Somalia Trys to Live by Both the Koran and ‘Das Kapital’ (NYT, 1977)
Somalia's socialist leaders had a vision for the country in which religion did not play such a prominent role in public life. That vision for Somalia faced resistance.
Political independence is a wonderful feeling. When it finally came to Somalia, my great-grandfather wrote a poem titled “I am born today.” It was “freedom time,” as Gary Wilder put it. Freedom meant the agency to define yourself, rather than being defined, but that also comes with the responsibility of figuring it out. What would it mean to be Somali? What kind of relationship would the state have with its citizens? How would it construct a usable history? And who would be the heroes and villains in that story?
Most postcolonial countries eclectically blended whatever they had available and Somalia was no different. In the immediate postcolonial years, it wasn’t entirely clear how Somalia intended to address those pressing questions. The country was non-aligned, so it couldn’t drape itself in either of two major ideas that defined the post-1945 world. Its leaders also did not feel they had a grand mission or special rank in the world, unlike the Ethiopians, Turks, Iranians, or Chinese. But they did have “two national assets of inestimable value” as former president Abdirashid Shermarke put it. Islam and poetry.
It was only with Siad Barre’s military coup, however, that those two assets would be put to use, embodied in the person of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a leader of a religious movement and quasi-state that fought British and Italian encroachment on Somali territory, and who was lionised as an anti-colonial hero and master poet, raising the self-esteem of Somalis.
Islam and Mohammed Abdullah Hassan were positioned alongside Karl Marx as key elements in the post-1969 ideological mix that the state would draw upon to justify its policies. This is why a western diplomat quoted in the New York Times story in this week’s instalment referred to the three Ms of Somalia: Prophet Muhammad, Karl Marx, and Mohammed Abdullah Hassan. Many still question the extent to which the post-1969 regime led by Siad Barre was committed to Marx’s ideas but that is for another day. This Times article explores how proponents the three Ms jostled for ideological primacy in socialist Somalia where deep religious convictions rubbed up against a modernising and secularising state. This is a common story in many parts of the Muslim world with similar themes in other colonised countries; that is what traditions do we take forward, which do we challenge and which do we leave behind.
The original link is here.
Two years ago, when it was pressing a campaign to emancipate women, the Somali Government was vexed to find conservative religious leaders preaching against equality of the sexes and supporting their arguments with readings from the Koran.
It decided to stop the dissent. Eleven of the religious leaders were rounded up, and early one morning they were executed by firing squad. Three hours later two Soviet‐supplied MIG's, flying above a new national monument, brushed wings and went down in twin spirals of smoke and flames.
“There wasn't a person in Mogadishu who thought it was a coincidence,” one Somali recalled. “It was a sign from heaven. Allah was angry.”
The episode underscores the peculiar position of Somalia, a nation of almost four million people, the majority of them nomads, as it struggles to move into the modern world under the banners of both Islam and Marxism.
The attempt to straddle, if not to merge. the two is the most striking feature of the Government of President Mohammed Siad Barre. who took power from a corrupt and fragmented civilian regime in a bloodless coup eight years ago and has securely ruled the country since.
Under his leadership Somalia became the only non‐Arabic speaking nation to join the Arab League and also the first country in black Africa to sign a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. Now, with the fighting in Ogaden, the eastern third of Ethiopia that Somalia wants to annex, Somalia stands out among African countries in its refusal to accept inherited colonial boundaries and its readiness to press territorial claims against a neighboring country.
A third potent force in the country's collective consciousness—nationalism—is expressed in the vision of a “greater Somalia” that would unite all Somalia speaking peoples spread through three other countries in the Horn of Africa.
Among 25 Poorest Countries
President Siad Barre has often insisted that Marx and Mohammed are not only compatible but also complimentary, that the religious asceticism of Islam can combine with the concept of mass discipline inherent in “scientific socialism” to forge a strong national will and lift the country from the ranks of the 25 poorest nations.
“Islam and socialism supplement each other because both advocate the advancement of the interest of the people, of mankind—justice, dignity, prosperity and equality,” be has written.
At a news conference with Western and Arab journalists several months ago, the President was pressed on the point and responded:
“There is no chapter, not even a single word, in our Koran that opposes scientific socialism. We say, ‘Where is the contradiction? The contradiction was created by man only.’”
To the outside parties closely involved in the developments on the Horn of Africa, however, the contradiction, in geopolitical terms, seems real indeed.
Saudi Arabia, the main source of money among conservative Arab nations contesting Soviet influence along the Red Sea, is exerting pressure upon Mogadishu to break its ties with Moscow, playing upon Arab solidarity.
The Soviet Union, at the same time, is trying to persuade Somalia to curb its nationalism in the interests of international Marxist brotherhood. If this is done, in Moscow's view, then a settlement can be reached with Ethiopia, an ancient enemy that is largely Christian but is now also Marxist, and a federation can perhaps be formed along the strategic Horn of Africa based upon ideological affinities, instead of religious and cultural ones.
In Mogadishu, the symbols and icons of the forces pulling at the soul of the country proliferate in striking juxtaposition. On every other wall are the initials of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, a political structure set up a year ago on the Soviet model.
Nearby are brightly painted posters depicting the victories of Somali insurgents in Ogaden and Djibouti, the newly independent nation with a majority of Somalirelated people called Issas, which Somalia also claims. Rising above the posters the minaret of , a modern $3 million mosque, a gift from Saudi Arabia.
Observers who have visited both Mogadishu and Addis Ababa usually conclude that in the three years since the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie the Ethiopian revolution has brought about a more fundamental change in national life than the eight‐year‐old Somali revolution. The military regime in Ethiopia has undertaken a major land redistribution program, nationalized all industry and prohibited ownership of more than one house.
In Somalia, where there were only four factories at independence in 1960, scientific socialism is laboring to take root in a pre‐industrial society. It has meant mostly the mobilization of collective labor to build Chinese — style “self — help”
Many Projects Impressive
Many of these projects are impressive, ranging from street‐cleaning brigades that have made Mogadishu one of the cleanest cities in Africa to construction crews in the northern city. of Hargeisa that have built a new national theater and cultural complex.
But about 6G percent of the population is still nomadic or semi‐nomadic and, following a 1,000‐year‐old routine of driving camels from wUterhole to pastureland, remains immune to centralized control. Authoritarian tendencies are tempered by the individualism of desert life.
Several years ago the Government tried to restrict the chewing of khat, the narcotic weed whose daily consumption eats up the income of most Somali wage‐earners. The effort failed, because khat is so much a part of daily life. Now the Government has left it to localities to limit the hours of sale and even grows khat on state‐run plantations as part of a drive for self‐sufficiency.
Soviet diplomats here have complained privately that the country's socialism is only skin‐deep and that for the Somalis religion takes precedence.
“The Somalis are very devout Moslems,” a Pakistani diplomat said. “When you go into a mosque, it is always crowded. You see a lot of young people, and some of them are even crying while praying.”
Although some of the precepts of the Koran, such as the sanctity of private property, are glossed over in the preachings, there is still a residue of conservative thinking, which shows itself in the endurance of such customs as infibulation, a traditional operation performed upon adolescent girls that combines clitoral circumcision with the surgical equiva lent of a chastity belt.
Infibulation, which insures the virginity of prospective brides, is a form of subjugation contrary to the policy of equal rights for women, but the Government appears reluctant to condemn it outright. Estimates arc that 90 percent of teen‐age girls in Somalia still undergo the operation.
“Somalia is a country of three M's Marx, Mohammed and the Mad Mullah,” a Western diplomat said, using the British nickname for Sayid Mahammed Abdulla Hassan, the Somali nationalist leader of half a century ago. “I leave it to you to decide which ‘M’ is the most powerful.”