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Textbook Ebook Towards Jihad Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique Eric Morier Genoud All Chapter PDF
Textbook Ebook Towards Jihad Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique Eric Morier Genoud All Chapter PDF
Textbook Ebook Towards Jihad Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique Eric Morier Genoud All Chapter PDF
Towards Jihad?
Muslims and Politics in
Postcolonial Mozambique
1
1
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Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © Eric Morier-Genoud, 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN: 9780197769348
Printed in the United Kingdom
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1. The ‘Rise’ of Islam after Independence, 1974–94 19
2. The 1996 ‘Muslim Holidays’ Affair 47
3. A Prospect of Secularization? Muslims and Political 69
Power, 1994–2004
4. Growth and Radicalization? Islam and Politics 93
after 2004
5. 2017: The Birth of a Jihadi Insurgency 117
Conclusion 141
Appendices
I. Foundation of the Islamic Council of Mozambique 151
(CISLAMO), 1981
v
CONTENTS
Notes 171
Bibliography 215
Index 233
vi
LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES, AND MAPS
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was researched and written over many years—since 1999,
on and off—and I have accrued numerous debts over that time.
In terms of research, I thank the Mozambican National Archives
and its director, Joel das Neves Tembe; the archive of the National
Directorate of Religious Affairs, of the Ministry of Justice, and its
director at the time of my visit, the late Job Chambal; the Library of
the Mozambican Parliament; and the Portuguese National Archives
in Lisbon, Portugal, whose personnel were most pleasant and
helpful. I also thank all those who generously granted me interviews
and supported my research in direct and indirect ways (see the list
of interviews in the bibliography). A special thanks goes to all those
who helped me but need to remain anonymous.
I received financial and other support from several academic
institutions: the universities of Basel, Lausanne, and Oxford,
and Queen’s University Belfast. In Mozambique, I have been an
associate researcher at the Centro de Estudos Africanos and the
Centro de Estudos da População of Eduardo Mondlane University,
the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos in Maputo, and the
Centro de Investigação e Estudos Económicos e Sociais de Cabo
Delgado in Pemba. I have benefitted from being a senior advisor on
Raufu Mustapha’s project ‘Muslim Leaders in Northern Nigeria’,
which brought me to Nigeria twice, and from taking part in the
project led by Benjamin Soares and René Otayek entitled ‘Islam,
désengagement de l’état et globalisation en Afrique’. I also received
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
x
CREDITS
xi
CREDITS
xii
GLOSSARY
xiii
GLOSSARY
xiv
ABBREVIATIONS
1
TOWARDS JIHAD?
emerged, the political economy of the area they come from, and
the history of the state and various other local actors in the area, let
alone that of the other actors in the unfolding conflict.
This book is a historical investigation of the relations between
Muslims and politics in Mozambique from independence in 1975 to
2022, five years after the jihadi insurgency began.The book discusses
the relationship between mosque and state, or the state’s religious
policy towards Muslims and how it has developed over time; the
dynamics within the Muslim community and its organizations; and
the demands that Mozambican Muslims have made of the state
and society. While each chapter focuses on a particular period, the
overall objective is to understand the relationship between mosque
and state, and between Muslims and politics, from Mozambique’s
independence up to the present day. The book can be read ‘forward’
as an analysis of Muslims and politics in Mozambique progressing
over time, but it can also be read ‘backward’ to understand where
the present situation came from and what it builds on. It allows for
a deeper appreciation of the contemporary situation by putting it
into perspective while hopefully also providing some idea of where
things might be going in the near future.
Five themes dominate the coming pages. The first is the state’s
policy towards religion. In Mozambique, the same party has been
in power since independence: the Mozambique Liberation Front
(Frente de Libertação de Moçambique [Frelimo]), though it has
changed significantly over the years, from an originally Marxist–
Leninist liberation movement to a patrimonial neo-liberal party at the
time of writing. Frelimo’s religious policy has changed significantly
over the same period too, and this raises several questions: What
was Frelimo’s original policy towards religion, how did it deploy
it, and with what effect? How did it change over time, when were
the turning points, and why was change implemented? Conversely,
what are the continuities in Frelimo’s views and policies towards
religion, and what effect have they had? The coming pages unpack
government policy, its making and remaking, its actors, and the
causes of change. The discussion focuses on Islam, but where useful
it also considers and discusses other faiths. The analysis thus explores
how the Mozambican state has been built since independence, how
3
TOWARDS JIHAD?
it has evolved over nearly half a century, what Frelimo is and wants,
and how it has adjusted its objectives over time.
Secularism is the book’s second major theme. The coming pages
analyse Frelimo’s policy of secularism and trace how it has changed
from a strong (or assertive) secularism at independence to a softer
(or more passive) one in later years.1 It also looks at how Muslims
have understood and responded to this secularism. Chapter 4
deals with the topic by looking at the integration of Muslims into
the political bloc holding hegemonic power. Subsequent chapters
return to the issue, if less centrally, to analyse how the Muslim
population perceives state policy towards religion and to discuss
the changes that took place in the 2000s and 2010s. Considering
the extensive discussions by scholars and historical actors over the
compatibility of Islam and secularism, particularly in relation to the
Muslim concern that laws be made in line with God’s revelation,
Mozambique provides an interesting case where Muslims, including
Islamists, have engaged actively with secular institutions and have
happily compromised with secular politics. Islamists have embraced
the state at all levels and worked ceaselessly in the hope of Islamizing
institutions and society ‘from above’. As the discussion reveals, their
success has been modest: using Christian Coulon’s expression, there
has been more of an institutionalization of Islam than an Islamization
of state institutions.2
The competition and conflicts between Sufi and anti-Sufi
Muslims form the book’s third focus. This topic has been extensively
investigated on the African continent but only emerged as a topic
of interest regarding Mozambique at the turn of the twenty-first
century. Like elsewhere, distinctions in theological doctrine have
always existed in Mozambique, but of note is a Wahhabi wave that
reached the eastern shores of south-east Africa in the 1960s and
initiated a new period within Islam in the territory. Wahhabism
settled in Mozambique among a new generation of scholars who
had been trained abroad and returned with new ideas; two decades
later, a number of Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Sudanese non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) made their way to the country and
buttressed the power of these scholars with funds, new mosques,
and humanitarian and development aid. This wave of Wahhabism
4
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
pieces far more evident than it is in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavichord’
or even the ‘Inventions’ of Bach. He undoubtedly offers the player
enormous opportunity to exercise his arms and his fingers in the
production of brilliant, astonishing effects.
Of these effects two will always be associated with his name: the
one obtained by the crossing of the hands, the other by the rapid
repetition of one note. Both devices will be found freely used in the
works of his father, and it is absurd to suppose that the son invented
them. Yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he made more use
of them than any man down to the time of Liszt. The crossing of the
hands is not employed to interweave two qualities of sound, as it
oftenest is in music for the organ or for the German and French
harpsichords which have two or more manuals that work
independently of each other. The Italian harpsichords had but one
bank of keys, and Scarlatti’s crossing of the hands, if it be not
intended merely for display, succeeds in making notes wide apart
sound relatively simultaneous, and thus produces qualities of
resonance which hitherto had rested silent in the instrument.
Of his life little need be said. He was born in Paris on November 10,
1668, the son of Charles Couperin, himself a musician and brother to
Louis and François Couperin, disciples of the great Chambonnières.
The father died about a year after his son was born, and the musical
education of the young François seems to have been undertaken by
his uncle, François, and later by Jacques Thomelin, organist in the
king’s private chapel in Versailles. Practically nothing is known of his
youth, and, though it is certain that he was for many years organist
at the church of St. Gervais in Paris, as his uncle and even his
grandfather had been before him, the time at which he took up his
duties there has not been exactly determined. There is on record,
however, the account of a meeting held on the twenty-sixth of
December, 1693, at Versailles, at which Louis XIV heard Couperin
play and chose him from other competitors to succeed Thomelin as
his private organist. Thenceforth he passed his life in service of the
king and later of the regent. He died in Paris in 1733, after several
years of ill health.
The great François was, no doubt, an unusually skillful organist, but
his fame rests upon his work for the clavecin, the French
harpsichord, and his book of instruction for that instrument. His
duties at court were various. He says himself that for twenty years he
had the honor to be with the king, and to teach, almost at the same
time, Monseigneur le Dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, and six
princes or princesses of the royal house.
The original editions being now rare and priceless, and hardly
serviceable to the average student on account of the confusing
obsolete clef signs, it is to be hoped that before long Chrysander’s
plan will be carried out and the almost forgotten treasures of
Couperin’s clavecin music be revealed in their great beauty to the
lover of music.
Another type of portrait fits its title a little more tangibly. There is La
Mylordine, in the style of an English jig; La Diane, which is built up
on the fanfare figure always associated with the hunt; La Diligente,
full of bustling finger work. Les Nonnettes are blonde and dark, the
blondes, oddly enough, in minor, the dark in major.
Many others are so purely music, delicate and tender, that the titles
seem more to be a gallant tribute to so and so, rather than the
names of prototypes in the flesh. La Manon, La Babet, La fleurie, ou
la tendre Nanette, L’Enchanteresse, La tendre Fanchon, and many
others are in no way program music; nor can they ever be
interpreted as such, since no man can say what charming girl, two
centuries dead, may have suggested their illusive features.
Between these and the few pieces which are frankly almost wholly
dependent upon a program are a great number of others lightly
suggestive of their titles. Sometimes it is only in general character.
Les vendangeuses and Les moissoneurs do not seem so particularly
related to wine-gathering or harvesting that the titles might not be
interchanged; but both have something of a peasant character. In
Les abeilles and in Le moucheron the characterization is finer. The
pleasant humming of the bees is reproduced in one, the monotonous
whirring of the gnat in the other. Les bergeries is simply pastoral, Les
matelots Provençales is a lively march, followed by a horn-pipe. Les
papillons is not unlike the little piece so named in the Schumann
Carnaval, though here it means but butterflies. There are some
imitative pieces which are in themselves charming music, such as
Les petits moulins à vent, Le réveille-matin, Le carillon de Cythère,
and Les ondes, with its undulating figures and fluid ornamentation.
III
The last of these compositions are in no way representative of
Couperin the artist. They might have been written by any one who
had a love for nonsense, and they are not meant to be taken
seriously. The quality of Couperin’s contribution to music must be
tested in such pieces as Le bavolet-flottant, La fleurie, Les
moissoneurs, Le carillon de Cythère, and La lugubre. His harmony is
delicate, suggesting that of Mozart and even Chopin, to whom he is
in many ways akin. He does not, like Scarlatti, wander far in the
harmonic field; but in a relatively small compass glides about by
semi-tones. There is, of course, a great deal of tonic and dominant,
such as will always be associated with a certain clear-cut style of
French dance music; but the grace of his melody and his style is too
subtle to permit monotony. The harmonies of the sarabande La
lugubre are profound.
This is not only because the peculiarities of the pianoforte call for a
different kind of ornamentation, but also because the playing of
harpsichord flourishes is practically a lost art. Couperin and Emanuel
Bach left minute directions and explanations in regard to them; but in
their treatises we have only the letter of the law, not the spirit which
inspired it. Even in their day, in spite of all laws, the agrémens were
subject to the caprice of the player; and they remained so down to
the time of Chopin.
IV
A glance over the many pieces of Scarlatti and Couperin discovers a
vast field of unfamiliar music. If one looks deep enough to perceive
the charm, the beauty, the perfection of these forgotten
masterpieces, one cannot but wonder what more than a trick of time
has condemned them to oblivion. For no astonished enthusiasm of
student or amateur whose eye can hear, renders back glory to music
that lies year after year silent on dusty shelves. The general ear has
not heard it. The general eye cannot hear it as it can scan the
ancient picture, the drama, the poetry of a time a thousand or two
thousand years ago. Music that is silent is music quite forgotten if not
dead.
And, what is more, the few pieces of Couperin which are still heard
seem almost to live on sufferance, as if the life they have were not of
their own, but lent them by the listener disposed to imagine a
courtier’s life long ago washed out in blood. ‘Sweet and delicate,’
one hears of the music of Couperin, as one hears of some bit of old
lace or old brocade, that has lain long in a chest of lavender. Yet the
music of Couperin is far more than a matter of fashion. It is by all
tokens great art. The lack is in the race of musicians and of men who
have lost the art of playing it and the simplicity of attentive listening.
In the first place, the style of its texture is solid. Instead of being
crushed, as Couperin’s music is, by the heavy, rich tone of the
modern pianoforte, it seems to grow stronger by speaking through
the stronger instrument. Bach’s style is nearly always an organ style,
whether he is writing for clavichord, for chorus, for bands or strings.
It is very possible that a certain mystical, intimate sentiment which is
innate in most of his clavichord music cannot find expression through
the heavy strings of the pianoforte. This may be far dearer than the
added depth and richness which the pianoforte has, as it were,
hauled up from the great reservoirs of music he has left us. But it is
none the less true that the high-tensioned heavy strings on their
gaunt frame of cast iron need not call in vain on the music of Bach to
set the heart of them vibrating.
Bach was a lovable man, but a stern and somewhat bellicose one as
well. He was shrewd enough to respect social rank quite in the
manner of his day, as the dedication of the Brandenburg concertos
plainly shows; but the records of his various quarrels with the
municipal authorities of Leipzig prove how quick he was to
unrestrained wrath whenever his rights either as man or artist were
infringed upon. A great deal of independence marked him. The same
can hardly be said either of Scarlatti or of Couperin, the one of whom
was lazy and good-natured, the other gently romantic and extremely
polite. Scarlatti rather enjoyed his indifference to accepted rules of
composition; and there was nothing either of self-abasement or of
self-depreciation in Couperin; but both lacked the stalwart vigor of
Bach. Scarlatti aimed, confessedly, to startle and to amuse by his
harpsichord pieces. He cautioned his friends not to look for anything
particularly serious in them. It is hard to dissociate an ideal of pure
and only faintly colored beauty from Couperin. But in the music of
Bach one seldom misses the ring of a strong and even an impetuous
need of self-expression. In the mighty organ works, and in the vocal
works, one may believe with him that he sang his soul out to the
glory of his Maker; but in the smaller keyboard pieces sheer delight
in expressing himself is unmistakable.
It is this that makes Bach a romanticist, while Couperin, with all his
fanciful titles, is classic. It is this that made Bach write in nearly the
same style for all instruments, drawing upon his personal inspiration
without consideration of the instrument for which he wrote; while
Couperin, exquisitely sensitive to all external impressions, forced his
fine art to conformity with the special and limited qualities of the
instrument for which he wrote the great part of his music. And, finally,
it is this which produced utterance of so many varied moods and
emotions in the music of Bach; while in the music of Couperin we
find all moods and emotions tempered to one distinctly normal cast
of thought.
Bach has been the subject of so much profound and special study
that there is little to be added to the explanation of his character or of
his works. In considering him as a composer for the harpsichord or
clavichord, one has to bear two facts in mind: that he was a great
player and a great teacher.
There is much evidence from his son and from prominent musicians
who knew him, that the technical dexterity of his fingers was
amazing. He played with great spirit and, when the music called for
it, at a great speed. Perhaps the oft-repeated story of his triumph
over the famous French player, Marchand, who, it will be
remembered, defaulted at the appointed hour of contest, has been
given undue significance. As we have had occasion to remark, in
speaking of the contest between Handel and D. Scarlatti, such
tourneys at the harpsichord were tests of wits, not of fingers. Bach
was first of all an organist and it may be suggested, with no
disloyalty to the great man among musicians, that he played the
harpsichord with more warmth than glitter. We find little evidence in
his harpsichord music of the sort of virtuosity which makes D.
Scarlatti’s music astonish even today; or, it may be added, of the
special flexible charm which gives Couperin’s its inimitable grace.
His system passed on through the facile hands of his son Emanuel,
the greatest teacher of the next generation; and if it is not the crest of
the wave of new styles of playing which was to break over Europe
and flood a new and special pianoforte literature, is at any rate a
considerable part of its force. Yet it must be borne in mind that
Scarlatti founded by his own peculiar gifts a tradition of playing the
piano and composing for it, in which Clementi was to grow up; and
that, influential as Emanuel Bach was, Clementi was the teacher of
the great virtuosi who paved the way to Chopin, the composer for the
piano par excellence.
The foundation of all Bach’s music is the organ. Even in his works for
violin alone, or in those for double chorus and instruments, the
conjunct, contrapuntal style of organ music is unmistakable. His
general technique was acquired by study of the organ works of his
great predecessors, Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, Pachelbel, Buxtehude,
Bohm, and others. He was first and always an organist. So it is not
surprising to find by far the greater part of his harpsichord and
clavichord music shaped to a polyphonic ideal; and, what is more,
written in the close, smooth style which is primarily fitting to the
organ.
His intelligence, however, was no less alert than it was acute. There
is evidence in abundance that he not only knew well the work of
most of his contemporaries, but that he appropriated what he found
best in their style. He seems to have found the violin concertos of
Vivaldi particularly worthy of study. He was indebted to him for the
form of his own concertos; and, furthermore, he adapted certain
features of Vivaldi’s technique of writing for the violin to the
harpsichord. Of the influence of Couperin there is far less than was
once supposed. The ‘French Suites’ were not so named by Bach
and are, moreover, far more in his own contrapuntal style than in the
tender style of Couperin. Kuhnau’s Bible sonatas are always cited as
the model for Bach’s little Capriccio on the departure of his brother;
but elsewhere it is hard to find evidence of indebtedness to Kuhnau.
So, for the most part, the forms which had evolved during the
seventeenth century were the forms in which he chose to express
himself. Of these, two will be for ever associated with him, because