Combating Discrimination in Their Own Country

​​Imagine a Muslim university where most of the lecturers are Christian and one of the deans is a Hindu. Believe it or not, it does exist. This idiosyncratic institution, whose existence owes as much to the dictates of necessity as it does to any spirit of tolerance, is to be found in the city of Morogoro in Tanzania.

One enters the campus of the private Muslim University of Morogoro through green wrought iron gates. An oasis of tranquillity, decked out with flowerbeds, the university is a mere five years old; the construction work is not yet finished.

Almost half of the 1,500 students are young women; their colourful headscarves, in all shades from black to flaming red, lend the campus a distinctive flair. Headscarves are obligatory, even for the university's minority of Christian students. They have come here because the cloistered ambience of the university – no alcohol, no parties, and gender segregation – appealed either to them or to their parents.

Tanzania is often considered a Christian country. It is, in fact, home to the largest Muslim population in East Africa. Both of the country's religions like to see themselves as constituting the majority – rival claims that the state has long been unwilling either to corroborate or deny by providing any statistics.

The truth of the matter is that in both higher education and the public service, Muslims are severely underrepresented. They have never made up more than a fifth of the country's students, often less. Since colonial times, the education system has been dominated by Christians and in particular the powerful Catholic Church.

Nowadays, with a drastic shortage of high schools, academic performance alone is not sufficient to determine whether a pupil will get a place at one after leaving primary school. It is a very selective system, "an open door to discrimination," according to Hamza Njozi, vice chancellor of the university in Morogoro.

Feeling of marginalisation

Njozi, an impulsive and affable man, uses his own experience to illustrate the point. Although his marks at school were among the best, he was not selected to go on to high school; instead he found himself having to work as a farm labourer. "I was a victim of my religion," he says.

In the end, he was forced to take the long way round, working his way gradually into university, becoming a professor of literature and a pioneer of a radical Muslim critique of the state. One of his books was banned. According to Njozi, although Tanzania is officially a neutral state, in the places where it actually counts for anything, being Christian is the norm, being Muslim the exception.

The loss of status suffered by Tanzania's Muslims becomes particularly dramatic when one takes their history into account. Swahili, the language of Tanzania, was originally spoken by the Muslims of the coastal region. The cosmopolitan Swahili traders already had a literature in Arabic script long before the Africans of the interior had even thought about writing. Their German colonial masters later put their administrative skills to use to ensure the smooth running of the country and made Swahili the official language. Back then, to be a Muslim was to be somebody.

​​When the British took over the colony after the First World War, Christian missionaries were given a free hand and they used it to create a new, mostly Catholic, educated elite. Following independence in 1961, new president Julius Nyerere, himself a Catholic, chose the educated Christians to help him run the country.

Nowadays, there is a growing resentment among Muslims about their marginalisation. The fact that Tanzania's current president is himself a Muslim has done nothing to change this. Muslims who succeed in finding their way into better jobs despite the corruption of the political system are viewed by those of their own faith as opportunists in a "Christian system", betrayers of their religion and their dignity. The tensions between Christians and Muslims thus overlap with those within the Muslim community itself.

Christian lecturers

It was this situation that led to the creation of the Muslim University in 2005. The Tanzanian president at the time, Benjamin Mkapa, a Christian, wanted to make a gesture of reconciliation before leaving office. The gesture was to present the campus in Morogoro, a former training centre for electrical engineers, to the Muslims.

It was a gift that unleashed fierce controversy among those leading thinkers on the Muslim question who are critical of the state. What use were empty buildings after decades of discrimination? Hamza Njozi took a more practical view of things at the time. After all, was it not true that a university of their own had been a dream of the Muslim community since the coming of independence?

Today, Njozi is the university's executive director; the official head is a woman. Although in the Tanzanian system, Mwatumu Malale's role as chancellor is purely ceremonial, her appointment nevertheless sent out a signal. The largely secular curriculum is the next surprise.

The majority of students are training to be teachers, a choice not without financial considerations. Graduates in such careers are in short supply and the government awards student loans, which can be used to pay the 600-dollar annual tuition fees. So far these charges have provided the private university with its main source of income; although some money also comes in from the Tanzanian business community.

Cooperation with the Saudi "World Assembly of Muslim Youth" and the Aga Khan University in Karachi has thus far failed to bring any financial benefits. "They probably just want to make sure that we are not planning to turn out any terrorists," quips Njozi.

The university's courses in journalism are secular. Although the course in law studies does include Sharia law as a supplementary element, even that had to be approved in advance by a Christian expert. The reason for this is that state approval is required for all parts of the curricula in Tanzania, and most of the academic experts appointed by the government to examine the curricula are Christian.

The majority of the lecturers at this Muslim university are Christian and external lecturers, because there are simply too few qualified Muslim academics. Njozi succinctly sums up the situation: "We have to have well qualified people; otherwise we would be shooting ourselves in the foot." Even the dean of the science faculty is a Hindu, a cheerful Indian woman with a red spot on her forehead.

The difference between Islamic and Muslim

The difference between Islamic and Muslim is striking here. "This university is Muslim," the vice chancellor explains, "because it belongs to Muslims, it is run by them, financed by them, and most of its students are Muslims." Islamic, on the other hand, are above all, the values they want to inculcate in their students: "a teaching that should instil dignity and selflessness." The student teachers must give a commitment to also teach in the more remote parts of the country at a later stage.

Hamdun Sulayman, dean and head of quality assurance at the university, is relieved that his institution recently passed a review carried out by the Inter University Council of East Africa. Sulayman himself studied in the United Arab Emirates and did his PhD in South Africa.

Asked about his own dream, he replies: "I dream about us having influence in this society. If, in the future, they decide to look for people who are not corrupt to fill government jobs, then those people should be from here."

Charlotte Wiedemann

© Qantara.de 2011

Translated from the German by Ron Walker

Editor: Aingeal Flanagan/Qantara.de

Qantara.de

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