Conversion in Context: Rethinking Religious Change in Colonial Western Kenya

On July 19 and 20, 2022, the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) hosted a symposium, “Religious Practices, Transmission, and Literacies in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.” The symposium featured the presentations of seven scholars who conducted two-week research residencies in the AMED Reading Room between June 1 and July 15, 2022. The residencies and symposium are part of the Exploring Challenging Conversations project generously funded by a planning grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The purpose of the initiative was to enhance public awareness of cross-regional and intercultural religious understanding in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and their global diaspora.

Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Women of Fire and Spirit: History, Faith and Gender in Roho Religion in Western Kenya and is currently completing a manuscript on Islam in Western Kenya during the colonial period. Cynthia’s scholarship concentrates on the interaction between indigenous religions and the two major missionary traditions embraced by Africans: Christianity and Islam. Her course offerings reflect this tripartite focus, too, as they seek to do justice to the traditions of Africa as vital systems of thought and praxis that are today largely sustained, revived, and transformed within Christian and Muslim contexts. She also offers thematic and comparative courses in the study of religion and is interested in theory and method in the history of religions.

Abstract: This presentation discusses the little-known “Mohamedan movement” that emerged near Mumias in Western Kenya in 1926. According to administrative records, leaders of this proselytizing effort proclaimed that the Last Days were at hand and that God’s deliverer would soon appear to exterminate all non-Muslims, especially the Europeans. Challenging standard models of anti-colonial movements, I argue that this movement should be seen as part of a diffuse, persistent undercurrent of indigenous discourse and practice that transcended ethnic and creedal boundaries. I make the case that there existed throughout parts of East Africa a longstanding religious “option” characterized by belief in mobile spiritual entities; the use of consecrated water for healing and protection; and the “preaching safari,” whereby adepts traveled the countryside disseminating their particular dispensation and/or medicine. This flexible, multi-pronged indigenous option shaped the way missionary religions—Islam and Christianity alike—initially gained a foothold throughout the region.