1990s, Muslim women in Tanzania have been
active in politics and have formed non-governmen-
tal organizations intended to promote political
awareness among Muslim women (Dunbar 2000).
Typically, Muslim women have been more polit-
ically organized and openly supportive of democ-
racy in Sub-Saharan African countries which are
not overwhelmingly Muslim (Nigeria, Kenya,
South Africa, Sudan, and Tanzania – Kenya and
South Africa are predominantly Christian), than in
countries that are overwhelmingly Muslim (Mali,
Niger, and Senegal). One possible reason that Mus-
lim women have become more engaged in these
developing civil societies is that more Muslim
women have been exposed to and inspired by non-
Muslim women’s movements in countries that are
pluralistic. It is also possible that more Muslim
women have been politically active in countries
that do not have Islamic majorities because more of
them have had the opportunity to be formally edu-
cated, often in Christian schools. This implies that
Islam itself sometimes prevents women from par-
ticipating in politics and openly supporting democ-
racy. It implies that only exposure to non-Islamic,
Western ideas, secular values, feminist discourses
and the idea of universal human rights can explain
why Muslim women have been more politically
active and openly supportive of democracy in some
settings than in others. However, this does not
appear to be the case. In the Sub-Saharan African
countries where Muslim women have become most
organized, politically active, and openly supportive
of democracy, they have typically appealed to Islam
and religious values, not Western ideas, secular val-
ues, feminist discourses, or universal human rights.
For example, FOMWAN and WLUML have called
for greater fidelity to Islamic law and democracy.
Thus, the question is, why might Islam inspire
political participation and vocal support for demo-
cracy by women in some settings more than others?
The answer to this question is certainly complex.
One possible explanation has to do with reli-
gious competition. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the
world’s most religiously competitive regions (Bar-
rett 2001). Islam has competed with a myriad of
Christian churches, both mainline and independ-
ent, for converts and influence over the wider soci-
ety for more than a hundred years (Hansen and
Twaddle 1995, Haynes 1996, Gifford 1998). This
competition burst out into the open with the break-
down of authoritarian regimes and the advent of
multiparty elections in Sub-Saharan Africa during
the 1990s, and has been especially intense in the
most religiously plural settings, settings where a
significant number of Muslims and Christians are48 civil society
present. In religiously competitive settings, particu-
larly during periods of political transition, when
constitutions are revised or created and the rela-
tionship between the state and religious institutions
may be renegotiated, it becomes very important for
religious leaders to ensure that the voice of the reli-
gious institution they lead is heard. In religiously
competitive and democratizing settings, there is
good reason to expect that Muslim leaders will be
most encouraging of political participation by
Muslim women, since including Muslim women
more than doubles the Muslim voting population
and increases the leverage of the Muslim commu-
nity vis-à-vis the state.
Thus, women become an important political
resource for Muslim leaders in the most religiously
competitive settings. This does not necessarily
mean that Muslim women will simply do the bid-
ding of their religious leaders, who, at the dawn of
the twenty-first century, are mostly men. As Mus-
lim women come to recognize that they are a valu-
able political resource, they are likely to become
more organized and effective at promoting change,
within the Islamic community and in the wider soci-
ety, as they did in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa,
Sudan, and Tanzania during the 1990s. In these
countries, Muslim women are likely to use newly
found social and political leverage to address issues
of importance to them, including education and
domestic violence, as well as inheritance and prop-
erty rights.
The consolidation of democracy is far from
inevitable in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa.
Poverty, disease, political corruption, and global
inequities, among other factors, threaten the
prospects that fledgling democratic institutions will
be strengthened in the region. However, assuming
that democratization continues and that elections
become increasingly free, fair, and regular, it is
likely that the social and political leverage of Mus-
lim women will increase, within the Muslim com-
munities and in the wider society, particularly in the
most religiously plural and competitive national
settings of Sub-Saharan Africa.Bibliography
D. Barrett (ed.), World Christian encyclopedia. A com-
parative survey of churches and religions in the modern
world, Oxford 2001.
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R. A. Dunbar, Muslim women in African history, in
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