The Mombasa Republican Council: Separatist Extremists or Legitimate Protestors?

by Nate Mathews
As I stepped out into the steamy humid Mombasa dawn, into a waiting taxi at Mombasa International Airport, I wasn't thinking about politics, or religion for that matter. But with a name like Prophet, my driver seemed destined to deliver a particular message. As we drove through the Mombasa morning, the acrid smell of burning trash piercing my nostrils, he shared some definite ideas about Mombasa's political situation. Apropos of nothing, he began speaking about the Mombasa Republican Council, a group of "extremists" who "were trying to destroy Kenya." They had, according to him, repeatedly said "they were not part of Kenya, until President Kibaki had no choice but "to go in there and start busting some heads" to "teach them a lesson." I asked my driver how long this was. "2 months ago, after they were banned."

I was fascinated by this rather pointed condemnation. I had been unaware of the recent rise to prominence and notoriety of the MRC, and I resolved to find out more in my short trip. I started with Paul Goldsmith's ominous sounding  MRC Conflict Assessment Report. The report is an excellent place to begin contextualizing the history of the Kenya Coast and the tangled threads that led to the present situation.
 The MRC issue is also heating up just as the country begans its long breath-holding leading up to the important March 2013 elections.

Colonialism and the Sultanate of Zanzibar
Back up a little for a brief review of history. The coast of Kenya has always had a different sense of historical identity than the rest of Kenya, and was treated as such by the British. Since the 1800s parts of it had been ruled by various Omani families. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Busaidi royal family under Said bin Sultan brought it under the control of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. In 1888, the 10 mile strip of coast was leased to the Imperial British East Africa Company. In 1895, in an agreement between the Sultan and the British Crown, the coast becoming a Protectorate as the Sultanate of Zanzibar was, while the rest of Kenya became a colony. In the early 1900s, British interests shifted inland, and they shifted their colonial capital to Nairobi. Thus from the beginning of the British colonial project, seperate administrative regimes characterized coast and interior.

Kenyan Independence and Mwambao
 As Kenyan independence approached, the status of the coast again became an issue. For various reasons, the Coast lagged behind other areas of Kenya in development and education. At least part of the reason was due to the reluctance of Muslims to send their children to colonial or missionary schools.  So while a generation of upcountry people took advantage of educational opportunities under the colonial system, coastal people were bypassed. Upcountry people moved down to the coast to take advantage of job opportunities, changing the demographics of the coastal towns. Coastal residents worried about the disposition of their lands. Swahili and Arab townsmen, fearing loss of representation and privilege, formed political parties to advocate for the rights of coastal people. The various parties can be grouped under a general "movement" called Mwambao, which called for autonomy and sovereignty for the Coast, or for its unification with Zanzibar. But Mombasa's economic importance to the rest of Kenya made this political outcome highly unlikely. In late 1961, the Robertson Commission recommended that the Coast be joined to mainland Kenya before independence. In response, On December 17, 1961,  Mijikenda leader Ronald Ngala lowered the red flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar at Malindi, a Kenyan coastal town. 

Coastal communities themselves were deeply divided, and unable to unite behind a single platform or identity. KANU and KADU, the two largest political parties in Kenya leading up to independence, were both united in their opposition to mwambao.The 1963 Memorandum of Understanding between the Sultan of Zanzibar and Jomo Kenyatta that formally transferred sovereignty over the coast to 
independent Kenya retained the outlines of the 1895 agreement:

1) Insure complete freedom of religion, especially  for Muslim subjects, and 
preservation of their religious buildings and institutions;  

2) the Chief Kadhi will have jurisdiction over questions of Muslim law relating to 
personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance);  

3) administrative officers in Muslim areas should be, “so far as is reasonably 
practicable:”   

4) Muslim children should be instructed in Arabic,  “so far as is reasonably 
practicable;”  

5)  “The freehold titles to land in the coast region that are already registered will 
at all times be recognized, steps will be taken to ensure the continuation of 
the procedure for the registration of new freehold  titles and rights of 
freeholders will at all times be preserved save in  so far as it may be 
necessary to acquire freehold land for public purposes, in which event full and 
prompt compensation will be paid.”

Nationalism and the Entrenchment of Colonial Borders
In the 1960s, Kenya also faced demands from Somalia to cede part of its territory in the northeast. Unlike most post-colonial African states, which were and are divided by ethnicity and language, Somalia faced a situation of internal ethnic and linguistic unity, with a good number of Somalis actually living beyond the colonial borders.

But Kenya violently quelled the secessionists, indicating that it would be willing to use force to maintain the territorial integrity of Kenya. The idea of the territorial integrity of colonial boundaries was something that emerged from the more conservative political vision of OAU members, who sought guarantees that what they viewed as "radical" Pan-African activism of states like Ghana would not affect their own bases of power. 

The Land Issue
It is well known that the Kenyan president throughout the state's recent history possessed final say over the disposition of land on the coast. President Kenyatta in particular used coastal land to reward independence fighters and other supporters, at the expense of locals. Thousands of acres of land were  declared state property and made a patrimony of the former president, a tool of political patronage. This is well known even by upcountry people residing on the Coast.

Tourism and the Marginalization of the Swahili
Despite the Coast being one of Kenya's top tourist destinations, and a base for the ever popular safaris to the major game parks, the local people have not enjoyed the economic benefits of tourism. Tourism dollars have not translated into substantial advances in education and development, and in fact have only eroded coastal people's control over the land. Far more upcountry people work in the tourist industry on the coast--as guides, drivers, cooks, builders, and souvenir sellers--than do coastal people.

The Mombasa Republican Council

The MRC has been around in one form or another since the late 1990s. The MRC's cry of "Pwani sio Kenya" is indicative of this tangled history and intense grievances. But it is also a strategy to get themselves heard, albeit a non-starting strategy in the eyes of most Kenyans.  The MRC claims to possess documents separate 50-year lease agreement signed by Kenyan Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta and his Zanzibar counterpart Mohamed Shante in which the Kenyan coastal strip is integrated into Kenya. The MRC claims that this lease expires next year, when the coastal strip should ‘regain’ its independence.The group has been banned and unbanned various times over the past few years, its leaders have been beaten by police, imprisoned and arrested, and generally treated as an extremely dangerous threat by other Kenyan leaders. MRC supporters, unlike most Kenyans, have greeted the new 2012 Constitution with cynicism, arguing that it doesn't reflect their interests. There is a deep-seated well of frusturation on the Coast that secessionist sentiments play into. Not all coastal people support secession, but any coastal person with some familiarity with the situation is aware of the pressing need for change that will empower coastal residents.

Islamism in East Africa
Does the MRC have links to militas like al-Shabaab or more militant transnational groups like al-Qaeda? The evidence for such links is extremely tenuous, although upcountry Kenyans often link the seperatists with al-Shabaab, mostly because (I think) their idea of the threat of Islamic militancy is primarily represented through the symbol of that specter in modern day Kenya (also connected with Kenya's brief incursion into Somalia during Operation Linda Nchi).

MRC is frequently linked to Uamsho, another separatist oriented group in Zanzibar, although it seems Uamsho has a much clearer social agenda related to the "Islamization" of Zanzibar island, than does the MRC, which is far from being a Muslim-only group. As the many media commentators have observed, the common thread linking these movements are social problems like unemployment, poverty and economic and social marginalization. Despite the tremendous wealth entering Coast Province through tourism and trade, coastal residents have benefited little from development projects mainly designed to serve foreign tourists. I saw concrete evidence of this driving through the countryside south of Malindi, where mile after mile of coastal resorts with Italian names were in various stages of construction, while people live in abject poverty sometimes only a few hundred yards away.

What provokes most anxiety in ordinary  upcountry Kenyans who live on the coast, many of whom are struggling to make a living just as much as the Swahili and other indigenous coastal groups, is xenophobic, anti-Christian, anti-mainlander/upcountry undercurrent to the MRC protests. It fuels irrational fears by these Christian coastal residents of Muslim dominance or foreign, Arab control of Kenya. 

The sad reality is that the Kenyan economy is already controlled by foreigners. Its economy is dependent on foreign aid and tourism, a fact which I believe will play some significant role in the upcoming election. Kenya's dependence on the West means that the election of Kenyatta and Ruto would throw its economy and political situation into further disarray, given their situation at the ICC. But that is another story. 

Analysts urge Kenyan leaders to address the grievances (if not the demand for secession) of MRC while remaining alert that it does not develop into an armed rebel group. In the 2007-08 election violence, elites often armed youth brigades to commit destabilizing acts of violence. Youth sympathetic to the MRC could very well be drawn into post-election violence. 

In my opinion 1) the coast will not cease to be a part of Kenya because Kenyan elites will not allow it 2) MRC can succeed in demands for autonomy and development if they moderate their secessionist stance while retaining the unity of their base 3)In addition to development projects and education for coastal residents, some sort of cultural program of understanding should be put into place to develop deeper ties of mutual understanding between coastal and upcountry communities.

What do you think?

For more on mwambao, see James Brennan, "Lowering the Sultan's Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya." Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008: 50(4), 831-861.

For more on Muslims and their relationship to nationalism and politics in Kenya, see Hassan Ndovu. "Muslim Relations in the Politics of Nationalism and Secession in Kenya." PAS Working Paper 18. http://www.northwestern.edu/african-studies/docs/working-papers/Hassan-Muslims%20and%20Secessionism%20in%20Kenya-FINAL.pdf

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The 'Other' India (Book Review of White Tiger)

In the West, India is a marketable brand. Witness the recent ad campaign for "Incredible India" featuring various brightly colored pictures of India with the descriptive color emblazoned across it in white type. The Taj Mahal is "Pure White". Bags of spices are "Technicolour." A shot of red clad worshippers is "Mystic Maroon." The award winning ads are only the most recent in a series of ads designed to market India as a tourist destination. Earlier ads showed Westerners who had settled in India as yoga instructors or meditation masters. Like the visual authenticity of the "Mystic Maroon" ads, these earlier ads portrayed India as the original land of spiritual enlightenment, a Mecca for those "conscious" tourists who wanted to invest in India's "spiritual capital."

All in all the ads reflect an old Western preoccupation (detailed in the excellent book Imperial Encounters by Peter Van der Veer) with India as an idealized Orientalist paradise of true and original religion.

Aravind Adiga's debut novel, The White Tiger, angrily explodes that fairytale image with a gritty and darkly humorous look at the "other side" of idyllic India--a world of gated communities, caste discrimination, rampant inequality and worm-eaten civic institutions. In interviews, Adiga stated that one of the inspirations for his book was Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, as well as the work of James Baldwin and Richard Wright, and the influence is marked. The White Tiger is an arresting mashup of Crime and Punishment and Native Son, a gritty true crime story told from the perspective of a brilliant and determined murderer.

When we meet him, Balram Halwai is writing a letter to the Chinese Premier Wen Jibao from his office in Bangalore, and the novel unfolds as a series of letters to Jibao in which Halwai relates his improbable rise to prosperity in the Indian middle class.

Born a servant to a family of sweetsmakers ("halwa" means sweetness in Arabic, and I'm assuming it has the same meaning in Hindi), Halwai nevertheless grows up in poverty in the northern Indian village of Laxmangarh, with his father pulling rickshaws to make ends meet. As Halwai introduces his life, we are given vivid snapshots of the events that define him as a character--his early intelligence, his female relatives, the horrific act that defines the heart of the novel, even his fear of lizards. As a literary voice, Halwai's character is unmatched by almost any character I've read in modern literature. The unnamed narrator of Invisible Man of course comes to mind, as does the protagonist of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Telltale Heart."

I cannot do justice to the book in this review. Suffice to say that, in my humble and rather uninformed opinion, Adiga has really gone deep into the Indian postcolony--probing its faultlines, showing the complex relationship between caste and class, and even illuminating the ties between the rural and urban areas of India. I thought his description of the relationship between master and servant accurately captured its tension and its alternation between paternalism, cruelty, servility and small acts of resistance, that I have personally witnessed in my travels.

I have two questions for our readers. One, have you read the book? If so what did you think? Two, what kind of reception has this novel received in India?

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Saba Mahmood interviews Talal Asad (excerpts)

full interview here.
Asad discusses modernity, religion, what agency is, Islamic reform, the difference between dependency theory and postcolonialism, and much much more. This is one of the best 'summations' of the various nature of Asad's intellectual pursuits and it maps out a great 'space' for scholars to follow up on his work in local contexts. Although its from 1996, over ten years ago, it is still a great read.

Talal Asad
modern power and the reconfiguration of religious traditions
Saba Mahmood

Contemporary politico-religious movements, such as Islamism, are often understood by social scientists as expressions of tradition hampering the progress of modernity. But given the recent intellectual challenges posed against dualistic and static conceptions of modernity/tradition, and calls for parochializing Western European experiences of modernity, do you think the religio-political movements (such as Islamism) force us to rethink our conceptions of modernity? If so, how?

Well, I think they should force us to rethink many things. There has been a certain amount of response from people in Western universities who are interested in analyzing these movements. But many of them still make assumptions that prevent them from questioning aspects of Western modernity. For example, they call these movements "reactionary" or "invented," making the assumption that Western modernity is not only the standard by which all contemporary developments must be judged, but also the only authentic trajectory for every tradition. One of the things the existence of such movements ought to bring into question is the old opposition between modernity and tradition, which is still fashionable. For example, many writers describe the movements in Iran and Egypt as only partly modern and suggest that its their mixing of tradition and modernity that accounts for their "pathological" character. This kind of description paints Islamic movements as being somehow inauthentically traditional on the assumption that "real tradition" is unchanging, repetitive, and non-rational. In this way, these movements cannot be understood on their own terms as being at once modern and traditional, both authentic and creative at the same time. The development of politico-religious movements ought to force people to rethink the uniquely Western model of secular modernity. One may want to challenge aspects of these movements, but this ought to be done on specific grounds. It won't do to measure everything by grand conceptions of authentic modernity. But that's precisely the kind of a priori thinking that many people indulge in when analyzing contemporary religious movements.

It has often been argued that the tradition of liberalism is based upon principles of pluralism and tolerance in ways that Islamic tradition is not, and that the concept of plurality remains foreign to Islam. How would you respond to that?

Well, I would say that it is certainly not a modern, liberal invention. The plurality of individual interests is what the liberal tradition has theorized best of all. On the other hand, the attempt to get some kind of representation for ethnic groups and minorities in Western countries has been difficult for liberalism to theorize. Liberalism has theories of tolerance by which spaces can be created for individuals to do what they wish, so long as they don't obstruct the ability of others to do likewise. But these aren't theories of pluralism in the sense we are beginning to understand the term today. Liberalism has theories of multiple "interests," interests which can be equalized, aggregated, and calculated through the electoral process and then negotiated in the process of formulating and applying governmental policies. But that is a very different kind of pluralism from the different ways of life which are (a) the preconditions and not the objects of individual interests, and which are, (b) in the final analysis, incommensurable.

Now the Islamic tradition, like many other non-liberal traditions, is based on the notion of plural social groupings and plural religious traditions--especially (but not only) of the Abrahamic traditions [ahl al-kitab]. And, of course, it has always accommodated a plurality of scriptural interpretations. There is a well- known dictum in the shari`a: ikhtilaf al-umma rahma [difference within the Islamic tradition is a blessing]. This is where the notions of ijtihad and ijm`a come in. As modes of developing and sustaining the Islamic tradition, they authorize the construction of coherent differences, not the imposition of homogeneity.

Of course there are always limits to difference if coherence is to be aimed at. If tolerance is not merely another name for indifference, there comes a point in every tradition beyond which difference cannot be tolerated. That simply means that there are differences which can't be accommodated within the tradition without threatening its very coherence. But there are, of course, many moments and conditions of such intolerance. One must not, therefore, equate intolerance with violence and cruelty.

On the whole, Muslim societies in the past have been much more accommodating of pluralism in the sense I have tried to outline than have European societies. It does not follow that they are therefore necessarily better. And I certainly don't wish to imply that Muslim rulers and populations were never prejudiced, that they never persecuted non-Muslims in their midst. My point is only that "the concept of plurality," as you put it, is not foreign to Islam.

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Sudan's Colonized Judiciary (Book Review)

by Alex de Waal from Making Sense of Darfur


It’s an unfortunate reality that books on Sudan by Sudanese authors—even those who have a wonderful English writing style, and who deal with their subject matter in a way that combines insight with accessibility—rarely get the attention they deserve.

We should take a close look at Abdullahi Ibrahim’s recently-published history of the Sudanese judiciary: Manichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in the Sudan, 1898-1985. Abdullahi writes as an insider to Sudan’s Islamist intellectual and political tradition, and illuminates why not only the law, but the judiciary as well, was an arena of such significant political contest in colonial and post-colonial Sudan. He places contemporary Sudan within the wider post-colonial experience, using Frantz Fanon’s paradigms of the opposition between the European/canonical and the native/deviant, using the divided judiciary as his case.

British rule in Sudan, as elsewhere, was marked by a talent for divide and rule. This has been much-remarked in the context of the ‘native administration’ system, developed in the 1920s in order to marginalize the educated ‘detribalized’ elites whom, the British feared, would challenge their rule. The rural aristocracy was empowered—within very strictly defined limits—and became tarnished as ‘collaborators’ within the dominant nationalist political discourse. Sharia judges were also allocated their tightly-defined status within the system: low.

Abdullahi documents how the colonial subjects’ experience of British rule was hierarchically ordered, from matters of dress to education to urban geography. He poses a set of dualities. The colonizers and their carefully-chosen effendi clients wore suits and polished shoes (jazma), while the rest wore jellabiyas and markubs—and could be punished for violating the dress code. Khartoum was the modern city, laid out in a grid (with diagonals, said to resemble the Union Jack), while Omdurman the ‘native’ town retained its disorderly street plan. (To this day the executive is in Khartoum and the legislature on the other side of the river.) The administration used the Gregorian calendar and collected regular taxes and dues; the traditional system used the Islamic calendar and collected the Islamic Zakat. Students destined for prestigious posts attended the secular Gordon Memorial College close to the Governor-General’s Palace in Khartoum, those relegated to local affairs went to the Mahad al Ilmi (Islamic College) in Omdurman.

Abdullahi’s account is made particularly vivid by his gift for anecdote and personal observation. He recounts a story told by an old folklorist whose life story he compiled, describing how the schoolboys of Khartoum turned out for a parade in honor of a British colonial official. After long waiting in the sun, the officer arrived on his horse, inspected the schoolboys from the government schools but wheeled away at the very point where he came to the ranks of the boys from the khalwas (Quranic schools), who went away aggrieved, ‘staring into the void drilled by the refusal of that British official, the symbol of power and legitimacy, even to take notice of our presence.’

Abdullahi’s chief concern is how this duality translated into the legal sphere, relegating Islamic Law and its courts to second class status and a domestic sphere. Instead of being a nationally unifying factor, Sharia became a divisive issue. The qadis (judges) of the Sharia Division were junior to the ‘authoritative’ Civil Division. Qadis were required to wear a version of traditional garb including a turban (a dress code that some later adopted as a defiant gesture against western mores), were not entitled to receive salutes from policemen, and were widely ridiculed as ‘women’s judges.’ This refers to how the Sharia courts were visibly ‘women’s courts’, crowded with abandoned wives and their children and dispossessed widows hoping for the near-impossible to occur. Abdullahi notes that women preferred the Sharia courts to the tribal courts because Islamic law gives them more rights.

Imperial Sudan possessed neither a unified legal code nor a single judicial system. Among the majority, the sense of moral injury generated by the distinct second-class status of their own customary legal system, generated a rage for justice, unmet in the formal courts. Post-colonial Sudan was little different: the ruling secularized elites despised the Sharia courts, insensitive to their political plight and history. From the first days of independence, the search for a unified judiciary became a central theme of Sudanese politics. Abdullahi describes how this struggle translated into a ‘rage for masculinity’ and a preoccupation with sexual morality (including especially prostitution and homosexuality) in public discourse. It is not insignificant that Hassan al Turabi is the son of a qadi. Abdullahi breaks new ground in situating Turabi’s political philosophy in his family background.

In two provocative chapters, Abdullahi provides an Islamist perspective on the politics of Nimeiri’s Islamism. He is critical of the Republican Brothers’ leader Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, for repudiating the Islamic courts—rubbing in their faces the fact of their colonial origin and their inability to implement their ruling, made in 1968, that he was an apostate. Abdullahi describes the popular support for Sharia as stemming more from people’s hostility to the (secular) courts with their slow and expensive procedures, than enthusiasm for Islam. Nimeiri’s September Laws held out the promise of a unified judiciary, but disappointed. Abdullahi concludes by noting that Sudanese political society remains in a Manichean trap, and implies that a certain madness, a ‘logic of daring,’ will be needed to escape from it.

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Paris: Secularism Unveiled

I was in a false position everywhere, except within myself, where I was convinced I was telling the truth.
--A House At The Edge of Tears, Venus Khoury Ghata.

I was pretty excited to head to Paris after my Oman trip. I was invited by my friend Dinah, who was TA-ing a class on Immigration and Multiculturalism in Paris for the University of Illinois. The course was taught by a retired professor of French, Evelyne Accad, a Lebanese woman who has written about international women's issues.

The class did not disappoint. From discussing polygamy and the French state to civil war in Lebanon to the issue of female genital mutiliation, I learned a lot and was able to make some interesting observations about French culture and society at the same time.

Disclaimer: I do not speak French. Therefore everything I learned (with the exception of the bits of French I picked up) was through English translation or talks in English. That said, I don't think it made a difference in some of the observations I am about to make.

Its wierd because I had the impression that the French were more progressive than Americans on the whole, but I have to say this is both a stereotype in which Americans associate everything French with being 'cultured' and a factor that depends on the particular French community one is referring to. For instance, it is true that students tend to be more activist, more politically aware, more cosmopolitian (Most students learn at least three languages) than their American counterparts. Having visited several French schools I feel I am on safe ground saying that.

However France illustrates some of the strange contradictions of secular society-- its particular blind spots that are often intimately linked to a strong sense of national and even racial identity (the so-called Gaullic exceptionalism). Nowhere is this contradiction more aptly symbolized than the banning of headscarves in the classroom of public schools. (ironically Turkey, a majority Muslim country, is facing its own version of this secular quandary). Here is where the rubber of religion's removal from the 'public sphere' meets the road of individual freedom. French efforts to promote the growth of the French state and to reify 'Frenchness' is not a project that can tolerate a multiplicity of identities, and is thus at odds with French notions of 'pluralism'. And that explains why not only are headscarves banned, but the call to prayer (اذان) as well.

Obama notwithstanding (I have a feeling a lot of my sentences are going to begin with that from here on out), America has never really resolved this conflict in practice either. For example, witness the powerful pull of the ignorant and racist 'English-only' educational movement. I guess my philosophy would be that, social movements that emphasize a particular aspect of identity are inevitable, especially enlight of forming social movements against powerfully entrenched interests of global corporations, powerful nation-states, and the like. Nevertheless, the insistence on one's single identity inevitably falsifys the richness of everyone's historical reality.

My own observation is that France has a stronger tradition of anthropologizing the 'other', in the sense of making outside cultures a subject of study for consumption by exotic-o-philes. Walking through an exhibit on matriarchy in Africa I had this feeling, and it was accentuated gazing at the innumerable artifacts stolen from the tombs of Pharaonic Egypt in the Louvre. It was a feeling similar to the one I had walking through the Indian Museum in Washington DC a couple years ago: like an eerie sense of displacement and invasion. I felt as if I walking through someone's most intimate personal belongings that had been put out at a common garage sale.

One highlight of the trip (other than my birthday :)) was reading a trio of great books by Lebanese Christian women and getting to meet two of the authors. We read Evelyne Accad's The Excised, Etel Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose, and Venus Khoury-Ghata's A House At The Edge of Tears. All three are very lyrical meditations on religion and growing up, war, beauty, violence, and sexuality. From Khoury-Ghata's book, I learned that apparently some Arabs of the Levant, Swahili is a derisive term for nonsense or baby talk. For me Dr. Accad's book was the most personally evocative, while Sitt Marie Rose is the most innovative in terms of narrative structure and voice. I will end with a meditation from that book, a tribute and affirmation of life in the midst of war-torn Beirut:

"Morality is violence. An invisible violence at first. Love is a supreme violence, hidden deep in the darkness of our atoms. When a stream flows into a river, it's love and its violence. When a cloud loses itself in the sky, it's a marriage. When the roots of a tree split open a rock it's the movement of life. When the sea rises and falls back only to rise again, it's the process of history. When a man and a woman find each other in the silence of the night, it's the beginning of the end of the tribe's power, and death itself becomes a challenge to the ascendancy of the group."

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