Ambivalent Islam: the identity construction of Muslims under Portuguese colonial rule

Abstract

This article wishes to contribute to the study of the historical processes that have been spotting Muslim populations as favourite targets for political analysis and governance. Focusing on the Portuguese archives, civil as well as military, the article tries to uncover the most conspicuous identity representations (mainly negative or ambivalent) that members of Portuguese colonial apparatus built around Muslim communities living in African colonies, particularly in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. The paper shows how these culturally and politically constructed images were related to the more general strategies by which Portuguese imagined their own national identity, both as ‘European’ and as ‘coloniser’ or ‘imperial people’.

The basic assumption of this article is that policies enforced in a context of inter-ethnic and religious competition are better understood when linked to the identity strategies inherent to them. These are conceived as strategic constructions aimed at the preservation, protection and imaginary expansion of the subject, who looks for groups to be included in and out-groups to reject, exclude, aggress or eliminate. The author argues that most of the inter-ethnic relationships and conflicts, as well as the very experience of ethnicity, are born from this identity matrix.

Keywords:

• identities
• identity strategies
• ethnic stereotypes
• Portuguese colonialism
• Muslims

Notes

1. The so-called New State, an authoritarian order very close to the fascist regimes in Italy, Germany and Spain, had its political police established in 1933 with the name of Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado [Police for the Surveillance and Defense of State]. In 1945 a decree changed its name to Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado (PIDE) [International Police for the Defense of the State], enlarging its powers and scope of action. In 1969 Marcelo Caetano, the successor of the dictator Salazar, extinguished the PIDE, replacing it by the Direcção-Geral de Segurança (DGS) [General-Direction of Security], which in fact assumed the former's functions in what concerned the control, surveillance and repression of any activities that opposed the dictatorship. Although the political police had been installed in the colonies by 1954, it was mainly from 1961, when the anticolonial movements burst onto scene, that the range of its actions was deeply felt. In Portugal, its repressive methods, systematically resorting to brutal torture during the interrogation of political prisoners, were aimed at specific targets, being nevertheless able to spread terror among the whole population, whereas in the colonies the repression took the proportions of an overt mass terror. In the context of the colonial war, the PIDE was instrumental for the military manoeuvres as a branch of the intelligence structure. On the general history of this political police, see Pimentel (2007); on its role in the colonial wars from 1961 to 1974, see Mateus (2004). Besides the thorough study conducted by Dalila Mateus, one can also see Souto (2007) on the intelligence services that the PIDE provided to the Armed Forces.

2. This passage is taken from a very important military report on the religious scene in Mozambique (Miscelânia sobre cultos religiosos, 1968). It can be found at least in two different archives in Lisbon: ANTT/SCCIM no. 105, ‘Miscelânia sobre cultos religiosos’ [Miscellany on religious cults], 1968, sheets 176–205, and Box ADN/FO/002/02/007/003/03, October 1967–October 1973. In the texts that I am quoting the word ‘Islamism’ does not refer to a fundamentalist branch of Islam. It simply stands as a synonymous expression for Islam taken as a whole.

3. Lobiano do Rego was the pseudonym of Albino da Silva Pereira, a member of the Portuguese Catholic clergy responsible for a movement known as Apostle Laymen of National Integration. He wrote several books in which he decried Islam (1959; 1966). On the movement of the Apostle Laymen, a kind of missionary ‘army’ conceived to forcefully promote the Christianization of the ‘gentiles’, see the documents in ANTT/AOS/CO/UL-32, sheets 1–7.

4. Considered to be the main figure in Portuguese anthropology throughout the 1960s, Jorge Dias merged the role of a social anthropologist with those of informer and ‘spy’. While he was conducting his research on the Makonde in the north of Mozambique at the end of the 1950s, which resulted in the writing of anthropological works praised by the scientific community, he kept sending classified reports to the authorities of the mainland informing on the ‘subversive’ movements of local populations and ethnic minorities. He actually did that as several other anthropologists who worked within the Centre of Political and Social Studies, a branch of the Portuguese colonial ‘research’. In the report that I am quoting, Dias flatters himself of having pretended to be a ‘Qur'an enthusiast’ just to pick up information about El Azhar University among its students (Dias, 1956). A good example of the secret texts produced by Dias’ team, parallel to the scientific ones they were working on, is a 1960 report he addressed directly to Salazar (see ANTT/AOS/CO/UL-37, 2).The interconnection between his anthropological activity and his intelligence work did not raise any deontological problems to Jorge Dias, who was perfectly at ease in the cultural environment of the dictatorship. On this, see West (2006). On the serious inadequacies of Dias’ anthropology, also see Macagno (2002).

5. For a much more nuanced and well-informed reading of the relations between Islam and socialism, made by a Salazarist ideologist, see Martinez (1970).

6. Implementing ideas conceived by the nineteenth century ideologues of Portuguese colonialism, Salazar's political regime, known as Estado Novo [New State], had promulgated in 1926 the Political, Civil and Criminal Status of the Native, which was to be applied in the colonies of Guinea, Angola and Mozambique. This legal framework denied the African ‘natives’ all the legal rights of citizenship reserved for ‘civilized’ people. It was formally abolished in September 1961, but its symbolic and material effects persisted until the end of the colonial war (Cross, 1987; Macagno, 2006).

7. Several Portuguese ideologues of colonialism voiced the idea that the Africans who adhered to Islam were mainly attracted to a supposed identity ‘prestige’ associated with the kaftan, an idea that we can already find in Enes’ nineteenth century report on Mozambique (Enes, 1946[1893]).

8. See, for instance, the instruction given by the Governor of the district of Mozambique, in April 1963, advising that teaching in ‘Mohammedan schools’, even of catechism, should be exclusively carried out in the Portuguese language (ANTT/SCCIM, no. 408, sheet 330). See also the note from the Education services, written in June 1964, which features the same demand (ANNT/SCCIM, no. 408, sheet 212).

9. Among the official letters and reports that Jacques Honoré, the Consul General of France in Mozambique, sent to the French Embassy in Lisbon, see Report no. 163, 1966, November 21 (Afrique-Levant, Mozambique 1966–1972, Politique intérieure – Questions religieuses, 59QO/34, April 1966–December 1972) and Report no. 55, 1967, April 15 (Afrique-Levant, Mozambique 1966–1972, Politique intérieure – Action rebelle et défense portugaise, 59QO/29, May 1966–December 1971), Archives Diplomatiques de La Courneuve (Paris). On the audience that Salazar gave to the Bishop of Vila Cabral and its relation to the diffusion of the Fraternal Letter to the Muslims, see Report no. 152, 1967, December 21. Despite his apparent complicity with the core of the Portuguese dictatorship, Dias Nogueira ended up clashing with the authorities. He and Sebastião Soares de Resende, Bishop of Beira (also in Mozambique), were targeted by the political police for siding with the exploited Africans and for publicly denouncing the repressive abuses that the local populations were suffering at the hands of policemen and the military (see ANTT/PIDE-DGS, Proc. No. 62221, UI no. 1699, ‘Eurico Dias Nogueira’, Delegation of Angola).

10. For the biography of Fernando Amaro Monteiro in his Mozambican stage and an analysis of his activities during the colonial war, see Monteiro (1993), Alpers (1999), Cahen (2000), Vakil (2004), Macagno (2006), Vakil, Monteiro, & Machaqueiro (2011).

11. The preparations that Amaro Monteiro made for the message of the Governor General, including the original text of the message and its publication in several languages (namely Arabic), can be found in ANNT/SCCIM/, no. 280, sheets 48–49, 218–219, 224–237, 276–288.

12. A statement he delivered to the author of this paper during an interview.

13. This does not mean that the enquiry is devoid of scientific interest. Although the way in which it was conducted raises several doubts regarding its accuracy, it provides a wealth of valuable information about the beliefs, traditions and social structures of Muslim communities in Mozambique at the time of the survey, as well as a glimpse of the methods applied by Portuguese colonial authorities. The bulk of the enquiry can be found in ANTT/SCCIM, nos. 409, 411, and 415–418.

14. In the Islamic tradition, Ijma is not exactly a specific organ. It means the ‘consensus’, one of the sources of the Shari‘a (the Islamic law). In order to represent the whole Community of Muslims (Umma) that consensus must be unanimous, and this quality can be achieved through the agreement attained by Muslim notables with recognized authority in matters of faith. On the ‘Ijma’ devised by Amaro Monteiro, see Information no. 28/968, 1968, December 28 (ANTT/SCCIM, no. 412, sheets 332–334), Information no. 19/70, 1970, July 31 (ANTT/SCCIM, no. 420, sheets 16–23), Appendix to Information no. 22/70, 1970, September 26 (ANTT/SCCIM, no. 420, sheets 96-100), Information no. 11/971, 1971, May 29 (ANTT/SCCIM, no. 413, sheets 118–124).

15. In the report that Fernando Amaro Monteiro submitted after visiting the leaders of the Islamic brotherhoods in Mozambique Island, he wrote that ‘the “Ijma”, in its periodical meetings, will give its members the social relevance they desire so much, while allowing, for the purposes of our policy, the General Government to play a patronizing and mobilizing role in relation to it …’ (Information no. 11/971 from the SCCIM, 1971, May 29, in ANTT/SCCIM, no. 413, sheets 118–124).

16. This meeting is narrated in an autobiographical short story written by Fernando Amaro Monteiro (1979).

17. The following analysis will be very loosely based on the theoretical frameworks that two Portuguese anthropologists, José Gabriel Pereira Bastos and Susana Bastos, have been developing in their studies of the Portuguese national identity and the identity representations or strategies of colonized populations, immigrants and ethnic minorities (Bastos, 1995; 2002; 2003; Bastos & Bastos, 2005; Bastos, 2008).

18. On the reception of ‘Lusotropicalism’ in Portugal and the way it influenced the Portuguese ideology of colonialism, see Léonard (1997) and Castelo (1998).