...Muslims and Muslim polities have been present for hundreds of years on the coast of East Africa. Some 80 percent of the population in Southeast Tanzania is estimated to be Muslim. How and why this came to be the case, and how this process has shaped both the ritual practice of these Muslims...

... of commerce existed before the colonial period in Southeast Tanzania. Muslim teachings could be readily evoked to argue for changes that affected women. The villagers' views of religious change are discussed. Funerary practices common among non-Muslims have come to be redefined as Muslim. In addition...

... the arrival of the tarika in Southeast Tanzania. The tarika-shehe of the inter-war period, who are most clearly remembered in the coastal towns, were themselves fairly well travelled, well connected, and partly of patrician parentage. Ritual practices constitute a crucial...

... that while the Ansar of Southeast Tanzania formed part of a transregional reformist current, their confrontational style and inflammatory rhetoric were directed against the specific conjunction of the political and religious authority they faced at home. The reformist debates and Muslim...

...This book looks at the Muslims in Mainland Tanzania, as well as what people in Southeast Tanzania understood by Islam, or by being Muslim, and what they sought to attain by becoming Muslim. This question may seem contrived: the personal reasons why a set of people, most of whom are now dead...