Regulating Religious Coexistence: The Intricacies of Interfaith Cooperation in Coastal Kenya (African Religions, Social Realities)

Regulating Religious Coexistence offers a compelling ethnographic analysis of how Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of indigenous African religions negotiate coexistence in Kenya’s coastal region.The book conceptualizes religious diversity as a dynamic field shaped by multiple partly intersecting and partly conflicting models of interaction.These include the political secularism promoted by the Kenyan state and civil society organizations focused on interfaith harmony, forms of competition between religious groups, and pluralistic practices in which individuals draw on multiple traditions to meet spiritual needs. Through a close examination of civil society initiatives funded by Western donors to foster peacebuilding and to counter violent extremism, the book investigates how these models for coexistence are negotiated and contested and how they intersect with historical and contemporary patterns.It demonstrates that modes of religious coexistence in coastal Kenya have been shaped