Chad - Islam

Islam in Chad

Islam became a dynamic political and military force in the Middle East in the decades immediately following Muhammad's death. By the late seventh century A.D., Muslim conquerors had reached North Africa and moved south into the desert. Although it is difficult to date the arrival and spread of Islam in Chad, by the time Arab migrants began arriving from the east in the fourteenth century, the faith was already widespread. Instead of being the product of conquest or the imposition of political power, Islamization in Chad was gradual, the effect of the slow spread of Islamic civilization beyond its political frontiers.

Islam in Chad has adapted to its local context in many ways. For one thing, despite the presence of a large number of Arabs, Arabic is not the maternal language of the majority of Chadian Muslims. As a result, although many Chadian Muslims have attended Quranic schools, they often have learned to recite Quranic verses without understanding their meaning. Hence, perhaps even more than among those who understand Arabic, the recitation of verse has taken on a mystical character among Chadian Muslims. Islam in Chad also is syncretic. Chadian Muslims have retained and combined pre-Islamic with Islamic rituals and beliefs. Moreover, Islam in Chad was not particularly influenced by the the great mystical movements of the Islamic Middle Ages or the fundamentalist upheavals that affected the faith in the Middle East, West Africa, and Sudan. Beginning in the Middle East in the thirteenth century, Muslim mystics sought to complement the intellectual comprehension of Islam with direct religious experience through prayer, contemplation, and action. The followers of these mystics founded brotherhoods (turuq; sing., tariqa), which institutionalized their teachers' interpretations of the faith. Such organizations stimulated the spread of Islam and also provided opportunities for joint action, for the most part, which was not the case in Chad, where only two brotherhoods exist. Perhaps as a result of prolonged contact with West African Muslim traders and pilgrims, most Chadian Muslims identify with the Tijaniyya order, but the brotherhood has not served as a rallying point for unified action. Similarly, the Sanusiyya, a brotherhood founded in Libya in the mid-nineteenth century, enjoyed substantial economic and political influence in the Lake Chad Basin around 1900. Despite French fears of an Islamic revival movement led by "Sanusi fanatics," Chadian adherents, limited to the Awlad Sulayman Arabs and the Toubou of eastern Tibesti, have never been numerous.

Chapelle writes that even though Chadian Islam adheres to the Maliki legal school (which, like the other three accepted schools of Islamic jurisprudence, is based on an extensive legal literature), most Islamic education relies solely on the Quran. Higher Islamic education in Chad is all but nonexistent; thus, serious Islamic students and scholars must go abroad. Popular destinations include Khartoum and Cairo, where numerous Chadians attend Al Azhar, the most renowned university in the Islamic world.

Chadian observance of the five pillars of the faith differs somewhat from the orthodox tradition. For example, public and communal prayer occurs more often than the prescribed one time each week but often does not take place in a mosque. Moreover, Chadian Muslims probably make the pilgrimage less often than, for example, their Hausa counterparts in northern Nigeria. As for the Ramadan fast, the most fervent Muslims in Chad refuse to swallow their saliva during the day, a particularly stern interpretation of the injunction against eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset.

Finally, Chadian Islam is not particularly militant. Even if young Muslims in urban areas are aware of happenings in other parts of the Islamic world, they have not responded to fundamentalist appeals.

Islam

"Islam" means submission to the will of God, and a Muslim is one who submits. In A.D. 610, Muhammad, an Arabian merchant of Mecca, revealed the first in a series of revelations granted him by God (Allah, in Arabic) through the archangel Gabriel. Later known simply as the Prophet, Muhammad denounced the polytheism of his fellow Meccans and preached a new order that would reinforce community solidarity. His censure of the emerging individualistic, mercantile society in Mecca eventually provoked a split in the community. In A.D. 622, Muhammad and his followers fled northwest to Yathrib, a settlement that has since come to be known simply as Medina, or "the city." This journey (called the hijra, or the flight) marks the beginning of the Islamic Era. The Muslim lunar calendar begins with this event, so that its year 1 corresponds to A.D. 622. (However, the solar and Muslim calendars are separated by more than 622 years; a lunar year has an average of 354 days and thus is considerably shorter than the 365-day solar year.) In Medina, the Prophet continued his preaching. Eventually defeating his detractors in battle, Muhammad became the temporal and spiritual leader of most of Arabia by the time of his death in A.D. 632.

In the decades after his death, Muhammad's followers collected his revelations into a single book of recitations called the Quran. During the same period, some of his close associates collected and codified the Prophet's sayings, as well as accounts of his behavior, to serve as guides for future generations. These compilations are called the hadith, or "sayings," which, along with the Quran, are central to Islamic jurisprudence.

The shahada (or profession of faith) states the central belief of Islam: "There is no god but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his Prophet." This simple testimony is repeated on many ritual occasions. When recited with conviction, it signals conversion.

The duties of a Muslim form the five pillars of the faith. These are recitation of the shahada, daily prayer (salat), almsgiving (zakat), fasting (sawm), and, if possible, making the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj).

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