RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Let's talk now about a culture clash just off the African coast. It involves Alcoholics Anonymous, created 80 years ago as a spiritual path to sobriety. Though never overtly Christian, it does employ Christian constructs of confession, redemption and submission to a higher power. And for some traditional Muslims, 12-step can still feel like a threat. NPR's Gregory Warner reports from the mostly Muslim island of Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Waves crash on the port of Zanzibar that once welcomed cardamom and cumin seeds from Asia on the ancient spice road. It is now a key stop on the global heroin trade, shipped here from Pakistan and Afghanistan before being smuggled on to Europe. Addiction rates on the island are some of the highest in the world. Suleiman Mauly used to come to this port as a teenager to buy heroin. Now 34 and very clean, he doesn't even drink soda. Mauly is back doing outreach for his heroin recovery houses. Mauly brought the 12-step program to this island six years ago with the help of a treatment center in Detroit.
SULEIMAN MAULY: It's a spiritual program, not religious program.
WARNER: Twelve-step is not overtly Christian. He says Jesus Christ never comes up. But the recovery process rests on concepts of admitting your sin and seeking redemption, of making amends to friends and family that you harmed as an addict.
MAULY: And before you make amends, you have to search yourself, your feelings of guilt, resentment. It's kind of like a Christian - some Christian spiritual process.
WARNER: And that can be a sensitive topic on an island that is mostly Muslim, an island with a frictional relationship with the mostly Christian mainland.
ADBULRAHMAN ABDULLAH: Well, I had a lot of challenges with that with my mom, you know. I said...
WARNER: Adbulrahman Abdullah manages one of the recovery houses. In the house with other addicts, they talk a lot about submitting to HP - Higher Power - it's a big part of the 12-step program. But when he goes home, his mom says don't talk about HP here.
ABDULLAH: Come here talk about Allah, don't give a [bleep] about your HP, you know? (Laughter) And if you don't watch your mouth, they're going to convert you to Christian, you're going to be in Christianity soon.
WARNER: She believes the 12-step could be a gateway to conversion to Christianity. A lot of islanders used to think that. But now 3,000 addicts have gone through the program, and success has won local support, to a point. Suleiman Mauly says families are still often unwilling to pay for the recovery program for their daughters - only for their sons.
MAULY: Because they give up hope with women.
WARNER: Wait, you said they give up hope?
MAULY: They give up hope with the women because when women - they use, they go into things that family feels more ashamed.
WARNER: While men might use crime to support their habit, women often turn to prostitution. And for traditional Muslims in Zanzibar, he says, that is an act from which there can be no redemption. There can be no amount - no amount - of making amends.
But Suleiman Mauly is nothing if not persistent. And with no financial support except for some funds he was able to divert from the men's clinic, the newest recovery house for women opened just last month. It's called Malaika House, where each morning begins with a chirp of songbirds and the Serenity Prayer, said in Swahili.
UNIDENTIFIED MALAIKA HOUSE MEMBERS: (Speaking Swahili).
WARNER: The room is bare - just a TV set and a whiteboard. I find, curled up in a plastic chair, 22-year-old Mosi Tamim Khalfan. She's been clean just 16 days. Her old life on the streets is still fresh.
MOSI TAMIM KHALFAN: (Through interpreter) Yes, it's very easy to get money in the sex industry. When I was arrested, I had so many condoms, they asked me whether I was opening a pharmacy to sell condoms.
WARNER: But now she says this bare-bones recovery house is really her soul sanctuary. She can't go home where her brothers all use. She can't go back to the streets where men on this tiny island all know her as a sex worker.
KHALFAN: (Through interpreter) When I get out of here, I don't want a man, and I don't want a man for the next at least two or three years. I also don't want to get a job because I believe if I get job and I have good money to spend, I will start buying drugs again.
WARNER: But if she can manage to be clean for just a year or two, then she imagines she can reenter life on the island, maybe find a job, and helping her in that process is 34-year-old Zuhura Khamisi. She's the house mentor, and she's been clean almost two years.
ZUHURA KHAMISI: (Through interpreter) The people who knew me when I was doing drugs and then they see me now, then they know that it is possible to get out of this.
WARNER: Even male addicts in Zanzibar tell me that there is a culture of looking down on women addicts. And Suleiman Mauly says he's not just trying to start a recovery house for women, he's trying to change that culture, to encourage this core 12-step concept that you can start life again, that you can be redeemed whatever your past. He points out that Zanzibaris were suspicious of the idea for men until there were too many local successes to ignore.
MAULY: So you need to walk the same model, you need to replicate it in women, and we just started.
WARNER: Unfortunately just two days after this interview was recorded, Mosi Tamim Khalfan, the 22-year-old, disappeared. She left the house. Suleiman Mauly says she likely relapsed, but he's waiting for her return.
MAULY: And we know that she might try again to quit. And she's welcome to join the program again.
WARNER: He believes deeply in second, third, fourth chances. Look at me, he says, you never know when someone will be saved. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.