Abstract

MACHAQUEIRO, Mário Artur. Teaching in Islamic policy of Portuguese colonial Mozambique: From islamophobic anxiety to the “Portuguese Islam” mirage. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos [online]. 2013, n.25, pp.95-119. ISSN 1645-3794.

During the Portuguese colonial rule, the approach to Mozambican Islam evolved from a stubborn Islamophobia, sometimes with interspersed gestures of understanding, to a program aimed at seducing the Islamic leadership, developed between 1968 and 1974. With such an evolution in mind, this article tries to describe the changes in the policies that framed the Islamic education in Mozambique. Whereas the Islamophobic period thought the Islamic education was de-nationalizing the colonized population, the latter period deemed it a hindrance to the idea of a “Portuguese Islam”, an obstacle that some agents planned to overcome by subordinating the Koranic schools to the official education system. The article also analyses the tensions these policies aroused, particularly the hostile reactions of conservative Catholicism.

Keywords : Islam; Portuguese colonialism; Islamophobia; Islamic education; Koranic schools; Mozambique.

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