Abstract
The Islamic Sacrificial Feast, one of the two major Muslim annual festivals and coinciding with the pilgrimage to Mecca, has long been neglected as a static, canonical ritual determined by centuries old, Arabic texts. This study based on extensive fieldwork and many written documents illlustrates how the 'orthodox' Idd el-Hajj
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(as the feast is called in Tanzania) shows many different faces. The basic elements of the ritual shared by all Muslims and corroborated by authoritative texts are a communal prayer, a sermon and an animal sacrifice. The ritual reflects the influence of these authoritative texts but the interpretations of these scriptures are continuously reworked in order to reconceptualise Muslim identity in a changing social and political context. Although all Muslim groups in Tanzania accept the idea that Islam is embodied in a set of basic texts, the legitimacy of these texts and their applicability to particular situations is continually challenged and contested. The discussions on the correct ritual practice are influenced by new developments like the vernacularisation of Islamic key texts and an exceptionally high literacy in Swahili which enables a large part of urban Muslim population to participate in these discourses on Islam and Islamic ritual. This study especially illustrates the ideas on time and place of the Idd el-Hajj. Differences in the date of the festival are connected to the problems of moonsighting: the lunar month only starts with the first sighting of the crescent but the validity of a sighting is not accepted by all Tanzanian Muslims. The personal authority of a religious leader, the loyalty to a local madrasa (Qur'an school) or the desire to synchronise the Idd with the ritual performance of the whole nation or with the activities of the pilgrims at Mecca results in different holidays. Secondly, the notion of place in the Idd el-Hajj performance is very important because of the link with the hajj: the annual pilgrimage to the sacred heart of Islam. Different conceptions of the religious and social importance of the hajj are reflected in the way Tanzanian Muslims perceive the role of Islam in their society. This is furthermore reflected in the place where each community performs its Idd prayers: inside the mosque or on public prayerfields. Also the significance of animal sacrifice changes according to the place where it is performed: in the private sphere of the house, on the public field in the centre of the town or in the state controlled abattoir. The major point of this study is that in the particular forms of the Idd el-Hajj Muslim groups redefine their position within a field of different loyalties and identities and in this process continually reconstruct a Muslim moral community. These different identities are not necessarily contradictory or mutually exclusive. Sometimes the social significance of the ritual is primarily that of a family happening, sometimes the ritual is important to express the identity of a particular madrasa or mosque. But the two most important moral communities visible in the discourses and practices of the Idd el-Hajj are the Tanzanian nationstate and the global Muslim community. Tensions between the daily reality of a Muslim minority living in a secular state and the ideal image of a unified Muslim community exemplified by the hajj are at the heart of these discourses.
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