Review of "The Edge of Islam" (original) (raw)

University of Kansas. He is the author of The Quest for Therapy in Lower Zaire (1978) and Lemba (1650-1930): A Drum of Affliction in Africa and the New World (in press); he has co-edited An Anthology of Kongo Religion (with W. MacGaffey, 1974). Wauthier de Mahieu (b. 1933) is Senior lecturer in Anthropology at the Catholic University of Louvain. He is the author of Structures et symboles (1980), and Qui a obstrué la cascade? Analyse sémantique du rituel de la circoncision chez les Komo (in press), and co-author of Mort, deuil et compensation mortuaires chez les Komo et les Yaka du Nord au Zaire (with R. Devisch, 1979). Terence Osborn Ranger (b. 1929) is Professor of Modem History at the University of Manchester. His books include Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896-1897 (1967), The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia (1970), Dance and Society in Eastern Africa (1975); he has co-edited The Historical Study of African Religion (with I. Kimambo, 1972). Jan Mathys (Matthew) Schoffeleers (b....

The Edge of Islam is an in-depth and nicely written ethnography about Giriama and Swahili ethnic groups and their identification with Islam. Focusing on the town of Malindi, situated on the Kenyan coast, the ethnography also includes a theoretical discussion on the different valorisation and enactment of oppositional kinds of personhood of the two ethnic groups’ members, which thus create two essentially distinct categories: the Giriama and the Swahili. Janet McIntosh pictures the diversity of Islamic practices and the multiple understandings of Islam as a religion, a means of power and distinction, as well as an explanation for economic success and social privileges by two ethnic groups. McIntosh, Janet. 2009. The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

In this article, I focus on the historiography of Islam in West Africa while also reflecting upon and assessing existing scholarship in the broader field of the study of Islam in Africa. My position as an anthropologist who conducts historical research informs my perspective in evaluating the current state of the field and my suggestions for directions in which I think future research might move in order to advance our understanding of Islam and Muslim societies and the history of religious life in Africa more generally.