CORRECTED VERSION: ISLAM IN SOUTHERN CHAD

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 NDJAMENA 000508

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR AF/C (MASHRAF),LONDON
AND PARIS FOR AFRICA-WATCHERS
INFO AF/PD (CANYANSO)

SIPDIS, SENSITIVE

C O R R E C T E D V E R S I O N

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL OIIP KPAO KIRF PHUM CD
SUBJECT: CORRECTED VERSION: ISLAM IN SOUTHERN CHAD


1. (SBU) Summary: What is the status of Islam in
southern Chad, a relatively densely populated area but
traditionally largely Christian or animist? Embassy
N'Djamena PAO and Arabic/Muslim Outreach Specialist
set out to answer this question, at least anecdotally, during
two trips over a three-week period. They found thriving
centers of Islamic education, and over 50 mosques and
Koranic schools, funded by half-a-dozen different Islamic
organizations with various affiliations. Curricula varied
widely, from purely Koranic memorization to programs of
literature, art, and mathematics. The economic upturn
surrounding Chad's new oil project in the South has drawn
Muslim trading communities from the North into major
southern cities, and Islam is flourishing there. End
Summary.


2. (SBU) Chad's religious demographic is described by a
horizontal axis dividing the country into a largely Muslim
center/north and a largely Christian and animist south. For
centuries, Muslims have moved through the South in search
of land and water for their herds (transhumance). In more
recent times, Christian churches have begun to appear in
larger towns in the North where ethnically southern
government bureaucrats live. In the South, mosques appear
along major transportation routes where Muslim traders
operate.


3. (SBU) Embassy N'Djamena PAO, along with and FSN
Arabic/Muslim Outreach Specialist, recently toured
southern Chad and met with Muslim leaders, Imams, and
Islamic educators, along the 1000 kilometer road
connecting N'Djamena to Moundou and Sarh. Islam is
thriving in southern Chad, with mosques and Koranic
schools in even the smallest villages, and numerous
examples of southerners from traditionally Christian or
animist ethnic groups having converted to Islam. The
South has seen some positive economic signs over the last
five years with the arrival of the World Bank-financed,
ExxonMobil-led oil project, now pumping some 150,000
barrels a day along a 1000 km pipeline to the coast of
Cameroon. This project has brought some growth to local
economies along the main road from N'Djamena to
Moundou Q Chad's southern economic capital Q and on to
Doba (where the oil projects are based) and Sarh (where
cotton and sugar production dominate). Local commerce
appears to be growing, at least in some sectors, now that
more southerners have a regular salary and some disposable
income. As in much of west and central Africa, traders and
merchants are predominantly Muslim, and the economic
upswing has brought ever-larger groups of northern
Muslims to the South. With them have come madrassas
and Koranic schools where their children are educated,
mosques where they worship, and an influx of Islamic
charities and NGOs of various orientations, who finance
the schools, build the mosques, dig wells, and build clinics.

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Muslim leaders in the South
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4. (SBU) Chad's Muslim community is organized around a
centralized leadership body, headquartered in N'Djamena,
called the High Islamic Council. Led by a dynamic
presidentially-appointed Grand Imam, Sheikh Hassan
Hissein Abakar, the Council plays a very active role in
governing all Muslim-related activities in Chad, from
monitoring the work of Islamic charities and NGOs, to
developing curricula for Islamic schools, to advising and
even reprimanding Imams on the content of their Friday
sermons. Grand Imam Sheikh Abakar appoints regional
Imams, who oversee regional High Islamic Councils in
most of Chad's larger cities Q a system that corresponds
roughly but not exactly to Chad's regional distribution of
governors. These regional Grand Imams are the spiritual
leaders of Muslims in their districts, and along with sultans
in the North and center, and animist traditional leaders in
the South, exert significant influence over their followers.


5. (SBU) Chad's two largest southern towns, Moundou
and Sarh, both have High Islamic Council branches. In
Moundou (population exceeds 150,000),Imam Mahamat
Tahir Abdoulmamout heads the Council. A genial man
with a gentle manner, Imam Tahir appears to be in his late
50s or early 60s. He is a northerner, educated mainly in
N'Djamena, well cultured, and fluent in French and
classical Arabic. Like many Chadian Imams, Tahir is a
Sufi. He described his main goal in Moundou as peaceful
co-habitation among all religions, and seems to have had
some success in his quest, as Moundou has not recently
seen religious conflict common in the late 1990s. He is
active in the promotion of Arabic-language education in the
region. In addition, he apparently has a good number of
Sufi contacts and colleagues in West Africa, including the
well-known Sheikh Hassan Ali Cisse of Kaolack, Senegal,
as well as contacts in the United States. In his
conversation, PAO encouraged Tahir's efforts at peaceful
co-existence between faiths, and presented the Imam with a
number of IIP publications such as "Muslims in the United
States."


6. (SBU) Sarh's High Islamic Council is headed by Imam
Oumar Abdal Rudjal, who is much older and in the twilight
of his career. He spoke only a few words during our hour-
long meeting, seeming at points to drift into reverie. The
council has an articulate and dynamic spokesperson,
Mahmoud Kheraddine Abakar, who engaged us in French,
classical Arabic, and even some English. As had the Grand
Imam in Moundou, the spokesperson in Sarh mentioned the
council's focus on strengthening relations with Sarh's
Christian community, describing their goal to "deepen the
concept of peaceful coexistence between religions."

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Islamic Education in the South
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7. (SBU) The High Islamic Council compiles some basic
data on Islamic schools throughout the country (names,
locations and number of students). In addition, UNICEF

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recently completed a nation-wide study on Islamic
education in Chad. Outside of these two sources, there is
little information on Islamic education in Chad. Thus the
basic goal of the trip: to identify schools along the major
southern axis, and visit a number of them to have an idea
about their curricula and to establish contact between them
and the Embassy. The data presented below are anecdotal,
but paint a representative picture of Islamic education in
southern Chad.


8. (SBU) On the roughly 500 kilometer stretch of road
from N'Djamena to Moundou, PAO and Muslim saw 51
mosques, 32 between N'djamena and Moundou, and 19
between Moundou and Sarh. Each small mosque includes a
school for teaching Arabic, the Koran, and basic Islamic
studies. We saw 51 schools. Most mosques and schools
receive funding from Islamic non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). The largest of these operating in the
South, based on our anecdotal survey, is the "International
Organization for Islamic Invocation", a Libyan Islamic
NGO. The "Red Crescent", funded by the UAE, is also
present, as is the Kuwaiti "African Muslim Agency."
Projects sponsored by the Wahabist-oriented "Islamic
Forum" can also be found, especially in Kournari village,
near Mandalia, in Kambarou village south of Loumia, and
in Bessada village, near the oil-producing region of Doba.
Other Wahabist-oriented NGOs operating in the South
include the "Al Bir International Charitable Organization"
(apparently funded by individual Saudi contributions) and
the "Organization of Islamic Relief," a Chadian Wahabist
NGO associated with Dr. Ahmat Mahamat Haggar, former
head of the Chadian chapter of WAMY and former
president of the Chadian chapter of Ansar al-Sunna.


9. (SBU) The al-Azhar mission, funded by the Egyptian
government, provides approximately eighty Egyptian
Koranic school teachers Q all men Q who teach in half-a-
dozen schools around Chad, including their three main
schools in N'Djamena, Abeche, and Sarh. The al-Azhar
school in Sarh, adjacent to the Grand Mosque, has 18
Egyptian teachers and approximately 200 students, both
primary and secondary levels. The school follows the
Egyptian national school curriculum, supplementing
regular courses in math, literature, and history, with
Koranic recitation classes. All classes had both girls and
boys, with girls outnumbering boys in most rooms. In a
high-school level literature class, the professor told us that
he was teaching "romantic poetry" to his students so that
they "could better express their feelings." The Arabic
grammar instructor told us he was using the "American
method" to teach language. In addition to their Egyptian
instructors, students are taught French and social studies by
two Chadian teachers provided by the Ministry of
Education. In the primary-level Koranic recitation course
we observed, girls led while boys repeated. According to
the instructor, this helped girls learn leadership skills. The
school has plans to teach English, and requested Embassy
assistance in paying for teachers and purchasing books.
The al-Azhar mission has been in Sarh since 1996.
Students whose families can afford it pay approximately 10

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USD per year to attend the school.


10. (SBU) Sheikh Amir Ousman, a dynamic Imam who
enjoys good relations with the regime, and converted to
Islam in his youth, founded the Mabrouka Center outside of
Sarh in 1991 Q by his telling, the center began with him and
four colleagues camping under a tree and studying the
Koran. Over the last 16 years, the school has grown to
include ten branches throughout southern Chad, the largest
of which, the Mabrouka Center Dar As-Salam, is located
seven kilometers outside of Sarh. Students and teachers
can be seen on the road near town wearing their distinctive
bright green knitted caps Q green being the color of Sufi
Islam in southern Chad. The Dar as-Salam center is home
to nearly 1000 students, many of whom are from other
regions of the country and are housed at the school while
they learn the Koran. According to Sheikh Ousman,
students normally stay at the school for a maximum of
three years Q the normal time it takes to memorize the
entire Koran Q and then return to another local school or to
a school in their home region. The Center has a number of
Koranic instructors and Imams, and also employs eight
teachers, seven of whom are Christian, who teach the
Chadian national curriculum. Local Christian families
frequently send their children to the school, as it offers the
best education and facilities in the area, and Christian
parents are active members of the parent-teacher
association. The Center includes a primary and a middle
school, and a health clinic.

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Christian-Muslim Relations
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11. (SBU) Southern Chad is traditionally an Animist and
Christian heartland. However, a significant percentage of
the population of larger towns is Muslim. Although a
census has not been conducted since 1993, reasonable
estimates put the Muslim population of both Moundou and
Sarh (the two largest southern towns) at between 20 and 30
percent. Muslims are principally engaged in trade and
commerce in the South, with their numbers increasing
along the main road in recent years due to an influx of
capital brought by the oil project. Besides trade and
commerce, Muslims are also employed in transport, in the
military, and in education, teaching at Koranic schools. In
addition, many of the local administrators in the South
governors, prefects, mayors, etc.Q are northerners who
have been placed in the South. Relations between the
majority-Christian populations and the minority-Muslim
populations in the South are generally peaceful, according
to both Christian and Muslim leaders we spoke with.
However, occasional tensions do arise. In the southern
town of Bebidja in 2004, for example, a commercially-
motivated conflict between an ethnic Kreda (Muslim)
shopkeeper and a southern (Christian) customer spun out of
control and resulted in riots and several deaths. Although
not inter-religious in their origins, this and other inter-
community conflicts are often portrayed as inter-religious
by local media and by the GOC.

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12. (SBU) Most mosques and their associated schools are
built on the main road, where Muslim populations working
in the commercial sector also tend to live. Some smaller
villages also have a mosque built by a local leader who
converted to Islam, or by an Islamic charity for the children
of converts. An example of the former is found in the
village of Fianga, some eighty kilometers off the main road
to Moundou towards Cameroon, where the a local
administrator recently converted to Islam and subsequently
built a Saudi-funded mosque. Fianga is approximately ten
percent Muslim. An example of the latter is the Institute
Ibni Anas in the village of Mbikou, some thirty kilometers
outside of Moundou. Built by the African Muslim Agency
(Kuwait),it is home to 32 students between the ages of 8
and 15. There is a separate building for female students,
who number fewer than a dozen. The Institute, run by
another southern convert, teaches Arabic, the Koran, and
basic Islamic studies.

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Comment
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13. (SBU) Post has focused its Muslim outreach efforts
primarily on northern Chad for the past few years. Some
high-level Muslim leaders and educators in the South had
never met a USG diplomat. Given the active Muslim
communities now found in the South, it is important to
promote Muslim outreach in both northern and southern
Chad.


WALL