Khatib M. Rajab

 Evolution Of Nationalism

Nationalism is a European ideology that demands for the sovereignty and independence of the people who live in a nation defined boundaries under a central rule which promotes and protects their secular life and interests. Among the major manifestations of such nationalistic sentiment were the American Revolution leading to the American Independence in 1776, and the French Revolution in 1789. Both revolutions stressed the principles of human dignity, equality, fraternity and equal opportunity. The American Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a prominent "Founding Father" of America, stated that all people were born equal and that liberty and equality were inalienable rights of all. Such a nationalistic struggle for liberation spread and led to the rise of the sovereign states in Central Europe early in the 19th century and then rose in Eastern Europe later in that century. This ideology spread among the Muslims countries after the abolition of the Khalifate in 1922 under the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) which emerged in the 15th century as a bulwark against European colonialism and expansionism. The abolition of Khalifate left the Muslim countries in a state of rampart stagnation with evolution of secular nationalism. The Westernization of educational system led to the growth of Muslim elites, among them perpetuate the ideologies of nationalism and patriotism in Muslim countries.

Although Zanzibar nationalism led to the struggle against the British colonialism for their independence until the current century, the resistance to foreign domination to impose cruel exploitation and inhuman atrocities did not need the importation of such a parochial concept of European nationalism. Because hatred of any sort of foreign exploitation is natural sentiment nourished by Islam as the Qur'an calls for the ‘Izzah (self esteem or honorable) of the Believers (Qur'an; 63:8). The Qur'an not only forbids surrender to the authority of infidels (Qur'an; 4:144), but Muslims must not take the Jews and the Christians as intimates and protectors (Qur'an; 5:51), but Muslims must be the rulers of their own nation (Qur'an; 4:59), according to the Islamic Laws (Qur'an; 57:25) for the best in this life and the best in the Hereafter. (Qur’an; 2:201).

Since the Islamic Laws are inseparable from politics, evolution of Zanzibar nationalism should focus on Islam unless it is a Western distortion of a pristine Islam in Muslim countries. When the Western hegemony, particularly the British became increasingly propitious during the twentieth century, Islam in Zanzibar inspired anti-colonialism, political movements and nationalistic struggle for independence. The grounds were cemented by a charismatic Muslim reformer, Sayyid Ahmad Abu Bakr al-Sumait (1861-1925), who applied to resign the post of Qadhi. When Barghash bin Said bin Sultan, the then Sultan of Zanzibar (1870-1888) denied his resignation, Sayyid Ahmed al-Sumait fled to Istanbul, Turkey where he was hosted by Sultan Abdul Hamid (1876-1909) for two years. Sayyid Abul Ahmed al-Sumait was seeking for other eminent Muslim reformers who worked with Sultan Abdul Hamid in collaboration with Jamal al-Din al-Afghan (1839-1897) for Pan-Islamism against Western imperialism. From Iran, Jamal al-Din al-Afghan was expelled to Istanbul, Turkey (1869-1871) before he left to Egypt (1871-1879) where he taught at the al-Azhar University but was later deported and went to India (1879-1882), asking Muslims to resist European colonialism under the spirit of Pan-Islamism, first advocated by Namil Kamal (1840-1888), a pioneer of Islamic revivalism in Turkey. But Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) and Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935), the two famous disciples of Jamal al-Din al-Afghan and Salafiyyah Islamic movement through its international journal called al-Manar (The Lighthouse) edited by Muhammad Rashid Rida, were also responsible for politics of nationalism and patriotism among the Islamists from Cairo to Zanzibar. Muhammad Jamal, an Egyptian ulama known as Turkiyyah was famous for promoting al-Manar in Zanzibar. After leaving Turkey, Sayyid Ahmed al-Sumait studied at al-Azhar University Egypt before he returned to Mecca for his further studies and pilgrimage. When he arrived Zanzibar he taught numerious students, including Sheikh Muhammad bin Ahmed al-Mlomry (1873-1936), who later also studied at al-Azhar under Muhammad Abduh.

Other famous student of Sayyid Ahmed Abu Bakr al-Sumait, was Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Bakashmar. He was forced into exile in India in 1889 by the British colonial government for what the Councillor Gerald Portal termed his "narrow minded fanaticism and his hatred of all things European." Hence, the ideas of Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), the founder of the Alighar Muslim Academy in India, induced Zanzibar Islamists to form the Zanzibar Muslim Academy, the first of its kind in East Africa. When Muhammad Bakashmar returned to Zanzibar, Islam was not only the basis for anti-colonial solidarity, but also Islamic slogans and terminologies which played important role in nationalistic movements in Egypt were replicated in Zanzibar, the than major ally for the Islamization and political movements against the British colonialism in Africa.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Abdul Ghany al-Amawy (1832-1897) so actively fought against the European political and cultural penetration among the Muslims in Zanzibar and Tanganyika that "the Germans expressed a feeling that he was in the habit of thwarting the desires and acting inimically to Germans interest in East Africa." The British, equally distrustful of him, felt that he was believed on terms of confidential intimacy with German consulate. Randall Pouwell stated that he often was in trouble with both contenders for power and empire in East Africa. The Germans threatened him several times with deportation to Germany, while the British Consul, Charles Ean Smith (1889-1891) in Zanzibar, also tried to pry Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Amawy from being a member of Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Body) under Sayyid Khalifah bin Said (1888-1890), the most strict Sultan of Zanzibar for the application of the Islamic Law before the evolution of nationalism and patriotism.

Islam On Nationalism And Patriotism

Nationalism and patriotism in Zanzibar were interpreted by the homegrown Muslim activists in two different schools of thought. The first advocated that nationalism is related to a particular group of people and is incompatible with Islam because its universalistic message draws no distinction between Muslims except on the criterion of their righteousness. Patriotism vaunted in the twentieth century was not associated with specific ethnic groups but the global Dar al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) as well as al-Watan al-Islam (the Islam homeland), analogous to the Egyptian politics under Mustafa Kamil (1893-1908), a radical nationalist and editor of al-Liwa (The Banner), started in 1900 which was read by eminent Islamists at Mosque Barza in Zanzibar. These Islamists uncompromisingly asserted that nationalism violates the very essence of the Qur'anic injunction which is against ethnocentricity, promotes universalism, embraces all aspects of life, advocates a free society and inculcates a single ummah (community) among the Muslims. Allah tells Muslims in the Qur'an that: "this is your ummah, one ummah" (Qur'an; 21:92), it is Dãr al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) and the rest of the world is reffered to as Dãr al-Harb (The Abode of War) or Dãr al-Sulh (The Abode of Peace by Treaty).

The second school of political thought amalgamated nationalism with patriotism as wataniyyah, from watan (nation), althougth is related to the territorial aspects of national identity. Because the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said that Hubb al-Watan Min al-Iman (Love of a nation is from the faith), they also believed nationalism or patriotism can be reconciled with Islam. According to this school of thought, love for one's birthplace and yearning for the place where he was reared early in his life, is a natural sentiment. This is not the same as "nationalism" or wataniyyah (patriotism), in the modern context. Because the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his Companions who emigrated with him to Medina in 622, missed Mecca badly, especially during the early part of their stay in Medina. Some of them, like Abu Bakr Siddique (573-634) and Bilal bin Rabah (570-641), fell sick and they composed poems during sickness about their longing for homesick of Mecca, their birth place. Therefore, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) prayed to Allah to inspire them with love for their new town and to make its climate as agreeable to them and as healthy as that of Mecca. This was centuries before the modern term of nationalism and patriotism had their conceptually political developement in Zanzibar.

Impact Of Islam On Zanzibar Nationalism.

Before the Second World War (1939-1945), there were no active political associations in Zanzibar except the Islamic movements, such as the Jamiyyatu Shubba al-Muslimin (The Young Muslims Association), founded on November 25, 1935 by Salim bin Abdullah bin Wadan (1901-1942), the editor of the al-Falãq (The Dawn) newspaper since 1929. One of the active member of the Young Muslim Association (YMA) was Sheikh Ilyas bin Ali bin lyas as-Sinesry (1888-1937), who used to commute to the rural areas to familiarize Zanzibaris with the Young Muslims Association and encouraged the rural people to join it. Eventually, he started darsa (classes) in the Simba Mosque at Gulioni, where he taught Islam under the auspices of the Young Muslim Association, reminiscent of the Egyptian Young Mens' Muslim Association (YMMA) founded in 1927 with their Muslim Journal launched in 1929 by Ahmed Yahya al-Dardiri.

Shortly after the First World War (1914-1918), other active political group in Zanzibar was the Indian National Association (INA), whose first president was Yusufali Esmailjee Jivanjee. But both the YMA and the INA were not advocating the Zanzibar independence but protecting their rights under British colonial regime. The former was independent from outside while the later had her political ties with the Indian National Congress under Muhammad Ali Jinna in British India. Traditionally, the leadership of the INA in Zanzibar came from large families but had the support of the rank and file of their groups called Jumui’a (Communities). When the British colonial government upheld the Education Commission based on racial separation in the professions in 1920, Yusufali Esmailje Jivanjee ardently demanded secondary schools should be opened to all races. He emphasized that the schools should teach to university entrance standard, and produce not a mere automatons but also men of an independent calibers who would be an ornament to the state and community and serve to raise the general intellectual level in Zanzibar. It was this time that the Teachers' Training College (TTC) was opened in 1923 at Raha Leo, but the British colonialists rejected any idea of establishing integrated school in Zanzibar. Therefore in 1923, the colonialists opened commercial school at Mikunguni mainly for Indians, and in 1924 an industrial school for Africans, but many rural schools started in 1925 such as Chwaka and Makunduchi in Zanzibar island, and Mtambwe at Wete in the Pemba, the sister island of Zanzibar.

After the partition of India in 1947, the Indian National Association was split into the larger association called the Muslim Association ( MA), led by an Indian scholar called Shah Muhammad Chowdhary. His party was sym pathatic with the Muslim League in Pakistan. The third group was the Arab Association (AA) whose first President was Abdullah bin Sulayman al-Harith, a direct descendant of the famous al-Harith family in which the governor of Zanzibar had been appointed prior to the establishment of the Omani Sultanate in Zanzibar under Sayyid Said bin Sultan. However, this association was not as much effective as another ethnic group, the Shirazi Association (SA) formed in 1939 under the Presidency of Sheikh Thabit bin Kombo bin Jecha al-Shirazy. But this association was less political until after the Second World War, when the Zanzibar nationalism became a dichotomy of Zanzibarism (Uzanzibari) and Africanism, known as Ubara (Mainlandernism), analogous to al-Misriyyun (Egyptianism) and al-Urbah (Arabism), a distinction between native Egyptians and immigrant Arabs in Egypt, similar discourse to the African mainlanders in Zanzibar. Not only Egypt and Zanzibar were under the British subjugation, but most of the radical concepts of nationalism with Islamic appellation in Zanzibar have their origin from Egypt. This discourse started in the late 1940s when the Shirazis became restless because of the British colonial frustration and arbitrary rule which destabilised their economic security at Kiembe Samaki near the Zanzibar Airport, a few miles from the Zanzibar City.

The threat from the British colonial government brought Washirazi (The Shirazis) together and provided their militant leadership into rampart against the British. But as usual, whenever the colonialsits were confronted with new militant evolution of nationalistic situations, they tended to panic and resorted to retaliatory crusades, often with violent if not Machiavallian or Pharaonic dictatorship. Several Shirazis in Zanzibar died and a number of their leaders were dragged into British custody at Kinua Miguu. In retaliation, the Shirazi nationalists stormed the central prison at Kinua Miguu and took away their leaders after they broke in and overpowered the gurdians. When the Shirazi Muslims' revolt was suppressed by massive use of the British military force, the leaders were rearrested, charged for "inciting riot" and sentenced to imprisonment. Some immediately became martyrs and others emerged as authentic leaders of the Shirazi nationalistic movement. Among these were Maalim bin Zaid, Miraji bin Shaaban and Haji bin Hussein al-Shirazi, a prominent radical for Zanzibar nationalism.

Source : http://victorian.fortunecity.com/portfolio/543/islam_and_nationalism.htm