By Jayden Fitzgibbon [Edited by Nadar Abdi & Carla Norman]
The study of religion as a recurring feature of anti-colonial resistance is generally overlooked by the “Orientalist” perception of Arab colonised peoples as “backward and uncivilised”, and Western imperialism as culturally and religiously superior. Founder of postcolonial studies, Edward Said, frames this attitude in his 1978 work Orientalism, as a “European ideological creation- a way for writers, philosophers, and colonial administrators to deal with the otherness of eastern culture, customs, and beliefs.”[1] There has been much critique over Said’s analysis and the stereotypical image of the colonised as “barbarians” where many argue their use of violence was justified in response to oppression from European imperialists. French revolutionary Frantz Fanon, and international historian Fred Halliday for instance, observe local factors as a way of mobilising tribal groups in mass millenarian movements, with Fanon coining Arab resistance for “national liberty” as a “cultural phenomenon- the awakening of Islam.”[2] For example, in the Indian mutiny of 1857, sepoys of the Bengal army were considered “oriental fanatics” for their violent resistance in response to local economic, religious, and colonial pressures, imposed on them by the British East India Company.
Similar acts of subaltern violence were demonstrated with “Jihad” on the North-West Frontier of India in 1897, and the role of prophetic leaders in inspiring violence in German East Africa during the Maji Maji rebellion in 1905-7. It was the fundamental ideological roots of these millenarian revolts that formed the framework of twentieth-century transnational movements such as Pan Islamism, calling on religious and racial solidarity of colonised peoples under a single Muslim caliphate. Hence, religion was a recurring feature in anti-colonial resistance for three main reasons. It mobilised the colonisers by a common cause with concepts of “Jihad” and “Greater Jihad”, it allowed prophetic leaders to propel the belief of spiritual or supernatural forces “on the side” of the colonisers and religious rumours also allowed the colonisers to develop a national consciousness for counter-insurgency in response to the demonization of their religion by imperial elites.
One example where religion was a recurring feature of anti-colonial resistance was in Muslim territories during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as indigenous colonised peoples engaged in “physical Jihadism” against their European colonisers. The concept of “Jihad” originally derived from the term “Jahada” meaning to “struggle” and was a method of legitimising radical violence against non-Muslim imperialists, with the ultimate aim of restoring the Caliphate lost to the West. Historian Benjamin Hopkins examines the Pashtun rebels on the North-West frontier as an example of anti-colonial resistance within a wider movement of “Jihad” where the British identified the colonial subjects as “religious fanatics”. These included the “mad mullahs” in Somaliland, “militant madhis” in the Sudan, and ”fanatical faqirs” on the Northwest Frontier.[3] The Somali tribes engaged in armed resistance during the Dervish Movement from 1899 to 1920, and were led by religious leader Mohamed Abdullah Hassan, who defeated the British, Italian, and Ethiopian empires. Similar tribal movements in Sudan saw anti-colonial uprisings led by “Mad Faqir” Mullah Siadullah against British rule, during the Siege of Malakand in 1897. In contrast, Sher Ali Afridi inspired earlier millenarian revolts of the 1870s, and was considered the first “Jihad” for his murder of British viceroy, Lord Mayo, in 1872. By coining tribal resistance on the North West Frontier as “mad” and “fanatical”, Hopkins analysis is effective in identifying recurring patterns in religious leadership across a number of anti-colonial insurgencies in North-Africa.
In each example, the movements leaders acted as Mahdi figures or “spiritual redeemers” giving the colonised a religious cause to mobilise for “Jihad”, where many fought as “ghazi sultans” or “holy warriors” in response to secularism. It is clear that religion played a similar role in all of these conflicts where Islam was a source of unity in fragmented and destabilized societies, as well as an idiom of anti-colonial resistance.[4] Commonly referred to as part of an eighteenth-century “Islamic revival movement”, “Jihad” also proved a unifying force of anti-colonial resistance in the Indian mutiny of 1857. Starting out as local discontent towards the colonisers, Indian nationalists abandoned non-violence, and engaged in violent mass protest movements. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these anti-colonial wars developed nationalistic and ideological values, and encouraged the rise of a transnational movement, known as Political Pan-Islamism. Indeed, Pan-Islam has achieved significant attention in post-colonial studies for its modern examination of the colonisers” recurring religious motives of rebellion and signalled a movement “for the return to the true principles of Islam, and the adoption of Western scientific and technological knowledge.”[5]
According to Islamic reformist and philosopher, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, during the Sepoy mutiny of 1857 “the most powerful source of dissatisfaction was the proselytising activities of Christian missionaries.”[6] Khan’s analysis provides a framework for modern scholarly debate over the widespread problem of proselytizing after 1835, where the British-ruled government in India had a significant role in funding Christian missionaries who imposed secularist laws and institutions on the state in an attempt to convert Indian Muslims and Hindus. As a consequence of secularism at a time of widespread famine and poverty, Islamic teaching placed a “new emphasis on action that led to violence (Jihad) […] and was encouraged to prevent the encroachment of non-Islamic ideas and practices on the Muslim society.”[7] In turn, nationalist tension were manipulated by “fanatical” mystic leaders and reformists like Nana Sahib, who justified holy war as a necessary response to the British East India Company, and invented new ways of uniting rebels in resistance. For instance, similar to Ngwale’s “war medicine” which united the Mutambi people against the German colonisers in the Maji Maji war, British officials were concerned by the distribution of “lotus-symbols” and “chapatis” between rebel soldiers. The unleavened Indian bread and lotus flowers were used to conceal revolutionary notes and encouraged the colonised peoples to engage in secret acts of insurgency, such as the firing of stolen British guns and burnings of British property. These individual acts of proto-nationalist violence were also demonstrated in the Cawnpore Uprising, where Sahib and the rebel Indian forces led an extended siege against the British, resulting in their surrender. The colonisers, however, were ultimately successful in crushing the resistance, and after significant defence, carried out the large-scale massacre of the colonised populations at Cawnpore, before finally suppressing the revolt in the Siege of Delhi in 1857.
Up until this decisive conflict, unity had existed in the mutinies against the colonisers, where sepoys fought alongside normal men and women to achieve a common goal for the reestablishment of their Islamic culture, similar to the early-modern Mughal Empire who ruled in India and Pakistan. The fleeing of religious leaders such as Sahib, and the final Mughal Emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar, however, proved decisive in overcoming the rebels, with a loss of coordination and religious identity. Hence, a combination of “Jihad”, religious symbols, and “fanatical” mystic leaders were significant in uniting the Indian sepoys in their uprisings against secularism, and the British destruction of Islamic icons and images. While religious leaders were significant in inspiring dedication to anti-colonial resistance as part of a wider struggle for liberty, they were also decisive in the self-destruction of these movements, as seen with British India who returned to a separatist culture between Hindus and Muslims throughout the subcontinent.
Alternatively, historian Michael Adas observes anti-colonial resistance against European colonial empires, as “a kind of cultural revitalization movement - the prophet inspired, millennial revolt […] where non-western peoples turned to violence to resist colonial rulers, aiming in the process to construct a new and more satisfying sociocultural order for themselves.”[8] He explores a number of examples of anticolonial protest movements, with a significant emphasis on the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanganyika from 1905-7, where “prophetic leaders” acted as a unifying force for the Mutambi people in redefining their beliefs on millenarianism. For example, the prophet Kinjeketile Ngwale claimed to possess the spirit medium of “Hongo”, and distributed water-medicine or “Maji” which he claimed would convert European bullets to water. Ngwale’s promise for the spiritual protection of the tribal peoples with water-medicine is seen by modern Tanzanian scholars such as Mwakikagile, and British post-colonial historians Illife as an agent for uniting tribes by a common religious cause against the German colonial empire where a large proportion of the Mutambi practised either Christianity or Islam. The role of the prophetic Maji messenger in forming a “collective identity” between the rebels, is useful when examining opposition to famine and poverty, and Christian colonial structures as causes of anti-colonial resistance, as the leaders recognised these widespread struggles as a common cause for inspiring revolt. Similar to colonialism on the North-West Frontier, religion was a recurring force in inspiring an Islamic folk culture, while mobilising the rebels to engage in a wider proto-nationalist movement.
Debate has, however, continued between colonial historians on the Maji Maji rebellion, the Indian mutiny and uprisings on the North-West Frontier, as to whether religion was a catalyst or central cause of anti-colonial resistance. While Tanzanian scholar Gilbert Gwassa, argues the rebels’ secular ideology to resist the colonisers have not been significantly challenged in post-colonial discourse, historians of the “New School” of the Dar el Salaam including Sunseri, stresses the importance of a “closer reading of archival sources from the German period […] that suggest Christian and Islamic influences helped to shape the writing of Maji Maji, if not the resistance movement itself.”[9] By emphasising the “Abrahamic” roots of the Islamic Maji Maji movement including: “Ngwale’s water rituals […] speaking under the omnipotent God, Koleo; and the apocalyptic images of destruction”; one may consider religious symbols and spirit mediums, as a more defining feature of millenarian anti-colonial resistance than other economic or material factors.[10]
Religion was also a recurring feature of anti-colonial resistance as seen by the spread of rumours. Historian Anand Yang has examined as a “manifestation of popular concerns […] constructed in the vernacular of the people, a language profusely embroidered with beliefs pertaining to popular indigenous culture and religion.”[11] For instance, a number of evil rumours spread of “a deliberate British plot to overthrow caste and religion” between indigenous peoples in British-ruled India, leading to a significant rise in fear and tension.[12] In North India in 1857, rumours spread about the cartridges of the British Enfield rifle lined with a coating taken from the fat of cows and pigs that went against the Islamic teaching of halal, while many were also concerned by British attempts to convert them to Christianity. In response, Indian rebels developed their own rumours which they spread through non-verbal and religious symbols, in order to radicalise the population for anti-colonial resistance. One of the main examples of this was the use of “chapati” as a medium for signalling rebellion, which involved the “wrapping of a message, planting dark sentiments into the hearts of its recipients.”[13] Rumours were spread between Sufi networks in post-colonial East Africa and British-ruled India where a unique clan culture and expanding maritime economy, were decisive in the spread of revolutionary information.
Historian of Islam, A.K. Bang, explores the widespread African religious tradition of “marrying Sufi leaders and clan leaders, as a vehicle for social mobilization, that ultimately brought rural tribes under the control of urban religious leaders.”[14] This was particularly evident in British-ruled Kenya and German East Africa, where local traditions were used as a mechanism for mobilising tribal peoples for anti-colonial resistance, and stressed the need to remove the colonisers intense hold on the East African economy. Furthermore, European rumours spread to East Africa portraying the “Indian merchant classes as “crafty traders”, while perpetuating ideas that Indians were undesirables and people that East Africans could not trust.”[15] As a result, Indian rebels engaged in merchant-class warfare, “providing “gun-running” and provision of supplies particularly to the Maji Maji fighters in Tanganyikka.”[16] Therefore, it is clear that the spread of rumours by word-of-mouth or secret initiatives at a time of expanding maritime trade were fundamental in uniting militant Islamic classes in anti-colonial resistance movements between continents.
In conclusion, it is evident religion was a recurring feature of anti-colonial resistance as it became a legitimising force for the indigenous populations in their struggle for liberation from European control. This was exemplified in British India, the North-West Frontier, and in German East Africa. Although not always the leading motivation of nineteenth-century anti-colonial resistance, Islamic spiritual teaching clearly formed a fundamental ideological basis from which to unite the colonised as part of an Islamic “Ummah” or “community”. The growing spread of rumours and rise of prophetic leaders, were two important examples of how local tribal communities used their similar and opposing religious beliefs to challenge the established colonial order and mobilise themselves in “Jihadist” or Sufi collaborationist movements. The religious foundations of these insurgencies became a microcosm for the establishment of a modern transnational Islamic revival movement, which emphasised the global struggle for religious and human equality and identity. It was the expansion of such a movement that historians like Halliday have used to critique Said’s model of the “colonised Orientalist” arguing that “the Orientalist and Islamist go hand in hand, each stressing the essential, determinant character of Islamic religion.”[17] This more critical understanding of religion as a determining feature of anti-colonial resistance and wider liberation struggles in the Middle East and Africa propels modern Pan-Islamic political theory calling on the reestablishment of Islamic teachings and traditions, and the restoration of an Islamic caliphate.
Notes
[1] Refer to ‘Preface’ of Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2014), pp. xviii-xxix. [2] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin Publishing Ltd, 2001), p. 171. [3] Benjamin Hopkins, “Islam and Resistance in the British Empire”, in David Motadel (ed.), Islam, and the European Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 150. [4] Hopkins, “Islam and Resistance”, p. 21. [5] Jonathan Derrick, Africa’s ‘Agitators’, Militant Anti-Colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918-1939 (London: Hurst & Company Publishers, 2008), p. 25. [6] Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, The Causes of the Indian Revolt (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University Press, 1859), pp. 30; 44; 45. [7] R. A. Greaves, “India 1857: A Mutiny or a War of Independence? The Muslim Perspective”, Islamic Studies, 35/1 (1996), p. 31. [8] Theda Skocpol, “Review of Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order by Michael Adas”, Journal of Social History, 14/4 (1981), p. 763. [9] Thaddeus Sunseri, “Majimaji and the Millenium: Abrahamic Sources and the Creation of a Tanzanian Resistance Tradition”, History in Africa, 26, (1999), p. 365. [10] Sunseri, “Majimaji” p. 367, see also David Sperling, “The Frontiers of Prophecy: Healing, the Cosmos and Islam on the East African Coast in the Nineteenth Century” in David Anderson and Douglas Johnson (eds.), Revealing Prophets, (London: James Currey Ltd. & Ohio University Press, 1995), p. 95. [11] Anand Yang, “A Conversation of Rumours: The Language of Popular “Mentalities” in late Nineteenth-Century Colonial India”, Journal of Social History, 20/3 (1987), p. 48. [12] Rudrangshu Mukherjee, “Satan Let Loose Upon Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857”, Past & Present, 128, (1990), p. 95. [13] Mukherjee, “Satan”, p. 487. [14] William Allen (2014), “Sufism in Asymmetric Warfare: Human Networks of the Somali Qadiriyya tariqa”, Small Wars Journal <https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/sufism-asymmetric-warfare> [Accessed 03 November 2019]. [15] Allen “Sufism in Asymetric Warfare”. [16] Allen “Sufism in Asymetric Warfare”. [17] Fred Halliday, “Orientalism and Its Critics”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 20/2 (1993), p. 155.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Khan, Sir Sayyid Ahmed. The Causes of the Indian Revolt. Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University Press, 1859
Secondary Sources
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2014
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Publishing Ltd, 2001
Hopkins, Benjamin. "Islam and Resistance in the British Empire”. in David Motadel (ed.) Islam, and the European Empires. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014
Derrick, Jonathan. Africa’s ‘Agitators’, Militant Anti-Colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918-1939. London: Hurst & Company Publishers, 2008
Greaves, R. A. “India 1857: A Mutiny or a War of Independence? The Muslim Perspective.” Islamic Studies. 35/1, 1996
Skocpol, Theda Skocpol. “Review of Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order by Michael Adas”. Journal of Social History. 14/4, 1981
Sunseri, Thaddeus. “Majimaji and the Millenium: Abrahamic Sources and the Creation of a Tanzanian Resistance Tradition”. History in Africa 26. 1999
Sperling, David. “The Frontiers of Prophecy: Healing, the Cosmos and Islam on the East African Coast in the Nineteenth Century” in David Anderson and Douglas Johnson (eds.), Revealing Prophets. London: James Currey Ltd. & Ohio University Press, 1995
Yang, Anand. “A Conversation of Rumours: The Language of Popular “Mentalities” in late Nineteenth-Century Colonial India”. Journal of Social History. 20/3, 1987
Mukherjee, Rudrangshu. “Satan Let Loose Upon Earth”: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857”. Past & Present. 128, 1990
Allen, William. (2014) “Sufism in Asymmetric Warfare: Human Networks of the Somali Qadiriyya tariqa”. Small Wars Journal <https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/sufism-asymmetric-warfare> [accessed 03 November 2019].
Halliday, Fred. “Orientalism and Its Critics”. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 20/2, 1993
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