Chapter 1 Ibadhi Identity and Intra-Muslim Relations in Postrevolution Zanzibar

Approaching Religious Difference in Islam: The Meaning of the Madhab

Ibadhism is a madhab “based on five legislative sources: the Koran, the Sunna (tradition), al-ijmā’ (consensus), al-qiyās (reasoning by analogy), and al-istidlāl (induction).”¹⁸ The term madhab literally means a “path” or a “way out”; and, in addition to its usual meaning as a school of law, the term dhehebu in Swahili often refers simply to a “sect” or “denomination.” A related term, tariqa, also means “path” or “way” but refers more specifically to the “Sufi way” or the order of the Sufi brethren. Finally, the term Shariʻa, which often connotes Islamic law or divine law, also carries a more literal sense in Arabic as “the clear path” or “the way,” as in “the way to Truth.”

These terms all convey the idea that the pursuit of Truth is both an individual and collective responsibility. Scholar of Islam Shahab Ahmed explains, “Even the legal madhhab is a discursive rather than an institutional entity: it has no physical or spatial corporate headquarters or salaried office-bearers—its statements are not formalized in a mosque council or a madrasah community, and its applied authority is entirely contingent on the willingness of the state and community to go its way—that is, to proceed in the madhhab.”¹⁹

Ibadhis in Zanzibar today imagine their school’s strict interpretation of Islam and Omani cultural distinctiveness as the basis for their unique culture of religious tolerance. They are at pains to project this ideal. However, this ideal is in tension with a history of dynastic descent in the selection of Ibadhi imams; the importance of kinship and genealogy to the construction of modern Ibadhi identity; and the uncomfortable connection between Ibadhism, Arab imperial rule, and cultural dominance (Sw., ustaarabu) in nineteenth- and twentieth-century East Africa.

An Ibadhi, a Sunni, and a Shiʻa Leader in Urban Zanzibar

Sheikh Ayman is a member of the Istiqaama education board and the main representative person for the organization with whom I maintained contact when I began my research in 2014. He worked out of his second-floor office in a school building outside Stone Town, where we met again two years later in 2016 for a full interview. Ayman was recruited by Mufti Al-Khalili in the late 1980s to study abroad at the Sharia College in Muscat. After returning to Zanzibar, he became one of the biggest advocates for Ibadhi youth education in Unguja. He now oversees the operation and expansion of the Istiqaama K–12 school and institute (ma’had) for advanced Arabic and Islamic Studies in the East Coast village of Tungu. Ayman later facilitated my introductions at the maʿhad, helping me establish trust among Ibadhi teachers and former students on the island.

I was introduced to Sheikh Ibrahim, a Sunni teacher and administrator at Madrasat al-Noor, by a friend and one of his former female students. The meeting was held at the madrasa’s administrative office in the Ukutani neighborhood of Stone Town. The office has an exterior staircase that ascends from the classrooms and a paved courtyard below, where students spend their recess. The courtyard is a valued and rare open space for chance encounters and children’s pickup games in the heart of Stone Town, surrounded by tall buildings, mosques, schools, and businesses, many dating back to the late nineteenth century.

Sheikhs Ayman and Ibrahim agreed that the Ibadhi and Shafiʻi scholars of the past in Zanzibar shared a special bond that dated back at least to prerevolutionary Islamic learning circles frequented by Ibadhi and Sunni scholars alike. This is perhaps due in part to the common origins of many students and scholars of the past on the Arabian Peninsula, specifically Yemen and Oman, and their shared cultural and linguistic heritages.

Sheikh Ibrahim described their relationships with the diverse Shiʻa communities of Zanzibar as civil and cooperative, collectively referring to Shiʿa Muslims as “wahindi” or Indians.²⁰ To assist me in seeking out Shʿia perspectives, Ibrahim referred me to a prominent member of the Ahlul Bayt Foundation (ABF), which is the largest organization of the Ithnaashari Shiʻa community of Zanzibar. The Shiʻa leader, Sheikh Zayd, relocated to Zanzibar from his hometown in India in the 1990s. He was attracted by the opportunity of serving the growing Shiʻa community in East Africa, which is now a majority African population though it began as South Asian. Zayd agreed to an interview in the ABF’s office near its school in the Kiponda neighborhood, in Stone Town.

Discourses on Difference: Politics, Law, and Creed

Zayd’s office is filled with volumes of books by Shiʻa scholars, a wall adorned with photographs from community events like the annual Hussein Day²¹ celebration, and portraits of prominent bearded and turbaned Shiʻa scholars from Iran and South Asia. He explained that while the Shiʻa communities in Zanzibar rarely pray with their Ibadhi and Sunni neighbors, they often invite one another to take part in their community events. He believes that all the various madhabs share the fundamental concept of tawhid and the prophecy of Muhammad, expressed in the Shahada. “Islam is saying the phrase: la ilaha ila allah wa Muhammadun rasul allah. There is no God except God of the universe [and Muhammad is the messenger of God], so it is our faith, it is the root. We say the oneness of Allah, may He be praised and exalted (subhana wa taala).” ²²

He further elucidated that the divisions between the madhabs arose from conflicts over authority after the passing of Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. Disagreements among Muslim leaders over who should become the successor or caliph (khalīfa) of the prophet serve as the origin of the predominant Sunni opinion that four rightly guided caliphs (the Rashidun) succeeded the Prophet Muhammad, while mainstream Shiʻa recognized twelve imams and the Ismaʿili Shiʻa six.²³ For Zayd, early Muslim conceptualizations of political authority eventually gave rise to distinctive sectarian identities with their own legal and theological traditions.

Speaking from an Ibadhi perspective, Ayman, agreed that the differences were minor and proposed that they existed in three categories of analysis: politics (siyāsa), legal practice (fiqh), and ideology (ʻitiqād). He proceeded to explain what distinguished Ibadhis in these areas. Impeccably dressed in an Omani dishdasha, he spoke primarily in Swahili but resorted to classical Arabic when explaining religious concepts or citing verses from the Qur’an.

He specifically mentioned the Battle of Siffin in 657 CE following the death of the unpopular third Muslim caliph, or successor, ‘Uthman b. Affan. The battle was fought between the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, ‘Ali b. Abi Talib and Muʽawiyya b. Abi Sufyan, who was the governor of Syria at the time. According to the story, when Muʽawiyya realized that his defeat was imminent, he called for arbitration, to which ‘Ali eventually agreed. Objecting to the arbitration, members of ‘Ali’s ranks, later called the khawārij (Kharijites) or “those who went out,” broke rank with his forces in protest. They were those who “held pious action to be the main criterion for accepting a person as a true Muslim, and who rejected the exclusive claims to the caliphate of the Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad, as well as the claims of the ‘Alids [supporters of ‘Ali].”²⁴ The Kharijites became famous for their slogan la ḥukm illā lillāh (there is no judgment but that of God)²⁵ and infamous for their practice of excommunicating fellow Muslims who did not live by their strict interpretation of Islam.²⁶ Over time, splinter groups emerged within the movement. The more moderate groups, to escape religious dissimulation (Ar., taqiyya) and the persecution of state authorities, migrated away from the key cities of the Islamic caliphate, such as Basra and Kufa, settling in regions in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. By the time of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) most Kharijite groups had disappeared, and today, only the Ibadhis remain.²⁷

Though modern Ibadhis tend to reject any association with the Kharijites and other groups such as the Wahhabis, who excommunicate Muslims they view as heretics,²⁸ they share the Kharijite ideal, which centers on a quest for righteous leadership over the Muslim community.²⁹ Scholar of religion Valerie Hoffman explains, “Sinning Ibadi Muslims and non-Ibadi Muslims are considered not kuffar shirk, or unbelieving polytheists, but kuffar nima, people who are ungrateful for God’s blessings.”³⁰ Over time, Ibadhi scholars developed an elaborate doctrine on association (walāya) and nonhostile dissociation or avoidance (barā’a) in regard to kuffār bil-niʻma.³¹

For the Kharijites, and for the Ibadhis descended from them, the imam, or caliph, did not have to come from a particular family, and the early community would establish a shurā council made up of learned members of society who would “democratically” select the imam according to his piety and leadership abilities.³² In practice, this ideal did not endure in the regions of the Ibadhi imamates of North Africa and Oman, where imams were often elected for their lineage and systems of dynastic rule developed.³³ Though the eponym of Ibadhiyya is ‘Abd Allāh b. Ibād., most Ibadhis consider Abū al-Shaʻthā̕’ Jābir bin Zayd (died before 722) to be the founding father and first imam of the school.³⁴ He was among the second-generation followers (tābiʻīn) of Prophet Muhammad, was said to have died in his hometown of Nizwa, Oman, in about 711 CE.

Ayman echoed the traditional Kharijite view of the righteous imam and provided examples of how Ibadhis demonstrated these principles in the selection of their imams.

When it comes to political matters, Ibadhis believe that the leaders of Islam can come from any tribe (kabila), as long as they have the necessary ability (uwezo). Whereas others, the Shafiʻi say that he must come from the Quraysh.³⁵ The Shi’a say he must be among the descendants of the Prophet (ahlul bayt). You see, now Ibadhis have opened a great door, they reckon, because a Muslim can come from any tribe. [For example] when you consider some of the Ibadhi imams after Imam Zayd, there were figures like Abu ʿUbayda. Abu ʿUbayda was not an Arab. Abu ʿUbayda was an Abyssinian (alikuwa mtu wa Habasha) who was raised as an Ibadhi and took hold of the opportunity of leadership. [In the case of] Imam Abdurrahman bin Rustam, he was of mixed ancestry, perhaps Persian and Arab. He came from a tribe of Afghanistan—that is, he was a Persian person, but he studied under Ibadhis, and he was the leader of the North African dynasty called the Rustamids (al-Dawla al-Rustamiyya).³⁶

The election of the Ibadhi imam occurs ideally through consultation among learned members of the community. The imam should be both a religious and secular authority trained in Islamic law and demonstrating exceptional piety. By contrasting Sunni and Shi‘a traditions of dynastic rule with the Ibadhi ideal of an imamate as one who does not discriminate based on race or family origins, Ayman echoes the language of moderation and religious tolerance. He suggests that acceptance of outsiders is a cornerstone of Ibadhi thought and practice and that this foundational principle serves as a clear example of the meritorious nature of the Ibadhi imamate. He justifies these claims by drawing attention to the ancestry of two early Ibadhi imams: Abdurrahman bin Rustam, the Persian founder of the Rustamid dynasty and the Ibadhi imamate of North Africa,³⁷ and Abu ʿUbayda bin Muslim bin Abi Karima al-Tamimi, a poor but free basket weaver (al-qaffāf) from Basra and mawlā, or client, of the Yemeni tribe of the Banu Tamima from the Red Sea region of the Tihama.³⁸ Ibadhi sources claim that Abu ʿʿUbayda was Imam Zayd’s successor—a teacher and guide to the emergent Ibadhi community who lived under the scrutiny of the Abbasid caliphs who were wary of their nonconformism.

Ibadhis credit Abu ʿUbayda with the spread of Ibadhi teachings and outreach (da’wa) while in concealment (kitmān), a practice that is like taqiyya in that it aims “to hide many of the practices of Ibādism in order to preserve it from enemies who might threaten or suppress it.”³⁹ He is also said to have trained the missionaries who would transmit Ibadhi teachings in peripheral regions of the Islamic empire in North Africa, Yemen, and Oman, there “harnessing the discontent of the largely ‘Yamani’ tribes of Southern Arabia from Yemen through Hadramawt to Oman.”⁴⁰ These efforts resulted in the establishment of one short-lived imamate in Hadramawt and another in Oman, both of which were defeated in attacks by the Abbasids. Various attempts were made to restore the imamate in Oman over the next centuries, but it wasn’t until the seventeenth century, under the Yaʿariba Dynasty, that a line of strong imams was established, chasing “foreign Arab dynasties out of the interior and the Portuguese from the Omani and East African coasts.” This marked the beginning of the modern imamate, which would survive in Oman until its overthrow in 1959.⁴¹

At its height, the imamate experienced a naḥḍa that mimicked trends in the diverse Salafi reformist movements of the time in their emphasis on following the example of pious predecessors as a way of showing the adaptability of Islam to life in a modern age.⁴² The movement was concerned with rediscovering the “pure” origins of Islam by returning to the Qur’an and the foundational Ibadhi texts while also emphasizing areas of convergence between Ibadhism and modern life. This move served to defend the madhab against increasingly hostile outsiders, such as European colonizers in Muslim lands, and establish the authority and authenticity of Ibadhi writers. Ibadhi writings in the modern period tend to idealize the imams and early Ibadhi thinkers, along with their movements, such as that of Abu ‘Ubayda.⁴³

While the Arabic sources provide only vague information about Abu ʿUbayda’s family history, some refer to the imam as zanj,⁴⁴ from which the term zinjibār, or Zanzibar, originated. The term zanj is typically a collective noun, sometimes employed as a toponym and frequently as an ethnonym in Arabic historical and geographic writings to refer to dark-complexioned people from the African continent or the lands in which they reside.⁴⁵ Ayman’s decision to highlight it serves his point about Ibadhi nondiscrimination in leadership and tolerance of non-Arabs. Yet Ayman’s comments about Abu ʿUbayda also hint at a parallel narrative about the African roots of early Ibadhi thought, which challenges scholarly assumptions that the Ibadhi madhab is originally or inherently Arab. This is akin to the “remapped Islamization” or indigenization that enables diasporic communities to appropriate “various Islamic figures, place names, texts, events, and themes in crafting black Islamic historical narratives.”⁴⁶ The Afro-Arab Istiqaama leadership in Zanzibar is particularly wary of perceptions that they are an Arab organization and often emphasize that most of the students who attend their schools are African or Swahili.

The emphasis on African-Muslim indigeneity and inclusivity is a central component of the postcolonial (re)formation of Muslim-minority identity in East Africa, especially in communities where religious identity often historically corresponded to privileged ethnicities, such as Arabs or Indians. A Shiʽi nonprofit and nongovernmental organization (NGO) founded in 1963 by Indian Muslims, called the Bilal Muslim Mission of Tanzania (BMMT),⁴⁷ takes its name from Bilal b. Rabah. Bilal, scholar of religion Edward E. Curtis explains, was “a former black slave” and “companion of the Prophet Muhammad, and the first muezzin, or the one who calls Muslims to prayer.”⁴⁸ Similar to the Ahlul Bayt Foundation and Istiqaama, the BMMT focuses on poverty reduction, education, and the provision of social services within local communities, in addition to “the spread of Twelver Shiʽism in East Africa and beyond.”⁴⁹ By invoking the Muslim hero Bilal, the Shiʽa organization makes a clear statement about the African roots of Islamic social and racial justice work, a strategy integral to its missionizing efforts within East Africa and beyond the Asian Shiʽa community. Given the constant struggle for legitimation that Ibadhis and Shiʽa face as minority communities in most Muslim societies, the efforts (however subtle or explicit) of charities and NGOs to indigenize the madhab by emphasizing the African origins of early Muslim figures are even more critical for the survival and longevity of their communities. This is perhaps even more so for Ibadhis who are a religious and (usually) ethnic minority in every place but Oman.⁵⁰

As the earlier example of Mariam’s encounter with the Emirati women at the mosque reveals, such critiques generated by state and religious authorities in Muslim-majority countries has a trickle-down effect, creating discomfort or hostility toward Ibadhis among Wahhabi reformist Muslim groups. Moreover, as the Abu Dhabi mosque anecdote reveals, Ibadhis are frequently mistaken for Shiʻa Muslims due to their obscure and poorly understood origins and the similarities in their prayer practices. For their part, Ibadhis also present what they perceive as Wahhabi-influenced fanaticism (Ar., al-taʻas.s.ub) as the counterpoint to the Ibadhi culture of tolerance, al-tasāmuh. Ayman adopted a similar strategy in his explanation of Ibadhi ideas about nonviolence:

For example, there is a difference between the Ibadhis and those Wahhabi [types] . . . you know, what I mean is, in Ibadhi law and creed, spilling the blood of a Muslim is something called the “red line” . . . if you meet a community of Ibadhis, they are always a calm people who live with their associates in a state of mutual listening. In history, if you read history, from the time of the imams in those past years, if they entered a place, they were able to live with people well. Different from other groups who, when they enter a place . . . they visualize their opposition. So, it is different for the Ibadhis, just as their creed [is different], because to live with any person is to live with him in good spirits, whether he is Muslim or non-Muslim.⁵¹

The example of Ibadhi leaders of old evokes Ibadhi hospitality and tolerance. Ayman suggests that the imams would work to adapt to local conditions and establish a culture of coexistence (Ar., taʻāyush) rather than viewing conquered populations as adversaries to their rule. Ayman’s explanation does two things: first, it distinguishes Wahhabi practice from how he imagines Ibadhi tolerance and second, following a typical strategy of modern Ibadhis, it attempts to distance Ibadhis from the violent reputation of their Kharijite forebears.⁵²

Having established a historical basis for an Ibadhi ethic of nonviolence, Ayman shared a more contemporary example:

If you study the influence of Ibadhism, you will not find even one person . . . involved in these [extremist] groups, Daesh⁵³ and whoever. You will not find a single Ibadhi [among them]. If you look at Algeria, there are many Ibadhis; [an Ibadhi there] could not be affected because his mind forbade him [from doing these things]. [Same thing] if you go to Mali, or over there near Algeria . . . I have heard there is a person, for example, from Mali who is involved with Boko Haram. People come [to join Boko Haram] from the East African countries along with people from other places. Among them, you cannot find Ibadhis . . . because Ibadhis are very strict⁵⁴ about bloodshed and taking property that does not belong to them. So, this is the idea of [Mufti] Al-Khalili or someone else, that even young children understand.⁵⁵

Though he appeared uncertain about the origins of contemporary Ibadhi policies regarding Islamic extremist organizations, Ayman suggests that the Ibadhi community in Zanzibar takes its queue on religious matters from authorities in Oman. In both Oman and Zanzibar, I found that the idea of school strictness and conservatism was a recurrent and translocal theme Ibadhis would draw on when making distinctions between themselves and their religious non-Ibadhi neighbors. Both terms recall how they identify as Ahl al-Haqq wa al-Istiqāma (the people of truth and righteousness), which implies a community defined by its righteousness and its avoidance of forbidden behavior, such as killing or stealing. Ayman presented the international terror networks established by the Islamic State and Boko Haram as the antithesis of Muslim values—values taught to and embodied by Ibadhi youth from Tanzania to Algeria. In this view, Ibadhi children embody righteous behavior from an early age so that by the time they are adults, they are incapable of committing grave sins. Ayman’s comments also reveal anxieties of local and international governments and human rights groups about the ongoing marginalization and surveillance of Muslim communities and organizations in coastal East Africa.

Modern Ibadhi scholars in Oman also frequently draw on the example of self-restraint in the spilling of blood as a strategy to delineate between Ibadhi tolerance and the extremist rhetoric propagated by Saudi Salafi figures like the late Sheikh Bin Baz. Scholar of religion Emily Goshey points out how this issue frequently emerges in contemporary Ibadhi discussions about sin and eternal punishment. From the point of view of Ibadhis, it is precisely the fear of punishment that prevents them from committing grave sins like murder. However, Goshey writes, “The other side of this assertion is the sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit view that Sunnis, especially Salafis, are more likely to commit major sins because of their belief that being a Muslim will save them from eternal hellfire no matter their behavior.”⁵⁶ The absence of fear for divine punishment in the Salafi religious imagination is the key factor “leading them to divide the Muslim community and commit acts of violence.”⁵⁷ The Ibadhi self-identification as pacifist has even been picked up (with some skepticism) by security analysts “documenting the global jihad,” who note that participants in online jihadist networks are confounded that “jihadis come from every country of the world except Oman,” the homeland of the Ibadhis in the Arabian Peninsula.⁵⁸ The efforts of these global jihadis to recruit Omani youth to join their ranks are in vain, despite the presence of “authoritarian rule, no civil rights, a revolutionary and misanthropic ideology, and a U.S. [military] presence.”⁵⁹ They attribute this failure to the majority of the Omani population’s strict adherence to Ibadhi Islam and the interest in Sufism among non-Ibadhis.

Outside observers use similar language of strictness when referring to Ibadhi Islam. European and Christian visitors to Oman and Zanzibar in the first half of the twentieth century frequently commented on Ibadhis’ strict adherence to Islamic traditions, describing it in their writings as a kind of “puritanism.” The use of this term was perhaps a way for those writers to convey their observations about Ibadhi practices in a manner that their European Christian audiences would understand, and this term continues to be used in scholarship. In the 1930s, W. H. Ingrams noted that Ibadhis in Zanzibar⁶⁰ were as religiously conservative as the puritanical Christian groups he encountered in Europe, but unlike them, were exceptionally tolerant toward other religious communities. In his classic history and ethnology, Zanzibar: Its History and Its People, Ingrams states,

Having lived for a year in a country of Baptists and Methodists, and for eight in a country of Ibathis [sic], would lead me to choose the Ibathis as being the most tolerant⁶¹ people in the matter of religion I have known. In almost any town in Zanzibar there are Sunnis, Ibathis, Ithnasheries, Bohoras, Memons, Khoja, Banyans, Quakers, Church of England, Roman Catholics, and Parsees. This may not be remarkable in these days when religious tolerance is insisted on, but it has been the case for years before such a state was reached. Ibathis [sic] consider others mistaken, as who does not, but they mix freely with all, and eat with even an infidel like me. They acknowledge that the one God other people worship is the same as theirs, though the method of worship is irregular. Such a thing as intolerance I cannot conceive in relation to them.⁶²

Ingrams here describes Ibadhis as the most tolerant people he had come across when it came to matters of religion, despite considering others to be mistaken in their beliefs. He pointed out that they freely interacted with individuals from different religious backgrounds and displayed an openness towards others’ religious practices.

Although other British writers of his time held a critical view toward Ibadhi Islam, and Islam in general,⁶³ Burton’s words appear remarkably progressive for his time. Through his observations of Zanzibar’s religious diversity and his portrayal of Ibadhi practice, he inadvertently managed to reconcile the seemingly contradictory concepts of puritanism and religious tolerance within the Anglo-Christian worldview. This focus on strict religious observance and a culture of hospitality is deeply ingrained in modern Ibadhism and remains a fundamental principle of the postcolonial Omani nation state and sultanate as built under the leadership of the late Sultan Qaboos. Religious institutions in Oman actively promote a nationalist narrative of political neutrality and openness towards foreigners, asserting that these values are deeply rooted in Ibadhi and Omani society and culture, as observed by writers like Ingrams.

Another often-cited example of the Ibadhi rulers’ tolerance is their practice of appointing advisors and aides from various religious backgrounds, as well as religious authorities of Comorian and Yemeni descent. Indeed, though he alone among the Busaidi sultans in Zanzibar bore the title of imam of Muscat and Zanzibar, Sayyid Said bin Sultan did not establish an imamate there, apparently opting for the more secular identification of sultan, a title also held by his successor sons. Scholar of Islam B. G. Martin comments on the relationships among key figures and groups within “learned classes of Zanzibar and East Africa,” stating, “In matters of religion, closely associated with politics in Zanzibar as in any Islamic state, there is a maximum tolerance⁶⁴ of the Sunni Shāfiʻīs by the Ibāḍī rulers. This was reflected in the good relations between Ibāḍī and Shāfiʻī jurists and religious personnel, all of whom appeared on the same footing in the daily or weekly barazas (levées) of the Sayyids of Zanzibar.”⁶⁵ He continues to say that Shafiʻis formed the scholarly (ulama) “class,” which he refers to as the “flywheel” of the Busaidi state in Zanzibar.⁶⁶

Historians Anne Bang and Vikør Knut further support this view of the scholars’ central role in the state bureaucracy, citing numerous court cases demonstrating the ways in which sultan-appointed Ibadhi and Shafiʻi judges (qadis) would consult each other’s texts and opinions on matters of Islamic law.⁶⁷ Anthropologist John Middleton, however, offered a more critical view of this relationship, claiming that the Shafiʿi judges viewed their Ibadhi colleagues with ambivalence due to their “strictness and exclusiveness as well as for holding much of the Shafiʻi behavior as unorthodox, although in fact the Ibadhi sultans showed great tolerance.”⁶⁸ Middleton noted though, that Ibadhis were not interested in spreading their beliefs, as their unique religious identity enabled them to maintain local perceptions of Omani exclusivism and social and political superiority.⁶⁹

Components of Ibadhi Fiqh and Ritual Practice

Ibadhis in Zanzibar are keen to emphasize their proximity to mainstream Shafiʻi Islam and insist that any discussion of identity distinguish between the religious fundamentals agreed on by all Muslims. Ayman explained,

But on a basic level, they [the followers of the madhab] have no difference . . . people agree on the five prayers, they agree that God is one. They do not differ on the religious basics; they differ in the branches, to close the hands, not to close the hands, things that are not the basics of religion. We say Amen, they do not say Amen, it is something that is not the basics of religion and madhabs differ from each other within the branches. They do not differ in the basics. In the basics of religion, all agree, everyone is on equal footing (sawa sawa). The prayers are five, they fast for the whole of Ramadan, there is Hajj, all [of the basics] they agree on, they differ in many things that we call branches.⁷⁰

While Ayman does not explicitly state that followers of other madhabs are correct in their interpretations of Islam, he appears to suggest that the five pillars are what enable mutual tolerance among them. The five pillars begin with the Shahada, or the proclamation of faith. Embedded within this core statement, which marks a Muslim’s lifecycle from birth to death and serves as a basis for conversion to Islam, is the idea of monotheism, or the oneness of God (tawhid). The second pillar consists of the five daily prayers (salat), performed by Muslims at dawn (fajr), at midday (dhuhr), in the afternoon (‘asr), at sunset (maghrib), and before bed (ʻisha). Each prayer is made up of a prescribed number of prayer cycles (rakaʻas), and, from Ayman’s point of view, the only real differences among the schools concern minor details like the positioning of the hands; the utterance, or lack thereof, of emphatics; and the use of closing statements like “amen” during the ritual. Almsgiving (zakat) and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan make up the third and fourth pillars. The fifth pillar is the hajj pilgrimage to the Ka’ba in Mecca, which all able-bodied and financially capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lifetimes.

Mosque-goers in Tanzania typically identify Ibadhis by their Arab ancestry and ritual practices. Like the Sunni women who approached Mariam, almost all my Ibadhi and non-Ibadhi interlocutors would focus on where Ibadhis placed their hands when performing the daily prayers. Like Shi‘a Muslims and followers of the Maliki madhab, which is the predominant Sunni school of law in West Africa and the Maghreb, Ibadhis leave their hands at their sides when praying. This differs from other Sunni groups that make up most Muslims in East Africa, South Arabia, and the Indian subcontinent, who cross their hands at the navel or chest during the rakaʻas.

In addition to his administrative responsibilities at Madrasat al-Noor, Ibrahim is also a Sunni imam at the affiliated Jibreel Mosque in the Ukutani neighborhood of Stone Town. He is a follower of the Shafiʻi Sunni and Afro-Yemeni heritage, and his ancestors migrated to the east coast of Africa from the region of Hadramout in southern Arabia. Ibrahim was a student of a legendary community of scholars affiliated with the Baraza Mosque in Zanzibar, founded by a scholar from the northern island of Lamu (now part of Kenya) named Sheikh Abd Allah bin Ba Kathir Al-Kindy. Ba Kathir was a student of the nineteenth-century Zanzibari scholar and teacher from Hadramawt, Sheikh Ahmad bin Sumayt, who is credited with driving the development of Islamic education in Zanzibar during the sultanate era and early colonial period. The builder of the Jibreel Mosque was a benefactor from Abu Dhabi who, on viewing the conditions of the neighboring school, provided funding for its renovation.⁷¹ The school and mosque community in Ukutani are not like Istiqaama part of a unified network of Shafiʻi institutions that maintains ties to the religious institutions in the Gulf. Therefore, they concentrate their work in Stone Town and depend on the intermittent contributions of the local community and international sponsors.

Like his Ibadhi counterpart, Ibrahim cited prayer as a key distinguishing factor between Ibadhis and Sunnis:

Eh, for example. In prayer. They [the Ibadhis] do not close their hands . . . . They do not pronounce “Amen” after finishing the recitation of the Opening Prayer [the Fātiha]. And if they give salaams, they give one salaam; these are the Ibadhis. Sunnis or Shafiʻi Muslims close their hands; they pronounce “Amen,” and they give both salaams. Now we say these things are branches.⁷² Concerning prayer, whether it be the noon prayer or the Asr prayer, they do not differ on this. What they differ on is inside the prayer itself. Whether to close the hands or leave them.

Another example of this “strictness,” which Ibadhis often cite, concerns extramarital affairs. Different from the Sunni schools of law, according to Ayman, “If a man commits adultery with a woman, it is not suitable for him to marry her. It is haram.”⁷³ This statement is consistent with the prevailing Ibadhi legal opinion prohibiting marriage between a man and woman after they have had sexual intercourse.⁷⁴ Much earlier, W. H. Ingrams heard about this and other practices, comparing Ibadhi and Sunni traditions from another “Arab gentleman, learned in the Sheria.”⁷⁵ Ibadhis also reject the practice upheld by Shi‘a Muslims that recognizes temporary (mut’a) marriage.

Eventually, my discussion with Ayman turned to matters of Ibadhi creed (ʻaqīda, iʻtiqād) and a famous debate that circulated in Muslim theological circles concerning the createdness of the Qur’an beginning in the eighth century. The debate might be summarized by Richard C. Martin in the following statement: “The controversy was over the claim of some dialectical theologians (mutakkalimūn) that the Qur’an, which is known to humans in its oral and written forms, was created (makhlūq) by God.”⁷⁶ This claim, upheld by modern Ibadhis, is the position generally associated with the Mu’tazilite theological school of Islam. Ayman, however, says “another issue that is not a big thing is—whether the Qur’an was created (imeumbwa) or whether it was uncreated (haikumbwi). We say that the Qur’an was created; they say no, the Quran was not created. This is a small issue that is not a fundamental thing. It is not a big deal.”⁷⁷

Mufti al-Khalili explains and defends this position in Al-Haqq al-Damigh. Here he argues that the early Muslim community had reached a “consensus on the point that Allah is the Creator of everything, and that whatever is other than Him is created, and the Qur’an—like other revealed Books—is Allah’s speech, His Revelation and sending down.”⁷⁸ While North African Ibadhis continue to maintain this position, Al-Khalili suggests that earlier scholars of Oman created confusion and doubt on the issue, leading to a longstanding and (in his view) erroneous belief in the country that the Qur’an is uncreated.⁷⁹ The Ibadhi positions on both the ru’ya and the createdness/uncreatedness of the Qur’an are remnants of the madhab’s earlier affinities to Muʾtazili—or so-called rationalist, theological doctrines that are in opposition to more mainstream Shafiʿi-Ashari traditions followed by Sunni Muslims in Tanzania. Modern Ibadhis are more concerned with emphasizing their similarities to Shafi‘i traditions and view these age-old theological debates as the domain of the ‘ulama’; they maintain the debate has little bearing on how they conduct their day-to-day lives and hold that all will be resolved by Allah on the Day of Resurrection.⁸⁰ As Mariam’s experience in the mosque in Abu Dhabi reveals, however, Ibadhi scholarly opinion does trickle down to the wider Muslim public and is sometimes used to discredit Ibadhis as “false” Muslims and heretics. Moreover, by relegating theological concerns to the scholarly establishment, we miss the very real ways in which these concepts impact the formation of distinctive communal identities like Ibadhism—including their ritual practices, styles of dress, and other observable differences. A focus on the lived experiences of Ibadhi Muslims also provides an alternative perspective on the madhab from the ideological writings of modern Ibadhi scholars and the heresiography of non-Ibadhi writers bent on discrediting the them.⁸¹

Indeed, Ayman’s explanation of creedal differences between Ibadhis and non-Ibadhi Muslims sounded like a summary of Al-Khalili’s manual, which addresses another issue he raised concerning intercession (Ar., shafāʽa): “What is the meaning of shafāʽa? It is that, as a Muslim person, you will reach the afterlife even if you commit a big rebellion (Sw., maasi makubwa). That does not exist for us. This is indeed a fundamental issue.”

Sunni Islamic traditions hold that the prophet Muhammad has the power to intercede on behalf of the ummah on Judgment Day. According to Christian Lang, some classical Muslim scholars, like al-Ghazālī, claim that this salvific power to absolve Muslims of their sins so that they may reach paradise and avoid hell extends “to all the truthful (ṣiddiqūn), learned (ʻulāmā̕) and pious (ṣaliḥūn), [al-Ghazālī, 1:12].”⁸² Although piecemeal, this perspective on the issue of intercession again suggests that those seeking salvation must exhibit an uncompromising moral rectitude.

Also, on the matter of the afterlife, he explains the controversial Ibadhi position on the ru’ya that upset Mariam in the opening anecdote of this chapter. “They [other Muslims] say that God can be seen, and we say that God cannot be seen.”⁸³ On the issue of predestination (al-qaḍāʾ wa l-qadar), or whether a person’s fate is predetermined by God, Ayman declared, “That is up to God. He knows what is about to happen, but he lets you choose the dangerous path.”⁸⁴

He ended our discussion over Ibadhi doctrine by insisting that these points of contention were important in the first centuries of Islam but today hold little import in Muslims’ everyday interactions. He also emphasized that these matters were secondary to the fundamentals of the faith:⁸⁵ “So, these are the issues of creed, politics, and fight. There are not many; they are very few. Whether [they be] issues of creed or politics, before the start of our madrasas, people were unaware, so after the existence of the madrasas, people understood, and we have institutions and madrasas at the secondary level. Those who graduate are like teachers. They are like imams of the mosques. They educate them in worship.”⁸⁶

The Ibadhi leadership that oversees Istiqaama in Oman and Tanzania identified a need to develop schools that would educate their communities on these differences and unify the Ibadhi transregional community around a shared set of Islamic discourses and practices. This was an attempt to raise awareness in Ibadhi youth about their ancestral religious identity and equip them to explain and defend the madhab in the face of outside criticisms. However, as Mariam’s emotional reaction to her detractors also shows, the thirst for knowledge among Ibadhi youth is not just a matter of learning how to hold one’s own in intra-Muslim theological or legal debates.

In addition, Ibadhi youth find their faith in the positions of their madhab tested when those positions appear to contradict majority views about what it takes to achieve absolution (e.g., by interfacing with Allah on Judgment Day). The Istiqaama madrasas thus serve as both the first line of defense against claims of Ibadhi unorthodoxy or ritual innovation from outsider critics and a space in which Ibadhi ideas about salvation and ritual practice are acceptable, if not the norm.⁸⁷ As Ayman pointed out, the graduates of these schools, namely the K–12 Istiqaama Institute in Zanzibar, are the drivers of this educational movement. Many of these youth receive appointments to teach or serve as imams at schools and mosques registered with Istiqaama across the country—narrowing the distance between rural and urban Ibadhi life and Ibadhi communities on the islands and the mainland. This growing transregional cohesiveness of Ibadhi Islam across East Africa and under Istiqaama stands in contrast to the prerevolutionary and sultanate-era reality, where Unguja Island in Zanzibar was the main center of Islamic learning in the region.

Intra-Muslim Religious and Racial Identity

Regardless of their madhab affiliation, Muslim leaders in Zanzibar often characterize the revolution of 1964 as a watershed moment that precipitated the decline of Islamic education in East Africa and the estrangement of the island’s many Muslim communities from each other. However, as Bang notes, such decline narratives were already palpable in learned circles on the islands following the deaths of the scions of the Hadrami Shafiʻi and Alawi Sufi traditions, the sheikhs and intellectual companions Ahmad bin Sumayt and Ba Kathir.⁸⁸ Prior to the revolution, my interlocutor Ibrahim insisted, Islamic institutions were strong and Ibadhis and Shafiʻis would often study and worship, blurring the lines between the two madhabs. In his view, it is only in these two groups’ relations to Zanzibar’s various Shiʻa communities that sectarian differences become discernible.

There was no sense of identity that these people are Ibadhis, and these others are Shafiʿis. Except for the Shi’a, only them, because they have their distinctive mosques. They build housing complexes (majumba) which have an area for the mosque and place for their other things, [this space was] only for them. As for the Ibadhi and the Shafiʿi mosques, the mosques of those guys are not different [they are open]. They have the shape of a mosque, but for the Shi’a their mosques are in a section inside the big housing complexes. In our mosques there is a qibla,⁸⁹ [but in their mosques] it is only visible to their people, like the Mabohora, there are Ismaʿilis, they have all been in Zanzibar for a long time. And they were not fighting, nor did they argue with each other, each one doing what he wants. You do not see differences between the Ibadhis and the Shafiʻis. You don’t see differences. Except for the Shi’as like the Bohoras because they are from the beginning people of a certain tribe, meaning they are Indians, we say wahindi. So, the Shi’a historically were Indians only and the Bohoras were Indians only and the Ismaʿilis were only Indians.⁹⁰

Ibrahim’s familiarity with the doctrinal diversity within the Shi‘a community in Stone Town is a reflection both of his exceptional knowledge of Muslim traditions and a long history of living next door, or around the corner, from Twelver Shi‘a, Bohora Ismaʿilis, and Nizari Ismaʿilis. More than their theological differences and distinctive leaderships, this Sunni perspective suggests that what most distinguishes Shi‘a communities in Zanzibar is the scale of their communal properties, their exclusivism and concealment from outsiders, and their undifferentiated racial identity as “Indians.” The 1860s saw the fragmentation into three main Muslim identities (Ismaʿili, Twelver Shiʿa, and Sunni) of the Khoja caste of South Asian to which many “Indian” Muslims in Zanzibar belong. Scholar of religion Iqbal Akhtar explains that “it was through the prism of caste that race entered Khoja collective consciousness in the context of imperial Zanzibar, drawing on Indic attitudes toward particular phenotypes.”⁹¹ The colonial government in Zanzibar later reified these preexisting racial attitudes, distinguishing between and imposing a clear hierarchy among Arabs, Indians, Comorians, and Africans. Like the conflation of Ibadhi and Omani identities, there developed a conflation between Shi‘a Islam (in all its manifestations) and Indian or South Asian identity.

The “Indian” community complexes mentioned are similar to the caste hall (mahanjhanavadi) described by Akhtar, which “shared a profession (merchantry), and had caste-specific religious traditions that were observed in a communal manner in the caste hall.”⁹² Muslim minorities have faced persecution (Ibadhis included), and a means of maintaining the strict caste and racial hierarchies Akhtar mentions. Modern Ibadhis and Shiʿa Muslims struggle with a similar problem of preserving and maintaining the social status and traditions of their communities through seclusion and being more inclusive to better integrate and avoid suspicion from the broader, predominantly African, Zanzibari society. This question is more pressing for the South Asian Shiʽa communities in both Zanzibar and Oman who have not had the same degree of rapprochement and intermarriage with the mainstream Shafiʻi as have the Ibadhis.⁹³

Speaking from an Ibadhi point of view, Ayman also felt that such differences between the madhabs should not affect the day-to-day interactions between Muslims of different schools. He said,

You know there is no question . . . there is no one who raises the questions of madhabs, people are used to it, for centuries, Zanzibar is famous for it. It is a country in which people live mixed. It is not a surprising thing. It is not a thing that confuses people. Our neighbors live together, there are Christians, they live together, Shiʻas, we live with them, Indian Bohoras, we live with them. Thus, in society, we are used to the mix. In Stone Town there are Indian Muslims and non-Muslims, but they come to the farm, eat at home, and if he wants charity, they give him. So, in all, Muslims can live together with other communities without any fight (Ar., s.irāʻ) occurring. If such a thing happens, it is because people from outside intended it. [They create] strings of stratification. Whereas here on Unguja [island], people live together. And this is reflected in the beginning of the history of Zanzibar. So, there is no instance of arguing over the madhabs, except, when something specific happens to a person . . . say if a person’s livelihood is under attack. [Then] our rule is to talk it out until we rejoice (mpaka tushangulie). Sure, we have our [own] books but we also consider the issues raised by other madhabs.⁹⁴

The idea of a quintessential Zanzibari cosmopolitanism that defines and derives its definition from its religious and cultural pluralism is recurrent in East African and Indian Ocean Studies, and it has all the trappings of the “nostalgia for a more tolerant past” once defined by the accomplishments of an enlightened class of scholarly, merchant, and landowning elites.⁹⁵ In Zanzibar, these elite were particularly characterized by the cosmopolitan Yemeni and Omani Arabs who were the primary purveyors of Islamic textual knowledge on the islands in the prerevolutionary period. In Ayman’s view, this cosmopolitan legacy endures in a local Islamic logic and ethic of hospitality that encourages interfaith dialogue and community-based conflict resolution. The only threat to the religious pluralism on the island is radical interference by outsiders.

Indeed, this perception is consistent with much of the scholarship written by the Omani diaspora about the Zanzibar Revolution, which some prefer to characterize as an invasion (Ar., ghazū), or coup (Ar., inqilāb), orchestrated by African outsiders from the mainland intent on disrupting the peaceful coexistence that marked island life for centuries. Moreover, many Muslims in Zanzibar who are uncomfortable with the growing influence and religious conservativism of radical reformist groups such as the Ansar Sunna⁹⁶ or Uamsho⁹⁷ often cast these movements and their leaderships as recently arrived outsiders (Sw., wageni). They fear that these groups—some of whom maintain ties to authorities and institutions in centers of Islamic learning, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, among others—threaten to disrupt the culture of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence between the various Muslim and non-Muslim groups on the island.

Zayd was keen to emphasize the efforts of the Ahl al-Bayt community in promoting unity among the various religious groups in Zanzibar.⁹⁸ Public celebrations of various Muslim holidays, like the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (mawlid) or Hussein Day, drew over three hundred guests “from different communities” on November 6, 2018, during the holy month of Muharram. The group’s Facebook page, like Zayd’s offices, displays invitations and photos of the events on the Kiponda school grounds. In the photos the foundation’s leadership stand side-by-side with their counterparts from other Muslim communities in Stone Town. The main guest of the 2020 Mawlid celebration was the Mufti of Zanzibar, Sheikh Saleh al-Kaabi. Zayd explained that “the Ahlul Bayt Foundation’s (ABF) activities are there to unite the Muslim ummah, to unite the people of Zanzibar. Because most people are Muslim here, almost 98% people are Muslim. So, one of the objectives of the . . . Foundation is to maintain unity in the island. So, when we call any program, we call the peoples, all the people whether they are Sunni or Ibadhi, we call [out] to everybody. We call every person.”⁹⁹

The work of the foundation that Zayd describes is a kind of daʽwa, or Islamic outreach. Daʽwa often involves discursive practices, such as public celebration of saints’ birthdays, as a call to Muslims to deepen their faith and an invitation to religious outsiders to learn about and interact with Islamic traditions in the low-pressure environment of the festival. Shared local traditions of drumming or praise poetry may imbue these festivals, thus affirming the possibility of difference within unity that Ayman suggested is the core of Zanzibar’s unique cosmopolitanism. Through these da‘wa initiatives put on by local charities and NGOs, Muslim minorities also find new public spaces to engage in rapprochement with other Muslim groups in Zanzibar without compromising the privacy they enjoy in their daily practice.

Ibadhi Religious (In)Tolerance under Sultanate Rule

Scholars and residents of Zanzibar alike often remark that though Ibadhi sultans ruled Zanzibar from the 1830s to the 1960s, this did not lead to mass conversions to the Ibadhi madhab. They agree that most Omanis who settled in East Africa focused their attention on political rule (Sw., utawala) and trade and relegated religious practice to the private sphere.¹⁰⁰ Historian Randall L. Pouwels characterizes the rule of Sayyid Said and his descendants as (save Barghash in a few instances) “noteworthy for their religious liberalism” and disinterest in imposing an Ibadhi worldview of the island’s diverse religious population.¹⁰¹ The reformist Sultan Barghash (d. 1888), who died just two years before Zanzibar succumbed to British protectorate rule, recurs in writings on sultanate-era Zanzibar as a patron of the literary arts and scholarship. Perhaps his biggest achievement was the introduction of a printing press that enabled the unprecedented dissemination of works by Muslim scholars, especially Ibadhi notables from Zanzibar, Oman, and Algeria who wrote extensively on Ibadhi law and against European occupation of Muslim lands.

Though Omani elites in Zanzibar did not appear to promote their madhab, they did express discomfort in the conversion of Ibadhis to other schools of thought. Indeed, an oft-cited example of the limits of Sultan Barghash’s tolerance was his imprisonment of scholars who did not do his bidding, especially those prominent Ibadhi figures who converted to Shafiʻi Islam. For example, Pouwels describes Barghash’s imprisonment of Ali bin Abdullah al-Mazrui of Mombasa, who fled the port city of Mombasa (Kenya) with his father in 1837 after its seizure by Sayyid Said. The Mazrui clan of Oman, who ruled much of the East African coast prior to the ascension of the Busaidi dynasty in the region, initially resisted Busaidi rule of Mombasa. However, Ali al-Mazrui eventually returned to Mombasa and served as a qadi under the rule of Sultan Majid bin Saʾid (r. 1856–1870). Originally Ibadhi, Ali came to vehemently defend and teach Shafiʻi works in his own writings and study groups he established in Mombasa and Pemba, which inspired other Ibadhis to change their religious orientation to Shafiʻi Islam. Because of his defiance, Ali remained in prison until Barghash’s death.¹⁰²

I would argue that this shift from an Ibadhi to a Shafiʻi orientation during the sultanate period happened on a larger scale in Mombasa and other areas of Mazrui influence than it did in Zanzibar and among the more influential Omani tribal groupings there. This perhaps explains why Zanzibar became the center of Ibadhi reform in East Africa through the Istiqaama schools first established there in the mid-1990s. According to Ibrahim, the Omani diaspora’s lack of interest in spreading the Ibadhi madhab created opportunities for other Muslim groups—mainly the Yemenis of Hadramawt or Comorians of Yemeni descent—to assume the responsibility of forming study circles and teaching Islam locally. Indeed, scholars have written extensively on the role of the Hadrami diaspora and the ‘Alawiyya and other Sufi orders in the spread of Islam on the coast and into the interior regions of the mainland and the adoption of Shafiʻism as the dominant madhab in East Africa.¹⁰³

Religious Tolerance in Contemporary Ibadhi Discourse

The term tasāmuḥ is a cornerstone of late-twentieth-century Ibadhi thought as it developed under the leadership of the Ibadhi scholars and institutions cultivated in the modern Omani state founded by Sultan Qaboos. Like his predecessors in Oman and Zanzibar, Qaboos, who we might characterize as a benevolent authoritarian who managed to unify and rule over a previously sharply divided Omani population for a period of fifty years, was also Ibadhi. Nevertheless, he took an inclusive position on religious diversity and had the government treasury fund non-Ibadhi houses of worship and religious institutions. He further gifted the Jāmi‘ī Zinjibār (see Introduction) to the government and people of Zanzibar. Oman’s Ibadhi heritage is thus detectable only in subtle ways, for example, in the appointment of an Ibadhi cleric, Al-Khalili, as the country’s Grand Mufti, and in the publications of the country’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs (MARA or MERA), which invests heavily in the preservation and print of Ibadhi religious and legal tracts.

The question of religious conversion arises, almost without fail, in all my presentations on Ibadhi education and the schools and charities, like those run by Istiqaama that receive support from Gulf-based donors in Zanzibar and Tanzania. The assumption often being that the African communities benefiting from and contributing to such religious institutions are not already Muslim or that they practice a different kind of Islam not quite commensurate with the strict observances of their counterparts in the Arabic-speaking world. What I found in my time spent researching Ibadhi institutions in Zanzibar and Tanzania is that there is a strong correlation between the imagined history of Ibadhi tolerance in the region and the community’s aversion to conversion in its common characterization as the act of leaving one religious tradition to adopt another. Representing Istiqaama, Ayman said, “For us, even if he [another Muslim] stays in his, we do not force him (hatumlazimishi). So, our approach was not to enter society directly. [Rather] we [focused] on preserving our people.”¹⁰⁴

He went on to explain that people are also free to read the books on Ibadhism available at the mosques and reiterated that the differences between Ibadhis and other schools are too few to “bring about any sensitivity (Sw., hasasiyya) in society.” The first objective of the Istiqaama Muslim Society in Tanzania and Zanzibar was to “preserve” Ibadhi and Omani traditions and train a cadre of young teachers and imams to transmit these traditions and engage in daʽwa to other communities by establishing schools around the country. Through these efforts, the Istiqaama community can revive local Ibadhi consciousness and attract others through mosque outreach in the form of print, sermons, radio shows, social media, and various charitable initiatives described in the chapters that follow.

During our conversation in Kiponda, Zayd insisted that the aim of the Ahl al-Bayt Shiʽa school was to educate and serve as a resource for those seeking knowledge about Islam and that the religious orientation of students was a secondary concern. He insisted that “we teach the people, and they decide. We cannot force them . . . You cannot force anybody to change their religion. No. They learn and understand if they have any type of doubt they ask. Then they themselves they change.”¹⁰⁵

It often struck me how my conversations with Muslim authorities in Zanzibar about conversion would often result in a defensive reaction aimed at dispelling any idea I might have that the mosques and schools under their care sought to “force,” “coerce,” or “compel” (Sw., kulazimisha) others to adopt their own beliefs. Others would recite the first part of verse 256 of “The Cow” (Al-Baqarah) chapter of the Qur’an, which states la ikrāha fi al-dīn or “There is no compulsion in religion”¹⁰⁶ as a demonstration of the religious pluralism inherent in local Islamic teachings. I came to view these responses as my interlocutors’ preemptive denunciation of any insinuation of religion-based violence in their communities or of an attempt to brainwash students and mosque-goers to adopt a particular interpretation of Islam.

Such responses are not surprising in a postcolonial and post-September 11th world, in which coastal Muslim groups in East Africa find themselves under the rule of Christian majority political leadership and under constant surveillance and harassment by secular government authorities. Moreover, in Tanzania, the government has a history of using Islamophobic rhetoric and threats of jihadist violence by groups like Al-Shabaab as a strategy for maintaining its grip on island politics. Moreover, the finances, sermons, and school curricula of transnational charitable societies and NGOs with ties to the Middle East in Africa are the target of scrutiny by local and foreign intelligence agencies concerned with the spread of extremist ideologies. Compounding the general sense of marginalization shared with other Muslim groups, relatively well-financed ethnic and religious minority institutions in East Africa, such as Ibadhis and the various Shiʽa groups, may face suspicion as exclusivist cultural “outsiders” with covert loyalties to religious authorities and governments in their ancestral homelands.

The Ibadhi Madhab as One Path among Many

To demonstrate the point of the Ibadhi being one path among many, Ibrahim shared an anecdote involving Mufti al-Khalili and his delegation when they came to Tanzania in the 1980s. The mufti and his delegation insisted that Ibadhis resume the obligatory Friday prayer, a practice long neglected by many who remained under the impression that the performance of the congregational prayers was impermissible in the absence of a just Ibadhi imam (Sw., mwimamu mwadilifu). As if addressing one of his students at Madrasat al-Noor, Ibrahim gently explained:

I would like you to know simply that these madhabs are a way to reach God [repeated]. Even when the Mufti of Oman came to Zanzibar, I remember in the Friday Mosque, he gave a lecture in the Friday Mosque, the Friday Mosque is Shafiʿī. [You see] at that time, there were no big [Ibadhi] mosques. So, they used the Friday Mosque for the Mufti of Oman. And there was no problem because people [sometimes] did that. And after the discussion he was asked a question by one of the Ibadhis: “Is it ok for me to follow a person who prays in the Shafiʿī way, who recites the qunūt?¹⁰⁷ Am I able to follow him?” So, the Mufti gave an example. He said: “all coconuts grow on the same coconut tree.” [Meaning] On a coconut tree, there are many coconuts. As for the climbers [of the tree], one uses a rope, other climbs without a rope but they all have the same goal: to reach the top.¹⁰⁸

The popular name for the sea-facing Friday Mosque where this public teaching moment occurred is the Forodhani Mosque located behind the Old Customs house at the Zanzibar harbor. The invitation for Al-Khalili to address a mixed congregation of Muslims from the pulpit of a legendary Sunni mosque affirmed the fluidity with which religious authority and knowledge flows between the different Muslim schools on the island. However, what this visit and public address by a top Omani state official also symbolizes is a turning point in diplomatic relations between Zanzibar and Oman since an extended period of estrangement following the Zanzibar Revolution.

The anecdote shared by Ibrahim suggests that the mufti appealed to his mixed Muslim audience in Zanzibar by addressing them in their shared native tongue of Swahili and using a metaphor and idiom appropriate for an island shaded by coconut trees that were once also a symbol of local prosperity. The Ibadhi man at the mosque who publicly addressed the mufti about the permissiveness of following the leadership of other Muslim groups further indicates that there were divisions in the Ibadhi community on the question of ritual authority, an issue that I will explore in the next chapter and links the rise of the Istiqaama society to the Mufti’s visit. By ending the interview with this anecdote, Ibrahim drove home the Islamic idea of the oneness of God affirmed by Ayman and Zayd, and the notion that in its variant ritual and doctrinal expressions there is just one path among many to reach this realization.

Conclusion

Drawing primarily from the experience of three representatives from different Muslim communities in Zanzibar, and colonial and postcolonial scholarship about Ibadhis, this chapter has explored the social construction of modern Ibadhi identities in Tanzania. My intention was not to recount historical events and phenomena, as I feel the facts (often a matter of debate) are less significant than from whom or what in the past Ibadhis drew authority in the present. So, while there have been many instances of dynastic succession within the imamate and sultanate that challenge the idea of Ibadhi inclusivity in leadership, it remains important for an Ibadhi in Zanzibar today to demonstrate the non-Arab and, particularly, the claimed African heritage of one the earliest imams Abu ‘Ubayda. In the examples provided above, I have explained how Ibadhis and their neighbors in Zanzibar understand identity and intra-Muslim relations in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This period beginning in the late 1980s is significant because it represented a growth of neoliberal market conditions and forced the hand of former socialist states to loosen their control over local economies, enabling the privatization of education. This in turn inspired the creation of new minority-driven FBOS and NGOs, like Istiqaama and Ahlul Bayt.

My interviews in Zanzibar showed that leaders of Muslim organizations, mosques, and schools in Tanzania tend to downplay differences like the technicalities of ritual practice between the madhabs as matters of secondary importance to religion. Instead, they emphasize what they perceive as their shared roots and the unity of Muslims around religious principles and practices, like the five pillars of Islam. My interlocutors insisted, particularly, on religious pluralism and a culture of intra-Muslim hospitality as defining features of life in Zanzibar—long celebrated as a crossroads of African, Indian Ocean, European societies and a haven of nonsectarian rule. The Mawlid and Hussein Day celebrations described by Zayd are telling examples of how Muslim leaders in Zanzibar today imagine this hospitality and the practice of reaching out (performing daʿwa) within and beyond their own madhab. For Ibadhis in Zanzibar, the queues for this friendly engagement with Sunni and Shiʻa Muslims comes primarily from Oman and the personality of the Grand Mufti. Since his first public appearance at a major mosque in Zanzibar in the 1980s, the mufti has been a frequent visitor to the islands and advocate of the work of Istiqaama, the central concern of the following chapter.

The opening encounter between Mariam, her sisters, and their detractors at the neighborhood mosque in Abu Dhabi reveals the stakes of knowledge transmission within modern Ibadhi communities in East Africa and the Gulf that frequently find themselves the target of critique. The incident also reveals the persistence of centuries-old debates on theology and religious practice continue to affect ordinary Muslims’ sense of who is an insider and who is an outsider of the global Muslim ummah. As Hoffman suggests, knowing the contours of these “obscure and subsidiary issues” and the position of one’s madhab on them, is a matter of great urgency for Ibadhis and (I would argue) some Shi‘a communities, like the Ismaʿilis, who historically showed little interest or found it imprudent to educate the larger Muslim public on their beliefs due to their precarious status as numerical, ethnic, and ideological minorities.¹⁰⁹

Notes

1. 1. Mariam (young Ibadhi woman and interlocutor), interview with author, Arusha, Tanzania, March 29, 2016.
2. 2. This is in reference to the grand mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, Sheikh Aḥmad bin Ḥamad al-Khalili, who is the country’s supreme interpreter of Islamic law. The mufti is also the world’s most high-profile Ibadhi scholar.
3. 3. The Shahādah states that “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
4. 4. Mariam, interview with author, March 29, 2016.
5. 5. Ibid.
6. 6. Ibid.
7. 7. Dale F. Eickelman, “Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Societies,” American Ethnologist 19, no. 4 (1992): 648.
8. 8. Eickelman, “Mass Higher Education,” 648.
9. 9. Shaykh Ahmad b. Hamad al-Khalili, The Overwhelming Truth: A Discussion of Some Key Concepts in Islamic Theology (Ruwi, Sultanate of Oman: Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, 2002).
10. 10. For an interesting discussion on sectarianism in Islam and how sectarian identities tend to wax and wane, see: Adam R. Gaiser, Sectarianism in Islam: The Umma Divided (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
11. 11. Abdul Hamid M. el Zein, The Sacred Meadows: A Structural Analysis of Religious Symbolism in an East African Town (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), xix.
12. 12. Important critiques and questions have been raised in recent decades about how well Islam fits in the category of religion that scholars have convincingly showed was the brainchild of the European Enlightenment and its proponents among Protestant missionaries and European colonial governments. While I recognize these problematic origins of the term religion, I use it here as a general way of referring to a community of monotheistic believers who follow the prophecy of Muhammad ibn Abdullah (570–632). For critical perspectives on religion as a Western construct and the colonial origins of the term world religions, please read David Chidester, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); Daniel Dubuisson and William Sayers, trans., The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). See also Shahab Ahmed’s discussion regarding the problems of directly translating the Arabic term “dīn” with the English term and concept “religion”: Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 194–95.
13. 13. Stuart Hall. “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?” In Questions of Cultural Identity, 1–17 (Los Angeles: Sage, 2011), 2–4.
14. 14. For a discussion on the relationship between discourse and force in the study of religion, see Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
15. 15. Lincoln, Discourse, 3 and 9.
16. 16. Janet McIntosh. The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast. Duke University Press, 2009.
17. 17. Ahmed Al-Ismaili, “Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Pluralism in Oman: The Link with Political Stability,” Al-Muntaqa 1, no. 3 (December 2018): 58–73.
18. 18. Hussein Ghubbash and Sue Lees, Oman—The Islamic Democratic Tradition (London: Taylor and Francis Group, 2006), 33.
19. 19. Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016), 93.
20. 20. However, as Iqbal Akhtar points out, members of the South Asian Khōja community in Dar es Salaam refer to themselves as “Asian as opposed to Indian,” due to the politicization of the term Indian in recent times. See Iqbal Akhtar, “Negotiating the Racial Boundaries of Khōjā Caste Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial Zanzibar (1878–1899),” Journal of Africana Religions 2, no. 3 (2014): 298.
21. 21. Hussein Day, also known as Ashura, is a significant day for Shia Muslims that marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD.
22. 22. His emphasis.
23. 23. Zayd’s characterization of Ismailis is a misnomer on two levels. First, the usual term that Muslims and non-Muslims use to distinguish Ismaili Muslims from Ithna ‘Ashara, or Twelver Shiʻa, is sevener, not sixer. This, they say, is because Ismailis hold that, following the death of the sixth Shiʻa imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, the seventh imam, his successor, went into occultation and planned to return to guide the community when it was safe to reveal his identity. For the Ithna ‘Ashara, it is the twelfth imam who went into hiding. Nevertheless, the term sevener is considered inaccurate and even offensive. Moreover, most Ismailis today claim that the Aga Khan is the direct descendant of an unbroken chain of imams going back to the seventh.
24. 24. Adam R. Gaiser, “Khārijīs,” in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Devin J. Stewart (Leiden: Brill, 2020), accessed March 15, 2024. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/*-COM_35487.
25. 25. Ibadhis later preserved this phrase and recited it three times when electing an imam to lead their community (Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition, 149). The phrase also appeared on early Ibadhi coins found in the 1970s in the interior of Oman, where the imamate was based, which suggests an attempt by Ibadhis to distinguish themselves as a morally superior Islamic sect in the manner of the Kharijites, though they continued to emphasize their pacifism and religious tolerance (Gaiser, “Khārijīs,” 185).
26. 26. For more on early Ibadhi and Kharijite history, see Adam Gaiser’s rich discussion on Ibadhi understandings of martyrdom and asceticism; Adam R. Gaiser, Shurāt Legends, Ibāḍī Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism, and the Making of an Early Islamic Community (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2016).
27. 27. Adam R. Gaiser, “Khārijīs.”
28. 28. John C. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 150.
29. 29. Gaiser points out, however, that bias against Kharijites in Islamic sources makes it difficult to conjure an accurate representation of their notions of leadership. See Gaiser, “Khārijīs.”
30. 30. Valerie J. Hoffman, “Ibadism: History, Doctrines, and Recent Scholarship,” Religion Compass 9, no. 9 (2015): 173.
31. 31. B. Wheeler and V. Hoffman, “Oman: Country Overview,” in Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices, 2nd ed. (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2015), 172–78, accessed March 15, 2024, https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NDQ3OTIyOQ==?aid=107358.
32. 32. For more on this comparison between the Ibadhi conceptualization of shura and modern democratic institutions, see Ghubbash and Lees, Oman.
33. 33. Hoffman, “Ibadism: History, Doctrines, and Recent Scholarship,” 1–2; John C. Wilkinson, “On Being Ibāḍī,” Muslim World 105 (2015): 105.
34. 34. Ersilia Francesca, “Ibāḍī Law and Jurisprudence,” Muslim World 105 (April 2015): 209.
35. 35. Sunni Muslims later changed this position and “accepted any ruler who could unite the majority of Muslims” (Hoffman, “Ibadism,” 1).
36. 36. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
37. 37. The Rustamid Dynasty eventually succumbed to the Fatimid expansion across North Africa in 909, but its legacy endures in the longstanding Ibadhi communities of Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria.
38. 38. Libyan Ibadhi scholar ʻAlī Yaḥyā Mu̕ammar provides an extensive biography of Abu Ubayda based on al-Shammākhī (d. 1522) in the biographical dictionary of Maghribi scholars in the Siyar. See Hoffman, “Oman,” 175.
39. 39. Adam R. Gaiser, “Imāmate in Khārijism and Ibādism” (Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, 2017).
40. 40. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition, 150.
41. 41. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition, 150–152.
42. 42. Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 5.
43. 43. Gaiser, “Khārijīs”; Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition.
44. 44. Mubarak bin ‘Abd Allah al-Rashidi uses the term zanj (the origin of the word Zanzibar or zinjibar, meaning “the land of the blacks”) in reference to Abu Ubayda in the first chapter of his dissertation on the life and works of the Ibadhi imam. In describing the personality of Abu Ubayda, he refers to the Persian scholar Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani and the Arabic prose writer Al-Jahiz, among others. See Al-Rāshidī, Mubārak bin ‘Abd Allāh, “Al-Imām Abū ’Ubayda Bin Abī Karīma al-Tamimī Wa Fiquḥu,” (PhD diss., Zaytuna University, 1996), 25.
45. 45. There is no clear origin of this term, though Marina Tolmacheva has argued that in the context of the caliphate, it generally referred to enslaved people of African descent or those who came from a dependent and lower socioeconomic class. “In West Africa, too, the word denotes a category of serf population, whereas in the East African context, to the contrary, the reference is generally to free inhabitants of the area. Here they are implicitly recognized as the majority, if not the sole population group.” See Marina Tolmacheva, “Toward a Definition of the Term Zanj,” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 21, no. 1 (1986): 105.
46. 46. Edward E. Curtis IV, “African-American Islamization Reconsidered: Black History Narratives and Muslim Identity,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73, no. 3 (2005): 659.
47. 47. Chanfi Ahmed, “Networks of Islamic NGOs in Sub-Saharan Africa: Bilal Muslim Mission, African Muslim Agency (Direct Aid), and Al-Haramayn,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 3, no. 3 (2009): 426.
48. 48. Curtis, “African-American Islamization,” 663–64. In his discussion on African American Muslim appropriations of Islam in the remapping of Islamization, Curtis mentions a Liberian missionary named Edward Wilmot Blyden, who “was the first prominent African American to advocate Islam as an efficacious religious tradition for black people.”
49. 49. Ahmed, 426.
50. 50. Often perceived as “other” in the regions they travel and reside in, Ibadhis sometimes find themselves the target of critique by local political leaders. For example, Ibadhis living in relative seclusion in the Nafusa Mountains in Libya face ongoing surveillance and threats of violence by the government. In the regions of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, polemical Emirati and Saudi clerics criticize Ibadhi ritual practices or theological beliefs as unlawful innovations (bidʽa).
51. 51. Ayman (Istiqaama leader), interview with author, Stone Town, Zanzibar, February 24, 2016.
52. 52. Valerie Hoffman, “The Articulation of Ibadi Identity in Modern Oman and Zanzibar,” Muslim World, 2004; Enki Baptiste, “Des vallées du pays Ibadite aux littoraux du sultanat: une histoire patrimoniale des manuscrits Ibadites Omanais,” Arabian Humanities, 2022; Adam R. Gaiser, Sectarianism in Islam: The Umma Divided (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
53. 53. The Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fī al-ʻIraq wa al-Sham).
54. 54. My emphasis.
55. 55. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
56. 56. Emily Goshey, “Eternal Punishment in Modern Ibādī Discourse: A Moral Argument.” In Local and Global Ibadi Identities, Eds. Yohei Kondo and Angeliki Ziaka, 13: 327–45. Studies on Ibadism and Oman (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2019).
57. 57. Goshey, “Eternal,” 337.
58. 58. Will McCants, “Oman, the Land of No Jihad,” Jihadica, July 18, 2008, http://www.jihadica.com/oman-the-land-of-no-jihad/.
59. 59. McCants, “Oman.”
60. 60. Ingrams also spent significant time in southern Arabia, an experience he recorded at length in H. Ingrams, “Arabia and the Isles,” in Arabia and the Isles (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 1998).
61. 61. My emphasis.
62. 62. W. H. Ingrams, Zanzibar: Its History and Its People (London: Stacey International, 1931), 191.
63. 63. Ingrams precedes these lines with a reference to Burton, who, in his view, portrayed Ibadhis as exclusivist and “fiercely intolerant.” See Ingrams, Zanzibar, 190–91.
64. 64. My emphasis.
65. 65. B. G. Martin, “Notes on Some Members of the Learned Classes of Zanzibar and East Africa in the Nineteenth Century,” African Historical Studies 4, no. 3 (1971): 526.
66. 66. Ibid.
67. 67. Anne K. Bang, “Teachers, Scholars and Educationists: The Impact of Hadrami-ʿAlawī Teachers and Teachings on Islamic Education in Zanzibar ca. 1870–1930,” Asian Journal of Social Science 35, no. 4/5 (2007): 458; Anne K. Bang and Knut S. Vikør, “A Tale of Three Shambas Shāfīʻī-Ibāḍī Legal Cooperation in the Zanzibar Protectorate: Part I,” Sudanic Africa 10 (1999): 1–26.
68. 68. My emphasis. John Middleton, The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 161.
69. 69. Here Middleton also claims that an “Ibadi can only be born not converted,” though this is not something I ever heard in my fieldwork; Middleton, The World of the Swahili, 161.
70. 70. Ibrahim (Sunni teacher and imam), interview with author, Stone Town, Zanzibar, March 15, 2016.
71. 71. Ibid.
72. 72. My emphasis.
73. 73. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
74. 74. Ersilia Francesca, “Ibadi School of Law,” Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World: Digital Collection, 2022.
75. 75. Ingrams, Zanzibar, 189.
76. 76. Richard Martin, “Createdness of the Qur’an,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, 2015.
77. 77. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
78. 78. Shaykh Ahmad b. Hamad al-Khalili, The Overwhelming Truth: A Discussion of Some Key Concepts in Islamic Theology (Ruwi, Sultanate of Oman: Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, 2002), 91–2.
79. 79. Khalili, The Overwhelming Truth, 93.
80. 80. Wilkinson, “On Being Ibāḍī,” 152.
81. 81. Najam Haidar makes a convincing case that the study of everyday practices of Shi’a Muslims in Iraq in the eighth century is a more effective way (than abstract theological debates) to show how communal boundaries and memberships were formed. See these arguments in Najam Haider, “Prayer, Mosque, and Pilgrimage: Mapping Shīʿī Sectarian Identity in 2nd/8th Century Kūfa,” Islamic Law and Society 16, no. 2 (2009): 154.
82. 82. Christian Lange, “Eschatology,” in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Eds. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Devin J. Stewart, (Leiden: Brill, 2020), accessed March 15, 2024, https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/*-COM_26227.
83. 83. See also Ingrams, Zanzibar, 189.
84. 84. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
85. 85. While this is not the place to list points of divergence between Ibadhi political, legal, and theological positions with those of other Muslims, such concerns are nicely outlined in the first chapter of Valerie J. Hoffman, The Essentials of Ibadi Islam (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012).
86. 86. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
87. 87. As will be discussed in chapters 2 and 3, the Istiqaama K–12 school in Tungu, Zanzibar, follows the curriculum for religion set by the Tanzanian government, which adopts Sunni perspective. However, many of the teachers and students at the school are Ibadhi and the curriculum is offset by religious studies textbooks imported from Oman. So, it is normal for students to encounter both Ibadhi and Sunni perspectives on campus.
88. 88. Anne K. Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family Networks in East Africa, 1860–1925, Indian Ocean Series (London: Routledge Curzo, 2003), 99.
89. 89. The kibla (or qibla) usually refers to the invisible line pointing in the direction of Mecca, the same direction that Muslims face when they pray. In Zanzibar, the term kibla also refers to the prayer niche or door-like outline inscribed on the interior wall of a mosque, which indicates this direction of prayer. Historically, Ibadhi kiblas were visible only from the inside of the mosque, whereas Sunni kiblas had a deep recess that would protrude to the extent that it would be visible from the outside.
90. 90. Ibrahim, interview with author, March 15, 2016.
91. 91. Iqbal Akhtar, “Negotiating,” 299.
92. 92. Ibid.
93. 93. Hoffman has credited Mufti al-Khalili with bringing modern Ibadhism closer to Shafi’ī Islam. See Hoffman, “Oman,” 175.
94. 94. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
95. 95. For an in-depth critique and discussion of the use of approaches to cosmopolitanism in Middle East studies, see Will Hanely, “Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies,” History Compass 6, no. 5 (2008): 1,346–67.
96. 96. “The followers of the Sunnah” are one of the “fastest growing Salafi organizations in Tanzania.” They are known for their puritanical interpretation of early Islamic traditions and teachings and their critique of what they perceive as un-Islamic practices—such as drumming at funerals or visiting the shrines of Sufi saints—as ritual innovations (bidʿa). All major cities have at least one branch of the group popularly known as “Ansar Sunna,” though their formal names may differ from location to location. Many of the leaders of the Ansar Sunna received their education in Salafi-learning circles in the Middle East and North Africa around the same time Tanzania began shifting away from socialism toward a more open economic policy in the early 1980s. Like Istiqaama, their mosques and schools receive significant foreign funding from those world regions. See Søren Gilsaa, “Salafism(s) in Tanzania: Theological Roots and Political Subtext of the Ansār Sunna,” Islamic Africa 6, no. 1–2 (2015): 30–59.
97. 97. This Islamist organization derives its name from the word for awakening or revival in Swahili. Its full translated name is the Association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation. In the past, they have promoted Zanzibar’s autonomy from mainland Tanzania, causing friction with both governments under the influence of the dominant Party of the Revolution. In 2021, two leaders of Uamsho were freed after eight years in prison, after “terrorism-related charges against them dropped.” See Ali Sultan, “Leaders of Islamist Group in Tanzania Freed, Charges Dropped,” Associated Press, June 16, 2021.
98. 98. The slogan of ABF reads, “To promote unity, social, cultural, economic and educational development.”
99. 99. Zayd, interview with author, March 16, 2016.
100. 100. Randall Pouwels also encountered this narrative among “field informants,” who insisted that the Omani ruling elite were invited guests in indigenous coastal communities and thus “not allowed to interfere in local affairs.” They could govern, but they could not proselytize. He concludes, “At Zanzibar, too, because of the great variety of sects and religions, tolerance was required of the Omanis.” See Randall L. Pouwels, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900, African Studies Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 116.
101. 101. Ibid., 126.
102. 102. Ibid., 117–18.
103. 103. See especially August H. Nimtz Jr., Islam and Politics in East Africa: The Sufi Order in Tanzania (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980).
104. 104. Ayman, interview with author, February 24, 2016.
105. 105. Zayd, interview with author, March 16, 2016.
106. 106. The remainder of the verse reads, “true guidance has become distinct from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped the firmest hand-hold, one that will never break.” See: Abdel Haleem, M. A. The Qurʼan: A New Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 29.
107. 107. An article published by the Arab news outlet Al-Bawaba, which covered the 2005 imprisonment of Islamists who attempted to overthrow the sultan of Oman, claimed that Ibadhis refrain from reciting the qunūt (a prayer of supplication offered while standing during prayer) because, historically, “this is where enemies were cursed during prayers.” While I had not before heard this reasoning, it is consistent with popular and nationalist narratives about Ibadhi tolerance and moderation in Oman. See “Ibadi-Islam’s Distinct Sect,” Al-Bawaba, May 3, 2005, accessed March 15, 2015, https://www.albawaba.com/news/ibadi-islams-distinct-sect.
108. 108. Ibrahim, interview with author, March 15, 2016.
109. 109. Valerie Hoffman, “Articulation,” 201.