Erin E. Stiles - Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean

Richard B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 15001850

Erin E. Stiles and Katrina Daly Thompson, eds., Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean: Islam, Marriage, and Sexuality on the Swahili Coast

ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

Edward A. Alpers

University of California, Los Angeles, Emeritus

Clare Anderson

University of Leicester

Sugata Bose

Harvard University

Ulbe Bosma

International Institute of Social History, Leiden

Janet Ewald

Duke University

Devleena Ghosh

University of Technology Sydney

Engseng Ho

Duke University

Isabel Hofmeyr

University of the Witwatersrand

Pier M. Larson

Johns Hopkins University

Om Prakash

University of Delhi (emeritus)

Himanshu Prabha Ray

National Monuments Authority, India

Kerry Ward

Rice University

Nigel Worden

University of Cape Town

Markus Vink

SUNY at Fredonia

EDITED BY

Erin E. Stiles and Katrina Daly Thompson

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

ATHENS, OHIO

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

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2015 by Ohio University Press

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Cover image: Typical henna decorations prior to Islamic wedding.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Cover design by Beth Pratt

Gendered lives in the western Indian Ocean : Islam, marriage, and sexuality on the Swahili Coast / edited by Erin E. Stiles, Katrina Daly Thompson.

pages cm. (Indian Ocean studies series)

Summary: Muslim communities throughout the Indian Ocean have long questioned what it means to be a good Muslim. Much recent scholarship on Islam in the Indian Ocean considers debates among Muslims about authenticity, authority, and propriety. Despite the centrality of this topic within studies of Indian Ocean, African, and other Muslim communities, little of the existing scholarship has addressed such debates in relation to women, gender, or sexuality. Yet women are deeply involved with ideas about what it means to be a good Muslim. In Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean, anthropologists, historians, linguists, and gender studies scholars examine Islam, sexuality, gender, and marriage on the Swahili coast and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. The book examines diverse sites of empowerment, contradiction, and resistance affecting cultural norms, Islam and ideas of Islamic authenticity, gender expectations, ideologies of modernity, and British education. The books attention to both masculinity and femininity, broad examination of the transnational space of the Swahili coast, and inclusion of research on non-Swahili groups on the East African coast makes it a unique and indispensable resourceProvided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8214-2186-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-8214-2187-1 (pb) ISBN 9780-8214-4543-3 (pdf)

1. WomenTanzaniaZanzibarSocial conditions. 2. Muslim womenTanzaniaZanzibarSocial conditions. 3. SexReligious aspectsIslam. [1. Family lifeTanzaniaZanzibar. 2. TanzaniaSocial conditions.] I. Stiles, Erin E. II. Thompson, Katrina Daly, 1975

HQ1798.5.Z8Z3635 2015

305.409678'1dc23

2015026449

ISBN 978-0-8214-4543-3 (e-book)

Contents

KATRINA DALY THOMPSON AND ERIN E. STILES

CORRIE DECKER

ELISABETH MCMAHON

PAT CAPLAN

NADINE BECKMANN

MEGHAN HALLEY

KATRINA DALY THOMPSON

KJERSTI LARSEN

ERIN E. STILES

REBECCA GEARHART

LINDA L. GILES

SUSI KREHBIEL KEEFE

SUSAN F. HIRSCH

Introducing Gender, Sexuality, and Marriage into the Study of Islam in the Western Indian Ocean

KATRINA DALY THOMPSON AND ERIN E. STILES

MUSLIM COMMUNITIES THROUGHOUT the Indian Ocean and beyond have long debated what it means to be a good Muslim. A great deal of recent scholarship on Islam in the Indian Ocean considers debates among Muslims about authenticity, authority, and propriety vis--vis the influence of Islamic reformism and reformers, those groups whose ideology pushes for social re-instatement of what they regard as pure Islam, as it was practiced by the Prophet and his followers, and who are publicly visible in their activism against undue innovative practices (bida). Yet women are deeply involved and impacted by debates about what it means to be a good Muslima label that often hinges on notions of normative gender performance and understandings of appropriate Islamic sexuality that affect both men and women.

Bridging some of these gaps in existing scholarship, the key question this volume asks is how ideologies of normative sexuality and gender are discursively constructed, performed, negotiated, or rejected within and outside marriage. We address this question by considering the gendered experiences and practices of Islam on the westernmost edge of the Indian Ocean, examining debates and changing understandings of what is Islamic with reference to marriage, sexuality, and normative understandings of masculinity and femininity. In this way, we build on a growing body of scholarship in the study of Islam in the Indian Ocean and beyond that considers debates about authenticity, authority, and proper Islamic practice, over time and in response to historical and global forces. In particular, we extend the body of work that considers how these debates play out in the gendered lives of Muslim women and men in other parts of the world through our focus on the Swahili coast.

THE SWAHILI COAST IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

The Swahili coast includes the coast and islands of East Africa that border the Indian Ocean, from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. It is called the Swahili coast because it is the home to people who speak various dialects of Swahili as their first language, and the name Swahili itself comes from the Arabic word sawhil (sing., shil), meaning coast. Most first-language speakers of Swahili are Muslims.

The Arabic-derived names for Swahili people (Waswahili), Swahili culture (Uswahili), and the Swahili language (Kiswahili) index the long history of interaction between coastal East Africans and other Indian Ocean peoples, including not only Arabs but also Persians, Indians, and other Asians from as far away as China. All these peoples, as well as Europeans who colonized Kenya, mainland Tanzania (then Tanganyika), and eventually Zanzibar, interacted with coastal Swahili speakers and in some cases intermarried with them, creating long-lasting influences not only on the Swahili language but also on the practice of Islam, local systems of governance, law, and education, architecture, food, clothing, and more. Contemporary coastal East Africans continue to interact with the Indian Ocean region through annual trips to Mecca for the