Muslim women and descendants of slaves shifted
the meaning of Muslim Swahili identity. Despite
increased marginalization under the British colo-
nial regime, Swahili women recast their Muslim
identity through wedding dances and new eco-
nomic practices (Strobel 1979). In the colonial city
of Nairobi, Islam served as a social inroad into
urban society for poor rural female migrants in the
early part of the twentieth century. As some of these
female migrants participated in the labor process,
particularly through prostitution, their activities
showed the limits of British colonial control over
labor processes and social values. Before the 1930s,
Muslim ideas of hierarchy and respect shaped cer-
tain neighborhoods and relationships more than
colonial directives. Islam also provided a means for
women to attain property and landlord status
(White 1992, 58–65, 223). In Kenya, existing
Muslim communities altered in self-definition and
composition partly due to the economic and social
initiative of women.
In northern Sudan, Zar or spirit possession
serves as a site to explore women’s experience of
Islam and colonialism. Turco-Egyptian occupation
in the early nineteenth century gave way to Anglo-
Egyptian rule by the end of the nineteenth century.
In this context of war and devastation during the
nineteenth century, Zar reputedly emerged in north-
ern Sudan. Zar potentially serves as a counterdis-
course of resistance to outside influence, including
well-established Islamic practice. Through their
participation in Zar, women act outside the bound-
aries of their femininity and village identity. Zar
thereby challenges local order while providing ther-
apeutic care and self-awareness. From a local to a
broader Islamic cultural context, women in north-
ern Sudan who participate in Zar ceremonies have
the potential to alter, contest, and reconstruct the
relationships between women and men within local
Islamic culture. The emergence and expansion of
Zar during the colonial period suggests the inter-
action between the colonial imposition, local con-
straints, and women’s mobility within Muslim
cultural boundaries (Boddy 1988).
In northern Somalia, songs, poems, and sayings
similarly serve as a site for debate over women’s
roles and gender norms in a Muslim, largely pas-
toral, society. The tumult of colonial rule and a 20-
year long anticolonial movement took a toll on the
economic and social development of the region
during the twentieth century. Much Somali orature
from this period reaffirmed male views of social
norms, particularly in relation to women’s proper
behavior. Somali women sang religious songs or
sitaatthat celebrated women’s roles through an76 colonialism and imperialism
evocation of celebrated female Muslim figures.
Women’s oral performance in Somalia suggests how
poetry, work songs, and religious songs made social
commentary, reflected social norms, and claimed a
gendered, Muslim identity (Kapteijns 1999b).
The invisibility of these histories and actors in
Islamic and colonial African history illustrates var-
ious power dynamics. After the devastation of the
First World War, European colonial officials in
Africa refocused their attention on masculine
domains of power. In the eyes of colonial adminis-
trators, the rapid introduction of “civilization” had
threatened male control and social order (Conklin
1997). Colonial administrators sought to re-estab-
lish an imagined, idyllic African past through more
intrusive control over women and women’s bodies.
Key policies included the codification of customary
law, birthing clinics, and domestic training for
women (Chanock 1985, Hunt 1999). These pro-
grams and policies emerged most forcefully among
Christian women or women who engaged in indige-
nous worship. These non-Muslim cases, together
with the Muslim examples above, illustrate the
integral part gender played in European imperial
efforts in Africa (Summers 1991).
This entry highlights the connection between
European colonial policies, gender, and Islam in a
variety of locations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Muslim
African women influenced religious and non-reli-
gious domains throughout history in multiple ways
(Dunbar 1999). Brief examples here illustrate how
Muslim women reconfigured the meaning of
Muslim identity in southern Niger and Mombasa.
Women affected colonial economies through their
participation in labor processes and markets in
Nairobi and northern Nigeria. Women’s religious
scholarship and spirituality in Senegal, Sudan, and
Somalia expanded the realm of Muslim religious
expression. The lack of attention to Muslim Afri-
can women reflects the colonial record and the gen-
eral focus on Muslim men’s trade and learning. This
brief exploration of Muslim African women’s reli-
gious observances, socioeconomic activities, and
cultural strategies challenges the standard view of
Islamic history on the continent. Attention to diverse
(especially marginalized) groupings of women, youth,
migrants, and others, expands both African and
Islamic history.Bibliography
J. Boddy, Spirits and selves in Northern Sudan. The cul-
tural therapeutics of possession and trance, in Amer-
ican Ethnologist15 (1988), 4–27.
J. Boyd and M. Last, The role of women as agents
religieux in Sokoto, in Canadian Journal of African
Studies19 (1985), 283–300.