IV - The Dervish Fight for Freedom: 1900-20

Summary

The Growth of Muslim brotherhoods

BEFORE FOLLOWING Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abdille Hassan's remarkable struggle to free his country from foreign domination, it is necessary to pause for a moment to review the social and religious context in which this patriotic movement arose. Islam in Somaliland has long been associated with the brotherhoods or tariqas (literally, ‘the Way’) which express the Sufi, or mystical view of the Muslim faith, a view which, since it exalts the charismatic powers of saints, is particularly well adapted to the Somali clan system in which clan ancestors readily become transposed into Muslim saints. So well developed indeed had these religious organizations become in the nineteenth century, that the Somali profession of the faith was now synonymous with membership of, or more frequently, nominal attachment to a Sufi brotherhood. The esoteric content of Sufism, however, was not strongly developed locally, although each religious Order had (and has) a distinctive liturgy for its adherents to follow in their worship of God. Despite their common aim of promoting religious as opposed to secular values, the relations between different Orders are characterized by rivalry centring on the respective religious merits and mystical powers of intercession of their founders. Generally, the Orders have a loose hierarchical organization, and many, though not all, Somali Sheikhs and men of religion occupy positions of religious authority within the Order which they follow.

More significantly, notwithstanding their own rivalries, in their membership and following the brotherhoods cut across clan and tribal loyalties, seeking to substitute the status of brother in religion for that of clansman, so that men who are divided by clan affiliation may share common adherence to the same religious Order. In this way, by their very nature, the Muslim Orders contribute to national unity through Islam and seek to overcome the sectional rivalries which separate men in their secular activities. However, given the circumstances of Somali life and society in which, lacking any large centralized political units, the only security was provided by small bands of kinsmen, the loyalties of kin and clan remained paramount. Thus the transcendental appeal to unity through Islam which the Orders preached, although it found a response in the cultural nationalism of the Somali, remained only a potential force overridden by the more restricted political realities of everyday life.