Chapter 4 Ibadhi Students and Teachers between Tanzania and Algeria

Tracing the Histories of Istiqaama and Al-Hayat

Tracing the histories of Al-Hayat and Istiqaama, two institutions situated thousands of miles apart, as well as their efforts towards reform (al-islāh) along Islamic lines, reveals the profound impact of North-West Ibadhi reformist and educational initiatives. These endeavors have their roots in the Middle Ages but gained momentum in the mid- to late-nineteenth through the pan-Islamic and pan-Ibadhi policies implemented by the sultans of Zanzibar, particularly Sultan Barghash, who established an Arabic printing press on the islands.¹

By studying the post-independence Ibadhi history in Tanzania and Algeria from the work of these two educational institutions, it becomes evident how transnational Ibadhi reform initiatives have continued to progress into the twenty-first century. These programs have adjusted to and accommodated various colonial and/or national circumstances, addressing both the spiritual and pragmatic requirements of students and educators who travel to acquire and share knowledge in both locations.

An examination of the attempts of Al-Hayat and Istiqaama to revive Ibadhi education in both countries demonstrates what historians Amal Ghazal and Augustin Jomier have already shown—that Islamic reformism is not an exclusively Sunni or, by extension, Shiʿi, phenomenon.² Indeed, Ibadhi networks and mobilities that focus on “the circulation of pilgrims and merchants between the Maghreb and Egypt (including the Hejaz and Oman)” date back to the early modern period, when connections between the “islands” of the Ibadhi archipelago,³ enabled by institutions such as the Buffalo Agency in Cairo, which included an Ibadhi trade agency, school, and library.⁴ These connections continued into the twentieth century with the financial support of the sultans of Zanzibar and the Ibadhi printing press, which Sultan Barghash established on the islands in the 1880s.

Situating Al-Hayat within the Mzab Region

The Mzab lies about “600 km south of Algiers,” the country’s capital, and is the primary home of the country’s Amazigh Ibadhi population.⁵ While the majority of Algerians are Sunni Muslims who follow the teachings of the Maliki Sunni madhab, the Mzab is an ethnically and linguistically diverse region comprised of five qus.ūr, or fortified towns and cities.⁶ People from the region are a confessional (Ibadhi) and linguistic (Tamazight, a Berber language) minority and refer to themselves using the ethnotype “Mozabite,” a term “forged in French from the 1830s, from the Arabic name Bani Mzab (or Mizāb).”⁷ According to the Algerian teachers at Istiqaama,⁸ being Mozabite in Algeria means being Ibadhi in the way that being Ibadhi in Tanzania implies having Omani ancestry.

The Algerian territory was home to the world’s second Ibadhi imamate, which the Persianate Rustamid Dynasty founded in the historic trade city of Tahert in 761. The Ibadhi imamate continued to rule in North Africa until its defeat at the hands of the Fatimids in 909.⁹ Following the fall of the imamate, the Ibadhi community migrated farther south toward the Mzab, where they established a unique governing system represented by elected members of the community called niẓām al-‘azzāba in Arabic.

North African Ibadhis first established the ‘azzāba in the eleventh-century to address their religious, educational, and social needs while they practiced kitmān (concealment) in the absence of a ruling Ibadhi imam. The ‘azzāba is made up of twelve members, each assigned specific roles. Traditionally, an elected member of the ‘azzāba is a man who possesses good manners and politeness, is an active seeker of knowledge, and has memorized the Qur’an because such a person is considered “willing to sacrifice for the sake of God and in the service of the Muslims.”¹⁰ The ‘azzāba members collectively supervise the building and management of mosques as well as community endowments (awqāf, sing. waqf), educational institutions, and local market accounts. They also determine the terms of association (walāya) and dissociation (barā’a) with other non-Ibadhis and work closely with women’s organizations.¹¹

The wealth generated by Berber-Ibadhi merchants during the trans-Saharan trade, combined with the early success of the lost imamate and the ‘azzāba system that developed in its place, have all contributed to the organization, preservation, and elaboration of Ibadhi thought and practice in North Africa. For example, Arabic is the primary language of instruction in government schools at Al-Hayat, in part because the Algerian government has invested in an intensive Arabization campaign that seeks to unify the population around an Arab Islamic identity. French is also taught, as it has remained an important language of business and international relations in Algeria since the colonial period.

The Birth of Al-Hayat amid Islamic Reform in the Mzab

Two decades after the 1882 annexation of the Mzab, the colonial regime imposed the military draft for World War I on men from the Mzab and others who lived in the north of the country, first in 1912 and again in 1918. Although there were rumors that conscription would be imposed in the south, it never was.¹²

During the war, Ibadhi scholars from the Mzab supported the Ottoman Muslim power over the French and joined the anticolonial movements already underway in Tripolitania (today Libya) and Tunisia. They hoped that by forming solidarity networks with other Ibadhis in North Africa and promoting resistance to colonial rule, they would liberate their own Berber region from French-controlled Algeria.¹³ It was against this sociopolitical backdrop that Al-Hayat was established as a study group in the home of Sheikh Ibrahim bin ‘Umar Bayyud (1899–1981), a well-known Ibadhi reformist figure. As such, he and his students faced continuous harassment from the regime. After time, the close-knit study circle responded to the pressure by transferring its activities to a local mosque in Guerrara.¹⁴

Al-Hayat: An Algerian Ibadhi Educational Movement

Al-Hayat was established as a secret study group during the time when Algeria was under French colonialism. The school’s Facebook page states that it was developed “in secret” under the colonial regime, which “sought to erase all the features of Islamic and Arabic character of the Mzab Valley.”¹⁵ The group would gather at the residence of Sheikh Bayyud. He hailed from Guerrara, a city in the Ghardaïa province, which is where Al-Hayat is still located today, in the Mzab Valley. Eventually, this group’s activism fueled an Islamic reformist renaissance (Ar. al-naḥḍa al-islāḥiyya) that focused on religion, science, society, and politics, serving as a precursor to a network of local Ibadhi schools and associations, such as Al-Hayat.

Ibadhis today admire Muslim scholars like Bayyud for their dedication to the resistance against colonialism in North Africa and their fight for independence of the Imazighen.¹⁶ However, Jomier wisely advises against taking the Ibadhi origin stories of revival and reform in the region too literally. This is because much of the history of the Mozabite community under colonial rule is written from a nationalist perspective, emphasizing the perceived resistance of local scholars and heroes (such as Attfayish and Bayyud) in the anti-colonial struggle. Such narratives are accompanied in later periods by a narrative of decline, similar to that of the Ibadhi community in Zanzibar following the revolution in 1964, which suggests that subsequent generations of Ibadhis failed to capture the essence of the madhab’s teachings. Such declinist perspectives have led to a teleology of the Ibadhi Naḥḍa, in Algeria, which prioritizes their networks at the expense of lesser-known exchanges of knowledge between the Ibadhi East and North West.¹⁷

Nevertheless, the Ibadhis of the Mzab view Sheikh Bayyud as the “the pioneer of the southern renaissance” (rā’id al-nahḍa fī al-junūb).¹⁸ They recognize his role as the “leader of Ibadhi reformism in Algeria after Muḥammad bin Yūsuf Aṭfiyyash (1820–1914),”¹⁹ who Ibadhis in the Mzab refer to as the pole of the imams (quṭb al-a’imma). Furthermore, Bayyud is celebrated as a leader of the “Ibadhi opposition to French colonialism in the Mzab Valley in Algeria” and someone who “educated a generation of Mzabi scholars who became leading figures in several anti-colonial movements spanning the Maghrib as well as the Mashriq.”²⁰

Bayyud earned this reputation “by the prolixity of his work,” which includes more than one hundred titles, poetry and correspondence excluded, written for the ma’had he established in his home—which attracted Ibadhi students from outside Algeria—and, for this study in particular, for the Ibadhi intellectuals of Zanzibar that he formed a strong connection with in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.²¹ He was in close contact with Ibadhi reformers in Oman such as Nur al-Din al-Salimi and the “Zanzibari sultans who sponsored the publication of his works, honored him with high ranking medals and provided him with financial support.”²² Finally, on October 21, 1937, under the leadership of Sheikh Bayyud, Al-Hayat received official recognition by the French colonial government.²³ Going forward, the association’s leadership would focus on “its curriculum, expanding its scope in accepting students from different parts of the country and from friendly countries.”²⁴ Like the Istiqaama Institute in Zanzibar, the Algerian school has expanded to include a combination of secular and religious subjects in its curriculum at the primary and secondary school levels. Additionally, the school campus features a college dedicated to advanced Islamic Studies and Arabic.²⁵ The academic year at Al-Hayat lasts for nine months, with classes being held for eight hours a day, five days a week. Students are given breaks during religious and official holidays, as well as select local events. They can participate in various school clubs that focus on law, literature, science, and art. They are taught to deliver speeches and engage in debates, and their written work is published in school magazines. The students also organize religious and national concerts.

To gain admission to university, students at Al-Hayat must pass a baccalaureate exam after completing three years of high school. The education system at Al-Hayat consists of three main levels:

1. The intermediate level (marhala at-taʻlīm mutawwasit) which lasts for four years and enables students to take the Ministry of Education exams to obtain a basic education certificate.
2. Secondary education lasts for three years and qualifies the student to take the Ministry of Education examinations to earn a secondary education certificate (baccalaureate).
3. Education in Islamic law is pursued at the university (taʻlīm sharʻī).²⁶

The stated objective of Al-Hayat is “to promote God-consciousness (taqwa min Allah) and good will (riḍwān) and to provide the Mzab Valley, Algeria, and the global Islamic community (ummah) with an elite (nukhba) of men competent in various fields of life.”²⁷ To achieve this objective, Al-Hayat now has transnational networks in place and a relationship with the international Istiqaama community in Oman and Tanzania.

A Bridge between Al-Hayat and Istiqaama: Mohammed Tiwani and Pemba’s Ibadhi Revival

In the office of the Istiqaama Youth Organization in Ilala, mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, there are bookshelves stretching from floor to ceiling. These bookshelves hold volumes of Ibadhi fiqh, which are embossed with gold titles published in Oman. There are also works by East African Ibadhi writers in Swahili, notably these include the apologetic works of Juma Muhamamd Al-Mazrui, an Omani writer and national whose Swahili language corpus includes a book aiming to dispel misconceptions about the Khawarij and their relationship to Ibadhism and another on the Islamic caliphate, the former a publication of the now closed Istiqaama Library in Muscat. On a wall behind a wooden desk, there is a large photo of the grand mufti of Oman, Mufti al-Khalili. Hanging next to it is a picture of Sheikh Muhammad Tiwani, an Ibadhi activist from Pemba who is credited with establishing religious and educational missions between Algeria and Zanzibar.

The relationship between these two men is described in a biography of Sheikh Mohammad, that appears in the Swahili language ritual manual called Qamusi-Ssalaa (the Prayer Dictionary). The manual was written for Ibadhi youth by Sheikh Mohammad’s relative in Pemba, Khalfan Tiwani. In the manual, Sheikh Mohammad is referred to as a “Muslim activist” (mwanaharakati wa kiislamu) and a disciple of Mufti al-Khalili. It is mentioned, “in adulatory language,” that Al-Khalili was impressed by Mohammad’s intellect and his tendency to challenge established wisdom. Through Al-Khalili’s influence, Mohammad got the opportunity to study in Oman, where he developed a passion for education and spreading knowledge about Ibadhi Islam. He then brought this passion back to his birthplace, the island of Pemba.

According to the notes in his biography, Sheikh Mohammad initiated various educational and social projects aimed at awakening Ibadhis (aliamsha hisia za watu) in Pemba and Oman to the need for grassroots reform. In the 1990s, the opportunity to send students from Zanzibar to Algeria emerged from extensive conversations that Sheikh Mohammad had with Algerian Ibadhi scholars whom he had met during his studies in Oman. When he returned home, these connections played a critical role in generating support for student missions in the form of scholarships, learning materials, and instruction from the Algerian Ibadhi community in the Mzab Valley. Tiwani wrote that, through Sheikh Mohammad’s international contacts, he was not only able to secure tuition and room and board for Pemban student missions to Algeria but he even raised enough to pay for students’ flight tickets and to support underprivileged students.

In the Qamusi, Sheikh Khalfan also lists the various initiatives Sheikh Muhammad developed at home in Pemba. These initiatives included securing scholarships for students to study abroad in Oman and Algeria as well as building libraries, a men’s and women’s college, a Friday Mosque named after Mufti al-Khalili, Qur’an schools, an orphanage, a computer center, and a radio station. Sheikh Muhammad also supported concerts for the holiday (Eid) following Ramadan and was something of a matchmaker for young Ibadhis, matching couples according to their “tendencies and attitudes”²⁸ rather than their physical appearances (sura). According to the biography, he accomplished all these tasks in a period of just fifteen years, even in the face of heavy opposition from Pemban elders and local authorities. The author emphasizes his relative’s resilience in the face of this fierce opposition: “For many, if you mention [those things], they think it just came about [effortlessly]. But it came at a great cost to him. Insults, accusations, breaches of honor, convictions, letters of sedition to international organizations, letters of intimidation and slander, [he was] taken to the police, taken to the courts.”²⁹

While the author does not call out Sheikh Muhammad Tiwani’s detractors by name, it is possible that some of this opposition came from the Ibadhi leadership in Pemba’s northern port town of Wete, where there is also a large Omani diaspora. In the early years of the organization, there was only one branch of Istiqaama on the island. Like its counterpart in Chake Chake, the northern branch in Wete has its own leadership and collection of schools, including a boys’ school called Istiqaama College. The Qamusi explains,

He selected some of the youth [of Pemba] to go to Oman to continue their education. [Moreover], while he was studying [abroad in Oman] he initiated relationships with the North African [Ibadhi] ‘ulamā’, especially in Algeria. After conversations over a long period of time, the rain of the opportunity of [his] studies started to pour from Algeria. The flight ticket (nauli) was an obstacle (kikwazo), so he had to mobilize [people] until they understood [and could help]. At the same time, he was raising money to help those who do not have the means. Now the youth have started to return with degrees in different fields (nyanja tofauti), Islamic law, secular law (kanuni), diplomacy, history, etc.³⁰

The Qamusi portrays Sheikh Muhammad not only as a self-sacrificing community leader and charismatic authority who leads a vanguard of youth abroad to train in the secular and religious sciences and then use their acquired skills to build their communities back on Pemba but also as a man who is mindful of the precarious socioeconomic position of his home island.

How Pemban Migration Contributed to Ibadhi Transnational Education

Although it is the smaller of the two islands in the Zanzibar archipelago, Pemba is arguably richer in natural resources, with “good soil and well-watered valleys.”³¹ Pemba receives marginal attention in scholarly works on Zanzibar, and its inhabitants often appear as socially regressive, religiously conservative, superstitious, and suspicious of any outsider synonymous with political opposition to the ruling party in Tanzania including the Zanzibar isles, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). The island’s residents have experienced severe economic and political marginalization as well as ongoing harassment from the Zanzibar authorities since the 1964 revolution.

In the decade that preceded the revolution, however, residents of Pemba had enjoyed extensive periods of bounty from the fruitful harvest and international sale of cloves.³² This economic fortune enabled them to maintain relative autonomy from the highly stratified urban society of Unguja, where economic prosperity and respectability connected intimately to affiliation with the Arab ruling class. Then, in the years following the revolution, Pembans of all racial and economic backgrounds found themselves the target of revolutionaries and the central government for not supporting the African nationalist coalition in Zanzibar, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), in the contentious elections of 1961 (preceding the revolution) and not participating in the massacre of their Arab and Indian neighbors as occurred in Unguja.

According to anthropologist Nathalie Arnold Koenings, in 1964 “the Revolutionary Government established an army camp and two new Field for Unit enclaves on Pemba (where there had been none in the past), at the same time significantly increasing police presence.”³³ Koenings has examined how the militarization of Pemban society led to a series of humiliating and “infantilizing” detainments and the canings of respected male elders who had previously served as the island’s authorities and arbiters. Also, during this period, the government “nationalized and redistributed wealth” on Pemba.³⁴ This process resulted in the divvying up of agricultural lands among several poor tenants, rendering it less profitable. At the same time, the government imposed a prohibition against imported goods and travel outside Pemba.

Then in 1971, an island-wide famine, locally referred to as “wakati wa njaa” or “the time of hunger,” hit local communities in Pemba hard. Islanders finally began to see relief from the food scarcity but only after the death of Zanzibar’s first president in 1972. Although more food became available during that time, and life on Pemba began to improve “in small ways deep distrust, surveillance, and widespread physical and economic hardship” endured.³⁵

As a result, many of the residents who had not had the opportunity to flee the island before—whether for Unguja, the mainland countries of Tanzania and Kenya, or the Gulf—began to do so in large numbers, hoping to secure better futures for themselves and their families. The members of the Omani diaspora and the business community from Pemba who settled in Ilala thus became part of a new wave of Ibadhi migrations from the islands to the mainland. Significantly, their children, who grew up in Dar es Salaam but attended school in Pemba (and, in some cases, Algeria) had become part of a new generation that inherited a strong sense of both Pemban and Tanzanian national identity. In fact, the male students I interviewed in Dar es Salaam were first sent by their parents to the Istiqaama school in Chake Chake, the island’s southern capital, and then to Al-Hayat.

Sheikh Muhammad Tiwani was, and continues to be, influential among the large Pemban Ibadhi community that settled in Dar es Salaam in the decades following the Zanzibar Revolution. So, in the 1990s, my interlocutor Suleiman said, the sheikh developed the transnational educational network between Al-Hayat and Istiqaama. At that time, many Ibadhi parents began to send their children to Pemba to study at the nursery and primary school appended to the gleaming Al-Khalili Friday Mosque in Chake Chake.

Now, Pemban students of non-Omani and Sunni origins³⁶ also attend the mosque school and may receive scholarships to study abroad in Algeria, although such opportunities are not widely advertised in the local media. Regardless of whether students are Ibadhi or Sunni, however, Suleiman said, “You must first go through Pemba, then you can go to Algeria. However, mainlanders don’t really like [this arrangement]; they prefer to study in Europe or English-speaking countries. . . . Until recently most of the students from [Ma’had Istiqaama] Tunguu [on Unguja island] who went to Oman would go to Algeria, but now it has changed so that the male and female Tungu students go to Algeria.”³⁷

Current Al-Hayat students and graduates in urban Ilala expressed ambivalence about spending time in the much quieter and more rural Pemba before moving to a very new cultural context in Algeria, where they received educational certificates that would be of uncertain value in the Tanzanian job market. (In Tanzania, competition and eligibility requirements—for example, the TOEFL exam—bar all but a handful of students from pursuing scholarships and opportunities to study abroad in English-speaking counties, such as the United Kingdom or United States.) Still, Al-Hayat presents a unique opportunity for students to receive a rigorous, mostly funded private-school education in a country that has the continent’s fourth largest economy.

In addition, the frequency with which Ibadhi parents in Dar es Salaam send their children to the private Istiqaama school in Pemba is a testament to the mainland community’s continued investment and participation in the social and economic life of the island. Further, the presence of mainland students at the school and Pemban students in Algeria speaks to the success of Istiqaama and local activists like Sheikh Muhammad in establishing local and global educational pipelines.

Developing a Cross-Continental Educational Network

Beginning in the 1990s, around the same time Sheikh Muhammed developed the transnational educational network between Al-Hayat and Istiqaama, an Ibadhi Muslim educational and religious mission originating in the Mzab began recruiting East African Muslim students to study abroad at Al-Hayat. The recruits came to Algeria through Istiqaama in Tanzania, where the Ibadhi leadership viewed the collaboration with Al-Hayat as an opportunity to strengthen their ties to the global Ibadhi community and benefit from the expertise and organizational knowledge of more established Ibadhi institutions in Algeria.

To ensure that knowledge flowed in both directions, Istiqaama provided paid opportunities for Algerian teachers from Mzab to travel to Tanzania and Zanzibar and live in a culturally immersive environment while helping the schools to develop and teach their Arabic and Islamic programs.

Today, Al-Hayat recruits students from six “friendly countries,” five of which are the African countries of Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Tunisia, Libya, Senegal, and Mali.³⁸ They also recruit students from Oman. Of the East African students who study in the Mzab, a majority come from the Istiqaama schools in Zanzibar and belong to the Omani diaspora. Algeria provides scholarship opportunities for Tanzanian students to study at universities in major cities located in the country’s northern region, in Oran, Algiers, and Constantine. Al-Hayat covers tuition, room, board, and healthcare for their recruits from East Africa, but parents must purchase their students’ flight tickets. The scholarships are strictly for study at the institute and do not guarantee entrance or support for study at Algerian universities on graduation. When students finish form 6 or grade 12 in Algeria, they must return to Tanzania and apply for the Ministry of Education scholarship to return abroad for college.

In a call for applications for the 2017–2018 academic year, the ministry announced that the government of Tanzania received forty scholarships for students to study in Algeria. There were three scholarships available for French study in the medical sciences and twenty-seven available for graduate degrees in the sciences. In addition, there was one scholarship for studies in transportation offered for both French and English speakers and religious affairs, presumably taught in Arabic. The main eligibility requirement for Tanzanian students applying for scholarships in the religious studies programs in Algeria is a certificate of completion for form 4 or grade 9 and a “good knowledge of the holy Koran.”³⁹

The University of Dar es Salaam does not accept certificates (cheti) showing the completion of secondary school from Algeria, so students must present evidence of the curriculum at the Hayat Institute to demonstrate that its standards of education match those of Tanzania. To accommodate its international graduates, the institute offers to print certificates and supporting materials in the language of the student’s intended recipient. According to the students, it is much easier to receive scholarships to study in Malaysia, which recently signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with Algeria.⁴⁰

When asked whether they felt their education abroad would position them well in an era of globalization, students in the Ilala mosque generally replied by saying that a knowledge of Arabic is not always useful outside of Algeria and that the emphasis on religion does not prepare them well for careers in business. As such, the Ibadhi youth who travel to Algeria from Zanzibar are now participants in a global Ibadhi movement aimed at reforming religious education to include secular subjects such as math, science, composition, and computer studies; and the college-educated Algerian teachers recruited to teach at Istiqaama in Tanzania are stalwarts of this reform, working closely with local Ibadhi leaders on curriculum development, girls’ religious education, and the exchange programs between Zanzibar and Algeria. In addition to their religious and linguistic expertise, these teachers bring with them a vision of Ibadhi associational life and educational reform that is deeply informed by their own experiences growing up in a close-knit Ibadhi enclave in the Mzab Valley.

This cross-continental Ibadhi network driven by Istiqaama and Al-Hayat is an example of the new religious diplomacy between countries of the Global South that combines Islamic reform with socioeconomic development.

Adapting to Life in North Africa

Students from Tanzania who are new in Algeria must rely on family members, friends, and fellow students who have studied there to help them transition to the new social and educational environment. As Fahmy, an eighteen-year-old philosophy and Arabic literature student in his fifth year at Al-Hayat and a fan of the twelfth century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) said, “We teach our fellow [students] how to plan (wanajipanga). We have taken note of these [shared] ideas. We must create unity [among ourselves].”⁴¹ He said that there was unity (umoja) among the residents of the Mzab because “they have their own [Ibadhi] religion.” In contrast, he felt Tanzania lacked unity because people there adhered to so many different religions.

Perhaps to address this weak sense of Tanzanian unity in Algeria, the Association of Tanzanian Students in Algeria (ATSA) was developed in 2002. Headquartered in Algeria, the ATSA now has chapters in major cities across the country and holds formal elections for its leadership. The members of ATSA are university students on government scholarships. According to Haidar, a graduate of the Istiqaama Institute in Zanzibar, the ambassador has a special discretionary fund, part of which he uses to support the activities of the students.⁴² Haidar said that he and other Zanzibaris met the ambassador in 2018 while attending an ATSA meeting at the Tanzanian embassy.

For some students, however, studying abroad in Algeria was considered an easy transition because it didn’t require them to worry about things like finding Halal meat, as would be the case if they had studied in London. Muhammad, a twenty-two-year-old former student who attended secondary school in Arabic language (al-thanawiyya) at Al-Hayat, said that although it was difficult to find certain East African foods in Algeria, he enjoyed living somewhere with “four seasons.”⁴³ He now sells clothes for a living and teaches at the Tandika Ibadhi mosque located in Dar es Salaam’s district of Temeke. He explained that he did not have other options for study after graduation.

To address language barriers during their first year at Al-Hayat, all students from East Africa study Arabic along with a few other subjects; thereafter, all their courses are in Arabic except for French or English language courses. The students in Ilala agreed that a year of intensive Arabic was enough to prepare them for coursework in Algeria as they had already studied the language at Istiqaama. After hours, in their dorms and in between classes, however, they said they often speak Swahili with their East African peers. They also try to reproduce a sense of home by cooking pilau, chapatis, and sugar-covered donut bites (visheti).⁴⁴

At the time of my visits to the Ilala mosque, I learned from members of the Istiqaama women’s group that there were no female students from their community or from the school in Pemba who studied abroad at Al-Hayat. However, girls who studied at the Istiqaama school and institute in Tungu, on Unguja Island, did go to Algeria on scholarship. The male students who attended Al-Hayat recalled that there was a separate “Madrasa al-Hayat for girls,” where the focus is on the “domestic sciences,” like home economics and sewing.⁴⁵

Haidar: The Unguja Route

When I met Haidar, who lives in Zanzibar Town and is not part of the Pemban group, he had just returned from his first year of study at Al-Hayat in Algeria.⁴⁶ Haidar was born in Rukwa, a region of mainland Tanzania. His father had earlier moved there for work from his hometown of Mwera in Zanzibar. As such, Haidar identifies as Zanzibari (Sw. mtu wa Unguja) and explains that he inherited his Ibadhi identity from his elders, whose direction he followed as a boy. He insists that while children ought to follow the leadership of their elders, only through studying can one obtain a deeper knowledge of their faith. After completing Form 4 in 2016 and spending a year in the advanced Arabic and Islamic Law (Shariʻa) program at the Istiqaama Institute on Unguja Island, Haidar received an opportunity in 2018 to go to Al-Hayat in Algeria to continue his studies with the same focus. He explained that the leadership of Istiqaama and Al-Hayat, though independent of each other, shared the same objectives regarding the education of their communities’ youth. “Because their goal is to provide expertise (kutoa taaluma) [and] skills for students,” he said, “and to make students familiar with good Islamic behavior. That is the goal of all Istiqaamas. And to give aide also (na kutoa misaada pia).”⁴⁷

The “good behavior” of a student and strong academics, serve as the primary criteria for teachers as they select who will benefit from study abroad in Algeria and Oman. East African students sent to Algeria and Oman represent their countries of origin as cultural ambassadors. Haidar explains that high marks on school or national examinations do not guarantee that one will receive a scholarship from Al-Hayat as might be the case for students who apply to study on government scholarships: “Over there [at Tungu], there are many things that they look for. Behavior (tabia), the behavior of a person, because even I am gifted, they look for behavior. So [it amounts to] good behavior, one’s efforts, and the desire to [learn] more. Those students who go [abroad] and strive [to succeed] and are brave (hodari), they are the ones [endowed] with the opportunity, eh. So, the teachers themselves sit in a meeting, and they choose the students . . . so you receive the opportunity.”

Before departing for Ghardaïa and starting their studies at Al-Hayat, students learn about their future home from the Algerians who teach Arabic and religion at Istiqaama. Haidar reflected, “So, if you go outside to study, you take lessons before entering the classroom (unajifunza madarasa kabla darasani). So, if you study well, you learn many lessons before entering the classroom. You learn how to live with others. I believe it was Sheikh Mustafa who informed us of the environment [in Algeria].”⁴⁸

Haidar credited the Algerian teachers with establishing the collaborative relationship between the two institutes—the one on Unguja Island and the one in Ghardaïa—and said that it was because of their efforts that these student-teacher exchanges were possible.

Once they begin their studies, students like Haidar, who specialize in Arabic and Shariʻa, find that there are few ways to supplement their religious education with more “marketable skills,”⁴⁹ such as speaking French and English and using computers. Moreover, while the students of Shariʻa do participate in community events, dorm life, and school clubs, their classes are in a “special unit”—a college within the institute that separates them from their younger peers who study in the mixed curriculum of the madrasa. According to Haidar, “But in the classroom, our goal is specifically aimed towards Arabic and Islamic law. So, we did not have other studies in addition to those. I was hoping to study something like French—which, the secondary school students get the opportunity to study French and computer. And I have made that request, especially regarding the computer studies. They said they would work on it, inshallah.”⁵⁰

Students who study Shariʻa generally end up in low-paying jobs (kazi za chini) when they return to Zanzibar, being best qualified to serve as teachers of Arabic and religion at private schools like Istiqaama that recognize their foreign certificates. Haidar already teaches these subjects as a volunteer at Istiqaama during his breaks. In keeping with the generally optimistic tone of his responses, however, he determined that when studying any given subject, a person must have both long- and short-term goals and consider what the benefit of a particular course of study has for their community: “So, when someone studies something, they should consider, ‘What is my community missing in this area? If I go over there [to study], how important will my return be?’ [The value of that is greater] than going to get something that people have already entered [into], have already studied. Eh, that’s when you [decide to] go over there [to Algeria] . . . in search for something new [and] to address what is lacking. That is what is helpful.”⁵¹ Haidar admitted feeling homesick, but he emphasized that he was self-motivated to study abroad and that this made it easier to garner confidence to overcome the challenge of being far from home. He recommended that any student opting to study in Algeria be flexible and open to change. “It is not that it is an easy thing; it is a big deal to reach your goals. [But over there] you study well, you sleep well, so those are the important things. The other stuff is manageable—you tolerate it.”⁵² Haidar aspires to obtain a master’s degree in religion and Arabic but recognizes that this will not happen overnight and that, in the meantime, he should take advantage of being in a language-immersive school within an Arabic-speaking country. He explained,

Without a doubt, that country is an Arabic country, so the language of the teachers will be at a higher level than here [in Zanzibar]. . . . And those of us who have gone to study there see that . . . eh, they are teachers that have studied in the big universities. Teachers that studied up to Medina, Mecca. This is not the case with the teachers that are here [in Zanzibar]. So, this guides the students. If he [the student] returns here, he will be different from the time he left to study. It is only natural that he would be different than those who study here.⁵³

Arabic has been the primary language of instruction in Algerian government schools since the 1980s because most regions of the country had shifted from a bilingual French and Arabic system of instruction to a monolingual Arabic one by that time. The Arabization project of the post-colonial state aimed to replace spoken languages and dialects of Arabic with the standardized version of classical Arabic (fusḥa) taught in schools.

The suppression of the Berber language and identity led to fierce political protest against Arabization during the Berber Spring of 1980, which resulted in the Algerian government’s recognition of Tamazight as an official language in 2001.⁵⁴ In my conversations with students in Dar and Zanzibar about their time abroad in Algeria, no one commented on the cultural specificities of the Mzab beyond highlighting its importance as a center of Ibadhi Islam. This suggests that students have limited interaction with the community around the Arabic-centric learning environment of the Al-Hayat and that the schools in the Mzab have adopted an apolitical stance like that of Istiqaama. The emphasis on Arabic-language immersion also positions Al-Hayat as an authority and competitor in the Algerian national education system and an international center for the study of Islam. Haidar explains that the Algerian teachers are experts in Arabic because they studied at major universities in Algeria or traveled abroad to other centers of Islamic learning in places like Saudi Arabia. For Haidar, studying with such role models is motivating and transformative. It also sets him and his fellow travelers apart from their peers, who do not or cannot pursue such opportunities abroad.

An Algerian Scholar on Pemba Island

In the short, published diary Muthakirāt min Aʻmāq Jazīra Zinjibār (Memoirs from the Depths of the Island of Zanzibar), a young Algerian teacher named Qasim bin Ahmad al-Sheikh Balhaj recounts his travels from Algeria to Tanzania in 1998. He details his impressions of the East African Ibadhi community and the Istiqaama schools it runs in Zanzibar. Balhaj is one of the first Algerian teachers Ibadhi leadership recruited to build the Islamic studies and Arabic programs at the Istiqaama schools.

He first learned about the opportunity to teach abroad from two Algerian sheikhs in Al-Guerrara while he was teaching at a government primary school. His uncle Muhammad al-Sheikh Balhaj was the head teacher of Al-Hayat and served as mediator between his nephew and the two sheikhs responsible for developing collaborations with the Ibadhi communities in East Africa.

Balhaj cited two main motivations for wanting to teach abroad. First, he hoped to avoid the national service that was obligatory for all Algerian males nineteen years and older. Second, he desired to see and experience life in these other places whose histories he had studied. Balhaj and three “brothers” received invitations to teach in Zanzibar, although they did not depart together as planned.⁵⁵

After boarding a flight that passed through the Cairo and Kampala airports in January 1999, Balhaj eventually landed in Dar es Salaam, where members of the Istiqaama Association were awaiting his arrival. Among those waiting was Maher (see chap. 2) of the Jabir bin Zayd Mosque in Dar es Salaam. Later that same day, Balhaj met Muhammad Tiwani, with whom he would eventually work at the Istiqaama institute in Pemba. Balhaj wrote the following about Tiwani: “And he is among those who came to Algeria more than once, accompanying the students of the Zanzibar mission. He welcomed me and I handed him the messages sent by their students to their families and books I had in my possession from Wadi Mzab. And I remember that evening he asked me to change my French clothes, which I brought and handed me Omani clothes instead. This is due to several considerations, some of which are my security.”⁵⁶

There is an expectation for foreign teachers employed by Istiqaama to conform to the norms of the Ibadhi and Arab diaspora in Tanzania, which involves wearing the Omani kanzu and kofia, eating African and Zanzibari foods, and gaining a familiarity with Swahili. For Balhaj, this resulted in his wistful reflection that he had transformed “to the extent that nothing remained of my Mozabiteity but my Algerianity.”⁵⁷ As part of his cultural immersion and integration into the local Ibadhi community, the author stayed on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam at the home of a pious Ibadhi businessperson named Sheikh Ahmed al-Badri, who spoke Arabic fluently and had lived and studied in Oman. Four of the family’s children studied at Al-Hayat.⁵⁸

In Dar es Salaam, he remarked on the contrasts he observed, first juxtaposing the city’s green suburbs against its clear blue sky and “the calm of its sea”⁵⁹ and then comparing the stark class inequalities and relative poverty of the African majority with the relative wealth of the city’s (notably Indian) business elite. After acclimating to life there, Balhaj departed for Zanzibar and began his teaching appointment at the Istiqaama secondary school in Chake Chake, Pemba. He also visited the Istiqaama Institute on Unguja, which he referred to as “a fortress, for shaping generations.”⁶⁰

The total number of students in both schools in 1999 was one hundred thirty and their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-five; most had attended government schools until middle or high school before leaving to enroll at Istiqaama. The secondary school in Chake Chake had eighty students, while the institute comprised a more selective population of fifty male youth representing Ibadhi communities across the region, including distant mainland cities such as Tabora, Mwanza, and Bukoba. Balhaj characterized the students as an emergent “elite that will be able in the future to turn the wheel of reform and change and development in this emerging homeland.”⁶¹ He remarked that the Ibadhi community in Zanzibar was in dire need of social and scientific reform, “especially concerning the Shariʻa sciences and Islamic Studies and humanities in general.”⁶² Graduates of Istiqaama, he observed, would join the workforce or accept an assignment to serve as an imam in a town or village (whether on the islands or the mainland) that had a sizable Ibadhi population. Others would receive scholarships to study law, preach, or offer religious guidance in Oman.⁶³

At the Istiqaama secondary school in Chake Chake, Balhaj joined a collegial group of young faculty that included Ibadhi and Shafiʿi teachers “who were able to obtain Arabic-language lessons here and there in Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, or others.”⁶⁴ At the time of his appointment, the Istiqaama leadership opened a Quran school for girls that was in such demand that “the group was forced to close the registration doors days after they were opened due to overcrowding of the halls.”⁶⁵ The two hundred enrollees were Ibadhi and Sunni girls aged five to twelve who came from all over the island. The school divided the girls into three levels of study based on their degree of education and made space for new classes at the boys’ secondary school between the sunset and nighttime prayers. Balhaj marvels at the extra time and energy that his delayed Algerian colleague, brother Yusuf, invested instructing, supervising, and guiding the girls school curriculum. He attributes Yusuf’s passion for the school, in part, to his prior experience working “in the field of girls’ education” in Wadi Mzab, recounting that Yusuf quickly won their hearts so that they became “like his daughters.”⁶⁶ Particularly popular among the female students were the classes dedicated to memorizing songs, hymns, and supplications, which familiarized them with the sound and pronunciation of Arabic. Yusuf recruited high-achieving students to assist with teaching and supervising the work of their peers in the classroom.

At the request of the local leadership in Chake Chake, Balhaj composed “a written program that carries a vision for the functioning of these schools, with vaccination recommendations according to the experience of the Mzabi school.”⁶⁷ The program proposed separate learning materials and class periods on specific days of the week for the study of the Qur’an, the prophetic hadith, and Arabic, which also included praise poems and supplications. In the class period devoted to Arabic, for example, he suggested that the focus be on the correct pronunciation of the Arabic alphabet and recommended that teachers identify specific letters, such as the “qaaf” and the “daad,” which were particularly “difficult for the Swahili tongue to pronounce.”⁶⁸ With this foundation, students would be ready to transition to the study of “word formation, sentence structure, and training in reading and proper reading.”⁶⁹ Students would retain what they learned through individual and group recitations, writing practice, and the use of “dictation, dialogue, and conversation.”⁷⁰

Rachid: An Algerian Ibadhi Teacher in Zanzibar

After Balhaj’s arrival, other Algerian teachers received appointments to teach at the Istiqaama Institute in Zanzibar. In 2016, I met with a teacher called Rachid, who began teaching at the institute in 2011. In addition to Tamazight and French, Rachid is fluent in formal Arabic, spoke some English, and was learning Swahili from his students and other staff members at Istiqaama. Our conversation took place in a combination of these languages.

We met during one of his free periods at school, and he wore the Algerian version of the prayer cap and robe that characterizes the teachers’ uniforms. A native of Ghardaïa, he had moved to Zanzibar with his family a few years before. About ten years prior, he had developed an interest in East Africa while studying at the Emir Abdelkader University⁷¹ of Islamic Sciences in Constantine, which sits near the border with Tunisia. There, he had specialized in communications and taken courses on the development of Islam in Africa. He had visited Tunisia often during his studies, and Ibadhi students from Tunisia and Libya would come to the Mzab to study at Al-Hayat.⁷²

When students returned to their home countries after studying away in Algeria, many became respected Ibadhi scholars, following a long tradition of regional Ibadhi intellectual in North Africa. This was also the case for ʿAli Yaḥya Muʿammar (1919–1980), who was born around Nālūt, in Jabal Nafusa, and educated in the school of the ʿAzzābī scholar ʿAbdul bin Masʿud al-Kabawi before attending a primary school opened by the Italian colonial administration. Muʿammar also studied in scholarly circles (ḥalqas) in Jerba Island and the Mzab at Al-Hayat.⁷³ However, these North African Ibadhi exchanges halted for a time under the postcolonial leadership and long-standing authoritarian rule of Habib Bourguiba, who was succeeded by Zine al Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and by Muammar Ghadafi in Libya, both of whom did not look kindly on the Ibadhi communities in their countries. Rachid explained that all these figures were, “tough on the Ibadhiyya so . . . [there was] no relation at that time, I think more than twenty-five years. Now after Bourguiba and after Ben Ali and Ghadafi, the relations [have changed]. They come to Algeria to visit, and people from the Mzab go to Libya and Tunisia for visits.”⁷⁴ He was referring to the largely youth-led Arab Spring that sparked protests across North Africa in 2011 and resulted in both the overthrow of Ben Ali and in the capture and killing of Ghadafi by Libya’s National Transitional Forces.⁷⁵

While at university in Constantine, Rachid met some of the Algerian teachers from Istiqaama who put him in touch with the leadership in Zanzibar. Through them, he received an invitation to move to Unguja to teach Arabic and the Islamic sciences at Istiqaama in Zanzibar. He reflected that while Islamic education is quite strong there, the schools needed teachers who had both a better grasp of the Arabic language and greater organization as he was accustomed to in the Mzab.⁷⁶ From his perspective, Ibadhis were hardworking and very “strict” in their religious practice, and Ibadhi institutions in Algeria were “old.” In contrast, the institutions of the Ibadhi community in Zanzibar were “young” and inexperienced in developing educational and social programs. “In Algeria it is more serious than here . . . because in Africa you see everything is simple and the work isn’t strict. But in Algeria . . . [among] the Mozabite . . . the organization is good, more than the African people.”⁷⁷ He attributes this organization to the history of the Ibadhi institution of the imamate and the ‘azzāba in Algeria.

Rachid’s story reveals another side of Algerian-Tanzanian relations, one in which the largely Black African societies south of the Sahara are no longer just the “receiving nation” to which wealthier Arab states offer aide, educationals, and/or employment opportunities. Rather, the African societies of Tanzania and Zanzibar are also places of curiosity and opportunity for young North African Muslim scholars interested in expanding their horizons and contributing to the growth of Ibadhi communities elsewhere. Given these mutual interests and collaborative efforts, it was odd that Rachid made a separation between “Africa” and “Algeria,” creating a curious distinction between the northern and southern regions of the continent. While unintended, the passive distinction recalls racialized French colonial policies that viewed the Islam of Black Africa (Islam Noir) as a more diluted form of Islam—one lacking solemnity in comparison with the more original and “strict” Islam practiced by the light-complexioned Arabs and Berbers of the north. Compounding this idea was the language of African “simplicity,” which he attributed to the newness of Muslim organizational life in Zanzibar.

During his time at Istiqaama, Rachid advocated for the introduction of more technical skills and scientific research methods into the curriculum to improve student writing while also generating interest in preserving local histories. To start, he introduced a thesis requirement for graduating students, like the one already in place at Al-Hayat. He explained, “We began [the thesis requirement] two years ago, last year and the year before that. Previously, it was handwritten, but in the past year they started writing it by computer. I aim to make students’ work more scientific . . . [the student theses] are special for the culture for Zanzibar.”⁷⁸ Rachid was familiar with social scientific methods from the extensive ethnographic research he did for his own postgraduate thesis (mājastīr) about a local radio program associated with an Ibadhi mosque in the Mzab region.

He observed, however, that there was little emphasis on research and writing in Zanzibari schools. As a result, recent works on Zanzibar are from the perspective of authors living in other countries. He cited as examples two well-known Arabic and Swahili histories of Zanzibar and the revolution, composed by writers of Omani heritage who now reside in Oman but maintain ties to Zanzibar.

Rachid and his family resided on the Istiqaama campus, living in one of the small bungalows built to accommodate teachers. The bungalows were arranged in a row beyond the classrooms and administrative buildings. “Life is good,” he said reflecting on his time in Zanzibar. “It’s very simple, but it is good, because people are very helpful and friendly. So, it is good for me, right now. It is good.”⁷⁹ When I returned to Zanzibar in the summer of 2019, Rachid had already left Istiqaama, having accepted a teaching position in Oman.

Haidar and Rachid both express a desire for introducing social scientific research methods into the curriculums of Istiqaama and Al-Hayat to improve student writing and generate interest in preserving local histories. Both have used their knowledge and expertise to make a positive impact on their communities, showing that learning from and in a foreign context can be beneficial for both individuals and their Ibadhi communities.

Conclusion

During the postcolonial period, Algeria and Tanzania have had a close and supportive relationship based, in part, on their shared history of colonization and liberation struggles in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, Algerian president Houari Boumediene provided military training and logistical assistance to other African countries, while Tanzania’s first president Julius Nyerere supported nationalist movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).⁸⁰ They prioritized Pan-Africanism, self-reliance, and socio-economic development with an African and decolonial framework.⁸¹ Although they did not fully achieve their economic and political goals, the shared socialist values of the two countries created a strong foundation for ongoing economic and political cooperation between the two countries which is little documented in scholarly works. For instance, the Algerian national oil company, Sonatrach, has partnered with Tanzania’s natural gas industry, and there have been collaborations in sectors like agriculture, energy, infrastructure development, and trade.⁸² Additionally, they are generally united in key issues affecting the continent, such as peacekeeping and supporting each other’s causes in regional and international forums.

Through student exchanges, and academic and cultural programs such as those described in this chapter, Tanzania and Algeria have fostered mutual dependence and goodwill. Non-governmental educational partnerships like Istiqaama and Al-Hayat indirectly participate in this practice. Just as Istiqaama in Tanzania sends students to Oman to study Arabic and Islamic studies and subsequently recruits them as teachers and administrators after graduation, likewise, Algeria is a popular destination for Muslim students to study abroad. The branches of Istiqaama on Pemba play a significant role in connecting east and west through study abroad programs in Algeria and hiring Algerian teachers for Arabic and religious subjects. These connections hold religious and diplomatic power, aligning with past decolonization efforts that transcended borders and continents, relying on pan-African alliances and non-Western ways of knowledge, including socialist governance and Islamic learning. Istiqaama serves as a compelling example of the vital role that Muslim-minority and diaspora communities play in fostering informal diplomatic relations between countries of the Global South, providing new and underrecognized frameworks for cross-continental foreign policy.

Notes

1. 1. Anne K. Bang, “Authority and Piety, Writing and Print: A Preliminary Study of the Circulation of Islamic Texts in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth Century Zanzibar,” Africa 81, no. 1 (2011): 89–107; Amal Ghazal, Islamic Reform and Arab Nationalism: Expanding the Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (1880s–1930s) (New York: Routledge, 2014).
2. 2. Jomier explained how anthropological studies of the Mzab “religious evolutions,” both in the region and within Ibadhism, were “preoccupied more with the quest for Berber social structures and facts”; Jomier, Une histoire, 17.
3. 3. Augustin Jomier, email correspondence with author, August 11, 2023. See also Cyrille Aillet, L’ibadisme dans les sociétés de l’Islam médiéval: Modèles et interactions, vol. 33, Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East (Berlin: De Gruyter, Inc., 2018).
4. 4. Paul M. Love Jr., Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
5. 5. UNESCO World Heritage List, “M’Zab Valley,” accessed October 27, 2020, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/188/.
6. 6. The town and city names are: El-Atteuf, Bounoura, Melika, Ghardaia, and Isguen.
7. 7. Jomier, Une histoire de L’Ibadisme en Algérie, 14.
8. 8. Rachid (Arabic and Islamic Studies teacher at Istiqaama), interview with author, Zanzibar, January 15, 2016.
9. 9. Ghazal, “Countercurrents: Mzabi Independence, Pan-Ottomanism and WWI in the Maghrib,” First World War Studies 7, no. 1 (2016): 81.
10. 10. Majmūʻa min al-bāḥitḥīn, “Niẓām al-‘Azzāba,” 702.
11. 11. Ibid., 703.
12. 12. Augustin Jomier, email correspondence with author, August 11, 2023.
13. 13. Ghazal, “Countercurrents,” 81.
14. 14. Institut Elhayat, “About,” Facebook, n.d., accessed March 25, 2024, https://www.facebook.com/Institut.Elhayat/about.
15. 15. Institut Elhayat.
16. 16. Ghazal, “Countercurrents,” 81.
17. 17. Augustin Jomier, email message to author, August 11, 2023.
18. 18. Institut Elhayat, “About.”
19. 19. Institut Elhayat.
20. 20. Ibid.
21. 21. Augustin Jomier, “Les réseaux étendus d’un Archipel Saharien. Les circulations de lettrés Ibadites (XVIIe Siècle-Années 1950),” Revue d’histoire moderne & ontemporaine 2 (2016): 26–27.
22. 22. Amal N. Ghazal, “The Other ‘Andalus’: The Omani Elite in Zanzibar and the Making of an Identity, 1880s–1930s,” The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (2005): 48.
23. 23. Institut Elhayat, “About.”
24. 24. Institut Elhayat.
25. 25. For more on the history of Islamic education in the Mzab, read: Jomier, Une histoire de L’Ibadisme en Algérie.
26. 26. Institut Elhayat, “About.”
27. 27. Institut Elhayat.
28. 28. Tiwani, Qamusi-Ssalaa, 86.
29. 29. Tiwani, Qamusi-Ssalaa, 51.
30. 30. Ibid., 48.
31. 31. Nathalie Arnold Koenings, “For Us It’s What Came After: Locating Pemba in Revolutionary Zanzibar,” in Social Memory, Silenced Voices, and Political Struggle: Remembering the Revolution in Zanzibar, eds. William Cunningham Bissel and Marie-Aude Fouéré (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2018), 150.
32. 32. Arnold Koenings explains that the Swahili term for “satiety” used by Pembans to describe the island’s immense wealth from their clove harvests in the 1950s is shibe from “the verb ku-shiba, ‘to be satisfied/well-filled’” (Koenings, “For Us,” 154).
33. 33. Ibid., 164.
34. 34. Ibid.
35. 35. Ibid., 174.
36. 36. The students were not aware of any Tanzanian Shiʿa students studying at Istiqaama in Pemba or the Hayat Institute.
37. 37. Suleiman (Istiqaama Youth Organization leader), interview with author, Dar es Salaam, June 2, 2019.
38. 38. Preliminary scholarship on FBOs in Ghana, where Muslims are an economically marginalized minority, reveals a new expression of Ibadhi Islam under the Istiqaama Muslim Organization established in the town of Wenchi in the early 2000s. See: Mahmud Mukhtar Muhammed and Umar Wahab Sina, “Faith in National Development: A Review of the Activities of the Istiqaama Muslim Organisation of Ghana” (International Conference on Religion and National Development, Kumasi, Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), 2018). According to the authors of this study, Alhaji Umar Adam Suleman, a native of Wenchi, Ghana, originally founded this branch of Istiqaama in 1994, before its official registration as a faith-based organization (FBO). Like its counterparts in East Africa, this branch of Istiqaama maintains a network of Ibadhi schools across the country and receives support from the organization’s headquarters in the Sultanate of Oman (pp. 11–14). The senior high school run by Istiqaama in Wenchi has over one thousandstudents, 95 percent of whom are Muslim and 5 percent of whom are Christian (15). It is unclear, however, how many of the Muslim students identify as Ibadhi. As in Tanzania, students at the Istiqaama senior high school in Wenchi receive scholarships to study the Shariʻa sciences in Oman.
39. 39. “Scholarships Tenable in Algeria for the Academic Year 2017/2018,” DreamjobzSTZ, accessed October 9, 2020, https://dreamjobtz.blogspot.com/2017/06/tcu-scholarships-tenable-in-algeria-for.html.
40. 40. The aim of the memorandum is “to expand their cooperation in the field of higher education in a bid to turn Malaysia into an educational hub in the region.” See Bernama, “Malaysia, Algeria Sign MoU to Expand Cooperation in Higher Education,” New Straits Times, December 5, 2016, accessed March 28, 2024, https://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/12/194663/malaysia-algeria-sign-mou-expand-cooperation-higher-education.
41. 41. Fahmy (Al-Hayat student), interview with author, Dar es Salaam, June 3, 2019.
42. 42. Haidar (Istiqaama graduate and Al-Hayat student), interview with author, Zanzibar, July 5, 2019.
43. 43. Muhammad (former student at Al-Hayat), interview with author, Dar es Salaam, July 3, 2019.
44. 44. Institut Elhayat, “About.”
45. 45. Al-Hayat students and graduates (notes from group meeting), interview with author, Ilala Mosque, Dar es Salaam, June 3, 2019.
46. 46. We met at a bus stop near the Amani soccer stadium and then wandered around a high-traffic neighborhood some miles outside Stone Town looking for a quiet, secluded place to sit for the interview. Eventually, we settled on some stairs behind the bleachers, the best of our options but not one without commotion. A scrimmage was taking place between two local teams simultaneously, and we frequently found ourselves talking over intermittent outbursts of cheers and shouts from the fans. For this reason, the recording was exceptionally difficult to make out.
47. 47. Haidar, interview with author, July 5, 2019.
48. 48. Ibid.
49. 49. Loimeier, Between Social Skills and Marketable Skills.
50. 50. Haidar, interview with author, July 5, 2019.
51. 51. Ibid., italics are mine.
52. 52. Ibid.
53. 53. Ibid.
54. 54. Gilbert Grandguillaume, “Country Case Study on the Language of Instruction and the Quality of Basic Education: Policy of Arabization in Primary and Secondary Education Algeria,” UNESCO Digital Library, Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2005, 2004, 1–57.
55. 55. Bālḥāj, Qāsim bin Aḥmad al-Shaykh. Mudhakirāt Min Aʻmāq Jazīra Zinjibār (Al-Jazāʾir: Manshūrāt al-Tabyīn/al-Jāḥiẓīyah, 2001), 10.
56. 56. Ibid., 18.
57. 57. Ibid.
58. 58. Ibid., 20.
59. 59. Ibid.
60. 60. Ibid., 70.
61. 61. Ibid.
62. 62. Ibid.
63. 63. Ibid., 71.
64. 64. Ibid., 80.
65. 65. Ibid., 80–81.
66. 66. Ibid., 81.
67. 67. Ibid., 82.
68. 68. Ibid., 83.
69. 69. Ibid.
70. 70. Ibid., 83–84.
71. 71. The university’s namesake is the Algerian Muslim reformer Abdelkader bin Muhieddine (1808–1883), who led the resistance against the French colonial invasion of Algeria in the nineteenth century.
72. 72. Rachid, interview with author, January 15, 2016.
73. 73. According to M. H. Custers, he held numerous positions in educational institutions in Libya after his return in 1945 and “in the middle of the seventies he set up Jamʿiyyat al-Fath. and Madrasat al-Fath. in Tripoli.” See M.H. Custers, Al-Ibāḍiyya: A Bibliography, vol. 2, Ibāḍīs of the Maghrib (Including Egypt) (Maastricht, Netherlands: Universitaire pers, 2006), 221. ʿAlī Yaḥyā Muʿammar is the author of Al-Ibāḍīyah bayna al-firaq al-Islāmīyah (The Ibadiyya: Between the Sects of Islam) and other works on the history and thought of Ibadis.
74. 74. Rachid, interview with author, January 15, 2016.
75. 75. Oliver Holmes. “Arab Spring Autocrats: The Dead, the Ousted and Those Who Remain.” The Guardian, December 14, 2020, accessed March 28, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/14/arab-spring-autocrats-the-dead-the-ousted-and-those-who-survived.
76. 76. Ibid.
77. 77. Ibid.
78. 78. Ibid.
79. 79. Ibid.
80. 80. Geoffrey Barei, “Britain and Algeria, 1945–1965” (Doctor of Philosophy (History), London, University of London, School for Oriental and African Studies, 2003), 171.
81. 81. See for example, Black Panther Pete O’Neil’s description of his time in both places while in exile in Paul J. Magnarella, Black Panther in Exile: The Pete O’Neal Story (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2020).
82. 82. See: “Algeria, Tanzania Sign Six Memoranda of Understanding,” Qatar News Agency, August 2, 2023.