Islam in German East Africa, 1885–1918

Download or read book Islam in German East Africa, 1885–1918 written by Jörg Haustein and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-14 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rich and multi-layered deconstruction of German colonial engagement with Islam, Jörg Haustein shows how imperial agents in Germany’s largest colony wielded the knowledge category of Islam in a broad set of debates, ranging from race, language, and education to slavery, law, conflict, and war. These representations of ‘Mohammedanism’, often invoked for particular political ends, amounted to a serious misreading of Muslims in East Africa, with significant long-term effects. As the first in-depth account of the politics of Islam in German East Africa, the book makes an essential contribution to the history of religion in Tanzania before British rule. It also offers a template for re-reading the colonial archive in a manner that recovers Muslim agency beyond a European paradigm of religion.