This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Yusuf Lule, a Muganda and Muslim from central Uganda, served a short term as president after Idi Amin’s ouster (1979–1980). Although unsuccessful in bringing stability to the country, he was widely respected and, as some of my Muslim interlocutors pointed out, removed some of the stigma inhering to a Muslim identity as a consequence of the privileges enjoyed by certain Muslims under President Idi Amin Dada’s government.
Moral values were already addressed in classical anthropological scholarship, especially in studies of kinship, gender and religion, but these studies were often not conceived as ethnographic investigations of local moralities (but see Edel and Edel 1959; also see Howell 1997: 14–16). The new scholarship on morality, in contrast, conceptually distinguishes between morality and other socially sanctioned conventions, such as religious practices, kin relations, ritual, and norms of reciprocity.
Nor should we narrow down the study of moralities to investigations into situations in which moral conceptions can be elicited as a matter of conscious decision-making and choice.
My argument here is based on oral historical research on the early decades of Muslim education conducted in three regions of Uganda between February 2011 and August 2012.
Their—and my—discussion focuses on African Muslims, rather than on Muslim members of the Asian community who were expelled by Idi Amin in 1972.
Among the Muslims who supported the UPC were many Baganda with strong loyalties to the kingdom.
This type of schools is referred today as “Muslim founded schools”. Amin also granted the Council religious endowments that were partly taken from the wealthy Asian Muslims whom he expelled in 1972.
Overall, protestant schools seem to have been more open to accepting Muslim children than Catholic institutions. The latter required a pupil to convert to Christianity at the latest at the level of P3 (Primary 3).
Because of the dearth of people trained in the Islamic religious sciences, in Arabic literacy, and because of the few Muslims with a higher educational degree, most teachers employed at Muslim schools were Christians.
Although, as Kiyimba reports, Prince Badru “came out as a good Muslim” (1986:232) from his training at King’s College, the father’s opposition illustrates the moral dilemma of elite Muslim families who sought to maintain their former political influence.
Following Gaddafi’s death, funding from the Libyan state (for instance, for Radio Bilal, the Islamic radio station in Kampala) has been reduced, but not stopped.
For similar developments in Kenya, see Seesemann (2007).
Recent critical interventions, by intellectuals and also by some Muslim politicians, center on the question of Islamic banking. Some of these critical interventions may be interpreted as carefully crafted attempts to mobilize an electorate. The interventions receive wide press coverage in daily newspapers, such as New Vision and Daily Monitor; they are also debated in Muslim online forums, such as the ‘Uganda Muslim Brothers and Sisters (UMBS, http://um-bs.com).
Among other effects, the sizes of classes quadrupled in many state primary schools after 1997. In many private (Muslim and Christian) schools, too, teaching standards have been lowered since the late 1990s.
Muslim primary schools follow the state school system (seven classes, completed by the Primary Leaving Examination). They vary strongly with respect to school curricula and quality of instruction. Whereas Muslim-founded schools (which operate under the tutelage of the government) issue a leaving certificate (PLE), Muslim schools that offer exclusively religious education (and that are usually associated with a mosque) do not offer a leaving certificate that is recognized by the Ministry of Education. As for secondary Muslim-founded schools, pupils may opt for a religious or secular wing of education. Yet there was wide agreement among Muslim parents of secondary-school children to whom I spoke in early 2011 that the ‘religious education’ stream offered by secondary schools offers fewer chances for employment (Schulz 2013).
Some of these educated Muslims are employees of the Islamic University of Uganda in Mbale; others belong to successful merchant families. Sending one’s children to far-away boarding schools has been a long-standing practice among Christians. Muslim parents have fewer choices in finding a school which will grant their children an education as a proper Muslim.
References
BBC News. (2007). Boost for free Uganda schooling. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6374927.stm, last accessed November 10, 2011.
Brenner, L. (2001). Controlling knowledge. Religion, power and schooling in a West African Muslim Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Chande, A. (2000). Radicalism and reform in East Africa. In N. Levtzion & R. Powels (Eds.), The history of Islam in Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Comaroff, J. L., & Comaroff, J. (2004). Criminal justice, cultural justice. The limits of liberalism and the pragmatics of difference in the new South Africa. American Ethnologist, 31(2), 188–204.
Constantin, F. (1995). The Attempts to Create Muslim National Organizations in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. In H. B. Hansen & M. Twaddle (Eds.), Religion and politics in East Africa (pp. 19–31). London: James Currey.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Edel, M., & Edel, A. (1959). Anthropology and ethics. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of Biopolitics lectures at the College de France 1978–1979
Hansen, H., & Twaddle, M. (Eds.). (1988). Uganda: Between decay and development (pp. 175–194). London: James Currey.
Hansen, H., & Twaddle, M. (1995). Religion and politics in East Africa. London: James Currey.
Heintz, M. (2009). The anthropology of moralities. New York: Berghahn Books.
Howell, S. (1997). The anthropology of moralities. New York: Routledge.
Kabeer, N. (Ed.). (2005). Inclusive citizenship. Meanings and expressions (pp. 1–30). London: Zed Books.
Kagabo, J. (1997). “Ilm wa ta‘lim: Savoir et enseignement islamiques en Afrique de l’Est”. In N. Grandin & G. Marc (Eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman (pp. 267–276). Paris: Éditions Arguments.
Karlström, M. (2004). Modernity and its aspirants. Moral community and developmental eutopianism in Buganda. Current Anthropology, 45, 595–619.
Kassimir, R. (1995). Catholics and political identity in Toro. In H. B. Hansen & M. Twaddel (Eds.), Religion and politics in East Africa. The period since independence (pp. 120–140). London: James Currey.
Kayunga, S. S. (1994). Islamic fundamentalism in uganda: The Tabliq youth movement. In M. Mamdani & J. Oloka-Onyango (Eds.), Studies in living conditions, popular movements, and constitutions in uganda (pp. 319–363). Wien: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik.
Kiyimba, A. (1986). The problem of Muslim education in Uganda: Some reflections. Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 7(1), 247–258.
Kiyimba, A. (1989). Christian-Muslim relations in Uganda. Current Dialogue, 16, 28–31.
Kiyimba, A. (1990). The Muslim community in Uganda through one hundred and forty years. Journal of African Religion and Philosophy, 1(2), 85–105.
Kokole, O. (1985). The Nubians of East Africa: Muslim club or African tribe? Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 6(2), 420–448.
Laidlaw, J. (2002). For an anthropology of ethics and freedom. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8(2), 311–332.
Lambek, M. (2000). The anthropology of religion and the quarrel between poetry and philosophy. Current Anthropology, 41(3), 309–320.
Larkin, B. (2008). Ahmed Deedat and the form of Islamic Evangelism. Social Text, 96(26,3), 101–121.
Larkin, B., & Meyer, B. (2006). Pentecostalism, Islam and culture: New religious movements in West Africa. In A. Emmanuel (Ed.), Themes in West African history (pp. 286–312). Oxford: James Currey.
Leopold, M. (2005). Inside West Nile: violence, history and representation on an African frontier. Oxford: James Currey.
Loimeier, R. (1997). Islamic reform and political change in Northern Nigeria. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Loimeier, R. (2001). Säkulärer Staat und islamische Gesellschaft. Die Beziehungen zwischen Staat, Sufi-Bruderschaften und islamischer Reformbewegung in Senegal im 20. Jahrhundert. Münster: LIT Verlag.
Loimeier, R. (2003). Patterns and peculiarities of Islamic reform in Africa. Journal of Religion in Africa, 33(3), 237–262.
Loimeier, R. (2007). Perceptions of marginalization. Muslims in Tanzania. In B. Soares & R. Otayek (Eds.), Islam and Muslim politics in Africa. New York: Macmillan.
Loimeier, R. (2009). Between social skills and marketable skills: The politics of Islamic education in Zanzibar in the 20th century. Leiden: Brill.
Marsden, M. (2005). Living Islam. Muslim religious experience in Pakistan’s North-West frontier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oded, A. (1974). Islam in Uganda; Islamizaton through a centralized state in pre-colonial Africa. New York: Wiley.
Pouwels, R. (1987). Horn and crescent: Cultural change and traditional Islam on the East African Coast (800–1900). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reichmuth, S. (1998). Islamische bildung und soziale Integration in Ilorin (Nigeria) seit ca. 1800. Münster: LIT Publishers.
Reichmuth, S. (2000). In History of Islam in Africa, N. Levtzion, & P. Randall (Eds.), islamic education and scholarship in Sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 419–440). Athens: Ohio University Press; James Currey; David Philip.
Schulz, D. (2012). Muslims and new media in West Africa. Pathways to god. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Schulz, D. (2013). (En)gendering Muslim self-assertiveness: Muslim schooling, higher education, and female elite formation in Uganda. Journal of Religion in Africa, 43(3), 212–231.
Seesemann, R. (2007). Kenyan Muslims, the Aftermath of 9/11, and the “War on Terror”. In B. F. Soares & R. Otayek (Eds.), Islam and Muslim politics in Africa. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillian.
Seesemann, R. (forthcoming). The divine flood: Ibrahim Niasse (1900–1975) and the roots of a twentieth-century sufi revival. New York: Oxford University Press.
Soares, B. (Ed.). (2006). Muslim-Christian encounters in Africa. Leiden: Brill.
The Guardian. (2011). Free universal secondary education in Uganda has yielded mixed results. Oct 25, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/oct/25/free-secondary-education-uganda-mixed-results, last accessed Nov.10, 2011.
Twaddle, M. (1988). The emergence of politico-religious groupings in late Nineteenth-Century Buganda. The Journal of African History, 29(1), 81–92.
Zigon, J. (2008). Morality. An anthropological perspective. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schulz, D.E. What makes a good minority Muslim? Educational policy and the paradoxes of Muslim schooling in Uganda. Cont Islam 7, 53–70 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-013-0246-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-013-0246-y