I dedicate this book to Muslim women in Tanzania in admiration for the courage they displayed at a trying moment in our history, and in gratitude for the inspiration they enkindled to those who faltered.

I have satisfied myself that President Mkapa’s speech to the National Assembly in Dodoma on 4 November 1998 was such a monument of eloquence in Kiswahili language that its majesty can rarely be captured in a foreign tongue. I am keenly conscious therefore that the following brief quotation in translation in which President Mkapa provided a breath-taking description of our beautiful country is but a faint shadow of that awe-inspiring address:

This book is about one old skeleton in our national cabinet; the burden of religious discrimination which we have always carried in our hearts but which we have carefully managed to conceal to the rest of the world. President Reagan of the United States once boasted about the global reach of his country by saying: You can run but you cannot hide. But as far as our religious skeleton is concerned, we have managed to fool even the arrogantly boastful America. All the official reports published by the US Department of State from 1994 to 1999 have failed to detect religious discrimination in Tanzania. The focus of this book is on the discrimination which Muslims suffer in their country. This does not mean that no one has suffered in Tanzania except the Muslims. To be sure, in their numerous writings, Issa G. Shivji and Chris Peter Maina have unearthed several sickening skeletons as far as our general record in respecting human rights is concerned. But it is the suffering of Muslims in Tanzania which has rarely been acknowledged even in our own country. Who can imagine, for example, that President Mkapa’s speech quoted above was delivered nine months after his government had ordered policemen to shoot and kill Muslims at Mwembechai? This book is offered as a modest attempt to understand the intricate weave of social and political factors which threaten our national unity.

Since my preoccupation has largely been on the wider implications of the Mwembechai killings, I have appended at the end of this book the long open letter which Abu Aziz submitted to the Attorney General on the government’s mishandling of the Mwembechai crisis. Abu Aziz’s submission offers a very insightful account of that sad episode in our national history.

Hamza Mustafa Njozi
University of Dar es Salaam
1999.

Alhamdulillah. All praise is due to Allah. This modest undertaking could not have been brought to completion without the support and co-operation of many people. I gratefully thank them all. I would like, however, to single out for particular appreciation Mr. Faraj A. Tamim, Mr. Omar J. Msangi, Mr. Juma Kilaghai, Mr. Burhani Mtengwa, Dr. Ramadhani K. Dau, Mohamed Said and Alhaj Ramadhani Madabida for the lively and sometimes heated discussions we had on the subject of this book.

The entire editorial staff of An-Nuur newspaper must receive a special word of gratitude for granting me unhindered access to their library and for allowing me to use in this book pictures which were published in their newspaper.

I also wish to note with grateful appreciation that in the course of my research, the late Sheikh Mohammed Ali, the late Sheikh Kassim bin Juma, Alhaj Sheikh Said Rupia, Sheikh Waziri Nkobo, Alhaj Aboud Jumbe and Mzee Bori Lillah honoured me with vital information that holds a rare quality of meaning about Muslims in Tanzania that I could not have possibly got anywhere else. I treasure their trust and I hope to use much of that information in subsequent works Insha-Allah.

I likewise wish to register my sincere thanks to Professor Rwekaza Mukandala, Dr. Palamagamba Kabudi, Dr. A.F. Lwaitama and other Christian colleagues who requested for anonymity for encouraging me to give my view of the other side of the hill despite our profound disagreement about the nature and magnitude of religious discrimination in Tanzania.

Finally I wish to pay special tribute to those Muslim women who, at the peak of Muslim persecution in Tanzania, when most of us wavered, stood up (as Muslims should) for their rights as citizens and as Muslims. For their stand they suffered torture and imprisonment. Yet after their release, their resolve did not flag. They travelled across the country to encourage Muslims to stand up for their God given and constitutional right to live as Muslims. Their courage in the face of intimidating state power has been a source of great inspiration to me. I dedicate this book to them in admiration and gratitude.

H.M.N.

Dr. Hamza Mustafa Njozi is a Senior Lecturer in Literature and current Chair in the Department of Literature at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In his student days the author served as the Secretary General of the Muslim Students Association of the University of Dar es Salaam (MSAUD). He also served as the interpreter of Ahmed Deedat, a leading Muslim scholar of the Christian Bible from South Africa, when the latter visited Tanzania at the invitation of MSAUD in 1981. The author is also a founder member of the Dar es Salaam University Muslim Trusteeship.

In 1998 Dr. Njozi served as an East African Visiting Scholar at the Centre of African Studies, SOAS, University of London and in the following year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for African Studies, University of Florida. In 1995 he attended the Folklore Fellows Summer School at the University of Joensuu, Finland. He obtained his BA and MA degrees from the University of Dar es Salaam and his doctorate degree from the National University of Malaysia (UKM). He has published many articles in the fields of Literature and Folklore. Dr. Njozi is the editor of a book titled, East Africa and the US: Problems and Issues and author of another book titled, The Sources of the Qur’an: A Critical Review of Authorship Theories.

Dr. Njozi was born in Songea, southern Tanzania. He is married to Fatma binti Burhani and they have six children.

On Friday 13 February, 1998 at the instigation of a Catholic priest of Mburahati parish in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzania government ordered its para-military police force to open fire on unarmed Muslims at Mwembechai area, killing at least four of them. It was soon discovered that the seditious claims made by the Catholic priest and repeatedly broadcast on a Catholic radio that Muslims were ridiculing Jesus were a sheer fabrication. Muslims’ demands for an independent probe team to investigate the killings were immediately rejected by the Minister for Home Affairs. The government also banned a meeting organised by Muslim women to speak out about the sexual humiliations and indignities they suffered at the hands of male police officers while in remand prison.

In this book Dr. Njozi looks at the Mwembechai killings as a manifestation of a simmering political crisis in Tanzania. The book provides unsettling details about religious discrimination in a country which is thought by many as setting a shining example to rest of the world. Tha author’s analysis of the looming political tragedy in Tanzania is both illuminating and sympathetic.