The rhetoric and expectations that characterized Tanzania's transition to independence related to many of the issues also involved in the acceptance of Islam: social allegiance, entitlement, and the negotiation of social obligations and ambitions. There are no traces of the Islamic anti-independence party in either the oral or written record of the Southeast. People in East Africa learned to use the rhetoric of progress just as they had learned the jargon of Indirect Rule. A discussion on the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), Muslim notables, and the development of a new progressive style is provided. A closer look at the Muslim networks that supported TANU and their methods helps us to understand the way local people construed their relationship with it. The religious debates and experiments around the time of independence are described. The chapter also reports the reformulation of authoritarianism and the beginnings of disconnection, and the growing isolation of Muslim notables. The endorsement of ‘localist’ styles by national politicians was less an acknowledgement of the value of Tanzania's political heritage than of the importance, and potential difficulty, of keeping the citizens in line.