Officers of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology are engaged at the Kenya Coast in exploring special relationships with Coastal institutions. These explorations may eventually lead to the first university to be established at the Kenya Coast.
The Coast was the first region of Kenya to be literate. People were writing and reading in Coastal towns hundreds of years before other Kenyan languages had a word for the pen or a concept of paper. And yet since independence six public universities have been established in Kenya – and not a single one is at the Coast.
Because the Coast was the first part of Kenya to become literate, the oldest body of recorded literature in Kenya is from the Coast. Poems like Al-Inkishafi and Utenzi wa Mwana Kupona go back hundreds of years. The Swahili language has been a written language at least since the fourteenth century of the Christian era, though of course the language has been evolving these last six to seven hundred years, and has changed extensively.
Because the Coast was the first area of Kenya to become literate the earliest written documentation for Kenya’s history has come disproportionately from Coastal archives. Exchange of letters, written discourses about war and peace between Coastal cities, memoranda by Chroniclers.
Because the Coastal people were the first in literacy in Kenya, they were the first to adjudicate on the basis of written law, especially the Sharia in Islam. Hence the long duration of Kadhi’s Courts in Kenya’s history. Kadhi’s courts or their variants in Islamic jurisprudence are a thousand years old in Kenya. There were Kadhi’s courts in Kenya hundreds of years before the United States created its exceptionally powerful Supreme Court. There were Kadhi’s courts in Kenya long before England had its Magna Carta.
British colonial rule stripped Kadhi’s courts of their jurisdiction in criminal cases and of their powers in most commercial and economic disputes. But the British were sensitive enough to create a Triple Heritage of Law – indigenous customary law, Islamic personal and social law, and a more wide-ranging legacy of British jurisprudence in criminal and other legal domains.
Nor should Islam at the Kenya Coast be regarded as a heritage of only Muslim people. The Islamic religion is primarily an inheritance of Muslims, but Islamic culture is interwoven with African culture and has become part and parcel of the national legacy of Kenya. Many Kenyans who are not Muslims, and who may not even speak Kiswahili, may nevertheless use the words “dini” for religion, “malaika” for angel, and “dunia” for world in their own ethnic languages.
Islam is too big a force in African history to be monopolized only by Muslims.
Winds of the world give answer,
They are whimpering to and fro,
Who would know of Islam
Who only Muslims know?
A Muslim who knows only about fellow Muslims, and about Islamic studies, has yet to learn about the influence of Islam in other civilizations.
Who would know about Islam
Who only Muslims know?
Many Kenyans speaking the English language may not realize that they are using Arabic-derived words when they say such English words as the following:
Algebra
zero [sufr]
tariff [taarifa]
admiral [al-amir]
and (surprisingly)
alcohol [al-quhl]
Non-Muslim places which bear Arabic-derived names include Gibraltar [Jabal Tarik - the Rock of Tarik] and of course Sahara [Arabic word for desert]. Even the name “ Africa” is, in all probability, originally Tunisian – though derived from a Tunisian Berber language rather than from Arabic.
What all this means is that much of African thought and conceptualization is already the product of a dialogue between African civilization, Islam and the legacy of Arabic.
Islam arrived into Eastern Africa while the Prophet Muhammad was still alive. But Islam’s first African landing-space was not Mombasa or Tanga, but a part of Ethiopia. Persecuted Muslims from Arabia arrived in Abyssinia in quest of asylum during the Prophet of Islam’s own lifetime. 1 It is because of that factor that some have argued that the Hijjra from Arabia to Africa was almost as holy, and in a few respects almost as symbolic, as the Prophet’s own Hijjra from Mecca to Medina. Uthman bin Affan, who later became Caliph, was among the refugees into Abyssinia. With the African Hijjra (migration for asylum), a seed was being planted which, by the end of the twentieth century, had turned Africa into the first continent to have an absolute Muslim majority.
Not long after the death of the prophet Muhammad, Islam got to the part of eastern Africa which is now the Swahili Coast. Mosques were being built in this part of East Africa before they were constructed in parts of what is now the Middle East. Islam in Mombasa is older than Islam in Istanbul and the rest of Turkey. It may be older than Islam in Islamabad and the rest of Pakistan. Is it older than Islam in parts of what is now the Arab world itself? Certainly parts of the Maghreb in North Africa (such as Morocco) were probably penetrated by Islam later than Mombasa, though much of this is in the arena of historical calculation rather than confirmation. 2
Before long the arrival of Islam in Mombasa and Coastal Tanzania affected diverse areas of the cultural experience of the people. 3 Marriage and kinship relations were changed profoundly, as were the rules of inheritance and succession. African indigenous norms were often in competition with the Islamic rules. In some cases syncretism was the result; in some cases the indigenous norms still had an edge; but increasingly the Afro-Oriental phase of Swahili history witnessed the gradual pre-colonial triumph of the Islamic rules of marriage, kinship, inheritance and succession.
The arrival of Islam along East Africa’s Coast also had a profound impact on dress culture. The concept of nakedness was completely re-defined for both men and women, with practical consequences for forms of attire for each gender. The kanzu entered the scene for men (the long outer garment, usually white) which subsequently became religion-neutral in Uganda where both Christians and Muslims accepted it as a kind of national dress. (In Kenya the kanzu was still associated with Muslims.) 4
In Mombasa and the Tanzanian Coast the womenfolk developed the black buibui for outdoor use, intended not only to veil their faces but also to deny shape to their bodies. 5 The buibui was worn by Muslim women of Zanzibar only out of doors when they visited relatives or went grocery shopping. 6 The shapelessness of the garment was part of Islam’s quest for female modesty in public places. “In public do not emphasize the curves! Conscience begins with avoidance of temptation!” This is a strong Islamic premise. 7 It profoundly affected dress culture on the Swahili Coast during the Afro-Oriental phase.
The arrival of Islam among the Swahili also affected architecture, initially with the minaret and the architectural culture of the mosque. The homes of the Swahili people increasingly felt the influence of Islamic conceptions of gender segregation, the court yard, the use of tiles and clay in construction, and the place of prayer for women and with the ablution washroom attached to many homes. 8
It often makes better sense to think of the impact of Islamic languages on African verbal culture than to refer to the impact of Arabic alone. Many words in Kiswahili or Somali which appear to be of Arabic derivation may in fact be originally Persian or Turkish. 9
Swahili words like Serikali (government), tajiri (rich person), bandari (harbor or port), and bakhshish (gratuity or tip) may appear Arabic in derivation but may have been originally Persian or Turkish. Alternatively, they may have come into East African languages by culture-contact with the Shirazi (Persians of Zanzibar) or contact with the Ottoman Turks.
There is a hidden linguistic architecture in Kiswahili which sometimes creates a remarkable symmetry between Islamic words and indigenous [Bantu] words. Let us explore such symmetries of cross-linguistic vocabulary.
LINGUISTIC ARCHITECTURE
FROM ISLAMIC LANGUAGES FROM AFRICAN INDIGENOUS
(Arabic, Persian or Turkish) LANGUAGES (Bantu and Others)
Politics: Siasa ( Islamic) Economics: Uchumi ( Bantu)
East and Mashariki and North and Kusini and
West: Magharibi ( Islamic) South: Kaskazini ( Bantu)
Freedom: Uhuru ( Islamic) Slavery: Utumwa ( Bantu)
Paternal Maternal
Uncle: Ammi ( Islamic) Uncle: Mjomba ( Bantu)
Angels: Malaika ( Islamic) God: Mungu ( Bantu)
The past: Zamani ( Islamic) The Future: Mbeleni ( Bantu)
Teacher: Mwalimu ( Islamic) Student: Mwanafunzi ( Bantu)
Fish: Samaki ( Islamic) Flesh or meat: Nyama ( Bantu)
Sugar: Sukari ( Islamic) Salt: Chumvi ( Bantu)
Earth: Ardhi ( Islamic) Sky: Mbingu ( Bantu)
Pen: Kalamu ( Islamic) Ink: Wino ( Bantu)
Book: Kitabu ( Islamic) Print: Chapa ( Bantu)
Minister: Waziri ( Islamic) King: Mfalume ( Bantu)
President: Raisi ( Islamic) Parliament: Bunge ( Bantu)
By far the most ambitious idea floating in the new era of Afro-Islamic speculation is whether the whole of Africa and the whole of the Arab world are two regions in the
process of merging into one. Out of this speculative discourse has emerged the concept of AFRABIA. Eastern Africa has been the starting point of a gradual merger between Africa and the Middle East. Sudan, Somalia and the Swahili Coast have been the vanguard.
Several tendencies have stimulated new thinking about African-Arab relations. One tendency is basically negative but potentially unifying – the war on terrorism. The new international terrorism may have its roots in injustices perpetrated against such Arab people as Palestinians and Iraqis, but the primary theater of contestation is blurring the distinction between the Middle East and the African continent. 10 In order to kill twelve Americans in Nairobi in August 1998, over two hundred Kenyans died in a terrorist act at the United States Embassy in Nairobi. In 2002 a suicide bomber in Mombasa, Kenya, attacked the Israeli-owned and Israeli-patronized Paradise Hotel. 11 Three times as many Kenyans as Israelis died. 12
African countries like Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya have been under American pressure to pass anti-terrorist legislation – partly intended to control their own Muslim populations and partly targeted at potential Al-Qaeda infiltrators. Uganda and Tanzania and others have already capitulated to American pressure. 13
Independently of the war on terror, Islam as a cultural and political force has also been deepening relationships between Africa and the Middle East. Intellectual revival is not only in the Western idiom. It is also in the idiom of African cultures and African Islam. The hot political debates about the Shariah (Islamic Law) in Nigeria constitute part of the trend of cultural integration between Africa and the Middle East. 14
The new legitimation of Muammar Qaddafy as a viable African leader has contributed to the birth of no less a new institution than the African Union. In my own face-to-face conversations with the Libyan leader I have sometimes been startled by how much more Pan-Africanist than Pan-Arabist he has recently become. At least for the time being Qaddafy is out-Africanizing the legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser. 15
The fourth force which may be merging Africa with the Middle East is political economy. Africa’s oil producers need a joint partnership with the bigger oil producers of the Middle East. In the area of aid and trade between Africa and the Middle East, the volumes may have gone down since the 1980s. The West regards Africa’s petroleum as an alternative to Middle Eastern. 16 But most indications seem to promise a future expansion of economic relations between Africa and the Middle East. In the Gulf countries of the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman the concept of “AFRABIA” has begun to be examined on higher and higher echelons. Let us look more closely at this concept in the light of the revival of both intellectual discourse and new approaches to Pan-Africanism.
Who Are the Afrabians?
It was initially Trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism which gave birth to the idea of Afrabia. The first post-colonial waves of Pan-Africanists like Nkrumah believed that the Sahara was a bridge rather than a divide.
The concept of AFRABIA not only now connotes an interaction between Africanity and Arab identity; it is seen as a process of fusion between the two. While the principle of Afrabia recognizes that Africa and the Arab world are overlapping categories, it goes on to prophecy that these two regions are in the historic process of becoming one.
But who are the AFRABIANS? There are in reality at least four categories. Cultural Afrabians are those whose culture and way of life have been deeply Arabized but falling short of their being linguistically Arabs. Most Somali, Hausa, and some Waswahili are cultural Afrabians in that sense. Their mother-tongue is not Arabic, but much of the rest of their culture bears the stamp of Arab and Islamic impact.
Ideological Afrabians are those who intellectually believe in solidarity between Arabs and Africans, or at least between Arab Africa and black Africa. Historically such ideological Afrabian leaders have included Kwame Nkrumah, the founder president of Ghana; Gamal Abdel Nasser, arguably the greatest Egyptian of the twentieth century; and Sekou Toure, the founding father of post-colonial Guinea ( Conakry). Such leaders refused to recognize the Sahara Desert as a divide, and insisted on visualizing it as a historic bridge.
Geographical Afrabians are those Arabs and Berbers whose countries are members of both the African Union and the Arab League. Some of the countries are overwhelmingly Arab, such as Egypt and Tunisia, while others are only marginally Arab, such as Mauritania, Somalia and the Comoro Islands.
As for genealogical Afrabians these are those who are biologically descended from both Arabs and Black Africans. In North Africa these include Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt who concluded a peace treaty with Israel and was assassinated in 1982 as a consequence. Anwar Sadat’s mother was Black. He was politically criticized for many things, but almost never for being racially mixed. Much of Northern Sudan is also Afrabian in this genealogical sense.
Genealogical Afrabians in sub-Saharan Africa include Salim Ahmed Salim, the longest serving Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity. Genealogical Afrabians also include the Mazrui clan scattered across Coastal Kenya and Coastal Tanzania. It should be noted that Northern Sudanese qualify as Afrabians by both geographical and genealogical criteria.
These four sub-categories of Afrabians provide some of the evidence that Africa and the Arab world are two geographical regions which are in the slow historic process of becoming one.
Not everybody is aware of the scale of interpenetration. In the seventh century of the Christian era there were almost no Arabs in Africa. Now there are 200 million Arabs in Africa. There are more Arabs in Africa than in the rest of the Arab world. And there are more Muslims in Africa than followers of any other religion.
The largest Arab city is in Africa and that is Cairo. The largest African city is in the Arab world – and that is also Cairo. 17
The oldest Arab universities are in Africa – al-Azhar in Cairo and at al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco. The oldest African universities are in the Arab world – the same ones - Al-Azhar and Al-Qarawiyyin.
The longest river in the world is an Afro-Arab river – the Nile. The largest desert of its kind in the world is an Afro-Arab desert – the Sahara.
While there are more French-speaking countries and more English speaking countries in Africa than there are Arabic-speaking countries, there are more Arabic- speaking people in Africa than there are either English-speaking people or French-speaking people on the continent. 18
International organizations which are either completely Afro-Arab in composition or in which African and Arab members constitute a majority either literally or de facto include the following:
The League of Arab States
The African Union
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
The Organization of the Islamic Conference
The Islamic Bank for Development
The Arab Bank for Development
The formation of the Organization of African Unity in May 1963 was, in part, a refusal to recognize the Sahara as a divide between Arab Africa and Black Africa. The OAU became a trans-Saharan Afro-Arab organization.
We have now formed the African Union. 19 Will it become a refusal to recognize the Red Sea as a divide between the African continent and the rest of the Arab world?
Should the African Union forge closer links with the League of Arab States than the OAU ever had? Should the new century inaugurate a new phase in the evolving reality of AFRABIA? Should there be not just closer cooperation between Arab Africa and Black Africa but between Africa and the Arab world as a whole?
The Clock, the Calendar and the Alphabet
Islam arrived in East Africa with new disciplines previously unknown south of the Sahara outside Ethiopia. There was first the discipline of the clock. Of course all cultures know about time, but not all cultures are guided by the clock. Before Islam arrived, most ethnic cultures in Eastern Africa knew almost nothing about watches and clocks. The cultures had broad ideas about early morning, mid-morning, noon, afternoon and evening. But the precision of keeping an appointment at, say, 12:15 was an alien experience.
The arrival of Islam introduced into East African “tribal” life not only the actual mechanical pieces, but also concepts like a twenty-four hour day and sixty minutes of each hour. Words for hour, minute, and clock in several East African languages are based on the Arabic words for those temporal phenomena. In Kiswahili the word for both hour and clock is saa, the word for minute is dakika and the word for time itself is wakati – all of them Arabic-derived. Other East African languages like Luganda have variants of those Swahili loan-words.
Islam also introduced time-specific routines into East African cultures. Formal Islamic prayers are within fixed time limits. Muslims may not be punctual in their appointments with each other, but it is a sin to keep God waiting. Among Islamized Africans it is not unusual to see a worshipper praying by the roadside – to make sure that the time for the mid-day prayer ( dhuhr) is not overtaken by the time for the mid-afternoon prayer ( asr). A devout Muslim should try hard not to keep God waiting.
Related to this discipline of the clock, Islam also brought into East Africa the discipline of the calendar. 20 The lunar month was a familiar unit of time locally, but the solar year was regarded as less exact except in terms of rainy and dry seasons. The idea that a year consisted of twelve months was quite alien before Islam arrived in Eastern Africa except for Ethiopia and the lower Nile Valley. In some cultures a year was only nine months – like a pregnancy.
The vocabulary of the march of time in some East African languages has also been impacted by Islam and the Arabic language. The word for the past in Kiswahili and related languages is zamani; the word for history is tarehe – both of them loaned from Arabic.
In addition to the twin disciplines of the clock and the calendar, Islam also introduced the discipline of numerals into indigenous East African languages. The word for ten is indeed Bantu ( kumi) in Kiswahili, but all subsequent units of ten are usually borrowed from Arabic (twenty, thirty, forty, up to a thousand – ishirini, thalatini, arubaini onwards to mia for a hundred and alifu for a thousand). 21
The European impact on East African vocabulary for counting does not begin until the millions. We then proceed to billions and trillions, all of them of European derivation.
In addition to this discipline of numerals, Islam brought into East Africa also the discipline of literacy. Outside Ethiopia and the northern Nile Valley, the earliest forms of literacy in Africa’s “tribal” cultures were based on the Arabic alphabet. Kiswahili was written in the Arabic alphabet for at least six hundred years before it was overtaken by the Latin alphabet in the twentieth century. 22 Arabothography was the initial foundation of literacy in most of Eastern Africa (as indeed in most of West Africa).
It is worth remembering that the impact of the Arabic alphabet was not always directly from the Arabic language. Among the Shirazi in Zanzibar Arabothography came indirectly from the Persian language. Some parts of Eastern Africa were first acquainted with the Arabic alphabet by the Ottoman legacy. The Turkish language used the Arabic alphabet until the revolution of Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in the years between the two World Wars. Alphabetically, Turkey went Roman in the wake of the Ataturk revolution. But before that the Turkish language had bequeathed Arabothography to other cultures through Ottoman influence.
Gender Between Africanity and Islam
In addition to the disciplines of the clock, the calendar, the numerals and the letters, has Islam also introduced into Eastern Africa a new discipline of gender in East African cultures? Indigenous cultures in East Africa gave more roles to women than Islam did, while Islam gave more rights to women than indigenous culture had.
On the whole, the gender discipline of Islam in Eastern Africa had, on the whole, been negative. Under Islamic influence the roles of women in Eastern Africa have become more restricted as compared with indigenous culture. But the rights of women in inheritance have improved under Islam than under indigenous traditions. Women are owning more under Islam than under native customary law. But what about the role of women in the wider Islamic experience? East Africans should pay attention to trends in the wider Muslim world.
Although the Prophet Muhammad’s widow Ayesha set the precedent of Muslim women in combat roles on the battlefield there is general consensus among Muslim jurists that killing women or children is beyond the pale. 23
This has to be seen in the context of three varieties of sexism evident in human behavior, not uniquely Islamic. Benevolent sexism is a form of gender discrimination which selectively favors the otherwise disadvantaged gender. For example, when in 1912 the captain of the Titanic decided that the limited space on the lifeboats was to be reserved for women and children, that was a form of benevolent sexism with which most cultures would agree. The safety of women and children came first. 24
Most cultures would also agree that while women may have a duty to die for their faith or for their country, women do not have a duty to kill for their faith or their country. Even in the West drafting women for direct combat has been culturally repugnant. Forcing women to go and kill has tended to be avoided in most cultures, including Western and Islamic. 25
In spite of Ayesha’s role in the Battle of the Camel, benevolent sexism in Islam has spared women obligatory combat roles. East African Muslim women have similarly been demilitarized, except perhaps in Somalia from time to time.
In addition to benevolent sexism, there is benign sexism. This benign sexism is of differentiation rather than of discrimination. A policy of different dress codes for men and women has been part of the sexism of differentiation in Islam. 26 There are different rules of modesty for male and female. In most cultures women are expected to cover more of their bodies than men. 27 The Swahili buibui is part of the local female dress code.
In addition to benevolent sexism and benign sexism, there is the third version of malignant sexism. This is the kind of gender discrimination which results in sexual exploitation, economic marginalization, cultural subordination or political disempowerment.
Although many Muslim countries are guilty of such versions of malignant sexism, there are paradoxes in the Muslim world. In no Muslim country are women more liberated than women are in the United States, but in some Muslim countries women have been more empowered than women have been in the United States.
Right now two Muslim countries outside Africa have women as heads of state or heads of government. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in population, has a woman as President - - Megawati Sukarnoputri. In Bangladesh both the Head of Government and the leader of the Opposition have been women – Sheikh Hasina Wajed and Begum Khaleda Zia have alternated in political power for more than a decade.
Two other Muslim countries outside Africa have had a woman chief executive at the top of the political process. Benazir Bhutto has been Prime Minister of Pakistan twice. And Ms.Tansu Ciller has been Prime Minister of Turkey.
All these cases of Muslim women at the top have occurred long before the United States has had a woman president, or Germany a woman Chancellor, or Italy a woman Prime Minister, or Russia a woman President. But Asian Muslims have been ahead of Africans in this empowerment.
While serving as heads of government such Muslim women in those countries have been de facto Commanders-in-Chief. Were they continuing in the tradition of the Prophet’s widow Ayesha in the middle of the Battle of the Camel way back in the first century of the Hijrah calendar, the seventh century of the Christian era?
Have any of these Muslim women in power had to contend with terrorism by fellow Muslims? Bangladesh has had conflicts, coups and assassinations over the years, but neither Sheikh Hasina Wajed in power nor Begum Khaleda Zia has had to fight terrorism.
On the other hand, Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia has been under enormous pressure to act against Islamic militants, especially since the devastating terrorist bombs in the resort town of Bali. 28
Muslims are not unique in resorting to terrorism in a bid to redress wrongs perpetrated against them. But terrorism by Muslims gets far more publicity as a rule than terrorism by others. What all cultures and all religions are being forced to scrutinize more closely than ever are the detailed ethics of terrorism. Eastern Africa is caught up in the crossfire between Middle Eastern militancy and the American war on terror.
In Eastern Africa Uganda has led the way in the political empowerment of women. It was a Muslim President of Uganda, Field Marshall Idi Amin, who appointed the first woman Foreign Minister in Eastern Africa. This was two decades before Bill Clinton appointed the first woman Secretary of State in American history.
But although appointed by a Muslim Head of State, Foreign Minister Elizabeth Bagaya of Uganda was not herself a Muslim. President Yoweri Museveni has since carried female empowerment in Uganda even further. Uganda under Museveni has known a woman Vice-President long before the United States has had one. Yet once again the highest ranking Ugandan women have not yet been Muslims. In Eastern Africa as a whole the political empowerment of Muslim women still has a long way to go, though military regimes have sometimes opened more doors to women than have civilian governments.
The headquarters of Islam in Kenya is the Coast where Kadhi’s courts have existed for a thousand years. It would be an act of cultural cleansing and religious bigotry to abolish the courts at this late hour.
The Price Tag of the Kenya Coast
What is distinctive about the Coast of Kenya? What does the Coast bring to the national heritage which is uniquely Coastal? 29
First, the Coast brings to the national table the national language of Kiswahili – the most successful indigenous language on the African continent. 30 This linguistic legacy was not forged just by the Waswahili. It was shaped and influenced by all Coastal peoples – the Giriama and the Digo, the Taita as well as the Mijikenda. In the Kenya context the Coast is the fountainhead of the national language.
Secondly, the Coast offers its natural features for sport – the splendor of its beaches. Thirdly, the exceptional utility of its harbours has made it the gateway to the outside world for centuries. Without Kilindini harbour the economies of Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere would be in serious trouble. Without the beaches of Malindi and other Coastal playgrounds Kenya’s tourist industry would diminish. 31 Without Kilindini Kenya’s economy would shrink. No other part of Kenya can claim to make similar contributions to Kenya’s economy.
The fourth area of uniqueness of the Kenya Coast is its historicity. Of course all parts of Kenya have a history, but there is something about the history of the Coast which is captured not only in the oral tradition, but also in stone, in written documents hundreds of years old, in the ruins of ancient cities like Gedi, and in the living continuities of ancient city-states like Lamu. 32 No other part of Kenya brings this kind of legacy to the national heritage.
Fifthly, the Coast in unique in Kenya in being the fountainhead of Islam – Islam as a faith, as a culture and as a civilization. In the Kenya Coast the muezzin was calling Muslim believers to prayers hundreds of years before the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is arguable that Islam in Kenya is older than it is in some areas of the Middle East. No other part of Kenya brings the Islamic legacy so decisively to Kenya’s national heritage as the Coast does.
To summarise, why is the Coast unique?
Ø It is the fountainhead of the national language, Kiswahili.
Ø It is the gateway to East Africa and to the outside world, through its
harbours, especially Kilindini.
Ø It is the playground of beaches and water sports – so vital to the tourist
industry.
Ø It is unique in its historicity – from the ruins of Gedi to Fort Jesus, from
ancient written documents to remnants of city-states like Lamu.
Ø It is Kenya’s fountainhead of Islam. The mosque on the Kenya Coast goes back to the earliest centuries of the Islamic calendar.
What do non-Coastal Kenyans feel about this five-sided distinctiveness of the Coast? Perhaps the nation has come to value the national language, Kiswalihi. Perhaps the nation appreciates its great dependence on Kilindini Harbour. But is there a tendency to take the Coast for granted?
Moreover, the least appreciated of the Coast’s five contributions to the national heritage is Islam. And yet Islam is also part of the ancestry of the national language, Kiswahili – which was born out of a meeting of two civilizations, African and Islamic.
Islam is also part of the historicity of the Coast – from the Swahili city-states to the fluctuating fortunes of Fort Jesus across the centuries.
In short, of the five aspects of uniqueness which the Coast brings to the national banquet, three aspects are profoundly influenced by Islam ( language, history and religion).
Can Kenya afford to despise Islam and still save the other four legacies of the Coast – language, national gateway, tourist playground, and monumental historicity?
The Waswahili are still by far the most gifted users of the national language, Kiswahili. And the Waswahili are, in their great majority, Muslims. A repressed Swahili community is unlikely to be a major agent for enriching the national language.
Although the proportion of Muslims in the population of Tanzania is larger than the proportion of Muslims in Kenya’s population, the proportion of non-Muslim experts of Kiswahili in Tanzania is paradoxically also larger than the proportion of non-Muslim Swahilists in Kenya. 33 Julius Nyerere, for example, was not a Muslim. But he also happened to be one of the most brilliant users of the Swahili language in Tanzania. He even translated William Shakespeare into powerful Kiswahili. 34
As compared with Tanzania, Kenya has a smaller percentage of Muslims. But for the enrichment of its national language, Kenya is in reality more dependent on Muslim Swahilists than Tanzania is. In Kenya to repress the Waswahili is to impoverish the Swahili language.
In Kenya to repress the Muslims is also to detract from the special historicity of the Coast. For much of what is distinctive about the history of the Coast is the profound interaction between the African peoples here and the Islamic culture. For more than a thousand years the Kenya coast has been not only part of the history of Africa. It has simultaneously been part of the history of Islam worldwide.
What about the Coast as a gateway into and out of East Africa? What about the Coast as a tourist playground? How would the repression of Islam affect those?
The last thing any patriotic citizen would want is a situation where there is so much discontent among the local people of the Coast that it begins to show first in escalating social deviancy, then in escalating crime, and finally in escalating rebellion and rioting. Joblessness corrupts; absolute joblessness corrupts absolutely. If the Coast were to become ungovernable Kilindini’s Harbour would be endangered, the railway artery would be at risk, the peaceful beaches would be in turmoil, and the historic sites could be a nightmare. The Coast is too valuable to Kenya to be taken for granted.
Kenya and Pax Americana
Since September 11, 2001 the Kenyan authorities have been so eager to please the Americans that they are tempted to repatriate their own Kenyan citizens to the United States on the slightest encouragement. Fortunately the American Embassy in Nairobi is sometimes more cautious.
President Moi of Kenya marched in sympathy with the victims of September 11. The Muslims of Kenya marched against the American bombing of Afghanistan in 2002. President Moi asked “Why didn’t the Kenya Muslims march when Nairobi was bombed by terrorists in August of 1998?” The Kenyan Muslims turned the tables on their President “Why didn’t President Moi lead a march when Nairobi was bombed in August 1998?” 35
The President of Tanzania declared a day of mourning for the victims of September 11 in the United States. His critics retorted that they did not remember a day of public mourning in Tanzania when 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the genocide of 1994. Africans grieve when Americans are massacred, but do we grieve as much when Africans are massacred? As The Economist has put it, “When terrorists murder Westerners in Africa, a much larger number of Africans usually die, too.” 36
There is some anxiety that September 11 and its aftermath may exacerbate tensions not only between pro-Western and anti-Western schools of thought in this continent, but also between Christians and Muslims in Africa. A demonstration by Nigerian Muslims in Kano against the American war in Afghanistan provoked stone throwing by Nigerian Christians in Kano, which flared up into communal riots. 37 Churches and mosques were soon being burnt. President Olusegun Obasanjo had to rush to Kano to contain the tensions before they spilled over into secretarian riots all over Nigeria.
The United States’ efforts to unite African governments against terrorism may be dividing African people among themselves – a coalition of elites resulting in a contestation at the grassroots.
The pressure on many African governments to enact new legislation against terrorism may pose newer threats to civil liberties in Africa just at the time when democratization was gathering momentum in some African states. 38 Nor must we forget that if America’s own democracy decays, it makes it easier for Africa’s own dictators to justify their own tyranny. 39
In November 2002 there was another remarkable terrorist act in Mombasa on the same day as the suicide bombing of the Paradise Hotel. This was the attempted shooting down of an Israeli passenger plane with over two hundred tourists. A surface to air missile seems to have been used in an attempt to blow up the Israeli plane. 40 The global media presented this as a wholly new threat to civilian aviation. In fact this attempt to shoot down a civilian plane was not new even in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa had a 1978 precedent at the level of national terrorism. North Africa was accused of a similar 1988 destruction of a civilian airline at the level of international terrorism.
The sub-Saharan precedent was the shooting down of a civilian government airliner by Zimbabwe liberation forces in 1978, in which about 50 people died. 41 Among those who survived on the ground Joshua Nkomo’s forces killed or attempted to kill several of them. NEWSWEEK carried a photograph of Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe raising their glasses. The caption of the photograph was “ We shot it down”. It was not clear whether the photograph was not an old one dug up by NEWSWEEK and taken long before the shooting down of the plane.
But there is no doubt that Joshua Nkomo accepted “credit” for shooting down the plane, and he caused an uproar when he chuckled over the incident in a BBC interview. This was all part of anti-colonial terrorism at the national level of the politics of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.
Less clear-cut was whether Libya was really responsible for the bombing or the Pan American flight 103 over Lockarbie, Scotland, in 1988. The fact that one Libyan has been convicted by a Scottish court has still left many doubts about the nature of the evidence. But if Libya was indeed responsible for the bomb which destroyed Pan American flight 103, it was North African participation in terrorism at the international level. 42
Libya itself had been a victim of trigger happy Israelis. A 727 Libyan airline was shot down by Israel in February 1973, killing 108 innocent civilian passengers of all ages – young and old, men and women. 43 A country like Israel was in a position to say “Oop! Sorry! My mistake!” And Israel was bound to get away with it.
Similarly, an American warship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian civilian airline with 292 civilian passengers on board. This was in July 1988. Again, like Israel, the United States was in a position to cry out “Oop! I didn’t mean that! Would you like some dollars to cheer you up?” Apparently, nobody was court marshaled in the United States. The incident was simply described as a “regrettable defense action” or “an unfortunate and tragic error”. 44
The Soviet Union was less hypocritical in its war games. It deliberately shot down a South Korean civilian airline in 1982 over the Shakhalin Islands – accusing the civilian plane of being used for spying. 45 Over 290 civilian lives were lost.
The powerful have been playing war games with civilian airlines in the past and never got punished. The powerless resort to similar games – either to end white rule in Zimbabwe, or to end Israeli occupation of Palestine, or to tame the mighty power of the United States.
The city of Mombasa is over a thousand years old. Because historically it had a superb natural harbour it was fought over many times – by the Arabs, by the Portuguese, by the Zanzibaris, by the Mazrui, by the British and by others. Indeed, there was a time when the city of Mombasa was called MVITA – the Isle of War. To the present day the Swahili dialect of Mombasa is called KI-MVITA.
In ancient days war in Mombasa was fought with swords, spears and later canon balls. It was against this background that these Coastal people coined the proverb “ Ndovu wawili wakipigana, ziumiazo ni nyasi”. [When two elephants fight, it is the grass which suffers].
In the twentieth century a companion concept evolved, not always suitable for polite society – “ Ndovu wawili wakitombana, ziumiazo ni nyasi”. [When two elephants copulate, it is still the grass which suffers].
Since the attack on the Israeli hotel, THE PARADISE, in November 2002, has Mombasa reverted to its ancient identity of MVITA, the Isle of War? Are we also back to the older proverb of “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers”? Or are we really confronting an entirely different phenomenon? Is this really a case of the single elephant, the United States, with its protégé, Israel? Has the singularity of the beast created an entirely different jungle game –“ Ndovu mmoja akiteza ngoma, maumivu ni ya nyasi”. “When a single elephant does a war dance, the grass feels the pain.” The anguish of Mombasa economically, as well as in terms of security, may have only just begun. The shadows of September 11, the repercussions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the postcolonial local discrimination against Muslims, and the reincarnation of Mvita have tragically converged on this historic African seaport on the Indian Ocean. Speedy action is needed to restore the sense of dignity of Coast and of Muslim Kenyans before Kenyan Islam is radicalized into a new Black Intifadah.
Conclusion
No one would like to see such a Coastal nightmare. That is why the Provincial Commissioner at the Coast is speaking to Muslim and other Coastal leaders. That is why President Moi probably regretted his provocative remarks in his 1992 Madaraka Day Speech alleging a link between Islam and slavery in Kenya. That is why there is hope. No one wants to witness a prolonged Black Intifadah in Kenya. Four forms of tension can be devastating for Kenya – tension between so-called “ tribes”, hostility between regions, violent prejudice between races, and explosive distrust between religions.
Right now Kenya is indeed experiencing tension between “tribes” and hostility between regions.
From time to time Kenya has also experienced violent prejudice between races – ranging from the Mau Mau war in the 1950s to more recent economic riots against Asian merchants.
But until now Kenya has basically avoided domestic sectarian violence – enmity and local brutality on the basis of religion. It would be utterly tragic if the authorities in Kenya allowed the situation at the Coast and the American war on terror to set the stage for sectarian confrontations between local Muslims and the government administrators. A trigger for a Black Intifidah could be excessive compliance with American counterterrorism.
When the first President George Bush in the United States was confronted with the violent situation in Los Angeles, he promptly invited African-American leaders to Washington, D.C. for consultations about how to ensure that the American system not only worked but was seen to work fairly and justly. The Black leaders met the first President Bush at the White House – and the President later went to Los Angeles to look for himself.
Should President Moi have gone to riot at the Coast areas and talk to local people himself? Should President Moi have toured the disturbed areas of the Western province and the Rift Valley? Should President Daniel arap Moi also have invited Muslim leaders to State House to discuss how best to ensure that in the future misunderstandings between Government, police and Muslims did not recur? Did President Moi miss too many opportunities of reconciliation?
We should remember that when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the invasion of the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, she created so much hatred at such a violation of the temple’s sacredness that she later lost her life as a result. She was killed by a Sikh.
The Muslim population of Kenya is proportionately more than ten times the percentage of the Sikh population in India. Fortunately, the Muslim population of Kenya is not in the least interested in starting a terrorist indigenous movement in the country. On the contrary, Muslims in Kenya until the 1990s were among the most law-abiding and docile of citizens. Is the American campaign against terrorism in danger of activating religious resistance?
I personally hope that Kenyan Muslims will become less docile and more assertive of their rights. But I still want Muslims to be law abiding. But I would also like the police to be law-abiding. After all, the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles were a protest against policemen who broke the law. Kenya police are not always law-abiding either.
Let us not create conditions which will give rise to a Black Coastal Intifadah in our beloved country. If it can be avoided, let us not have Muslim women dance before the President. It fuels fundamentalist rage. On the other hand, let us end the near Christian monopoly of religious programmes on the electronic media. Let us end this electronic theocracy. Let us restore more Muslim programmes which used to exist under Jomo Kenyatta. Let us also give due recognition to African indigenous religions on state occasions like Madaraka Day. Let us not violate places of worship the way the Mombasa police violated the sanctity of a mosque, as well as the civil rights of the worshippers, in the 1990s.
Above all, let us end conditions of regional, ethnic and religious discrimination for either local or American reasons. As far as the Kenya Coast is concerned, social justice and religious respect are the only ways of averting a militant BLACK INTIFADAH in the years ahead.
The British were Christianized nearly fifteen hundred years before the first Kenyan became a Christian. The British had no difficulty accommodating Kadhi’s Courts for half a century of British rule. Jomo Kenyatta has no difficulty accommodating Kadhi’s Courts. Why should more recent Christians be more intolerant than long established Christian nations like Britain?
If Eastern Africa was the original Garden of Eden, let it now become an Eden of tolerance as well as of ancestry. Amen.
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