Religion in Global Politics by Jeff Haynes

Author:Jeff Haynes [Haynes, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317886679
Google: LWquBAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 23370273
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1998-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

National Muslim organizations and political change

In this section I want to look at the role of national Muslim organizations in the recent period of democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa, with case studies from Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi. In each of these states Islam is an important majority or minority religion.

Since independence, African governments – like their counterparts in other parts of the Muslim world – have been in partnership with leading Muslim individuals to perpetuate an ideology of domination based on a desire to reform traditional, popular modes of Islam. As Bromley (1994: 42) notes, popular Islam is normally the religion of the majority of Muslims in most African countries. It is independent of the State and, for this reason, Islamic reformers in the national Muslim organizations seek to repress popular Islam, seeing it as a threat to their position. In other words, Islamic reformers aim to bolster their standing by systematizing their group values. The function of such an Islamic ideology is to concentrate belief in the values which are necessary for the domination of one group over others. Popular Islam – anti-orthodox Islam – is the ordinary people’s response. I want to examine how regimes adopt ‘Islamization’: how they seek to force non- or nominal Muslims either to convert to Islam or to adopt the reformers’ version of the faith to enhance their religious ‘purity’. The real aim, of course, is to bolster the hegemonial positions both of the reformers and of their secular allies in the State by manipulating national Muslim organizations for their objectives.

National Muslim organizations, in the same way as many mainstream Christian Churches, aim to fill the role of intermediary and interlocutor between State and umma (the Islamic community). Senior Muslim figures thus claim to serve a dual role: to channel the State’s orders and wishes downwards, while officially passing social concerns the other way. These organizations are not only found in Sub-Saharan African states where there are majorities of Muslims – such as Niger, Mali and Guinea – but also in others, including Tanzania, Malawi, Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda, where Muslims form substantial minorities. In these latter states, government, through its alliance with the national organization, seeks to achieve control of Muslims, apotentially subversive group, they believe. Such organizations, then, function primarily as control and surveillance bodies, as ‘a means of protection against the… development of a militant Islam, uncontrolled and subversive’ (Triaud 1982: 38). This recalls the way that colonial administrations where possible chose the ‘big’ marabouts (Muslim holy men) as their interlocutors with Muslim society. The various national Christian Church councils today fill something of a similar role to that of the State-level Muslim bodies. Because of international links with their former ‘parent’ Churches they are able to maintain a degree of financial independence; Muslim national associations may also receive funds from abroad – perhaps Iran or Saudi Arabia -although these foreign governments are just as likely to fund non-State Muslim organizations, especially in states where Muslims are in a minority, such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

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