Chapter 2 Building a Righteous Muslim Society

Biography of a Modern Ibadhi Reformer from Zanzibar

Ahmad bin Hamad al-Khalili was born into a conservative Ibadhi family in the village of Mfenesini (literally, “where the jackfruits grow”) in Zanzibar on July 27, 1942.⁴ Along with thousands of others, he fled the chaos and violence of the Zanzibar Revolution for Oman in 1964. In returning to the islands of his birth as both a celebrated Ibadhi authority and a member of the Omani government two decades later, the mufti and his delegation delivered a series of lectures at congregational mosques across Tanzania focused on Muslim unity and collaboration in education and development. At the same time, he gathered leaders of the Omani diaspora with the goal of educating the community on Ibadhi thought and practice and encouraging its rapprochement with the country’s Shafiʿi Sunni majority. The mufti’s delegation stressed that Ibadhism was in danger of effacement by fundamentalist groups like the Wahhabi movement, which originated in Saudi Arabia, and that it was time to educate their youth about the madhab so they could pass this knowledge on to future generations. This transmission of knowledge was critical not only for the long-term survival of the Omani-Ibadhi diaspora in Tanzania but also for Ibadhi identity, which was increasingly less understood by religious outsiders. The delegation from Oman began its open lectures in Sunni congregational mosques while also addressing Ibadhis in more intimate settings, such as in the historic Omani family mosques in Stone Town. They reproached their Omani-Ibadhi kin for their mutual estrangement following the revolution, which, as Maher related it, brought on an “every man” and “every family” for himself/themselves mentality. This estrangement presented an obstacle to community development as foreign donors from Oman, for example, were wary of sending aide to Tanzania as there was no centralized Ibadhi leadership or organization that could speak to the needs of the entire community and ensure the trusted transfer of funds and implementation of building projects and charitable initiatives.⁵

Talks between the Omani delegation and local Ibadhi leaders in Tanzania eventually led to the decision to establish an Ibadhi religious and charitable society called Istiqaama, which would unify the diaspora around their common origins in Oman, their belief in Islam, and their adherence to the teachings of the Ibadhi madhab. Beyond its commitments to reviving Ibadhism in the diaspora, the founders stressed the importance of outreach to the broader Muslim community. They worked to revive and demarcate Ibadhi space by labeling old and new mosques after the madhab’s founding figures, hanging up portraits of Al-Khalili in their homes and offices and creating a transregional network of private schools all under the name Istiqaama. From its foundation Istiqaama was a transnational initiative with a translocal reach, connecting Omani and Ibadhi communities of coastal and northwestern Tanzania and into central Africa. So far was the organization’s reach, that once the Istiqaama Institute was established in Zanzibar (see chap. 3), Ibadhis in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda gradually began to send their youths to Tanzania to study at the Istiqaama Institute. The rise of Istiqaama, then, must be contextualized in terms of the 1980s and 1990s, when Tanzania, and much of Africa, was undergoing a transition from socialist to democratic governance, multiparty elections, and neoliberal reforms centered on structural adjustment policies and the privatization of the economy in a way that enabled the proliferation of FBOs and NGOs across the country. Moreover, during this period, the country’s borders opened to trade and foreign investment, welcoming diplomats and businessmen from Oman, among other places. Al-Khalili’s delegation was an example of Tanzania’s openness to reviving its cultural ties with Oman and interest in pathways toward mutual economic growth.

Istiqaama is an example of what geographer Mona Atia has called “pious neoliberalism,” or a meeting point of neoliberalism and Islamism where “subjects engage in a moral economy that is inextricably linked with the market, self-government, and faith.”⁶ Moreover, it is a way of doing good works (khayr), which brings one closer to God, while also attempting to engage in socioeconomic development that will improve effectiveness and efficiency of governing structures.⁷ As Atia cautions, this is not necessarily a top-down process, as much as governments and government authorities may try to monitor, control, and co-opt, for diplomatic or civil purposes, the activities of religious groups within their purview. Nor do all neoliberal faith-based organizations around the world look the same or relate to governance in the same kinds of ways.⁸ International diaspora organizations like Istiqaama offer a unique vantage point from which to examine how the same organization may take on varied leadership and economic structures or be more or less explicit about their religious identities, depending on how near or far they are to what they consider their ancestral homeland. At the same time, religious organizations like Istiqaama have the potential to create transregional and transnational solidarities around diaspora identity by engaging in religious diplomacy that conveys a particular interpretation or vision of Islam. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in what I call the “Friday prayer movement,” the main case study in this chapter, which was initiated under the leadership of Al-Khalili as a means of bringing Ibadhis into proximity with Shafiʿi Sunni Islam in Tanzania through public sermons at old and new mosques across the country.

The Friday prayer movement was essential to Al-Khalili’s religious diplomacy in Tanzania as it drew on the rhetoric of religious tolerance and Muslim unity, which are central to the sultanate’s self-image, while at the same time resonating with local discourses about peace and security in postrevolutionary Zanzibar. The Omani mufti’s personal connections to Zanzibar and his knowledge of Swahili and familiarity with Muslim cultures and practices in East Africa enabled him to reach and connect with a wide public. Ibadhi calls for religious reform in Zanzibar have intersected with Omani public diplomacy in the formation of the Istiqaama Muslim Society of Tanzania.

A Lost Son Returns: Al-Khalili and Omani Public Diplomacy in Tanzania

Omani writer Nasser Abdulla Al-Riyami’s biography of Al-Khalili begins with two hagiographic anecdotes about his early childhood in rural Zanzibar that portray him as the lost son of exceptional piety and discernment who would become the key figure driving the religious reforms of the modern Omani state under Sultan Qaboos. In the first of the two incidents, the four-year-old Al-Khalili purportedly reproached his mother for attending a co-ed, though gender-segregated, celebration of Mawlid without the permission of his father. When his mother explained that she could not seek permission as his father was out of town, the young Al-Khalili made a fuss until she took him home in defeat.⁹ In the second account, we learn that Al-Khalili was precocious and could recite the Qur’an by the age of six. The boy prodigy also studied closely with, and attended the public lectures of, the Algerian Ibadhi Sheikh Abu Ishaq Atfayyish during his first and second visits to Unguja island. By the age of seven, he had begun to serve as the mosque’s muezzin, where his father served as imam, and by age nine, he had become a hafiz, having memorized the entire Qur’an. Al-Khalili learned under the tutelage of several other scholars in Zanzibar and studied the Qur’an, hadith, Arabic grammar, law, and inheritance, among other subjects. He read the Ibadhi legal primer Talqīn al-s.ubiyyān mā yalzamu al-insān (Educating the Youth on What Is Imperative of the Human) and the two-volume legal poem Jawhar al-Nidhām (Jewel of the Legal System) both by Nūr al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh bin Humayyid al-Sālimī (1869–1914). When the Zanzibar Muslim Academy opened in Stone Town in the early 1950s, Al-Khalili was unable to attend because he lived far away. Moreover, he was responsible for tending to the family business whenever his father was out of town.¹⁰ Disturbed by the lack of parity in rural and urban education, Al-Riyami claims that Al-Khalili once addressed the issue in a speech delivered to members of the Arab Association in Zanzibar. The eloquent young orator stressed the importance of making Islamic education available to children in the rural areas who for various reasons could not attend the elite institutions of the town.¹¹ These stories establish the impeachable and righteous character of Al-Khalili, an image consistent with the reverential manner with which Ibadhis in Tanzania regard him.

At the time of the Zanzibar Revolution, Al-Khalili’s father spent time in jail along with “many tens of thousands of Arabs,” most likely under suspicion that they would try to undercut the revolution and reinstate the sultanate.¹² After his father’s release, the Khalili family joined the waves of Arabs fleeing the island by boarding a Pakistani ship for the weeks-long journey to Muscat, Oman. From Muscat, they left for the mufti’s home region of Bahla, located in Oman’s interior region (Al-Dakhaliyya). As Al-Riyami tells it, there the young Khalili began to seek out local scholars and study groups, and it was not long before he gained notoriety for his extensive knowledge of Islamic studies. He accepted a position teaching the Qur’an and religion to local children and held study groups at the Bahla Mosque. As the word about his intellectual abilities spread, Al-Khalili received and accepted an offer to teach advanced Islamic sciences at a college in Al-Khoor Mosque in Muscat. In 1975, following the death in a car accident of the mufti who preceded him, Al-Khalili was appointed the grand mufti of Oman by Sultan Qaboos, who had only just risen to power following a British-backed coup that overthrew his father five years earlier. Starting in 1986, Al-Khalili served as undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Awqaf and Islamic Affairs until a severe illness required him to take a sabbatical from this post to seek treatment abroad. Al-Riyami writes that after Al-Khalili’s recovery, the sultan made him a minister of the same office, now called the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs (MERA).¹³ The biography ends here and, surprisingly for an author focused on the legacies of Zanzibar elites and exiles who went on to build Oman, does not mention the mufti’s role in the creation of Istiqaama or the significance of this transnational Ibadhi movement in shaping the future of Oman-Tanzania relations. His narrative, like that of many Omani exiles whose focus is on the history of Zanzibari elites the first two decades after the revolution, is a nostalgic one, concerned with celebrating and archiving an idealized past without examining present struggles and achievements. When the Ibadhi imamate dissolved in Oman in the late 1950s and Sultan Qaboos rose to power in Oman in 1970, he worked quickly to legitimize himself as the sole ruler capable of creating a sense of shared identity or an “imagined community.”¹⁴

The new leader’s legitimacy-building project relied largely on the promotion of shared national myths about Omani identity and “on [establishing] standardized collective references.”¹⁵ Chief among these references is the idea of a distinctively Omani nationalist articulation of Islam, which draws heavily from the Ibadhi ideals of justice and equality, and a history of downplaying and concealing one’s religious identity. Strong links continue to exist between the history of Ibadhi Islam and state power in Oman. Yet Sultan Qaboos was reticent about his own Ibadhi heritage, and state representatives in Oman, in general, tend to downplay the political significance of Ibadhi Islam as part of its policy to promote religious unity. They elevate the ideal of religious unity by promoting what Political Scientist Marc Valeri called “a consensual and ‘generic’ Islam that is peculiar to Oman and that neglects both controversial past influences and foreign ones, such as the Saudi Wahhabi influence.”¹⁶ The idea of a generic and unified Islam necessarily undermines sectarian identities and debate in the interest of maintaining political neutrality and regional stability. The irony of Oman’s philosophy of Muslim unity is that its justification derives in large part from a sectarian identity (i.e., Ibadhi Islam). While state actors emphasize the need for tolerance in public pronouncements on religion, the Omani government also works hard to undermine any religious voices that threaten to challenge the existing political order or that highlight sectarian differences.

Eickelman shows that the Omani state’s preoccupation with religious tolerance and accommodation is, in many ways, a response to the consciousness of religion and sectarianism that emerged in post-1970 Oman. Driving this consciousness is a better-educated younger generation that has come into greater contact with alternative interpretations of Islam and the role of religion in the modern world.¹⁷ Ibadhis in Oman have taken advantage of the increased literacy, new community and institutional arrangements, and new media at their disposal to project a controlled image of Ibadhi Islam.¹⁸ What defines this new Ibadhi consciousness is its unique relationship to the state in Oman. This relationship relies on Ibadhi religious and political ideals, such as moderation and mediation, as a basis from which to disseminate a hypercontrolled discourse on tolerance.

The sultanate also closely monitors religious organizations and congregations through MERA. “All religious organizations must register with the government. Groups seeking registration must request meeting and worship space from one of the sponsor organizations recognized by MERA. Muslim groups must register, but the government—as benefactor of the country’s mosques—serves as their sponsor.”¹⁹ Oman recognizes several Christian churches and Hindu and Sikh temples and appoints an official sponsor to oversee each one. “The sponsors are responsible for recording the group’s doctrinal adherence, the names of its leaders, and the number of active members, and for submitting this information to the ministry.”²⁰ MERA has branches in the major governorates across the country and is the umbrella organization housing both the mufti’s office, the Institute of Shariah Sciences, and all other religiously related institutions, including the departments of zakat, waqf, hajj affairs, and preaching.²¹ The sultanate’s structured religious bureaucracy is identifiable in schools and houses of worship that follow very clear curricular and building guidelines.

The building of Friday mosques in cities across the sultanate is another visible manifestation of the state’s “generic Islam” and a good example of the inextricable link between religious and state authority in Oman. The construction of mosques requires the approval of the local and national governments and is well monitored with strict guidelines for their location and function.²² The government appoints all imams in the sultanate, and the state issues a uniform Friday sermon delivered weekly in every mosque there. The International Religious Freedom Report states that “all individuals who deliver sermons in recognized religious groups must register with MERA. Unlicensed lay members are prohibited from preaching sermons in mosques, and licensed imams must follow government-approved sermons. Lay members of non-Muslim groups may lead prayers if they are specified as leaders in their group’s registration application.”²³

According to this report issued by the US government, its Omani counterpart accepts proposals for each week’s sermon, and MERA checks these for stylistic errors, accuracy of information, and the quality of their content before the selection.²⁴ The government then publicizes the name of the author for each week’s selected sermon, adding a degree of competition and prestige to the practice of sermon writing. The state’s appointment of mosque religious leadership and its monopoly over the Friday sermon is part of a comprehensive strategy under MERA to incorporate Islam and the country’s religious leadership into the state, thus enabling a more effective transmission of the national message on Muslim unity.²⁵ Valeri suggests that this “bureaucratization of men of religion” is the reason “why relations with Ibadhi communities of Tanzania, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya remain weak after 1970. By confining religious personalities within the national framework, the regime has not only controlled their voice and influence more easily but also involved them personally in the promotion of a national identity.”²⁶ Providing government subsidies for transnational religious charities such as Istiqaama and working with these groups to shape national discourses on Islam and Ibadhi Islam, the Omani state is beginning to revive its ties to Ibadhi networks in East and North Africa.

In early sermons and lectures addressing the Ibadhi community, the authorities from Oman and their supporters in Tanzania focused on self-knowledge as a first step in removing a veil of ignorance about Ibadhism. Ayman from chapter 1 explained:

Our goal is first to bring in those Ibadhis who realized that they did not really know themselves and those who had not yet reached this realization [of lack of self-knowledge], i.e., those who were uneducated. You could say that before the 1980s, there was no [madhab] education at all [haipo kabisa]. Even the youth were not educated, [a person] would just exist, almost ashamed to discover a path to learn more. So, the first step was to introduce the Friday prayers. We started in Stone Town near [the business called] Stone Traders. The first day in that location was April 4, 1986. . . . So first it was prayer then they began to inform the community [about the madhab] and people began to recognize each other. The jumuiya did not start right away; it happened by way of the madrasa, madrasas of Istiqaama . . . over there in Mkunazini. To this day, the Shaksi madrasa continues to teach children, and we ourselves studied there, so it became our first identity until we realized it is up to us to bring understanding. Before getting outsiders to understand. So, people from other madhabs [come] without being called, see the mark of the Ibadhi works.²⁷

Ayman implies that the collective “forgetting” or willful dissociation from their madhab was due to a lack of guidance and consensus among Ibadhis about where religious authority lay. According to this line of reasoning, the revival of Ibadhi group consciousness²⁸ first required that individual members of the community face the shame of recognizing their lack of self-awareness. This self-realization demanded the humility that comes with submitting oneself to the care of another deemed more learned and authoritative, who would serve as a guide on the path to righteousness in a manner like the relationship between the Sufi master and disciple. To submit to a more knowledgeable authority was as much the prerogative of “uneducated” elders as it was for the youth. Still, the situation for youth was more urgent due to their affinity toward new religious movements with more articulate religious ideologies that were adept in recruiting followers through new media and educational programs that combined religious knowledge with modern technologies.

Ibadhis who I spoke with or whose works I read during my research on mainland Tanzania and the islands would often describe their communities as having been in a state of spiritual slumber or, like Ayman put it, of existing without purpose or meaning. For example, in Qamusi-Ssalaa (2010) a Swahili language primer designed to teach school-age children about Ibadhism and prayer, a Pemban scholar, Sheikh Khalfan Tiwani, explained that there are two reasons that other Muslim groups misunderstand and sometimes shun Ibadhis. First is because of the propagation of what he calls sectarian hate, which he attributes to the failure of non-Ibadhis to read and engage with scholarship written by Ibadhis themselves, so he provides references for those seeking to understand the tradition on its own terms. The second reason is that Ibadhis themselves have been asleep and are in part to blame for the ignorance of others about the madhab because they do not attempt to explain it beyond their immediate families or communities, if they even do that. He cited the dearth of books about Ibadhism written in Swahili as evidence of this spiritual lethargy and claimed that therefore young people go in search of other paths to gain clarity about their faith. They then return to their Ibadhi parents and critique the way they pray and behave. He credited Al-Khalili with “activating” Ibadhism “after a long time of bitter sleep” and praised the work of his relative Sheikh Mohammad Suleiman Tiwani, an acolyte of the mufti, for using his talents and education to awaken Ibadhis in Pemba.²⁹

Related to the recurrent trope of the “sleeping” madhab or Muslim is shame that comes with not knowing one’s own history or the reasons for one’s beliefs. From Ayman and Sheikh Khalfan’s point of view, shame that derives from a lack of self-knowledge has the potential to destroy communal and familial bonds, making one vulnerable not only to moral corruption but also to other religious groups and ideologies that are intolerant to other ways of life. They describe a deeply ontological struggle to uncover a sense of both spiritual “consciousness and intersubjectivity.”³⁰ Summing up major philosophical positions on how shame affects our sense of self, philosopher Luna Dolezal explains that “without shame, we would not have the capacity for reflective self-awareness nor eventually become relational political subjects.”³¹ She suggests, in her rereading of John Paul Sartre’s work on the topic, that there is a strong connection between “shame, the body and vulnerability” and that this interconnection reflects a basic human need for belonging.³²

When viewed through a similar lens, Ayman’s experience of shame can be seen as a productive force that prompts spiritual reform. Rather than serving as an obstacle that prevents someone from advancing on the path to spiritual reform, shame enables the self-awareness essential for the first step to joining a righteous society. Ayman’s words are also a commentary on the suppression of religious education and associational life in Zanzibar following the revolution and a reference to the secularization of Tanzanian society under socialist governance in the 1960s and 1970s. While Istiqaama’s leaders shy away from involvement in public politics, their critique is not so different from that of earlier Muslim reformists, such as the forerunners “of contemporary Sunni Islamist thought,”³³ like the Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966). Qutb blamed the spiritual depravity of humanity on the cultural and political hegemony of an “unbelieving” Western civilization. In adopting Western and Eastern systems of governance such as a secular legislative authority, democracy, and socialism, Muslim leaders were themselves ignorant (jahili) of the authority of Allah and were not able to serve as righteous guides for the umma. The only way to restore the earth to righteous leadership, in his view, was to create a vanguard of reformers who would at once maintain distance from and closeness to the ignorance (jahiliyya) surrounding them and follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad and the Salaf (pious ancestors) in leading their communities to spiritual enlightenment.³⁴ The challenges faced by Ibadhi youth in integrating into the capitalistic aspects and secularizing projects of modern nation states, as well as navigating calls for global Islamic revival, emphasize the importance of a framework to make sense of their multiple identities and experiences of modernity. This tension between conforming to the expectations of the modern nation-state and adhering to conservative Islamic teachings reflects a broader struggle within Tanzania’s Ibadhi-Omani community to build and sustain its aspirational righteous community in the diaspora.

The Islamic revival of the 1980s presented a challenge to local Muslim practices that Islamist reformers criticized as deviating from the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunna and the example of the Salaf from the first century of Islam. Muslim youths were facing the challenge of how to integrate into postcolonial and quasisocialist local environments that were hostile to political Islam while also responding to the call for them to don the mantle of religion and propagate the faith. During this dual pressure to conform to the exigencies of the modern nation-state and Islamic reform, Ibadhi youth also felt pressure to articulate their place in this global Islamic revival while not having the religious framework to help them make sense of this double consciousness³⁵ and the ways in which their diasporic identities intersected with their Islamic ones.³⁶

Like the earlier movement described by Amal Ghazal, the postrevolution Ibadhi revival began in the mosque. Yet now it was not only the mosque study circles where issues of moral reform and Muslim unity were highlighted; the Friday prayer and sermon were also involved. The prayers were a call to action for young people, inspiring them to assume their new role as the vanguard of the imagined righteous community that would later refer to itself in Swahili as the Istiqaama Muslim Community. The creation of the organization allowed Ibadhis the opportunity to redefine their collective identity in the unstable postrevolutionary present as an inclusive and tolerant madhab that other Muslims would want to follow. This reorientation toward inclusivity in a community that (in Zanzibar especially) had historically kept to its own networks of Arab family mosques, depended greatly on the charismatic authority of the foreign delegates and the religious literature and spiritual resources they brought with them.

The Ibadhi Friday Prayer Movement

The Ibadhi Friday prayer movement began in what is today Stone Town’s largest Ibadhi mosque located near and across the street from the landmark Ismaili-owned Stone Town Traders stationery shop. The location of the mosque is on Gizenga Street, part of the old city’s upscale Shanghani neighborhood and the main tourist thoroughfare and center for souvenir shopping. Indeed, the somewhat awkward encounter between brightly—and sometimes, scantily—clad tourists and the outpour of crisply dressed Muslim male worshippers following the Friday afternoon prayer is a commentary on both the tolerance and the unease with which Stone Town residents have learned to maintain the town’s religious integrity amid the material signs of a Westernized modernity.

When Sultan Qaboos assumed power in Oman in the 1970s, state-funded Friday mosques proliferated, as did efforts to standardize the Friday sermon in government mosques. According to Al-Siyabi, the Friday sermon in the first Istiqaama mosques came from MERA.

Oman sends them podium books especially preaching books that are prepared by the Ministry.³⁷ They preached from them, and [practice of] the khutba [sermon] was new to the people, as the khutbas were delivered in the Friday mosques that are connected to the other ancient madhabs. And among the teachers were Egyptians and Sudanese, coming to pray in the Ibadhi mosque, and we sent to them [text of] the khutbas constantly. There were so many people praying to the point that they filled the mosque, and the Ministry of Endowments set out to expand the Muharrami mosque so that now it consists of two floors. Then the Istiqaama Mosque broke away from it, so the Istiqaama Mosque used to be the Al-Muharrami mosque, and it was appropriate for the Omani man from the tribe of al-Muharrami in Oman.³⁸

The imagery of Muslims crowding into the mosques eager to hear the sermons given by Omani visitors or provided by the Omani government suggests both a renegotiation of authority in Zanzibar in the 1980s, when the movement began, and an openness and curiosity for the new expressions of Islamic knowledge coming from Oman. I prefer the term “(re)negotiation” of authority over “crisis” or “fragmentation” of authority because it is less suggestive of intra-Muslim antagonism and also better explains how a reform movement led by Ibadhis and religious authorities from Oman could gain such momentum in primarily non-Ibadhi spaces. Moreover, the presence of Omani religious authorities at the podiums of a Sunni congregational mosque on Friday gave those Ibadhis who had previously opposed the practice on the grounds of Omani “tradition” a reason to enter the space, observe the practice, and join the dialogue over Muslim unity that was key to the reforms. Beyond the rapprochement with Sunni Islam, however, the revivalists sought to bridge a generational gap within the Omani diaspora that threatened the longevity of the madhab, which was already obscure even to most Ibadhis in Tanzania. According to sectary general of Oman’s Mufti’s Office, Sheikh Ahmad Ibn Al-Siyabi,

The idea of holding a Friday prayer in Zanzibar motivated the Ibadhi youth to oppose the sheikhs and elders. I was among the strong supporters of the prayer. When I traveled to Zanzibar, I would give lectures in several of the mosques. I seized the opportunity to persuade them, and to encourage them to perform the Friday prayers. There were heated conversations with the opposition, who argued that the ancestors did not perform [the Friday prayers] in their time, and the rule in Zanzibar was an Omani Arab Islamic [state].

There were many protests. So, I quoted the Qur’an and Sunna to them, and [gave examples of] the precedent of the pious ancestors in the performance [of the Friday prayers]. I made clear to them the intellectual arguments that the Friday prayers are among the things that will protect the madhab because there were some youths who had been lured into sectarian destruction.³⁹

The prayer movement both destabilized and challenged existing structures of Ibadhi authority based primarily on one’s seniority rather than learnedness. Moreover, it reflected larger debates about correct Islamic practice that formed part of the Islamic revival and that migrated with students who traveled to and from Tanzania and the Arabic-speaking countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Egypt. In these major urban centers of Islamic learning and Salafism, the students were in proximity to some of the most famous preachers (Ar., duʻāt, sing m. dāʻī, sing. fem. dāʻīyya) and mosque lecturers (Ar., khut.abāʾ) and had the opportunity to participate in public debates about the virtues of different schools of thought. Moreover, they inhabited a pious “sensorium” of new Islamic media, sounds, and conservative dress that heightened their sense of piety and primed them to protest the low quality of religious and secular education in their home countries and the moral corruption and/or lack of representation of Muslims in government.⁴⁰ Siyabi comments on the talismanic quality of prayer, something that is well documented in studies on Sufism but that is rarely discussed in the case of minority Muslim politics. When the question is raised, say in the case of Muslim minorities in Europe, prayer as protection is usually seen as antiassimilationist rather than as a means of downplaying the sectarian identity of an individual or group, or as an attempt to assimilate into the Sunni Muslim mainstream. For the Omani diaspora in Tanzania, mimicking the prayer practices of other Muslims was not only critical to narrowing the distance between the madhabs but was also essential for the transformation and expansion of Ibadhi space across the country.

Mainstream Shiʿa were less likely to attend congregational prayers owing to the frequent absence of a Shiʿa imam who is both a political and spiritual leader. In Ibadhi-dominated territories, a similar opinion prevailed. At various periods in Omani history when there was a power vacuum in Nizwa, the historic seat of the imamate, the local community would refrain from prayer. Valerie Hoffman explains that the prayers could “be done only in the traditional capital cities like Nizwa in the presence of a just imam.”⁴¹ In the diaspora, Omani clans such as the Kharusi of Zanzibar remained staunchly supportive of the imam and ambivalent about the leadership of the sultans at Muscat and Zanzibar. A widespread belief circulated within the Swahili-speaking Ibadhi community in sultanate-era Zanzibar that in the absence of a just imam (Sw., imamu mwadilifu) and leader of the Islamic polity, the performance of the Friday prayers was impermissible. This belief held sway in Zanzibar and Ibadhi circles on the mainland until at least the 1980s, when the mufti’s delegation from Oman began to tour the region promoting the practice of Friday prayers as necessary for the revival and survival of the Ibadhi madhab on Zanzibar. This set the example for the community elsewhere in the country.

Historically Ibadhis did not perform the Friday prayer owing to a belief that because the island’s rulers were sultans and not elected imams, it was impermissible to congregate in prayer. The stance of Ibadhis particularly in Zanzibar, who refused to recognize the sultans as legitimate religious authorities, reflected a deep-rooted allegiance to the Ibadhi imam in Nizwa and historical ties with Omani families such as the Kharusi clan. Through this historical context, we see the complexity of religious authority and political leadership within the Ibadhi community, and the ongoing negotiation of practices and beliefs in the face of changing social and political circumstances.

Moreover, factions within the Omani-Ibadhi diaspora in Zanzibar, especially, the resistance to congregational prayers is what had long distinguished them from other Muslims and ethnic groups in the highly cosmopolitan and religiously plural coastal context of Zanzibar. The Ibadhi practice of abstaining from performing the Friday prayer historically served as a key distinguishing factor in Sunni and Ibadhi practice in Tanzania. According to Hoffman: “Traditionally Ibadi scholars were divided over the permissibility of performing the Friday congregational noon prayer under the reign of any but a just imam, but it is now normative for all Muslim townsmen to attend.”⁴² The Friday prayers were historically incumbent on all adult males who had reached the age of puberty, unless they were sick or traveling. Additionally, scholar of Islamic law Marion Katz remarks: “Women, slaves, villages, and nomads are all regarded in Islamic law as responsible religious actors, but all of them are [at least according to some schools] permanently exempted from Friday prayers.”⁴³ For Shafiʿis, the Friday prayer could only be held in settlements “whose populations afforded a quorum of at least forty resident male worshipers, without which the prayer was invalid.”⁴⁴ The practice requires the presence of an imam who stands in front of the rows of congregants, “synchronizes the prayer,” and guides the recitation of the Qur’an. The imam plays a fundamental mediatory and sacramental role in the weekly communal ritual.⁴⁵

The Ibadhi practice of abstaining from Friday prayers was a defining feature of the Omani diaspora’s identity which the older generation was desperate to preserve. This practice and the new Ibadhi spaces it created led to contestations within the diaspora as they demanded a rethinking of the meaning of righteous behavior among Ibadhis in Tanzania.⁴⁶ As historian Linda Gale Jones notes, the Friday khutba and communal prayers have been critical in bridging the generational gap between seasoned religious authorities and youth in local and global protest movements and calls for religious reform.⁴⁷ During the so-called Arab Spring, for example, communal space of the mosque and the premodern practice of the sermon gave moral weight to protest and the struggle against injustice in a way that mass “modern media and social networks,” as effective as they are in sustaining and spreading awareness about the movement, could not do.⁴⁸

The congregational prayer also offered Ibadhi Muslims a space in which to identify each other, reaffirm their commitment to the religion of their ancestors and to reimagine the meaning of madhab in the present. Maher explained: “So it started with prayer then [through it] we began to inform the community [about Ibadhism] and people began to recognize each other.”⁴⁹ As the movement gained momentum, space in Stone Town became an issue and the Ibadhi leadership gathered to discuss how to modify existing mosques to accommodate the influx of worshippers. He continued,

Those restorations happened because the number of people grew. The number of people praying filled [the mosque]. That was the reason for the additions. And, when we wanted to pray on Friday we sat in a meeting, which mosque do we want [to pray in]? Should we add [a section] to the Binti Juma Mosque, or that of Shangani which has more room in the front [for expansion]? On one [of the mosques], the back wall had to be demolished because it was not permissible to take down the front. We looked and we found that if we were to add a section in front and above, it would create a lot of [extra] space.⁵⁰

Maher alludes to the politics and trials that residents of Stone Town face in their attempts to build, expand, and improve historic buildings such as Ibadhi mosques, many of which were built at the height of sultanate rule on the islands in the mid- to late 1880s.

Several studies in Islamic art, architecture, and ritual practice have sought to destabilize normative understandings of what constitutes Muslim space.⁵¹ Historian Barbara Metcalf poses and responds to this question with the suggestion that we ought to reimagine Muslim space as more than just the visual markers of mosque domes, arabesque designs, and minarets, some of which are emblematic of Middle Eastern architectural traditions. Instead, we should turn our attention toward the sacred words, typically in Arabic, that make a space Islamic. Unlike mosque architecture, which looks dramatically different in style and material from Mali to Iran to Zanzibar, congregants of the space in all these places share a vocabulary of Islam drawn from the Qur’an, the Hadith, popular supplications, and the practice of everyday life in admonitions such as Bismillah (in the name of God) or InshaAllah (God willing). These sacred words also adorn the interior and exterior of mosques and other Islamic spaces, globally, and punctuate ritual practices like the five daily prayers and the Friday sermon. Drawing on the work of Clifford Geertz, Metcalf reflected: “And beyond the words, one encounters shared practice. The linkage between sacred word and practice is clear.”⁵² Sacred words in Arabic and ritual practice are often the ways in which non-Muslims identify Muslims and the ways in which Muslims identify differences among themselves—however big or small. In the case of the Omani-Ibadhi diaspora in Tanzania, the introduction of the Friday prayers and the attendance of adult men at the weekly sermon not only ignited a sense of group feeling with a broader Muslim community but also led to the reorganization, creation, and spread of Ibadhi space across the country. It announced the presence of Istiqaama in local communities as founding ceremonies of new mosques or the restoration of old ones usually entailed the visit of delegations from Oman, the naming of mosques after prominent living and historic Ibadhi scholars, and the labeling of the mosques as belonging to Istiqaama. The mosque came to serve as a way of marking diaspora identity as Ibadhi while also signaling the minority group belonging in the broader ummah.

Religious Education in a State of Revolution

Among the effects of the Zanzibar Revolution was the tightening of government control over associational life on the islands and ethnic and religious-based organizations. This was in part due to the fear that unmonitored religious, social, and political activities could foster disunity among the islands’ residents and solicit help from foreign governments and organizations to overthrow the revolutionary government. For many people from the Zanzibar archipelago, the revolution is not only a marker of time but is an ongoing event and state of being. It is a recurring theme inscribed on the slogan of the undefeated party of the revolution and reenacted through red fireworks reminiscent of spilled blood and celebratory gunfire every January 12 and in the layers of faded and new party campaign posters and green-and-yellow flags on city walls and government office buildings. When we spoke on the baraza outside his home one evening in Ziwani, Pemba, Mzee Bakari, an elderly representative of Istiqaama, explained that the constant awareness and fear of revolution among island residents is a deterrent of religious fanaticism and intra-Muslim conflict. “In this country we have a revolution (Sw., tunayo mapinduzi), it is not permitted to organize anything, they have made it militant (walifanya ni militant). You understand? So, everyone is careful of that. They only teach . . . without entering political language that labels Ibadhis as this, and the Ansar Sunna as that. So now, we do not fight (hatugombani) we go together to the funerals, to the weddings not to . . . they have their beliefs, and we have ours.”⁵³

The Zanzibar government’s constant invocation of the revolution, whether through symbolism or militarization, is an effective and at times brutal means of social control. Mzee Bakari distinguishes “teaching” about religion and religious identity as a benign act that contrasts with the more divisive practice of “labeling,” whereby group identities reflect attitudes toward outsiders. Such attitudes might map onto politicized traits often used by insiders and outsiders to characterize modern Islamic movements as “tolerant,” “moderate,” “extremist,” or “fanatical.” He describes the situation in Zanzibar as one of self-censorship, where every group knows the power of language to foment division and justify violence, especially when deployed to politicize religious, racial, and class identities. In a state of revolution where language can be a dangerous signifier of identity, Mzee Bakari suggests that public religious ceremonies such as weddings and funerals were a way of maintaining Ibadhi religious distinctiveness while also practicing hospitality toward non-Ibadhi neighbors.

The Istiqaama Muslim Community of Tanzania

The constitution of the Istiqaama Muslim Community of Tanzania states that a “member of the Association shall be any Moslem who belongs to the Ibadhi sect.”⁵⁴ Members attend Friday prayers at Ibadhi mosques and group meetings and activities organized by Istiqaama. They must not affiliate with “opposing organizations” but should engage in da’wa with the aim of unifying “all the Moslems of the Ibadhi sect in the Republic, both mainland and the Isles.”⁵⁵ As a group, their mission is “promoting understanding and cooperation between Moslems of the Ibadhi sect and all other sects of Islam, and to endeavor to find ways of resolving differences that exist between them in theory and in practice.”⁵⁶ The main vehicles for carrying out this mission are the various schools and institutes for Islamic and Arabic studies under the purview of Istiqaama, some of which offer vocational training and advanced studies “with religious and environmental perspectives among others.”⁵⁷ They also provide social services, assisting in disaster relief (e.g., fire and floods) and the care of orphaned children.

The organization is bureaucratic, with its international headquarters and leadership based in Oman and branches in East Africa, each of which adopts similar leadership and hierarchies, including a president or chairperson, vice president, secretary, treasurer, etc. However, there was no corporate office for Istiqaama in Muscat at the time of my research and, unlike in Tanzania—where Istiqaama buildings often bear the community’s name—the group’s presence in Oman seemed to be much more understated. The relative invisibility of the organization relates to the role of religion in public life and the government’s policies regarding religious pluralism and tolerance, which strictly regulate the activities of religious organizations. The pervasive discourse on religious tolerance generated by the state differs from that of other Muslim majority countries in that it depends largely on the underlying perception that Ibadhism, the religious heritage of Oman, is an inherently moderate and tolerant expression of Islam.

According to its constitution, Istiqaama derives its funds from tithes (zakāt) and voluntary charitable donations (s.adaqa). The association’s governing committee sets the amount of membership dues. They may also receive funds from other associational groups and Islamic organizations and any “lawful economic activities”⁵⁸ conducted by members of the community to raise funds for its various projects. On both the mainland and Zanzibar, my Ibadhi interlocutors responded with only vague answers to questions about sources of funding and the shilling or dollar amounts donated for their various community initiatives and building projects. I learned that the various branches of Istiqaama across the country provide the government with year-end reports of donations received and funds spent and that they are subject to auditing by the state, though none of these records is publicly available. In other instances, I heard that they did not want to share information about funding for major projects such as multimillion-shilling mosque building projects because they were afraid the government would tax them heavily. As a result, only a qualitative assessment of Istiqaama’s sources of funding, costs, and investments was possible.

According to Ayman, the bulk of donations received by the organization come from wealthy actors (Sw., watu wazito) in Tanzania and Oman. He explained that there are at least three meetings per year. Two meetings occur after the big and little Eid holidays and the third is an official (Sw., rasmi) meeting where the Istiqaama leadership gives a report on the work of the society and people make donations. Ayman explained,

Some people [come to] give their thoughts and others give complaints. At those meetings it is just regular people [not the wealthy] who contribute what they can, or they offer to volunteer. They are not people who take initiative themselves; [rather] they wait for the jumuiya to help them. These are the challenges [we face], these are not people of initiative, [meaning] the members of the jumuiya carry the burden, we spoon-feed everything; this type of assistance is a problem for us. . . . The jumuiya performs extra work for the sake of serving people. They know what exactly is there for them. However, little by little people are changing.⁵⁹

The periodic open meetings held by Istiqaama are an opportunity for people in the community to raise questions or complaints about the operations of the organization or ask for assistance in personal matters. Yet Ayman’s concerns about the dependency of those seeking aid suggests that the organization aspires to create institutions that will not only cater to the immediate needs of those who participate in them but will also empower them to eventually support themselves. At first blush, Ayman’s complaints sound very similar to neoliberal logics that view poverty as an impediment to development and that require an ethics of self-help to overcome it. While such logics certainly do inform many of Istiqaama’s works in Tanzania, such as the for-profit health care centers they have opened to generate revenue for other projects, socioeconomic development is not the only, or even the primary, focus of their outreach.

Anthropologist of religion Amirah Mittermaier shows how this religiously oriented view of giving serves as a critique of conventional understandings of charity: “Rather, it is dutiful and directed at God. Placing God in the foreground, and the suffering Other in the background, disrupts both the liberal conceit of compassion and the neoliberal imperative of self-help.”⁶⁰ Islamic communities, like Istiqaama, often conflate good works or “charity” with daʽwa and Islamic ethics in which charitable giving brings one closer to God and prepares the givers for the afterlife. The leaders of Istiqaama hope that by providing various kinds of aid and making space for prayer and discussions, they will create moral subjects who will become not just professionals or entrepreneurs but also members in a righteous society.

As is the case with most other NGOs and FBOs in Tanzania, Istiqaama is run by elites and was created to primarily serve the interests of the Omani-Ibadhi diaspora, which tends to be concentrated in major urban centers where the branches are located, though many members trace their roots to rural farms and towns. Legal Studies scholar Issa Shivji has observed that while NGOs do exhibit concern for improving the conditions of “working people” or nonelites in Tanzania, most were not designed to include the masses in their memberships or organizational decision-making, even though they may, as in the case of Istiqaama, host barazas or meetings where the grievances or requests of nonmembers may be voiced. The relationship remains one of “benefactors and beneficiaries”⁶¹ rather than a radical collaboration between a relatively well-funded transnational charitable organization with a distinctive religious and ethnic identity and the non-Arab majority that it serves. Membership in Istiqaama, like NGOs, is limited to a minority of people, and this creates a problem of transparency and accountability beyond the exclusive community⁶² that is constructed from Omani-Ibadhi ideas of diaspora, kinship, and ancestry and is beholden to international donors who identify largely, though not exclusively, with the same community.

Just as framing Istiqaama’s giving practices in the language of charity makes the organization more readable to non-Muslim authorities and international collaborators so does the language of “volunteerism,” (Sw., kujitolea) which members in Oman and Tanzania use to describe their work. By calling themselves volunteers, they simultaneously distance themselves from association with sectarian or political interests while also framing their work as altruistic and meant to serve both humanity and the ummah.⁶³ Historian Felicitas Becker notes that Muslim organizations often face more difficulties in striking collaborations with Western donors in Tanzania “whose conceptions of civil society and volunteering do not accurately reflect the institutional practices of Muslims.”⁶⁴ Moreover, Becker explains, Muslim organizations in Tanzania often prefer to work independently from the government, which they mistrust⁶⁵ for reasons stemming from the marginalization of coastal Muslim communities under European colonial rule and the persistence of state Islamophobia during the socialist era and following the Zanzibar Revolution. Even in Zanzibar, where the islands’ government has a Muslim majority, Islamophobic rhetoric tends to amplify around election periods, when the ruling party invokes the threat of international terrorism as a scare tactic. Opposition candidates who may seem to have a large following within the Arab diaspora or who may advocate for loosening restrictions on land acquisition and business permits for investors from the Gulf are often presented as supporting neo-Arab colonialism in Tanzania. While Muslim organizations like Istiqaama that are financially independent from the government are in danger of being accused of such designs, they may also be viewed as more legitimate religiously as they do not serve as puppets to the regime.⁶⁶

Indeed, there is a general sense that Islamic morality was corrupted, and learning lost in Tanzania, generally, and Zanzibar, in particular, following independence with the revolution and the rise of a socialist regime that sought to minimize and control the impact of religion in public life. That this project of social control was successful is evident in the absence of extensive archival information about Islam and Muslim organizations in state institutions or newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s. In a rhetorical turn, Istiqaama members often associate this decline in religious scholarship and institutions with state xenophobia toward Arabs and Islamophobia, which they argue deprived the country of righteous leadership and moderate expressions of Islam, like Ibadhism.

Istiqaama and State Islamic Authorities in Tanzania

Despite the appearance of unity in Istiqaama projects, notable divisions within the organization and between its branches occurred over time. For example, while it began as one organization based in Dar es Salaam and registered under BAKWATA, the Zanzibar leadership of Istiqaama eventually decided to register independently with the Grand Mufti’s Office (GMO) or in Swahili, Ofisi ya Mufti Mkuu wa Zanzibar, which has branches on both Unguja and Pemba islands. The GMO is a government department established in 2001, with its budget controlled by the state. The divisions within Istiqaama are a touchy subject. In Pemba, Mzee Bakari explained to me that in the past an argument over leadership had occurred between the big men of Istiqaama and the community became divided because of human selfishness. Therefore, each group developed its own mission statement, but relations remained amicable. He continued, “There is no hate, we work together as one people (watu moja).”⁶⁷ The objective of all Istiqaamas is to serve society through ground-up organizing centered on distribution and missionizing. “They are for society . . . here in Pemba you know there is a lot of poverty from a long time ago, people don’t have money for the food that is available, there is no money. It overwhelmed me. So, Istiqaama does not have money [of their own] but they ask for funding. They brought food, rice, clothes, and whatnot, you see. They go to Chake Chake [first], not here, and they take food to Zanzibar . . . to help. Then if they have books like Qur’ans, they bring and distribute them in all the mosques.”⁶⁸

Mzee Bakari explained that most of the aide comes from local and international religious institutions and individuals, but occasionally they receive funding from the government in Zanzibar. He claimed that direct funding from foreign governments occurs by way of the Zanzibar government, which suggests that much of the funds and materials donated from the Gulf come through informal networks, for example as cash donations from family members or visitors from Oman.

The distribution of copies of the Qur’an alongside nonperishable food and clothes is an indication of how Istiqaama’s giving practices connect to a larger religious mission to spread awareness about Islam. The symbolism of offering copies of the Qur’an along with base-level nutrition suggests a clear statement about a perceived necessity for both material and spiritual nourishment among the beneficiaries of this aid. There is little publicly accessible information about the number and sources of donations the headquarters of Istiqaama receives in Oman and how much goes toward projects in the country or abroad in countries of influence, like Tanzania. However, the projects range from establishing regular programmatic schools (madāris nidhāmiyya); building schools for Islamic and Arabic education; digging wells; establishing public libraries, computer labs, sewing centers, and large and small mosques; buying land to generate income for local branches of Istiqaama; and purchasing four-wheel drive vehicles “in order to carry out daʽwa in remote areas.”⁶⁹ The daʽwa vehicles are an indication of Istiqaama’s self-identification as a harbinger of righteous reform to communities both near and far and of the intimate connection between charitable giving and bringing oneself and others closer to God.

African students who study Islam and Arabic (among other subjects) in Istiqaama madrasas and schools can receive scholarships to study abroad in Oman at the College of Sharia Sciences in Muscat. There they deepen their intellectual and personal engagement with the faith, become part of an international network of Ibadhi-oriented religious youth, and are prepped to serve as teachers of Arabic and religion on graduation. Since the founding of Istiqaama in the 1990s, many of the youth from Tanzania who studied abroad in Oman have returned to their home countries to become duʻāt and serve as teachers, imams, administrators, and leaders for Istiqaama in their communities. In the language of Sayyid Qutb, this vanguard are the ideal figures to spread Istiqaama’s vision of righteousness.

State Authorities and Muslim Associational Life in Tanzania

The socialist dream of Ujamaa in Tanzania required the nationalization of the means of production across the country, a move that proved disastrous for the Indian business community and Arab landowning elites on the mainland, especially in Zanzibar.⁷⁰ Moreover, the Christian-dominated Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) leadership reneged on their promises to address colonial-era inequities in Muslim and Christian access to education. TANU added salt to this wound by banning the country’s first major pan-Islamic, East African Muslim Welfare Society (EAMWS), established by the global Ismaili Muslim leader, the Aga Khan, in 1945.⁷¹ In place of the EAMWS, in 1968 the TANU government founded the state-sponsored Baraza Kuu la Waisilamu of Tanzania (BAKWATA) or, the National Muslim Council of Tanzania.⁷²

BAKWATA and its counterpart on the islands, the Grand Mufti’s Office in Zanzibar, serve as the premier Muslim religious authorities in Tanzania. All religious organizations in Tanzania, including Istiqaama, must receive approval from BAKWATA to operate, but the state institution does not typically provide financial support to its affiliated private religious organizations, and it is widely perceived as representing the interests of the country’s majority Sunni Muslim population. In the eyes of Ayman, this lack of support has led some private organizations, like Istiqaama, to rely on their own resources for development and maintenance. “Now we drive ourselves forward. This means that if you think of doing something, you get it done. For example, when you see our mosques here, do not think that we depended on BAKWATA . . . they did not contribute a single shilling. They failed to contribute to the development of the decrepit mosques until they began to crumble, [even then] they did not contribute.”⁷³ This self-reliance demonstrates a sense of agency and determination within the community to drive themselves forward, even in the face of limited support from state-sponsored institutions. This dynamic reflects a broader trend of grassroots initiatives and self-sufficiency within religious communities in Tanzania.

When Ibadhis in rural areas need assistance for the maintenance of the mosque or religious programming, they send a delegation to the larger mosque communities in Mwanza, Shinyanga, and Meatu to request assistance. According to Mzee Bakari, many who contribute to the mosques are Ibadhis and members of Istiqaama. Were they to approach BAKWATA for help, say in hiring a Qur’an teacher, they would have to follow government guidelines for the religious curriculum and accept whoever the organization assigns to teach at the mosque. Going through Istiqaama, on the other hand, is preferable because while they must report their activities to the government, they also have a degree of autonomy in the training and selection of the teachers for Ibadhi mosques and schools around the country.⁷⁴

In Tanzania, the state does not exercise the same degree of control over religious organizations as it does in Oman, in large part because groups like Istiqaama are financially independent of the state and the government has limited resources to standardize and monitor the production and dissemination of religious knowledge across the country. Still, Muslim groups frequently voice concerns about what they perceive as the disproportionate amount of government surveillance at mosques, schools, and charities bearing an Islamic identification. On Zanzibar, the main Muslim authority with which all organizations must register is the GMO. On the mainland, “The two most important Muslim apex bodies are the National Muslim Council of Tanzania (established in 1968), known as BAKWATA, and the Supreme Council of Islamic Organizations and Institutions in Tanzania (established in 1992), known as Baraza Kuu.”⁷⁵ The GMO and BAKWATA are “umbrella bodies” for Islamic institutions on the islands and mainland and the latter runs a number of educational, healthcare, and entrepreneurship programs throughout the country while also writing and recommending “policy priorities and guidelines to the ulama.”⁷⁶ It is exceedingly difficult for Muslim groups to operate independently of the two government religious authorities.⁷⁷

The head office of BAKWATA is in the Kinondoni district of Dar es Salaam, and other main branches exist in the nation’s administrative capital in central Tanzania, Dodoma. BAKWATA has about twenty-four of its own schools and supervises hundreds of mosques across the nation, all considered Sunni institutions and all run through a complex hierarchy of district and regional sheikhs appointed by BAKWATA in cooperation with the local communities. According to a senior official at BAKWATA, Yasser, religious organizations in Tanzania must receive the endorsement of his office before they can register with the government, and the office bases its endorsement on approval of the contents of each group’s constitution. “The only thing we manage now is whether they go against the principles stated in their constitution. When a religious organization wants to register with the government, they must first present their constitution to BAKWATA. We read [the constitution] carefully, and if it is OK, we sign and endorse it.”⁷⁸

On presenting their group constitution and receiving the council’s endorsement, religious organizations like Istiqaama are then eligible to register under the Tanzanian government’s Societies Act, originally established under the British colonial regime in 1954 through the Ministry of Home Affairs and still in use today.⁷⁹ According to the act “a ‘society’ includes any club, company, partnership or association of ten or more persons whatever its nature or object,” with several exemptions, including political parties and sports associations. (See points g–h of chap. 337.2.) Once officially recognized by the state, the society or organization in question must proceed to register its trustees under the Trusteeship Act, governed by the Registration Insolvency and Trusteeship Act (RITA).⁸⁰ The registering of trustees, Yasser from BAKWATA explained, “makes clear who is responsible for the governance of the organization and who owns it. The minimum time to complete the registration process is one year.”⁸¹ Istiqaama registered as an organization under the Societies Act in 1995.

The Societies Act suggests that there is strict government oversight in the activities of all religious NGOs on the mainland. In theory, the president of Tanzania can declare an organization unlawful in the “public interest,” just as the registrar can cancel a group’s registration should they prove to have any external political affiliation or demonstrate “any purpose prejudicial or incompatible with the maintenance of peace, order and good government.”⁸² Under the act, the government can also perform an audit of any organization at any time (sect. 22) and has the power to “enter and search meeting places or business places” (sect. 31) and make arrests according to its own discretion (sect. 32). The Tanzanian government does occasionally demonstrate its power of search and seizure, entering Muslim communities and spaces of worship to assess the content of public lectures and, in more extreme cases, arrest Muslim religious leaders perceived to have ties to foreign terror networks and fundamentalist groups. Popular Islamic newspapers such as the weekly An-Nuur routinely condemn the government’s indiscriminate arrest of both ordinary citizens and high-profile preachers without due process and call for the institutionalization of special courts on the mainland that could protect the interests of Tanzanian Muslims.⁸³

Additionally, many Tanzanians feel as though the government officials representing Muslim interests on the mainland (BAKWATA) and the islands (the GMO) function primarily as handmaidens to the state and do not adequately represent their aggrieved Muslim constituency. For this and other reasons, nonstate actors such as Istiqaama are becoming increasingly more attractive sources of education and social services because they are economically independent of the state, though they may be subject to annual audits and government surveillance (see chap. 6).

Anas, a representative of the GMO in his late thirties whom I met at its main branch in Chake Chake, Pemba provided some historical context. He stated that before the office of the mufti, all the roles were the work of the office of the chief kadhi or judge. Anas is originally from the Mkoani district of southern Pemba, and after completing his primary and secondary education in government schools, he began an independent search for religious knowledge (Sw., taaluma), attending the study groups offered by various sheikhs on the island. He later went to Dar es Salaam and had the opportunity to travel to the region of Hadramaut in Yemen for his higher education. There, Anas enrolled first at Ribat University in Tarim city for one year before entering a program in Islamic and Arabic Studies at Al-Ahqaff University. He traveled to Yemen independently and paid for his own studies, emphasizing that “the government did not pay even a shilling for me.”⁸⁴ He explained that this was before the war in Yemen, which has since ravaged the entire country and left tens of thousands dead (2014–present), displaced, or at risk of hunger. Hadramaut was then very safe and the only conflict that emerged was a result of “tribal politics,” which rarely erupted into anything of great concern.

When Anas returned to Zanzibar, he served as a teacher in a primary school on Unguja island before accepting a position in 2010 in the Office of Islamic Research at the mufti’s office. He explained that he assisted in issuing fatwas and used comparative fiqh, drawing on legal methods and interpretations from the different Sunni and Ibadhi madhāhib represented in Zanzibar. When a person approaches the mufti’s office for an opinion on a given issue, he explained, they assess whether the person has the learning to receive different interpretations and then they provide fewer or many explanations according to their ability. While most employees of the GMO, including Anas, identify as Shafiʿi Sunni, Anas insisted that “the mufti’s office is for all Muslims that are in Zanzibar. There are Ibadhis, there are Sunnis, there are Shiʿa, and others whatever they may be.”⁸⁵ He continued, “They come to the office for everything that pertains to the office of the mufti. If you go to the mufti’s office, he does not choose between the Ibadhis and the Sunnis or the Ansari Sunna or anyone else.”⁸⁶

Like BAKWATA, the GMO in Zanzibar oversees all registered Islamic organizations in the archipelago. According to Anas, his office can call out any Muslim individual or organization on matters pertaining to Islamic law. However, the mufti or his representatives are frequently guests or collaborators in the celebrations and charity events hosted by the various Muslim groups on the islands. The support Muslim organizations like Istiqaama receive from the GMO is largely symbolic and does not provide funds for building private mosques and Islamic schools. However, Islamic groups must apply for and receive permission from the mufti to carry out such building projects. According to Anas, Istiqaama and other Islamic organizations in Pemba typically host an annual public prayer at a community mosque in Chake Chake to welcome the start of Ramadan. They also use this time to discuss their work and plans and suggest collaborations with the GMO.

Conclusion

While Al-Khalili is frequently credited with founding the International Istiqaama Charitable Society based in Muscat, the majority of the organization’s branches are in Tanzania, where they play an important role in shaping Ibadhi and Islamic identity across the country through the many schools, mosques, radio stations, and charities under Istiqaama’s leadership. These branches are successful because they depend on long-established Omani-Ibadhi kinship networks that occur throughout the country and strong family ties to Oman, which enable the informal transfer of funds and resources, such as textbooks, dates, clothing, and religious knowledge between the two countries. Istiqaama presents itself as an apolitical and nondiscriminatory organization guided by Ibadhi principles of tolerance and moderation in religious affairs. It demonstrates inclusivity by welcoming male and female Ibadhis and non-Ibadhis into its mosques and schools, though the organization’s leadership is male and of Omani ancestry. This suggests that though there is a push to bring Ibadhi Islam closer to more popular Islamic practices and communities in Tanzania, the Istiqaama community also clearly demarcates insiders and outsiders through its exclusivist membership policy.

Moreover, because of the organization’s deference to the religious authority of Oman, and as will be shown in the next chapter, Islamic learning in Istiqaama schools is heavily imbued with Omani cultural practices, as seen in the content of school textbooks, the dress of many of the students and teachers at the schools, and the popularity of scholarship programs that allow graduating students from the Istiqaama Institute in Zanzibar to pursue advanced training in Islamic law and Arabic in Muscat. These opportunities for study abroad enable students to expand their social networks and deepen their faith while also creating an educational pipeline that enables graduates of religious colleges in Oman to return to teach religion and Arabic at Istiqaama schools in Tanzania.

Notes

1. 1. Fatima bint Muhammad (d. 632) was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad who married his cousin ‘Ali bin Abi Talibin. The twelve imams revered by most of the world’s Shi‘a population are descendants of Fatima and ‘Ali and thus members of the “House of the Prophet” (Ahl al-Bayt).
2. 2. Maher (representative of Jabir bin Zayd Mosque), interview with author, Kitumbini, Dar es Salaam, May 15, 2019.
3. 3. Ibid.
4. 4. In the English translation of Al-Riyami’s book, he dedicates pages 388–395 to the mufti’s biography. See Nasser Abdulla Al Riyami, Zanzibar. Personalities & Events (1828–1972) (Muscat, Oman: Beirut Bookshop, 2012).
5. 5. Ibid.
6. 6. Mona Atia, Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), xviii.
7. 7. Ibid.
8. 8. Ibid., xix.
9. 9. Al Riyami, “Personalities,” 388–90.
10. 10. Ibid., 390–91.
11. 11. Ibid., 392.
12. 12. Ibid., 393. This number varies from hundreds to tens of thousands, depending on who is narrating the events of the revolution.
13. 13. Ibid., 394–95.
14. 14. Benedict Andersen, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
15. 15. Marc Valeri, “Ibadism and Omani Nation-Building Since 1970,” in On Ibadism, eds. Abdulrahman al Salimi and Heinz Gaube, Studies on Ibadism and Oman (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: S, 2014), 166.
16. 16. Ibid., 167.
17. 17. Dale Eickelman, “The Modern Face of Ibadism in Oman,” in Studies on Ibadism in Oman, ed. Angeliki Ziaka (Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms, 2014), 154–55.
18. 18. Ibid., 153–54.
19. 19. Oman 2016 International Religious Freedom Report, 2.
20. 20. Ibid.
21. 21. “Organization Chart” (Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, Sultanate of Oman), accessed March 16, 2017, www.MERA.om/MERA/organization-chart/.
22. 22. According to the Oman 2016 International Religious Freedom Report: “The law states the government must approve construction and/or leasing of buildings by religious groups. In addition, mosques must be built at least one kilometer (0.6 miles) apart from each other” (3).
23. 23. Ibid.
24. 24. Drawn from notes recorded in a conversation with a longtime American resident of the Gulf and active participant in interfaith initiatives between Muslims and Christians in Oman (December 2016).
25. 25. MERA and the mufti’s office are patrons of Islamic and Ibadhi studies and produce several publications on these topics, many of which can be found in Istiqaama libraries across Tanzania. One notable publication of MERA’s is the multilingual and “quarterly Islamic intellectual magazine” called Tafahum (previously Tasāmuh). Contributors come from all over the world, and their work focuses on, among other issues, “Strengthening an Islam that is based on understanding, [and the] right to difference and diversity of views.” As an international scholarly publication committed to the elaboration of the ideals of pluralism and religious accommodation in Islamic thought, Tafahum gives scientific weight to the project of Muslim unity and interfaith cooperation. Moreover, the journal carries with it a reformist mission aimed at reinstating intellectual rigor in Islamic thought and practice and making Islamic ideals compatible with the exigencies of the modern world. Characteristic of other calls for reform in Islamic thought, this process involves an intensive “weeding-out” process that identifies areas of degeneration or neglect within the tradition and calls for a revival or reinterpretation of texts and practices in such a way that will serve to substantiate the national vision of Islamic unity. The underlying paradox of reformist discourses that aim to create a uniform narrative of religious tolerance is that they sometimes require, at least initially, a high degree of intolerance of differences of opinion to achieve such harmony.
26. 26. Valeri, “Ibadism and Omani Nation-Building,” 167.
27. 27. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
28. 28. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Karen E. Fields (translator), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free, 1995).
29. 29. Sh. Khalfan Tiwani, Qamusi-Ssalaa, first edition (N/A: Publication rights are reserved for the author., 2008), 82–91.
30. 30. Luna Dolezal, “Shame, Vulnerability and Belonging: Reconsidering Sartre’s Account of Shame,” Human Studies 40, no. 3 (2017): 421. See also J. P. Sartre and H. E. Barnes (trans.), Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London: Routledge, 2003).
31. 31. Dolezal, “Shame,” 422.
32. 32. Ibid., 421.
33. 33. Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Sayyid Qutb 1906–1966,” in Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 129.
34. 34. Ibid., 139.
35. 35. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Vintage, 1990).
36. 36. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99.
37. 37. MERA.
38. 38. Sayfī, Muḥammad ibn ʻAbdullah ibn Saʻīd ibn Nās.s.or al-. Al-Namīr, Hikāyāt Wa Riwāyāt: Al-Ibāḍiyya Fī Zinjibār Wa Mā Jāwarahā Min Duwal Sharq Ifrīqiyyā (Nizwa: Al-Ghantaq) 2013, 357. v. 6:357.
39. 39. Quoted in Muhammad bin ‘Abd allah bin Sa’īd al-Sayfī, Al-Ibāḍiyya Fī Zinjibār Wa Mā Jāwarhā Min Duwwal Sharq Ifrīqiyya, first, vol. 6 (Mascat, Oman: unknown, 2013), 356.
40. 40. Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
41. 41. Hoffman, Oman, 175.
42. 42. Ibid., 176.
43. 43. Marion Holmes Katz, Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 131.
44. 44. Ibid.
45. 45. Ibid., 139.
46. 46. Anthropologist Patrick Desplat has observed how sites such as shrines and mosques have always been the objects of contestation throughout Islamic history, but these arguments often have less to do with the nature of the space itself than with the practices that define them (See: Patrick A. Desplat. Prayer in the City: The Making of Muslim Sacred Places and Urban Life, edited by Patrick A. Desplat, and Dorothea E. Schulz, (Bielefield: transcript, 2012), 11). For related work see Jonathan Berkey, “Tradition, Innovation, and the Social Construction of Knowledge in the Medieval Islamic Near East,” Past and Present, no. 146 (1995): 38–65; Felicitas Becker, “Islamic Reform and Historical Change in the Care of the Dead: Conflicts over Funerary Practice among Tanzanian Muslims,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 79, no. 3 (2009): 416–34.
47. 47. As Jones points out, the mosque sermon has been a popular topic of anthropologists interested in how this premodern practice “foments normative or revivalist Islam in contemporary Muslim societies and thus how this institution has been transformed under modernity.” Linda Gale Jones, The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge: Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, 2012), 3. See Richard T. Antoun, Muslim Preachers in the Modern World: A Jordanian Case Study in Comparative Perspective (Princeton University Press, 2014); Patrick D. Gaffney, The Prophet’s Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019).
48. 48. Jones, The Power of Oratory, 2.
49. 49. Maher, interview with author, May 15, 2019.
50. 50. Ibid.
51. 51. See especially Barbara Metcalf, Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Patrick Desplat and Dorothea Elisabeth Schulz, Prayer in the City: The Making of Muslim Sacred Places and Urban Life (Germany: Biefeld University Press, 2012); Michelle Apotsos, The Masjid in Contemporary Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
52. 52. Metcalf, Making Muslim Space, 5.
53. 53. Mzee Bakari, interview with author, February 2, 2016.
54. 54. “Katiba” (Dar es Salaam: Jumuiya ya Kiislamu ya Istiqaama Tanzania, n.d.), http://istiqaamatz.org/tz/images/documents/katibaenglish.pdf.
55. 55. Ibid.
56. 56. Ibid.
57. 57. Ibid.
58. 58. Ibid., 13.
59. 59. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
60. 60. Amira Mittermaier, Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), 4.
61. 61. Issa Shivji, “Reflections on NGOs in Tanzania: What We Are, What We Are Not, and What We Ought to Be,” Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on Behalf of Oxfam GB 14, no. 5 (2004): 689.
62. 62. Ibid.
63. 63. Felicitas Becker, “Obscuring and Revealing: Muslim Engagement with Volunteering and the Aid Sector in Tanzania,” African Studies Review 58, no. 2 (2015): 111–33.
64. 64. Ibid., 111.
65. 65. Ibid.
66. 66. Ibid., 124.
67. 67. Mzee Bakari (Ibadhi elder and Istiqaama representative), interview with author, Ziwani, Pemba, February 2, 2016.
68. 68. Ibid.
69. 69. Istiqaama Arabic Webpage, “Alistiqaama.Org,” accessed June 15, 2016, http://alistiqama.org.
70. 70. For more about the effects of nationalization policies on Indian and Arab communities in urban Tanzania between 1958 and 1975, see James R. Brennan, “Blood Enemies: Exploitation and Urban Citizenship in the Nationalist Political Thought of Tanzania, 1958–75,” The Journal of African History 47, no. 3 (2006): 389–413.
71. 71. Bruce E. Heilman and Paul J. Kaiser, “Religion, Identity and Politics in Tanzania,” Third World Quarterly 23, no. 4 (2002): 701.
72. 72. Ibid.
73. 73. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
74. 74. Mzee Bakari, interview with author, February 2, 2016.
75. 75. Robert Leurs, Peter Tumaini-Mungu, and Abu Mvungi, “Mapping the Development of Faith-Based Organizations in Tanzania,” UK Aid (International Development Department, University of Birmingham, January 2011), 31.
76. 76. Ibid.
77. 77. Ibid., 54.
78. 78. Yasser (senior BAKWATA official), interview by author, Kinondoni, Dar es Salaam, June 21, 2017.
79. 79. According to a working paper published by a development branch of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (KEPA), the NGO Act of 2002 under the Ministry of Community Development, Gender and Children aimed to streamline the requirements for NGOs by adding the requirement that all NGOs apply for a certificate of compliance from the government. However, this did not change the basic guidelines of the original societies’ act through which religious organizations and others register as NGOs in Tanzania. See Evod Mamanda, “NGO Work in Tanzania: Highlights of Relevant Facts, Policies and Laws,” KEPA’s Working Papers (Helsinki, Finland: Service Center for Development Cooperation (KEPA), 2012), 3, accessed March 15, 2024, https://fingo.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ngo-work-in-tanzania-2012-update.pdf.
80. 80. Yasser, interview with author, June 21, 2017.
81. 81. Ibid.
82. 82. The United Republic of Tanzania, “The Societies Act 337” (Registration Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency, June 1, 1954), 8.1a, accessed March 28, 2024, http://www.rita.go.tz/eng/laws/History%20Laws/Societies%20Ordinance,1954%20(cap.%20337).pdf.
83. 83. See for example Mwandishi Wetu (unnamed author), “Tanganyika Si Guantanamo Ya Kutesa Masheikh (Tanzania Is Not a Guantanamo Where Shaykhs Can Be Tortured),” An-Nuur, September 11, 2015, headline and 2–3.
84. 84. Anas (the Grand Mufti’s Office), interview with author, Chake Chake, Pemba, February 4, 2016.
85. 85. Ibid.
86. 86. Ibid.