Islam and the Colonial Encounter in Africa
The role of Islam in African societies has partly been shaped by its encounter with colonialism, as the two had complex and often contradictory relationships, varying according to the shifts in colonial policy.
At the same time, Islam also provided a zone of autonomy and resistance to colonialism. For instance, although the “anti-Islamic” dimension and fear of Islam was an integral aspect of French colonial policies, this period witnessed the fastest expansion of Islam in the region (Triaud 2000: 169). The hostility was rooted in various sources, religious as well as the tenets of the Enlightenment which called for a separation of religion and the state, thereby conditioning French perceptions of Islam by the struggle of republicans and radical secularists against Roman Catholicism in France itself. “French colonialism always experienced the Muslim presence in the guise of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy” (170). Thus, when the French first encountered the Muslim Sufi brotherhoods in Algeria, they “were immediately likened to their presumed European counterparts, in particular to the Jesuits, who were a “secret society” par excellence, being conspiratorial and subversive in the eyes of republicans of the epoch” (170).The classification of all Muslims according to brotherhood affiliation that was initially adopted in Algeria, sometimes contrary to the available evidence, was applied across the Sahara, and “remained one of the foundations of colonial administrative taxonomy up to independence” (Triaud 2000: 171). Theories of French specialists and ethnographers devalued Islam in the evolutionary chain. “The intensive use of polemical anti-Islamic literature, which was sometimes obsessive, created a common ‘culture of Muslim affairs’ with which a large number of civil and military functionaries became permanently infused” (172). However, there were also competing perspectives among colonial administrators, some favorable and others hostile to Islam and Islamic groups.
For instance, in Senegal and Mauritania, the Qadariyya were marked and treated as the “good” brotherhoods and the Tijaniyya were the “bad.” In Algeria, it was exactly the opposite.After World War I, it seems that “the fear of Islam and of a conspiracy that would take its orders abroad, in Germany and in Turkey, finally overrode all other considerations” (Triaud 2000: 172). French colonial policies accordingly reflected assessments of Islam and Muslims in terms of loyalty to France over other European powers during the war. Different groups of Muslims won favor and cooperated with the colonial administration:
In Senegal, the talents of the Mourid brotherhood, which corresponded to the needs and the demands of the administration, won quasi-immunity for the brotherhood in the French colonial system. Elsewhere, networks of Muslim merchants, particularly the Julula, thanks to their role as intermediaries along the railway routes and the trails, benefited from the protection of an administration with vested interests. Muslim elites and the French administration found the terms for a lasting compromise, albeit one that was at times disturbed by fits of mistrust. Under the Popular Front, de Copper, the socialist governor general of French West Africa, renewed links with “Islamophile” practices close to the British style, including attending the major Muslim feasts, subsidizing Islamic institutions, and giving instructions in this vein to the administrators. (Triaud 2000: 176)
In contrast to a general policy of compromise and cooperation, the French colonial administration of West Africa sometimes ruthlessly repressed the followers of Shaykh Hamahallah, a branch of the Tijaniyya. The Shaykh was deported to Mauritania, Côte d’Ivoire, followed by Algeria, until he eventually died in Montlucon, France, in 1940, while his followers were sent to internment camps. The crushing of the Hamallah was used as an example to intimidate those who sought to take Islamic authority beyond the control of the French administration of West Africa (Triaud 2000: 176).
After World War II, there was a focus on economic development and political liberalization, but the Arab/Palestinian conflict in the Middle East and the Algerian war of independence kept the French colonial administration deeply worried about Islam. The administration continued to utilize the theory of “Black Islam” as a means to cut the Muslims off from their Arab fellow believers, while continuing to follow the brotherhood model, most prominently in Senegal. The target of the colonial administration in this phase was Wahaby doctrine imported by young preachers with its emphasis on purity and reform. Those young preachers were regarded by French colonial administrations in the 1950s as part of a Middle Eastern/North African conspiracy. But with the imminence of decolonization and its change in the dynamics of power, and the institution of local autonomy in 1956, the colonial bureaucratic systems were no longer able to stem these changes (Triaud 2000: 177).
The relationship of Islamic movements and groups with French colonial administration in West Africa was a mixture of resistance and cooperation. The officially recognized Islamic movement benefited from cooperation with the French administrators, who always accorded a certain status to religion, even when they were generally hostile or negative to its role in West African colonies. At independence, however, French-educated elites replaced religious elites who also had to deal with the impact of the colonial French policy that sought to undermine Islamic culture. As a result, according to Triaud, there was a contradiction in the colonial period, a huge increase in numbers of Muslims, on the one hand, and “a substantial defensive conservatism, or stagnation, of thought and intellectual reflection,” on the other (2000: 182).
During the next phase of decolonization, the symbols of Islam were mobilized for an essentially modern political form of the state and nation. For instance, “the key feature of Islam in Tunisia during the preindependence period was not that there was a modernist interpretation that emerged but, rather, that Islam provided the symbols and the vocabulary for a mobilization of the people in opposition to foreign rule” (Voll 1982: 209).
Algerian nationalism was formed in a more complex manner, where the crux of the nationalist imperative was to define a distinctive Algerian identity in the wake of a colonial effort to destroy the basic social order through a political and cultural offensive, as well as the establishment of a large European settler population. In that context, “the struggle was to define the meaning of being an Algerian, a process in which Islam played a significant role” (209). Islam in Algeria provided the symbolism and emotion of the Algerian revolution, thereby complementing, instead of competing with, nationalism. It was also a major aspect of the resistance to European rule and emergence of nationalism in Morocco as well (212–13).Once again, however, the dynamics of the role of Islam shifted with a change in context, from a struggle for independence to post-independence governance in the Maghrib (Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), despite the violence of the liberation struggle.
In this transition, the key issues relating to the Islamic experience involved the problems of modernization and nation-building. In particular, once the common enemy was removed, debate arose over the appropriate ideological and programmatic foundations for modernization. During the 1960s, the major development in the area was the evolution of a more secularist socialism. This ideological approach became a powerful force by the middle of the decade but then declined in importance. Parallel to that process was a decline and then a revival of a more visibly Islamic orientation. (Voll 1982: 215)
Another feature of the paradoxical relationship of Islam and colonial administrations relates to ways in which Islamic leaders were able to retain a degree of autonomy that was, to a significant extent, ordained by colonial policies. This paradox is illustrated by the codification of Shariʿa principles in specific fields of family law and inheritance, while at the same time separating Islam from the sphere of official political authority.
That codification fixed the nature of Islamic authority, contributing to notions of “authentic” Islamic authority as being that which is officially recognized by the state. Colonial administrators also privileged certain Islamic groups over others through “indirect rule,” and sponsored certain “Islamic” officials, like the Grand Mufti, who was in charge of issuing officially sanctioned religious rulings on a specific matters placed under hisjurisdiction by the colonial administration. The approval of Islamic titles, sanction of the Arabic language, and acknowledgment of Shariʿa in general by colonial administrators served to confirm and reinforce the importance of Islamic institutions. The codification of Shariʿa principles in the limited field of so-called law of personal status also resulted in the establishment of a “Shariʿa judiciary” distinguished, if not institutionally separate from, the regular “civil judiciary” which had jurisdiction in all other legal matters. That colonial codification and specialization in the administration of justice also introduced a new degree of uniformity and consistency in the applications of Shariʿa throughout individual colonies or protectorates, and formalized a division between state authority and religious institutions. This process had the dual effect of undermining the adaptability of Shariʿa to local customary law, despite the long history of mutual accommodation of the two systems, while extending the application of Shariʿa in legal matters to some communities where it previously had little impact (Stewart 1990: 205–6). In that way, changes introduced by various colonial administrations set the scene for the formal and institutional relationship between Islam and the emerging independent states of Africa with majority Muslim populations. A brief discussion of this latest phase may help clarify the contingency of the role of Islam in the constitutional development of present African states.