Sufis vs. Jihadists in Mogadishu

Hindustan Times

16-05-2025

Soldiers from the Somali National Army at a military base north of Mogadishu, Somalia, April 21.Mogadishu, Somalia
Jihadism is an ever-fluctuating menace: a local terror one year, a threat to global order the next. Somalia is an exception to the swinging pendulum of extremist power. The al Qaeda franchise al-Shabaab has attacked nearly every state institution, security installation and large hotel in Mogadishu over the past 20 years. In April it captured key towns within 150 miles of the capital, where radicals continue to plant roadside bombs and launch mortars. The African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia recently determined it needs an additional 8,000 troops to fulfil its mandate.
That Somalia is an incubator of jihad is a tragic irony. Somali Islam comes from the mystically inflected Sufi tradition. The deepest Somali divisions have been between regions and clans—when the government collapsed in the 1990s, separatists and tribal warlords, not religious ideologues, fought over the remains. But jihadism can achieve a kind of institutional status when nothing else functions on a national scale.
As a Somali colonel pointed out to me, al-Shabaab had a head start on the government in their long-running war. It was founded in 2006, while the Somali National Army reconstituted only in 2008. Jihadism offers a way out of the clan system and a vehicle for retribution in tribal disputes, with al-Shabaab drawing many of its soldiers from among marginalized clans. The state struggles to assert its authority anywhere, and local and foreign trainers, weapons traffickers and ideologues operate with impunity. The terror group offers its fighters greater opportunities for pillage and power than any other organized force.
But there is a religious element to the conflict. I interviewed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud inside the Villa Somalia, a windowless building inside a labyrinth of security checkpoints. The cerebral 69-year-old, who survived an al-Shabaab attack on his convoy in March, said the government was engaged in an 'ideological war.' The president quoted a Quranic phrase as proof that Islam has inherent respect for human dignity. In contrast, he says, 'al-Shabaab are people who get together and kill 1,000 people in one second.'
The government is launching a TV network promoting a view of Islam uncorrupted by jihadist ideology. It has twice gathered more than 300 prominent Somali religious scholars for conferences to condemn al-Shabaab. The president acknowledges the meetings were necessary in part because of the low status of Somalia's political leadership. 'When the politician says al-Shabaab is bad, people can see it as politics. . . . But when a prominent religious figure makes a fatwa and says that something is un-Islamic, the people don't tolerate it.'
Abdulkadir Moalim Nur, a politician and Sufi imam, says that isn't enough. 'Sufis gathered and issued a fatwa, but who is implementing it? The president tried his best. But you need to have force.'
Mr. Nur, an ally turned rival of President Sheikh, had no visible security when I met him at his open-air mosque amid hundreds of white-robed students and followers. He heads a newly founded Sufi political party and has served as a government minister and as Somalia's ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a position he recently resigned when he re-entered electoral politics. Still, he says, 'by default I'm a spiritual leader, not a politician.'
The son of a prominent cleric, Mr. Nur returned to Mogadishu in 2009 after a long period out of the country. For a time al-Shabaab controlled nearly 80% of the capital. Mr. Nur organized a Sufi militia to fight the jihadists. His group suffered more than 200 fatalities in the campaign, which pushed the jihadists into the hinterland. Since then, al-Shabaab has murdered Mr. Nur's son and sister.
'Pre-civil war, there was not even a single jihadi in this country,' he says. 'It was dominated by Sufism.' Since then, nearly every institution and source of authority has disintegrated in Somalia. The few that have asserted themselves are related either to religion or clan. If jihadism is a foreign import, that perhaps raises its appeal in a state whose failure is as thorough as Somalia's: Islamic radicalism puts forth a vision that is unsparing and straightforward as well as global in its ambition and scope. Al-Shabaab is an older and healthier institution than the state it is fighting. The government struggles to produce enduring alternatives to the terrorists destroying the county.
Jihadism's foreignness is also a vulnerability in a place that's maintained a strong current of national pride amid decades of conflict. As he sat cross-legged on a dark, hand-crafted leather mat, Mr. Nur offered me a delicacy served at Somali spiritual gatherings: coffee beans soaking in a pool of hot sesame oil, held inside a carved wooden basin. Perhaps the answer to al-Shabaab lies in such Somali distinctiveness—in the assertion of a national and religious identity strong enough to incorporate even the jihadists one day. 'If al-Shabaab wants to recognize Somalia as a nation with known borders and the blue flag, I will invite them here. They are from us,' Mr. Nur said. 'If they want power, let them come here and we can talk. If they want to eliminate Somalia from the world map, we say no.'
Mr. Rosen is a staff writer for Tablet magazine.
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