William andrew kopwe the open university of tanzania

3.3 Research Approach

The study of Sharī’a implementation in Tanzania mainland is an anthropological study, which involves the study of the empirical lives of people. For such an undertaking, the qualitative approach provides enough knowledge for the study. The approach was adopted because it collects information which shows how people live and function in the community. It gives information about the views, feelings, values, norms, achievements and problems of a community as a group. Also, it helps to understand relations between members of the given group. It indicates how people understand their own situation, aspirations, problems and what their priorities are (Kabiru and Njenga, 2009). Since in anthropological study researchers are more interested in meanings and not numbers, the qualitative approach is most suitable because it refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things. The meanings that are given to things or phenomena come from their qualities and not quantities (Berg and Lune, 2012).
Qualitative research methodology is suitable for this research because as stated in Chapter Two of the Literature Review, Sharī’a is multifaceted phenomenon. Qualitative research methodology focuses on the phenomena that occur in natural setting. It also involves studying those phenomena in all their complexity. Qualitative researchers recognize that the issue they are studying has many dimensions and layers, and so they try to portray the issue in its multifaceted form (Leedy and Ormrod, 2005). Hence this approach helped the researcher to study Sharī’a and its complexity in the context of Tanzania mainland in its multifaceted form. The researcher did not take for granted what he observed, but rather took seriously everything that was happening in the research process.
Lastly, the qualitative research approach was used in this study because its method of data analysis is done inductively building conclusions from particular to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data. And in the end the final written report has flexible structure (Creswell, 2009). Therefore, by using this approach the researcher was able to generalize the findings from selected areas of study to the entire Tanzania mainland context because religious consents are more or less similar to all people of the same religious following especially when the meanings and symbols are taken from the grand sources of a particular religion or same religious authority.
Qualitative approach enabled the researcher to get an in-depth understanding of Sharī’a implementation in the religious-cultural, political and social-economic context of Tanzania mainland. It helped him to collect information based on people’s views, cultural values, norms, practices and aspirations. The researcher managed to obtain people’s perceptions and opinions on the issue of Sharī’a implementation in the Country.

However, from the beginning of the research undertaking the researcher was aware that the qualitative research approach has its disadvantages. It is very difficult to prevent or detect the researchers induced bias. The scope of qualitative research is limited because of the in-depth and comprehensive data collection which is time and money consuming. Data analysis process takes a long time which implies that reporting of the research takes a longer time. The analysis has very few guidelines for protection against self-dilution and can present unreliable or invalid conclusions. Finally, a researcher can be derailed and collect a lot of unnecessary data.

Given these weaknesses of qualitative research, the researcher took several cautious measures to make sure his observations were influenced as Little as possible by any perceptions, impressions and biases he may have had. Those measures included: perform several tests of the coded research themes using various data collection methods, limitation of scope of the study to few selected areas, careful sampling of the respondents and present some direct quotations from the interviewees. Therefore, this makes the research findings of this study reliable.

3.4 Area of Study

The present study falls under the field of religious study with special emphasis on social-anthropology of Islam, particularly Sharī’a. At the beginning of this study the researcher was aware that Sharī’a is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. But the study is limited to its religious, social and anthropological aspects in respect to its implementation in the Country. Geographically, the research was limited to the Tanzania Mainland only because the Mainland’s context is different from the Zanzibar context since in the Mainland the numbers of Muslims and Christians are almost equal while in Zanzibar Muslim are the majority. Hence Islamic precepts in Zanzibar are more prevalent than in the Mainland. In Tanzania Mainland however, the research was done in selected areas. The areas are selected in a way that they can fairly represent other places. The research was limited to Arusha, Tanga, Dar-es-salaam, some parts of Bagamoyo and some references are made to Morogoro and Dodoma. Arusha was selected because it is traditionally a Christian majority area. Tanga and Bagamoyo were selected because they are empirically hometowns of Islam in the Country. Meanwhile Dar-es-salaam was selected because it is a city where there is a mixture of Muslims and Christians. The other parts, Morogoro and Dodoma are included in this study because some of the religious experts who were interviewed live in these towns.
Like most African countries Tanzania has a threefold religious-cultural heritage: African religion, Islam and Christianity. Though there are three major religions in the Country, the study concentrated on Christians and Muslims only. Though Muslim-Christian encounters can be traced back to the coming of the Portuguese on the coast of Tanganyika in the 15^th Century (Sahlberg, 1987), this research was chronologically limited from the coming of the Germany colonialism in 19th Century to date. It was during this time that Christian influence started to be widely felt in Tanganyika. Also, it was during this time when Muslim-Christian tensions clearly came to the surface, a legacy that is still vivid.