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This article analyses how concerns about youth and violence intersect with the politics of managing religious coexistence in the coastal Kenyan town of Malindi. During extensive ethnographic research, I noticed that Muslim, Christian and ‘Traditionalist’ leaders, politicians and NGO officials often fear that the ‘idleness’ of young people leaves them susceptible to various immoralities, including political violence and ‘violent extremism’, that threaten peaceful ethnic and religious coexistence. The article explores how these concerns motivate leaders’ attempts to incorporate youth in development and peace projects, and how youth respond to these interventions. These projects are funded by Western donors, who often see ‘radical’ religiosity, especially among Muslim youth, as a security threat. Yet, leaders in Malindi accommodate donor policies to the (coastal) Kenyan context, and tend to understand immoralities and violence as resulting from a lack of religiosity among youth. The article argues that perceptions of ‘idle youth’ as potentially violent threats to peaceful religious coexistence and morality allow leaders to develop a ‘moral religiosity’ that is shared across religious divides. However, the ways in which youth strategically resist or comply with interventions to pacify them demonstrate that they do not necessarily agree with dominant moral and political constellations.

Cover illustration: The picture shows Sharhani, a border post between Iran and Iraq. This area witnessed one of heaviest confrontations during the war between these countries. Nearly five hundred unclaimed remains of combatants were found in this area. Volunteers try to match the bones, form a body, and package them. The body-sets are kept in the shrine we see in the picture, waiting for an appropriate political moment for propaganda in favor of the Islamic Republic. But the incomplete bodies are kept in the two concrete bunkers which are very spooky because it is just filled with the stack of human bones. The volunteers also collect all rusty military equipment to keep the militarized feeling alive. Photographer: Younes Saramifar.

This research would not have been possible without my research participants, whom I thank for so generously sharing their time, knowledge, struggles, and aspirations with me. I regard it as an exceptional privilege to be introduced to worlds that were previously largely unknown to me. I particularly appreciate those who have taken me along on their endeavours across various civil society settings in Malindi: I have learned so much from their incredible capacity to work with people from diverse institutional, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. I am also deeply grateful to all of those who supported me during this research project, welcoming me into their homes, their maskani, and their families. Although there are many people that I would like to thank by mentioning their names, they remain anonymous in this dissertation.On the level of scholarly support, I am indebted most of all to my supervisors, Birgit Meyer and Lucien van Liere. I cannot thank Birgit enough for seeing potential in me after I visited her office in Utrecht to discuss my plans for a PhD project with her in February 2014. I appreciate all the precious support, coaching, and feedback that she has given me, from the initial stage when this project was no more than a proposal that we eventually submitted to the Dutch Research Council (NWO), until the final edits were made to this thesis in May 2021. I also thank Birgit for reading so many drafts of lectures, chapters, blogs, and articles in between.I am also very appreciative of my second supervisor, Lucien van Liere, who always found a way to make time to discuss my project. I will always cherish our invigorating conversations next to Lucien's immense bookcase in his office in Utrecht, and the many trips we made to Ludwig for coffee. Lucien and I co-taught the course 'Religion and Conflict' at Utrecht University several times during my project, and I am also grateful to him for giving me a brilliant example of how teaching can be done in an interactive, engaged, and intellectually stimulating manner.In July 2016, at the outset of my project, I received a lot of help and feedback at the 'Muslims and Christians in Africa' summer school that was organized at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. I had valuable conversations with

This chapter analyses how contested understandings of sexuality and sex education for young people are put into practice in the transnational social field of development. It does so by focusing on the Educaids network, a transnational network of Dutch and East African faith-based organisations (FBOs) focused on the prevention of AIDS through education. This case study shows that the contestations over sexuality, and the strategies employed to overcome these contestations, are based on conflicting power claims as well as shared concerns. It is argued that a narrow focus on the colliding liberal and conservative views on sexuality in the field of development fails to contribute to a better understanding of the complex nature of transnational linkages between FBOs, in particular when it concerns sexuality and the prevention of AIDS.