East African Muslim in Exile: Zanzibar’s Nationalists and Muslim Critiques of State Tyranny in Zanzibar, 1964-1985

This presentation examines the articles of the Free Zanzibar Voice, a key exile publication of the post-revolution period, published by a former editor of Mwongozi, Ahmed Seif Kharusi. Kharusi went into exile with the sultan and settled in the UK. There he published letters by dissidents within Zanzibar as well as political commentary, critiques of the Union, and satirical anti-regime poetry, as well as representing the ZNP as the true voice of an authentic, albeit underground Muslim political culture in Zanzibar. I read the FZV alongside other publications of the period to explore questions of religious transformations through exile, and the various idioms of postcolonial political arguments that crossed national borders in the era of the Cold War. Co-sponsored with the Institute for African Development