On the skills to navigate the world, and religion, for coastal Muslims in Kenya

Abstract

Kresse explores the ways in which coastal Muslims in Kenya have responded to life in what he refers to as a ‘double periphery’. This concept indexes the extent to which Kenyan Muslims are located on the edge of a predominately Christian Kenya and of the Muslim umma more generally. In such a context, ‘exceptional figures’ in the community develop skills of ‘patience and endurance’ in order to tackle the worldly problems they and their community face; ‘this range of skills’, Kresse argues, ‘may be drawn upon fruitfully as a kind of arsenal of ideas and approaches with which to handle regional politics, ideological disputes and internal moral dilemmas’.