Chapter 6 Gendered Righteousness Ibadhi Women and Their Local Networks

Ibadhis and Scholarship on Muslim Women’s Piety

Scholarship on gender and sexuality and Islam focuses largely on women’s piety, authority, dress, and charitable giving in the context of the Islamic revival that gained momentum during the 1990s and early 2000s.³ The case studies in this area tend to center on charismatic women leaders in Sufi orders or the more Salafi-oriented da’wa movements. They show how pious women in urban centers like Cairo, Egypt, demonstrate agency in the teaching and learning of Islamic texts, practices, and “forms of bodily comportment considered germane to cultivation of the ideal virtuous self.”⁴ For women in these situations, the main issue is not about challenging patriarchal norms like male-only mosque leadership, women’s seclusion, and unequal access to public spaces of worship. In fact, their religious devotion has effectively resisted the efforts of nonreligious political authorities to confine religion to personal matters and has also challenged Western liberal beliefs regarding the suppression of Muslim women.⁵ The power of this piety movement lies in its appeal to women across different social classes, with those from lower-income backgrounds playing a critical role in defining the parameters of participation or nonparticipation in public religious life and spaces. Further, the rise of social media and new generations adept at online activism have enabled women in places like Turkey to challenge patriarchal “cultural norms around privacy and intimacy,”⁶ norms that regard the domestic sphere, not the mosque, as the primary site of women’s ethical formation. In these contexts, women are actively campaigning for equal access to mosque spaces where they may gather, study, and pray with the same ease and frequency as men.

Conversely, although the Ibadhi women I spoke with in Mwanza expressed frustration about not having their own spaces in which to gather, study, prepare meals for major events, celebrate weddings, and perform community duties (like washing the bodies of the deceased), their access to mosque space for daily or congregational prayer was not a primary concern. Moreover, their absence from the mosque and decision-making circles neither precluded their participation in other areas of community life nor prevented them from creating new, more inclusive spaces of learning and worship by drawing on their own business networks and financial resources. In fact, when describing their activities, Ibadhi women in Mwanza used a language of self-reliance. Such language reflects a recognition of their own marginalization within the national organization and in public spaces like community mosques; but it also reflects the entrepreneurial spirit of their pious works.

The Istiqaama Women’s Group

In 2011, women from Ibadhi families in Mwanza came together to create a women’s organization that was independent of the national Istiqaama one but bore the same name: Istiqaama Women’s Group. By 2016, when I first met the group, they had recruited approximately fifty members.

The group has a president, vice president, and treasurer responsible for collecting the membership fee of TZS10,000 (US$4) at every meeting, which occurs on the third of each month. They deposit the funds into a communal bank account. The group also collects sadaqa through local community networks and personal connections and supporters in Oman. The donations, which they generate independently of the men’s organization, serve as a form of economic security for the group members and as capital for the group’s various philanthropic initiatives.

After reaching fifty members, the group opted to apply for a permit from the Tanzanian Ministry of Home Affairs so that they could purchase property collectively and enjoy recognition as a registered association. (Acquisition of the permit was contingent on having an adequate number of members to prove that any funds or land obtained was for collective rather than individual benefit.) In April 2016, they received the permit from the ministry and began to formalize the organization’s work.

The president of the group is Shireen, Mariam’s mother (see chaps. 1 and 5); curiously, she was the only non-Ibadhi (she is Yemeni) and non-Omani member of the group, but she had a husband belonging to a prominent Omani family in Mwanza and his mother was Sukuma. The family’s five children identified as both Sukuma and Omani and sometimes referred to themselves as “Afro-Arab.” Through marriage, Shireen became familiar with the religious and social practices of the Ibadhi community, and her demonstrated leadership skills and experience in local business led to her election as the group’s leader. Extensive experience as a business owner and manager also qualified her well for the position. In their youth, she and her husband had owned a local nightclub in Mwanza and played a role in the housing-construction industry. Pictures from that time show a beaming and fashionably dressed young mother wearing skirt suits with shoulder pads and a face of carefully done-up makeup.

Her days of running the nightclub behind her, Shireen now operates a café in Mwanza that serves breakfast (from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.) and lunch following the afternoon prayers (from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.). On the menu are Swahili favorites such as chapatti,⁷ maandazi,⁸ samosas, and a hearty lunch of rice or ugali⁹ with a choice of red meat or chicken, cooked bananas, and avocado juice. Accordingly, Shireen’s clothes are now more conservative, both at work and in public. Her stylish suits having been replaced with long-sleeved, loose-fitting, full-length dresses (diras) decorated with colorful geometric patterns or floral designs. A long hijab, often matching in color, covers her hair and frames a light-tan face that at once projects compassion and the shrewdness of a seasoned businessperson and pillar of her community. Like other Istiqaama women, she wears a black robe over her clothes and headscarf, appearing more conservative than the café’s casually dressed, mostly non-Ibadhi and non-Arab female staff and clientele.

The importance of correct dress in town, especially near the mosque, was apparent when I visited the café with Mariam and her sisters. We followed their mother’s example by covering up our pants trousers and T-shirts with loose-fitting robes. This was partly because the café sits in the direct line of vision of the Ibadhi congregational mosque and its outdoor bench (baraza), where kanzu-clad men meet to chat following each of the five daily prayers, sometimes enjoying dates with coffee poured from a thermos into tiny porcelain cups. The mosque baraza, located as it is at the center of town and in full view of passersby, is a place where one goes to observe and to be observed—a site from which righteous behavior is both conveyed and monitored.

The original location of the café had been on the first floor of the building complex that houses several other businesses, which are part of the mosque’s waqf. The rent collected from the businesses in the complex funnel back into the Istiqaama treasury for maintenance of the mosque and community development. Connecting the building on one of the higher floors is an interior passageway that simplifies access to the mosque’s prayer hall for members of the local business community while also enabling the mosque leadership close oversight of the activities that take place in both. The café has since been moved to its current location, which is larger and sits across the street from the mosque.

Located in Mwanza’s business district, the city’s Ibadhi mosque is easily identifiable by its two towering minarets, a blue, marble-tiled facade, large archways, and heavy wooden doors with engravings, like those found on the homes of past Arab and Indian elites, landowners, and merchants in Zanzibar. A plaque on the front wall of the mosque informs visitors that Mufti Al-Khalili laid its foundation stone on June 1, 1995, clearly signifying the mosque’s adherence to the religious authority of Oman. Locals refer to it in Swahili as “msikiti wa waarabu” or “the Arab mosque.”¹⁰

Within walking distance, there is a Khoja Ismaili Jamaat Khana, an Ithnashari Shiʽa Mosque, and a Memon Mosque, all forming a constellation of houses of worship that is reminiscent of the mercantilism of the coast. While the buildings look rather different from Swahili stone houses, they too signal this lakeport city’s cosmopolitanism and the mobility of its populations while simultaneously delineating communal and ethnic boundaries through its built environment. These boundaries are somewhat relaxed, however, when some mosques open their doors for congregational prayers or during encounters at shared spaces of business and sociality, such as Shireen’s café in the center of town.

The largely male customer base that frequents the café during its peak breakfast and lunch hours is comprised of mosque attendees and local businesspeople. This puts Shireen in a unique position to navigate both male and female spaces in the local Ibadhi and broader Muslim communities, which is notable considering the Ibadhi mosque does not have a women’s section; neither do women serve on its board nor attend meetings in the sebleh, where announcements are made and matters concerning the community are discussed.

There is no universal prohibition against women performing prayers at mosques in Tanzania. In fact, the practice is quite common among Sunni women across the country. This is due in part to a longer history of congregational prayer within some of these communities, in addition to an earlier emphasis on building mosques and prayer spaces large enough to accommodate these worshippers and the gendered division of space. Another possible reason for the greater participation of Sunni women in mosque life is that most adherents to Sunni Islam are African, with only small minorities being Arab (mostly Yemeni) and Asian.¹¹

Regardless, members of the Istiqaama Women’s Group in Mwanza hold various views on the lack of an Ibadhi female presence in the mosques and at community meetings. During a meeting at the home of a group member, Shireen explained, “Ibadhis [in Mwanza] don’t a have a place for women to pray like the Sunnis, so they pray at home. In Muscat and other places [however], they do build areas for women.”¹² One of the women commented that a well-known sanctimonious elderly male figure, who apparently tends to avoid interactions with women, had once informed the community that if women came to the mosque, “they would cause trouble.” In recounting this familiar story, the women all laughed, after which the group’s treasurer cited a prophetic hadith that states women receive greater rewards in the afterlife if they pray at home (Sw., ni thawabu zaidi kuswali nyumbani). The treasurer went on to explain that women do perform the tarāwīh. prayers at the Ibadhi Friday Mosque during Ramadan and that this is a meritorious practice.¹³

From Shireen’s perspective, Ibadhi women’s exclusion from the mosque is a matter of space. The mosque’s designers, whether consciously or not, neglected to include a space for women to pray in seclusion, and this explained their absence from mosque life. She suggested that Ibadhi women in Tanzania lag behind their counterparts in Oman in matters of prayer because women in Oman have benefited from the state’s modernization campaigns, including the building of Friday mosques in every major city of the sultanate. An important feature of these mosques is the inclusion of sizeable women’s sections, which suggests an increased emphasis on accessibility in Omani women’s participation in public piety. (See chap. 2.)

The different perspectives on women’s mosque participation in Mwanza raise important questions about the gendered and intergenerational politics of space in the new Ibadhi mosque movement. For now, however, the net result is the same: women are not privy to much of the discussion or decision-making that happens in the mosque. Rather, they may hear news or ask about the meetings in conversations at home with a husband, brother, or father. In these same informal conversations, moreover, women may mobilize their male kin to ask Istiqaama for support on a particular matter. Indeed, it was in this way that the Istiqaama women in Mwanza began to address women’s access to religious education and space.

Since then, according to Shireen, the group has acquired two plots of land. They are in the process of changing the title deed of the latter from individual to collective ownership. One of these two plots will support the girls’ school, which aims to increase women’s influence in the mosque and school system. The other plot will be used for the construction of a mosque that will be open to all madhabs and will include a women’s section.

Another notable achievement of the group occurred during Ramadan in 2015, when the women raised TZS4,000,000 (US$1,597) to install waterpipes at the girls’ school so that students would be relieved of the tiresome task of collecting water from a source a mile off site.¹⁴

Before the formation of the women’s association, however, no organized community initiatives like this existed. “We had to start from scratch,” Shireen explained. “We made food, mats, and other things to sell to sustain [ourselves], the initial costs [of] which were high.”¹⁵

As homemakers and owners of small businesses, the women’s group does not have access to the kinds of social and material capital generated by the male leadership; neither do they travel to and from the Gulf for business and study with the same frequency as their spouses, fathers, brothers, and uncles. Ibadhi women are thus more likely to collaborate with and to assist non-Ibadhi individuals and groups in Mwanza. For this reason, just as mosque attendance and public prayer are the important barometers of men’s participation in the religious life of Istiqaama, alliance building with non-Ibadhis, social events like fundraisers, self-help initiatives, women’s study groups, and home visits tend to be the measures of women’s pious works.

The group’s current activities focus on providing support to individuals in the community during major life events, such as funerals. The women also have a storage area with their own equipment, including funeral palls. In the event of a death in the family, the women host guests in their homes, share cooking and serving equipment, and prepare meals for visitors. Moreover, each woman donates TZS10,000 (US$4) on the first day of the funeral to cover Ibadhi mourning and burial expenses. If the husband of one of the group’s members were to die, she would be given approximately TZS400,000 (US$160) toward her living expenses.¹⁶

The group also provides support to those in need during Ramadan. A form is distributed to each member to declare a donation to provide for Mwanza Muslims who cannot afford the meal to break the fast (iftari). In 2015, the women managed to collect TZS600,000 (US$240) for this purpose.¹⁷

The Ibadhi Women’s Group has also devised independent strategies for overcoming obstacles that women and girls face in education and religious participation. Shireen explained, “Like Istiqaama Mwanza, we [women] want to sustain ourselves; we women are not dependent on men (hatutegemee wanaume).”¹⁸

This idea of self-reliance (Sw., kujitegemea) has a distinct political and social history in Tanzania. In popular and political discourse, kujitegemea often appears alongside another term, ujamaa, usually translated as “national unity” or “familyhood.” Ujamaa also refers to the socialist ideology and policies associated with the independence party and mass movement that TANU (the Tanganyika African National Union) established in 1954.¹⁹ The implementation of these dual concepts of ujamaa and kujitegemea in the process of nation building was essential for shaping a socialist state based on the African principles of communitarianism. The idea of ujamaa centered on the notion of “self-reliance”—that people should build their futures for themselves—and on “the full participation of all Tanzanians in developing the nation. This took the form of communal labor in the rural sector and communal ownership of land and nationalization of the private sector and of public services,” said Shireen.²⁰

Shireen and the other group members, now in their late fifties and early sixties, are part of this ujamaa generation, and it is possible that their familiarity with the principles of the movement influenced their own vision of work and progress as it connects to self-reliance. Jessica Ott has suggested that the Swahili term umoja, or unity, which is closely related to ujamaa in the sense of the collective responsibility that it engenders, has become an “increasingly gendered” political form of discourse.²¹ Using the framework of “collective conviviality,” Ott demonstrates how “umoja avoids directly confronting patriarchal social structures, which raises questions about its potential to ensure gender justice.”²²

In practice, Shireen emphasized that the women’s association works together with and supports (Sw., tunashirikiana na tunakaa nao) the initiatives of the men’s organizations and said that the close personal relationships between the members of the two Istiqaama groups enable them to depend on each other for the implementation of their various initiatives. However, it is difficult to ascertain to what degree this support flows both ways; the women suggest that little of the funds generated by the Mwanza branch of Istiqaama under the male leadership trickles down into their own treasury, leaving them largely dependent on their own initiative and ingenuity in fundraising.

During my fieldwork in 2016, one of the leaders of the men’s organization in Mwanza said that Istiqaama was in the process of revising its constitution to include the women’s group in its leadership structure. As of July 2022, however, the women had yet to receive official recognition from the national Istiqaama organization. Recognition by the larger organization would undoubtedly expand the women’s sphere of influence and enable them to apply for funds from the Istiqaama treasury.²³ On the other hand, their incorporation into the larger organization could diminish their power to make decisions regarding the distribution of funds and undermine their leadership vis-à-vis the more established men’s organization.

Formally recognizing the women’s group might also enable Istiqaama to reach a larger segment of the Omani and Muslim population in Mwanza because of the unique capacity of the women’s organization to use smart phones and new media to mobilize other Ibadhi women around educational and charitable initiatives in Mwanza and Oman. The women communicate largely through WhatsApp, which enables them to mobilize quickly in the event of an emergency, such as a sudden death in the community.

Finally, incorporation of the women’s group might motivate the development of other forms of organization and empowerment among Ibadhi women in Tanzania, including under Istiqaama.

A Women’s Institute in Mwanza

Apart from the various services they provide within their own community, Ibadhi women in Mwanza have developed collaborations with various Sunni and Shi‘a Muslim charities in the city, especially with women of Yemeni heritage. I had the opportunity to visit a number of these charities with Mariam and her mother, the most memorable of which was a residential school for a women’s institute in Nyamanaro. On the road to the Mwanza airport, Nyamanaro is a town that has undergone rapid development in the past ten years, as evidenced by the new and half-finished houses and shops lining the main road leading to the school. The ride was initially very rough, but we noticed that road construction was underway. Dusty potholes gave way to a smooth dirt road and, as we neared the educational institute’s campus, a newly paved highway. As we approached the school, a large property of at least one acre came into view. Around it was a concrete and iron fence connected by a black gate at the entrance.

We met the institute’s founder, Sara, in her office. Volumes of hadith and other Islamic texts, including a Swahili translation of the authoritative Sunni hadith collection Sahīh al-Bukhārī lined the bookshelves, along with framed certificates from the government legitimizing the property and school, including a certificate of recognition (Sw., shahada ya taasisi) from the National Muslim Council of Tanzania, BAKWATA. The back room stored an open and empty deep freezer and the remaining office furnishings and equipment were modest, including black-and-white checkered floors, two light-blue plastic chairs, a computer monitor, and a photocopier, among other things. The photocopy machine had been a donation from the Amana Bank, which is well regarded by Muslims in the region. The bank donated several items to the school when they first opened and continues to support the ma’had in various unspecified ways. Other local charities, such as The Table and Desk Foundation (TDCF), which was started by South Asian Shi‘a emigres from Mwanza who now live in the United Kingdom, donated several tanks to the school for water storage.²⁴

The women’s institute comprises dormitories, classrooms, administrative offices, a computer lab, a community garden, and a lengthy workshop room that looks like an industrial garment factory with neatly organized rows of small desks topped with black, vintage sewing machines. The massive wall that surrounds the property maintains the privacy of the female teachers and residential students.

Sara is a petite Afro-Yemeni woman who single-handedly runs the school with occasional support from private donors and her dedicated core of teachers. Her inspiration for founding the school came after she attended a lecture by a local celebrity known for delivering compelling sermons in town. The dāʻīyya, or preacher, had recounted her experience visiting the fishing towns and villages that surround the lake and expressed her dismay at the impoverished situation of the children there, who had few opportunities for education or social mobility. Moved by her story, Sara gathered five other Sunni women to establish the school, which got its start in a rented house in an area called Ghana, north of the permanent campus. The purpose of the school was, and continues to be, to provide girls from low-income families with an inexpensive and safe learning environment where they also receive regular meals. It bothered Sara that when girls completed Form 4,²⁵ they could not find employment; in addition, several of them got pregnant after graduating or became infected with HIV. She said, “It hurt me very much. So, I saw that it was better to have religion, to get that knowledge first.”²⁶

At first, the ma’had enrolled only fifteen girls because many feared they could not afford to attend, but the number of students has grown steadily each year since, totaling seventy-five by the time of my visit in the summer of 2019.

At that time, the school had four teachers whose courses focused primarily on the study of Arabic, the Qur’an, and basic Islamic texts and ritual practices. Another four teachers taught in the vocational studies section, which included courses focused on home economics, such as cooking, embroidery (Sw., kudarizi), and sewing. The school hoped to provide more, however, and had registered to receive training from the Information and Communication Technology Commission (ICT) and the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA), which the Tanzanian government created in 1994 to “ensure quality vocational skills, providing, regulating, coordinating, promoting, and financing vocational education and training for national socio-economic development.”²⁷ With ICT and VETA accreditation, the school could supplement the current curriculum with vocational training and grant students government-recognized certificates to help them gain work or start businesses in the fields in which they excel. This would help the school achieve its goal of enabling women from the villages to employ themselves (Sw., wajiajiri) when they return home after graduation. Until then, Sara says the school tries to find resources related to a graduate’s specialization (such as a sewing machine), which they then give to the graduate before she leaves the school.

In its early years, to secure donations, the six founders often threw fundraising or self-help events called harambees, or parties (haflas), where community members participated in games and activities, watched short skits, and bought homemade food and treats. The events helped, but the money earned barely covered maintenance costs, teacher salaries, and the food and supplies needed to keep the school running. At one point, Sara’s partners began to waver as they were aging and tired of operating the school on a volunteer basis without a steady source of income. They suggested closing the school and relieving themselves of the responsibility.

“I said no,” Sara told me. “I still had the will to do it. Therefore, in 2017, we had a big harambee, just as we used to. I had seen that they were defeated. And thank God we received the money to build this [new] campus.”²⁸

The plot they purchased already had two buildings, which they preserved to use as classrooms and dormitories. They were able to add more brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs using the harambee funds. The sewing machines, which have increased in number from four to thirty-six since the school opened, were purchased at a discount for about TZS60,000 (US$24); a collection of embroidery machines was added as well.

Further development occurred a few months prior to our visit, in October 2018, when construction began on the privacy wall surrounding the institute. A wealthy Egyptian businessperson who lives in a neighboring lake district provided the funds and oversaw the construction. Sara and her colleagues had heard that there was someone in town who liked “to do religious works,” so they wrote him a letter requesting support for the wall the next time he was in Mwanza for business. After visiting the school and measuring the plot, he agreed to build the wall using his own contractors as he preferred not to make a cash donation. By December 2018, work on the wall was complete, worth a total of TZS80,000,000 (US$31,942).

In more recent years, due to the sharp economic downturn experienced by many middle- and upperclass Tanzanians and businesses, women’s organizations have limited their use of harambees to raise funds for charitable causes, recognizing that the financial burden and time required to plan the events would likely not result in the necessary returns. Because most students do not pay full tuition or room and board, the teachers and administrators have had to devise new ways for them to contribute to their education and care at the school.

“This year we have a different system of receiving students,” Sara said. “That is, every student must come [to school] with food. Because things have become hard.”²⁹ She went on to explain that because they cannot depend on tuition money, they are asking students to bring food from home, both at the start of each school term and after each break, so that they can contribute to the meals. Most of the students come from farming or fishing backgrounds on the lake belt, which includes the regions of Musoma, Pala, Dida, and Shinyanga, so their contributions come mainly in the form of produce like corn, beans, and other nonperishables. These items boost the school’s consistent, but varied, monthly contributions from committed patrons. “Although it is not enough,” Sara said, “alhamdullilah, it pushes us along.”³⁰

The school does set a monthly budget with the help of a volunteer accountant from BAKWATA. The budget is then used to determine how much support to request from patrons each month, and this has helped resolve some of the economic issues.

Another change they have made is requiring parents to make monthly visits to the school to see their children because in the past, some parents would not visit their children for a whole year. Sara worried that the girls who were not visited would become disconnected from their roots and family networks. Further, she was concerned that parents were abusing the boarding policy, using it as a form of long-term childcare. Under the new policy, if parents do not visit for two months in a row, their children are sent home. Regular visits from family members also enable a steady flow of donations in kind, although this may put an economic strain on parents who are responsible for several other children at home or who find it difficult to leave their farms or pay for transport into town.

The school’s economic position has been further challenged by the current political administration. Contrary to the desire of the women founders, the school is subject to the authority of BAKWATA. The founders had tried to register with the government as an independent organization, as the Istiqaama Women’s Group had, but they could not afford the registration fees. “So, when you don’t register with the government,” Sara explained, “you must register with something, so that you don’t get in trouble. So, we have registered with BAKWATA . . . . We are under the umbrella of BAKWATA.”³¹ She went on to explain that they would be “freer” if they could register as a nongovernmental organization rather than as a religious one, but she said they would never be allowed to fully cut ties with BAKWATA “because that is how the government wants it.”

When I asked how the school benefited by registering with BAKWATA, she suggested that it gave them some form of legitimacy and protection—particularly important in the era of President John Pombe Magufuli (1959–2021), whose administration put Muslim charities under high surveillance. Sara said that after the wall was funded, she was jailed by the government for nine days and the Egyptian who built it was also arrested and investigated. Both were suspected of operating with terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda.

Sara explained that the school’s other board members had been persistently absent during the time of her arrest, so when the government came to investigate the campus, they were suspicious that she was the only person managing the school. She suggested that there was a racial dimension to the division of labor in women’s groups in Mwanza—one where “White” Arab woman (weupe) had a reputation for not showing up to help as they were not used to doing activity outside their domestic duties. This often caused the work to fall on one person—and during the school’s surveillance, that one person happened to be Sara.

The school administrators are now very careful about writing down the names of donors and keeping receipts for major donations and tracking communication with donors on social media, in case such an investigation was to happen again. Regardless, the surveillance impacted the group’s haflas as people want to see registration before they participate. Registration with the government as a school was not possible for two years, until August 2019, as President Magufuli had set out to investigate all Islamic charities; therefore, if someone wanted to donate to the group during this time, they had to do so secretly.

In addition, the school found that donors they could formerly rely on for regular funds or supplies were scared off by the arrests and surveillance. For example, a Somali businessperson who used to donate soap, sugar, and oil each month stopped the deliveries because of political concerns. This created a problem, Sara explained, because they had come to depend on the supplies and had not created space in their budget for purchasing them.

BAKWATA is ineffective in protecting Muslim groups from this surveillance and harassment; it also does not have a unified vision of how to help those under its charge as it oversees such a large number and variety of Muslim groups, often with very disparate objectives.

The Khairia Sunni Women’s Group

Taking their name from the Arabic word that can mean both virtuous and charitable, the Khairia Sunni Women’s Group was formed in the year 2000. The members are from mixed backgrounds, identifying primarily as Yemeni, Omani, and Indian, and most come from families that have been in Mwanza for generations. The group began with twenty-five members, and by the time of my interview with their chairperson, Mona, in 2019, their numbers were up to thirty-five. When we met in her second-floor apartment off a main street surrounded by shops and businesses in Mwanza Town, Mona explained that most of the members were “housewives” who, in addition to their domestic duties, engaged in small businesses (Sw., biashara ndogo ndogo) out of their houses. Since the group began, its members have dispersed, with some living in other towns and cities like Dar es Salaam.

Group members’ main source of pride is their educational and health initiatives, most notably the madrasa they have been running since 2003, when the original patron passed away and gifted it to them. The school initially had 161 students, which decreased to 120 when students or their families started to move away. The youngest students are three years old. Monthly membership fees are TZS32,500 (US$13) per member, and payments go toward teacher salaries and maintenance, but tuition is free.

The group also provides childcare for families in the neighborhood, and they would like to build a nursery on the plot that they had purchased next to the school for this sole purpose, but the space is too small. So, instead, they plan to build a two-story social hall to generate revenue for the school.

Like Istiqaama, the group has extensive kin networks outside of Mwanza Town, which means they often receive proposals and requests from rural communities to assist in developing programs and resources that benefit women in those places. Their current projects include volunteering at the major Sunni Friday Mosque in Mwanza, doing things like donating carpets and helping with cleanup following prayers and events. In addition, for Eid al-Fitr, they rent a school space like that of the Thaqafa School and charge entrance fees to provide games, toys, and a jumping castle for children. They also host a Qur’an competition for boys and girls every year during Ramadan.

Also like the Istiqaama Women’s Group, their meetings take place in different locations and are usually hosted by one of the group members. The meetings, which occur on the last Saturday of every month, are both social and professional, with discussions often focused on creative ways to change attitudes around social issues. The women also determine what causes to raise money for during events and their annual party, or hafla.³² Although they would like to develop their own event ideas, Mona explained that many of their ideas were borrowed from women’s groups in Kenya. They especially favor event ideas that elicit the power of storytelling through drama because they see this as a means of transmitting lessons to several people at once.

At their annual haflas, they dress in character and enact social dramas with various themes that teach lessons of Islam. One such drama, for example, is a cautionary tale about not valuing one’s parents. It tells of an educated child who travels away from home in search of work but does not tell their parents; when the child loses the job and returns home for the support of their mother, they find that she has passed away. Other dramas center on themes of charity, prayer, and the example of the close companions of the Prophet Muhammad (the Sahaba). For the haflas hosted by male-led Muslim groups like the main Istiqaama organization, they buy electronic products and other goods from local businesses and then auction them off at higher prices.

The funds raised at the haflas support a variety of projects. One such project is to assist students who develop financial difficulties midway through their studies abroad in neighboring countries like Kenya. The group was also able to secure a building to perform the ritual washing of bodies in preparation for burial, although this was done in conjunction with additional financial support from the Istiqaama Women’s Group.

Other fundraising activities include trivia nights, with faith-related questions and awards for the winners, and a fete fete—essentially a bazaar at which community members can set up stalls in a designated area to sell various goods. The latter event is not very profitable, as each table is TZS10,000 (US$4) to rent and there are other setup costs; but they provide enjoyment and leisure for women and children while also giving community members an opportunity to meet.

Adding to the economic challenges faced by Khairia is their members’ lack of financial independence as most do not have a steady source of expendable income and cannot always pay the membership fees or financially contribute in other ways.

Mona explained that younger people, due to their many other responsibilities, are more likely to contribute monetary resources to support the group’s initiatives than attend meetings or participate in event planning; moreover, the group struggles to recruit younger members as many young women often leave Mwanza when they get married or study abroad.

Since the younger cohort tends to be less involved in pious work and volunteering, they often are not present, meaning those who are left to carry out the work become tired and overcommitted. For their work to be successful, Mona said, members must be more financially self-sufficient and committed to showing up and sharing responsibilities within the group.

Sustainable income is a constant source of concern for the group’s leadership, as is the youth’s apparent lack of time and interest in carrying on their grassroots initiatives that revolve primarily around fundraising for causes such as religious education, supporting orphans and other children at risk, caring for the dead, and helping families in times of economic hardship and crisis. Mona explained, “All we hope for is to get more funds to build the social hall so that we can generate income that is sustainable; income is quite a challenge because we do not get much support from external sources. We have seven madrasa teachers, and we need to be more sustainable [to support them].”³³

Although it is recognized as a religious society by the government, the Khairia Women’s Group has managed to avoid registering with BAKWATA and sees little value in doing so as it would mean decreased autonomy without any additional financial assistance. As Mona put it, BAKWATA itself needs funding.

Conclusion

The collaborations between the Istiqaama Women’s Group and other Muslim associations I observed in Mwanza tended to occur primarily between middle- and upperclass Yemen Sunni and Omani Ibadhi in Mwanza, suggesting that while women in these communities may adopt an ethic of Muslim unity, this unity is in some sense confined to class and caste identities that exclude the majority of the town’s residents. Moreover, as Shireen’s marriage demonstrates, the two Arab diasporas are bound by kinship ties and cultural familiarity and their relative prominence in business. Members of both communities have family on the coast and abroad and frequently send their children to neighboring countries or the United Arab Emirates and Oman for study.

When studying religious institutions, especially those of religious minorities, it is easy to look to the most public-facing members for answers about what it means to belong to the group and what makes the group unique. But the official narratives rarely give way to nuances in group identity formation; neither do they tend to highlight how religious agency operates on the margins, which is often more flexible than what is found at the center. In the case of the women’s organization in Mwanza, such flexibility can be found in its leader, who is not Ibadhi but Shafiʿi, and not Omani but Yemeni—a demographic that would probably not be found in a leader of the larger, and perhaps more rigid, men’s organization. Incidentally, being outside the public eye and doing this more grassroots-type work is what enables such flexibility, which suggests that how women both engage the public and present themselves publicly matters in postcolonial Muslim contexts such as Istiqaama in Tanzania.

The absence of publicly available information on or advertising of Ibadhi women’s activities in Tanzania further underscored the importance of examining gender dynamics in religious organizations. By looking beyond the public-facing figures and official narratives of Istiqaama, I was able to discover the crucial role that women play in shaping sustainable community institutions and support networks. Their more flexible work schedules, creative funding schemes, and extensive social networks enable them to engage in important grassroots work focused on caring for vulnerable members of the community, particularly women and girls, in real time.

The case of the Istiqaama Women’s Group in Mwanza reveals a complex and nuanced picture of how gender operates within the context of a conservative diaspora religious organization. While the official narratives and public image of Istiqaama may center around male leadership and activities, my observations showed that women play a crucial role in the day-to-day operations of the organization, particularly in local community building and support work. They do not view their work as a challenge to male authority but as a locally focused and more modest supplement to the grander transnational projects enacted by well-connected male elites in their community. As this role suggests, the two groups—men’s and women’s—cannot exist without each other, but there is undoubtedly a very gendered dynamic to the role of each. While the role of the male is to be the public face of Istiqaama, the role of the female is to be a local face—and a driving force in the organization’s work in specific parts of Tanzania.

Notes

1. 1. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds., “Diaspora,” in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1995), 425.
2. 2. The Istiqaama women’s organization in Mwanza practices religion and charity in ways that secure their own and their families’ place within an exclusive Omani diaspora. At the same time, the group draws on their own expertise, social networks, and community resources to ensure the economic security of vulnerable members of their community and empower disadvantaged women and girls beyond the diaspora. Scholarship on Islam in East Africa tends to focus on the Swahili-speaking coastal regions with very little work on Muslim women and gender in mainland towns and villages.
3. 3. Adeline Masquelier, Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Britta Frede and Joseph Hill, eds., “En-Gendering Islamic Authority in West Africa,” Islamic Africa, 5, no. 2 (2014).
4. 4. Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 2.
5. 5. Ibid.
6. 6. Oguz Alyanak, “When Women Demand Prayer Space: Women in Mosques Campaign in Turkey,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 15, no. 1 (2019): 126–27.
7. 7. A fried flatbread, usually served with stew or beans.
8. 8. A spiced donut.
9. 9. A doughlike staple made of corn flour, millet, or sorghum.
10. 10. In Swahili, “Jiwe la msingi la Masjid Ibaadh Mwanza limewekwa na Mufti wa Sultanate of Oman Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamed Al-Khalili, Tarehe 6-1-1995. 4-Shaaban-1415 hijriya.”
11. 11. In a study of Muslim women in Mombasa, Kenya, Margaret Strobel explains how a self-perceived sense of social backwardness motivated Omani Arab women in the city’s old town to establish their own, largely ethnicity-based, collectives and self-improvement organizations in the 1950s. The first Arab women’s association in Mombasa (the Arab Women’s Institute) emerged, in part, as a response to criticisms lodged against members of this ethnic group by their more organized Asian counterparts. The institute was at first more concerned with the politics of prestige that depended on reinscribing social hierarchies by maintaining a selective membership (mostly Omani Arabs) with a conservative agenda focused on enhancing the social image of the group. In protest to the institute’s exclusionary practices, the more ethnically diverse and inclusive Arab Muslims Cultural Association emerged in its place. This new association eventually dropped the “Arab” part of its name to appear more inclusive. See Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890–1975 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 184–87.
12. 12. Istiqaama Women’s Group, interview with author, Mwanza, April 26, 2016.
13. 13. Ibid.
14. 14. Shireen (president of the Istiqaama Women’s Group), interview with author, Mwanza, April 25, 2016.
15. 15. Ibid.
16. 16. Ibid.
17. 17. Istiqaama Women’s Group, interview with author, April 26, 2016.
18. 18. Shireen, interview with author, April 25, 2016.
19. 19. See David Westerlund, Ujamaa Na Dini: A Study of Some Aspects of Society and Religion in Tanzania, 1961–1977 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1980).
20. 20. Istiqaama Women’s Group, interview with author, April 26, 2016.
21. 21. Jessica Ott, “Umoja: A Swahili Feminist Ethic for Negotiating Justice in Zanzibar,” Feminist Anthropology (2022): 1.
22. 22. Ibid.
23. 23. Shireen, interview with author, April 25, 2016.
24. 24. This organization has a relatively large budget of £291,647 as of December 31, 2020, accessed March 15, 2024 “About Us.” The Desk and Chair Foundation. https://www.tdcf.org.uk/about-us/.
25. 25. Form 4 signals the end of the ordinary four-year high school track.
26. 26. Sara (founder of the women’s ma’had), interview with author, Mwanza region, June 15, 2019.
27. 27. Vocational Education and Training Authority, “About Us” (United Republic of Tanzania: Ministry of Education Science and Technology), accessed May 25, 2022, https://www.veta.go.tz/about-us.
28. 28. Sara, interview with author, June 15, 2019.
29. 29. Ibid.
30. 30. Ibid.
31. 31. Ibid.
32. 32. Mona (leader of the Khairia Women’s Group), interview with author, Mwanza, December 6, 2019.
33. 33. Ibid.