What A New Book Says About Mozambique’s Fight Against Jihadi Terrorism
(REVIEW) For the past seven years, Mozambique has been in the throes of a bloody jihadi insurgency that has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced more than 1 million others. The insurgency in the northeastern part of this vast former Portuguese colony took the Maputo administration by surprise, coming as it did as the African country was beginning to experience peace after decades of civil war.
Where did this jihadi insurgency come from? What is it trying to achieve? What has been the relationship between mosques and the state over the years, and could this have contributed to the insurgency? Have Muslims in Mozambique been moving “towards jihad” since the country got its independence from Portugal in 1975? Is there any link between this insurgency and other Islamic jihadis in other parts of Africa and the world?
These are some of the questions Eric Morier-Genoud, a history professor at Queen’s University in Belfast, tries to answer in his latest book “Towards Jihad? Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique,” a product of more than two decades of research into the intricate relationship between Muslims and the state in Mozambique.
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This well-researched book traces the background to the insurgency and, on the backdrop of the broader and longer history of the relationship between Islam and politics in Mozambique, tries to explain it away. The author examines the period immediately after independence, when the socialist government of Samora Machel engaged in anticlericalism (with disastrous consequences).
Morier-Genoud then takes the reader through the decades to the 2000s, when the ruling Frelimo party and the opposition alike reached out to tap the Muslim vote — which comprises about 20% of the country’s population — up to the 2010s when tensions between the Muslims and the state got rekindled.
In the process, he skillfully weaves together a wide range of issues that include an attempt at secularism, the rise of Wahhabism, religious competition, state mediation, the supposed growth and radicalization of Islam, as well as the genesis of the current insurgency. From a socio-historical perspective, the book unpacks a complex dynamic that the jihadi insurgency appears to be disrupting.
Using his understanding of the long history of Muslims’ involvement with politics in Mozambique, he spotlights where the country has come from, where it is now in and where it could be heading.
Morier-Genoud, who is not a Muslim, writes that his research was not conducted in any negative spirit to reveal or stir divisions within Islam.
“On the contrary, the objective was, and remains, to improve our understanding of the complexity of the Muslim community and its history [in Mozambique specifically], to avoid misunderstandings, undermine simplistic ideas that feed prejudice, Islamophobia, and bad policies, and to reinforce bridges if not create unity between communities,” he writes.
The book has a chapter dedicated to the origins and nature of the insurgency in Mozambique. It reveals how the insurgents, commonly referred to as al-Shabaab, built on a religious sect that emerged around 2007.
“The sect was Islamist, thus aiming to establish a counter-society ruled according to Islamic law (sharia). The sect had nothing to do with the Sufi Muslim majority of Cabo Delgado (province) nor the Wahhabi CISLAMO (Conselho Islâmico de Moçambique (Islamic Council of Mozambique)), both of which opposed the sect from the outset. While both CISLAMO and the sect shared scripturalist ideas, they differed on several points, the most important being their social make-up and their view of how Muslims should relate to the secular state. Over a ten-year period, the sect established itself in at least eight districts of Cabo Delgado before turning to violence in 2017,” Morier-Genoud writes.
The book concludes that although Muslims in Mozambique have become more active in politics in the post-independence period, they have not moved towards a jihad — only this one small sect has done so.
“Most Muslims were and remain opposed to violence, and all their leaders were happy to work with the state,” he concludes.
He also points out that when the al-Shabaab sect emerged in the early 2010s, both Sufi and Wahhabi Muslim leaders actually made efforts to stifle it, as they saw that it could be a source of trouble.
“It is true that the jihadis were scripturalists like the Wahhabi, but the methods of the two groups were contrary to each other, the two groups differed socially, and there were significant tensions between them from the very beginning,” Morier-Genoud writes. “The jihadi insurgents began as a sect, opposed to other Muslims, the state, and society at large. This indicates that the jihadis emerged in rupture with other Muslims and with society, and particularly in rupture with the historical trajectory of Muslim relations to politics and the state. Their project and actions are against the existing state and against the overwhelming majority of Muslims who accommodated themselves to this state.”
This, according to the book, is the key lesson in relation to the issue of jihad in Mozambique. It adds that the question that follows is not only whether the jihadis can sustain their insurgency in such a context (against almost everyone), but also whether their armed action could change the way the majority of Muslims think of themselves, relate to the state and imagine their future.
“There is indeed a risk here: the insurgency could change Muslims, expectations in relation to the state (wanting more Islamic law, for example), while it could, conversely, change (if it has not already changed) the state’s expectations in relation to Muslims (the state demanding more from Muslims to prove their allegiance, for example). In other words, the conflict and its jihadi nature put in question the relationship that exists between Muslims and the state in Mozambique,” Morier-Genoud writes.
Regarding the future, the book suggests that in order to maintain a good rapport, if not to resolve the insurgency, the state and the Muslim majority will have to work together with renewed dedication to avoid misunderstandings and design a collective future where all Muslims and Mozambicans feel included, treated equally and inspired — leaving no place for a jihadi critique and project of any kind to gain traction.
Cyril Zenda is a Christian and an African journalist and writer based in Harare, Zimbabwe.