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CONSTRUCTING ARGUMENTS AND INSTITUTIONS OF ISLAMIC BELONGING: M. O. ABBASI, COLONIAL TANZANIA, AND THE WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN WORLD, 1925–61*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2014

James R. Brennan
James R. Brennan*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract

This article explores the intellectual life and organizational work of an Indian Muslim activist and journalist, M. O. Abbasi, a largely forgotten figure who nonetheless stood at the center of colonial-era debates over the public role of Islam in mainland Tanzania. His greatest impact was made through the Anjuman Islamiyya, the territory's leading pan-Islamic organization that he co-founded and modeled on Indian modernist institutions. The successes and failures of Abbasi and the Anjuman Islamiyya demonstrate the vital role played by Western Indian Ocean intellectual networks, the adaptability of transoceanic, pan-Islamic organizational structures, and, ultimately, the limits imposed on pan-Islamic activism by racial politics in colonial Tanzania.

Keywords

TanzaniacolonialismIslamSouth Asianspolitical cultureliterature
Type
Special Feature: Africa and the Indian Ocean
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 211 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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6 Much of this article's biographical information comes from the author's interviews with A. I. Khatri, Dar es Salaam, 7 Dec. 1998; with Bashir Punja, Dar es Salaam, 17 Nov. 1998; with M. M. Devani, Dar es Salaam, 2 Aug. 1999; with Abdul Mokri, Dar es Salaam, 27 June 2002; with Noorali Velji, Dar es Salaam, 1 July 1999; and with Abdullah Hemani, Dar es Salaam, 3 Aug. 1999 and 28 June 2002. All interviews were conducted by the author, unless otherwise noted.

7 Interview with Bashir Punja. Punja claimed that Abbasi knew 18 languages.

8 He pursued a lifelong trade drafting legal instruments (such as rental agreements) of dubious legality, owing to that fact that he was not entitled ‘to practice as an advocate of the High Court’. Mohammad Omar Abbasi v. Rex, Criminal Appeal No. 93 of 1934, Law reports of cases determined by the High Court of Tanganyika and upon appeal therefrom by the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa, Vol. I 1921–1952 (Dar es Salaam, 1955), 199.

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14 TNA Dar es Salaam 12915/f.55, letter from Commissioner of Police to Chief Secretary, 2 Sept. 1932.

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21 TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 12915/I/f.61, letter from M. U. Abbasi to Chief Secretary, 13 Sept. 1932.

22 Ibid. For a history of these newspapers, see Brennan, J. R., ‘Politics and business in the Indian newspapers of colonial Tanganyika’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 81:1 (2011), 42–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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24 TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 12915/I /f.74-5, letter of Commissioner of Police to Chief Secretary, 14 Sept. 1932.

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29 TNA Kew FCO 141/17862, entry for Mohamed Omar Abbasi, Asian ‘Who's Who’, Tanganyika Police Special Branch, Sept. 1958. The major European-owned newspapers in Tanganyika were the Dar es Salaam Times (1919–24), which became Tanganyika Times (1924–30) and disappeared around the time that Tanganyika Standard (1930–64), a branch of the Nairobi-based East African Standard, emerged to become the territory's paper of record.

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34 Interview with Bashir Punja, Dar es Salaam, 1 Dec. 1998. What follows comes from this interview.

35 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 21 May 1948.

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38 TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 11676/I/f.39, 1927 Eastern Provincial Annual Report; TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 7017/f.196, letter from Isherwood to Chief Secretary, 2 Sept. 1927.

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41 The most comprehensive account is the letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 15 Sept. 1954.

42 TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 26035/f.1, circular entitled ‘The Federated Muslim Union’ by M. O. Abbasi, n. d. (ca. June 1931); ‘Tanganyika Muslim League’, Tanganyika Herald, 16 Apr. 1932.

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48 Brennan, Taifa, 29–32.

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53 ‘Islamic Rally in Dar-es-Salaam’, Samachar (Zanzibar), 14 Sept. 1930.

54 TNA Dar es Salaam Accession 61/665, minute of Harvey to Eastern Provincial Commissioner, 18 May 1939; Buruku, ‘The townsman’, 107.

55 Letter of K. Plantan, Tanganyika Standard, 2 July 1938. The Jamiatul's school enrollment collapse was the product of a bitter conflict over control of the body between self-fashioned ‘owners of the town’ and ‘newcomers’. Brennan, Taifa, 67.

56 Samachar, 3 Nov. 1940; Letter of Ali Mwinyi Haluwa, Tanganyika Standard, 20 Dec. 1940.

57 Tanganyika Herald, 29 May 1937; Tanganyika Standard, 5 Apr. 1940; ‘Maulidi Celebrations in Dar es Salaam’, Tanganyika Opinion (Dar es Salaam), 29 June 1934; ‘Maulid Celebrations’, Tanganyika Herald, 15 June 1935.

58 Letter from M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Times, 24 Aug. 1929; Abbasi to editor, Tanganyika Opinion, Sept. 1929, enclosed in TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 13708/f.1, letter from Abbasi to Chief Secretary, 2 Sept. 1929; Interview with Haidar Khimji, Dar es Salaam, 4 Dec. 1998.

59 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 4 Feb. 1933.

60 Tanganyika Opinion, 22 Feb. 1935.

61 TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 26105/f.11, letter from S. Feroz-Ud Din to Chief Secretary, 2 Mar. 1936.

62 Minutes of Dar es Salaam Township Authority, 1 July 1943, Martha Honey research notes (in author's possession); TNA Kew CO 537/4717/f.5, Intelligence Summary, Sept. 1949; Trimingham, J. S., Islam in East Africa (Oxford, 1964), 109–11Google Scholar.

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64 Letter of Musa Issa Patel, Tanganyika Standard, 25 Jan. 1950; Ibid. 21 July 1945; letter of Secretary, Tanganyika African Association, Ibid. 17 June 1950; Tanganyika Standard, 22 Sept. and 15 Nov. 1950; Mambo Leo (Dar es Salaam), Apr. 1951; Tanganyika Standard, 10 Oct. 1951; letter of M. O. Abbasi, Ibid. 13 May 1952; ‘Death of Dr. Malik’, Ibid. 18 Aug. 1952; letters of M. O. Abbasi, Ibid. 17 Feb. and 15 Sept. 1954.

65 TNA Dar es Salaam SMP 13708/f.6 ‘A Dozen Open Questions to the Authorities of the Anjuman Islamia Dar es Salaam’ by M. O. Abbasi, n. d. (c. July 1952); interviews with Abdallah Hemani.

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67 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 28 Nov. 1952; letter of ‘Non-African Muslim’, Ibid. 3 Sept. 1954; letter of Abdul Hamid, Ibid. 16 Sept. 1954.

68 Brennan, Taifa, 109.

69 Letter of ‘An African’, Tanganyika Standard, 19 Jan. 1954.

70 TNA Dar es Salaam Accession 540/27/14, copy of Kalimatul Hak, Apr. 1948.

71 TNA Dar es Salaam Accession 540/27/14, booklet entitled ‘Message from V. M. Nazerali, President, Central Society of Tanganyika Muslims’, n. d.

72 TNA Kew FCO 141/17858/f.89, Harris to PC Eastern, 11 Oct. 1957.

73 Buruku, ‘The townsman’, 106.

74 Interview with Habib Omari Musa, Dar es Salaam, 16 Aug. 1999.

75 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 5 Aug. 1944.

76 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 19 Sept. 1945.

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79 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 23 May 1949.

80 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 25 Jan. 1954.

81 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 15 June 1949.

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83 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 4 Sept. 1950.

84 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 22 Apr. 1952.

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86 National Archives and Records Administration of the United States, College Park, MD, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, 778.00/1-1452, letter of H. Gordon Minnigerode to Department of State, 14 Jan. 1952.

87 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 25 Feb. 1955.

88 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 4 Nov. 1957.

89 Letter of M. O. Abbasi, Tanganyika Standard, 14 Jan. 1958.

90 TNA Kew FCO 141/17862, entry for Mohamed Omar Abbasi, Asian ‘Who's Who’, Tanganyika Police Special Branch, Sept. 1958.

91 ‘TANU seeks backing of Europeans’, Tanganyika Standard, 18 Feb. 1958.

92 Iliffe, Modern History, 552–76; Brennan, Taifa, 148–57.

93 This was first done with the party's didactic expulsion of Suleiman Takadir, who had publicly voiced concern over Christian dominance within TANU. TNA Kew CO 822/1362/f.230, letter from Eccles to Turnbull, 21 Oct. 1958. For a partisan account, see Said, M., The Life and Times of Abdulwahid Sykes (1924–1968): The Untold Story of the Muslim Struggle against British Colonialism in Tanganyika (London, 1998), 245–53Google Scholar.

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95 Interview with Mtoro Seif, Dar es Salaam, 4 Jan. 1999.

96 Interviews with Mohamed Hassan Kiswagala, Dar es Salaam, 31 Jan. 1999; with Abdala Mohamed Mfaume, Dar es Salaam, 23 Dec. 1998; with Ahmed Seifu Salum Mponda, Dar es Salaam, 22 Sept. 1998; with Habib Omari Musa; with Rashidi Mohamed Kibanda, Dar es Salaam, 14 Dec. 1998.

97 His final published letter was entitled ‘Quo vadis, Tanganyika?’, which celebrated TANU electoral victories but asked Tanganyika to ‘make up their minds to be Tanganyikans for the purpose of geographical nomenclature only, and must learn to work and live for humanity which is fundamentally and radically non-racial’. Tanganyika Standard, 22 Sept. 1958.

98 Interview with Ali Abbas, Dar es Salaam, 31 May 2010.

99 Tanganyika Standard, 27 Apr. 1960.

100 Interview with Abdul Mokri.

101 See Brennan, Taifa, ch. 5.

102 Bose, S., A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Metcalf, T. R., Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley, CA, 2007)Google Scholar.