Why the murder of British MP Sir David Amess will have political resonance throughout Africa

The word “harbi” is an Arabic word meaning “military”.

Ali Harbi Ali, a young British Muslim man from an elite Somali political family, was charged in London last week with having carried out a murder on 15 October. He is charged with having made a journey of 241km from his home in London in order to stab to death a devout Christian white British MP, Sir David Amess, while the MP was listening to the needs of his constituents in a Christian church. Harbi Ali sat waiting patiently for the police to arrest him.

In so far as a largely Somali-based Muslim jihad has extended south into Kenya and now further down to Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique, this murder of an elderly MP in an English coastal resort is also an African issue. Have no doubt, the Harbi Ali case will have a jihad-type political resonance throughout east, central, west and southern Africa. For South Africa, it is an issue for its next-door neighbour.

Given his Somali heritage, it is not possible to separate the trial of Harbi Ali from the history of East Africa, just as this history cannot be separated from Islam. The reality is that the slave hunt by Arab Muslims for black Africans began in Mozambique only 300 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and at least 700 years before the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in the Western Cape.

Mozambique received its name from the East African Arab slave trade, when Mussa bin Bique based himself on the island of Mozambique more than 500 years ago, well before the Christian Portuguese colonised the island and the region, with their own Atlantic slave trade to follow. The Wikipedia entry for Mussa Bin Bique reads as follows:

“Mussa Bin Bique (Arabic: موسى بن بيك‎), other names Musa Al Big or Mossa Al Bique or Mussa Ben Mbiki or Mussa Ibn Malik, was ruler of the Island of Mozambique and wealthy merchant, before the Portuguese overtook the island in 1544.”