Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya: negotiating knowledge on the double-periphery (original) (raw)

2009, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

This paper investigates Muslim politics in its wider social context in postcolonial Kenya, with a historical focus mainly on the Moi era (1978-2002). Hereby, I look at the introduction, integration, and internal constestation of Islamic reformist ideologies in Swahili discourse and in social practice. Central to my argument about the interconnections between Muslim politics, national politics, and coastal sociality is the notion of a 'knowledge economy', within the postcolonial setting of a 'double-periphery' in which Kenyan coastal Muslims are situated, vis-à-vis the state and the Muslim umma (community of believers). I discuss the dynamics between aspects of knowledge and rhetorics, reasoning and power, and ideology and social practice at work in this particular Muslim context. All of this is situated within national Kenyan politics, and discussed against the background of a postcolonial state governed by upcountry Christians with whom coastal Muslims have historically had a tense and antagonistic relationship. Muslim politics, according to Eickelman and Piscatori, 'constitutes the field on which an intricate pattern of cooperation and contest over form, practice, and interpretation takes place' (1996: 21). The distinctiveness of Muslim politics, then, is linked to 'the specific, if evolving, values, symbols, ideas, and traditions that constitute "Islam" ' (1996: 21) in particular places, and research should consider the multiple contexts of such politics. It follows that the distinct character of regional Muslim politics evolves out of mediation and negotiation processes that constitute Islam in specific geographical and historical contexts. Here, I explore Muslim politics in a particular postcolonial setting, the Kenyan coast. Drawing from Asad's approach to Islam as a 'discursive tradition' (1986), I investigate how regional practices and interpretations of everyday life in sociality and language make reference to, 'knowledge' , and how they overlap, intersect, and feed into (or alter) the negotiation of Islam in coastal Kenya. History and power constitute two fundamental axes underpinning a proper understanding of Muslim politics. As Zaman has argued, Islam is shaped not just by a continuous interactive link between the present and the past, 'but also by the manner in which relations of power and other forms of contestation and conflict impinge on any definition of what it is to be a Muslim' (2002: 6). Here, I examine internal negotiations of difference and sameness among Muslims in coastal Kenya. I also consider how these processes are influenced by (and may in turn have to be balanced out against) external, non-Muslim forces and pressures, like those generated by the state. In order to reflect upon the specific postcolonial dynamics of Kenyan politics, I use Chabal and Daloz's paradigm for postcolonial African politics, 'the political instrumentalization of disorder' (1999: 13, 155). Muslims in coastal Kenya Since Independence from Britain in 1963, when upcountry Christians under President Jomo Kenyatta took over the rule of the Coast province and implemented 'Africanization' policies on all administrative levels, coastal Kenyan Muslims have been on the receiving end of postcolonial politics. 1 Many of them were regarded as 'less Kenyan' by the new rulers, and made to feel as outsiders, due to their Swahili, Arab, South Asian, or Persian descent. Political tensions were not surprising, since before Independence many coastal Muslims had resisted the political integration of the Coastal Strip, the so-called 'Mwambao' (which belonged to the Sultanate of Zanzibar and was administered by the British), into Kenya. Instead, they had campaigned for Coastal Independence (Brennan 2008; Salim 1970). Bitter memories of this failed endeavour live on in vivid discussions in coastal towns today. During postcolonial rule, Kenyan Muslims have increasingly organized themselves more assertively as 'Muslims' in the public arena, partly in response to the discrimination they saw themselves facing as a neglected minority. 2 Mutual suspicions between Muslims and the state have continued, with tensions and anxieties flaring up after each of the terrorist attacks that affected Kenya as well as the wider world: on the US embassy in Nairobi in August 1998; the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States; and on a beach hotel and aeroplane near Mombasa in 2002 (see Seesemann 2007b). These were condemned by Muslim communities and their representatives. As elsewhere in the Muslim world, a different kind of pressure towards more assertive public engagement 'as Muslims' has come from within the Muslim community itself, through the growing ideological impact of Islamic trans-local networks on local Muslim discourse and practice. Especially since the 1980s, with the return of students who had studied in the Middle East, ideological confrontations between different groups of Islamic 'reformists' and their others have become more agitated (see Bakari 1995). This is visible, for instance, in the emphatic rejection of regionally established Muslim practices, like the celebration of the birthday of Prophet Muhammad (maulidi), the visit to graves of deceased pious people (ziyara), and other Sufi-related practices by so-called 'Wahhabi' 3 reformists. Islamic reformism in East Africa, initiated and shouldered from within the region since the 1930s, displays liberating as well as dogmatic features in a kind of 'dialectic' , opening social debate on some issues while closing it on others (see Kresse 2003; for South Asia, see Osella & Osella 2008a). Contrary to simplifying descriptions in popular and academic writing, Islamic 'reformism' in Africa as elsewhere comes in different shapes and forms and is ambivalent in character (a potentially creative as well as destructive force). 4 The increase of public attention on Muslim identity through reformist debates pushed coastal Kenyan Muslims to deliberate their stances more consciously. Taking these aspects into account, we can say that there is a two-way front on which 'Muslim identity' is negotiated by coastal Muslims: an external one, vis-à-vis the postcolonial state; and an internal one, within the umma (the community of believers) itself. The internal differences and divisions are most significant since this is where the Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya S77