Volume 33 2006 Issue

Review of African Political Economy No.110:619-634 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2006 Religion, Ideology & Conflict in Africa Roy Love Prologue: Whose Political Agenda? The last issue which ROAPE devoted entirely to religion (‘Fundamentalism in Africa: Religion and Politics’, No. 52, 1991) reflected what its editors saw then as the principal area of concern, particularly Christian fundamentalism often sponsored by US evangelical churches. Global events since the devastation of the ‘twin towers’ in New York on 9 September 2001, the election and re-election to the American presidency of a ‘born again’ Christian,1 terrorist atrocities in Kenya and Tanzania and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, have altered the picture so radically that a revisit to the topic is now timely, if not overdue. In so doing it is appropriate also to update the terminology. ‘Fundamentalism’ has increasingly come to be seen as a problematic label, with a shift from its meaning of a dogmatism of belief that did not depart from literal interpretation of sacred texts. Concern today is not with religious belief per se, but faith as the basis for political activities and organisation, even if the rigidity of those beliefs adds intolerance to violent politics. This will be the focus of the current issue. In it we will tend to use the now more standard ‘Islamism’ and talk about Islamist movements rather than ‘Islamic fundamentalism’; likewise, rather than Christian fundamentalism we will talk about ideologies such as evangelism or Pentecostalism and in organisational terms concentrate on the familiar ‘Christian right’. There is also a contextual shift internal to Africa (and elsewhere globally) in the apparent burgeoning of religious bodies, of converts to new faiths and in the centrality of religious concerns, especially in politics – in turn reflected in the number of books, articles and conferences on these themes.2 The contemporary global backcloth is thus the starting point for looking at religion and politics in Africa. The Cold War has been replaced by a new global confrontation whose proponents couch their ideological stances in religious and indeed ‘fundamentalist’ terms. Bush’s pronouncements lump together Afghanistan and Iraqi resistance, with phenomena like Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, and in August 2006 the alleged plot to blow up British planes, as sharing a common ‘totalitarian ideology’ and a desire to ‘attack free nations’. This view reflects that of a sizeable minority (40% in some polls) of US citizens who believe their country is faced with a single global conspiracy by Islamists to destroy their society. Both leaders and citizens define the core of that society in Christian terms and use religious shibboleths to urge resistance to this threat. Moreover, the practice of the ’war on terror’ has been one that has targeted Muslim societies and organisations, seeming to confirm the perceptions of most Muslims that the war is one against them. In August this year, Blair echoed Bush by stating in a major speech in the US that there was a ‘crusade’ in progress – seemingly mindless of the connotations of this term among Muslims. On the other side of the divide, there are clearly Islamist networks that are bent on a jihad against the US and the West more generally, to promote a political realm based on Islamist formulae, using religious ISSN 0305-6244 Print/1740-1720 Online/06/040619-16 DOI: 10.1080/03056240601118986 620 Review of African Political Economy slogans to justify the use of tactics of terror against non-implicated civilians and the slaughter or forced displacement of opponents and ‘infidels’. Mahmood Mamdani, in his book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (reviewed in this issue), characterises the problem that such a world poses in these terms: Both Bush and bin Laden employ a religious language, the language of good and evil, the language of no compromise: you are either with us or against us … The danger of bringing good and evil into politics cannot be underestimated … if the struggle against political enemies is defined as a struggle against evil, it will turn into a holy war. And in holy war, there can be no compromise. Evil cannot be converted; it must be eliminated. One first step to a saner world is to challenge this simplistic dichotomising. But Mamdani also holds out an organisational challenge: ‘… nothing less than a global movement for peace will save humanity’. He does not offer details of how such ‘a mass movement within each country’ might come into being. But it is one hope that the discussions sparked by this Special issue might focus on an alternative ‘neither- nor’ way forward in this dangerous era. The African Setting Africa is not, of course, at the centre of this global clash but it has already been targetted in various ways as part of the protagonist’s strategies, such as the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam with their massive human damage. For many years, US fundamentalists saw the cause of the South in the Sudan as a religious crusade, which they supported in war and now still support in peace. Several African governments have accepted the ‘for or against’ formula and have been clamouring to sign up to membership of the global coalition against terrorism – among them regimes that had earlier been seen as among the new (progressive) leaders. Both Eritrea and Ethiopia, for instance, have been vying to be the favoured base for US operations in the Middle East. Djibouti has in fact taken in troops from the US and Germany to add to the permanent French garrison, and US navy patrols operate along the Red Sea coast to interdict possible terrorists into Somalian territory. A huge web of US military staging posts has been sited across vast tracts of Africa to provide logistics for military action by the US in the Middle East and to pre-empt ‘terrorist’ incursions or explosions within the continent – these were well documented in the last ROAPE issue on North Africa (September, 2006). Most recently, statements attributed to Osama bin Laden refocused attention on Africa, especially the north-east. He sees what is happening in Darfur (see Briefing by Alex de Waal in this issue) as evidence that the West is waging a war against Islam (BBC News, 2006), a curious conclusion when it is African Muslims who are bearing the brunt of what may be ‘genocide’ and where in early September 2006 the Sudan government rejected UN peacekeeping forces. In assessing the impact of the ‘war on terror’ in Africa, one should not neglect what the US sees as one of its ‘successes’, using diplomatic means, backed by the threat of force – the conversion of the Sudan government from what the US officially recognised as a ‘state supporting terrorism’, deemed also to be an Islamist state, to something of an ally (at least in the same ambiguous way as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia). In these circumstances, an initiative in Africa to reject this subservient role, with its logic of adversarial political alliances, would be a strong building block in a global peace movement. What is needed, perhaps, is a new ‘non-aligned’ movement – Editorial: Religion, Ideology & Conflict in Africa 621 non-aligned as regards religion-based political loyalties and international ties. Any such movement would have to be based on popular movements and not just an assembly of states. As such, it is not only the ‘extremist’ groups on each side which need to be gathered in but also those in the mainstream of the great variety of denominations and sects in the different faiths which are practised on the African continent. An effective policy response requires a wider understanding of the links between belief and action, religious adherence and socio-economic circumstance, and between faith organisations and politics within Africa as much as internation- ally. In the present issue of the Review we ground this debate on religion and politics in Africa. The 1991 issue of the Review contained little on Islam, but the events of 9/11 and their repercussions on US foreign policy, together with ongoing conflict in Sudan, Somalia and religious tensions in Nigeria, Algeria, and Egypt – where divisions within Islam and their relationships with Christian groups are all festering – has altered that perception considerably. Religion in the politics of health has also emerged as an issue. In addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis, the responses of churches and Islamic communities has been central but ambiguous, with many Muslims seeing it as a ‘Christian’ disease and many Christians characterising it as the ‘wages of sin‘ while at the same time proffering ‘miracle’ cures – particularly in new Pentecostalist and charismatic churches. The pandemic has provided the perfect vehicle for US Evangelical Christians, often originating in the Baptist south, to impose their own concepts of ‘family values’ and moral rules on US official policy aided by a like-minded President. Similarly, the traditional objection of the Roman Catholic church to artificial forms of contraception has been reaffirmed in its negative stance on condoms in preventing HIV. Where we can agree with our predecessors in 1991 is, first, that ‘fundamentalism’, of whatever variety, must be seen not as an atavistic throwback but as ‘quintessentially modern … a complex, heterogeneous and often ambiguous response to events and processes – and above all to crises – in the contemporary world’. Second, that fundamentalist believers, whether Christian or Muslim, appear inevitably to be within the purview of right-wing politics

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