man in his exalted state is God.' The black gods 'died' mentally, a
metaphor used to describe the black man's unawareness of his true identity.
World supremacy was given over to a white race of evil, grafted through a
process of gene manipulation out of the black man. In essence, the white
man is the abstracted and concentrated potential for evil that was present in
the first black man, as all creation is composed of the negative and the
positive. Ruled by his inner negative side, manifest as the blond, blue-eyed
devil, the black man was to suffer in his effort to learn how to master the
Quranic imperative 'enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong'.
The true secrets of the universe were concealed to a closed circle of divine
gnostic sages, 'the hidden imams' of Shia Islam, or the 'four and twenty
elders' of Christianity, and was not to be revealed until the cycle of
confusion ends and the cycle of unveilment commences. Reconnecting with
the roots implies embarking on a black path of gnosis, and as knowledge of
Self equals knowledge of God, the spiritual journey ultimately guides the
black man and woman back into the exalted state of divinity defined as the
vaison d'gtre of mankind. This is symbolised in the concept of 'I.s.l.a.m.',
which if one breaks it down stands for I-Self-Lord-Am-Master. The
blackosophic rationale is reflected in the hip hop culture, where artists
frequently adopt names such as 'Divine Justice', 'Supreme Intellect' or 'God
Islam', and is carried further by splinter groups such as the East coast-
based, youth-dominated Nation of Gods and Earths, founded by Clarence
13X as Father Allah in 1963.
The reign of the devil explains the phenomena of colonialism, slavery,
racism, economic hardship and oppression that blacks have experienced in
recent history. The white devil was commanded by God to subdue the
world and establish his supremacy in fulfilment of Revelations 6:8: 'And
behold a pale horse; and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell
followed with him'. A pale horse rode into Africa, America, Asia and
Australia, Farrakhan exclaimed, and 'wherever you Caucasians went you
brought Death to the people. Wherever you went you brought Hell to the
people.' But, as Revelations also informs us, there will be an end to the
righteous' suffering. The white devil was to rule for 6,000 years, and that
era is now rushing to its end. The count-down to Armageddon started in
1555, when a white devil named John Hawkins arrived at the shores of
Africa onboard the slave ship Jesus to capture the black tribe of Shabazz
and bring them as slaves to the 'wilderness of North America'. With this,
God's words to Imam Shabazz (known Biblically as Abraham) in Genesis
15:13-14 came true: 'Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not
theirs, and they shall serve them; and they shall afflict them for four
hundred years; and also that nation, whom they will serve, will I judge'.
The fulfilment is stressed by the Nation as irrefutable evidence that
identifies blacks as the principal actors of the Scriptures, reducing to
impostors any other nation with claims to be the Chosen People. As is
obvious from the above, the Nation makes frequent use of the Bible,
counting as holy scriptures the Old, the New and the Final Testament - the
latter, of course, being the Quran. In effect, slavery brought the original
man as a Trojan horse into the fortress of evil, giving the African-American
a key role in the approaching apocalypse.
Close to the expiry of the 400 years, a self-fulfilled God and member of
the Gnostic circle named Master Farad Muhammad came to Detroit on the
July 4, 1930. He raised a poorly educated son of a Georgia share cropper to
become His Messenger, and then departed to the abode from which God
supervises the destiny of mankind. Elijah Muhammad spread the gospel
and embarked on the black path of divinity until he was elevated into a
black Messiah and taken to God. The Nation thus denies the 1975 death of
Elijah Muhammad, and keeps an empty coffin in its Chicago mother
mosque as a symbol of the miracle. Elijah the Messiah entrusted Minister
Farrakhan to guide the lost-found Nation of Islam through the turbulent
times to come, and will imminently return to judge the wicked as the sun
sets over the devil's world.
Far from being an escapist movement, passively awaiting God's
intervention, the Nation is a religion of practice that teaches blacks to
use their inherent divine powers to create their own destiny. Sharply
criticising the black Church, which at that time had gone from its earlier
activist position to become largely politically quietist and other-worldly,
Elijah Muhammad taught that Islam was the aboriginal religion of the
black man. Christianity was said to be a slave religion, a pie-in-the-sky
philosophy, that taught the blacks to turn the other cheek to oppression and
set all hopes for a dead white man nailed on a cross to give them
compensation beyond the grave. Islam restored black self-respect, and in its
demand for social justice turned into a creed of black empowerment.
Inspired by black Islamic theology as preached by Elijah Muhammad and
Malcolm X, black Christians in the late 1960s began developing a black
theology of liberation, reasserting the activist standpoint of the early
church. Today, black nationalist Christianity and Islam cooperate freely,
with black as a theological concept bridging the manmade borders of
different creeds.
The black-man-is-god concept can be seen as a psychological level, an
extreme version of a very American positive thinking, destined to break the
mental chains of inferiority by which the black man is said to be chained to
the bottom ladder of society. The Nation urges the black man to stop
whining over injustice past and present. Nothing good can be expected
from the devil. The government of the United States is one of the most
North America
.sc.
"G/vEMEYOUR R / q YOURFAMOUS Y#R

- . .WE?L B V E
Anln-BLACK,
YfA/W/NG FOR WH/T.. S U P R E ~ Y .
7ifE L / G X f ON FOR YOU ,
A black Muslim interpretation of the statue of liberty.
powerful on earth and would have solved all its domestic problems long
ago had it been genuinely interested. The United States is equated with
Babylon and any demand for assimilation with the foul spirits in the city of
evil at its brink of destruction is an insane suicidal policy. Aloof from the
civil rights struggle for desegregation, the Nation taught separation from
evil. Blacks were not Americans, but a separate nation with legitimate
claims of self-determination in a territory of its own. In compensation for
centuries of unpaid slave labour, the Nation demanded land, in America or
Africa, and reparations in equipment and cash to get the new nation
started. It adopted its own flag, which is red with a white star and crescent,
and composed its own national anthem. Elijah Muhammad, and later
Farrakhan, regard themselves as the head of a theocratic shadow cabinet,
governing a rightfully independent nation state from its headquarters, 'the
Black House', in Chicago. Organisationally, the Nation is modelled as a
sovereign state administration, with departments for finance, education,
health, defense, law, foreign relations and so on. Its disciplined members are
clean-living, non-drinking, hard-working and law-abiding national soldiers,
kept in shape by a strictly hierarchical and undemocratic chain of
command. Farrakhan is elected by God and not the black citizens, and can
according to the NO1 Constitution appoint and discharge his Ministers and
other officials at will. Their efforts to 'rebuild' an economic black national
infrastructure have been remarkably successful. During the time of Elijah
Muhammad, the Nation evolved into the most potent economic force in
black America. They owned tens of thousands of acres of farm and
grasslands, a modern transport fleet including trucks and a jet plane took
care of distribution, and in the cities there were restaurants, supermarkets,
real estate, bakeries, hotels, print shops, a bank and numerous other
ventures. Due to legal suits in probate court and Imam Muhammad
Warithuddin's sweeping privatisation of the Nation of Islam companies, the
economic empire fell apart following the death of Messenger Muhammad,
but has slowly been rebuilt during the present government.
Emphasising re-education as a key to national liberation, Muslim
schools are now mushrooming throughout the country, but still fall short of
meeting the national demand. The health ministry, presently headed by
Minister Dr Alim Muhammad, not only runs programmes for better diet
and exercise, but also operates a chain of AIDS clinics. The defense
department is in charge of a black Muslim army which gained national
attention when its soldiers started to intervene in down-trodden neighbour-
hoods to clear the streets of drug dealers and prostitutes in the late 1980s.
Later incorporated as Nation of Islam Security, the Islamic patrols today
have contracts in at least five different states and are employed as guards at
black housing projects. This could partly be seen as the Nation's first serious
effort to expand its jurisdiction in black America. Its prison ministry has
won great prestige for its outreach efforts, and is also responsible for what
is held to be the most effective rehabilitation programme for criminals and
drug addicts. Internationally, the Nation engages in trade and Farrakhan is
today greeted as a head of state when he travels across Africa and Asia.
Charges of having working relations with dictatorial governments counted
as foes of the United States are brushed aside as interventions in the affairs
of a sovereign state, and besides, who is the United States to criticise other
nations for friendly relations with foreign dictatorships?
Long at the margins of black America, the Nation of Islam grew out of
its sectarian position during the 1980s and gradually gained wider
acceptance for its separatist message. For a long time, black America was
largely caught up in the civil rights struggle and kept the dream of Martin
Luther King, Jr. alive. A gradually diminishing gap in income, standard of
North America
The Malcolm Shabazz Masjid (mosque) in Harlem, New York (photo:

Kristina Gardell, 1987).
living and health and education seemed to confirm the vision of a multi-
racial American nation as a realistic possibility. Affirmative action placed
individual blacks in visible positions of power, and blacks made inroads
into public affairs as elected representatives at county, city, state and federal
levels. Reaganomics marked a dramatic reversal of this trend, and during
the 1980s and early 1990s whites and blacks effectively moved apart,
economically, socially and politically. The blacks in the United States are
the only Western population whose life expectancy rate is declining. With
50 per cent of black children raised in poverty, a dramatic school dropout
rate, high unemployment numbers, one third of black males either in prison
or out on parole, and a crime rate that makes black inner cities war zones
deadlier than the Vietnam War, Farrakhan is by many blacks considered
more a realist than an extremist when he, paraphrasing the Kernel
Commission, concludes that 'there already exist two nations in the United
States. One black and one white. Separate and unequal'. Since 1995, the
black-on-black crime rate has dropped dramatically. Besides all credit that
might be given to the Clinton administration, the Muslim impact deserves
recognition. Farrakhan's unique rapport with young blacks in concert with
black Islamic rappers is a part of the picture. Touring the nation with a
'stop the killing' campaign, Farrakhan in 1992 succeeded in effecting a
Gardell
truce between the notorious Los Angeles-based gang federations Bloods and
Crips. Expanding the peace process, increasingly more gangs with a total
membership of several hundred thousand signed up. The extent to which
this effort will have a lasting effect remains to be seen. The Million Man
March of 1995 encapsulated much of the same spirit as more than 1 million
black men atoned for their failure to take responsibility for their own
families and communities. Denouncing the path of self-destruction, they
pledged to rebuild their neighbourhoods, renounce drugs and violence,
become educated and take charge of their own future. This 'spirit of the
Million Man March' should be considered when trying to explain the
falling crime rates in black America.
Mainstream Islam in the United States

It should be emphasised that not all African-American Muslims adhere to
the Nation of Islam or its black Islamic competitors, such as the Lost Found
Nation of Islam led by Silis X Muhammad or the Ansaaru Allah
Community led by Imam Isa. Although all estimate must be seen more as
qualified guess work than rock solid statistics, it seems as if mainstream
Islam has made an impact in the black community at least on a par with
black Islam. Most scholars in fact claim that a huge majority of black
Americans belong to more conventional Muslim congregations, although
this development is fairly recent and reliable statistics are yet to be
presented. Many of these African-American Muslims belong to mosques or
Islamic networks with a predominantly black membership, such as Darul
Islam, A1 Fuqra or those who followed Imam Warithuddin Muhammad's
reformation of the Nation, as was indicated above. Imam Muhammad is
one of the leading Muslim theologians in the contemporary United States,
whose message can be heard on local radio and television stations in most
American states. Sharply criticising Farrakhan's path of black Islam, Imam
Muhammad points out that the Black Muslims have gone from a position
of being victims of racism to advocating racism themselves. True Islam,
Muhammad argues, is a religion for all people and is therefore universal,
not racial. Rejecting the merger of Islam and black nationalism as being in
'conflict with the open society and democratic order of an Islamic
community', Imam Muhammad has tried to counter the anti-Muslim
sentiments in American society by claiming its compatibility with basic
American values. 'The Constitution of the United States is basically an
Islamic document', Muhammad suggests. 'Its principles were presented to
the world over 1,400 years ago by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).' His
efforts to expand the Judeo-Christian foundation of American society to
include the latest partner in the Abrahamic triad was granted a gesture of
recognition when Imam Muhammad became the first Muslim invited to
offer morning prayers in the United States Senate in 1992. Imam
North America
Dawa work in downtown New York (photo: Kristina Gardell, 1987).
Muhammad's instrumentality in spreading mainstream Sunni Islam in the

African-American community has frequently been applauded by conven-
tional Muslim leaders in the United States and abroad, especially by those
involved in the Saudi led dawa (mission) machinery. In 1978, Imam
Muhammad was chosen by a number of rich Persian Gulf states to be the
sole consultant and trustee for the recommendation and distribution of
their economic support to Muslim movements in the United States. A
further sign of his rising international status came in 1986, when Imam
Muhammad was elected to the prestigious Supreme Council of Masajid of
the Muslim World League, with responsibility for the American mosques.
The large majority of Muslims in North America is comprised of
immigrants and guest students derived from more than 60 different nations.
Muslim immigration to the United States follows, like most other
Gardell
immigration, a wave-like pattern. The first wave commenced in 1860 with

migration from what was then Greater Syria and lasted up to the outbreak
of the First World War. There followed three other major waves: from the
mid 1920s to the Second World War; from the early 1950s to mid 1960s;
and from the 1970s to present. The latter wave has been the most significant
due to a 1965 change in immigration policy that previously greatly
restricted immigration for individuals of non-European descent. During the
present wave, the number of Muslim immigrants has doubled in proportion
to other categories of immigrants. In the previous waves, Muslims from
Asia and Africa south of the Sahara were significantly under-represented,
while Muslims from Eastern Europe were over-represented. During the
latest wave, this trend has been reversed, with a significant increase in the
number of Muslim immigrants from Asia and black Africa. A general
feature of immigration is voluntary geographic concentration. If there is a
choice, statistics show that immigrants tend to move into areas where they
expect to find relatives, friends and other people from the same country, city,
ethnicity andlor religious affiliation. This strategy facilitates establishment
in the new country and has successfully been adopted by Muslim migrants
to the United States. More than 30 per cent of the sum total of Muslims in
the United States are concentrated in the three states of California, New
York and Illinois. Iranians tend, for instance, to settle down in California
where they comprise roughly one Muslim in ten. Muslims of East European
origin favour New York, where they in 1980 made up for 40 per cent of the
Muslim community, and Illinois, a state with a basically tripartite Muslim
population consisting of African-Americans, East Europeans and West
AsiansJNorth Africans, divided into blocs of about equal size.
Major Mainstream Muslim Organisations

The early Muslim immigrants kept a low profile, religiously and politically.
Their motives for leaving their homes in dar al-Islam to settle down in dar
al-kufr were mostly pragmatic, based on uncertain conditions in their
native countries, and they sought primarily individual fortunes in the
United States. Religious ambitions before the Second World War were
limited to discreet mosque constructions, with the first in Ross, a remote
rural town in North Dakota. It should be noted that the first mosques were
established on private initiatives by successful migrant families, such as the
Diabs, the Igrams and the Khalids. Voluntary associations for mutual
support and assistance had not yet been organised on religious grounds, but
had an ethnic foundation. Thus the National Association of Arab-
Americans was pan-Arabian and embraced Christian, Muslim and secular
Arabs. A nationwide Islamic organising move, supported by religious
communities rather than individual families, did not commence until after
the end of World War 11.
North America
In 1952, the war veteran Abdullah Igram summoned a conference in

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with the intention of establishing a continental
Muslim organisation. Some 400 delegates, representing local Muslim
communities from the United States and Canada, gave birth to the
International Muslim Society and elected Igram as its first president. Two
years later, it was reorganised as the Federation of Islamic Associations of
the United States and Canada (FIA) in an ambitious effort to include all
North American Islamic communities, Shiites not excluded, and once again
Abdullah Igram was elected as president. Although the activities of FIA
were limited to organising meetings and conferences, it was a significant
development that gave American Muslims a first semblance of belonging to
a Western umma. The typical FIA leader was a second generation
immigrant of West Asian parents. He was educated, had served in the
military, had a successful professional career and was well-integrated in
American society. A decade later, domestic and international developments
made the time ripe for an Islamic organising move of higher profile,
initiated by an increasing number of guest students with a more radical
Islamic outlook.
In 1963, the Muslim Student Association was established by students
from North Africa and Asia, who had been members or supporters of the
Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) or the Pakistani-based
Jamaat-i-Islami. Demanding radical transformation of society and govern-
ment, the Muslim Brotherhood had mainly been forced underground in
Syria and Egypt and would be further repressed in the years to come. The
radical Islamic Jamaat-i-Islami had been outlawed by the Pakistani
authorities and its founder, Abul Ala Mawdudi, had received his death
sentence (later revoked). Following a modest start, the Muslim Student
Association grew dramatically after the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, and
increased again after the October War of 1973, reflecting the general rise of
Islamist sentiments and the dissatisfaction with the overtly pro-Israeli, anti-
Muslim foreign policy of the United States government. In 1975, the
members decided to employ a full-time secretariat and moved its
headquarters to farmland owned by the Muslim Student Association
(MSA) in Plainfield, Indiana. The MSA expanded in several directions.
Gradually moving into new areas of activity, this association began to
overshadow other Islamic organisations. It established Islamic teaching
seminars, prison outreach ministries, publishing houses, newspapers,
mosques, local community associations, propaganda arms and funds to
support Muslim entrepreneurs. Many students who stayed in America after
graduation continued their MSA activities through its professional leagues,
like the American Muslim Social Scientist or the Islamic Medical
Association. Later, the Muslim Student Association claimed 45,000 student
members at 310 universities and had a roughly equal number of non-
student members. It was obvious that the MSA had evolved into something
larger than a student association and the need for reorganisation led to the
establishment of the Islamic Society in North America in the early 1980s.
The Islamic Society in North America is a federation of Muslim
associations based on profession, local communities, country of origin,
age, gender and specialisation (such as publishing, cooperatives or prison
ministries). Among the various newspapers published are Islamic Horizons,
Al-Ittihad, American Journal of Islamic Studies and Muslim Scientist.
Until the Iranian revolution and the subsequent war between Iraq and
Iran, American Sunni and Shia Muslims generally co-existed in the same
organisations. Four of the early Muslim Student Association presidents were
Shiites, and so was the editor-in-chief of Islamic Horizons, Kaukab Siddiq.
The war and the anti-Islamic fervour that Ayatollah Khomeini and the
Islamist revolution unleashed in the United States, contributed to a split
along Sunni-Shiite lines in the North American mainstream Muslim
community. O n various university campuses, Shiite student associations
were established, and the International Islamic Society was founded in
Virginia by long-time Shiite propagandist Yasin al-Jibouri. Financed by
Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Student Association, the Islamic Society in North
America and its affiliate, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, began
distributing anti-Shiite literature. Shiites and Islamic pro-Khomeini revolu-
tionaries countered by accusing these organisations for being corrupt
puppets in the pocket of conservative and affluent Wahhabi oil princes.
Siddiq accepted the post as editor of the Maryland-based Shiite paper New
Trend which, together with the Canadian Crescent International and Islamic
Forum, became a pro-Iranian voice, and Iran distributed free propaganda
material through its office at the Algerian embassy and the Mostazafan
Foundation in New York. Sunni strategists began legal preparations to
ensure that Shiites would be unable to rule, should they win local masajid
(masjid, mosque) elections, by statues stipulating that the Islamic Society in
North America in such a case could assume control of the property. Outside
the pro-Iranian Imamiyya Shiite community is the Nizari Ismailiyya, which
grew from a few hundred to 25,000 in Canada and 5,000 in the United
States when Idi Amin expelled all Asians from Uganda in 1972.
Muslim immigration and the black Islamic gospel of African-American
independence have been the two major sources of Islamic presence in North
America. There is, however, a third route represented by the Sufi connection
with the New Age community. Sufism has, of course, also been a significant
factor in the immigrant and black Muslim communities. A number of
successful Sufi orders are found in the former, and in the latter, Sufism has
informed the blackosophic black path to divinity and been manifest in
separate organisations, such as the black racialist Order of the Sons of the
Green Light. Besides these Sufi avenues, its presence can be noted by anyone
who cares to browse through some of the many thousand bookstores that
cater for the community of seekers in the New Age milieu. Instrumental in
North America
this history is the Sufi Order of the West, founded in 1910 by the Indian Sufi
Hazrat Inayat Khan and revived in the 1960s by his son Vilayat and his
early American disciple Sam (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Lewis. The latter felt his
call as a 'teacher to the hippies' and attracted a large following in the flower
power era, creating the immensely popular Dances of Universal Peace.
Michael A. Koszegi argues that the Sufi Order of the West 'helped give both
form and philosophy to the New Age movement' since its start in the 1960s
and points out that leading New Age figures, such as G.I. Gurdieff and
Oscar Ichazo had Sufi training. Among the many achievements of the Sufi
Order of the West is the Omega Institute, a major vehicle for the New Age
community in America and abroad. On its huge annual gatherings, Omega
has attracted a great number of leading New Age propagandists and has
turned into an outstanding forum for the exchange and development of
'movement' ideas.
Islam in Canada
Chattel slavery has no recorded history in Canada. Thus, we do not find any
documented Muslims in Canada until 1871, when the Canadian census
recorded thirteen Muslim residents. Prior to the Second World War, Muslim
immigration was limited due to Canadian efforts to restrict immigration
from Asia. The pre-war Muslim presence remained small, numbering not
more than 3,000 residents in a Canadian umma dominated by Turks and
SyriansJLebanese. The first and only pre-war mosque was built by Lebanese
Muslims in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1938. In the post-war period, Islam
expanded due to a heavy influx of immigrants of various ethnic origins and
the slow but steady spread of Black Islam. Estimations of Canadian
Muslims varies, but could roughly be set at no more than 200,000,
primarily living in metropolitan centres. Serving the community are some
200-300 mosques and Islamic associations, including Black Muslim,
Ahmadiyya and Ismaili chapters. Local Canadian Muslim associations are
in general affiliated with the above-mentioned Islamic confederations with
headquarters in the United States, following a logic established by other
mainstream American organisations, such as the labour movement. The one
exception is the Nizari Ismailiyya, composed of 20,000 immigrants of Asian
origin who were ousted from Uganda by then president Idi Amin in 1972.
Ambassadors of God in the Abode of Unbelievers

How, then, do American Muslims perceive their place and their role in the
United States? Are they striving to assimilate? Are they trying to maintain a
separate Islamic identity? Are they trying to create islands of peace in the
house of war? Do they want to win America over to Islam? These questions
may be tentatively answered if one avoids viewing the American Muslims
as a monolithic entity in favour of identifying a number of distinct strategies
of orientation.
The idea of the American society as a melting pot, into which immigrants
of different ethnic and religious background from all over the world are
assimilated or turned born-again Americans, has long been part of public
ideology. In the light of reality, the theory can be severely questioned, and
the controversy over what it means to be an American, and who should be
included and who should be excluded as an alien, has characterized much
of its history. The extent to which you can be a Muslim and an American is
far from resolved, as was indicated in the introduction. Pakistani and
Indian Muslims have found a niche in low-budget motel business, which
has provoked white Christian motel owners to advertise their business as
'American owned and operated', thus rejecting that a United States
citizenship makes an Asian Muslim an American. Research reports show
that few Muslims chose the path of assimilation by playing down their
Islamic identity, other than as an individual or temporary strategy. A great
majority seem to favour the maintenance of Islamic norms and values in
cases where these are perceived as conflicting with the norms harboured by
the dominant culture.
At a speaking engagement during a United States tour, the internation-
ally renowned Islamic theologian Sayyed Abdul Hasan Ali Nawdi reminded
his Muslim audience that:
For us Muslims, it is permitted to live only in a country where we can
live with our distinctive qualities and observe our duties. If it is not
possible in this environment or you feel you cannot carry out your
religious obligations, it is not permissible for you to stay. It is your
duty to see that you live here distinctly as Muslims. You should build
your own society and ensure that your children remain Muslim after
you.
Efforts to increase the possibilities for living as a Muslim in the United
States have, with varying degrees of success, been made on different areas.
The president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of the United States
and Canada and war veteran Abdullah Igram in a successful plea made it
permissible for Muslims enroled in the United States military to have the
letter 'I' as a religious identification on their dog tags. Some American high
schools have set aside facilities for students to observe salat (the Muslim
prayer). Through successful legal battles, an increasing number of Muslim
prison inmates have been entitled to a pork-free diet and to participate in
Islamic activities, although few prisons allow attendance at the communal
Friday service.
Politically, a number of Islamic strategies could be identified and
correlated in relation to how the United States is perceived. A minority
tendency seems to agree with Imam Warithuddin Muhammad, who see the
North America
United States as 'blessed by Allah' to become 'the greatest country on the

face of the earth'. For some, religion and politics should be separated and
they see no contradiction in running for political office on a conventional
party ticket while reducing their Islamic identity to a private matter. Most
Islamic tendencies seem to harbour more critical attitudes and condemn the
United States for placing man and Mammon above God. An overwhelming
majority seem moreover greatly concerned with the 'anti-Muslim' and 'pro-
Israeli' foreign policy of the United States governments.
The Islamist-oriented American groups seem to concentrate their
activities on mobilising support for the cause fought for by their brethren
in the various countries of origin. This has been of some concern for Israel,
and in 1993 Israel urged the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take
measures against Palestinian Americans involved with Hamas, claiming
that several Hamas actions against Israel had been planned and directed
from Virginia and California. It should perhaps be noted that Palestinians
have accused Jewish-Americans of similar tactics.
Since the early 1980s, several Islamic lobby groups, such as the Muslim
League of Voters and the All American Muslim Political Action Committee,
have been established in concerted efforts to influence the decision-making
process in United States foreign policy. Modelled on the successful pro-
Israeli lobby, a handful of Islamic Political Action Committees (PACs) have
organised think-tanks, sponsored candidates and arranged meetings with
congress members. Explicitly Islamic candidates have run for offices at
town, county or state level, some on the small Islamic Party ticket, although
none to the best of the writer's knowledge have been even remotely
successful. Any Islamic expectation of rapidly achieving an effective
political mobilisation has been frustrated by the fundamental lack of unity
that characterises the American Muslim community. Besides the obvious
disagreement with Black Islam, the Islamic-American mainstream is torn
apart by internal divisions in sharp contrast to the Islamic ideal of unity.
Saudi-oriented, well-financed groups have clashed with both Ikhwan
sympathisers and pro-Libyan groups. The Muslim Brothers not only fight
the latter but also suffer from great internal divisions. In addition to the
above-mentioned Sunni-Shia division, the Shia community is split into pro-
Iranian revolutionaries and its foes. The Black Islamic world has its
recurrent internal conflicts that occasionally have violent eruptions. A huge
part of the Islamic community in the United States avoids participation in
the arena of conventional politics. Spokespersons for Jamaat al-Tabligh, a
numerically strong, mainly Indo-Pakistani and African-American, move-
ment have sharply distanced themselves from any political involvement in
North America, arguing that a system based on kufr, such as the American
democracy, can never give rise to an Islamic state.
What then should a Muslim living in dar al-kufr do? He should, ideally,
follow the example put forward by the Prophet Muhammad. When he
Gardell
realised that his God-given mission was frustrated by the unbelievers in

power in Mecca, he moved to Medina and established an independent
Islamic society. Muslims in the United States should thus perform hijra
(migration) and build the foundation of a society in accord with God's plan
for humanity. However, this imperative has no given interpretation and at
least two ideal types could be contrasted, each leading to distinct strategies.
The first method, termed 'the sectarian-hijra response' by John 0. Voll,
represents a separatist orientation, aiming to withdraw from the outer
American society and establish an Islamic society within the United States.
The Nation of Islam belongs to this category and represents its majority
subdivision in its effort to establish a society within a society, wherever
members might live. Another solution worked out on this basis is found in
the several communal settlements that have been established. In 1987,
followers of Imam Warithuddin Muhammad inaugurated its New Medina
in rural Mississippi. Adherents of Imam Isa of the Ansaaru Allah
Community have established a number of communal settlements, and the
Atlanta-based Lost Found Nation of Islam, led by the Farrakhan critic Silis
X Muhammad, has founded Project Exodus in Georgia with a similar
purpose. Another, but multi-racial, all-Muslim communal township called
Dar al-Islam is located outside Abiquiu, north of Santa Fe, in the New
Mexican desert.
The other method is to identify the migration to the United States as the
hijra, and thus intensify the dawa zeal in an effort to make the whole
country the New Medina. The distinguished Arab-American Muslim
scholar-activist Ismail R. al-Faruqi (1921-86) argues that it cannot be a
coincidence that so many Muslims have migrated to the Western world. It
must be by the design of God. Muslims should see themselves as
'ambassadors of Islam, with a mission to bring Islam to Western society'.
Addressing Muslims living in the West, al-Faruqi suggested:
This is our Medina, we have arrived, we are here. Now that you are in
Medina, what is your task? [It is] the saving, the salvation of life, the
realizations of the values of dignity, of purity, of chastity, all the
nobility of which humans are capable.
As Voll points out, this vision is powerful and 'goes beyond the suggestions
of traditional Muslim teachers who urge emigration from non-Muslim
societies' if it proves difficult to live an Islamic way of life. It sets
Islamisation of society as a goal without insisting that it should be
accomplished immediately, and thus 'makes it possible for Muslims to have
a sense of Islamic mission while participating in a non-Islamic social order'.
It should perhaps be emphasised that al-Faruqi called for a Christian-
Islamic dialogue, based on mutual respect and understanding, arguing that
it should be possible to develop an Abrahamic ethic as the basis of moral
society.
North America
Literature
For an introduction to different aspects of Islam in the United States and
Canada, see the excellent anthologies The Muslims of America, ed. Yvonne
Y. Haddad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Muslim Communities
in North America, eds. Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane Smith (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1994); The Muslim Community in
North America, eds. Earle H . Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban and Regula B.
Qureshi (Edmonton: University of Albany Press, 1983); and Islam in North
America, eds. Gordon J . Melton and Michael A. Koszegi (New York:
Garland, 1992). Stephen E. Barboza's American Jihad (New York:
Doubleday, 1994) is a brilliant compilation of interviews with American
Muslims, immigrants, converts, Sufis and Black Muslims, including early
disciples of Elijah Muhammad. An important study of Islam in Black
America is African American Islam by Amirah McCloud (London:
Routledge, 1995). For arguments of a pre-Columbian link with the
Americas, see the anthology African Presence in Early America, ed. Ivan
van Sertima (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987). Albert J.
Raboteau's awarded Slave Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978) contains valuable information on Islam in the slave communities, as
does Allan D. Austin's African Muslims in Antebellum America (New York:
Garland, 1984).
Black Islam has begun to receive considerable scholarly attention. Two
outstanding studies, C. Eric Lincoln's The Black Muslims in America
(Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1996) and E.U. Essien-Udom's Black
Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) present the
Nation of Islam during the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. An eminent
Elijah Muhammad biography is An Original Man: The Life and Times of
Elijah Muhammad (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997), written by Claude
Andrew Clegg 111. Peter Goldman's The Death and Life of Malcolm X
(Urbana, 11: University of Illinois Press, 1979) and Karl Evanzz's The Judas
Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press,
1992) add valuable information concerning the Nation of Islam in that era.
The Islamisation process initiated by Imam Warithuddin Muhammad is
described by Clifton E. Marsh in From Black Muslims to Muslims: The
Transition from Separatism to Islam (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press,
1984). For a comprehensive study of the Nation of Islam with a focus on
the Second Resurrection during the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, see
Mattias Gardell's In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and
the Nation of Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996). The latter
also includes some information on other Black Islamic tendencies. Arthur J.
Magida sheds new light on Farrakhan's early life in his Farrakhan
bibliography Prophet of Rage (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
Chapter Twenty
The Caribbean and Latin

America
Muhammed Abdullah al-Ahari
For centuries Muslims have claimed that there were Arab and African
Muslim explorers in the so-called New World long before Columbus. The
discovery of a medieval Turkish map drawn in March 1513 by the
cartographer Piri Muhyil-Din Reis has been put forward as one possible
proof on numerous occasions since its initial discovery in October 1929 by
Khalid Edhem Bey at the Topkapi Saray Library in Istanbul. Other
explorers from Europe are said to have heard or read of Muslims finding
strange, wonderful, distant lands across the Atlantic and felt that it was a
shortcut to India. One such person was Vasco da Gama. He learned about
the compass and the East Indies from Moorish navigators of the coast of
Mozambique. There are rumours of other travellers using Muslims or their
books as guides. The most famous is, of course, Christopher Columbus.
During Columbus's first voyage, he had a Moor, Luis de Torres, as his
navigator. Some writers have claimed that de Torres was a Jewish convert to
Catholicism (as Columbus probably was). O n his voyage, Columbus had a
journal of a voyage to the New World written in the twelfth century. The
narrative by al-Sharif al-Idrissi (1097-1155) was called The Sea of Tears. In
it al-Idrissi discusses the voyage of eighty muhajarin, explorers from
Lisbon, Portugal during the reign of al-Murabit Amir Yusuf ibn Tashufin.
The narrative mentions visits to fourteen islands, half of which have been
identified as belonging to either the Canary Islands or the Azores. However,
the ones not traced could have been as far away as the Caribbean. An even
earlier voyage, in 942, is mentioned by al-Masudi in his Annals.
Spanish Muslims and African Moors frequently were guides during the
settling of the American southwest, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Istafan the Arab, known in Spanish sources as Estevano, was guide to the
Spanish settlers in Arizona in 1539. He was from Azamor, Morocco and
had previously been to the Americas on Panfilo de Narvaez's ill-fated
expedition to Florida in 1527. Istafan was a guide to a Franciscan friar,
Marcos de Niza, and was invaluable in this capacity until he disappeared in
an Indian attack in present-day Arizona or New Mexico. The influence of
African Muslims prior to Columbus is harder to trace, but it is often
claimed that Mandingos, Malis and other Muslims had settled in the New
The Caribbean and Latin America
World before Columbus. In fact, some Moorish Science Temple Muslims,

who will be discussed below, claim descent from the Moorish settlers before
Columbus and that the importation of slaves never existed and was a lie
made to separate them from their land. The Muslims who came here left
mostly a legacy of architecture and iron-work. All over Latin America
traces of their craftsmanship still exist as do loan words from Arabic into
Spanish. These artistic and linguistic traces of Muslim influence in America
have been particularly documented by several Brazilian scholars.
The century before Columbus's voyages saw the conversion of all of
Spain to Catholicism. Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians were
killed, exiled or forced to convert. When the exiled Muslims and Jews made
it to the New World, the Catholic Church wanted to ensure that they would
not set up Muslim colonies. Largely in vain, the Church issued
proclamations against the importation of Muslim slaves and forbade any
religion in their territories other than Catholicism. Still, there were
numerous Muslim slaves imported and several Muslim insurrections in
South America. In Latin America all who did not submit to Catholicism
were killed, tortured or enslaved. The Inca, Aztec and Mayan empires all
fell due to Spain's desire to import the inquisition to the New World.
Before the writer leaves this general introduction, brief mention of
contact between North and South American Muslims during the time of
slavery and afterwards is needed. During the War of 1812, around 1,000
southern slaves had been recruited by the British. Of these 240 ended up in
the West Indies and became Muslims (some joined Trinidad's Free
Mandingo Society). In the Muslim slaves' narratives in America we find
that Muhammad Said (formerly of the 55th regiment during the Civil War)
and Muhammad Baquaqua (a convert to Christianity and a minister) had
both been slaves in Brazil. Furthermore, several dozen Muslims had been
slaves in the Bahamas before arriving on the North American mainland.
The most important of these are Salih Bilali and Bilali Muhammad of St
Simon's Island and Sapelo Island, respectively. Bilali Muhammad was
responsible for much of the Islamic influence upon the African-American
languages of Gullah and Geechee. He also passed on a small thirteen-page
text on prayer, fasting and beliefs loosely based on the tenth century
Tunisian scholar Abi Zaid al-Qairawani's work Al-Risalah.
In the twentieth century we find several North American Islamic groups
setting up centres in the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico and South
America. The earliest of these is Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple.
Drew Ali was born in 1886 in North Carolina as Timothy Drew to a share-
cropping family. As a youth he became a circus magician and a Pullman
porter. Sometime before the age of twenty-seven, according to Moorish
American historiography, he travelled to the Middle East as a merchant
seaman. During these travels he came upon the idea that Islam and
reclaiming an Islamic identityhationality was the only solution for the
problems of the African-Americans, then only a few generations from
slavery. He proposed a Moorish nationality and gave them a religious text
called the Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple (based on Levi
Dowling's Aquarian Gospel and the Rosicrucian text Unto Thee I Grant).
In 1927 he travelled to Cuba and Mexico, where he set up branches of his
Moorish Science Temple. He died on July 20, 1929 in mysterious
circumstances possibly related to a power struggle within his organisation.
His legacy includes his religious text, reclaiming nationality and establish-
ing temples in many of the ghettoes across North America.
As shown in the chapter on North America by Mattias Gardell, the
Nation of Islam was started in 1930 by Wali Farad Muhammad. When he
vanished in late 1933 or early 1934, his student Elijah Muhammad took
over the reins of leadership. They taught that the Black Man was 'god',
descended from the Tribe of Shabazz, that the White Man was a grafted
devil, and that the Black Man was the true inheritor of the earth. These
teachings helped to take many individuals off drugs and out of prostitution
and a way of life that was destroying family life in many inner cities. Elijah
lead the organisation till his death in 1975. His students included his son
and successor Warithuddin Muhammad, boxer Muhammad Ali, Malcolm
X and Minister Louis Farrakhan. In 1977 Farrakhan would re-establish the
Nation of Islam after a split with Imam Warithuddin Muhammad over the
so-called Orthodox Sunni direction his American Muslim Mission was
taking. As we shall see, Warithuddin Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan and
Elijah Muhammad all established temples in the Caribbean, Central
America and South America.
The Caribbean Islands

Most writers on eighteenth century Caribbean life neglect to mention the
existence of Islam. Bryan Edwards and Richard Robert Madden were two
exceptions. Edwards considered the Muslim to be a superior slave and tells
us in his The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the
West Indies (1794) book that, 'an old and faithful Mandingo servant . . .
stands at my elbow while I relate this'. That Mandingo servant told
Edwards about circumcision, memorising the Quran, prayer times, the
shahada or creed, fasting and Friday prayers. Edwards also tells of another
Mandingo servant who wrote Arabic exercises from the Quran but relates
that this servant died shortly after being purchased before more could be
learned about him. Madden is our main source for Islam in nineteenth
century Jamaica. He was one of six special magistrates sent to the island in
1833 to ensure a smooth passage of former slaves to freedom. He stayed
nine months and recorded his experiences in Twelve Months' Residence in
the West Indies (1835). Like Edwards, he called all the Muslims
Mandingos. In a letter to J.F. Savory at St Andrews, Jamaica he writes of
a slave who wrote the Quran from memory, a self-trained doctor named
Benjamin Cockrane, and half a dozen other Muslims he met. Madden
recalls that when he mentioned the name of the Prophet Muhammad these
so-called converts to Christianity all gave salaams (blessings) to him. In his
narrative, Madden publishes letters sent between the Muslims he met. In
one letter the young doctor Benjamin Cockrane writes that his African
name was Anna Musa and that he had a warrior name, Gorah Condran.
Cockrane mentioned that he was from the Carsoe nation and that its ruler
was Demba Saga. That letter of November 1, 1834 was sent to another
Muslim, Abu Bakr Sadiqa. In his reply, dated September 20, 1934, Abu
Bakr Sadiqa writes that he was born in Timbuktu and raised in Jenne. Abu
Bakr was captured in a fight with the Ashanti of Ghana and sold into
slavery. This former slave was also a supposed convert to Christianity, but
he writes that 'nothing shall fall on us except what He ordains; He is our
Lord, and let all that believe in Him put their trust in Him'.
After the abolition of slavery, Muslims either converted to Christianity,
went back to Africa or to other places in Latin America where there were
Muslims, or hid the fact that they were Muslims. Until the last quarter of
the present century, Islam was almost unknown in Jamaica outside the
small indentured East Indian Muslim community. Today, most Muslims in
Jamaica are of African descent but a fair number of Indians and Arabs have
settled there. In 1981 the Islamic Council of Jamaica was founded. Today it
is the umbrella organisation for this small Caribbean nation's eight
mosques. In 1994 it was estimated by the Centre for Muslim Minorities
Affairs in Saudi Arabia that there were 3,000 Muslims in Jamaica. They
were, for the most part, found in Kingston, St Catherine, St Mary and
Westmore.
The Muslims in Barbados number around 3,000. A third of these are
East Indians and the rest are converts. They have four mosques and have
contact with Muslims in Trinidad. An Islamic Centre was built in
Christchurch with money from Trinidad and Saudi Arabia in 1981. There
are two mosques in the capital. Besides the Saudi and Trinidadian influence,
the Indian Jamaat al-Tabligh is extremely influential amongst the Muslims.
In Barbados there are also some followers of the Nation of Islam. The
number of Muslims in the Bahamas is over 1,000 of whom most are
converts. The Nation of Islam and Warithuddin Muhammad both have a
presence there. In the early 1990s the government of the Bahamas tried to
ban Farrakhan from speaking to his supporters. The Muslims in the
Bahamas are organised as the Jamaat-us-Islam. At one time in the 1970s a
Spanish Sufi group, the Murabitun, had a centre ran by Abdul Haqq
Bewley. They held a Maliki law conference there in the early 1980s.
However, most Murabitun eventually left the Bahamas. There are between
500 and 1,000 Muslims, mostly converts, organised in Bermuda. Most are
of African-Bermudian origin and congregate at an Islamic Centre in the
capital. There are about 2,000 Muslims in the Virgin Islands. Most are of
Arabic origin and they have a centre at Saint Croix. The Ansarullah, Islamic
Party and the Nation of Islam have also made inroads there.
Before the revolution of 1959 there were more than 5,000 Muslims in
Cuba. A large number of these were Chinese Muslims. The Moorish Science
Temple also had a centre there, as in Mexico, but the one in Cuba has
apparently been defunct for quite a while. It is estimated that more than 80
per cent of the Muslims emigrated after the revolution, but several small
mosques still operate and National Geographic and Aramco Magazine have
both had articles on the Muslims in Cuba.
About 2,000 Muslims existed in 1982 in the Netherlands Antilles. They
established an Islamic association in 1964 and built a mosque in the capital.
There are about seventy African and thirty East Indian Muslims in
Grenada, and they have close contact with Trinidadian Muslims. A few
hundred Muslims live on St Kitts. The 500 Muslim converts of Martinique
were organised in 1982. The island of Dominica is a favoured site for
students training to be doctors. The students of Indian and Arab origin have
a Muslim organisation and the hundred or so other Muslims meet at each
others' homes.
In the early 1980s Puerto Rico had a community of 3,000 Palestinian
Muslims. Recently the number of Muslims has swelled due to the
conversion of Puerto Ricans to such groups as the Ansarullah, the Nation
of Islam and the Jamaat al-Tabligh. The Palestinians are organised into an
Arab Social Club and an elder acts as imam for the community.
Trinidad and Tobago

Today most Africans live on the island of Tobago and most East Indians and
Javanese on the island of Trinidad. The East Indian Muslims have
segregated themselves from their African co-religionists. This was not
always the case. Indians were indentured servants and the African Muslims
were primarily free due to the efforts of the Free Mandingo Society. In fact,
in the 1830s the chief imam of Trinidad was Jonas Bath, a Susu by birth.
The Muslims in Trinidad established schools at Port of Spain and an
organisation of free Mandingos led by Yunus Muhammad Bath. One of his
descendants, Dr Patricia Bath, recently formed the Jonas Muhammad Bath
Foundation in Los Angeles. A number of Africans that fought Napoleon in
the British West Indian Regiment also joined Bath's organisation. Other
soldiers settled in the south of Trinidad and in Manzanilla, on land given
them as reward for their service to the crown. The main focus of Bath's
organisation was to free Muslim slaves. The members even petitioned King
William IV to that effect. The petition explained that Muslims saved their
earnings and did not waste money on intoxicants and gambling. It was sent
three times but refused each time it was received. This forced the Muslim
slaves to settle in Trinidad after being freed. One former leader of the Free
Mandingo Society, Muhammad Sesei (1788-838), did eventually return
together with his wife to his native village Niyani-Maru on the Gambia
River 100 miles from the Atlantic coast.
In 1814 a proposal for the importation of workers from India to
Trinidad was put forward by William Burnley. He wanted men with habits
and culture who could stand on their own, and since importation of new
slaves from Africa was a closed door, he turned his eyes to India. Between
1838 and 1924 nearly half a million Indians immigrated to Trinidad,
Guyana, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Surinam, the Virgin Islands and other
locations. The indentured servant could not lay down the terms of the
contract upon which his immigration to the Caribbean from India
depended. The controlling party in this venture was the British Government
through the Colonial Office in India. Eventually, by 1840, the terms were as
follows: work for five years as a day servant, one shilling per day wages,
free housing and medical care, food free for first three months and then a
third of daily pay per day, and after five years the indentured servant could
resign or get free passage back to India. Among these Indian immigrants,
most were Hindus but one in six was Muslim. The Indian Muslims came
primarily from the lower and illiterate classes in India. They were forced to
co-exist with the Hindu migrant workers in the New world. The Hindus
called them 'Madingas' as an ethnic slur to show that they had more in
common with their African co-religionists than with their fellow Indians
who were Hindus. This was also true in Guyana where the Hindus called
Indian Muslims 'Fulas' after the Fula people of West Africa.
Trinidad and Tobago consists of several islands. The largest being
Trinidad and Tobago. The smaller of these main islands, Tobago, has always
been the more African of this nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Most Indians
and Javanese settled in Trinidad. There are few Muslims on Tobago. Less
than 200 are estimated to live there. These islands are only seven miles from
Venezuela and have close commercial ties with South America. Althogether
there are approximately 115,000 Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago out of an
overall population of 1.1 million. Most are of Indian origin. Muslims from
other ethnic origins are also found in Trinidad. At least 500 Chinese
Muslims are there and another 4,000 Chinese Muslims are spread between
Mexico, Cuba, Panama and Ecuador. These Chinese Muslims are not well
organised and are primarily service-oriented business people.
In 1985 the Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago had seventy mosques with
Quranic schools. They are well-organised and some hold cabinet posts and
are members of parliament. The Muslims from India were traditional
Hanafi Muslims, but early in this century the Ahmadiyya movement was
able to gain control of some of their centres. In 1935 the Anjuman Sunnatul
Jamaat Association was founded to combat this new form of Islam. A
similar organisation called the United Sadr Islamic Anjuman was organised
The Jinnah Memorial mosque in St Joseph, Trinidad (photo: Justin Ben-
Adam, 1997).
in Guyana the following year. The government of Trinidad and Tobago is

controlled by Africans, but the Indians have frequently sided with them in
order to have a share of power. A Muslim, Dr Wahid Ali, has been president
of the senate, and Muslims such as Kamaluddin Muhammad have held
cabinet posts in the past. Since 1976, the American leader Warithuddin
Muhammad has had an imam in Trinidad. The first was Sunni Ahmad.
Warithuddin Muhammad also has mosques in Belize, Jamaica, Bahamas
and Barbados. The adherents of Deen Muhammad number around 300 in
their centre at Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Since most Muslims are of the Hanafi school and of Indian origin, some
details about their organisation should be presented. The Islamic
Missionaries Guild of South America and the Caribbean, founded in
1960 by Maulana Fazlur Rahman Ansari, has branches in all English-

speaking Caribbean areas. They built a mosque in the mid 1980s at Kelly
Village Caroni. The other areas where they have centres are Guyana,
Surinam, Venezuela, Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Vincent, Dominica, US
Virgin Islands and Brazil. Every year they hold a regional conference with a
special theme. The Guild publishes The Torch of Islam (formerly The
Islamic Herald) and has published several works by Abul Ala Mawdudi and
other Indian Muslim writers. They have built a public Islamic Library,
helped Muslims to perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and have sent
students to study abroad in India, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They
also have a half-hour radio programme called the 'Voice of Islam', which
goes on air every Friday night. The Muslims of Trinidad have to contend
with the influence of Saudi Arabian-salaried dawa (missionary) workers
from the University of Medina. The Saudi workers are connected to the
Muslim Missionary Guild.
Tackweyatul Islamic Association (TIA), founded in 1927, was the first
Islamic organisation in Trinidad. Today it is largely inactive but runs five
secular schools with a total of 1,700 students. Like all other denomina-
tional schools, the government pays teachers' salaries and funds 75 per cent
of other expenses. The principal in 1985 was the Al-Azhar trained
Trinidadian Shaykh Muhammad Shakir. Islamic instruction is only for one
hour a week at these schools. They control four mosques: Bamboo
Settlement Mosque at Valsyn, Charlie Village Mosque, Freeport Mosque
and Lengua Princetown Mosque. They have around 2,000 members and
like to celebrate traditional holidays such as the birth of the Prophet
Muhammad (mawlid), Islamic holidays and the fortieth day of remem-
brance after the death of a relative.
More than 80 per cent of Trinidadian Muslims belong to the Anjuman
Sunnatul Jamaat Association of Trinidad and Tobago (ASJA), which was
founded in the 1930s. It now controls fifty-three mosques, seven primary
schools and two secondary schools. The schools are all government-
supported. The members of the ASJA are for the most part traditional
Hanafi Muslims, although Wahhabis have sought to influence their
organisation. The Trinidad Muslim League, founded in 1947 by Ameer
Ali, was one such Wahhabi-inspired organisation that grew from the ASJA.
It runs three schools with around 1,000 students of whom 65 per cent are
Muslim. Originally this organisation also had a number of Ahmadiyya
followers as board members. However, in 1977 all of them were purged
from the organisation in order to make it acceptable to the larger Muslim
umma (community of Muslims).
The Islamic Trust, a charity founded in 1975, runs an Islamic bookstore,
publishes a newspaper called The Muslim Standard, and established the
first Muslim Credit Union in Trinidad. Members meet regularly for Islamic
study circles. The Islamic Funeral Services Trust, registered in 1984,
provides inexpensive funeral services for Muslims. They receive funds from
most of the Muslim organisations in Trinidad. Its yearly budget in 1985
was $100,000. The Abdul Aziz Trust was established in 1978 by the son of
Abdul Aziz Kudrat (d. 1952).They run free medical clinics at Dow Village,
California and Samson Village, Clarkson. They also have a monthly
periodical. Jamaat al-Tabligh is an Indian immigrant group that seeks to
bring Islam to back-sliding Muslims. The present leader in Trinidad is
Mufti Shabil. They have close contact with members of their group all
around the world. An estimated 500 Muslims belong to this group.
Jamaat al-Muslimeen was founded in 1979 by former members of the
Islamic Party of North America, Dar-ul-Islam, and the Ansarullah. The first
elected leader was Yasin Abu Bakr, an African Trinidadian who went to
college in Canada. The Jamaat al-Muslimeen has a mosque at Macurapo, a
school with all grades (primary and secondary) and a residence for their
imam. The schools have an Islamic curriculum, are not government funded
and have students who do well on government school exit exams. Since
1982 the members of the Jamaat al-Muslimeen have published a newspaper
called Al-Nur, but it has no regular publishing schedule. In 1983 they were
accused of an attempted government coup, but no member of the Jamaat
was formally charged. They have perhaps 300 members. A splinter group
was started in 1982 by a member who felt it un-Islamic to participate in
politics. That group, with fewer than fifty members was called Jamaat al-
Muminin. The Saudis have given them funds to build a mosque in
Levantine and to publish a newspaper called The Voice. Moreover,
international organisations such as the Muslim World League, Rabitat al-
Alami al-Islami, are influential in Trinidad. In 1977 it held a Muslim
minorities conference and in 1980 directed an imam training course for
Caribbean Muslims. As stated above, foreign Muslim organisations and
leaders from North America, such as the Islamic Party, Dar-ul-Islam,
Ansarullah, Warithuddin Muhammad and the Nation of Islam have been
active dawa participants. However, Saudi Arabia has surpassed all
organisations in its spending to spread its version of Islam.
One great boon for Muslims is that the government supports Muslim
schools, holidays and personal laws. Since the early 1980s it has passed
laws to make it easier to have Islamic schools, banks and other
organisations in Trinidad. One such measure was to allow a tax-deductible
$2,500 investment in Muslim Credit Unions. It appears that Islam will
continue to grow and spread in Trinidad, but it may not spread to the
Africans until the Indian Muslims accept converts from among them as
equals. A strong reason to believe the likelihood of this assumption
occurred in 1983 and 1990, when the African-American and African-
Trinidadian Muslims took over the parliament building and staged
unsuccessful coups. The coups were attempts on their part to establish a
Muslim brotherhood, equality and an Islamic state. The leaders of these
coups were former members of the Dar-ul-Islam, Islamic Party, Ansarallah

and other non-Trinidadian groups. Some of the coup participants are still
(1998) in prison.
Central America
Perhaps 1,000 Muslims live in Belize, the majority of whom are of African
origin. This century some Muslim groups from the United States (mainly
the Nation of Islam and the Ansarullah) established centres. The first
Nation of Islam leader in Belize was Imam Nuri Muhammad. The Nation
had earlier introduced the message of Elijah Muhammad to Jamaica,
Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Nassau and other Caribbean
islands. After the death of Elijah Muhammad, most of these new Muslims
followed Warithuddin Muhammad's lead, but Farrakhan has rebuilt much
of the pioneering work done to spread the message of the Nation of Islam.
The Islamic Party of North America also established sites in Guyana, Belize,
Grenada, the Dominican Republic and Surinam. The sites established by
the Islamic Party collapsed after the death of one of the founders, Yusuf
Muzaffar Hamid, from leukemia in 1992. Besides the Muslims of African
origin and the followers of Louis Farrakhan and Warithuddin Muhammad,
there are some 500 Muslims in Belize divided between the Arab and Indian
immigrants.
Islam first arrived in 1552 in Panama when a group of 400-500 escaped
slaves lead by a Muslim named Bayano settled there. He was arrested by the
then governor of the Spanish territory Ursua. Bayano and forty of his men
were killed by poisoning at the hands of Ursua. Islam virtually faded from
Panama until migrant workers came from the Indian subcontinent in the
nineteenth century. There are a number of manuscripts, which date from
the time of slavery, written in Arabic. At the end of the nineteenth century, a
number of Bangladeshis arrived in Panama. However, there was never a
sufficiently large number of Muslims to organise until 1930 when Indian
Muslims founded the Islamic Mission. One of the earliest leaders of this
group was a Lebanese merchant in Colon named Muhammad Majdob.
Abdul Jabbar Babu and his brother Ali Akbar lead the Islamic Mission
group. Their numbers rarely exceeded twenty to twenty-five individuals. In
1967 they changed their name to the Indo-Pakistani Islamic Association
and to the Panama Islamic Association in 1974. This organisation has an
Islamic Centre, cemetery and school in Panama City. Recently Islam has
begun to spread more widely in Panama. Much of the growth has been
among African-Panamanians. In 1982 there were 1,000 Muslims in
Panama; 400 were Palestinian, 200 Panamanians and 400 were of Indian
origin. Since then, Warithuddin Muhammad, Farrakhan and the Saudis
have all secured some influence there, and today there are almost 4,000
Muslims in Panama. The earliest Nation of Islam missionaries were Abdul
Wahab Johnson, Abdul Kabir Abdul Malik Reid and Suleyman Johnson.
They established centres in Panama City and Colon. After the death of
Elijah Muhammad, this group eventually disintegrated and faded from
existence. However, their work was continued by followers of Warithuddin
Muhammad and Farrakhan.
Among the Muslim communities of Latin America, it was only in
Panama, Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil where Middle Eastern and Arab
Muslim immigrants showed any great influence. Most of them became
totally absorbed in business and had little to do with religion. In Panama,
Venezuela and many South American countries, the central mosque is Saudi
sponsored. In several areas the first mosques were built by the Ahmadiyya.
This is especially true in Central America. In fact, the first mosque in
Panama was built by the Ahmadiyya in 1930. Other than in Belize and
Panama, there is little Islamic activity in Central America. A small number
of Muslims exist among the Arab businessmen in the Dominican Republic
and in El Salvador. Guatemala has a few 100 recently immigrated
Palestinian businessmen, while Honduras has around hundred Arab
Muslims. Nicaragua has 150 temporary resident Arab Muslims with no
organisation and Costa Rica has a 100 recent immigrant Muslims among
its 2,000 Arabs and Asians. There is an Islamic Centre in San Jose, Costa
Rica.
The number of Muslims in Mexico is rapidly growing. There were
several thousand Iranians shortly after the Iranian revolution and several
hundred connected with foreign diplomats. The Moorish Science Temple
and the Nation of Islam have centres there. It is estimated that there are at
least 10,000 Muslims in Mexico including converts and immigrants.
Islamic Centres are found in Mexico City and some of the larger northern
cities. There is no national organisation and most of the dawa work is
carried out by Mexican-American converts to Islam.
Venezuela, Guyana and Surinam

In 1983 there were 50,000 Muslims in Venezuela, of whom 45,000 were of
Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian origin. Around 20,000 now live in
Caracas. Most are small retailers but some are professionals. The year 1968
saw the establishment of an organisation named the Committee for the
Formation of Mosques in Venezuela. It established an Islamic Centre in the
same year with a mosque in Alparaiso (a suburb of Caracas). The members
have drawn up plans for an Islamic Centre and a school. In 1970 they built
their first mosque in Caracas, and in 1972 a school was being run for sixty-
four students.
According to Internet information, Muslims in Venezuela today remain a
small unorganised community and are heavily influenced by an influx of
funds from Gulf State nations. At present there is a battle between Wahhabi
influence and traditional Sunni- and Sufi-oriented Islam. A large mosque in

Caracas built by the Saudis is almost always empty, while small Sufi
meetings in neighbourhood homes are always crowded. In addition to these
problems, the Arabs have not been united in the past and have often
grouped themselves along nationalist lines.
Guyana is a former British colony that was granted independence on
May 26, 1966. The official language is English, but 55 per cent of the
population is of Indian and 33 per cent of African origin. The first Muslims
were of African origin. The African-origin Muslims either converted to
Christianity or migrated to Africa, and by the 1880s they were almost non-
existent in Guyana. However, Indian Muslims immigrated after 1835 as
indentured servants. Until 1965, Muslims of both Indian and African origin
were forbidden by law to practice the rites of Islam (including Islamic
marriage). After the end of British rule, both Hinduism and Islam became
state-recognised religions by Guyana's constitution.
Between 1835 and 1917 about 240,000 East Indians came to Guyana.
Among these Indian indentured servants were some 40,000 Muslims. The
Indian Muslims in Guyana organised in 1865 and built mud and thatch
mosques with associated schools for rudimentary education in Urdu, Islam
and Arabic. Most of the Muslims were not trained in Muslim schools in
India but did the best they could to pass on their traditions. 111 1935 the
United Sadr Islamic Anjuman (USIA) was founded in order to unite
Guyanese Muslims against the threat of being taken over by the
Ahmadiyya. The USIA split in 1972 into two groups, one identifying itself
with the governmental party and one with the opposition. The Muslims are
divided between those who feel they need to side with Hindus, those who
side with Africans and those who wish to remain neutral. Efforts at forming
an Islamic political party have failed. Since then an umbrella group, the
General Congress of Islamic Brotherhood, established 1973, has come into
existence. The USIA groups now have 120 local organisations.
In 1982, there were 130,000 Muslims in Guyana (15 per cent of the
population). Over 90 per cent of these were of Indian origin. Muslims in
Guyana have more than 130 Islamic centres, the ability to apply Muslim
personal laws and a secular Muslim Trust College in Georgetown. Africans
control Guyanese politics, but Indians struggle to have a share of the power.
Since 1964 the African-dominated People's National Congress Party has
been in control. In 1978, the Muslims held four ministerial posts and ten
seats in the National Assembly. The Muslims in Guyana struggle to retain
their Muslim identity, although they have little contact with the larger
Muslim world.
The Muslims in Surinam resented being slaves and fought against the
Dutch on numerous occasions. The most successful slave revolt was led by
Arabi (born in Senegal) and Zam-Zam. In 1761, the latter forced the Dutch
to sign a peace treaty with his co-religionists. The area they controlled is
still ruled by their descendants. East Indians were imported as indentured
servants to Trinidad. They proved so valuable there that they, as of 1873,
began to be brought to Surinam. By 1916, some 24,000 East Indians had
been imported and among them were some 6,000 Muslims. The Surinamese
Indians follow the Hanafi law school and have the khutba (Friday sermon)
in the Urdu language. About a third of the Indians follow the Ahmadiyya, a
fact which has caused a split in the community.
A group of Indonesians from Java began to arrive in 1890, and by 1907
they numbered 33,000. The 50,000 Javanese there today remain aloof from
Muslim affairs in Surinam, the Caribbean and the rest of Latin America.
Since the 1940s, the Javanese segregated themselves from the Indians and
many returned to Indonesia after its independence or obtained dual
citizenship. The Javanese mosques are distinct from other centres in
Surinam in that they face west for prayers (as in Java) and are Shafii instead
of Hanafi. Many writers on Javanese Islam point to its eclectic nature and
its use of pre-Islamic Javanese native religious rites such as magic and spirit
worship. Most of the Javanese who came as workers to Surinam stayed and
did not take the return provision of their contract. About 7,000 of the
Javanese live in Paramaribo where they are employed in commerce,
industry or as domestic servants. However, the close kinship lines of
traditional Javanese society remain in Surinam so that even if the people in
general are poor, no member of the Javanese community there can be found
to be hungry or homeless.
In all there are some seventy mosques in Surinam. Until 1978, the
Ahmadiyya held control in many centres and the national Muslim
organisation, Surinamese Islamic Organisation (established 1929), was
dominated by them. The Muslims broke away from this organisation in
1978 and founded the non-Ahmadiyya-controlled Surinam Islamic Asso-
ciation. There are three Dutch translations of the Quran used in Surinam,
two Ahmadiyya ones and one by Professor J.M. Krammer. The Muslims in
Surinam stand on the verge of possibly establishing the only Muslim
majority country in the Western hemisphere. In 1982 they were 150,000 in
number and 35 per cent of the country's population. The Muslims are 33
per cent Indian, 55 per cent Javanese, with the remainder of African and
other origins. Despite their diversity, they have a nationwide umbrella
organisation, the Surinam Islamic Council.
Muslims in Surinam have been able to follow Islamic personal laws for
themselves and establish more than fifty Islamic centres. Some of them
perform the hajj every year and about twenty full-time Muslim schools
exist. Id al-fitr (the feast of breaking the fast of Ramadan) is a national
holiday, and in 1973 Muslims held two cabinet seats (out of thirteen) and
eight legislative seats (out of thirty-nine). Politically, most Indian Muslims
belong to the opposition party, Vereenigde Herormings Partij. Recently, one
of the major political parties in Surinam has been the Moslim Partij. Since
attempts at coups d'e'tat in February and August of 1980, the implicit

discrimination against Muslims has increased and an estimated 30 per cent
of the Indian Muslims have emigrated to the Netherlands. Likewise with
the Javanese, a large number of them emigrated since the coups of the early
1980s.
Brazil
Most of the early Muslims in Brazil were of African origin. Today the
majority are of Middle Eastern background. The area where the early
Muslims were most numerous was the state of Bahia. In the sixteenth
century African slaves formed an independent state in Northern Brazil
called Palmares. Little has been written about this slave empire that lasted
almost a century. Researchers have assumed that it was an African 'pagan'
empire, but more un-biased researchers such as Clyde Ahmad Winters have
pointed to a more likely Muslim power-base for the Brazilian-African
Palmares Republic. Most of the literate slaves in Brazil were Muslims
(primarily Yoruba and Hausa).
The Brazilian authorities called the Muslims Malis or Males (inhabitants
of Mali). The Muslims in Brazil had secret schools and often had trained
imams. They called God Allah or Olurum-ulua. Lessons were taught to
Muslims (alufos) by the teacher (lessano) and assistant (ladano). The beliefs
of the Muslims in Brazil were those of traditional West African Muslims of
the Maliki school of law. They used amulets containing passages from the
Quran and believed in baraka (blessings) that were contained in that Book
of God. The most vocal of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Brazilian
Muslims were the Yorubas. It was these Yorubas who kept Islam alive until
the forced assimilation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
after slavery and segregation ended in Brazil. Throughout much of South
America the Yoruba-speaking Muslims were known as 'Hausas'. In Brazil,
these 'Hausas' were often the leaders amongst slaves, and the most feared
by the slave owners. Because Islam requires basic literacy in its active
practice, a fairly large number of the 'Hausas' were literate. This gave them
a unique edge in a society where even many of the slave owners were unable
to read or write. The slave owners were very suspicious of the Muslims and
often treated them harshly, in many cases outlawing the practice of the
Islamic faith in order to punish the Muslims.
Their constant oppression coupled with their often educated minds made
the Muslims very likely to participate in subversive activities. This
combination proved true in Bahia, a section of Brazil heavily populated
by Yorubas. In 1835, a slave rebellion took place in the city of Salvador (a
city in Bahia) that was the biggest of its kind in the Americas. Despite the
fact that the Yoruba Muslims contributed great numbers and provided
much of the planning for the uprising, it is important to note that many
non-Muslims, and non-Yorubas for that matter, participated in the
rebellion. Although others did take part, the role of Muslims should not
be overlooked. They were central in the planning phase. During slavery the
masters took many measures to keep the slaves separated. However, much
of the planning was done without arousing the suspicion of the owners. It
remained secret largely because the meetings were held under the auspices
of religion. In this manner the planning was completed. The Muslims, with
their superior education, were able to lead the preparations and devise a
sound plan.
The Islamic spirit was crucial in the uprising. Many of the captured
slaves who had participated in it were found to possess amulets or talismans
filled with Quranic verses. They believed that the spirit of Allah would
protect them and lead them to success. Clearly the Yorubas, who formed a
majority among the Brazilian Muslims, played an important role in the
rebellion of 1835. After the jihad ('holy war') of that year, numerous Arabic
texts were found on the bodies of the Muslim combatants. The Portuguese
authorities in Brazil considered them to be plans for jihad. However, when
translated, they proved to be one of the following: prayers, verses from the
Quran, Arabic alphabetic exercises or amulets. The most popular portions
from the Quran were 12:64, chapters 109-14 and various short passages.
These proved a love of God and his Prophet and a belief in their protection
rather than a plan for jihad.
After the abolition of slavery, the number of Muslims in Brazil of African
origin diminished dramatically. Many of them returned to Africa. Other
factors which led to a decline in the number of Muslims were public
education, inter-marriage and desegregation. A further factor in the
declining number of Muslims was the appearance of the Ahmadiyya in
1924, which had a divisive effect. For such reasons, immigrant Muslims
today form the largest sector of the Muslims of Brazil. Around 1890,
Muslims from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine began to arrive. Most of them
settled in Rio de Janeiro and Sso Paulo. Some decided to use their pen to aid
the cause of Arabs and Islam. These writers included Fawzi Ma'luf (d.
1930) and Illyas Farhat (d. 1893). It was estimated that in 1908 there were
100,000 Muslims of African origin in Brazil, most were centred in Bahia.
As late as the 1940s the Brazilian police would often harass and arrest the
Muslims when they gathered. Consequently, the number of Muslims was
probably underestimated.
Today, there are approximately 500,000 Muslims in Brazil. The majority
are of Lebanese origin, with a large number of Syrians and Palestinians also.
About half of the Muslims live in the state of Sgo Paulo. A Syrian Muslim
runs a television station in Manaus, Amazonia, but there is no local Muslim
newspaper. The first non-African mosque was built in Sgo Paulo in 1950. In
1985, there were fifteen mosques in Brazil with plans for more. Several
Islamic organisations have been established to work between these
mosques. The Brasilia Islamic Centre was started in 1977 and the
Federation of Muslim Associations in 1979.
Argentina
The first Muslims to set foot in what would later become Argentina were
the so-called Moriscos - the forcibly baptised Christian Moors - expelled
from Spain in the sixteenth century. These early immigrants had little
lasting impact, but numerous Argentinian writers (especially those who
represent the Gaucho tradition) have an affinity for Islamic subjects.
Domingo Sarmiento, a nineteenth century author, even claimed descent
from Turk Ali Kaka Ben Al-Bazin in eastern Spain. His most famous works
are Recuerdos de Provincia and Facundo. The Egyptian Sayf al-Din Rahhal
was a fine Arab poet who wrote elegant Spanish prose. Many see him as
the poet laureate of Argentina. Of course, there were also much earlier
Spanish writers who used Islamic themes, such as Cervantes in his Don
Quixote.
The Muslims in Argentina were able to establish a lasting presence with
immigration from Greater Syria between 1880 and 1955. Most of the
Syrians were Christian, but Syrians still make up over half of the Muslims in
Argentina. By 1982, 300,000 Muslims of Syrian origin lived in Argentina.
These and other Muslims numbering 100,000 formed 1.5 per cent of the
country's population at that time. Around 80 per cent of the 400,000
Muslims were Sunnis, 10-12 per cent were Lebanese Shias and the rest were
mainly Druse. Very few of the immigrants returned to Syria and, as a result,
the Muslim population of Argentina is stable and growing. The vast
majority of the Muslims are now second or third generation Arab-
Argentinians and have heavily intermarried among Christian Argentinians.
About half the country's Muslims live around Buenos Aires. The
majority of the others live in the northern provinces. Muslims in Argentina
suffer the humiliation of having to have Christian names, although they are
allowed freedom of congregation and religion by the constitution. In
addition, Islamic marriages are not recognised by the government and, as a
result, Muslims are forced to marry in Catholic churches or in civil
ceremonies. Despite laws such as this that have the practical aim of effacing
Islam in Argentina, many military and political leaders have come from the
Muslim ranks. In fact, a coup attempt was lead in the early 1980s by a
general of Druse ancestry. The most important Muslim military and
political leader of Arab ancestry was Carlos Saul Menem, president of
Argentina from 1989, who converted from Islam to Catholicism during his
imprisonment in the late 1970s.
Outside Buenos Aires, Arabic is practically a dead language among the
younger generation and there is little contact with the larger Muslim world.
The Syrian Muslims are successful economically, however, since most are
engaged in commerce of some sort. Most Muslims of Syrian origin belong
to Arabic social clubs organised along Syrian village origins of both
Christian and Muslim immigrants. In Buenos Aires, the first Islamic centre
was established in 1918. In 1968 it left its rented space for a permanent
location. Since then the centre has been directed by an Al-Azhar-trained
imam. In 1960 another Islamic organisation, called the Arab Argentinian
Islamic Association, was established by Argentinian Muslims. Muslims in
Buenos Aires have an Islamic school for 250 students, and they also have a
cemetery. Centres were established in Mendoza in 1926, Cordoba in 1929
and later in Rosario and Tucuman. The centre in Cordoba has had an Iraqi-
trained imam since 1973. Tucuman saw the organisation of their local Arab
Club into an Islamic centre by the Muslim World League in 1974 when a
Saudi-trained imam was sent there. However, most Arab Muslim centres
outside Buenos Aires are more like social clubs than true Islamic centres
because they have no regularly trained imams. Some Argentinian Christians
have converted to Islam, including one nun from New York, but Islam in
Argentina remains Arab-inspired, and the lack of Spanish language
materials for converts and Arabs who were born and raised in Argentina
does not help to spread Islam.
Other South American countries

The Muslims in Columbia are mostly Arabs. The Christian Arabs began to
organise shortly after Columbian independence. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century, Syrians arrived and after 1947 Palestinians came. An
Islamic Club was organised by the Palestinians in Bogota in 1964. In 1971
there were about 10,000 Muslims in Columbia, and of these some 2,000
were living in Bogota. A decade later centres were located in rented
apartments in Bogota, Maco and Bona Vintura. In 1948 the first Lebanese
family came to Bolivia. The first member of that family to settle in Bolivia
was Ahmed Sabagh. In 1971, 100 Muslims lived in Bolivia, of whom some
fifty lived in the capital. The Muslims are unorganised and hold no
communal festival or Friday prayers. There are about 20,000 Arabs in
Ecuador, and it is estimated that around 100 are Muslim. There are
approximately 5,000 Arabs in Paraguay and at best 1,000 of them are of
Muslim origin. They are unorganised and have no Islamic centres or
organisations. A small population of Muslims, of Syrian and Palestinian
origin, also exist in Uruguay.
The 500 Muslims of Peru are not organised religiously and have no
schools for their children but carry a great deal of political clout. Most are
wealthy Arab businessmen who live in the capital Lima. They were
organised in 1924 by the Palestinian importers Talib Ahmed Humaida and
Mutih Abdullah Humaida into an Arab Social Club. The influence of Islam
is also literary, like the literature of Argentina and Colombia. Thus, several
writers in Peru have also touched on Muslim themes. In the mid 1980s, a
convert to Islam from Peru, Muhammad Ali Louis Castro, went to study at
the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The Muslims in Chile have had a considerable influence on the literature,
music and art there. In 1921 the Chilean writer Pedro Prado wrote a series
of poems patterned after Omar Khayyam under the pen-name Karez-I-
Roshan. These poems were extremely popular and praised by the likes of
Bernard Shaw and Khalil Gibran. Another famous writer was Benedicto
Shawqi. Today around 2,000 Muslims live in Chile. They are divided
between Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Bosnian origin. Palestinians have
a weekly radio programme. Christian Arabs run orphanages and hospitals.
They are actively trying to convert the Muslims of Chile to Christianity. The
first Islamic organisation was founded on July 25, 1926. In 1955 Tewfiq
Romiah, a translator for the Syrian embassy, reactivated the organisation.
He was also active in helping to buy land to establish a cemetery. A Union
of Arab Nations exists, but there is no fully functioning Islamic centre. The
children have the benefit of a trained teacher, Abdullah Mustafa Idris, who
was born in 1921 to a Chilean mother and a Syrian father in Chile. He was
raised in Syria and thus know both Arabic and Spanish well.
The slave trade in past centuries and mass immigration from Europe and
the Near East to the New World have brought Muslims to the United
States, the Caribbean, the British Colonies, Brazil and Latin America. Since
the majority of these new immigrant Muslims were slaves or held little
political or social influence, it was a rarity to find any detailed inclusion of
them in the history of the New World, no matter how extensive their
contributions may have been toward building a society there. The travesty
of exclusion from historic record has been turning around to a point where
most recent history texts mention Muslims in the New World. However,
they still have to contend with inaccurate presentations of Islam in the mass
media. This is particularly the case for Muslims in Latin America where
they exist in small numbers, have little literature in the vernacular
languages and rarely have formal Islamic education. It is hoped that this
small effort at writing some notes on the Muslim minorities in the
Caribbean and Latin America will help to change this situation.
Literature
Material on Islamic history in Latin America and the Caribbean can be
found in Allan Austin's African Muslims in Antebellum America (New
York: Routledge, 1997); Thomas Ballentine Irving's The World of Islam
(Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1984); Ivan van Serima's They Came
before Columbus (New York: Random House, 1976); and Abdullah Hakim
Quick's Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Caribbean from before Columbus to
the Present (London: Ta-Ha, 1996). See also the writer's own study of
American Islamic history entitled 'The historical development of the Islamic
community in the United States', Fountain Magazine, 2:10 (April-June
1995), pp. 18-22, which has material on early Muslim immigrants to Latin
America. Expulsion notices and similar documents can be found in Rafael
Guevara Bazan's 'Muslim immigration to Spanish America', The Muslim
World, 53:3 (July 1966), pp. 173-87. Interested readers should look there
for further information and bibliographic sources. Recently the Islamic
Circle of North America's Message Magazine has had articles on Islam in
South America, but they are polemic, not scholarly, in content. Material on
nineteenth century Islam in Jamaica can be found in Richard Robert
Madden's A Twelve Months Residence in the West Indies (Philadelphia:
Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835) and Bryan Edward's The History, Civil
and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies (London: John
Stockdale, 1794).
Articles on Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Surinam, Guyana and
Brazil have appeared in the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs published
by the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs in Saudi Arabia. Muslims in
Trinidad, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Surinam
and Guyana also have an Internet presence, for this essay and some of the
more recent material, was derived from Muslim web pages for these areas.
General survey material on Islam in Brazil and the Caribbean can be found
in articles by Clyde Ahmed Winters in back issues of al-Ittihad, published
by the Islamic Society of North America. Articles in Portuguese dealing
with the 1835 slave revolts and Arabic writings by captured Muslim
combatants can be found in issues of Afro-Asia 1965-67. Similar articles
by Reichart are in French in the Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., published by
L'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire. See also Raymundo Nina
Rodrigues' 0 s africanos no Brasil (SZo Paolo: Companhia editora national,
1932).
Arab Argentinian Islamic Association, 459 banks, Islamic, 69, 231, 264, 394, 451
Arab League, 43 Bano, Shah, 239-240
Arabic language, 1-3, 16, 22, 58, 70, baraka, 14, 44, 81, 85, 93, 102, 366,
94, 97-98, 100, 162, 243, 298, 302, 456
339, 354, 369-370,454 Baraza Kuu la Jumuia na Taasisi za
Arabs, 1, 57, 78, 98, 152, 167, 170, Kiislam, 107
193-195, 246, 250, 360, 443, 446, Baraza Kuu la Waislam wa Tanzania,
453-454, 457, 459 103-104
architecture, 16 Baraza la Uendelezaji Koran Tanzania,
Ardabil, 169, 171 106
Argentina, 31, 458-459 Barbados, 446, 449
Armenians, 152 Barelwi, 116, 220-221, 224, 226, 231,
Arvasi, Abdiilhakim, 136 237, 244, 364-366, 372, 388
ascetism, 12, 199, 270 Barre, Mohamed Siyad, 40, 42
Ashgabad, 152, 159 Bashkortostan, 41 1-413
ashraf, 243 Beijing, 190, 194, 197-198, 207, 210
Askariyya, 24, 101 Bektashiyya, 14, 16, 128, 140, 297,
Asma'u, Nana, 59 330, 391
Association Culturelle Islamique, 344 Belarus, 149, 404
Association des Etudiants Islamiques en Belarussians, 150
France, 346 Belgrade, 300, 303
Atatiirk, Kemal Mustafa, 128-130, Belize, 449, 452
134-135, 139-140 Bello, Ahmadu, 62, 65-67
atheism, atheists, 39, 130, 135, Bello, Muhammad, 59, 66
155-156, 159, 182, 185,207, 308, Berbers, 57, 78, 346
385,402,408-409,413 Berg, Einar, 393
Auckland, 287, 289-290 Berlin, 319, 321, 331
Australia, 28, 278-287, 293 Bermuda, 446
Australian Federation of Islamic beurs, 353
Councils, 280-282 Bhutto, Benazir, 231
Austria, 30, 298, 315-336 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 228, 230, 235
Ayodhya, 236, 238, 245 Biafra, 66
Azerbaijan, 403, 405, 409, 417 Bilal Mission, 101, 393
Azeris, 152, 170, 417 Birmingham, 357, 364
Bishkek, 150
Babakhan, Shamsuddin Khan, 157 Black Muslims, 427; see also Nation of
Babangida, Ibrahim, 68 Islam
Babri mosque, 236, 238-239, 245 blood compensation (diya), 42
Bagamoyo, 101 Bohras, 100, 105, 215, 225-226, 238
Baghdad, 168, 213, 234 Bolivia, 459
Baha al-Din, 14, 159, 184, 214 Bombay, 238
Bahai, 170 Bordeaux, 337
Bahamas, 444, 446, 449 Bosnia, 29, 120, 297-314, 318, 326
Bai Fall, 85 Bosnians, 297-314, 385-386,460
Bakwata, see Baraza Kuu la Waislam wa Botswana, 113, 120
Tanzania Brasilia Islamic Centre, 458
Baluchs, 170, 175, 177 Brazil, 31, 444, 456-458
Balukta, see Baraza la Uendelezaji Brezhnev, Leonid, 156
Koran Tanzania bridewealth, 90, 185, 283
Bamba, Amadou, 84-88 Britain, see Great Britain
Bangladesh, 27, 212, 224, 242-246 British (people), 170, 172, 217-224,
Bangladeshis, 341, 373, 452 357-378, 444
Buddhism, Buddhists, 28, 168, 193, Germany, 325, 333-334; in India,
236, 242-243, 245-246, 250, 240; in Indonesia, 255, 276; in Iran,
254-255, 258, 379, 403 168, 170, 175; in Nigeria, 56, 66-67,
Buenos Aires, 458-459 72; in Pakistan, 225, 235; in Russia,
al-Buhari, Baha al-Din Muhammed, 153 402-405, 407-408, 415; in Senegal,
Buhari, Muhammad, 73 77-78, 82; in Somalia, 41; in Sri
Bukhara, 150, 152-153, 157, 161, Lanka, 246; in Tanzania, 97,
168-170, 182, 192 102-103, 105; in Turkey, 132, 138
Bulgaria, 29, 297 Ciller, Tansu, 134, 146
bumiputra, 253, 269, 273 circumcision: female, 17, 105, 286-287,
Burckhardt, Titus, 331 289; male, 114, 163, 201, 398-399
Butha Buthe, 115 civil war: in Afghanistan, 177, 181; in
Algeria, 348; in the Balkans, 300,
Cairo, 63, 266, 381 321, 326, 394; in India, 224; in
caliph, 8, 11, 16, 59, 81, 85-86, 90, 127 Nigeria, 66; in Somalia, 41, 54
caliphate: Abbasid, 1, 16, 167, 221, Claremont Muslim Youth Association,
247, 380-381; Ottoman, 127-129, 112
222; Sokoto, 26, 59-63, 67-69, 73; Clinton, Bill, 420, 432
Ummayad, 1, 9-11, 167, 213 clitoridectomy, see circumcision
calligraphy, 57 Cologne, 317, 326, 387, 389
Call of Islam, 112, 119-120 colonialism, colonialists, 11, 18, 25,
Cambodia, 28 60-63, 78-79, 99-100, 111,
Cameroon, 67 217-224, 255, 266, 278, 317, 322,
Canada, 435, 438 338-339, 367, 374, 377,428
Cape Town, 112, 118-119, 121 Columbia, 459
Cardiff, 357 Columbus, Christopher, 443-444
Cassiem, Achmat, 118-120 communism, communists, 105, 139,
Catholicism, Catholics, 78, 106, 235, 151, 154-155, 163, 178, 181, 186,
246, 298, 308, 318, 348-350, 377, 190, 198, 200, 207, 210, 222, 257,
379, 381,444, 458 262-263, 301-304, 306, 310, 402,
Caucasians, 150, 153 408-409
Central London Mosque, 359 Confucianism, Confucians, 194
Chad, 67 Conseil de rkflexion sur 1'Islam en
chadur, 177,232 France, 351
Charlemagne, 337 Constantinople, 11
Chechens, 405-408, 415-416 conversion, converts: to Christianity,
Chechnya, 407-408, 410,415 132, 235-236, 407, 423, 444; to
Chicago, 426, 431 Islam, 2, 30-31, 57, 66, 82, 99, 101,
Chile, 460 112-114, 136, 168, 191, 193, 195,
China, 27, 190-211 198, 213-214, 236, 240, 242-243,
Chinese, 28, 190-211, 266, 269, 273, 250, 255, 270, 275, 288, 298, 319,
447-448 331-333, 342, 354, 357, 359, 386,
Chirac, Jaques, 341 392,404, 416, 421,451
Chisti, Muin al-Din, 15, 214, 237 Copenhagen, 389, 392, 396
Chistiyya, 15, 122, 179, 214, 226, 330, Cordoba, 16, 337
365, 391 Costa Rica, 453
Christchurch, 288-289 Coulon, Christian, 82
Christianity, Christians, 4, 8, 23, 28, Council of Ulama, 69, 72
318; in Austria, 334; in the Balkans, Coventry, 365
297-299, 302, 305, 308, 310; in Creevey, Lucey, 81
Bangladesh, 242, 246; in Central Creil, 350
Asia, 157, 161; in China, 193; in Cruise O'Brien, Donal, 94
Fattah, Abdul, 331 Gasprinsky, see Gasparali, Ismail Bey
fatwa, 171, 218, 224, 348, 395 Gastarbeiter, 319-322, 327-329, 387
Ftdtration des Associations Islamiques Gayoon, Mamoon Abdul, 250
en France, 346 Gdansk, 404
Fkdtration Nationale des Musulmanes Geistliche Verwaltung der
en France, 346 Muslimfluchtlinge, 326
Federation of Islamic Associations of genealogy, 41-43, 46, 195-196, 198,258
New Zealand, 292 Germany, 30, 315-336
Federation of Islamic Associations of the Germans, 150, 182, 315-336
United States and Canada, 436, 439 al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, 13, 16
Federation of Muslim Associations, 458 GIA, see Groupe Islamique Arm6
Feild, Reshad, 16, 331 Gnosticism, Gnostics, 13
feminism, feminists, 5, 17, 155, 396 Gokalp, Ziya, 128-129
Fethullahis, 134-136, 147 Golden Sufi Centres, 331
FIANZ, see Federation of Islamic Gorbachev, Michail, 156, 407, 413
Associations of New Zealand Gothenburg, 385, 390
Fiji, 28, 280, 288 Gowon, Yakubu, 66
Finland, 3 7 9 4 0 1 Great Britain, 27, 30, 171, 357-378
fiqh, 7 Greece, 29, 297, 348, 355
FIS, see Front Islamique du Salut Grenada, 447
Fisher, Michael M., 118 Groupement Islamique en France, 346
Foderation der Islamische Gemeinden Guadeloupe, 448
und Gemeinschaften, 328 Guatemala, 453
Foderation der Turkisch- Guinea, 23
Demokratischen Idealistenvereine in Giilen, Fethullah, 134-135, 147
Europa, 329 Gumi, Abubakar, 69-72
Fodio, Usuman dan, 59, 62, 66, 69-70 Gumiishanevi, Shaykh Ziyaeddin, 133
Foi et Pratique, 345 Gundiiz, Miislum, 136
Forenade islamiska forsamlingar i Guyana, 31, 113, 448-449, 453-454
Sverige, 387
France, 30, 91, 337-356 hadith, 6, 12, 17; see also Sunna
Frankfurt-am-Main, 325 Haeri, Fadhlalla, 16, 391
freedom of religion, 121,200,227,235, hajj, 5, 51, 72-73, 79-80, 121, 158,
316, 350, 380-383, 408 194, 200, 205, 262, 311, 333, 339,
Front Islamique du Salut, 327, 348 405,414,418,450
Front National, 341, 348 halal, 194, 280, 287, 290, 293, 348,
Fulani, 56-59 351, 354, 394-395
Fulbe, see Fulani al-Hallaj, 13
fundamentalism, 238-239: Christian, Hamas, 440
72, 75, 105, 108; Islamic, 2, 20, 68, Hamburg, 325
108, 135, 161-162, 198, 282, 286, Hamidullah, Muhammad, 346
308, 313, 315-316, 332, 348, 354, Hamilton, 288-289
374, 417; see also Islamism Hanafi school of law, 7, 41, 100, 116,
Fundikira, Abdallah, 102 128, 156, 170, 177, 182, 212, 226,
fuqaha, 7, 422 229, 244, 297, 318, 352, 359, 408,
al-Futi, Umar, 79 448450,455
Hanbali school of law, 7, 100
Galiev, Sultan, 154 Hans, 27, 190-211
Gandhi, Mahatma, 222 al-Haqqani, Muhammad Nazim, 331
Gandhi, Rajiv, 238, 240 Haqqani Foundation, 331
Garvey, Marcus, 425 Harakat Al-Aslah, 47
Gasparali, Ismail Bey, 153 Harakat al-Fallah, 92
Islamic Institute (Liverpool), 358 Jafari school of law, 156, 170, 175
Islamic Movement of Nigeria, 69 Jamaat al-Tabligh, 116, 270-271,
Islamic Political Action Committees, 291, 344, 364, 372, 388, 440,
440 446, 451
Islamic Religious Community, 300-301, Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat, 388, 391, 394
303 Jamaat-i-Islami, 228-230, 244, 364,
Islamic Renaissance Party, 151 367, 372, 408, 436
Islamic Republican Party, 175 Jamaatou Ibadou Arrahman, 92
Islamic Revival Party, 187 Jamaatu Izalat al-Bida wa Iqamat al-
Islamic Salvation Front, see Front Sunna, 69-72
Islamique du Salut Jamaatu Nasril Islam, 66, 69
Islamic Society in North America, Jamaica, 445-446, 448
436-437 Jamiatul Ulama Transvaal, 112, 116
Islamic Union of Europe, 328 Jamiyat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, 178
Islamic Unity Convention, 119, 121 Jamiyat-i ulama, 178
Islamic Women's Council of New Jamiyat-i-Ulama-i-Hind, 222, 239
Zealand, 293 Javanese, 254,257-263,275-276,448,
Islamiska Kulturcenterunionen i Sverige, 455-456
387 Jeddah, 107
Islamism, Islamists, 2, 20-24, 28; in Jerusalem, 5, 73, 319, 338
Afghanistan, 178, 181; in the Jesus, 4, 12, 46, 426
Balkans, 312-313; in China, Jews,4,8, 132, 152, 157,170,175,
198-200; in France, 351, 354; in 177, 182, 193, 298, 305, 377, 379,
India, 217; in Iran, 173-176; in 395, 398
Malaysia, 269; in Nigeria, 63, 68-72; jihad, 58-60, 67, 71, 79, 136,218,220,
in Pakistan, 231-236; in Russia, 408, 234, 317, 405,416,457
415; in Senegal, 82, 91-94; in Jinnah, Mohamed Ali, 222-223, 227,
Somalia, 42, 47-48, 54; in South 232-234, 243
Africa, 118-119, 121; in Sudan, 26; jinn, 52, 81, 203, 260, 366
in Tajikistan, 186-187; in Tanzania, jizya, 216, 236
105; in Turkey, 127, 139, 142-143, Johannesburg, 112-1 13, 116, 118
146; in the United States, 436, 440 Jumbe, Aboud, 107
Islamrat der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland, 330 Kaba, 6, 67
Ismail, 9 Kabul, 177, 179-180
Ismail, Shah, 171 Kano, 57, 63, 67, 75
Ismailis, 9-10, 100, 102, 168, 177, Kano, Aminu, 65
181-182,215,225-226, 236,238, Kaolack, 62, 81-82
280, 390,437-438 Kaplan, Cemalettin, 328
Israel, 146, 162, 440 Karachi, 231
Istanbul, 11, 130, 136, 385, 387 Karbala, 9, 173, 391
istishara, 79 Karimov, Islam, 151, 161-162
Italy, 28, 91, 337 Kaum Muda, 267
Ithna Ashari, see Imamites Kawawa, Sofia, 104
Ittihad-i Islami, 178 Kazaks, 149, 153, 159, 166, 191-192
Izala, see Jamaatu Izalat al-Bida wa Kazakstan, 27, 149-150, 156-159, 162,
Iclamat al-Sunna 191, 410
~zetbe~ovik, Alija, 304-306, 308, Kemalism, 130, 134-135
311-312 Kenya, 40-41, 99
Khadija, 370
Jadidism, Jadids, 152-155, 407 Khalwatiyya Jerrahi, 136
Jafar al-Sadiq, 9, 170 Khan, Genghis, 152, 192
Khan, Hazrat Inayat, 330, 390-391, Mahdawi movement, 215-216, 226
410, 438 Mahdi, 10, 12, 172-173,215
Khan, Sir Sayyid Ahmed, 221-222 Mahdism: in Iran, 173; in Malaysia,
Khan, Vilayat, 438 270; in Nigeria, 60-61, 68; in
Khan, Yahya, 244 Senegal, 26, 83
khanqah, 14 Mahmoudy, Betty, 316
Kharijites, 9, 57, 100 Mahmud, Husayn bin, 101
Khatmiyya, 26 mahr, see bridewealth
Khojas, 9, 181 Maitatsine, Mohammed Marwa, 67-68
Khomeini, Ayatollah, 10, 172-173, 181, Maji Maji uprising, 99
229, 232, 270, 348, 437 majlis, 171, 250
khums, 172 Makda, Shaykh Adam, 114
Kiev, 405 Maktab Tarighat Oveyssi
Kilaziyya, 140 Shahmaghsoudi, 33 1
King, Jr., Martin Luther, 431 Malawi, 23, 112
Kirghiz, 153, 159, 166, 177, 190-191 Malawians, 113-1 14, 116-1 18
Kirghizstan, 27, 149-150, 157, 159, Malays, 112, 118, 246, 253, 265-276,
161-163, 191 279
Kohani, Nadir, 391 Malaysia, 28, 253, 265-276
Konya, 331 Malcolm X, 429, 445
Kosovo, 29, 297, 308, 310 Maldives, 28, 212, 215, 250
Kotku, Mehmet Zahid, 133, 141 Mali, 23, 338
Krushchev, Nikita, 155-156 Malians, 340-341, 443
Kuching, 268 Maliki school of law, 7, 100, 250, 352,
kufr, 440; see also dar al-kufr 423
Kurdistan, 26, 179 mallam, 66
Kurds, 26, 130, 150, 170, 175, 382, Malmo, 385, 393, 396, 399
386-387, 390 Manchus, 193
Mandivenga, Ephraim, 113-1 14
Lagos, 56, 60, 64 Maoism, 230
Lahore, 225, 228, 231 Mao Zedong, 197
law, see sharia marabout, 14, 63, 353; in Nigeria,
Laye, Seydina L., 83 62, 70; in Senegal, 77-94; see also
Layenne, 81, 83 shaykh
Lebanese, 438, 45211.53, 457-460 marja-i taqlid, 172, 175, 179
Lebanon, 338 Marseille, 337, 342-344
Lesotho, 115 Martel, Charles, 337
liberation theology: Christian, 429; Martinique, 447
Islamic, 424, 429 Marxism, Marxists, 91, 155, 177-178,
Libya, 92 230,403
Lille, 342, 345 Maryamiyya, 122
Lithuania, 29, 404 Massignon, Louis, 349
Liverpool, 357 Masud, Shah, 178, 181
London, 30, 357, 359 Mauretania, 23, 83
Lost Found Nation of Islam, 433, 441 Mawdudi, Mawlana A.A., 181,
Lyon, 337, 342, 344-345, 348 228-230, 436,450
Mawlawiyya, 14, 331, 384
Macedonia, 29, 297, 310 mawlid, 101, 113, 116, 118, 291, 312,
Mad Mullah, 45 450
madrasa, 157-158, 161, 247, 301, 327, Mawlud, see mawlid
414 Mbabane, 115
magal, 87-89 Mbackk, Falilou, 82, 86
Mecca, 2, 5, 31, 48, 51, 60, 67, 72-73, 325; in the Balkans, 309, 312; in
121, 138,202,266, 347, 441 Botswana, 113; in Brazil, 457; in the
media, 2, 20, 22, 30, 286; in Australia, Caribbean, 446-448, 451; in Central
286; in the Balkans, 311; in China, America, 453-455; in Central Asia,
196; in France, 347, 354; in Great 155-157, 159; in China, 194, 197,
Britain, 375; in Indonesia, 263; in 199-201, 205; in France, 337,
Malaysia, 267, 271; in New Zealand, 342-345, 347-348; in Germany,
293; in Nigeria, 69; in Pakistan, 233; 325-329, 333; in Great Britain, 357,
in Senegal, 77, 92-93; in Somalia, 51; 362-363, 369, 376; in India, 236,
in Tanzania, 108-109; in Turkey, 238, 240; in Malaysia, 271; in New
134-135; in the United States, Zealand, 292; in Nigeria, 69; in
436-437 Russia, 407, 410-411, 413; in
Medina, 5, 60, 266, 441 Scandinavia, 380, 389, 392, 396; in
Melbourne, 279 Senegal, 77, 80, 82, 84, 87; in
Menem, Carlos Saul, 458 Somalia, 41, 47, 49; in South Africa,
merchant, 11, 29, 57, 112, 207, 247, 111-112, 116, 121, 123; in
255, 262, 382; see also trader Tajikistan, 184, 188; in Tanzania, 97,
Mevleviyya, see Mawlawiyya 102, 106; in Turkey, 131, 139; in the
Mexico, 453 United States, 421, 427, 432, 435,
Mexico City, 453 437
millet system, 128, 298-299, 313 Mouridiyya, 24, 79-81, 84-91, 352
Milli G o r u ~ 328-329,
, 334, 389 Mozambique, 23
Minhaj ul-Quran, 389 Muawiya, 9
miracle, 4, 53, 81 mufti, 74, 156-157, 183,319,331,404,
missions, missionaries: Christian, 407,411,413,417
20-21,23, 61, 74, 99,233, 241,299; Mughul empire, 11, 213, 216-217,219,
Muslim, 13, 16, 23, 153, 214, 241, 238
270-271, 328, 358, 381, 392,404, Muhammad, 1-2, 4-5, 10, 12, 44, 60,
410, 412 213, 226,258,264,424, 426, 440
Mitterand, Franlois, 341 Muhammad, Bagaudin, 415
modernism, modernists, 221, 228, Muhammad, Eliiah, 427,429430,445,
235-236, 239-240,257,263-264, 452
266, 275, 304, 315 Muhammad, Farad, 429, 445
modernity, 18, 128-129, 153, 176, 207, Muhammad, Silis X, 433, 441
303, 338, 367, 374, 379,403 Muhammad, Ustaz Ashaari, 270-271
Mogadishu, 41 Muhammad, Warithuddin, 427, 431,
Mohamad, Mahathir bin, 273 433-434, 439, 441,446, 449,
Mombasa, 102 451453
Mongolia, 192 Muhammad al-Muntazar, 10
Mongols, 11, 193 Muhammadiyah, 257, 263-264, 266
Montenegro, 297 Muhammed, Khamis, 107
Moorish Science Temple, 424425,436, Muhammed, Shaykh Zahur bin, 101
444445,447,453 Muharram, 172-1 73
Moors, 247, 249, 443, 458 mujaddid, 68
moriscos, 338 mujtahid, 171-172
Moroccans, 339-342, 344, 346-348 Mujuma Al-Ulama, 47
Morocco, 338 mulla, 171, 177, 185, 202-203, 404
Moscow, 403, 405, 408, 410 Munich, 325
Moses, 46 Murabitun, 446
mosques, 28, 30, 67, 115, 301; in murids, 14, 215, 366
Afghanistan, 180; in Australia, murshid, 169, 330
278-279, 281-284, 286; in Austria, Musa, see Moses
Musa al-Qasim, 9 Nation of Islam, 31,427,429-433,441,
music, 12, 17, 391, 427-428 445-447, 452-453
Muslim Academy, 103 Nayyar, Abd-ur-Rahim, 64
Muslim Brotherhood, 21-22, 26, 47, Nazarbayev, Nursultan, 149, 161-162
179, 181, 327-328, 346,408, 436, nazism, nazis, 319, 330, 345, 380
440 Nehru, Jawahar Lal, 239
Muslim Institute (Copenhagen), 389 Nesin. Aziz. 139-140
Muslim Institute (London), 375 New kge, 16, 379, 391, 403, 410, 421,
Muslim Institute (Paris), 343-344, 351 437
Muslim League, 220, 222-224, New York, 91, 432, 434, 437
227-228, 230, 232, 234 New Zealand, 28, 278, 287-293
Muslim League of Voters, 440 New Zealand Muslim Association, 289
Muslim Manifesto, 375 Niass, Ahmed Khalifa, 92-93
Muslim Students Association (United Niass, Ibrahim, 24, 62-63, 83
States), 436-437 Nicaragua, 453
Muslim Students Society (Nigeria), 69, Niger, 23
74 Nigeria, 22-23, 26, 56-76
Muslim World League, 66, 292, 329, Nimatullahiyya, 331, 391
346-347, 352, 434, 451, 459 Nishanbai, Radbek, 157
Muslim Youth Movement (South Niyazov Turkmenbashi, Saparmurat,
Africa), 26, 119 152
Mustalis, 100 Nizaris, 9, 181, 437-438
Mustapha, Shaykh Ali, 113 Nkrumah, Kwame, 83
muta, 171 Norway, 30, 379-401
Mwinyi, Ali Hassan, 105, 108 NU, see Nahdatul Ulama
mysticism, 12-13, 24, 53, 133, 136, Nurbakhsh, Javad, 331
168-169, 199, 214, 255, 258, Nurcu movement, 30, 134-136, 147,
261-262, 270, 276, 327, 330; see 327, 330
also Sufism Nursi, Bediiizzaman Said, 133-134, 327
Nusayrites, see Alawites
Nahdatul Ulama, 257,263-264 Nyamwezi, 97-98, 102
Najaf, 172-173 Nyerere, Julius, 102, 105
Napoleon Bonaparte, 338-339, 447
Naqshband, see Baha al-Din Organisation of the Islamic Conference,
Naqshbandiyya, 14, 16, 128, 132, 135, 22, 72, 82, 108, 161
146, 153, 169, 179, 184, 199, Oslo, 386, 388, 392, 396
214-216, 226, 331, 352, 365, 387, Ottoman empire, 11, 26, 28, 127-129,
391,407, 409, 413, 415 132, 139, 142, 153, 169,297-299,
Narbonne, 337-338, 345 302, 305, 317-318, 338, 382,
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 83 405-406
National Islamic Front, 21 Ozak, Musafer, 136
nationalism, nationalists, 26-27, 128, Ozal, Korkut, 133
299; in Afghanistan, 181; in the Ozal, Turgut, 130, 133-134, 143,
Balkans, 301-303, 312; in 146-147
Bangladesh, 243; in Central Asia,
159; in China, 190; in India, 238, Pakistan, 27, 166, 196, 212, 222-236
240-241; in Indonesia, 255-257; in Pakistanis, 341,373,382,388-389,439
Malaysia, 274; in Pakistan, 228; in Pakistan Muslim Youth Club, 115
Somalia, 40, 42, 4 4 4 5 ; in Sri Lanka, Palestine, 162
248; in Tajikistan, 186; in Tanzania, Palestine Liberation Organisation, 322
102; in Turkey, 130-132; in the Palestinians, 162, 440, 447, 452-453,
United States, 433 457, 459-460
Panama, 448, 452 Qiblah, 26
Panama Islamic Association, 452 Quilliam, Henry William, 357
Pan Arab and Islamic Conference, 22 Qum, 172, 175
pancasila, 253, 257, 264, 275 Quran, 4, 6, 17, 86, 106, 133, 161,
Pan-Malayan Islamic Party, see 184-185,200-202, 217, 262, 304,
Persatuan Islam se-Malaysia 307, 359, 370, 383, 393, 418,
pantheism, 13, 15, 215 422-423,429,445,455-456
Paraguay, 459
Paris, 339, 343-344, 347, 349, 353 Rabah, Bilal Ibn, 424
Paris Mosque, 343-346, 351-352 Rabbani, Burhanuddin, 178
Parsees, 236 racism, 30, 272, 428, 430, 433
Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, 253, Rahman, Shaykh Mujibur, 230,
264 243-244
PAS, see Persatuan Islam se-Malaysia Ramadan, 51, 86, 100, 106, 108, 120,
Pashtuns, 177, 181 138, 174, 202, 205, 253, 270, 290,
Pasqua law, 341-342 309, 313, 353, 455
Peer, Badsha, 116 Ramiya, Shaykh, 101
'Peoples of the book', 8 Reagan, Ronald, 420
Persatuan Islam se-Malaysia, 253, 268, Refah Partisi, 131, 134, 136, 139, 143,
274 145-146, 328, 389
Persia, 98 reformism, reformists, 19, 58-59, 79-80,
Persian language, 16, 184-186, 191, 92, 99, 216-217, 219-221, 244,
214,217, 243, 302 266-267, 332, 352, 366, 388-389
Persians, 97, 170, 177, 213, 326 refugees, 67, 150, 222, 236, 288, 326,
Philippines, 28 338, 380, 382, 386, 398
pilgrimage, pilgrims, 6, 48, 51, 62, 72, reis-ul-ulema, 299-300, 311-312
75,86,120,138,155,158,160-161, resurgence, see revivalism
164, 172, 183, 199, 384, 415, revivalism, Islamic, 2, 22, 44, 99,
418-419, 425; see also hajj 105-108, 130, 139, 143, 146,
pir, 14, 169, 179-180, 184, 214, 219, 160-161, 185,212-213, 229, 245,
224, 226,234,244, 330, 365-366; 291, 349, 354, 366, 370-371,
see also shaykh 375-376, 412-413
poetry, 13, 45 riba, 231
Poitiers, 11, 337 Rifaiyya, 44, 128, 331, 391
Poland, 29, 404 Rio de Janeiro, 457
polygyny, 17, 85, 104, 155, 232, 245, Rome, 73
270 Roskilde, 390
possession, 52 Rumania, 297
predestination, 263 Rumi, Jalal al-Din, 15, 384
prophets, 3-4, 39, 53, 425 Rushdie, Salman, 30, 190, 287, 293,
Protestantism, Protestants, 20, 132, 315, 348, 375, 396
235,246, 379, 381,402 Russia, 29, 149, 155-156, 162, 171,
Puerto Rico, 447 192, 402-419
purdah, 245, 250, 369 Russians, 27, 149, 151-153, 170, 178,
182-183
al-Qaddafi, Muammar, 421
qadi, 157, 184, 187, 339 Saad, Shaykh Idris bin, 101
al-Qadir al-Jilani, Abd, 14, 45, 214 Safavid empire, 11
Qadiriyya, 14, 44-45, 51, 62, 65, Saheb, Soofie, 115-1 16
70-71, 79, 81, 83, 99, 101, 103, 122, Said, Abu, 169
128, 155, 179, 184, 199,214-215, Said, Omar Ibn, 423
226, 352, 365,410, 413,415 Said, Shaykh, 133
saint, 13, 44, 81, 116, 179, 184, 199, 367; in Indonesia, 258, 262; in Iran,
202,205,214-215, 233, 366 170; in Malaysia, 266, 268; in
salaam, 3 Nigeria, 59-60, 64, 70, 73, 75; in
Salafiyya, 19 Pakistan, 228-229, 231-232; in
salat, 290, 293, 439 Senegal, 91, 93-94; in Somalia, 48; in
Saleh, Ibrahim, 70, 74 South Africa, 121-122; in Sri Lanka,
Salih, Sayyid Mohamed, 45 249; in Tajikistan, 187; in Tanzania,
Salihiyya, 44-45 104; in Turkey, 135-136
Samarkand, 150, 152, 168-169, Shariat-Madari, Kazim, 175
182-183, 192 shaykh, 13-14, 25, 214, 331; in
Sarajevo, 300-301, 303, 312 Afghanistan, 179; in Central Asia,
Sarajevo trial, 303-304 169; in Great Britain, 357-358; in
Saudi Arabia, 66, 73, 144, 157, 181, Nigeria, 62, 70; in Russia, 410; in
187,233, 419 Somalia, 42, 45, 48, 50, 53; in
Sayyaf, Abdurrasul, 178 Tanzania, 101-103; in Turkey, 137;
Schimmel, Annemarie, 315 see also pir
schools, 205, 263, 371-373, 394; Sheffield, 357
Islamic, 30, 47, 69, 78, 80, 89, 102, Shiism, Shiites, 8-10, 24, 212, 215; in
106, 113, 131, 158, 190, 205, 280, Afghanistan, 177, 180; in Argentina,
290, 300, 399-400,431,451, 455, 458; in Azerbaijan, 417; in Australia,
459; mission, 61, 63-64, 99, 235, 280; in Austria, 322; in Bangladesh,
247, 271; modern, 63, 70, 293; 243; in Central Asia, 168-169; in
Quranic, 5,44,48-49,57, 64,70, 82, Germany, 322, 326; in Iran, 26,
93, 106, 179,202,240, 247, 300- 170-176; in Pakistan, 225-227, 233;
301, 309, 371, 448; secular, 88, 350, in Scandinavia, 389-390; in Somalia,
450 41; in Tajikistan, 182; in Tanzania,
Schuon, Frithjof, 122, 331 100, 102; in Turkey, 137-140; in the
secularisation, 21, 176-178, 302, 308, United States, 437
311, 375, 379, 403 shirk, 92
secularism, secularists, 92, 108, shrines, 44, 86, 155, 160, 163,
127-129, 132, 136, 141, 147, 163, 171-172, 179, 184, 199, 203, 366
187, 227,237,243-244, 273,283, shura, 291, 326
327-328, 335, 348-349, 351-353, Siddiqui, Kalim, 30, 375
41 8 Sikhism, Sikhs, 177,224, 236,240, 379
Senegal, 24-26, 68, 77-96, 338 Singapore, 269
Senegalese, 77-96, 340-341 Sinhalese, 246-250
Senghor, Lkopold, 80, 82, 93 Sirhindi, Ahmad, 14, 216-217, 219
Sepoys revolt, 27 Sivas, 139-140
Serbia, 297 slavery, slaves, 11, 25,46, 99, 112, 168,
Shabazz, Imam, 428 338, 345, 4 2 1 4 2 2 , 428, 444,
al-Shadhili, Abu al-Hasan, 15 446448,452,456-457, 460
Shadhiliyya, 15, 99, 101, 391 socialism, socialists, 100, 102-103, 106,
Shafii school of law, 7, 41, 100, 156, 154, 256, 300-301, 310, 312;
170, 212, 238,246,250,408,455 Islamic, 20, 63, 83, 102, 143, 163,
Shah, Idries, 331 230, 303, 306
shahada, 2 sokhnas, 86-87, 89
shamanism, 14 Sokoto, 26
Shamil, Imam, 4 0 5 4 0 6 , 4 1 6 Solomon, Job Ben, 423
Shanghai, 27 Somalia, 23, 26, 39-55, 68
sharia, 6, 17-20, 214, 223, 298, Somalis, 39-55, 357, 384, 386, 388
300-301; in Australia, 283; in Somali Salvation Democratic Front, 47
Bangladesh, 245; in Great Britain, South Africa, 24, 26, 111-124
theocracy, see state, Islamic ulama, 7, 14, 47, 54, 57-58, 102, 112,
theology of religion, 8 116, 123, 154, 171, 177, 212,
Thiam, Ahmed Lyane, 92 214-215,217,220-222, 224, 226,
Thies, 78, 81 228, 230, 232-234,236,239-240,
Tibet, 190 244,272-273, 304, 372,411,422
Tibetans, 193-194, 210 Umar, 9
al-Tijani, Ahmad, 16 umma, 7, 111,118-120,172,367,375,
Tijaniyya, 16, 24, 58, 62, 66, 70-71, 79, 422,436, 450
81-82, 92, 135, 352; Reformed, Ummayad empire, 9
62-63, 83 UMNO, see United Malays National
Timo Weyne, 48 Organisation
Tito, President, 300-301 Union Culturelle Musulmane, 80, 92-93
Tivaouane, 82 Union Islamique en France, 346
Tornberg, Carl Johan, 383, 393 Union des Organisations Islamiques en
Touba, 81, 84, 86-88 France, 346
Toulouse, 342 Union der Turkisch-Islamischer
Touri., Shaykh, 92-93 Kulturvereine in Europa, 329-330
trader, 11, 40, 56, 61, 78, 88, 91, 112, United Malays National Organisation,
115-116, 121, 168, 191,212-213, 253, 267, 273
246, 338, 359 United Nations, 149
traditionalism, traditionalists, 30, 143, United States, 31, 77, 91, 136, 181,
200,220, 240, 257 420-442
trance, 13, 53, 85, 136, 173, 179, 260 universalism, Islamic, 111, 118-120,
Transcaucasia, 156, 402-419 161,267, 365-366, 368-369, 390
Trimingham, J.S., 100 universities: in Central Asia, 159; in
Trinidad and Tobago, 31, 446-450 Great Britain, 373; in Malaysia, 271;
Triuoli. 56 in New Zealand, 287; in Nigeria, 63,
69, 75; in South Africa, 118; in
Tanzania, 103, 106; in Turkey, 130;
Tunisians, 340-342, 347 in the United States, 436
al-Turabi, Hasan, 22 Uppsala, 380, 390, 396, 399
Turkey, 26, 127-148, 196, 222, 283, urbanisation, 23, 25, 40, 56, 61, 197,
326,417 266
Turkistan, 159, 184 Urdu, 1, 116, 214, 238, 454-455
Turkmenistan, 149, 152, 157, Uruguay, 459
159-162 Ushurma, Mansur, 405
Turkmens, 152, 159, 166, 169-170, Usmaniyya, 62
175, 177, 183 usuli, 171, 173
Turks, 79, 127-148, 169, 175, 184, Uthman, 9
197, 215, 234, 242, 279, 298, Uwaysiyya, 45, 101
301-302, 318, 320, 323-324, Uzbekistan, 27, 149, 151-154,
327-329, 340-342, 346, 352, 380, 158-159, 161-163, 191
382, 384, 387-389, 391,438 Uzbeks, 150-152, 159, 166, 177, 183,
Turku, 384, 390-391, 396 191
Twelvers, see Imamites
uakuf, see waqf
Ufa, 29, 156, 411, 413 Varemba, 113
Uganda, 99, 439 Vaughan-Lee, Llwellyn, 331
Uighurs, 150, 190-21 1 veil, see hijab
Ujiji, 98, 101 Venezuela, 453
Ukraine, 149, 404 Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren,
Ukrainians, 150, 182 327
Vereinigung der Alewiten Gemeinden, in Scandinavia, 390-391; in Senegal,
326 78, 85-87, 91, 93; in Somalia, 44,48,
Victoria, Queen, 357 50; in South Africa, 113, 119, 121; in
Vienna, 11, 318-319 Sri Lanka, 249-250; in Tanzania,
Vietnam, 28 104; in Tatarstan, 412; in Turkey, 134
uilayat-i faqih, 172 World Association of Muslim Youth, 293
Vilnius, 404 World Council of Mosques, 107
Virgin Islands, 448 World Islamic Mission of Norway, 388
Vladivostok, 403
Yan Tatsine movement, 67-68
Wahdat Al-Shabab Al-Islami, 47 Yasavi, Ahmad, 14, 153, 159, 184
Wahhabi movement, 22,218-220,437; Yasaviyya, 14, 153, 159, 184
in Afghanistan, 181; in the Yazid, 9, 173
Caribbean, 450; in Central America, Yemenis, 357
453-454; in India, 221; in Nigeria, Yilmaz, Mehmet, 137
58, 63, 73; in Pakistan, 229, 233; in Yogyakarta, 263
Russia, 415, 417; in Senegal, 92; in Yoruba, 56, 60-61, 65, 74, 456
Somalia, 41, 47; in Tajikistan, Young Muslims, 305-306
187-188; in Tanzania, 108; in Turkic Yousof, Kamal, 392
Central Asia, 158; see also Ahl-i- Yugoslavia, 29, 297, 299-301, 304,
Hadith 306, 308, 310, 312, 318
Wahid, Abdurrahman, 264 Yusuf, Shaykh, 112, 117
Waliullah, Shah, 216-217, 221, 229
waqf, 7, 155, 299-300
Warsaw, 29, 404 Zagreb, 299-300, 303
Warsha ya Waandishi wa Kiislam, 106, zakat, 231, 249
108 al-Zakzaky, Ibrahim, 69
Welfare Party, see Refah Partisi Zanzibar, 26, 97, 102, 104, 107-108,
Wellington, 289-291, 293 112
wird, 84, 410 Zayd, 9
Woking, 357-358 Zaydis, 9
Wolof, 24, 78, 83, 94 zawiya, 14, 136, 357
women, 5, 14, 17-18, 223; in Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland,
Afghanistan, 177; in Australia, 284; 330
in Bangladesh, 245; in Central Asia, ZetterstCen, Karl Vilhelm, 393
153-155, 161; in China, 200; in Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad, 230-232,
France, 348, 353-354; in Germany, 235-236, 392
315-316, 332; in Great Britain, 357, Zikris, 212, 216, 226
359-360, 363, 367, 369-371; in Zimbabwe, 113
India, 239-240; in Iran, 176; in New Zimbabwe Council of Imaams, 114
Zealand, 289, 291, 293: in Nigeria, Zimbabwe Islamic Mission, 114
59-60, 63, 70; in Pakistan, Zoroastrianism, Zoroastrians, 8, 138,
228-229, 231-232; in Russia, 416; 168, 170, 175; see also Parsees

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ISLAM

OUTSIDE THE ARAB WORLD

Key concepts: Islam, Sufism, Shia, Ahmadiyya, conversion, immigrant

Reprinted 2002 by Routledge

Editorial Matter 0 1999 David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg

In January 1998 the Anchorage Daily News reported that there is a

David Westerlund and Inguar Suanberg

Muhammed Abdullah al-Ahari is a postgraduate in Linguistics and History

Ishtiaq Ahmed is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stockholm

Justin Ben-Adam is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tulane

Sven Cederroth is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor at the

Svante Cornell is a postgraduate in the Departments of Peace and Conflict

a number of articles on politics and conflicts in the Caucasus and

Eva Evers Rosander is Senior Research Fellow in Gender Studies at the

Mattias Gardell is Assistant Professor and Research Fellow in the History

R o n Geaves is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of

Christer Hedin is Associate Professor of Studies in Faiths and Ideologies and

Bernhard Helander is Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural

Michael Humphrey is Senior Lecturer in the School of Sociology at the

identity and globalisation, especially in the context of the contemporary

Franz Kogelmann is Lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies at

Kjell Magnusson is a sociologist and Assistant Professor at the Centre for

Roberta Micallef is Research Fellow and teaches Turkish at the Department

Neal Robinson is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Department of

William Shepard is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the

annotated translation of the last edition of Qutb's Social Justice in Islam,

Christopher Steed teaches African history at Uppsala University. His

Ingvar Svanberg is an ethnologist and Senior Research Fellow at the

Abdulkader Tayob teaches Islam and Religious Studies at the University of

David Westerlund is Associate Professor at the Department of Comparative

Bo Utas is Professor of Iranian Studies in the Department of Asian and

Say (0Muhammad): O people! I am the messenger of God to all of you.

conversion is an important additional reason for the expansion of Islam in

The foundations of Islam

A copy of an old Quran in the Muftiate centre of Tashkent, Uzbekistan

knowledge of that language has a legitimising function. However, this does

Islamic law and organisation

Sunnites and Shiites

rightful successor to Muhammad was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali.

Ismailism. Theologically, Ismailis tend to be very eclectic, and their

The historical spread of Islam

themselves against accusations of religious anarchy. Spiritual life was

reputation, lineage connections with predecessors and miraculous powers.

century and was strongly influenced by al-Ghazali. The now most

Muslims. Essentially, however, it is a pre-Islamic custom which is practised

others. When Muslim countries became independent in the mid twentieth

A fast food restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, serving halal meat

mission organisations, which has contributed to attracting new followers.

the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, Hasan al-Turabi, one of the most

powers, Islam frequently became a religion of resistance, although open

tendencies. In some parts of sub-Saharan Africa there are strong memories

strong orthodox traditions, especially the significance of the Sokoto

Asia and Oceania

the case of Iran as well as of its neighbouring countries Afghanistan and

Europe and the Americas

The mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand (photo: William Shepard,

Second World War developed into a national identity, which was

The mosque in Malmo, Sweden (photo: David Thurfjell, 1998).

1988), which is published in the British series The World's Religions,