A Prospect of Secularization? Muslims and Political Power in Mozambique Today

Morier-Genoud, Eric

doi:10.4314/jis.v27i1.39936

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In conclusion, this chapter has been arguing that, unlike studies such as those of Morier-Genoud (2007) and Loimeier (1996) on the rise of secularism in Sub-Saharan Africa, no singular, monolithic notion of secularization is possible. Studying the manner in which an inchoate domain appears to be emerging for members of the educated classes who are questioning the Pentecostal churches and leadership seems to confirm the notion that there is a multiplicity of roads to secularization that distinguishes the rise of different public spaces, as Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt also indicate (2012).…”

Section: The Pentecostalization Of An Educated Publicmentioning

confidence: 76%

After Pentecostalism? Exploring Intellectualism, Secularization and Guiding Sentiments in Africa

Dijk¹

2015

Multiple Secularities Beyond the West

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processes of secularization in Sub-Saharan Africa is either completely lacking in the literature or in a state of infancy. While there is little empirical evidence to substantiate the claim that 'Africans are notoriously religious' (Mbiti 1969), this lack of attention to processes of secularization in Africa may also be the result of an essentialized differentiation between 'us and the other' whereby such processes are predominantly perceived as belonging to a kind of 'European exceptionalism' that cannot be imported into other cultural domains. This contribution questions how religion can be co-productive and co-constitutive of the manner in which, in Casanova's (2011) terms, separate social spheres arise and where religion starts to play less of a role in informing identities. This will be approached from a perspective informed by ideas of sentiment and emotion. I propose that, by building on Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt's (2012) notion of studying secularization processes through the guiding ideas that inspire people and groups to engage with this 'work' of separation, we also need to consider the rise of guiding sentiments, that is, emotions that inspire people to view religion differently. This ties the understanding of the experience of secularization to the sensual and the sensitive, and allows for the importation and transportability of Charles Taylor's emotional understanding of the process into Africa. In her brilliant review of Taylor's A Secular Age, Hurd (2007 highlights the difficulty Taylor has in acknowledging that some people in the current age neither endorse religion in any of its manifestations nor eschew any form of metaphysics or humanism. Instead, she points out that Taylor consigns these groups, who seem to adhere to a level of radical or fundamental immanence, to living in a universe cloaked in darkness. She points to his Unbehagen¹ about this development by showing how he sees that 'a race of humans has arisen which has managed to experience this world entirely as imma- I am using the German term Unbehagen so as to indicate a register of sentiments of unease, anxiety and discomfort that, in their combination, are otherwise difficult to translate in English. Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 8/8/15 3:23 PM Rijk van Dijk Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 8/8/15 3:23 PM

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Section: The Pentecostalization Of An Educated Publicmentioning

confidence: 76%

After Pentecostalism? Exploring Intellectualism, Secularization and Guiding Sentiments in Africa

Dijk¹

2015

Multiple Secularities Beyond the West

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“…68 The colonial administration imposed limitations on the creation of madrassas or Islamic teaching, ordered the closure of mosques or the burning of Islamic symbols, among other insults and injustices. 69 Several Islamic leaders were arrested by PIDE, the Portuguese political police, and imprisoned in prisons in Pemba or Ibo, where some ended up dying. 70 Alongside Protestantism, communism and African nationalism, Islamism was seen as one of the threats to the Portuguese presence in Africa.…”

Section: Collaborationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domination, Collaboration and Conflict in Cabo Delgado's History of Extractivism

Feijó,

Orre

2024

Kronos.

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A long history of extractive industries and activities have shaped the societies of northern Mozambique, and the Cabo Delgado province in particular. For centuries, the growing international demand on local resources had a great impact on the northern micro-societies. The demand for cheap labour and natural resources, ranging from ivory and cotton, to timber, rubies, land, gas and more, involved thousands of local actors in its extraction, reproducing systems of local power. The persistence of poverty, inequality and conflicts, as well as simmering and sometimes grand-scale violence, fits into a long-term trend of extractivism. Through a historical approach and field observations, we focus on the political economy of extracting natural resources. We point out the persisting basic patterns of extractivism that accompanied Mozambique's integration into global markets, and continued or even deepened, in the post-independence period. These activities are oriented towards foreign markets. They are instigated by foreign investment, but invariably carried out in collaboration with a chain of national gatekeepers. In a clientelist system, local elites resort to their proximity to the state to reproduce their power, often at the expense of state expropriation. Weak state institutions have the functional effect of reproducing the elites, also serving the interests of extractivist capital. It is, however, a system with many and profound contradictions, producing conflict and violence, which also recurrently put those interests at risk.

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“…The Islamic Council maintains deep political and economic connections with Frelimo. Some of its main laic representatives, from the 1990s, entered the dominant Frelimo's elite in key institutional and business positions (Morier-Genoud, 2007), as in the case -just to remember the most recent ones -of Gabriel Salimo, Ministry of Science of Technology, Abdul Carimo, President of the National Electoral Committee and Salimo Abdul, CEO of Vodacom Mozambique, a close friend and sponsor of the former President Armando Guebuza, with whom he shared the ownership of the social capital of Intelec, a company acting in the field of telecommunication (Moçambique/Dívidas, 2019).…”

Section: Managing Islam: a Short Historical Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Risk Management of Islamic Terrorism in a Fragile State: The Case of Mozambique

Bussotti

Torres²

2020

PMC

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Islamic terrorism has been a serious threat for Eastern and Southern Africa since the 1990s. Many of these African countries have developed different forms of struggle against Islamic terrorism, from a military intervention to social policies, in order to improve the general socio-economic conditions for society as a whole. In Mozambique, no specific measure was adopted to cope the diffusion of terrorism, leaving that radicalized forms of Islamism spread in particular in Cabo Delgado, a Northern Province bordering with Tanzania. Research aimed at approaching Islamic terrorism in Cabo Delgado according to the strategy of risk prevention and risk management by Mozambican State. This study demonstrates that during the second term of Guebuza as a Chief of State, Mozambique had to face three different, potential threats. Nevertheless, Mozambican government identified two of these threats as a priority (namely Somali piracy in Mozambique Channel and Renamo´s action), neglecting possible Islamic terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado Province. This study demonstrates – using privileged witnesses as well as open sources available in the public sphere - that this choice was typical of a fragile and authoritarian State. Firstly, it was not based on an objective risk analysis, but on political as well as on patrimonial interests of political elite, and secondly local civil society could not oppose any resistance. This choice allowed radical Islamic groups to grow undisturbed in Cabo Delgado, until carrying out violent attacks from October 2017, which Mozambican government seems unable to counter until today. Keywords: Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambican State, religious extremism, risk prevention.

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A Prospect of Secularization? Muslims and Political Power in Mozambique Today

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

After Pentecostalism? Exploring Intellectualism, Secularization and Guiding Sentiments in Africa

After Pentecostalism? Exploring Intellectualism, Secularization and Guiding Sentiments in Africa

Domination, Collaboration and Conflict in Cabo Delgado's History of Extractivism

The Risk Management of Islamic Terrorism in a Fragile State: The Case of Mozambique

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