The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa1 Chanfi Ahmed
Unlike Islamic missionary groups that focus on education as a means of conversion, the Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) specialize in giving sermons and preaching on the streets, at markets, or in football stadiums. They refer to these activities as “open-air conferences.” Their sermons consist of an “Islamic” reading of the Bible, with the intention of converting Christians to Islam; hence their somewhat hybrid name. This article traces the emergence of this missionary method in East Africa. Regardless of how negatively the Preachers of Islam interpret the Bible, the fact that they do this in front of a mixed Muslim-Christian public could be interpreted as a contribution to greater mutual understanding between the groups. The Preachers of Islam exclusively use Swahili in their sermons and even render Quranic verses in Swahili. Analysis of the role of the vernacular (in relation to Arabic), in both Islam and Christianity, addresses the concept of the “translatability of the (religious) message” developed by Lamine Sanneh (Sanneh 1993).
Introduction This article is part of a series of publications that resulted from five months’ research conducted in East Africa (Tanzania and Kenya) in 2004 and 2005, in coastal cities and the upcountry.2 During this fieldwork, I met with the main representatives of groups active in converting and reconverting the local population to Islam. In the interviews I conducted with these representatives, I focused on their educational and professional background; in the interviews with converts and “reverts” to Islam, I focused on the process of their conversion. I collected pamphlets, tracts, audiotapes, and videotapes sold or distributed free for missionary purposes. Among my interviewees were members of Wahubiri wa Kislamu, the movement at the center of this article. I observed their so-called open-air preaching (mihadhara).3 One of these events was particularly impressive: a
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africa today 54(4) 4 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
conference held in the soccer stadium of Tanga, Tanzania. Also, I attended their daily open-air preaching at Uhuru Garden in Mombasa, Kenya, which takes place after the so-called al-‘Asr, the afternoon prayer. In addition to the audiotapes and videotapes they produce, they publish propagandistic literature. Most of these texts are transcripts from their sermons, written in Swahili or English and sold as small booklets; however, in comparison with the audiotapes and videotapes, the printed material is negligible. Unlike other missionary groups active in East Africa, such as the Shi’a Ithna Ashari,4 the preachers focus on oral forms of da’wa (defined below), with the sermon playing the most important role. Nevertheless, some of the booklets published by them have become “classics” within the movement.5 Who are the Preachers of Islam? Where and when did they emerge? What is their specific conversion and mission discourse? Not only does the content of their preaching differ from traditional ulama sermons, their performance, too, makes their preaching radically different.6 Unlike traditional ulama, they do not preach at the mosque, the site of Islamic preaching per se; instead, they preach in football stadiums and public parks, at markets, and in bus stations and other public places. Their sermons, delivered in Kiswahili, consist essentially of a deconstruction of biblical texts in favor of Islam and the Qur’an. This method, which they call comparative religion, can be considered as an Islamic reading of the Bible. Whether consciously or not, these preachers maintain a certain continuity with their former Christian faith. A similar continuity seems in fact to exist for most converts. The preachers have two practices that give particular proof of this heritage: first, the importance they accord to sermons as means of spreading the religious message and as tools for conversion; second, the practice of using vernacular languages in their sermons, even when reciting the Qur’an. Irrespective of how negatively the preachers speak of the Bible, the fact that they speak of it at all in the presence of a mixed Muslim-Christian public contributes to improved mutual understanding between the religions. These preachers belong to groups and movements now active in converting the people of East Africa to Islam—that is, to the version of Islam each of these groups deems authentic and legitimate. Their activities can be considered da’wa (“missionary”), and, although Islam does not have a missionary tradition comparable with that of Christianity, conversion and proselytizing activities are common to both religions.
Da´wa: The Meaning of a Concept The term used in Islam to describe conversion activities is not mission, but da’wa “call,” “invitation,” meaning that the preacher does not go to the people he intends to convert, but sends for them. In Christianity, by contrast, it is the preacher or missionary who approaches the people he means to convert. The Arabic term for the process of converting to Islam is dakhala al-islâm “to enter Islam” or i’tanaqa al-islâm “to embrace Islam.” In East
Chanfi Ahmed
The Preachers of Islam are a good example of this hybridity. Their origins are not quite clear. In a hitherto unpublished and somewhat polemical book, Islamic Movement and Christian Hegemony: The Rise of Muslim Militancy in Tanzania 1970–2000, Mohamed Said describes their beginnings as follows. The particular da´wa method of the Muslim Bible scholars emerged in the town of Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika during the colonial period, and consists essentially in the deconstruction of biblical texts in favor of Islam and the Qur’an. According to Said, it began with a certain Sheikh Mussa Hussein, who allegedly received his knowledge from a Jew who lived in the region. In reality, the method was introduced to the region by the Ahmadiyya, who arrived there in 1934 and soon opened a main office in Tabora. They chose Tabora for their headquarters because they felt their missionary
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Who Are the Preachers of Islam?
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Africa, the Kiswahili term employed for a convert is amesilimu “he islamized himself.” The term da’wa as used by Muslims to describe missionary activities probably goes back to the tenth-century Ismaili Shiites. Even though contemporary Sunni Muslims frequently quote Quranic verses and hadiths to assert that da’wa is a perpetual obligation intrinsic to Islam, the actual ideology and practice of da’wa are a product of nineteenthcentury Salafism and its main representatives, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, ‘Abd ar-Rahmân al-Kawâkibi, and Rashid Rida.7 These reformers considered da’wa not so much a means to convert non-Muslims to Islam, but a call for all Muslims to return to the alleged strength and purity of early Islam. By doing so, they assumed, they could fight increasing Western dominance in the Muslim world and defeat European colonial rule. If Muslims, once successful conquerors and rulers themselves, were now colonized and subjugated by the West, the reason must be that they had abandoned the ways and values of the salaf al-salih “the pious ancestors”; hence the term salafist (or salafi, salafiyya), used to describe this movement. The salaf al-salih include the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (sahaba), the following generation (tabi’un), and the third generation (tabi’u al-tabi’in), in other words, the first three generations that sympathized with the Prophet. Accordingly, the salafist da’wa concept consisted of internal conversion (a reconversion of the convert, as it were), rather than external conversion (the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam). Eventually, it has come to denote both internal and external conversion; moreover, it has increasingly adopted Christian missionary techniques. By the same token, Christian missions serve as the main opponent and a role model to be imitated when it comes to methods and strategies of conversion. The strategic hybridity of Islamic institutions and organizations active in da’wa nowadays is the result.
africa today 54(4) 6 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
propaganda was likelier to be successful in the hinterland, given that the majority of Christians lived there; on the coast, by contrast, the population was predominantly Muslim. The Ahmadiyya began to publish a great deal of Islamic propaganda material in Kiswahili, which they distributed among the people in the region, especially the population of Tabora and Kigoma-Ujiji. Their method consisted in a polemical deconstruction of biblical texts, in part influenced by the Protestant street preachers active in India, whom the Ahmadiyya engaged in lively polemics. They subsequently introduced the same polemical method to East Africa. As early as the 1930s, they began to translate the Qur’an into Kiswahili; they published the first integral Kiswahili edition in 1953. The introduction and commentaries in this translation contain numerous negative references to the Bible. Both the commentaries and the introduction to this translation are taken from the 466-page introduction to an earlier translation, published in 1949 by Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad (Khalifatul Masih II), then head of the Ahmadiyya and son of its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.8 Of the Sunni Muslims who appropriated and propagated this method in East Africa, two have special importance: Sheikh Amri Abedi (chief advocate of the Ahmadiyya in East Africa) and Sheikh Songoro Marjami Lweno. The latter did not become an Ahmadi, but remained a Sunni Muslim until his death, in 1989. He published a book in Lahore entitled Mtume Muhammad s.aw. katika Biblia (The Prophet Muhammad in the Bible). He was the teacher of Sheikh Mussa Hussein, now known as the master of the Preachers of Islam and the precursor of their da´wa method. He transmitted his knowledge to disciples, the most famous of whom are Ustadh Swaleh Athumani Ngoy, M. A. Kawemba (now living in Oman), and the late Sheikh Ngariba Mussa Fundi, a former pastor (who died in 2001). They all come from the region of Kigoma and Ujiji, around Lake Tanganyika in the west of the country. The last two, who for a long time preached and published together, are of Congolese and Zaire origin, through their grandfathers. According to Maallim Ally Bassaleh, the well-known imam of the Idris Mosque in Kariakoo, Dar es Salam, in spite of longstanding conflicts between Sunni Muslims and the Ahmadiyya (considered by Sunni and Shi’i Muslims to be an un-Islamic sect), both groups were working together in da’wa matters in the 1970s (Bassaleh 2005). Maallim Ally Bassaleh himself participated in this joint venture. He was then part of a group of Sunni activists who cooperated with Ahmadiyya Muslims. Together, they went to the market of Kariakoo to engage in disputations with the Christian preachers there. Even then, the Ahmadiyya used the preachers-of-Islam method against the Christian preachers. Thus, many Sunni activists, among them Maallim Ally Bassaleh, made contact with this method and soon adopted it for themselves. Only in the late 1970s, after joint Sunni-Ahmadi efforts had chased away all Christian preachers from Kariakoo market, did Sunni Muslims cut all ties with the Ahmadiyya movement and start to fight them. Despite Sunni hostilities toward the Ahmadiyya, the Preachers of Islam clearly derived their missionary methods from the Ahmadiyya.
Organizational Structures of the Wahubiri wa Kislamu In the early 1980s, the Wahubiri wa Kislamu founded in Tanzania the organization Umoja wa Wahubiri wa Kislamu, which became UWAMDI (Umoja wa Wahubiri wa Kislamu wa Mlingano wa Dini / Union of Muslim Preachers for Comparative Religion) in 1990 (Balda 1993).
Chanfi Ahmed
Unlike Sunni Muslims, who believe Muhammad to be the “Seal of the Prophets,” after whom there can be no other prophet, the Ahmadiyya consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1839–1908) to be a prophet of Islam.13 Then again, they believe him to be only a subordinate prophet and deputy to Muhammad, the last law-bearing prophet. In Ahmadi belief, the two eschatological figures of Jesus (‘Isa, the Messiah) and the Mahdi play a central role. In Sunni Islam, Jesus did not die on the cross, but was transported to heaven, where he lives to return eventually in the flesh to the earth at the end of days. The Mahdi will appear sometime before the Day of Resurrection (Yawm al-Qiyama) and will then institute a kingdom of justice on earth. The Ahmadiyya believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be the embodiment of both the Messiah and Mahdi. They believe Jesus did not die on the cross, but moved to Srinagar (in Kashmir), where he died of old age. His remains are believed to be entombed in Kashmir, where his tomb remains a site of worship for the Ahmadiyya. They take Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s messianism metaphorically, not literally. This means that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad possesses only the qualities and functions of the Messiah: his spiritual power. Though the Ahmadiyya consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad subordinate to Muhammad and without a new law or religion, in the eyes of Sunni Muslims this is enough to make them heretics and non-Muslims.14
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Main doctrinal differences between Ahmadiyya and Sunni Muslims
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Similar methods had already been used in disputations between local ulama and the first Christian missionaries in Zanzibar and Mombasa at the beginning of the twentieth century, but these had been rather elitist arguments, largely restricted to the ulama and the missionaries, and did not attract a wider public.9 One example, Godfrey Dale, of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA)10 who had published the first Kiswahili translation of the Qur’an in 1923, was involved in rather aloof and sophisticated disputes with certain Zanzibari ulama.11 Another example, the only missionary of the time to preach in public places (in markets), was William Ernest Taylor (1856–1927) (Frankl 1993), of the Church Missionary Society (CMS),12 yet the local population did not take him seriously. Dale and Taylor seem to have been the last missionaries to engage in religious dispute in which the Qur’an and the Bible served as the central weapons. The comparative-religion method was not used in public until the 1930s, when the Ahmadiyya arrived and started to pass this method on to the Sunni Muslims of the region.
africa today 54(4) 8 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
The most renowned Preachers of Islam in East Africa in early 2000 were beyond doubt the Tanzanians Sheikh Ngariba Mussa Fundi and Ustadh Habib Uthman Mazinge (from the city of Mwanza), who worked together until the death of Ngariba, at the beginning of the new millennium. Mazinge now works with Yahaya. Together they are the most celebrated Preachers of Islam in the region. It seems that the Wahubiri wa Kislamu were greatly influenced by the writings of Sheikh Said Musa, a former student of al-Farsy and the most prolific writer on Islam in Kiswahili; however, Sheikh Said Musa fervently advocates Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. A split occurred between those in favor of that revolution and those against it. The latter went on to create ALMALLID.15 It is not surprising, therefore, that the members of AL-MALLID are much closer today to the salafiyya-wahhabiyya than to other Islamic groups. It is not the movement as such, but individual preachers, who are increasingly becoming salafi-wahhabi. Since most of them are recently converted Muslims, they tend to display a particular religious zeal and thus embrace a strict and fundamentalist current of Islam, in this case the salafiyya-wahhabiyya. The Preachers of Islam owe much of their current success to Ahmed Deedat, a South African and the true modern precursor of the methods applied by the Wahubiri wa Kislamu in East Africa.16 It began in 1981, when Deedat gave several conferences in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. The Wahubiri wa Kislamu are also active in Kenya, especially in the main cities of Nairobi, Kisumu, Nakuru and Mombasa. Surprisingly, their presence is most visible in Mombasa. I say surprisingly because the preachers might have been expected to focus on upcountry areas (or at least the Kenyan capital, Nairobi), rather than on the coastal towns, of which Mombasa is an example. The reason is the strong Christian community upcountry (Kikuyu, Luo, etc.), whose members the preachers want to convert to Islam first. Each day after the al-‘Asr prayer (4:30 p.m.), the Preachers of Islam preach in mihadharas held in Mombasa’s Uhuru Garden. Occasionally, when they are visited by Tanzanian or Ugandan colleagues, they hold their mihadhara on Makadara ground, which is larger than Uhuru Garden. Once a month, they convene a mihadhara in the hinterland of Mombasa. Every three months, they organize a mihadhara in the upcountry, where they are joined by the local preachers, whose most famous representative is Mahmud Karani, a former pastor currently living in Kisumu. From time to time, they are invited to talk to young converts (or reverts, as they are called), who spend six months or a year in the AMKENI (Kiswahili: “wake up”) Centre, close to Mombasa. This institution was founded by the Islamic Foundation of Kenya; its director, Sheikh Siraj an-Nadwi, is the head of the Kisauni Islamic University, near Mombasa. In the 1980s, the Islamic Foundation established the Kisauni Islamic Institute, which became the Kisauni Islamic University in 2000. The Islamic Foundation runs the Dar al-Irshad in Nguluni, close to Nairobi, which offers six-month training courses for new converts.
The Conversion Discourse of the Preachers of Islam
Chanfi Ahmed
The major source of all texts published by the Preachers of Islam is the Gospel of Barnabas, a text well known by Muslims worldwide. Most Muslims believe it to be the only authentic book relating the life of Jesus. The four canonical gospels (those according to Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John) are considered falsified. In the Gospel of Barnabas, Jesus is a human being, not the son of God or part of the Trinity: he was simply a prophet who preached the love of God, teaching charity, ritual purity, ablutions, and circumcision. As for the Passion of Christ, there is a different explanation too: the Jews had conspired to kill Jesus, yet through a divine miracle he was saved and transported to heaven; Judas, who had been transformed to look like Jesus, was crucified instead. There is also mention of the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad and the advent of Islam. Part of the Gospel of Barnabas is a diatribe against St. Paul, whom it considers to have corrupted and falsified Christianity, the true nature of Christianity being professed in the Gospel of Barnabas. Accordingly, Christianity as a religion known since the days of St. Paul is a deviation from true Christianity. In short, the Gospel of Barnabas conforms in many ways to the Islamic interpretation of Christianity. Overall, the structure of its text closely resembles that of the four canonical gospels. The Gospel of Barnabas was discussed in 1734 by George Dale in The Preliminary Discourse to the Koran. Dale referred to a Spanish version he had read, but believed the original version to have been written in Italian. According to Dale, this text was initially in the possession of Pope Sixtus VI (1521–1590), who had hidden it in his personal library in the Vatican. Fra Marino, a monk, had discovered the text during a visit to the pope and purloined it. Even before this incident, Fra Marino had allegedly found a text by St. Irenaeus with a similar anti-Pauline stance, a text that mentioned the authority of the Gospel of Barnabas. None of St. Irenaeus’s writings bears the
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Injili ya Barnaba (The Gospel of Barnabas)
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The conversion discourse held by the Preachers of Islam in their open-air preaching basically implies deconstructing biblical texts in favor of Islam and the Qur’an. The preachers, however, consider this to be correction, rather than deconstruction. They claim that Christians falsified biblical texts that had stated that the prophet to succeed Jesus would be Muhammad. The Gospel of Barnabas (Injili ya Barnaba in the Kiswahili version), the text that allegedly proves this “truth,” has become almost the most important text in Kiswahili “Islamic” literature. It is frequently found at places where Islamic literature is sold at in Tanzania and Kenya. The preachers are certain that the Injili ya Barnaba was initially part of the New Testament (Kiswahili: “Ahadi Jipya”). They reject the divinity of Jesus and the story of his crucifixion, following the polemics of the famous South African Muslim preacher Ahmed Deedat in his book Crucifixion or Crucifiction?
africa today 54(4) 10 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
slightest resemblance to the text that Fra Marino claimed to have read, yet Dale, in his introduction to the English Qur’an, maintained that the monk eventually converted to Islam after having read it. The Gospel of Barnabas is mentioned as early as the sixth century, when it figured on a list of texts condemned by the church. At that time, neither the text nor its doctrine was known. Experts believe that the false Gospel of Barnabas (quoted by Dale) was in fact written after the Renaissance; according to these experts, it was written in the West (Pons and Fernando 1995; Slomp 1997). At any rate, the gospel that Dale read did not at all correspond to the text condemned by the church in the sixth century, well before the advent of Islam. The Italian version of the false Gospel of Barnabas was first discovered in the seventeenth century. John Frederick Cramer, a counselor to the Prussian king, acquired the manuscript in Amsterdam. He gave it to John Toland, an Irish scholar, who was the first to notice the Islamic subtext. After some wanderings, the manuscript reached the Austrian Hofbibliothek in Vienna. In 1977, Louis Cardaillac, a specialist in the history of al-Andalus, discovered a Spanish manuscript of it. After a thorough examination, he came to the conclusion that the text was most likely written by a Muslim of al-Andalus who had made a bogus conversion to Christianity after the Reconquista while secretly sticking to Islam.17 It is not entirely clear how the Gospel of Barnabas arrived in East Africa, where it is known as the Injili ya Barnaba. Most probably, both the Ahmadiyya and the Salafi reformism of Rashid Ridda (1865–1935) are responsible for its spread in East Africa. We know for sure that the Ahmadiyya used certain topics from it for da’wa purposes there. It is quite possible that the East African Muslim reformers of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Sheikh al-Amin bin Ali al-Mazrui of Mombasa (who died in 1947), were acquainted with the Arabic version of it. By 1908, it had been translated into Arabic18 under the patronage of al-Manar, a journal founded and edited by Rashid Rida, who had a strong impact on the reformist ideas and work of Sheikh al-Amin bin Ali al-Mazrui (Salim 1987). The leaflets and journals published by Mazrui in the 1930s and 1940s (e.g. al-Islah and Uwongozi) are in fact a blend of themes derived from both the Gospel of Barnabas and the writings of Rashid Ridha (al-Mazrui 1944, 1947). In the early 1990s, the Christian churches in Tanzania accused the Preachers of Islam of blasphemy (an offense according to Tanzanian law), since they had alleged that Jesus was not God’s son, nor had he died on a cross. The Muslims responded that should the Christians stick to their point, they themselves would be guilty of blasphemy toward Muslims. The Tanzanian state intervened in the polemics and forbade the open-air preaching of the Wahubiri wa Kislamu. The matter was then brought to court, where it was decided that each community should have the right to believe in its respective religious doctrines and to propagate them. Nevertheless, the preachers’ slightly aggressive discourse continues to revitalize the conflict of the 1990s from time to time, as I observed in
The Reenactment of Conversion
11 Chanfi Ahmed
During my field research, I observed one of these open-air preaching sessions, held in Tanga football stadium by the AL-MALLID branch of Morogoro. What struck me most, apart from the crowd that filled the stadium, was the reenactment. When the sermons were over, the new converts to Islam came onto the stage one after another to bear witness. The believers were then asked to give money or special items (kanzu “white tunics,” kofia “Islamic headgear,” prayer rugs, etc.) to the converts. Conversion publicity has become a tradition. After the collective prayer in the main mosque in Nairobi (Jamaat Mosque), the imam often announces over the microphone the name of a person who has just converted to Islam. The new convert then takes the microphone and repeats after the imam the words of the Shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, in Kiswahili19 and occasionally in Arabic. This is quite similar to the procedure followed in some Protestant churches, such as the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (in Kiswahili, Wa Sabati), which often organized public disputes with the Wahubiri wa Kislamu of Mombasa. The majority of the Muslims appreciate the Preachers of Islam. The ambience during a mihadhara is always theatrical, full of word-battles and jokes. Listening to the Muslim preachers can be great fun. Spectators learn about the Bible, a book they have regarded with suspicion and prejudice, even as something impure (najisi), without knowing anything of its contents. They enjoy the conversions that take place during the mihadhara and like to listen to the stories new converts relate and the confessions they make—edifying tales on how they found the right path toward Islam. The reenactment of conversion, or rather of the narrativity of conversion, affects the spectators all the more because they see those concerned constantly in the streets, at work or at the market. Sometimes at the end of each mihadhara, the conveners collect money for a good cause. This practice, which is commoner among the Preachers of Islam of Tanzania than those of Kenya, has been criticized by many Muslims. It indicates that the preachers have limited financial means in comparison with other organizations active in conversion in East Africa; hence, they find themselves competing with other da´wa institutions, such as the Ansar asSunna (a wahhâbiyya salafiyya group with headquarters in the city of Tanga in Tanzania), the Islamic Foundation, and the Bilal Muslim Mission (a Shi’a group with headquarters in Dar as Salaam). All of them try to convert the
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Korogwe in early June 2004. Preachers from AL-MALLID’s Dar es Salaam branch had come there to organize public conferences in cooperation with their colleagues from Korogwe. After the first conference, the Christians present on the occasion complained to the local police about speeches they considered blasphemous. The police arrested the preachers. Shortly after, however, the AL-MALLID office in Dar es Salaam intervened. The preachers were released, and they continued their series of conferences.
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preachers to their version of Islam—which adds to the lack of organization and increases tension and splintering among the preachers. Each time a group of Wahubiri wa Kislamu splits, other groups are created, so what the preachers lose in organization they gain in diffusion. Thus, their methods of preaching and conversion are becoming more and more widespread. In fact, even ulama not belonging to the movement have started to use the preachers’ arguments and strategies to increase their own impact.
Preachers of Islam as Seen by their Detractors
12 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
Preachers of Islam have always been strongly criticized by the churches, which accuse them of blasphemy toward Christianity. Furthermore, they allegedly stir up discord between the two religions. For the same reason, they have been under close scrutiny by Tanzanian and Kenyan authorities. The traditional ulama, as much as the activist Muslim elites of both countries, having previously supported their beginnings, now snub these preachers.20 The traditional ulama reproach them primarily for their feeble and inadequate knowledge of the Qur’an and the Islamic sciences. The preachers allegedly talk only of the good things to be found hidden in the Bible about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. They rarely speak of what the Qur’an has to say about Christianity—and with good reason: they know very little about it. The main critique of the activist Muslim elites is that the preachers neglect the political claims of the Muslim population. In fact, the Muslim activist elites, especially those of Tanzania, have been backing the Preachers of Islam because they have understood the latter’s anti-Christian discourse as part of a wider struggle against the alleged Christian hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church (Kanisa Lakatoliki) in Tanzania. Their support for the preachers was thus motivated from a political perspective. By giving their support, they hoped to mold the preachers into a broader political movement acting in favor of the Islamic community. The preachers, for their part, although they gave their consent to the cause of the Islamic community, did not take any further interest in political activities. Their preaching had an essentially religious goal: to convert a maximum number of Christians to Islam.
Conclusion Critics castigate the Preachers of Islam as ignorant troublemakers, but I regard their activities as a factor in modernizing Islam in East Africa, notwithstanding the particular preachers and the message itself. I consider them active in promoting a better understanding between Muslims and Christians. During my field research in Tanzania and Kenya, I began to believe their activities exemplify an entirely novel type of Islamic preaching and of
africa today 54(4) 13 Chanfi Ahmed
Islamic reformism in the Muslim world. They maintain that, were it not for falsifications added by the authors of the Christian Gospels, the differences between the Bible and the Qur’an would be negligible. Regardless of these alterations, the Bible remains a sacred book for them, as they believe it contains proof of the veracity of Islam. I see another important reformist element in the fact that the preachers, much like Christian preachers, give their sermons in Kiswahili, the local language of Tanzania and Kenya. The traditional ulama in the region may well preach in Kiswahili but will always render Quranic verses in Arabic first, and will only as a second step translate them into Kiswahili before commenting on them. The preachers, in contrast, recite the Quranic verse in Kiswahili and likewise the commentary. The difference may seem minimal at first sight, but it has important implications. One of these merits closer examination here. This is the use of the vernacular in the transmission of Islamic religious knowledge and in ritual practices. This issue refers to Lamin Sanneh’s argument in his book Translating the Message (Sanneh 1993). Let me briefly sketch Sanneh’s argument. From its beginnings, Christianity felt the need to translate its message from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek and then into Latin and other languages and therefore cultures. Hence, Christianity was initially marked by two absences: first, the absence of a centrally binding original language, and second, the absence of a single geographic center for religious learning and a point of departure from which Christian faith could be diffused all over the world (Jerusalem as a holy city does not have the same significance for Christians as Mecca and Medina have for Muslims). In other words, when it comes to spreading the religious message, all vernacular languages and cultures are considered equal in Christianity. As a consequence, different ethnic and cultural groups were able to appropriate Christianity easily. This explains the great diversity of expression in the Christian religion. By contrast, Islam sanctified the early religious geographic centers, Mecca and Medina, in as much as it sacralized the Arabic language for the Qur’an. Arabic is obligatory not only for the reading of the Qur’an, but also for ritual practices. According to Sanneh, this gave birth to two different concepts of mission and conversion.21 As an ecumenist, Sanneh concludes that in spite of its nontranslatable scriptures and ritual practices, Islam has proved superior to Christianity in its capacity to impose the same ritual practices on all its believers throughout the world, whereas Christianity can be considered superior to Islam in terms of the diversity of vernacular languages. I agree with Sanneh on the question of language. Arabic is still the central language used for the transmission of religious knowledge, and it is the only language accepted in ritual practice, although there is no official commandment prohibiting the use of vernacular languages in the five daily prayers (salât).22 I believe Sanneh is mistaken when it comes to the question of geographical centers. Mecca and Medina have at all times undoubtedly been the two principal sacred places of Islam, but they have not always been the
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centers of its expansion, and certainly not of religious knowledge. With regard to the significance of a single geographical center, therefore, Islam does not differ from Christianity to the extent Sanneh maintains. The predominance of Arabic in East Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa in general has now been reinforced by a growing number of primarily salafi ulama, active in all forms of the Islamic mission. The Wahubiri wa Kislamu, most of whom are converts to Islam, have little or no Arabic and thus preach at first exclusively in Kiswahili. In time, they begin to recite the Qur’an in Arabic, just as the traditional ulama in the region.
Notes
14
1. The Kiswahili phrase Wahubiri wa Kislamu literally means “Muslim preachers” or “preachers of
The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
Islam.” The term wahubiri (sing. mhubiri), part of the Kiswahili Christian vocabulary, is used for Christian preachers, particularly for Evangelicals and Pentecostalists. It has been reappropriated by Muslim preachers who are recent converts to Islam. Before their conversion, many of them had been Christian preachers and pastors. The singular form, mhubiri, is derived from the Arab word khabar. Both words mean “information.” In East Africa, the movement is almost exclusively known by the name of Wahubiri wa Kislamu. By contrast, Justo Lacunza Balda refers to it by the term Preachers of Islam (Balda 1977: 17 and 126). In turn, Mohammed Said uses the terms Muslim Bible Scholars and Muslim Bible Experts (Said 1998:42–55). To my knowledge, these are the only two studies written in English that mention the Wahubiri wa Kislamu. 2. The main outcome of this research is my Convertir le converti (Ahmed 2007). The field research was conducted as part of a three-year, wider research project, Discourses of Conversion: Local and Translocal Interactions of the Islamic Mission in Contemporary East Africa at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. My coworkers in this project, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, were Achim von Oppen and Tabea Scharrer. 3. They are also called open-air conferences. 4. Some of the texts published by the Shi’a Ithna Ashari in East Africa bear surprising resemblance to writings by the Preachers of Islam, with regard to the titles and the content. See, e.g., Kundi la Waandishi Katika Njia ya haki: Uhakika wa Ukristo [The Truth about Christianity], translated by Muhammad Ali Zanjibari (Qom: n.d.). 5. Among these classics are Baagil, Johnson, and Nubee 1984; Beleko n.d.; Kanoni n.d.; Kanoni 1970; Marjami n.d.; Ngariba 1987a, 1987b. In this context, see also the writings of the South African A. H. Deedat, first published in English as translations from Kiswahili: Deedat 1965; 1982; 1988; n.d. 6. Traditional ulama rarely compare the Qur’an and the Bible in their sermons, either, because they deem such a comparison improper, or simply because most of them do not have sufficient knowledge of the Biblical text. 7. For a good introduction to Salafism, see Ende 1995. 8. This introduction (Ahmad 1949), first published in Urdu, served as a model for all further introductions to Qur’an translations authorized by the Ahmadiyya of Rabwa (the Qadyani), the first of which was published by Ali Sheer in 1955. As early as 1917, the Ahmadiyya of Lahore published an English version of the Qur’an, translated by Muhammad Ali (1875–1951).
Muhammad Ali, then head of the Lahore Ahmadiyya, constantly revised and reedited his translation. Before his death (in 1951), he edited a fourth version of it. 9. In Zanzibar, these polemics involved the local ulama and missionaries from the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), their most famous representative being Canon G. Dale, who first translated the Qur’an into Kiswahili. In Mombasa, the disputations were held between local ulama and members of the Church Mission Society (CMS); William E. Taylor was their
11. Traces of these polemics can be found in the writings of Canon G. Dale. See Dale 1913, 1930. 12. On W. E. Taylor, see Frankl 1993. On the history of the CMS, see Ward and Stanley 2000. 13. For the Ahmadiyya, see Ahmad 1949; Fisher 1963; Gualtieri 2001; Lavan 1974. 14. For a mainstream Sunni view on the Ahmadiyya, see al-Tâ’î 1972. See also Ahmed 2001. On East Africa, see al-Mazrui n.d. ´an ad-Dîn; in Kiswahili, Kituo cha kuwazindua walio ghafilika katika Din. father at the age of nine. Having studied in English state schools and Islamic schools (madrasa), he worked in different sectors, including a Christian mission near Durban, where he gradually gained an impression of Christianity. It was only after reading Rahmatullah Kayranwi’s Izhâr al-Haqq that he began to adapt the da’wa method of the Muslim Bible Scholars. In nineteenthcentury India, the book became a major Muslim tool in the debates on Christian missionary activities. In 1957, he founded the Islamic Propagation Centre, which in the 1980s became the International Islamic Propagation Centre, an institution dedicated to the diffusion of his books and conferences recorded on audiotapes and videotapes. He received financial support in the 1980s from the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, and a number of da´wa institutions, such as the Kuwaiti African Muslim Agency. In 1985, he was awarded the King Faisal Prize for his services to Islam. After a long illness that left him paralyzed, he died in South Africa on 8 August 2005 (Sadouni 1998; Westerlund 2003). 17. On the Gospel of Barnabas, see Borrmans 1996; Cirillo and Fremaux 1977; Durrani 1982; Linges 1994; Pons and Fernando 1995; Ragg and Ragg, 1907; Rahim 1973; Slomp 1997. 18. On the role of the Arabic translation of the gospel in the Arab world and among Indian Muslims in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Schirrmacher 1992. 19. The Shahada in Kiswahili is: Ni nakubali kwa moyo; ni natamka kwa ulime kwamba hakuna Mola ana ipasa ku abudiwa kwa haki isipokuwa Allah. Na kwamba Muhammad ni Mtume wake [I accept with all my soul and I declare with my tongue that there is no God to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet]. 20. By activist Muslim elites, I mean Muslim activists who have been educated within the Western educational system. 21. Another point in Sanneh’s favor was the first translations of the Qur’an from Arabic into other languages. For a long time, Muslims had argued as to whether translating the Qur’an from Arabic into other languages was possible. Those in favor cited the fact that when the Prophet Muhammad corresponded with non-Muslim rulers, he wrote in their languages. In his letters, Muhammad would render Quranic verses in the appropriate language. Moreover, Salman alFarisi, a Persian companion of his, translated the Fatiha (the first sura of the Qur’an) into Farsi. Those opposed to translating the Qur’an put forward the classical doctrine of the inimitable perfection of the text (i’jaz al-Qur’an), that is, its untranslatability. Hence from the Middle
Chanfi Ahmed
16. Deedat was born in 1918 in the region of Surat in India and migrated to South Africa with his
15
15. AL-MALLID Islamic International Propagation; in Arabic, al-Markaz al-Islâmî li tanbîh al-ghâfilîn
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best-known missionary. 10. For the UMCA, see Wilson 1936.
Ages to the eighteenth century, it was non-Muslims who translated the Qur’an into European languages, including Latin. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Christian missionaries translated it into non-European languages, particularly African and Asian ones. The first Muslim to translate it was Muhammad Ali (1875–1951), then head of the Ahmadiyya branch in Lahore. In 1917, he published an English translation, which not surprisingly was rejected by most Sunni Muslims. In 1930, Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, an English convert to Islam,
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published another English translation; although similar to Muhammad Ali’s translation, it was accepted by the majority of Sunni Muslims. The most popular translation was published in 1934 by Yusuf Ali, an Indian Muslim; its backing by the Saudi state was responsible for its widespread acceptance (Khaleel 2005; Kidwai 1987; Rippin 1988). 22. One might recall Abu Hanifa, the founder of one of the four juridical schools (madhhab) in Islam, who authorized Persian Muslims to recite the Fatiha (the opening sura of the Qur’an) in Farsi if they could not do so in Arabic.
16 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
References Ahmad, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud. 1949. Introduction to the Study of the Holy Quran. London: The London Mosque. Ahmed, Chanfi. 2001. Islamic Mission in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Perspectives of Some ‘Ulamâ’ Associated with Al-Azhar University (1960–1970). Die Welt des Islams 41: 348–378. ———. 2008. Convertir le converti: Les conversions à l’Islam fondamentaliste en Afrique au Sud du Sahara: Le cas de la Tanzanie et du Kenya. Paris: L’Harmattan. Baagil, H. M., R. E. Johnson, and M. A. Nubee. 1984. Christian–Muslim Dialogue. London: Dar Al-Dawa Book Shop; Zanzibar: Al-Khayria Press. Balda, Justo Lacunza. 1977. An Investigation into Some Concepts and Ideas Found in Swahili Islamic Writings. Ph.D. dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, London. ———. 1993. The Role of Kiswahili in East African Islam. In Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Louis Brenner. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: Bassaleh, Maallim Ally. 2005. Interview by author. Kariakoo, 18, 19, and 20 April. Beleko, Ustadh Mustafa Salim. N.d. Ana kwa Ana na Wachungaji wa Makanisa [Disputations between Ustadh Mustafa Salim Beleko and Christian Pastors on the Divinity of Jesus]. Korogwe: n.p. Borrmans, Maurice. 1996. Jésus et les musulmans d’aujourd’hui. Paris: Desclée. Cirillo, Luigi, and Michel Fremaux. 1977. Evangile de Barnabé. Paris: Beauchesne. Dale, Canon G. 1913. The Contrast between Christianity and Muhammadanism: Four lectures delivered in Christ Church Cathedral, Zanzibar. London: Office of the UMCA. ———. 1930. The Peoples of Zanzibar: Their Customs and Religious Beliefs. Westminster: The UMCA. Deedat, A. H. 1965. Mtume Muhammad katika Biblia [The Prophet Muhammad in the Bible]. Lahore: MSD. ———. N. d. Is the Bible God’s Word? Kuwait: African Muslim Agency. ———. 1982. What the Bible Says about Muhummed (Peace be upon Him). Kuwait: African Muslim Agency. ———. 1988. Biblia yasema nini juu ya Muhammad s.a.w. [What the Bible Says about Muhammad]. Mombasa: AMY. Durrani, M. H. 1992. The Forgotten Gospel of St Barnabas. Delhi: Noor.
Ende, Werner. 1995. Salafiyya. In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill. Fisher, Humphrey. 1963. Ahmadiyya: A Study in Contemporary Islam on the West African Coast. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frankl, P. J. L. 1993. W. E. Taylor, 1856–1927: Swahili Scholar Extraordinary. South African Journal of African Languages 13:37–41. Gualtieri, Antonio. 2001. The Ahmadis: Community, Gender, and Politics in Muslim Society. Montreal:
Became a Muslim]. Mombasa: Adam Traders Massjid Hidaya Biashara Street. ———. 1970. Sikumkana Yesu bali Mtume Paulo [I Do Oppose St. Paul, Not Jesus]. Nairobi: TIDI. Khaleel, Mohammed. 2005. Assessing English Translations of the Quran. Middle East Quarterly 12: 59–72. Kidwai, A. R. 1987. Translating the Untranslatable: A Survey of English Translations of the Quran. Muslim
Marjami, M. S. N.d. Mtume Muhammad s.a.w. Katika Bible [The Prophet Muhammad in the Bible]. Lahore: n.p. al-Mazrui, Sheikh al-Amin bin Ali. N.d. Mirzai na Jinsi Wawadanganyavyo Islamu [Mirza and How he Deceives Muslims]. Mombasa: EAMWS. ———. 1944. Uwongozi wa Kimasihiya na Ki-islamu. Mombasa: EAMWS. ———. 1947. Mtume Muhammad katika Vitabu Vitakatifu. Mombasa: EAMWS. Ngariba, Mussa Fundi. 1987a. Mtambue Paulo katika Biblia [Understanding Paul in the Bible]. Dar es Salaam: Ngariba Mussa Fundi na Kawemba Mohammed Ali. ———. 1987b. Uislam katika Biblia [Islam in the Bible]. Zanzibar: Al-Khayria Press. Pons, Bernabé, and Louis Fernando. 1995. El Evangelio de San Bernabe: un evangelio islámico español. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante. Ragg, Lonsdale, and Laura Ragg. 1907. The Gospel of Barnabas. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rahim, Muhammad Abdur. 1973. The Gospel of Barnabas. Karachi: Qur’an Council of Pakistan. Rippin, Andrew, ed. 1988. Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’an. Oxford and New York: Clarendon and Oxford University Presses. Sadouni, Samadia. 1988. Le Minoritaire sud-africain Ahmed Deedat, une figure originale de la da´wa’. Islam et Sociétés au sud du Sahara 12:149–170. Said, Mohammed. 1998. Islamic Movement and Christian Hegemony: The Rise of Muslim Militancy in Tanzania, 1970–2000. Tanga: n.p. Salim, Ahmed I. 1987. Sheikh al-Amin bin Ali al-Mazrui: un réformiste moderne au Kenya. In Les voies de l’Islam en Afrique orientale, edited by F. Constantin. Paris: Karthala. Sanneh, Lamin. 1993. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Schirrmacher, Christine. 1992. Mit den Waffen des Gegners: Christlich-muslimische Kontroversen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert dargestellt am Beispiel der Auseinandersetzung um Karl Gottlieb Pfanders Mîzân al-haqq und Rahmatullâh ibn Halîl al-´Utmânî al-Kairânawîs Izhâr al-haqq und der Diskussion über das Barnabasevangelium. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Slomp, Jan. 1997. The Gospel of Barnabas in Recent Research. Rome: Islamochristiana, Pontifico Instituto di Studi Arabi e d’Islamistica.
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Service. Linges, Safiyya M. 1994. Das Barnabas-Evangelium. Bonndorf: Turban-Verlag.
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World Book Review: 66–71. Lavan, Spencer. 1974. The Ahmadiyah Movement: A History and Perspective. New Delhi: Manohar Book
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McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kanoni, Abass Gombo. N.d. Kwanini Niliacha Ukristo na Nikawa Muislamu [Why I left Christianity and
al-Tâ’î, Kamâl al-Dîn. 1972. Al-Qadyâniyya wa-al-Ahmadiyya. Majallat al-Azhar 44:749–752. Ward, Kevin, and Brian Stanley, eds. 2000. The Church Mission Society and World Christianity, 1799–1999. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Westerlund, David. 2003. Ahmed Deedat’s Theology of Religion: Apologetics Through Polemics. Journal of Religion in Africa 33:263–278. Wilson, George Herbert. 1936. The History of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. Westminster:
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Central Africa House. Zanjibari, Muhammad Ali, trans. N.d. Kundi la Waandishi Katika Njia ya haki: Uhakika wa Ukristo [The Truth about Christianity]. Qom.
18 The Wahubiri wa Kislamu (Preachers of Islam) in East Africa
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Controversies among female supporters of Islamic moral renewal, and between them and other Muslims, pinpoint tensions that arise between Muslim women’s emphasis on the primacy of deeds over talking about it, and the actual narrativization of their identity as proper Muslims.
(Re)Turning to Proper Muslim Practice: Islamic Moral Renewal and Women’s Conflicting Assertions of Sunni Identity in Urban Mali Dorothea E. Schulz
This article explores competing discourses and understandings of proper Muslim practice as they are reflected in controversies among female supporters of Islamic moral renewal, and between them and Muslims who do not consider themselves part of the movement. Supporters of Islamic moral renewal highlight the primacy of deeds, such as proper behavior and correct ritual performance, as ways to validate their newly adopted religious identity. Their emphasis on proper action, and their dismissal of talking about religiosity, stand in tension with their own tendency to construct elaborate narratives about their decision to embrace what they consider a more authentic form of Islam. The importance they attribute to the embodied performance of virtue leaves many supporters of Islamic renewal in a double bind: despite their claim to unity, their conception of the relationship between individual ethics and the common good, combined with the tendency among supporters of Islamic moral renewal to set themselves apart from “other Muslims,” reinforces trends of differentiation among Muslims who aspire to a new moral community.
Introduction In August of 1999, during my research on religious education institutions for adult Muslims in urban Mali, I visited a Muslim women’s learning group in an older neighborhood of San, a town in southeastern Mali.1 After the usual introductions and I had explained my interest in women’s learning activities, the group’s leader (tontigi) offered to respond “to any kind of question I might have” on Muslim women’s attendance to the “learning group.”