What's (not) in a leather pouch? Tracing Islamic amulets in Asante, Ghana

Abstract

Islamic charms and amulets (lāyā) are simultaneously fairly common, highly valued and ardently contested items among Muslims in Asante. Tracing their history and the relations in which Muslims in Asante manufacture, make sense of and debate them, this article places such amulets within relations and delineates the discourses surrounding them. For those who manufacture and request them, these amulets are part not only of the Islamic tradition but of the divine, which permeates them. For their critics, these are un-Islamic idols that contravene the religion of Islam as they ‘keep people away from God’. Such amulets and their usage – or their non-usage – are therefore central to people relating to the divine, and as amulets thus take part in various (re)makings of Islam, they matter and are part of larger processes that knit several elements together. If one considers such amulets as genuine sources, they provide a lot of information not only about how people conceive of, debate and live Islam, but of how Islamic lifeworlds come into being and of the various entities that participate in these processes.