Radical ‘tabligh’ recruit fighters

PEMBA, Tanzania — Twisting an old and respected tradition of spreading the faith, Muslim extremists from the Middle East and Central Asia are traveling as missionaries in East Africa to recruit young men for holy war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In places such as Pemba, part of the Zanzibar island group 50 miles off the coast of Tanzania, part-time preachers go from mosque to mosque spouting sermons of hate — sometimes scripted by radical groups in Saudi Arabia, said moderate Muslim leaders.

The groups also pay for the fundamentalists’ travel, other Muslims and a Western diplomat said, on the condition of anonymity.

East Africa’s poverty and a feeling of disenfranchisement among Muslims have created fertile ground for the extremists from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Pakistan. After speaking at religious services, the “tabligh,” or missionaries, begin recruiting young men, sometimes offering a chance to join Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terror network, said Ali Abdallah Amani, the Pemba representative of Zanzibar’s top Muslim leader.

“They do it in a very, very, very secret way, but they do it,” Mr. Amani said. “Sometimes they are Arabs; sometimes they are people working for them. There are some [charitable] agencies that sometimes use a native of the village [to recruit], because the others would be caught by the police.”

He said most older imams oppose the extremists and try to warn their congregations, most of whom come to pray in small, simple mosques built with donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

“We caution each other as to who is going to distort Islam. We call these people the distorters,” Mr. Amani said. “Awareness is the key.”

But because the tabligh’s mission is purportedly religious, local Muslims — who make up 90 percent of the island’s 1 million residents — feel compelled to listen and provide them with food and shelter. Islam came to the tropical archipelago more than 1,000 years ago. Most women here wear head scarves, and many men dress in robes and knit caps.

The extremists appeal to a frustrated minority who believe that Islam is at war.

“There is an army of Muslims, and they are fighting an army of non-Muslims who are trying to destroy Islam,” said Zahor Issa Omar, a Pemba resident who answered the call to become one of the hundreds of tabligh who visit mosques in East Africa every day. Like most tabligh, he spends 40 days every year preaching and wears traditional Pakistani clothing with a simple turban.

Mr. Omar, 34, said he has made two trips to an Islamic school in Raiwind, Pakistan, which Pakistani police say has trained millions of tabligh. He declined to discuss al Qaeda or whether he has been to Afghanistan or received military training.

He said he helps spread the extremists’ ideology in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, urging Muslims to become more devout and to join the struggle against non-Muslims. He also insisted that he paid for his new home and extensive travel by doing odd jobs.

Zanzibaris say, however, that Wahhabi charities pay the tabligh a higher salary than the European Union pays Zanzibar’s schoolteachers, who receive several hundred dollars a month. Wahhabis follow a fundamentalist brand of Sunni Islam practiced mostly in Saudi Arabia. The Raiwind madrassa is based on Wahhabi beliefs.

Saudi institutions not only finance extremist tabligh, but also provide suggested texts for their sermons, the Western diplomat said. Sermons faxed from the religious groups were found in the home of a terror suspect in Kenya, Aboud Rogo Mohammed, and focused on Islamic fundamentalism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Several imams known for radical views refused to be interviewed by a non-Muslim journalist, and Islamic charities in Zanzibar also declined to answer questions. The Tableeghi Markaz Raiwind madrassa, where Mr. Omar trained, also refused to answer questions from the press.

Most Zanzibaris, who follow a mystical form of Sufi Islam, which emphasizes peace and harmony, reject the tabligh’s fiery rhetoric. Their islands have been a trade center for 3,000 years and have long played host to Christian and Hindu minorities without any communal violence.

“They tell us to support Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda,” Seyyid Mohammed Seyyid, a man in his 20s from Pemba’s main town, said scornfully. “They talk about how the Americans are killing Iraqis and the Israelis are killing the Palestinians. They only talk a little about religion.”

Mr. Amani and other imams said that while the influence of these fundamentalist missionaries is limited, it appears to be growing among younger imams, especially since the U.S. invasion of Iraq last year.

In Zanzibar’s Stone Town, which resembles an ancient whitewashed Arab city, more and more Zanzibaris wear traditional Muslim garb and the 300-year-old mosques built with crushed coral overflow on Fridays, reflecting a resurgence of religion.

The tabligh’s recruiting drive has yielded significant results. At least 25 percent of the several hundred foreign fighters captured in Iraq have come from East Africa, U.S. Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson said in the fall from his new base in Djibouti.

Two Zanzibari tabligh purportedly were involved in the 1998 car bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 234 persons. A U.S. court convicted Khalfan Khamis Muhammad in 2001, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani remains on the FBI’s list of most-wanted terrorists.

Aboud Rogo Muhammad, a Kenyan who runs a madrassa for girls, has been charged in the November 2002 car bombing of a hotel on Kenya’s coast that killed 15 and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner minutes before. Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, a Kenyan tabligh, is on the FBI’s terrorist list for the 1998 and the 2002 attacks.

The U.S. military has posted 1,800 military personnel in Djibouti to monitor terrorist and extremist activities in the region. A key part of its mission is to reach out to Muslim communities and monitor and counterbalance the message of the extremists.

Gen. John Abizaid, whose U.S. Central Command is responsible for East Africa, said in February that extremists are trying to gain an “ideological foothold” in the region.

“We know the terrorists gravitate toward ungoverned spaces, and these are areas where they look for the opportunities to gain recruits, establish safe havens and move money,” he said in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

The United States asked Saudi Arabia after the September 11 attacks to cut off funding for religious extremists and their charities. But many have just closed their offices and continue to operate underground, and private donations to the tabligh are untraceable.

Juma Mtumwr, deputy police commissioner for Zanzibar, said there are no immediate terrorist threats on Zanzibar, but police are watching.

“We are also trying to follow these religious groups,” he said. “The immigration department in Dar es Salaam [deported] two imams, and they went back to their original countries.”

He declined to elaborate, saying police are cooperating with the FBI.

Maalim Muhammad Idriss, one of the most respected imams and Islamic historians in Zanzibar, said the tabligh and the Wahhabis who sponsor them have perverted the Islamic missionary tradition — which goes back centuries — and represent a threat to the region’s Sufi traditions.

“The Wahhabis are dangerous … the old men have become very disturbed, those following the old traditions have become very disturbed,” Mr. Idriss said.