In its most popular form, the Salafiyya movement of Africa was a modern Muslim reform movement established by Jamal al-Afghani and Muhammad ‘Abduh at the turn of the 20th century. The term Salafiyya (also spelled Salafiyah) is derived from the Arabic root salaf, which means “predecessors,” and is often used to refer to the first three generations of Muslims (where a generation is equivalent to a century).
The presumption is that the individual Salafis who make up the Salafiyya derive their understanding of Islam directly from the religion’s primary sources, such as the Qu’ran (Koran) and Sunnah (normative example of the Prophet Muhammad), instead of being bound to the traditions, customs, and ideas that were developed by later Muslims. As such, there have been numerous Muslim movements, both premodern and modern, that some historians have designated as Salafi.
One such premodern movement was established in Nigeria by Usman Dan Fodio, the revolutionary founder of the Sokoto Caliphate. Having been inspired by the Wahhabi (or Wahhabiyah) movement, which was established by the 18th-century Arabian reformist Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, Dan Fodio sought reform, unity, and a purification of Islam from its African syncretistic elements.
Whether historians are actually justified in designating Dan Fodio as Salafiis debatable, especially given the latter’s connections to certain classical institutions, such as the legal school (madhhab) system and Islamic mysticism (Sufism).
Either way, it is the modern Salafiyya movement that has come to define Salafism. This movement, which arose during a period of Western colonialism, is characterized by a desire to both reform Islamic thought and end the intellectual, political, moral, and cultural stagnation of the Muslim world.
It strongly opposed the blind imitation of archaic religious decrees and advocated a revival of ijtihad (unmediated interpretation). It also explicitly emphasized the role of reason and science and asserted that Islam was indeed compatible with both. Perhaps what most separates this modern Salafiyya movement from that of its predecessors is precisely its modernist character, as is evident in the writings of both Afghani and ‘Abduh.
Afghani was probably of Persian Shi’i origin and had spent a considerable amount of time in Afghanistan during his youth. (Afghani himself claimed that he was an Afghan). After a brief stint in Istanbul, Afghani made his way to Egypt, where he taught at al-Azhar University and established a following.
It was there that he would meet his young Egyptian disciple, ‘Abduh, who once described his master as “the perfect philosopher.” Following a period of fiery speeches against the British colonizers of Egypt, al-Afghani was expelled from Egypt in 1879.
In 1884 Afghani was joined by ‘Abduh in Paris, where they published the pan-Islamic Arabic newspaper al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa (The strongest link). Afghani would eventually pass away in Istanbul, where he had been confined during the last years of his life.
On the other hand, ‘Abduh, who was arguably the most significant figure of the modern Salafiyya movement, would return to Cairo to head al-Azhar and write his famous Risalat al-Tawhid (The message of unity). In their time, both Afghani and ‘Abduh were controversial to some (because of their heterodox teachings) and inspirational to others (because of their reform-mindedness).
And though Afghani and ‘Abduh would become the icons of the modern Salafiyya movement, there were others who would also play a major role. Most prominent among them was ‘Abduh’s famous student Muhammad Rashid Rida. Rida was especially instrumental in propagating Salafiideas by way of his periodical Al-Manar, which was initially a joint effort with ‘Abduh before the latter’s death.
It is notable, however, that the movement under Rida came to acquire a reputation of being more conservative, and his ideas have been considered a link between the reformism of Afghani and ‘Abduh and the activism of the famous Egyptian neorevivalist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was established by Hasan al-Banna.
The ideas of the modern Salafiyya movement spread throughout North Africa and the Muslim world. In Algeria the reformist ‘Abd al-Hamid Ibn Badis took a stance against Muslim mystical (Sufi) orders, focused much of his efforts on education reform in order to safeguard national identity (in light of the assimilationist policy of the French), and established the Association of Algerian Ulema (Scholars).
In Morocco Wahhabi and modern Salafiideals would be adopted by the reformist scholars Abu Shu‘ayb al-Dukkali and Muhammad ibn al-‘Arabi al‘Alawi, both of whose ideas would influence Moroccan nationalist movements and their leaders, such as ‘Allal al-Fasi.
In Tunisia modern Salafithought would be adopted by ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Tha’alibi, founder of the Destour Party, as well as by prominent scholars of al-Zaytuna University, including Bashir Safar, Muhammad al-Tahir ibn ‘Ashur, and his son Muhammad al-Fadil ibn ‘Ashur.
In light of contemporary Muslim scholarly discourse, it would appear that many of the ideas put forth by the modern Salafiyya movement are as relevant (and contentious) now as they were over a century ago.
Salvation Army
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| Salvation Army |
The couple had eight children, and all of them became major figures in this new organization, which developed a military structure and esprit de corps to serve better the spread of the Christian message and a welfare program based on the Gospels. William gave himself the title of “General,” which his wife and children were enjoined to use even at home. Catherine became known as the “Army Mother.” Converts and members were known as “Salvationists.”
Within a decade, and particularly after the 1890 publication of William’s book, In Darkest England and the Way Out, this new movement was well established not only in the British Isles but also throughout Europe, Canada, and Australia. Already, by 1880, the Salvation Army had “opened fire” on the United States, and one of the older children, Ballington, soon became the “Commander” of operations there.
The doctrine of sanctification, by which God’s grace and believers’s practical exercise of faith give rise to a host of virtues and a deep sense of love for humanity, is preeminent in the ideology of the Salvation Army, functioning as a guiding force in members’ lives.
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While many other evangelical doctrines, including faith in the sacrificial atonement of Christ’s death, are of enormous importance for Salvationists, all mainstream Protestant sacraments and rituals were jettisoned as confusing and divisive, in order to streamline the Army’s evangelistic goals.
In addition to the Booths’s evangelistic fervor for lost souls, demanding of all Salvationists, both Officers and Soldiers, that they sign the Army’s Articles of War on unbelief and poverty, the Salvation Army has always advocated humane treatment of animals and supported women’s rights. With respect to the latter, William and Catherine insisted that all three of their married daughters hyphenate their last names, long before the practice became more common.
However, it is the charitable nature of the Salvation Army that is so widely known and appreciated. The American organization has created day-care centers, summer camps, residences for senior citizens, programs for the homeless, rehabilitation centers for alcoholics and drug addicts, and relief collections, for which the red kettles and the ringing bells have become ubiquitous during the Christmas season.
The most vibrant mark on the American consciousness was made by the seventh of the Booth’s children, Evangeline. With a strong will and a penchant for flamboyance, this remarkable administrator served as the U.S. commander from 1904 to 1934, bringing relief to many during World War I and the Great Depression. Of special note were her campaigns on behalf of unwed mothers and neglected children, acknowledged by the government and the public alike.
Due to her work, today there are well over 1,000 Corps (local churches) in America, many of which conduct evangelical services distinguished by exuberant brass band hymn singing. Before retiring in the United States, now boasting the largest organization and membership in the world, Evangeline returned to London in 1934 and for five years assumed duties as the fourth general of the Salvation Army.
José Antonio López de Santa Ana
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| José Antonio López de Santa Ana |
Generally unscrupulous and invariably self-serving, from 1833 to 1855 he occupied the country’s highest political office at least 11 times (depending on how one counts and the criteria one uses). His extensive network of loyal clients and allies, combined with his keen political acumen made him one of the nation’s most important political players throughout the early republican period, sometimes dubbed the “Age of Santa Ana.”
Born in Jalapa, Veracruz, on February 21, 1794, Santa Ana joined the Spanish military at age 16, when he became an officer cadet in his home state’s Fixed Infantry Regiment. After a stint in the north, he returned to Veracruz in 1815 as a sublieutenant conducting counterinsurgency operations against the various bands then harassing the Spanish forces.
It was in Veracruz, among the criminals and vagabonds who filled the ranks of his regiment, that Santa Ana began to hone his vaunted interpersonal skills. For five years, between 1815 and 1820, in the steamy jungles and rocky sierras of his home state, he conducted search-and-destroy operations against insurgent bands, gaining a large personal following and earning a reputation as an effective and charismatic military leader.
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With the formation of Agustín de Iturbide’s “Army of the Three Guarantees” in 1821 Santa Ana abandoned his royalist allegiance and joined the independence movement. It was the first of several such about-faces that characterized his subsequent political and military career.
In 1823 two years after allying with Iturbide, he put himself at the head of the revolt that ousted the vainglorious emperor, his Plan de Casa Mata and successful uprising making him the darling of the liberals, who ruled Mexico for the next 13 years.
The period of liberal dominance generated an accumulation of grievances on the part of the military, the Church, and other conservative elements. Sensing the impending backlash, Santa Ana was elected president as a liberal in 1833, retired to his Veracruz estate, and put himself at the head of the conservative revolt that followed.
From 1833 until his fall from power in the mid1850s, his politics can be generally described as conservative and centralist, though mainly they were pro–Santa Ana. He accumulated fantastic wealth, and as head of state devised many elaborate rituals, ceremonies, and titles to honor his heroism and grandeur.
His final fall from power came in the aftermath of Mexico’s humiliating defeat in the Mexican American War of 1846–48, despite subsequent attempts to resurrect himself and his brief return to power in 1853–55. Convicted of treason after the liberal “Revolution of Ayutla” that ousted him in 1855, he was sentenced to permanent exile, though was allowed to return to his homeland in 1874.
He died a broken man two years later. Despite the central role played by Santa Ana in the political tumult of the new Mexican nation-state, scholars widely agree that he was more a symptom than a cause of the period’s chronic political instability.
Santeria
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| Santeria |
Santeria (Santería), or “the way of the saints,” is a syncretic religious practice that combines elements of Catholic and Yoruba faith; the practice originated in Cuba. It is often called La Regla Lucumi or La Regla de Ocha. Santéria was a derogatory term used by the Spanish to describe their slaves’s inappropriate reverence of the saints. Priests of Santeria are called santeros; priestesses are called santeras.
A syncretic religion is one that combines and reconciles different belief systems—or significant elements thereof—into a new whole, quite often as the result of a mingling of two cultures. In the West, syncretic belief systems are more common in folk practice than at the institutional level, often originating among a conquered or enslaved people. In the Caribbean, syncretic religions are sometimes called Creole religions.
Like Santeria, most Creole religions combine elements of Yoruba belief with the Catholicism of the European masters: voodoo in Haiti and Louisiana; Umbanda and Candomble in Brazil; Obeah in the West Indies; Kumina in Jamaica; and Palo Mayombe, Kimbisa, and Santeria in Cuba.
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The Yoruba are a large ethnic group in West Africa, the land from which many slaves bound for the Caribbean came. In Cuba, the Spanish built cabildos (social houses organized according to ethnic group) for their slaves. In areas where the Yoruba ethnic groups predominated—and possibly in some where they did not but were an influential minority—the practices of Santeria began to coalesce in the cabildos, where slaves were allowed to gather on holidays and engaged in traditional practices.
They had been forcibly baptized and were ostensibly Christians, but the days in the cabildos were intended to be an occasional outlet for their African culture; they provided a way to burn off steam, so to speak.
In Santeria, the gods of the Yoruba—the Orisha— are associated with, and revered as, Catholic saints. God becomes—or is the “true identity of”—Olodumare or Olorun (specific correlations between Christian and Yoruba elements vary by tradition), and the other deities are redescribed accordingly. Ellegua, a trickster and psychopomp (a manifestation of death) and the god of travel and the crossroads, became Saint Anthony or Saint Michael.
Chango, the god of thunder and ancestor of the Yoruba people
, became Saint Barbara. Oshun, the goddess of love and beauty, was associated with Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba—and Ogun, the god of war, with Saint Peter. There was no real transformation here, as such; these joint Yoruba-Catholic entities were treated not as new deities or supernatural beings but as newly recognized manifestations. Much as different apparitions of the Virgin Mary—Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Prompt Succor—are revered as aspects of Mary rather than as independent entities, the Orisha were now venerated as aspects of the saints. Traditional Yoruba prayer could continue—and continue to develop. The Spanish, for their part, would hear only prayers to their own saints.
Traditionally a purely oral faith, Santeria has no official written records and no holy scriptures other than the Christian Bible. Like many Creole religions, its rituals are secretive, open only to the properly initiated. Ritual music and dancing are used in prayer, as they were in the days of the cabildos. Dancing may be used to induce a trance state for the purpose of ritual possession, similar to being “ridden by the loa” in Voodoo.
The veneration of ancestors is the focus of family rituals. In some cases, a santero sacrifices a chicken, the blood of which is given in offering to the Orisha, the meat being consumed separately. These sacrifices have been the subject of lawsuits in the United States, and discussions of the specific protections of freedom of religion.
Sanusiya
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| Sanusiya |
The Sanusiya was a religious reformist movement founded by Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al- Sanusi. Born in Algeria, al-Sanusi studied in Cairo and Mecca. He was heavily influenced by the teachings of the noted Sufi Ahmad ibn Idris. Al-Sanusi established his first lodge, or Suficollective, outside Mecca in 1827. After ibn Idris’s death, he moved to Cyrenaica in present day Libya and established zawiyas (collectives) along the desert trade routes into the Sahara.
The Sanusiya stressed the role of the prophet Muhammad and encouraged members to practice a pious way of life with a stress on Islamic education. It discouraged excessive rituals involving singing or dancing. The orders were highly centralized and individual zawiyas were governed by several key officials.
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With their stress on the importance of work, the Sanusiya zawiyas flourished economically and attracted more followers. From Cyrenaica, new orders were established in the oases of Jaghbub and Kufra that became the center of the movement in 1895.
Although its base was primarily from among the desert bedu, it also attracted urban followers. The Sanusiya also spread into Chad in the southern Sahara and, by the turn of the century, into Niger where the movement was repressed by the French.
Although the Sanusiya cooperated with the Ottoman governors in the northern Libyan coast, they opposed French expansion into Algeria and became fierce opponents to Italian imperial designs over Libya. Thus like many Islamic revival movements it gradually became a nationalist force against imperial domination.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
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| Domingo Faustino Sarmiento |
Most famous for his classic polemical study of caudillo politics and life in the Argentine interior, Facundo, or Civilization and Barbarism, and for his educational reforms during his term as president of Argentina, Domingo F. Sarmiento ranks among the most influential statesmen and intellectuals of 19th-century Latin America.
His diverse literary contributions and political activities have also been interpreted as emblematic of the larger search for national identity in Latin America during the first century of independence, as the literati and politicos of the freshly minted nation-states from Mexico to Argentina struggled to create a viable sense of national belonging from the disparate ethnic and racial strands of their homelands.
Born on February 15, 1811, in the rustic capital city of the interior province of San Juan in the shadow of the Andean foothills, Faustino Valentín Sarmiento Albarracín, one of 15 siblings, was the only son of his soldier-laborer father and homemaker mother to survive to adulthood.
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Precocious as a youth, he learned to read at age four, continuing his studies at San Juan’s Escuela de la Patria (School of the Homeland), and later with his priest uncle, under whose tutelage he acquired his lifelong appreciation for the transformative power of education. Conscripted into a provincial militia in the late 1820s, he was briefly imprisoned for refusing to serve, an experience that sharpened his rapidly evolving political views.
Sarmiento became convinced that only under the strong leadership of Buenos Aires could Argentina transcend its historic legacy of backwardness and primitivism, represented by its interior provinces, and become a modern nation. Embracing this Unitarist (pro-Buenos Aires, centralist) perspective, he fought against the army led by Federalist caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga.
Captured and arrested by Facundo’s forces, he fled to Chile in 1830, where he spent most of the next 15 years working in a variety of jobs. Reading voraciously and writing prolifically, it was in exile in Chile that he wrote Facundo and other important works, many directed against the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.
From 1845–47 he traveled widely in Europe and the United States, establishing a lasting friendship with U.S. educational reformer Horace Mann and his wife, Mary; the latter’s translation of Facundo introduced the Argentine author to an English-speaking audience.
With the overthrow of Rosas in 1852, Sarmiento returned to Argentina and launched his political career, becoming senator in the National Assembly; governor of San Juan Province, and minister to the United States. Upon his return from Washington, he was elected president of the republic—the first in a string of four non-porteños (persons not from Buenos Aires) to hold the nation’s highest office.
During his administration—which coincided with the last two years of the Paraguayan War—federal government expenditures on education in the interior provinces quadrupled, much of it going toward the construction of new schools.
Between 1869 and 1914 the nation’s illiteracy rate dropped from more than twothirds to around one-third, thanks largely to the legacy of educational reform bequeathed by Sarmiento, while its secondary school and university system came to rank among the finest in Latin America. Overall, however, many Argentines considered Sarmiento’s presidency a disappointment, in part because of his administration’s failure to reform the nation’s highly unequal patterns of landownership.
Remembered mainly for his literary contributions, especially the impassioned dualism expressed in his major work—civilization as represented by the cities, especially Buenos Aires, lifeline to Europe and national progress, and barbarism as embodied by the backwardness and primitivism of the gaucho, the Indian, and the interior provinces—Sarmiento has been both lauded for his cosmopolitanism and criticized for his racism and disdain for rural life.
Few would disagree that he left an indelible legacy on the literary, cultural, and political life of his homeland or that his larger oeuvre can be taken as representative of the broader struggle to create authentic national identities in Latin America during the first century of independence.
Satsuma Rebellion (1877)
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| Satsuma Rebellion |
The origin of the Satsuma Rebellion in Japan lay in the voyage to Japan of U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry to Japan in July 1853. Perry carried with him instructions from President Millard Fillmore for the government of Japan to move away from isolationism.
If the government did not do so voluntarily, according to the president’s instructions, Perry was given the freedom to turn his guns on the Japanese. Several years earlier, Commodore James Biddle had been given a similar mission, but because he lacked the authority to use force, he had been compelled to turn away by Japanese officials. Fillmore was determined that Perry’s mission would not have a similar outcome.
On July 10, Perry sailed into Edo (Tokyo) Bay, with the warships Susquehanna, Mississippi, Saratoga, and Plymouth. For four days, the American warships carried out firing exercises in Edo Bay. On July 14 an emissary came from the Japanese emperor Komei, promising to take a message from Perry to the emperor. With his mission accomplished, Perry promised to return in spring 1854.
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Perry’s mission to Japan provoked an immediate crisis for the Tokugawa shogun, Iesada. The appearance of a foreign naval squadron underscored his inability to protect Japan. The sole rationale of the shogunate (military regime) was its ability to use force to preserve domestic peace and prevent foreign invasion.
Having seen what the British had done to China when they inflicted a humiliating defeat in the Opium War in 1839–42, a group of military leaders were infuriated by the “loss of face” that Tokugawa Iesada had caused the Japanese to suffer.
When Perry returned to Uraga Harbor on February 15, 1854, he was met by five officials of the imperial court. After six weeks of cordial ceremonies, the Japanese signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854.
Opposition began to grow again toward the Tokugawa Shogunate in the west of the country. Two clans began to assert themselves against the Shogunate: the Satsuma Clan in southern Kyushu, and the Choshu in western Honshu. Ironically, because they were “outsiders” in the Tokugawa social and political order, meaning that they were not originally supporters of the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, they tended to have kept the samurai warrior virtues that the Tokugawa supporters had gradually lost.
In response to the declining figure of the shogun, the rebellious lords began to champion the emperor, although he had largely been powerless since the first shogunate in the 12th century. The Satsuma and Choshu clans had strong resources to back them. Politically, the Choshu and Satsuma samurai became known as the Imperial Loyalists, feeling that the Emperor Komei was the legitimate leader of Japan.
Both the Choshu and Satsuma clans vied for leadership in what became open opposition to the shogunate. In December 1862 the Choshu samurai forced the shogun to agree to expel all foreigners by July 1863, something which the Choshu leaders knew the Tokugawa were now powerless to do. Thus, they achieved their goal of making the Tokugawa appear even more politically irrelevant than before.
In September 1863 a Satsuma force marching on Kyoto forced the Choshu samurai to abandon the court. However, the political cause of both clans, to restore the emperor, remained the same. The decisive event, the Shimonoseki Affair, took place in 1864.
The Shimonoseki Strait was an important maritime trade route controlled by the Choshu samurai, who attempted to block it to foreign trade. Its position between Honshu and Kyushu made its opening imperative to foreign commerce.
To the nationalistic samurai of Choshu and Satsuma, the Tokugawa capitulation at Shimonoseki proved the final insult. On March 7, 1866, Choshu and Satsuma drew up a secret alliance to restore the emperor. In 1867 Emperor Komei died, to be succeeded by Mutsohito, who took the reign name of Meiji.
Emperor Meiji was determined to rule Japan, and he welcomed the secret support of Choshu and Satsuma against the new shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu. Civil war erupted in 1867, and the Choshu and Satsuma clans openly rose up for the emperor.
Yoshinobu surrendered his powers to Meiji, who became restored to a powerful imperial throne in December 1867. In January 1868 Yoshinobu decided to attempt a final stand at Fushimi, where his forces were crushed. He surrendered to the imperial forces, and formally opened Edo to the imperial troops.
As when Western monarchies modernized, Japan’s modernization was done at the expense of the feudal classes. In August 1871 the new imperial government suddenly abolished all the domains of the feudal daimyo and established governmental prefectures in their place.
In 1873 the imperial government announced the formation of a new peasant conscript army to support the emperor, and this was rapidly followed by the permanent eclipse of the samurai class. Always proud of their status in society, they were now no longer to carry the daisho, the great sword and the small sword, in public.
The humbling of the samurai class distressed the new government, which not only had owed its creation to the samurai of Choshu and Satsuma but was composed itself of members of the warrior class. In 1873 a possible invasion of Korea was announced as a way to help the samurai regain their sense of military honor and at the same time diffuse what was beginning to become a threat to the new imperial regime.
Throughout this period, Saigo Takamori, a Satsuma samurai, had loyally supported the Meiji Restoration and had worked closely with Kido and Okubo in the modernization of Japan. When the new national army was created, Saigo had been made a field marshal in recognition of his services to the emperor.
Yet Saigo saw also in the decline of the samurai the ending of the class system of the ancient Japan to which he had dedicated his life. In the summer of 1873 Emperor Meiji called off plans for the invasion.
Saigo Takamori resigned from the government and returned to the Satsuma lands. Others felt as he did, especially when the wearing of the swords of the samurai was officially abolished by law in 1876. Rebellions broke out in Satsuma, Hizen, and Tosa. Whether intentionally or not, Saigo was forging the nucleus for a rebellion.
The flashpoint for what became known as the Satsuma Rebellion came when imperial troops seized the military supplies from the arsenal at Kagoshima, to prevent them falling into the hands of any rebels. To the Meiji government, this was an example of its policy of fukoku-kyohei (rich country, strong army) in a country in which all were now servants of the emperor.
To Takamori and his supporters, it was a call to revolt to defend traditional values. Although late to join active opposition to the emperor, Saigo nevertheless found himself in command of some 25,000 samurai.
His original strategy was to march directly on the imperial capital at Edo. There is some reason to think he may have been able to capitalize on the discontent of the peasant class as well if he had done so. To the peasants, the conscription of their sons was just another form of taxation, to be paid in blood rather than kind. However, Saigo deviated from his plans by besieging Kumamoto Castle, being held by a garrison of imperial conscripts.
The attack on the castle began on February 21, 1877. Finally, the Meiji government, showing a lack of military preparedness, was able to send a relief force to Kumamoto Castle on April 14. Faced with this new threat, Saigo was forced to abandon the siege. There followed months of a long pursuit in Kyushu, where government forces were compelled to fight on Saigo’s own terms.
Saigo, with only a few hundred followers, was confronted by an imperial force of some 30,000 men. However, in true samurai spirit, he refused to surrender to the government soldiers. On September 24, 1877, he led a final charge down Shiroyama into the guns of the imperial conscripts. He was mortally wounded.
His closest follower, Beppu Shinsuke, picked up the dying Takamori and carried him further down the hill to a place suitable for ritual suicide. Shinsuke then charged into the guns of the imperial troops. The Satsuma Rebellion was over, but the legend of Saigo Takamori had just begun.
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