Politic?

Overwhelming Jihad

"Islamist preachers use the population’s poverty to expand their flocks."
"They’re banking on the fact that the schools are almost free of charge and have no minimum education requirements. In exchange, they only demand that pupils convert to Islam."
"And schoolgirls are required to wear a veil."
Henrilys Rakotounarivo, school inspector. Vohipeno, Madagascar

"They’re takfiris [the new piously Salafist clerics entering the country]! They call anybody who doesn’t think like them apostate."
"They’re under the influence of preachers from Pakistan, building mosques and madrassas everywhere, without government authorization."
Mohamed Zubaïr, Amadiyya imam, Manakara mosque

Noor Mosque Antananarivo Madagascar

"It’s very easy for a child to convert and become a Muslim for life: He only needs to come here, take a shower and pronounce the Shahada [the Islamic profession of faith]."
"Things are easy for me. I am a servant of truth. It’s my life. And the only truth is in the Koran."
"[Women] complement men, but are not equal to men. Sure, women are technically capable of driving a car, but it’s the freedom they’re given to do so that is a problem. Women don’t know how to handle their freedom."
Nadeem Dolip, Mauritian head, new Islamist school (madrassa)

Madagascar, known historically as one of the 'spice' islands is the major source of the world's supply of vanilla beans. It has little industry, and it is an impoverished African country in the Indian Ocean, a population of 23 million, with electricity provided to 15 percent of the island's homes. The Malagasy people arrived on the island originally from South East Asia, so this is the origin of the population but it's considered to be an African nation, the size of France or Belgium.

Extreme poverty and a weak government and its strategic placement between Africa and the India subcontinent makes it a target for Islamization.

The country is about 85 percent Christian with a long-established Muslim component representing a mere six percent of the population. Moderate Amadiyya Muslims who have no wish to contest the island's major religion have always existed side by side with their Christian counterparts with no friction. That is changing. Saudi Arabia which financed the building of Salafist orthodox Islamist madrassas teaching Wahhabist Islam in Arabic installed these schools in Pakistan, Somalia, Turkey, Europe and elsewhere around the world. Where young boys are taught the fundamentals of medieval Islam in a language they neither speak nor understand.

It is these schools which have largely produced Islamist jihadis with the instruction to go out into the world and convince non-believers to convert to Islam by any means that will work; missionary work to terrorism. In Madagascar where parents cannot afford to send their children to schools operated by the state and through churches, Islamist organizations offer to educate their children at no cost to the parents, but their children must convert to Islam and practise all the precepts of the faith.

And so conversion becomes a simple matter of offering something of value at a price that seems negligible.

As an example, the mayor of a small town on Madagascar was born into a poor Catholic farming community. As a student he made his community proud as he completed his education. But university was out of bounds until a proposal arrived from Saudi Arabia offering him university study for a four year period at no charge. As long as he converted to Islam.

Saudi Arabia has become a destination of choice for students from Madagascar to study abroad; in the process they become Muslims. And Vohipeno’s young mayor is Muslim. As a former colonial power France also offers tuition for students.

Since the 19th Century Madagascar has been predominantly Christian. The island, dependent on tourism and entrepreneurs in the food industry has seen some alarm being expressed in the recognition that Islam is being spread wholesale, thanks to the vigorous interference and investments being made by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Both of which are building mosques away beyond the need for them in relation to the numbers of Muslims, most of whom were Amadiiya and well served in the past by their own mosques.

The spread of Salafi Islam has alarmed the Amadiiya Muslims as well, who live in harmony with their Christian counterparts, and whose women eschew the veil, demanded by Wahhabist Islam. The proliferation of mosques and madrasses on Madagascar's southeast coast and the northwest side of the island has not brought peace of mind to this minority sect of Islam traditionally persecuted by their orthodox brethren.

And as young boys from age seven to 14 sit on the floor of madrassas wearing skullcaps and djellabas reciting verse after verse from the Koran in a language foreign to them (Arabic or Urdu) these ultra-strict boys-only schools, the producers of jihadists, represent a real subject of concern. "Ten years ago, there wasn't a single veiled woman to be seen. Now they're everywhere. They get subsidies in exchange for wearing a veil", noted a 60-year-old nurse doing her local rounds. In her district alone, she said, over one hundred mosques unauthorized by the government have been opened.

A challenge to the tolerant, traditional syncretic form of Madagascan Islam which dates to the 13th Century, representing six percent of the population.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States spend vast financial resources on the spread of Wahhabist Islam pursuing their duties as pious Muslim leaders to ensure that Islam grows by leaps and bounds using whatever techniques work; in this instance, extolling the virtues of Islam in providing free 'educations' to poor children. Yet they will not sully their own territories by absorbing any of the countless refugees that dysfunctional Islamic governments are producing all over the world. By ignoring the needs of Muslim refugees and economic migrants ensuring that those Muslims relocate to Europe further spreading Islam.

The devil is in the details.