The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood and Ethno-Religious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast (review)

It is extremely hard to do justice to this remarkable book, which is filled with excellent analysis and narratives. Janet McIntosh analyzes Giriama-Swahili relations in the town of Malindi, which is north of Mombasa in Kenya. She contrasts the rural Giriama—especially illiterate Giriama female diviners and healers, or aganga—with the urban Swahili-Arab, particularly literate Swahili male diviners and healers (234). She juxtaposes the Swahili religion, Islam, against what she calls "Giriama Traditionalism," explaining that "I capitalize the term Traditionalism to honor it as a system of supernatural beliefs and practices" but one that is "flexible and improvisational" rather than "frozen in time" (263).

McIntosh argues that the Giriama perceive the Swahili as self-serving elites who exercise hegemonic powers over them. She agrees that Giriama have faced economic disenfranchisement, as well as social denigration at the hands of Swahili, although she also considers their frequently expressed anger about their history of enslavement at the hands of the Swahili mostly as "a rhetorical device when discussing their subordination in the past and present" (53), since most of the slaves were Nyasa. This is true, but it does not mean that the Giriama have "made up" or invented their enslavement.

The Giriama also perceive the Swahili as mocking those Giriama who attempt to assimilate into Swahili communities, although McIntosh explains that even the Giriama who do "defer to Swahili status and Islam's power" (26) have little chance themselves of becoming Swahili. Her basic thesis is that the two groups will always remain distinct, mainly because the cultures are different, regardless of religious considerations. However, she herself emphasizes the religious conflict. Most Swahili do not accept Giriama into Swahili ranks because they feel that Giriamaness pollutes Islam, and McIntosh agrees that "Giriamaness is essentially different from, and in some respects, even toxic to Islam" (21). Among Giriama for whom "Islam and its accoutrements (especially Arabic) are intrinsically and supernaturally potent" (21), the result is a tendency to defer to the Swahili, especially through their reading of Arabic texts, although sometimes the texts they acquire are merely children's versions of lessons from the Qur'an (and sometimes they "read" these upside down). In chapter 5, "Divination and Madness"—which to my mind is the critical chapter—the author explores the "powers and dangers" of the Arabic texts, through which Muslim spirits exert their power to require conversion to Islam and "the Giriama self is displaced by an Arabic-speaking spirit who colonize[s] his or her speech and actions in a grotesque . . . simulation of Islam" (223). "Giriama partake of Muslim powers while risking being overtaken by them" (223), observes McIntosh, arguing that Arabic has "mystical potency" for both the Giriama and the Swahili. My final question, however, is whether the Swahili really do discriminate against the Giriama economically, religiously, and culturally, or whether it is the Giriama who perceive themselves, as the title of the book says, on "the edge of Islam."