Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74 - by Sandra Araújo (Hardcover)

About the Book

A study exploring how Portugal sought to exploit Muslim communities to back its counter-insurgent war during the liberation struggle in colonial Mozambique between 1964 and 1974.

Book Synopsis

Revealing Portugal's counterinsurgent spying on Muslims during Mozambique's liberation struggle, this book uses archival and field work to study Muslim responses to counterinsurgency and armed nationalism that led to Mozambique's freedom from colonial rule. Paying particular attention to the intricate set of realities Muslims faced during the colonial war, and their responses to Portuguese efforts to woo them against armed nationalism, Araújo shows how some elements of the Muslim community supported Portuguese counterinsurgency, while others defied it.

Exploring complex interconnections between Muslim culture, Portuguese intelligence-gathering practices, and colonial and nationalist propaganda, Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique brings a novel insight to the study of colonial counterinsurgency. Drawing scholarly attention to view this period of Portuguese colonisation as a matrix of lived realities pushing and pulling Muslim communities in opposite directions, this study enhances our understanding of colonial security strategies in Mozambique during the liberation war and their legacies in the post-colonial era.

Review Quotes

"As Araújo writes in this illuminating study of late colonial Mozambique, 'history is the craft of the possible' (p. 9). Readers learn how the Salazar and successor Caetano regimes securitized Islam and Sunni Muslims in northern Mozambique from 1964 to 1974, concerned that Indian and African Muslims might support FRELIMO, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, whose members were mostly Africans. Araújo acknowledges that her narrative is shaped by FRELIMO's silence and the gaps in the archival records about Salazar, Caetano, and the various Portuguese security forces active in the north. What she finds is nevertheless remarkable... Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." --Choice

"As Sandra Araújo shows in her fascinating new study, the unhappy conscript armies of Portugal's Overseas Wars were not solely agents of the 'butcher and bolt' violence of legend. Making common cause with Mozambique's Muslims against godless communism, perfecting intelligence operations, and investing in civilian infrastructure, the Portuguese dictatorship kept the empire a going concern right up until disgruntled officers toppled the Lisbon regime on 25 April 1974." --Mark Lawrence, Senior Lecturer in Military History, University of Kent, UK

"This monograph on Portugal's intelligence gathering on Muslims in colonial Mozambique demonstrates how lack of resources, absence of strategic planning, intense inter-agency skullduggery, bureaucratic incompetence, and simplistic view of Muslims undermined Lisbon's best efforts to recruit members of this community as surrogates of the colonial war. The book is elegantly written, well crafted, easy to read, methodologically sound, and well-structured; it is an invaluable addition to the body of literature in this field of inquiry." --Mustafah Dhada, Professor of History, California State University, USA

About the Author

Sandra Araújo is Associate Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Her post-doctoral work focuses on the role of Portuguese intelligence during the liberation wars.