THE PROTESTANTS OF ISLAM:

Sahara refugees form a progressive society: Literacy and democracy are thriving in an unlikely place. (John Thorne, 3/26/04, CS Monitor)

A dozen women recline on the steps of the main girls' school in the Saharawi refugee camps, their pastel robes like blots of water-color on the whitewashed cement. When the door opens and the headmistress emerges, the women suddenly leap up and crowd around her, clamoring. They are mothers seeking places for their daughters in the already-crowded school.

The Saharawi women are among the most liberated of the Muslim world, and their status is characteristic of the well- organized, egalitarian society that has developed in the refugee camps over the past three decades. For all their bleakness, the Saharawi camps boast a representative government, a 95 percent literacy rate, and a constitution that enshrines religious tolerance and gender equality.

The Saharawis are the Arab nomads of Western Sahara, bound together by their Yemeni ancestry and their dialect, Hassaniya, which remains close to classical Arabic. For centuries, they roamed the territory with their camels and goats, sometimes trading with Spanish colonizers, and became known as "blue men" for the indigo robes they wear.

When Spain abandoned Western Sahara in 1975, Morocco invaded and drove the Saharawis into neighboring Algeria. Trading their camels for Land Rovers, they fought a guerrilla war under the leadership of the Polisario Front, an independence movement, until the UN brokered a cease-fire in 1991. Since then, the promised vote on independence has been stalled by disagreement over who should be allowed to participate. [...]

It has also begotten an individualistic approach to Islam. While most Muslims tend to stress the importance of the Islamic community, "the Saharawis believe that religion is a very personal issue," says Mouloud Said, the Polisario's representative in the United States. "It's a personal relationship between the human being and his Creator. This is the mentality of the nomadic society."

Mosques are conspicuously absent from the camps, in large part because the Saharawis "don't believe that to speak to God, you need a fancy place," explains Mr. Said.

Saharawis seldom pray in groups save on important Muslim holidays, and view even these ceremonies as purely optional. For some, this is a welcome escape-hatch from the religion's bloodier rituals.

"Each person has his own Islam," says Zorgan Laroussi, a translator in the camps who chose not to attend the mass slaughter of camels for the feast of al-Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. His brother-in-law Salek did go, and relishes explaining the ritual's finer points while the two men and their families share a dish of grilled hindquarters.

Saharawis are equally welcoming of other religions. "There is an almost continuous presence of church groups from all over the world - in particular the US - in the camps," says Said. "Every year for the last four years, there has been a joint prayer at Easter."

"Tolerance is not something new, but it's something [Saharawi leaders] encourage," he says. "In a tolerant society, the center prevails, not the extremes. That means respect for others, whether for the faith or their ideas."

Move them here.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 25, 2004 7:50 PM