Description
"Millennialism on the Margins" contributes to the study of East African Islam. It focuses on the little-known "Mohammaden Movement" that emerged in western Kenya in 1926. Movement leaders proclaimed that the Last Days were at hand, and that God's deliverer would soon appear to exterminate all infidels, especially Europeans. It shows that a variety of Muslim messianic beliefs were present in the region, inluding some of Indian, Sudanese and Swahili-Arab origin, as well as prophetic interpretations of Islam by various local ethnic groups. Challenging sholarly models of Islamization that imply a progressive linear development toward orthodoxy, it argues that the Mohammaden Movement should be seen as part of a diffuse, persistent undercurrent of indigenous prophetic discourse that transcended ethnic and creedal boundaries. It argues that throughout the East African interior there existed a longstanding religious "option" characterized by 1) belief in migratory spiritual forces; 2) autonomous homesteads where devotees resided together; 3) the use of consecrated water for healing (dawa); and 4) the "preaching safari," wherein adherents traveled the countryside spreading their particular dispensation and/or medicine. This flexible and mobile four-pronged indigenous option shaped the way missionary religions--Islam and Christianity alike--initially gained a foothold throughout the region. It also explores british officials' tendency to delineate between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" Islam. By considering the intimate relationship between constructions of Islam and issues of power and dominance in colonial East Africa, this study offers provocative points of comparison with our own era.
