Issue No. 872

The Islamist Capture of Somalia's Education

Last Sunday, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud appointed Mohamed Mohamud Mohamed as the latest rector of Somali National University, ousting Prof Osman Mohamed Mohamud, who had been in place since 2019. With this appointment, the president has added the Somali National University to the roster of Damul Jadiid-affiliated institutions.

Over the past decade, the rapacious state capture of Somalia's institutions by Islamist groups has gone unchecked, but the speed and scale of the Islamist advance have reached fresh heights under this current government. Since the conservative Islamic cleric Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed was appointed president in 2009 in an attempt to 'de-fang' and suck the oxygen from Al-Shabaab, the 'moderate' Islamists have not left power. Building from their socio-economic and cultural influence established amid the country's state collapse, several competing factions affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood have risen and fallen over the years, not just Damul Jadiid, but Aala Sheikh, and the much-diminished Al-Islaah as well. Between 2017 and 2022, though, it was the Salafist Al-I'tisaam movement– the ideological twin of Al-Shabaab with which it shares a jihadist ancestor– that wielded political power through Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo's spy-master, Fahad Yasin. But in 2022, the return of Hassan Sheikh to Villa Somalia similarly brought back the Damul Jadiid clique affiliated with his first term.

Many hoped that the experienced, professorial Hassan Sheikh would restore a semblance of 'normality' to Somalia's federal system, restart the state-building agenda that had stalled under Farmaajo, and resume the fight against Al-Shabaab. Quite the reverse has ensued, with Somalia now bogged down in its worst political-constitutional crisis in years and the jihadists on the ascendancy. Facing a possible ouster from office next year-- either at the point of a militant's gun or a 'return to the tent,' Villa Somalia has decided to go on the offensive, consolidating its influence within key academic and state institutions. 

For Damul Jadiid and the Muslim Brotherhood, Somalia's education system has long been a frontline in extending its influence across the country. Such emphasis has distinct echoes of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood faction in the 20th century, as well as Hassan al-Turabi, the Sudanese mastermind and ideologue behind the coup in 1989, who prioritised placing allies within the military, judiciary, and universities. At the heart of grooming new generations of conservative Islamist political leaders in Somalia has been SIMAD University-- co-founded by none other than Hassan Sheikh, who served as dean when it was still the Somali Institute of Management and Administration Development. Founded in 1999 with Kuwaiti support, the university was the brainchild of the current Education Minister and Damul Jadiid ideologue, Farah Abdulkadir. Abdulkadir presciently channelled Kuwaiti funding for Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated development and education organisations in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Among them was the 'FPENS' project, an umbrella group through which tens of thousands of children were educated.

Following the collapse of the state in 1991, like all public institutions and infrastructure, Somalia's education system was eviscerated. In the void that followed, a more conservative strain of Islam, particularly Wahhabism, began to sprout in the private schools and universities that emerged. Backed by Gulf funds, particularly from Saudi Arabia, they offered free education, but stealthily undermined Somali culture and Sufi Islamic practices. Arabic was often the language of instruction, while Somali folklore stories, such as those about Dhegdheer, a female cannibalistic demon, were slowly written out. Co-education of genders became increasingly scarce, as neo-Salafis -including Al-I'tisaam - quietly established madrasa and school networks in the 2000s. And today, Somalia's education system remains a hodge-podge of privatised Islamic schools, government and NGO-supported institutions, and Al-Shabaab's own twisted version of indoctrination.

Post 9/11 and with Muslim-focused development organisations under growing scrutiny, the Kuwaiti Africa Muslim Agency, which had supported Abdulkadir's efforts, decided to divest from Somalia. At the same time, several other Gulf 'charities' in Saudi Arabia had been charged with the funding of Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya – the first home-grown Somali jihadist movement and forefather of both Al-Shabaab and Al-I'tisaam. Somalia's Islamist groups turned increasingly to Qatar for political and financial support instead. Ever since, Doha has remained the pre-eminent sponsor of Islamist movements within Somalia, while maintaining discreet lines of communication with Al-Shabaab in the hopes of playing a 'peacemaker' role.

In these intervening years, SIMAD thrived, churning out new generations of Damul Jadiid politicians who now populate the highest echelons of the federal government. Abdulkadir remains right at the heart, often referred to as the 'de facto prime minister,' such is the extent of his influence in setting policy and direction of government. But Hassan Sheikh and Abdulkadir are not the only SIMAD alumni in senior posts, with the two men fashioning a coterie of others in senior posts, including the ambassadors to both Russia and the US. SIMAD alumni have also been appointed to key positions within the Education Ministry, with one university lecturer reported to have taken charge of educational curricula. The current government has repeatedly emphasised that education is at the heart of its agenda– citing the hiring of thousands of teachers and near-tripling of the allocated budget. Such investments have been touted as the victories of the government and the unrelenting march towards stabilisation as part of its 'Somalia Rising' narrative. Leaving aside the reality that only a handful of teachers in Hirshabelle, for instance, are actually funded by the government, the emphasis on education-- and the recent replacement of the Somali National University rector -- are emblematic of the Islamist state capture.

For onlookers, the lenses of clan and corruption too often obscure the key role that ideology has and continues to play in Somalia's political trajectory, and in the war against Al-Shabaab. It is worth noting, however, that Damul Jadiid-affiliated universities and schools remain more progressive than their Al-I'tisaam counterparts, with men and women allowed in the same classrooms —though on different sides —and attending similar courses. The neo-Salafist movement, however, is far closer to Al-Shabaab ideologically and remains highly restrictive for women's roles.

Both, however, have an aversion to Sufism, the mystical and tolerant strain of Islam that has historically pervaded the Somali-speaking Horn of Africa. With the flooding of new madrasas and mosques preaching a more conservative vision of Islam over the past three decades, Sufism has been squeezed out, not just in Somalia but in North-Eastern Kenya and Djibouti as well. Both Al-Shabaab and Al-I'tisaam exhibit a very public enmity towards the traditional Sufi Orders in Somalia, casting their practices as idolatrous. Most infamously, Al-Shabaab launched a desecration campaign in the early 2010s against the tombs of much-beloved Sufi scholars. But just last week, Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, a senior figure of Al-I'tisaam and chair of the government-affiliated Ulema Council, also took to the airwaves to condemn the Sufi practice of 'Mawlid,' the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday.

The Somali National University was one of the few independent educational institutions still standing in Somalia. It may now well go the same way as SIMAD, simply another government-aligned Islamist proxy competing in the milieu of conservative voices in the country. And with such reforms, though attention remains understandably trained on the destabilisation of Gedo and Sool, the voracious entrenching of the so-called 'moderate' Islamists within the state architecture and particularly within education is readily apparent. Hassan Sheikh may depart, but his movement is hedging its ideological bets and cashing in on the time he has left-- if he can't pull off the rigged electoral scheme in 2026. There is no space for moderate strains of Islam nor federalism within this vision of an autocratic, Islamist Somalia.

The Somalia Wire Team