Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, and Social Change

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude goes to all the Muslim women in Kenya in Mombasa and Nairobi (Jami’a Mosque, Pumwani, Pangani, Parklands) and other Kenyan women and men who welcomed me and contributed to the research that led to the writing of this book. The research for this book began as a humble question as to whether there was a Muslim women’s rights movement in Kenya, a predominantly non-Muslim country, and, if there was, what types of rights these advocates were claiming and what mechanisms they were using to achieve their goals. My fieldwork in Kenya was conducted between  and , thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation , through the Nairobi office, under its program for Human Rights and Social Justice, which I am grateful for and delighted to acknowledge.At that time the program was directed by Willy Mutunga, the current chief justice of Kenya. I am most thankful for his encouragement, wonderful support of my research proposal, and for providing me with (Muslim) women contacts and pointing me to networks in the field. My great appreciation to Anna Mnogolia for her effective administration of my grant from the Ford Foundation and to Alva Walker, from Rutgers University’s grant office. I owe a debt of gratitude to the then executive dean of arts and sciences Holly Smith and dean of social sciences Edward Rhodes at Rutgers University for their support of my research. Kim Butler, then chair of my Department of Africana Studies, was very helpful in supporting this research and I express my thanks to her. I am also deeply grateful to Barry Qualls, vice president for undergraduate education,for his support of my work,Douglass Greenberg, executive dean of arts and sciences, Robin Davis, associate executive dean of arts and sciences, Fran Mascia-Lees, dean of social and behavior Acknowledgments xiii sciences, and Jimmy Swenson, dean of humanities, for granting me a semester of sabbatical leave in fall  to complete the revisions to this book.I owe a special debt of gratitude to Abena Busia, then associate director of the Center forAfrican Studies,and Renee Larrier,current associate director,for their formidable and unconditional support in all my work while directing the Center forAfrican Studies.Their mentorship as senior colleagues,founding members of the Center forAfrican Studies and then directors,and their friendship and generosity of heart and mind have continued to have a great impact on my life. I am grateful to Renee DeLancey, my assistant at the Center for African Studies,for the energy and enthusiasm she brings to working together,which has been important in helping me find balance between time devoted to directing a very dynamic center, teaching, and writing this book.Thank you, Renee! My deepest gratitude goes also to Jane Grimshaw, who agreed to fill in for me as director of the Center for African Studies for one semester to allow me to focus on the revisions to this book. My utmost thanks to the wonderful members of the center’s executive committee—Carolyn Brown, Barbara Cooper, Rick Schroeder, David Hughes, Renée Larrier, and Julie Livingston—and other esteemed colleagues and friends such as Meredith Turshen and Allen Howard for their unfailing support of me and my work. During fieldwork I encountered many people in Kenya who directly or indirectly served as crucial sources of information and data and who helped me network with various people and communities. Foremost among these are the Muslim women whose biographical narratives informed the writing of this book, namely, Bi Swafiya Muhashamy-Said, Mwalim Azara Mudira, Justice Abida Ali-Aroni, Honorable Naomi Ummi Shaban, Honorable Amina Abdallah, Amina Abubakar, and Nazlin Umar Rajput. I am sincerely indebted to them all for receiving me with open arms and entrusting me with their oral narratives of their personal lives and their accounts of their roles in and their contributions to the social changes that have been wrought in their communities and in the nation. I was also welcomed by the many other Muslim women I interviewed and greatly enlightened by their oral narratives, including Fatma Khalfan, Maryam Sheikh Abdi, Yasmin Jeneby (aka Yvonne Oerlemans), Maryam Sheikh at Little Bird, Wambui Wahida, Muslim women in Pumwani, Pangani, Parklands, the Nairobi Embakasi Young Muslim Women’s Self-Help Association, vendors at Mombasa Market, young Muslim women I met at the Mombasa Blue Room using computer facilities, shopkeepers and shop owners and young Muslim women teachers. I discuss some in the introduction, while...