Using gender as the major line of difference, the paper examines the diversity within Islam in northern Mozambique, in which, despite strong historical ties to the Swahili world and waves of Islamic expansion, as well as attempts to establish and police an Islamic 'orthodoxy', matriliny continues to be one of the main cultural features. Concentrating on two coastal regions, Mozambique Island and Angoche, and on three urban zones of the modern provincial capital, Nampula City, the paper addresses the reasons for the endurance of matriliny, through historical processes that brought about different currents of Islam, and discusses the ways in which the colonial and post-colonial state, while attempting to control the often conflicting Islamic and African 'traditional' authorities, have contributed to the perpetuation of this conflict as well as to the endurance of matriliny.
The coexistence of Islam and matriliny has been viewed as a ‘paradox’ because of strict patriliny that Islam prescribes. This article attempts to disentangle this enigma by comparing the Minangkabau, Kerala and coastal northern Mozambique that represent the most well-known cases of simultaneous practice of Islam and matrilineal kinship, which initially was a result of peaceful Islamisation through Indian Ocean networks. In the nineteenth century, the Dutch and British colonial regimes helped matriliny to survive, despite all the efforts of the Islamists to the contrary, by codifying local juridical rules. The Portuguese integration of the local matrilineal nobility into their colonial administrative system preserved matriliny within the local Muslim order. Nowadays these communities are influenced by modernisation, nation-state policies, and Islamic reformist movements, but matrilineal principles still regulate the use of the ancestral land.
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