Religion in Mozambique

In addition African Muslim clerics had increasingly sought training in Egypt, Kuwait, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia, returning with a more fundamental approach than the local traditional, Sufi-inspired Swahili Islam particularly common in the north.

[8] Many small, independent Catholic and Protestant churches that have split from mainstream denominations fuse African traditional beliefs and practices within a Christian framework.

After independence, it declared state atheism and nationalized all schools and health facilities, including those owned and run by religious institutions.

[19][20] In response to these and other social and religious changes, Catholic bishops condemned the death penalty and re-education camps as godless.

[19] Several Protestant groups in Mozambique had strong allegiance to the FRELIMO government, potentially because many in the FRELIMO leadership (including the late national hero Eduardo Mondlane) had been trained in Protestant schools and the World Council of Churches had supported the Mozambique institute in Dar es Salaam during the war of liberation.

Frelimo ministers thought, for example, that raising pigs was a good idea to combat rural underdevelopment and genuinely failed to understand that Muslims resistance in the north of the country came from religious objection.

Some campaigning was done nationally and internationally by the rebel movement on the subject of religion already in 1978, but with little long-lasting impact - only some radical American and English Pentecostal groups openly sided with Renamo.

The anti-religious campaign of FRELIMO formally ended in 1982 when the party in power held a meeting with all the main religious institutions.