Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience

A study by Kai Kresse, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and Vice Director for Research at Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient. The book is an exploration of the experience of Kenyan coastal Muslims, focusing on Kenyan postcolonial history. Kresse isolates the ideas that coastal Muslims have used to separate themselves from their upcountry Christian countrymen. He looks back to key moments and key texts, including pamphlets, newspapers, lectures, speeches, and radio discussions, as a way to map out the postcolonial experience and how it is negotiated in the coastal Muslim community. On one level, this is a historical ethnography of how and why the content of public discussion matters so much to communities at particular points in time, showing how intellectual practices can lead to a regional understanding of the world. On another level, the ethnography of the postcolonial experience reveals dimensions of intellectual practice in religious communities. Kresse is also the author of Philosophising in Mombasa: Knowledge, Islam, and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast.