Methodology and context of the study

My research on the Istiqama schools in Zanzibar began in the summer of 2014 and continued until the summer of 2019. I conducted interviews in English and Swahili, the primary language spoken on Zanzibar, with former studentsFootnote ⁷ and teachers and administrators at Istiqama. I also draw on interviews and observations made while visiting the Istiqama Institute in Zanzibar. I examined educational materials such as textbooks imported from Oman and used on the Istiqama campus and in the Istiqama evening classes held in Ibadi mosques in Stone Town, Zanzibar’s historic capital.^{Footnote 8} To protect the identities of my research subjects, I use pseudonyms in all cases and provide only general information about the roles they play within Istiqama. As Istiqama does not release public reports on Istiqama membership, enrolment in its schools or the demographics of members, a quantitative analysis of the religious, racial and ethnic identities of students, teachers and administrators at the institute and in the schools is not possible. Tanzania has not included religion as a category in the national census since 1967 and the number of Muslims, Christians and followers of other religious traditions are approximate (Bakari Reference Bakari2012: 3). If I were to guess, I would say that Ibadis make up less than 5 per cent of Zanzibar’s population. Reliable figures on the tiny global population of Ibadis are unavailable to researchers. However, the largest number of Ibadi are in Oman and there are Ibadi communities in enclaves across North Africa, such as the island of Djerba in Tunisia, and Jabal Nafusa in Libya and Wadi M’zab in Algeria. North African Ibadis are ethnically Berber (Ghazal Reference Ghazal2014a: 583; Reference Ghazal2010: 105). Connections between the geographically dispersed Ibadi communities have intensified in the postcolonial period and in particular with the modernization of religious institutions of learning and with the rise of private schools in Tanzania and Zanzibar since the 1990s. These private schools are largely faith-based or ‘religiously inflected’ and have links to religious charities and NGOs such as Istiqama (Fitchner 2012 cited in Dilger Reference Dilger2013).

The Istiqama schools and the privatization of education in Zanzibar

Islamic private schools in Tanzania that maintain ties to the Middle East or the ‘Arab’ regions (sehemu za kiArabuni) appeal to students and parents because they boast newer buildings and facilities, are able to recruit foreign-trained teachers, maintain low acceptance rates, and benefit from transnational religious and economic networks that enable greater social mobility and religious learning. Simon Turner notes that liberalization and the privatization of schooling in Zanzibar coincided with a global Islamic revival. ‘Since the 1980s wealthy individuals from the Gulf States have funded mosques, madrasahs [Islamic schools], health clinics, secondary schools, teachers’ training colleges and universities in Zanzibar, and young Zanzibar men have been given scholarships to study in Medina, Khartoum and elsewhere’ (Turner Reference Turner2009: 238). The rise of private Islamic institutions of education during this period further enabled the dissemination of religious literature in the form of textbooks and pamphlets from abroad in addition to ‘CDs and DVDs [and now social media] in Arabic, English and Swahili’ both within and beyond formal school structures (ibid.: 238). State actors in Zanzibar frequently denounce new religious activists who studied in North Africa and the Arab Gulf and promote foreign religious literature as the work of ‘fundamentalists’ or ‘radicals’, or as Arab-centric. This in turn has led some Muslims to lose trust in state institutions (ibid.: 238), even those tasked with representing Muslim interests in Tanzania and Zanzibar, such as the mainland Muslim council (BAKWATA) and the corresponding Office of the Mufti on the islands.

The Office of the Mufti in Zanzibar approves the Islamic studies curriculum taught in private schools. The Mufti is Zanzibar’s supreme religious authority, equivalent to the BAKWATA, which plays a similar role on mainland Tanzania. Since 2001, the Mufti has served as ‘a public employee of the Zanzibari government’ appointed by the president.Footnote ⁹ Additionally, it is the responsibility of the Mufti to settle disputes between the islands’ various Muslim groups, ‘approve all Islamic activities and gatherings on Zanzibar, supervise all Zanzibar mosques, approve religious lectures by foreign clergy, and approve the importation of Islamic literature from outside Zanzibar’.Footnote ¹⁰ The government in Zanzibar prohibits the formation of religious parties, and minority Muslim charities such as Istiqama and the Ahlulbayt Foundation, which was founded by South Asian Shi’a Muslims in Tanzania, are at pains to stress that they are non-political and inclusive of all Muslims regardless of religious, racial or ethnic identity.

While Muslim minority movements in Zanzibar attract large numbers of non-Arab and non-Asian followers, their founders maintain close family, professional and financial ties to Oman and South Asia. This occurs to such an extent that one commonly hears Istiqama mosques and schools referred to as ‘Omani’ and ‘Arab’, making it difficult for the Omani-Ibadi community in Zanzibar to avoid being signified as both a minority religious and ethnic organization. The Istiqama Institute attracts many Sunni students and a few Christian converts who receive scholarships and the opportunity for fellowship in a Muslim community. The students come from all over East Africa, and they include Ibadi-Omanis whose families are members of local branches of Istiqama in the region. The recruitment and admissions process at the school is rigorous and includes a written questionnaire that serves as an entrance examination; only high-scoring students are accepted. According to Salim, a former Sunni Muslim chemistry teacher at Istiqama, students from families who cannot afford to pay the monthly fee of approximately 65,000 Tanzanian shillings (about US$30) receive scholarships from the Istiqama school board in Zanzibar. Salim explained that the scholarship opportunities provided through Istiqama enable greater economic and racial diversity at the school, as most students receiving financial aid are from non-Arab Swahili or African backgrounds. On an island where some estimates put the average monthly household income at around US$54,Footnote ¹¹ most parents on Zanzibar would find the cost of attendance at the Istiqama Institute prohibitively expensive.Footnote ¹² Students who excel at the Institute may receive scholarships to study at the College of Shari’a Sciences in Muscat after they graduate, where they deepen their knowledge of Islamic law and Arabic and become familiar with Omani society and culture. Istiqama recruits many of its teachers and school administrators from the college, creating a sustainable educational pipeline predicated on transnational networks.

Religious studies is not a compulsory subject in public schools in Zanzibar and Tanzania, but community members may teach them on an ad hoc basis. In most private Islamic K–12 schools in Zanzibar, religion is compulsory, but the secular courses taught at these institutions, such as maths and science, follow the curriculum set by the Tanzanian government. Students at the Maahad Istiqama also take the national O-level and A-level exams that determine entrance to high school and university. The attire worn at the Istiqama Institute is noticeably Islamic. Female teachers and older girl students wear the respectable long black robes known as buibui in coastal East Africa or abaya in many Arabic-speaking countries. The male teachers also dress conservatively in long Islamic shirts (kanzu) and embroidered prayer caps (kofia) characteristic of the Ibadi communities of Oman and Algeria. The teachers often joke among themselves that their journey back and forth between the separated girls’ and boys’ sections of campus is like running between the two hills of Ṣafa and Al-Marwah, a ritual that Hajj pilgrims perform annually when visiting the sacred enclosure in Mecca. This ritual commemorates the Islamic matriarch Hajar’s desperate run in search of water when abandoned in the desert with her young son, Ishmael.^{Footnote 13} Students at the Istiqama Institute learn to pray at the small campus mosque and have the opportunity to conduct research at two school libraries that contain volumes of legal and theological texts written by modern and classical Ibadi authorities. The library contains a collection of student theses that serve as the basis of a growing archive of local Ibadi and Islamic knowledge. Many of the books in the library are publications of the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs in Muscat and are donated to the library by Omani investors and visitors to the school. The library books offer advanced students opportunities to deepen their knowledge of Islam and Arabic after they have completed a series of introductory courses in grammar, Islamic education and reading comprehension. These subjects are taught through a series of imported textbooks from Oman donated to the schools for use in the religion and Arabic language classes.

Examples of Omani textbooks in Zanzibari schools

The first textbook I will discuss, Tarbiyya, is from a series entitled ‘Islamic Education’ (or al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya). It is a primary school-level guide to Islamic ritual practice and norms and is similar in content to a series with the same title used in the national religious studies curriculum in Oman (see Limbert Reference Limbert, Doumato and Starrett2007). This textbook is printed by the Ministry of Education in Oman and bears the printed Istiqama Tanzania name and logo. The series, first published in 1998, has six sections: Qur’an, prophetic ḥadīth, ‘aqīda, acts of worship, biography of the prophet (sīra), and ethics and good manners (ahlāq). Mandana Limbert’s study of equivalent textbooks in Oman explores the ways in which the books used by elementary school students serve ‘in the production of good citizens’ as well as to instil a sense of ‘personal piety and seriousness of purpose’ from an early age (ibid.: 103–4). According to Limbert, the Ibadi orientation of the textbook writers and the primarily Omani audience is detectable only in a number of references to prominent Ibadi figures, in stories about succession disputes and tribal politics in early Islamic Arabia, and in pictorial representations of distinctively Ibadi prayer practices.

The Omani nation is never mentioned explicitly in the textbooks used at Istiqama, but images depicting ‘typical’ Omani landscapes and dress as well as features of a stereotypical middle-class lifestyle of modern toilets, homes and public buses serve as representations of what the ideal modern state should look like. These ‘wish-images’, Limbert explains, are as much a part of Oman’s particular modernist vision and state-building narratives as they are of pre-existing notions of behavioural propriety and civil obedience. As ideals, however, they are often in tension with the realities of daily life (Limbert Reference Limbert, Doumato and Starrett2007: 121). The Tarbiyya used by Istiqama describes ritual practices with an emphasis on neighbourliness and cleanliness and includes scenes of an Omani domestic life and physical environment (for example, desert landscapes, Omani houses, craggy mountain ranges and water canals).

The second textbook I will discuss is from a series entitled ‘Read!’ or Iqrā’. This series focuses on Arabic-language pedagogy and includes reading passages and comprehension questions. According to former students at Istiqama, the series is studied alongside a third three-volume grammar and syntax textbook written by Egyptian authors ‘Alī Al-Jārim and Musṭafā Amīn entitled Naḥw al-Wādi’i (The Unambiguous Grammar). However, discussion of the content and specific usage of the Naḥw is beyond the scope of this article.

In the Tarbiyya, Islamic ideals and norms pertaining to physical appearance, family and social relations and gender roles appear to be inseparable from Omani ideals and social norms. Additionally, the series presents a conservative interpretation of gender roles in Islam and in the Omani household. The images that demonstrate ritual practice in the Tarbiyya are of men and boys, and the images depicting household chores such as cooking and cleaning are of young girls wearing the hijab and colourful house dresses. Ibadi women in Zanzibar and Tanzania typically perform their daily prayers at home; however, mosque attendance among women is growing in regions with newer mosques that have designated women’s prayer halls. The textbook ideal that suggests that the duties of the Omani Muslim woman lie primarily in the domestic sphere is at odds with Istiqama’s – or, for that matter, Oman’s – many initiatives to promote education for its female students, for example at the Maahad Istiqama in Zanzibar.

If one were to remove the Istiqama Tanzania logo from the book cover, little would distinguish the series from those described by Limbert as the basis of Oman’s religious studies curriculum. The presence of the logo suggests some degree of Omani governmental investment in, or at least awareness of, its role in Istiqama’s educational efforts in Zanzibar and Tanzania. Oman’s role in educational development in East Africa appears, on the surface, to be unidirectional and absent of collaborative pedagogy, or dialogue, between the writers of the donated textbooks and their recipients. The textbook audience at Istiqama is a largely Swahili-speaking and non-Arab coastal East African Muslim community that expresses discomfort with the wholesale adoption of Arabic and Islamic studies textbooks that appear to privilege Arab Muslim and Arab nationalist discourses. Coinciding with this discomfort is an attitude of indifference that suggests that the textbooks serve only a practical objective – to teach Swahili-speaking students from Zanzibar the basic principles of Islam and the Arabic language – while the rest of the content is superfluous and does little to change students’ perceptions of their physical or social selves.

The willingness to accept the gift of unmodified textbooks from Oman points to two things: first, that material constraints and/or lack of expertise in the relevant subjects mean that the East African branches of Istiqama are unable to produce their own textbooks or to contribute to the modification of the books to reflect the local environments in which they learn. Second, the religious authority of Oman within Ibadi circles in Zanzibar is clear because of the Ibadi community’s strong kinship ties to the ancestral homeland. This authority is also linked to charismatic figures such as the Sheikh Al-Khalili, the Mufti of Oman, who is often credited with the vision to establish the transnational Istiqama Charitable Society (Wortmann Reference Wortmann2018).

Student and teacher perspectives on the use of imported language materials at Istiqama

Students learning Arabic and Islamic studies at neighbourhood Ibadi mosques in Stone Town also use the Istiqama textbooks donated from Oman and used at the Institute outside the town. One student, Jalali, attended the evening classes during his schooldays and, at the time of our interview, was pursuing a degree at a local college in Zanzibar Town. Jalali’s mother is Zanzibari of Indian and Sunni heritage, and his father is a member of a well-known Omani family in Zanzibar Town. Jalali and several other Ibadi students went to evening classes funded by Istiqama at an Ibadi mosque from the ages eight to fifteen while also attending school full time at the Cutchi Indian Sunni madrasa (Islamic school) in the Mkunazini neighbourhood of Zanzibar Town. The madrasa is large and has a distinctive façade of white walls with leaf-green trim. It sits in a prominent location across from the island’s main branch of the CRDB bank. The Sunni madrasa is a private school, but, like the Istiqama Institute, it follows the Tanzanian national curriculum in which religion is only one subject out of many and English is the primary language of instruction. Jalali explained that the religious education offered in the school is from a completely ‘Sunni perspective’. Moreover, students who are not Sunni are obliged to conform to mainstream Islamic ritual practices while in school, and they learn about Islam from exclusively Sunni sources.Footnote ¹⁴ In the evening at the Istiqama classes, however, Ibadi students enter a different epistemological sphere, one that privileges Ibadi norms and practices. This phenomenon of cross-cultural appropriation and subject formation is strikingly like Jalali’s description of a school life that compelled him to be Sunni by day in the Cutchi school and Ibadi by night at Istiqama.

Arabic language textbooks

Former students and teachers in the Istiqama schools explain that the Swahili language permeates all aspects of Arabic language pedagogy and mediates between the ideal of Omani Arab nationalism portrayed in the imported textbooks and the cosmopolitan context of the Istiqama classroom. Like the Tarbiyya, the Iqrā’ textbook series designed for Arabic language pedagogy is replete with reading passages and pictures drawn from an Omani context and projects an identifiably more nationalist tone. When asked about his experience studying religion and Arabic from the Istiqama textbooks printed in Oman, Jalali explained that, while he was generally comfortable with the Omani examples and pictures in the textbooks, accepting the centrality of the Arabic language to the Istiqama curriculum was an adjustment:

Jalali’s experience of growing up in the multicultural but patrilineal Muslim society of Zanzibar in which children of Arab heritage typically assume the religion and ethnic identity of their fathers was good preparation for the digestion of the Omani customs presented in the textbook. However, like most Omani–Zanzibari children of his generation and his parents’ generation (born in the 1950s and 1960s), knowledge of the Arabic language and script consisted of what was learned in Qur’an school classes or a few key religious phrases and greetings, while Swahili (and, in Jalali’s case, Hindi) served as the dominant mode of communication. This is in contrast to a long history of local Swahili writings using Arabic script – a cultural and intellectual practice that British colonial officers and missionaries disrupted and transformed by enforcing the romanization of Swahili as part of a broader civilizing mission to make the language and its speakers ‘legible’ to Europeans (Bolton Reference Bolton2016). Other narratives suggest that the loss of Arabic language abilities on the island is a partial result of the anti-Arab and Zanzibari nationalist policies adopted by the government in the years following the revolution (Loimeier Reference Loimeier2009).

The experience of several formative years spent in a bilingual, dual-confessional and multicultural Zanzibari educational milieu is likely to produce occasional moments of confusion. In this particular postcolonial context, where independence and revolution came from both European and Arab imperial powers, such conflict persists in the Muslim student’s attempt to navigate between a local Swahili African culture heavily influenced by Arabic and Islam and the idealized Arab Islam presented in the textbooks. Like any subject, learning Arabic is something that takes time, sustained exposure and discipline until it becomes ‘an everyday situation’, a habit, or something normal. Inculcating a sense of normalcy in Arabic is one of the distinguishing features of the Istiqama school curriculum in relation to that of other similarly faith-based educational institutions in Tanzania’s primarily Kiswahili- or English-speaking educational context. The cultivation of Arabic language skills within the Istiqama association also bestows the minority Muslim group with a degree of religious authority in a religious playing field in which knowledge of Arabic often means greater access to higher truths and symbolic capital (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1993). This capital affects not only campus life but also one’s ability to accumulate material wealth on graduation, as it enables access to trade networks in Arabic-speaking countries such as the United Arab Emirates or Dubai (Keshodkar Reference Keshodkar2014). Yet, the emphasis placed on Arabic as a prestige language is not without its critiques; some religious elders, such as sheikh and Ramadan lecturer Abdilahi Nassir of Mombasa, caution against mistaking ‘appearance for substance’ (Kresse Reference Kresse, Simpson and Kresse2008: 240). From this perspective, functionality in the language of Islam is different from having knowledge of the faith (ibid.: 240–1).

Given the competition that Istiqama faces from other Gulf-funded institutions and actors in Zanzibar and Tanzania, it is no wonder that Arabic is at the core of the group’s current educational initiatives. Despite the high premium placed on knowledge of Arabic in the region, Zanzibar’s Istiqama teachers frequently employ Kiswahili in their classrooms in order to facilitate the process of foreign language acquisition. Jalali expressed his admiration at the intelligence and skill of his teachers at Istiqama, who, he explained, attended college in Oman. Emphasizing that they were non-Arabs, he referred to them as ‘Swahilis’ and then clarified that they were ‘Africans’. Jalali said, ‘It wasn’t like they [the teachers] were talking Arab, Arab, Arab, no no no. He would read a passage or a story and then translate it into Kiswahili, and that helped me a lot to understand the words and how Arab is used.’Footnote ¹⁶ This dual-language pedagogical approach adopted by the Istiqama teaching staff demonstrates a sensitivity to and awareness of the various learning needs of their primarily Kiswahili-speaking student body.

The fifth lesson in the fourth part of the Iqrā’ textbook focuses on the ‘Omani armed forces’ and their role in the Omani renaissance (Nahda) that began in the 1970s under Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said (r. 1970–2020). The lesson includes patriotic pictures of the armed forces, including a plane from the Omani air force and a military march in front of a building bearing the Omani crest, two crossed ceremonial swords and a ceremonial dagger (khanjar) (Ministry of Education in Oman 1997: 44). The passage reads: ‘[The Nahda] realized major successes in the way of building powers aimed at the spread of peace and tranquillity in the souls of the citizens in [every] corner of the Sultanate and the protection of the dear homeland [al-waṭan al-‘azīz]’ (ibid.: 44). The passage also discusses the various different branches of the Omani military (the army, the air force, the navy and the sultan’s guard) and their phases of development, along with the various academies established by the sultan for the training of those aspiring to join the armed forces. The military propaganda in the primary school textbook intended for students in Omani government schools and madrasa systems at home and abroad is an indication of the vast reach of the country’s vision for modernization. Moreover, the textbook links Oman’s achievements in modern development (al-tanmiyya al-ḥadītha) to the intellectual acumen and military might of the recently deceased sultan in Oman.

Textbooks published by governments for use in their public schools, in Oman as elsewhere, frequently contain nationalist rhetoric (Doumato and Starrett Reference Doumato and Starrett2007). It is not uncommon for students studying abroad to return home influenced by the rhetoric and the images espoused in their host country’s curriculum and public discourses, as occurred with many of the leaders of modern Saudi-inspired Wahhabi or Egyptian- and Sudanese-inspired Salafi movements across coastal East Africa. What is less clear is how the content of such textbooks influences student perceptions of their own national history and culture vis-à-vis that imported from abroad and how local students process, filter and interpret the contents of these books. To what degree do students and teachers actively engage the textual and pictorial narratives displayed in the textbooks? And to what degree is the foreign textbook just a means to a very practical end – acquiring the ritual and linguistic knowledge required to be a ‘good’ Muslim? Jalali described his own experience with the Tarbiyya and Iqrā’ textbooks as one of passive engagement with the ‘foreign’ nationalist message imbuing the textbooks.

From this perspective, the Omani textbooks were, in a very practical sense, drills (tadrībāt) for improving one’s knowledge base and not a replacement or competition for Zanzibari students’ hearts and minds. Jalali makes it clear that the two cultural contexts are distinct – despite the familiarity of Zanzibari Arabs with Omani customs and traditions. It also appears that the Istiqama teachers, although they previously lived and studied in Oman, were very conscious of not engaging in any dialogue with students that might touch on issues of political sensitivity in Zanzibar, such as the virtues of the sultan and his armed forces. Still, it was striking the degree to which, even years later, a student from the Institute could remember very acutely the themes of the passages and the images, suggesting a degree of passive learning that transcended the acquisition of merely technical knowledge.

For students in Zanzibar who study Arabic and religious studies from an Omani curriculum in night school and who will not take a national exam on the content, there is perhaps even less motivation to internalize that content (Doumato and Starrett Reference Doumato and Starrett2007: 47). It is also very possible in the case of Zanzibar that, since the Istiqama textbooks differ little, if at all, from those used by students in Oman, the Omani government and textbook writers put little thought into the intended audience of the textbooks when transporting them to collaborators abroad. As the authors also point out, the religious knowledge students receive in government schools is only one small component of the religious ‘socialization’ they encounter elsewhere through various print and electronic media, Friday sermons, and daily conversations with friends, families and teachers outside the official classroom (Toronto and Eissa Reference Toronto, Eissa, Doumato and Starrett2007: 47–8). Jalali explained that, during his time in the dual-learning environment of the Cutchi madrasa and Ibadi classes, he and his fellow Ibadi students would often engage in debates with their Sunni classmates over the merits of the different schools of thought in Islam. In these encounters, he would often find himself compelled to defend his Ibadi expression of faith in the face of criticism.Footnote ¹⁸

Accompanying the Gulf Arab- and North African-influenced social and learning environment of Istiqama is a familiarity with the Arabic language that students come to embody from nursery school onwards. Nuhu – a Zanzibari university student who recently graduated from the Istiqama Institute – explained that, for many students at Istiqama who studied in a local madrasa prior to enrolling in the school, learning religion and the Arabic language from Omani textbooks is not at all strange. ‘For me, it was simple because since a long time ago I had started to study Arabic … For me, I saw that it was just normal, it was good, because I already understood something that was written and it was easy to understand.’ Similarly, students who enter the Institute’s campus quickly learn that knowledge of Arabic is essential to their success in and outside the classroom. ‘It is the rule for everyone to speak Arabic, and they know it.’Footnote ¹⁹ The physical and social environment of the school appears as a lusher version of the idyllic Omani desert village scenes represented in the textbooks from which the students learn Arabic grammar, reading comprehension, and the behaviours befitting a good Arabic-speaking Muslim.

Like the students, few of the teachers who come from Omani families at the Istiqama schools are native speakers of Arabic. Moreover, Arabic is probably only their second or third language after, in most cases, Kiswahili. Even the Algerian teachers who have a more natural command of Arabic from the Arab nationalist context in which they were raised and educated are ethnically Berber and speak a mix of Arabic and Berber dialects among themselves. Several former students and current teachers at the Istiqama schools explained that the cultural and linguistic diversity influences the translation and interpretation of the curated image of Islam and Muslims that appears in Omani. Nuhu explained that some teachers would draw on examples from their own cultural context (e.g. Algeria) when teaching religion or Arabic reading comprehension. ‘Others stick to this [Zanzibar’s] environment, they teach about this or that river, meaning, they use [examples] of different kinds.’Footnote ²⁰ This suggests that there is an awareness among teachers at the Institute of different student learning needs and that the Omani textbook is just part of a pedagogical toolbox for communicating knowledge of Arabic and religion in Zanzibar’s Ibadi schools.

Bi Aida, a long-time teacher and administrator at the Istiqama Institute, explained that, as a private institution of learning, the school affords teachers relative freedom to select classroom materials and experiment with a variety of pedagogical methods:

From this perspective, it is only natural that Zanzibari students would learn from textbooks printed in a country where Arabic is the official language, if not always the primary mode of communication. The question is not necessarily one of Omani or Arab supremacy but rather one of utility: how can we use the various materials at our disposal to enhance the pedagogy of our teachers and to address the learning needs of our students? The association Bi Aida makes between knowledge of Arabic and being from Oman invokes a deeply ingrained assumption in Zanzibar that the Gulf countries are the home of the ‘pure’ Arabic language and culture to which young Muslims must aspire. A successful Istiqama student is one who achieves the same level of Arabic as their Omani counterparts in Oman who attend the national school system in Arabic. This does not take into account that many students of East African heritage or the Zinjibari diaspora in Oman are themselves struggling to navigate between their Arab and Swahili/African linguistic and cultural heritage. For example, some students may grapple with the expectation of being ‘fluent’ in the standardized Kiswahili taught in schools, while their home dialects may differ drastically from the Tanzanian standard that uses a roman orthography and flattens some of the guttural sounds characteristic of Arabic and Islamic vocabulary (Hillewaert Reference Hillewaert2019: 79).

Arabic-language education at Istiqama

At Istiqama, maths and science teachers tend not to use the Arabic language. Salim, who left the Institute to teach chemistry in a government school, explains: ‘There are some books written in Arabic for science, but we do not use those. For example, myself, I cannot use Arabic books to teach. I can read Qur’an [that is all].’Footnote ²² While there are some science textbooks in Arabic available in the school library, English and Kiswahili appear to be the preferred methods of communication in these subjects. Salim’s experience is an example of the distinction made between English as a language of industry and Arabic as the language of Islam and Arab culture, and a language that also serves the socio-economic purpose of maintaining business and kinship ties with the Gulf. Salim further gestures to a desire to immerse students in what many view as the primary language of Islam; this is also a primary reason for which Zanzibari parents may send their children to study at the Maahad. According to Salim, the Istiqama Institute’s success in graduating students with high marks in national exams – Ibadi and non-Ibadi, Arab and non-Arab – means that parents and teachers alike aspire to send their children to the Istiqama-supported schools to learn Arabic and to learn the behaviours and cultural practices perceived to befit a good Muslim.

Salim aspires to gain respectability for his children by exposing them to Arabic – which he views as a prestige language more valuable than Kiswahili for the symbolic capital it yields. He expresses an insecurity shared by many of the island’s educated Muslims that their failure to learn or their lack of opportunity to study Arabic in depth deprives them of opportunities and religious authority that would enable greater integration into Arab economic and social circles in Zanzibar and the Gulf. Parents may transfer this anxiety to their children, who have the burden of mastering Arabic for its religious value and English for the opportunities it affords Zanzibaris to achieve success in education, the local tourism industry and international business, among other sectors. Parents in Zanzibar choose to send their children to private religious schools such as Istiqama in order to increase their earning potential but also to improve their social standing in a local context where good Muslim behaviour is still strongly linked to regular attendance at prayers, knowledge of Arabic, modest dress, and knowledge of Arab culture. Despite being associated with a religious and ethnic minority in contemporary Zanzibar, the Istiqama Institute in Zanzibar has managed to position itself as one of the most sought-after Muslim private schools in Tanzania. The school’s success is due, in part, to its modern educational resources and rigorous learning environment, but it is also due to its direct ties to Omani Arab society and culture, which once served as a standard for respectable Muslim behaviour in Zanzibar. In this way, Istiqama differs from other Gulf-supported Muslim private schools whose founders are not so directly entangled in Zanzibar’s complex histories of imperialism, Arab landownership, class-based and racial discrimination, and revolution. Perhaps more than any other cultural project spearheaded by the Omani government or private actors in Zanzibar today, the faith-based Istiqama organization and the educational networks it has established across Eastern Africa have been critical in reimagining the Ibadi-Omani diaspora as a locally rooted, inclusive and bilingual Muslim community.