4 - Era of Civilisation: Popular Education and Islamism

Summary

Joseph du Bouchet had just settled in as the leader of the Church in Chad when, on 25 September 1946, the governor of French Equatorial Africa vowed to give the education of indigenous children ‘extreme attention’. Education, he said, was essential to French colonial interests in Africa, and would improve the human skills and behaviours of the Chadian youth. Catholic missions, especially the Jesuits, were entrusted with this task of educating Chadians, as ‘loyal auxiliaries’ to the colonial administration. For it to be successful, however, there would be a need for government subsidies.

Having young French missionaries working in the Muslim-dominated north of Chad was of paramount importance. Like the missions in the Muslim areas of the northern region of Cameroon were already doing, led by Bishop Yves Plumey, the Catholic missions in northern Chad focused on promoting social services first. Only then did they begin the work of evangelising Muslims: the twofold goal was to impede the infiltration of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism in Chad and the surrounding French possessions. These ideologies, they believed, posed a direct threat to France's geostrategic interests in the region.

As this chapter will show, the Jesuits were on familiar ground, as they drew on their long tradition of educating children. Jesuit education in Chad not only served as a form of evangelism, but it was also a tool for Frenchification or ultra-Gallicanism – that is, the overseas transplantation of France's Catholicism. In its focus on the popular masses and resistance of the elite, this strategy set the Jesuits in Chad apart from traditional interpretations of the role of Christian missions in raising African nationalism. The same anti-elitism, however, might have further delayed the clerical Africanisation of the Church in Chad. Despite some converts among the young Muslims showing clear evangelising skills, there is no evidence of these being interested in becoming priests.

Unlike their contemporaneous missions in the Middle East, where the Jesuits tried to use colonial ties to create a pluralistic society, the primary goal of the Jesuit mission in Chad, in this initial stage, was to contain Islam. They saw Islam as a threat to France's geopolitical interests and stability in the region. In that sense, their mission aligned with France's diplomatic attempt to isolate Chad's Islam from the broader Umma and Pan-Arabism.