Philosophizing in Mombasa: Knowledge, Islam and Intellectual Practice on the Swahili Coast (review)

Kai Kresse's key aim in this engaging book is to establish the possibility of a study of philosophy in an African context. Philosophy here is defined as knowledge about knowledge, or a reflexive approach to one's own episteme, and Kresse explicitly argues that this is not a study of community knowledge: his concern is with the individual thought of three individuals in Mombasa, as expressed in a series of texts. This may seem an unexceptionable argument, but it does run counter to a tradition of anthropological research whose focus has been on the collective. It also, inevitably, sets the author a challenge. The texts on which the book focuses revolve around discussions of the nature of morality and social values, and it is really impossible to give any sense of the creativity or significance of individual thought in these areas without also considering societal context. In consequence this work has to try and sketch in this background while steering clear of the sort of generalized ethnographic statements which would undermine the focus on individual thought. There has been much previous ethnographic work on various communities along the East African coast, and much discussion of the problematic and contested nature of Swahili identity. Kresse shows an acute sense of the challenges of the topic, and particularly of the hierarchical nature of these communities, which has inevitably shaped ideas about morality and culture; and he is careful to insist that he is not describing 'Swahili society'. But it is striking that two of his chosen subjects of study are closely related, and that all belong in the higher end of this social hierarchy and share a similar culture of learning – to use the distinction which Kresse himself cites, this is really a study of Schulbegriff, rather than Weltbegriff.

Kresse's discussion suggests that he is in fact uncertain of the philosophical credentials of at least one of these three figures, the poet Ahmed Nabhany. It is hard not to agree – while Nabhany has been an assiduous cultural entrepreneur, advising many foreign researchers as well as conducting his own work, there is little reflexive thought in his determined project of linguistic preservation and renewal. Kresse is more willing to define his second subject, the poet Ahmed Nassir, as a philosopher, and he discusses one of his poems in considerable detail and depth to make this point. It might be argued that much of this poem is formulaic both in structure and content, but Kresse plausibly argues that it also offers a discussion of the nature of human morality which is both thoughtful and critical. On the third individual discussed here, the religious and political thinker Abdilahi Nassir, the verdict of the book is unequivocal, and almost partisan in its enthusiasm. So much so that the author is perhaps a little too willing to accept Abdilahi Nassir's own account of his political/intellectual journey, in which he presents himself as a long-standing advocate of ethnic and religious harmony, and says little of his role in the secessionist coastal politics of the early 1960s. In that context, it is perhaps not so surprising that Abdilahi was viewed as a turncoat for his subsequent, rather swift, conversion to the politics of Kenyan nationalism, and that similar suspicions of inconstancy attach to his conversion to Shi'te Islam in the 1980s – a conversion which, surprisingly, Kresse makes no attempt to discuss, beyond briefly attributing it to his belief in 'free will'.

The lack of any serious discussion of that conversion will be keenly felt by many readers. For while Kresse's main argument is about philosophy, I suspect that this book will be read as much – or more – as an immensely useful source on the changing nature of Islam on the Kenya coast in the last three decades. For part of the backdrop to Abdilahi Nassir's thought is the...