Issue No. 881

The Ghosts of 1975 in Al-Shabaab's Latest Documentary

Last month, Al-Shabaab distributed a documentary across its Al-Kataib Media Foundation wing, seemingly just another film in the torrent of high-spec productions the jihadists have rolled out this year. But its topic-- and themes-- make it noteworthy for a number of reasons, with the documentary focusing on the great 'calamity' for Somalia's arrayed Islamist movements: the execution of 10 sheikhs by the Siyaad Barre regime following their denouncement of his contentious 'Family Law' legislation in 1975. Interwoven with grainy colour videos of 20th-century Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab foregrounds several of its senior militants, including Mahad 'Karate,' alongside archival footage of prominent sheikhs and particularly Mohamed Ma'alim. Entitled 'Shuhadada Dacwada,' this 90-minute documentary is some of the most unmistakable evidence of Al-Shabaab positioning itself squarely in the pantheon of Somali Islamic history.

In January 1975, Barre's 'Scientific Socialist' regime proposed a wildly contentious and radical secularisation of Somali society in a series of reforms dubbed the 'Family Laws.' Declaring that "women and men are equal," the government sought to overhaul traditional Islamic family structure and practices, granting women equal rights to inheritance, divorce, and outlawing polygamy. On 12 January, at a stadium rally, justifying the sweeping changes, Barre was reported to have claimed that the Prophet Muhammad would move with the spirit of the times, among other audacious claims. For believers, it was another salvo against Islam by the government, which had sought to co-opt elements of the traditional Sufi Orders into the regime to monitor and suppress any murmurings of dissent. 

Furthermore, for Somalia's nascent Islamic movements, Barre's 'Scientific Socialism' and nationalism were contextualised within the bloc of Arab nationalists in Egypt and the secular Ba'athist elites' repression of Islamic expression. As a counterweight to Ethiopia, the Gamal Abdel Nasser regime in Cairo had sought to amplify Barre's Somali nationalism, but this first post-colonial generation of Arab leaders-- also working as a bloc against the Gulf monarchies-- were considered apostates by the Muslim Brotherhood. Subsequently, Barre's pronouncement of Family Laws-- as well as the brutal crackdown to follow-- were considered analogous to the godless rule and suppression of Muslim communities across the Arab world. So, on 17 January, dozens of sheikhs furiously denounced the legislation in Mogadishu, with a number of prominent clerics, including Sheikh Ahmed Sheikh Mohamed, taking a stand in the capital's Abdulqadir Mosque. The response from Barre was immediate and brutal, with 10 sheikhs sentenced to death by firing squad and nearly two dozen more handed down lengthy prison terms. 

The crackdown deeply disturbed the nation, regarded as the clearest symbol yet of Barre's authoritarianism and disregard for Islam. And the reverberations of the executions into Somalia's politically conscious Islamic leaders at the time proved highly consequential as well, not least supplying a pulpit from which to mobilise underground opposition to the regime. For some academics, the execution of the sheikhs marks one of the beginnings of Islamic radicalisation and the path towards home-grown extremism within Somalia. However, even then, rather than serving as a uniting rallying cry, the sheikhs' killing crystallised and accentuated the fractures within the various movements that maintained bases in Somalia and the Gulf. And then, much like now, many such divisions were often petty and parochial in nature, either related to clan or doctrine or simply jostling for power.

Among those radicalised by the sheikh's execution were members of the nebulous Jama'at al-Ahli Al-Islaam movement, formed by Sheikh Mohamed Ma'alim. Educated in Egypt at the distinguished Al-Azhar University, Ma'alim absorbed much of the fervent religious-political Islamic milieu of the time in the aftermath of Sayyid Qutb's execution in 1966. And upon returning home, Ma'alim began to spread the reformist Ikhwan ideas and preach the social activism of the Muslim Brotherhood. In turn, the bloody repression of Barre in 1975 inflamed the appetite for revolution amongst the younger followers of the Al-Ahli association in particular. But it triggered a number of splinters and fractures among members as well, with some elements fading into irrelevance by the late 1970s. Meanwhile, in northern Somalia, the executions would trigger similar discord and radicalisation within the affiliated Al-Wahdat al-Shabaab al-Muslimiin movement, also known as Wahda. Amidst this splintering and, at times, active hostility towards one another, reformist Ikwhan and neo-Salafist ideologies nevertheless took root and proliferated underground in Somalia, further spurred by the education of sheikhs and Islamic leaders in a Saudi Arabia that was flush with petrodollars during the 1970s.

Still, there were a handful of thinkers who rose above the melee, including Ma'alim, who many consider the father of political Islam in Somalia. Flash forward five decades, and many of the foremost Islamist movements in Somalia today, including the ruling Damul Jadiid clique, Aala Sheikh, and the much-faded Al-Islaah, either pay homage or directly trace their lineage through Mohamed Ma'alim. The scale of his continued influence is hard to overstate, with members of the amorphous Aala Sheikh movement led by ex-President Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed directly following his teachings, as well as a host of other leaders from Somalia's arrayed Muslim Brotherhood groups. For instance, opening a conference in January 2023 to rally Islamic clerics against Al-Shabaab, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud paid homage to the sheikhs.

Naturally, being an overwhelmingly youthful society, most Somalis alive today have no memory of the executions, but rather consider the sheikhs as defenders of their faith against the repressive Barre regime rather than ideologues. And so by emphasising Ma'alim in its recent documentary, Al-Shabaab is similarly explicitly seeking to tie itself to one of the most influential Islamic thinkers of his time, someone who stood up to the godless Marxist dictatorship of Barre. This documentary comes as part of Al-Shabaab's broader, subtle reframing, which increasingly taps into Somalia's Islamic history and nationalism to appeal to the wider population. For instance, in recent months, Al-Shabaab has aired dozens of podcasts featuring senior jihadist leaders on Radio Andalus, where the militants recount their lives and journeys into radicalisation, marking a distinctive shift away from previous narratives that centred on Al-Qaeda in the Middle East. But publishing an entire 90-minute documentary with Karate and other militants front and centre, explicitly on the Family Laws and the subsequent executions, is a significant marker in the jihadists' own narrative development.

Within the documentary and beyond, one of the principal themes that the jihadists are tapping into relates to the concept of 'sovereignty' in an Islamist theocracy, where laws and governance are already ordained by Allah-- unlike democracies, where it lies with the people. For Al-Shabaab and conservative Islamist clerics within Al-I'tisaam, the jihadists' ideological twin and competitor, the Family Laws and legislation such as the progressive Sexual Offences Bill in 2018 represent an attempt to repeal the laws of Allah, feeding into its framing of Villa Somalia as infidels themselves and oppositional constitutional rule itself.

Yet by seeking to co-opt the speeches of Ma'alim into its narratives, Al-Shabaab quietly writes over the deceased sheikh's deliberate eschewing of any particular Islamist movement, including their jihadist ancestors of Al-I'tihaad Al-Islamiyaa. The video may be high-specs, and the messaging sophisticated, but dig a little deeper, and the Al-Shabaab documentary helps to remind one of the squabbling, disparate histories of Islamism within Somalia. Even the Islamic Courts Union, at its height in the mid-2000s, could not claim to enjoy wholesale support from Somalia's arrayed Islamist movements. And, in turn, such co-opting of the memories of the executed sheikhs against rival Islamist movements has remained a free-for-all, with each one drawing their own interpretations and particular weaponisations to court popularity and power.

Such ideological competition and fracturing remain one of the most overlooked and least understood elements of the enduring civil war, with today's Islamist groups on the block-- Damul Jadiid, Aala Sheikh, and Al-I'tisaam —as well as the armed Salafists of Al-Shabaab —all drawing inspiration from Ma'alim. It is the same Islamist factions-- albeit with different names and faces-- that failed to unite against Barre in the aftermath of the execution of the sheikhs that are jostling for power at the centre of the country today. Al-Shabaab may attempt to appropriate this struggle against its rivals in this latest documentary, but it fundamentally remains the same old story.

The Somali Wire Team