This chapter discusses the nature and character of the Islamic reform movement in Uganda under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime. It contends that the violent attitude of the Islamic reform movement bred a language of radical expressions of Islam internal to the general Muslim public. It considers that the intra-Muslim debate within the Tabligh/Salafiyya movement informed multiple social-political imaginations when various splits in elite Muslim leaderships perceived and sought to cultivate a role of reformist Islam within the Uganda state. As one side argued that Muslim youth were an important fulcrum in reforming the state to found a dawla Islamiya (Islamic state) another argued that Muslims were safe within the majorly non-Muslim state. The paralysis within this debate bred a wave of intra-Muslim violence that culminated in conflict around masjids as sites of Muslim power. These instances of Muslim violence and the consequent Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebellion invited intervention from the state to counter the Tabligh threat using its military and political machinery.

The chapter demonstrates that Islamic reform was a product of three important moments that reinforced each other. First, the role of Idi Amin in attempting to construct a single unified Islamic centre under state patronage had met with momentary success when Amin’s patronage welded Muslims under a single force, which convinced many Muslims of the opportunities of Muslim unity. The nascent reformist debate therefore spoke to ways of transcending historical marginalization by consolidating the gains of Muslim unity. As reformers took a nostalgic view of the Salaf, they imagined a new role for Islam within a majorly non-Muslim society. How to overcome this Muslim minority status came to dominate the reformist debate.

Second, returning Muslim students of Islamic studies that had gone abroad to Libya (Tripoli), Saudi Arabia (Jeddah, Madina), Pakistan (Lahore), Sudan (Khartoum) and Misr (Al-Azhar), became agents of local reform in connection with the various structures and spheres where they studied. (Returning students took after their Alma Mater, e.g. those from Madina designated themselves Ba nna Madina.) Many of these returning students became Islamic preachers in urban masjids or took up teaching positions in Islamic schools.