By Moshe Terdman
Director and editor: Reuven Paz
THE PROJECT FOR THE RESEARCH OF ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS (PRISM)
Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center
Inside this Issue:
• Tribu Ka Organization and Sub-Saharan African Muslims in France
• Radical Islamic Conspiracy Theories Block Immunization against Polio in Northern Nigeria
• Conversion to Islam among the Nguni Blacks in South Africa
Tribu Ka organization and Sub-Saharan African Muslims in France
On January 20, 2006, Ilan Halimi—a 23-years-old son of Moroccan-born Jews of modest means, who sold cell phones at a shop in Paris—disappeared after being apparently lured into a sex trap. He was held and tortured for three weeks in a poor multi-ethnic suburban Paris apartment estate by a predominantly Muslim youth gang dedicated to crime, street fighting, rap music, and virulent anti-Semitism. The gang sent cash ransom demands of more than $500,000 to his family. When Halimi's family could not produce the money, he was murdered shortly after being dumped by a railway line on February 13, 2006.
The group of kidnappers called itself the Barbarians and was aided and abetted by their friends, family, and community. The abduction, torture, and murder of Ilan Halimi, and several kidnapping attempts which were aimed at Jewish individuals, highlighted African Black Muslim anti-Semitism in France.
The leader of this gang was Yusouf Fofana, a 25-years-old of Ivorian origin. On February 15, 2006, he fled to Cote d'Ivoire and on February 22, 2006, was arrested by the Ivorian police. He was delivered into French custody for extradition after failing to convince an Abidjan court that he had Ivorian citizenship through his parents. Back in France, He was immediately charged with murder.
Although tens of thousands of French turned out in February to march against anti-Semitism, following Ilan Halimi's murder, few analysts believe the show of solidarity will change the attitudes of an embittered underclass of restive Arabs, Africans, and other dark-skinned newcomers who increasingly, if illogically, blame Jews for the poverty and prejudice that often beset their lives. France is home to Europe's largest population of Muslims—about 6 million—as well as the continent's largest community of Jews, about 600,000.
After World War II, Africans and Arabs migrated to France to help in the rebuilding of Europe. The next wave came in the late 1960s and 1970s after independence was won by most of these African states. France allowed their hoods (ghettos) to be built outside of their major cities in what they called a controlled area for immigrants who are mainly black Africans and those from the Arab world. In these hoods (ghettos) drugs, unemployment, and the lack of decent schools is abundant.
Thus, one of the striking things of the two weeks of riots that swept France in November 2005 is that so many of the rioters were Muslim Sub-Saharans of West African and Caribbean origins, rather than Arabs, though North Africans from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia make up more than two-thirds of the estimated 6 million immigrants, their families included, in France.
On this background, Tribu Ka was founded in December 2004 by Kemi Saba (aka Kami Saba). Kemi Saba derived his views from the American group Nation of Islam, and the theories of Elijah Mohammed and Farid Mohammed. He had experienced a racially-inspired "epiphany" in a Nation of Islam mosque in Los Angeles, where a sermon was being preached by Tony Muhammad. In Paris, Kemi Saba had joined a French branch of the Nation of Islam before founding Tribu Ka. Thus, Tribu Ka seems to be the French manifestation of the Black Power movement in the United States in the 1960s, even though the American movement is regarded heretic by most orthodox and radical Muslims.
The Tribu Ka members refer to white people as "leucodermes" or leucos". The initials KA stand for Kemites Atoniens. Kem [Khem] is a Biblical term for Egypt, and Aton is the name of the monotheistic deity revered by Akhenaton, who was the heretical Pharaoh. After his death, many of the carvings of his reign were defaced where the symbol of the Aton or the one God was represented, and the usual roster of multiple deities was reestablished in Egypt.
This organization, which includes only African Muslims, is opposed to all contacts between blacks and non-blacks. A center point of their beliefs is that they are a superior race called Kemites who are destined to rule mankind. Thus, a factor that may link the Paris riots with the anti-Semitism of the Barbarians may come from this philosophy. Tribu Ka clearly stated in its Internet web-site (www.tribuka.com) that it had violent intentions toward members of the right-wing Jewish groups, Jewish Defense League and Beitar. They also accused the Jews of being the descendents of slave-traders, an accusation repeated by controversial comic Dieudonne Mbala Mbala, who is seen by the Tribu Ka as an inspiration.
During the time that Yusouf Fofana was on the run after the murder of Ilan Halimi, Tribu Ka had sent threatening letters to Jewish groups. The group had also invaded a Jewish self defense gymnasium, and physically threatened its members.
On July 26, 2006, Tribu Ka was banned by the French government, following its intimidation of Jewish groups and a rally it held on May 30, 2006 in the Jewish district of Marais, in which anti-Semitic slogans were called. The French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced the ban on the group, saying that "their anti-Semitism is no longer to be established and the French Republic cannot tolerate such action and behavior." He further said that he would not be "tolerating people that threaten, intimidate, injure or behave in the way that they behaved." Kemi Saba said that his group would ignore the ban on the grounds that "during the time of slavery, we asked slaves not to meet up after a certain time… if slaves had taken this into account there would not have been the abolition of slavery." Moreover, he claimed that after the group's march in Marais, membership of the Tribu Ka had tripled.
The involvement of Tribu Ka in violence and their messages, raise the potential threat of Muslim Sub-Saharan in France and other parts of Europe to be involved in the process of Jihadi radicalization, alongside North African groups, and on the grounds of joint social conditions.
Radical Islamic Conspiracy Theories Block Immunization against Polio in Northern Nigeria
On July 3, 2006, the five-day polio immunization campaign in eleven polio-endemic states in northern Nigeria, the world's polio hot spot, ended, with health officials hailing its success despite concerns about low turnout. The aim of the "Immunization Plus" campaign was to vaccinate ten million Nigerian children under five-years-old in order to ensure that polio transmission is stopped in Nigeria by the end of 2007. This campaign involved delivering the oral polio vaccine as part of a package that included measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus vaccines as well as bed nets to prevent malaria. The campaign was backed by United Nations health agencies and conducted by Nigeria's national immunization agency. Key to this campaign had been the support of local political, traditional and religious leaders in backing it, particularly in visiting villages ahead of regular vaccination drives to persuade people of the vaccines' safety.
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with approximately 130 million people, has the largest polio problem in the whole world. According to figures of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Nigeria accounts for 83 percent of the global poliovirus and 95 percent of polio cases in Africa, as well as 41 percent of polio cases worldwide, which are not caused accidentally through immunization. More specifically, five states in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria account for most of the world's polio cases, according to the WHO, which is leading an international campaign to eradicate the virus.
There is no cure for polio, but, in most cases, a cheap oral vaccine offers a protection for lifetime. Polio spreads through ingestion of contaminated faecal matter and affects mainly children under the age of five. The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis and deformation. Once contracted polio cannot be cured, though vaccination can provide protection. However, many of those infected with polio never know they have it, although they can spread it.
However, WHO's target of wiping out polio by 2005 failed after three states—Kano, Kaduna, and Zamfara—in the mainly Muslim northern Nigeria halted the polio immunization drive for eleven months in 2004 and 2005 after Muslim clerics alleged that the polio vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile as part of U.S.-led plot to depopulate Africa. They further claimed that the polio vaccine contained impurities that could cause infertility in women and even infect those immunized with HIV virus and cancer. They presented the vaccination campaign as a Western Christian plot to try and reduce the Muslim population of Nigeria.
Polio vaccinations resumed only after the Nigerian government conducted international tests to disprove the claims, and new vaccines were imported from mainly Muslim Indonesia. The Muslim clerics said that supplies from a Muslim country could be trusted. In the meantime, the disease spread to other Muslim countries in the African continent and outside of it, where successful immunization programs had eliminated polio. These countries, which are primarily Muslim ones, are: Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Togo, Chad, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, Botswana, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Indonesia. Hundreds of children were killed, or paralyzed for life by polio, as a result.
Therefore, as from the Hajj of early 2005, when two cases of polio were found in Saudi Arabia, which was polio-free since 1995, it requires that visitors under fifteen years of age from nineteen countries be vaccinated against polio on arrival in the country, whether or not they were previously vaccinated. This vaccination requirement stems the potential for contagion as millions of Muslims convene for the Hajj – and also at other times of the year, when much smaller but still sizeable numbers go on the 'umrah. Beyond the practical dimension, this step places the authority of the Saudi state behind polio vaccination, something likely to be important in places like Nigeria and Indonesia.
However, distrust of the vaccines has continued to linger among the poor and in many rural areas, enabling a resurgence of the virus. Thus, many residents in Kano, northern Nigeria largest city, still refuse to have their children vaccinated, not only against polio but also against other childhood diseases such as measles, citing "the general Western plot against Muslims worldwide" as the reason. Thus, since 2004, there has been a surge in polio infections in northern Nigeria that threatens to undermine global efforts to eradicate the crippling disease. According to the National Programme on Immunization (NPI), 467 new polio cases had been recorded on the first six months of 2006, compared with only 224 cases for the whole of 2005. According to the same NPI, five states in northern Nigeria contribute almost ninety percent of this figure. Moreover, some 15 of Nigeria's 36 states have reported new outbreaks of polio in 2006.
The source of the problem lies with the Muslim doctors, imams, political leaders and professors who endorse the conspiracy theory. They are led by Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, a physician and president of the Supreme Council for Shari'ah in Nigeria (SCSN). On one occasion he stated of Americans that "they are the worst criminals on Earth to sterilize children for life. Even Hitler was not as evil as that." In another instance, on February 26, 2004, Ibrahim Shekarau, governor of Kano—one of the three Nigerian states refusing the polio vaccine—justified the decision to halt the polio immunization by saying that "it is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even ten children [to polio] than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile."
Furthermore, there had been incidents in the past which may have given rise to legitimate suspicions about government-sponsored vaccination campaigns. Those incidents combined with the fact that the immunization as a whole has been politicized by certain forces in northern Nigeria that hope to boost their public support by rejecting the polio vaccine make the immunization drive even more difficult to be implemented.
The fiasco arising from trials of a new meningitis drug by U.S. pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer in Kano in 1996 is often cited as a legitimate reason for northern Nigerians to beware of the polio vaccine. Hundreds of victims of a meningitis epidemic, most of them children, were treated that year with a new Pfizer drug. Many parents complained later that they had not been told their children were being used to test a new drug which had severe side effects and was not always successful. Eleven children who were administered the trial drug died of meningitis. Meanwhile, the parents of many of those who survived claimed that their children had suffered side effects, including loss of speech and deafness as a consequence of the treatment. A federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a class-action suit against Pfizer submitted by Nigerian families who claimed the drug maker put their children in dangerous drug trials without proper consent. The dismissal brings the case back to Nigerian courts, where it stands nowadays.
Thus, a deep suspicion of any mass application of Western medicine has continued to linger in northern Nigeria since then. This feeling has only intensified following events such as the September 11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Some radical Islamic groups see opposition to polio vaccination as a means of expressing their anti-Western feelings. The best known of these organizations is the SCSN. Apart from opposing vaccination, the SCSN has also launched a campaign against the implementation of some UN conventions in Nigeria on the grounds that they are offensive to Islam. These include the Convention against Cruel, Inhuman, and other Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; and the Convention against Child Abuse. The SCSN believes that implementing these UN conventions in Nigeria would undermine the application of strict Islamic law.
To sum up, the five days immunization campaign did not have a chance to achieve its aim of immunizing the whole under five-years-old children, since suspicions and distrust of the vaccines still lingers on among the Muslim population of northern Nigeria. Nigeria is not the only country in the world to be classified as polio-endemic by the WHO. Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, and Pakistan are also in this list. But, of these, all except Nigeria have reduced the number of polio cases in recent years. These countries have substantial Muslim populations. This raises the question, whether conspiracy theories similar to those found in Nigeria can be found in other Muslim countries as well.
Conversion to Islam among the Nguni Blacks in South Africa
For the first time since 1996, South Africa has freedom of religion as a guaranteed right as attested in article 15 of the new constitution. Though still a small force in the townships, Islam is gaining a foothold in many black communities in South Africa. Islam is attracting both poor shantytown dwellers who appreciate Islam's emphasis on charity, and young intellectuals attracted by the faith's focus on lifestyle and social reform. Many of the new converts are young men, who were attracted to Islamic belief in one God and saw it as a way out of gangsterism and drugs. Few Black women find their way to Islam on their own. Most female converts follow husbands, boyfriends, fathers, or brothers. But those women who do convert say the religion offers a refuge from the early sex, AIDS, alcoholism, and domestic violence rampant in many poor black communities in places like Soweto. Overall, Islam seems to be the fastest growing religion of conversion in South Africa, especially among the blacks.
Currently, some 650,000 South Africans, or less than two percent of the population of 45 million, are Muslims. Around 90 percent of the Muslims are termed "Indian" and "Malay" Muslims. The former are descendents of indentured and trader immigrants who arrived from the Indian sub-continent from 1860; the latter's ancestors were slaves imported from South and Southeast Asia from the seventeenth century. Around ten percent of the Muslims are termed "African", that is, individuals indigenous to Africa. Muslims are largely urbanized and live in racially segregated suburbs and townships. Christianity, practiced by 80 percent of the approximately 45 million people, is still the dominant religion amongst black South Africans. But, an estimated 75,000 Africans are now Muslim. Of those, eleven percent is black Africans and that group is expected to become the largest segment of the Muslim South Africans within the next two decades. .
The South African blacks have been divided into their respective tribal affiliations such as the Nguni, Sotho, Venda, and Herero-Ovambo. The Nguni speakers are composed of four tribes, namely the Swazis, Ndebeles, Xhosas and Zulus. The latter two are the two largest South African groups and they are located along the coastal regions stretching from the Cape to Mozambique's border. Over the decades, the socio-economic conditions forced many of them to trek from the rural to the urban areas. We deal here only with the conversion to Islam amongst the Nguni, as an example for the whole phenomenon.
The history of black Muslims in South African townships is very young and started in earnest only around 1960-70s. Due to the rapid socio-political transformation during the last four decades of the twentieth century and because of the Christian missionary activities in the 1950s and 1960s among Muslims, Muslim missionaries came to the defense of Islam and made a concerted effort to carry the massage of Islam to the Africans. Organizations such as the Islamic Missionary Society (Johannesburg), Islamic Propagation Center (Durban) and the Al-Jihad Islamic Movement (Cape Town) were very active during the mentioned period to convert Africans and others to Islam. In the 1970s the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, which was established in 1970, played a crucial role in undertaking missionary work in Kwa-Zulu Natal via their missionary wing called the Islamic Movement of Kwa-Zulu & Natal. In the 1980s, it was however, renamed the Islamic Da'wah Movement of South Africa (IDMSA) when it separated from its parent-body. And by then, it undertook missionary activities in more than thirty townships across South Africa. IDMSA's activities were later complemented by those of the Johannesburg-based and Kuwaiti-funded Africa Muslim Agency, whose activities are not only confined to South Africa. Through the efforts of these and many other Muslim organizations, mosques (especially in Soweto), Muslim schools (for instance in Mamelodi), Islamic centers [in Mabopane (Transvaal), Kwamashu (Natal), and Guguletu (Cape)] and secular schools [the Cassiem Thombela High School (Durban)] were established. These institutions played important role in disseminating Islamic culture in the various densely populated African regions. In addition to them, there have been a fair number of individuals who have also contributed very vigorously to Da’wah in South Africa; some of these were done in an informal and unofficial manner.
The gradual growth of Islam, particularly amongst the Africans, not only alarmed the churches—primarily the Nederlandse Gerformeerde Kerk (NGK)—which was the state church, but also those amongst the government circles. This, as well as other developments, caused the 1986 NGK synod to once again declare that "Islam was a false religion", a view which many of the black churchgoers did not accept. In the 1960s the government and the NGK church espoused the opinion that there were three dangers. These were the spread of Communism, the entrenchment of black power, and the challenge posed by Islam. The mere fact that Islam was earmarked as one of the potential dangers in South Africa has led many blacks to ask questions about its philosophy and character. Another factor, which also aroused their interest was the visits of Afro-American Muslims such as Muhammad 'Ali, the former world boxing champion, and Luis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam.
Under the Apartheid regime, Islam was practiced primarily by the country's small South Asian and Malay populations. Indian traders in Natal mostly, remained isolated from Africans. In fact, Islam has historically viewed by South Africans as an "Indian religion", and an exploitative one, because of its close association with Indian traders. There is still a strong perception among Africans that Islam is an exclusively Indian religion, and Africans who embrace Islam are seen to be "colonized" by Indians. Furthermore, Islam failed to take root in black communities that were Christianized by settlers and missionaries. Apartheid and the isolation of the Indian community also slowed the spread of Islam among the blacks.
The heritage of apartheid still lives on nowadays. The South African Muslims are deeply divided by race, class, ethnicity, language, politics, education, and beliefs. Generally, average per capita income is highest among Indian Muslims, followed by Malays and then Africans. This reflects higher levels of education and lower levels of unemployment. Language is another marker of differentiation. Over 90 percent of Indian Muslims regard English as their first language. Among colored Muslims the divide is roughly equal between English and Afrikaans. However, among black Africans, indigenous languages like isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi, Setswana, and SiSwati are represented. Thus, there is enormous tension between South Africa's black and Indian Muslim communities. Blacks accuse the Indians of racism.
However, since the mid-1990s, following the collapse of the Apartheid regime, the numbers of African Muslims have been augmented by the arrival of Muslim refugees from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Angola, Malawi, and other African countries. So, much of the conversion work conducted today in the townships is being carried out by older converts and by tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants from other African countries who have surged into South Africa since the end of apartheid.
Black South Africans, drawn to Islam practiced by African immigrants, are converting in growing numbers and slowly changing the face of religious affiliation on the overwhelmingly Christian South Africa. According to Dr. Shamil Jeppie, an expert on Islamic history in Africa at the University of Cape Town, "there is massive growth especially in the (black) townships." Immigrants from Central and West Africa, escaping poverty at home for life in the continent's economic powerhouse, have brought with them a new "Africanized Islam" more in line with black South Africans' identities than the religion practiced by followers with closer links to Asia. Thus, due to the infiltration of the Zanzibaris and Malawians into the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng respectively, a clearer understanding of Islam was provided; this has mainly been because of their interaction and intermarriage with members of the Nguni people.
Overall, one can see that post 1994 saw demographic changes in the townships, with more Muslims from other countries flocking into the townships, thereby introducing new schools of thought. As a result, further changes were once again brought about. black Muslims were now opting for Shi'ism over other Sunni schools of thought simply to revolt against the established communities. Hostility between the established and the developing Muslim communities grew even harsher. Grievances of black Muslims varied from racism and exploitation, to the unfair distribution of zakat. Institutions such as Afro-Middle East Center conducted reconciliation sessions to calm down the volatile situation and the embassy of Saudi Arabia also got involved to a lesser extent. The problems, especially racism, are spreading unabated in a community that is supposed to spearhead non-racialism. The problem of racism has jeopardized mobilization campaigns for international causes concerning Muslims. The third post-1994 phenomenon in the townships was that more Muslims abandoned township mosques in favor of mosques in the developed Muslim communities. This new attitude has as a result further segmented the developing Muslim community.
Furthermore, in 1993 a Cape Town umbrella body for the Muslim youth was formed called Ikhwanul-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood). During the 1990s Sheikhs Ismail Gqamane and Jamil Kobus completed their studies in Medina/Saudi Arabia. Upon their return in 1997 the Ikhwanul-Muslimeen changed its name to Masakhane Muslim Community (MMC). The main aim was to officially represent township Muslims and convene Islamic activities in the Western Cape. June 13, 1999 marked the date of confirming the MMC as the sole representative and umbrella organization for the townships. The leaders were Cassiem Gqamane (Amir), Faiza Lebaki (vice president), Sheikh Jamil Kobus (general secretary), Ashraf Zantisi (treasurer). The MMC has been instrumental in maintaining and setting up of new structures. After a very successful beginning the MMC is not very active at present due to the fact that a number of active people have left, such as Iqbal Cassiem.
Generally, despite all the problems mentioned above, Muslims are eager to increase and extend their influence in the townships by winning people to Islam. This reality of extraordinary increase is reflected in the statistical growth recorded for black Muslims in South Africa. With 11.4 percent of the current Muslim population it is the fastest growing sector of the Muslim community.
The Project for the Research of Islamist Movements is part of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center. Site: www.e-prism.org. Email: reupaz @ netvision . net . il. All material copyright Reuven Paz unless otherwise stated. Credit if quoting; ask permission to reprint. GLORIA is part of the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, ISRAEL
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Islam in Africa Newsletter provides and analyzes information, political, religious, and social developments, events, or documents on Radical Islam and Islamic movements in Africa.