The Swahili context Mombasa, the Old Town and Kibokoni

Kresse, Kai

doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627868.003.0003

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Mazrui's guidance consisted of 'ideas and teachings on issues in order to raise Muslims and lead them on a good path in religion and worldly matters,' and he consistently reiterated the need for unity and education amongst coastal Muslims in particular, the main audience for the book. 25 Rather paradoxically, however, and like other so-called modernist thinkers of the time, he advocated for an Islam shorn of much of its African particularities, especially with regards to certain rituals and practices deemed outside the pale of Islam proper. Mazrui would also subtly call out the excessive materialism of Indian merchant communities in Mombasa, most of whom he would have likely considered heretical.…”

Section: Remembering Sicily In Mombasamentioning

confidence: 99%

Provincializing Mecca? (1924–1969)

Kara

2021

Global Intellectual History

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This article argues that in the moments leading up to decolonization, Indian Muslims living in East Africa sought to refuse their minority status through the excessive language of universal Islam. Groups with an established presence like the Khoja and Bohra trading communities, as well as new arrivals like the Ahmadis, sought to escape the deterministic logic of demography that had increasingly come to characterize African nationalist thought. Critically, however, this article argues that such an escape also had them recast and even rewrite the very substance of that universality, detaching Islam from its Arab provenance in order to reposition it anew out of the African context; in effect, provincializing Mecca. The article thus connects the intellectual histories of these minority communities to that of the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who once claimed that for Islam to be universalized across difference it would first need to shed the weighty inheritance of 'Arabian Imperialism.'

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Section: Remembering Sicily In Mombasamentioning

confidence: 99%

Provincializing Mecca? (1924–1969)

Kara

2021

Global Intellectual History

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“…Mabaraza have existed in the East African region for many centuries. The earliest usage of the term baraza on the Swahili Coast is linked to small benches outside homes during the Portuguese colonial era (beginning in 1505) (Kresse, 2007). These spaces were usually dominated by men, who congregated in the evening without women to conduct their ‘daily informal meetings’ (Kresse, 2007: 56).…”

Section: Baraza: a Traditional Conversational Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The earliest usage of the term baraza on the Swahili Coast is linked to small benches outside homes during the Portuguese colonial era (beginning in 1505) (Kresse, 2007). These spaces were usually dominated by men, who congregated in the evening without women to conduct their ‘daily informal meetings’ (Kresse, 2007: 56). In Kenya, mabaraza were part of Mombasa’s political structure, where the leaders (always male) from each of the 12 main tribes of Kenya dominated the ruling order before the administration was colonised by the British in 1895 (Kresse, 2007).…”

Section: Baraza: a Traditional Conversational Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Baraza as method: Adapting a traditional conversational space for data collection and pathways for change

Chubb¹,

Fouché

Kengah³

2021

Qualitative Social Work

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The call to decolonise research processes and knowledge produced through them has spawned a powerful shift in working relationships between community researchers and members of local communities. Adaptation of a traditional conversational space in a community-based participatory research study offers a context-specific example of a decolonising method for data collection and as pathways for change. This article reports on learnings encountered while adapting the space and highlights the relevance for other cultural contexts. We present principles to adapt traditional conversational spaces both for collecting data and as a means of working in partnership with indigenous communities to enable different ways of knowing and action.

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“…See, for example, Nassir (1979). See also my own earlier extended discussion on utu (Kresse 2007: 139–75).…”

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confidence: 99%

KENYA: TWENDAPI?: RE-READING ABDILATIF ABDALLA'S PAMPHLET FIFTY YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE

Kresse¹

2016

Africa

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Poets and other writers have not escaped the politics of culture in post-colonial Kenya. One of our leading poets, Abdulatif Abdulla [sic], was imprisoned for three years in 1969 for writing and circulating a pamphlet: Kenya, Where Are We Heading To? Asking questions is a dangerous exercise in a post-colonial society. (Ngugi 1993: 94) To meet Abdilatif Abdalla for the first time is to be thrilled -in the full sense of the word -by his personality and his kind, joyful and vivacious yet sensitive and respectful ways. He makes his interlocutors feel at ease when interacting with him -

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The Swahili context Mombasa, the Old Town and Kibokoni

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Provincializing Mecca? (1924–1969)

Provincializing Mecca? (1924–1969)

Baraza as method: Adapting a traditional conversational space for data collection and pathways for change

KENYA: TWENDAPI?: RE-READING ABDILATIF ABDALLA'S PAMPHLET FIFTY YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE

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