Muslim Politics in Postcolonial Kenya: Negotiating Knowledge on the Double‐Periphery

Kresse, Kai

doi:10.1002/9781444324402.ch5

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…5 The attraction it offered to Rajah and Jafar was its radical break with the Makhuwa notions of relatedness described earlier. Instead of defining the person in terms of interdependence 5 As in other African countries (Brenner 1993;Kresse 2009;McIntosh 2007;Rosander 1997;Soares 2004), the growth of Islamic reformism in northern Mozambique is funded by international Islamic donors such as the Kuwait-based Africa Muslims Agency (AMA) and the Sudan-based Munazzamat al-Daʿwa al-Islamiyya (MDI), whose scholarships for Islamic studies abroad and financial support for the construction of mosques and madrasas (Islamic schools) facilitate the incorporation of Mozambican Muslims into the Salafi faction of the umma (the global Muslim community). In adopting Salafi interpretations of Islam, Nampula City's Islamic reformists favour scripturalism and criticize alternative understandings of Islam as illicit innovations (bidah).…”

Section: In God's Handsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dangerous neighbours: sorcery, conspicuous exchange and proximity among urban migrants in northern Mozambique

Laheij

2018

Africa

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Urban migrants in Nampula City, northern Mozambique, perceive themselves to be living in an environment where they are particularly vulnerable to sorcery attacks. Key to this sense of vulnerability are Makhuwa notions of matrilineal descent and relatedness, which work to locate sorcery fears in the interstices of two kinds of proximity, namely social and physical. Accordingly, people fear the translocal reach of the ill will of kin residing in the countryside, with whose well-being they remain connected regardless of the physical distance. Simultaneously, there are threats posed by urban neighbours who, due to their proximity in physical terms but separation in social terms, are considered dangerous. This article analyses practices of conspicuous exchange as one of the strategies urban migrants employ in coping with these anxieties. Specifically, it draws on the life histories of two women in one neighbourhood of Nampula City to explore the challenges they experience in meeting demands for material assistance from rural kin and urban neighbours. The analysis shows that their accounts of sorcery are structured by the difficulty of balancing such demands in a setting of poverty and socio-economic inequality. This finding has implications for anthropological theories of sorcery, misfortune and urban migration.

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Section: In God's Handsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dangerous neighbours: sorcery, conspicuous exchange and proximity among urban migrants in northern Mozambique

Laheij

2018

Africa

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“…Movements of Islamic reform, financed by a variety of bodies, challenged a range of religious practices which were denounced as innovations; these issues also provided a way to challenge entrenched social hierarchies. From the 1980s, a sometimes countervailing programme of education was pursued by Shi'ite organizations (Kresse 2009(Kresse , 2007. These debates over practice and 'proper living' were sometimes combined with a wider political sense of a need to create the right conditions for the Muslim community: which might be seen as requiring reform of an international system dominated by the west, or as involving more local political action.…”

Section: Islam and The Politics Of The Coastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preaching politics: Islam and Christianity on the Kenya coast

Deacon¹,

Gona

Mwakimako

et al. 2017

Journal of Contemporary African Studies

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Focussing on the Kenya coast, this article analyses the developing contrast between the place of Islam and Christianity in public politics. It argues that Islam's association with criticism of the political order contrasts with Christianity but that this is not the result of inherent difference between the religions. Both have previously provided a language, and space, for political commentary and activism in Kenya. The contrast is rather the contingent result of particular circumstances in Kenya. Christianity has become increasingly associated with affirming clientilism and the accumulation of wealth in a way which is avowedly non-political but in practice legitimates the current political order. Meanwhile, although individual Muslims are more likely to enjoy high political office than was previously the case, Muslims are also more likely to located their experience as symptomatic of a wider pattern of exclusion in Kenya and link this sense of local injustice to global inequalities. Regional and global conflicts have shaped that discourse and propelled a steady increase in terrorism, which has in turn heightened the contrast.

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“…In doing so, anthropologists are positioned to pose better-informed questions, hone their ethnographic focus and observation, and formulate new and critical perspectives on longstanding issues. In turn, it is hoped that anthropology reshapes the thinking and method of other disciplines (James 2003;Moore 2007;Kresse 2007a). When engaged in this process, anthropology needs to integrate the reflexive dimensions of local knowledge (in Africa and elsewhere) into its theory, in order to make the theoretical reflections generated in particular local settings part of a wider common discourse about what it means to be human (see Moore 1996; for a recent overview of African anthropology, see Ntarangwi et al 2007).…”

Section: Anthropology Of Knowledge In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The essays present a range of methods and theoretical perspectives for investigating knowledge-in-practice in dialogue with recent concerns in the anthropology of knowledge (for example , Crick 1982;Whitehouse 2001;Barth 2002;Boyer 2005;Harris 2007; Marchand forthcoming), as well as with interdisciplinary interests in the interrelated topics of divinatory, religious, and political forms of knowledge in Africa (for example, Peek 1991;Janzen 1992;Lambek 1993;Feierman and Janzen 1992;Olupona 2000;Ellis and ter Haar 2004). While a general overview of research on knowledge in Africa cannot be provided here (see, for example, Kresse 2007b;Fardon 2007;Moore 1996), the contributions to this special issue together cover much of that scope, each drawing upon the existing literature and underscoring recurrent and salient themes while at the same time presenting novel insights.…”

Section: Anthropology Of Knowledge In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%