Let Somalis Reclaim the Lost Glory of their Religion and Culture

[Xudeedi]

Let Somalis Reclaim the Lost Glory of their Religion and Culture

By Mohamed I. Farah (Raghe)

 

08 Augost, 2007

 

For centuries Islam, as a religion, has provided Somalis with a means to communicate with their Almighty God, and helped them to conduct their lives according to the dictates of that religion and in accordance with their cultural precepts. Nowhere in the recorded history of Islam in Somalia, however has religion ever been opposed to the Somali cultural identity. If anything, each in their separate ways, they had been used to enhance and compliment the right of the other to exist in the society. As for the state of religious harmony in the country, except for a short-lived period of time during the last quarter of the 19th century, when the two religious orders of Salihiya and Uwesiya had fought each other, otherwise there has always been a sense of understanding between and among adherents of different religious orders in the country. Even when the two had been in conflict with each other, it is well to be in mind that the Somali culture has never been in contention. However, following a mounting pressure from some religious- zealots, the Somali cultural identity has been placed under a severe stress today. As for the fate of religion, there is an increasing sign to indicate that the local face of Islam has undergone a severe amount of changes in Somalia caused by a movement known as Islamic fundamentalism. Different people understand the meaning of Islamic fundamentalism differently. Here in my discussion I will only refer in passing to that aspect of so-called Islamic fundamentalism that calls for a return to the basic tenets of Islam, and show how this has been perverted to a point where it has affected Somali cultural practices, especially in relation to the role of women in the society. I chose to focus on women because they are the pillars of any society, and I also believe to denigrate their worth as a people can have consequences too ghastly to contemplate for the future of any society.

 

I have been baffled by how often the so-called Muslim fundamentalists have let women to form the nucleus of their religious discourse. In their discussions women are not seen as part and parcel of the society in which they live in, but an appendage to be either hidden in dark tenements and behind shapeless clothes or to be misused, disinherit, and then dispose. Does any of this ignoble way of how to treat women have anything to do with the call for the return to the original roots of Islam? I say the answer is no. Unless the return to the roots referred to here is associated with either the pre-Islamic Arabia where female individuals, who having escaped from becoming victims of infanticide, had been treated as chattels, or the period that came immediately after the death of Prophet Mohamed (SAW), otherwise at the actual time of the Prophet women had been accorded the highest respect, honour and esteem in the society. Far from being kept hidden in dark places or made to cover their bodies from toes to head, they had participated in all societal activities, including taking part in battles in which case Aisha, one of the wives of Prophet Mohamed (SAW) is a good example. Women entrepreneurs were not in short supply either; Khadija, the senior most wife of the Prophet is a good example of women entrepreneurs. There were also women scholars of great note. It stands to reason therefore that neither of the Prophet’s wives would have performed the duties attributed to them well while sitting behind walls, or encumbered by large fitting clothes with their faces hidden from people and the bounty of God: the day light.

 

It is sad to note that with the death of the Prophet came also the end of the glorious role that women had played in the Islamic society. Henceforth, Muslim Arabs relapsed into a favourite past time of their pre-Islamic days, using women either as sexual objects, as in Harems, or chattels to be disposed as war-booty. To make sure that their Harems, like the “fragile goods,” were not “damaged” by those who were employed to take care of them, the Muslim Arab rulers, and later the Ottoman Turks, had employed African slaves (eunuchs) whom they had blinded and castrated. The practice of keeping women behind walls, or having them covered with large shapeless clothes, has its roots in the practices of the Arab merchant class, as well as the Arab princely rulers. This practice could find roots and survive easily in Arabia, and in the neighbouring countries of Asia, because of the cultural practices and the traditions of those societies that favour such practices.

 

Although in the traditional Somali society life was not a paradise for women, yet they were never degraded as people. Fathers never let torrents of tears to indicate the state of sadness for having a new baby-girl. Instead most of Somali parents saw in the birth of a child-girl the sign of good things to come; hence baby-girls were favoured with auspicious names such as Hodon, Warsan, Ebla, Deqa, Aurala, Aulo, Haadsan, Quman, Dhahabo, Meran, etc. Either out of ignorance or sheer disregard for the cultural values of their people, I can already hear echoes of sounds that come from people who might wish to accuse me of recommending names that according to them belong to the “Age of Ignorance.” Apparently to such people, one would like to remind them that the “Age of Ignorance” is here and belongs to people who would call their children names that are not Somali but foreign ones; often they are names that have little or nothing to do with Islam.

 

The idea that women should be kept separate from the rest of the society is quite an alien feature of the Somali culture, and hence no amount of religious justification can make the practice stick for ever, and the reason for this is not hard to find: first there is no any religious injunction to support its validity and secondly it is impractical. Imagine, given the pastoralist environment of Somalia, if past generations of Somalis had forced women into seclusion, what do you think could have happened? Indeed Somalis would not have been propelled into this present generation, and this is why it never happened and never will. Forcing women into seclusion has never been part of the Somali culture, as women most often worked side by side in the bush with men to keep the continuous flow of the family and the community from one generation to another. Taking a stand against the practice of women seclusion means clarifying and reshaping many issues involving both male and female sexualities. To people who would rather see women getting secluded or hidden behind large voluminous shapeless cloth, the idea of female sexuality is not far from their mind. One of the reasons given for women to stay at home or hide behind voluminous cloth is a need to induce the spirit of chastity in them. Experiences have however shown that neither of the two shoddy reasons is strong enough to induce a spirit of chastity in them. It is mostly their knowledge of who they are, and the understanding of the relation they have with the world around them, that can make women value and respect their bodies, and this requires a certain level of education. In the traditional Somali society where seclusion was not known it was the cultural education, in terms of norms and principles, which had guaranteed a high level of chastity. For example, it was part of the rainy season celebrations that girls and boys were expected to meet and dance together. The dance could go on for a whole night, and nothing untoward happened. Those dancing sessions had a functional meaning in the society; they provided the opportunity for the boy to meet the girl, one’s future wife, if you may.

 

However, at present, following an onslaught mounted against all forms of traditional dances by some religious-zealots, the Somali traditional dances have almost become part of history. Most young Somali women and men of today do not know how Somali traditional dances, such as Walasaqo batar, daanto etc, once looked like. In marriage ceremonies, an occasion for communal celebration, people until recently had sat huddled together looking sad, as if they were there to officiate at the funeral of their dear departed friend. Those who managed to break through the barriers of artificially induced religious proscription and wished to dance they often find, to their dismay and embarrassment, they don’t know how to go about the business of doing the traditional dances. The irony is that in Saudi Arabia, a society that these religious zealots want Somalis to emulate, traditional dances still form part of their cultural festivities. I remember having seen the Saudi King taking part enthusiastically in a sabre-dance, and wished Somali religious zealots could have witnessed the spectacle. However, in retrospect now I know that that would not have mattered much, because according to such people, except themselves, everybody else is wrong on matters involving religious interpretations. In their eyes they are the only ones who follow the right path, while others are sinful and guilty of corrupting Islam. I would like to hear from such people what they think of the dancing King, who until recently happened to be their patron? Today if Somalis seem not to know how to dance their traditional dances, remember that this has not always been the case. Somalis were once known throughout the world for the beauty of their traditional dances. In 1976, for example, the Somali national dancing troupe had been awarded the greatest honour for being among one of the best traditional dancers in a celebration that had been held in Nigeria which had brought together Africans and people of African origin to showcase their arts.

 

When the separation of the sexes is taken to the extreme it could have dangerous consequences for the society. What does for example one achieve by separating people who share common blood ties? You do not have to be a religious person to know that it is against nature to have a sexual desire for your niece, cousin or aunt. If by separating people in different compartment this is meant to achieve a level of sexual security in the society, the results unfortunately have been quite disappointing. Unlike the proverbial cat, men and women may or may not pay with their lives for being curious, but something else can happen to them: they might like to satisfy their curiosity which could result in their crossing the Rubicon, in terms of breaking sexual mores. Within the Somali traditional society, in spite of a high level of interactions between sexes, child-molestations or sexual perversion of any kind had been unheard of unlike societies that practise women seclusion. Is this the kind of fate that the so-called religious zealots wish for us Somalis? Our forefathers made sure this never happened, and will not happen anytime soon.

 

Our view of what is sexually desirable in the opposite sex is what has led to prescription in female dress-manners in order to allegedly avoid male sexual arousals, as if women have no feelings. Despite being opposed to each other politically, both western and some Islamic societies have made strange bedfellows in their admiration for the female mammalian glands that are seen as an object of sexual desires by them. Hence both societies have made sure that that part of the woman is cleverly hidden to the sight of men. In the traditional Somali society, as it is true for the rest of the African continent, those glands are what they have always meant to be: objects for providing mother’s milk to her child. Some of the readers will recollect while on a journey, riding in a rickety bus, on a bumpy village road somewhere in Africa, they might have seen a woman passenger feeding milk to her baby from her mammalian glands. I am sure no one had felt anything strange in the action of the woman. Let me hastily add here by saying that I am not proposing that women should walk topless. God forbid; no; that is not my intention. My intention here is to illustrate a point with an example drawn from our experiences to prove that man’s perception of what is sexually suggestive is a product of cultural practices and upbringing. Some Muslim communities wear heard-scarf as a badge of chastity. In some African societies, on the other hand, it forms an important part of the woman’s outfit, worn not for religious but for aesthetic reasons. In the traditional Somali environment, married women used them to differentiate themselves from girls whose hairs were plaited; they called the piece of cloth on their head gambo.

 

Religious Zealots as the Bane of True Islam in Somalia

 

As an important social institution, religion in Somalia today is fighting a war to maintain its local identity that goes back to many centuries. Not so many years ago in Somalia, Islam achieved a high level of local freedom. By freedom I mean the ability of religious institutions to reproduce, regenerate and maintain themselves independent of other similar institutions elsewhere in the world. Mosques that were built by using local available materials acted as centres of worship, a place for learning and a communal meeting ground. Centuries of Islamic practices in Somalia have moulded Islam to give it a typical Somali appearance. For example, the intonation that Somalis used we they recited the Koran or when they called the faithful to prayers, all of these were uniquely Somali. Both the freedom and the innovation that Islam had at the local levels not only in Somalia but elsewhere in the African continent had made westerners to say that Islam has its roots firmly grounded in the African soil, unlike African Christianity which until recently looked to Europe in order to function well. In the case of Islam this state of things had been made possible by a presence of large Islamic centres that had existed in different regions of Africa to guarantee the promotion of Islamic learning and practices. In the Horn region both Mogadishu and Harar in Ethiopia were part of a regional network of Islamic centres of education. Lamu in Kenya was the centre of Islamic learning in East Africa.

 

In West Africa Gao and Timbuktu were places of choice for those seeking religious-education. To get religious education it was enough to travel to these centres of learning. Hence, in the case of Somalis, they occasionally travelled to Al Azhar University in Egypt for their education, and hardly to Saudi Arabia that had since acquired the status of a cultural backwater in terms of Islamic scholarship. Earlier on, when Somalis went to Al Azhar mostly on foot in search of education, university dons were amazed with the extent of knowledge those students had accumulated and mastered. As a language the Somali language had formed an important part in any religio-political discourse. A good example is the case of Ina Abdulle Hassan who relying on Somali poetry made use of religious symbols to fight the European incursions into the Somali territories. At the risk of their lives Somali sheikhs had undertaken missionary-trips abroad in East and Central Africa to spread Islam as a religion. The greatest of them all was Sheikh Uways Mohamed who in his mission to spread Islam in Central and East Africa braved all kinds of dangers coming from men and wildlife. Sheikh Uweys is a living example to prove that Islam in Africa had been propagated and spread by Muslim Africans, and not by people of other nationalities like those whose views of Africa was a place to make business of selling and buying African men, women and children. Today the memory of Sheikh Uweys in those countries that he had visited is highly treasured and revered. Before the destruction of the Somali state, every year the followers of Sheikh Uways from Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Congo had paid visit to his shrine at Biyole to honour his memory.

 

If this was the face Islam in Somalia, what does it look like today? Well Somalis are still Muslims, albeit committed to a struggle to have Islam regain its local face that is about to change drastically. How did this unenviable state of things come to pass, is the question to which most of my readers would like to have an answer. The process that has led to this change has not come quickly and suddenly; this was piecemeal affair; it had all started in Saudi Arabia in the decades of the seventies of the past century. This period is remembered as the time when Cold War had reached its zenith. Small and middle-sized countries were pulled into the vortex of the Cold War through a system of alignments and counter alignments. Saudi Arabia fearful of the spread of Communism had become a strong ally of America. Across the Persian Gulf an Islamic Revolution lead by Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini had taken place. Somalia had become a clientele state of Soviet Union. Until now Saudi Arabia had been an insignificant desert Kingdom pursuing quite a narrow and insular set of foreign policy principles. All this would change. In order not to succumb to a revolution similar to the one that had taken place in Iran, the Saudi rulers had decided to become a regional power of sort. Saudis embarked on policies that had entailed the need to win friends, deny friends to potential foes and strengthen the military capacity of their country’s defence system.

 

Saudi Arabia had a two tier level policies to deal with Somalia. On the one hand it had established a cordial relations with the military regime in Somalia and, on the other hand, it gave support – both financial and moral - to former students from their country’s university to preach their narrow brand of Islam in Somalia. At a time when in Somalia dissent of any type was punished with long-term jail sentences, the ability of the new Somali preachers from Saudi Arabia, to stand up against the state authorities, had worn the heart of the people, and this gave them a soft landing ground on which to further carry their operations. Initially they gained access to the community by establishing themselves in local mosques, which they used as a platform to carry out their preaching activities. In due course of time they had started to discredit the traditional Ulemas by calling them names.

 

They had shown no respect for traditional institutions and practices, and even insulted elders who had made their access to the community possible. They had no patience even with their own parents whom they despised. Often they looked gloomy and unhappy except in the company of each other. As time went by, they used the wealth they had acquired, as a form of aid from Saudi Arabia, to gain further control of the mosques until they replaced those who had run them, and from there went on to build new ones. By now they had established themselves as a group quite apart from the people to whom they were preaching. They formed an elite group of traders whose large beards and shortened trousers became their trademark. While the rest of the Umma groaned under a state of poverty and bad governance they prospered beyond anyone’s wild imagination. However, despite high-sounding Arabic words that they often used when preaching their doctrine, as a strategy this was not enough to hide the shallowness of their point of view; they were polemicists per excellence. Among some of their favoured subjects of discussion are the following:

Women must hide behind a veil

Be careful not to shout when you utter the name of Prophet Mohammed (SAW).

Do not visit graveyards, and do not tend any of those that belong to your dead relatives; if possible destroy them completely.

Koran must be recited with Arabic intonation, and so must the call for prayers.

Children must be given Arabic-sounding names. Somali names must be avoided like a plague.

One should not rejoice at anything.

Marriages of conveniences are legal.

Somali traditional dresses represent a throwback to the “Age of Ignorance.”

Those who do not share our point of view are not part of us; in fact they are our enemies; they are Kaffir and will end up in Jahima, which is the mother of all hells.

 

I do not wish to discuss the demerit of each of the above mentioned points; suffice to mention here is that in perusing through these statements it becomes clear to one what their negative implications are for the society, in terms of communal understanding, cultural and religious identities. The break up of the Somali state and the chaos that had resulted from that break up had laid the ground for people to preach all kinds of ideas, including political and religious ones to people who were desperate. In the refugee camps in the neighbouring countries, in camps for displaced people inside the country, and even in Diaspora, to Somali people life had suddenly become meaningless. Hence in this sad state of affairs anyone who could offer solace in his or her religious speeches was able to have a ready-made audience. Given the wealth at their disposals no one could have benefited better from this opportunity more than those with their religious agendas drawn from Wahabi doctrine. Although the current leaders of Islamic Courts who are contending for political power in Somalia pursue a religious doctrine not quite dissimilar to Wahabism, I believed theirs to be an independent and indigenously inspired movement until they had established their headquarters in Eritrea. However whether their political objectives are founded on a narrow agenda based on clan interest, as their opponents would have us believe, or whether they represent a truly national movement only time will tell. Culture and not politics is the focus of my discussion here, and I would rather therefore leave, for the time being, the subject of politics for others to discuss.

 

However, following the 9/11 incident things are beginning to change. The Americans convinced that all forms of extremism had their roots in Saudi Arabia had forced the Ministry of Auqaf of the country not to send money to any of their beneficiaries throughout the world on ground that the money had in the past been used in Madrasas to radicalise Muslim students. From this American stand it is clear that the Americans were concerned with the political implications of the Saudi aid more than anything else; and so did Saudis themselves who agreed with the American point of view. To the utter dismay of both parties the political radicalisations of some of the Muslim population in the world is growing stronger day by day. I am sure what the Americans chose to call extremism is not a product of any religious instructions; it is something that has its roots in a collective psyche of a people who might have felt a deep sense of humiliation in their lives. In case you wonder what makes people commits acts that defy your imagination, try by not only causing acts of humiliation against them, but also make them feel it; rub their nose in the sand, so to speak, and then wait and see. Everyone has his or her breaking point, and I am sure the world would have been a better place to live in, if we could make sure that people don’t get to that point. Be that as it may, for Somalis who are still reeling from the cultural domination of the Saudi aid, happiness is not strong enough an expression to capture the state of joy in them for realising that no more money is forth coming to help destroy their culture and religion. With no money coming in, at least officially, the levelling of the playing field is real today.

It is now up to Somalis to reclaim the lost glory of their culture and religion.

 

Mohamed I. Farah (Raghe)

Email: Mohfara2005@yahoo.com