Multireligious Utopias? Youth, Secularization and Islamic Education Across the Western Indian Ocean World

(working title) / ‘Generation Absent: Youth Identity and Belonging in the “Zanzibar Diaspora”‘

Dr. Franziska Fay

At the center of the comparative, ethnographic research project, whose majority Muslim and multi-religious urban research fields are located in Zanzibar City (Tanzania), Mombasa (Kenya) and Muscat (Oman), was the question of the conditions of multi-religious coexistence in times of decreasing tolerance with regard to religious diversity. The investigation of ‘multi-religious utopias’ makes it possible to question the qualities and characteristics of a social idea of ‘modernity’, which is characterized by the positive emphasis on intra- and inter-religious heterogeneity. Interfaith centers, which use project approaches to bring children and young people of different faiths together, were central points of orientation with regard to the project’s interest in knowledge.
The postdoctoral project was continued in 2020 under the title “Generation Absent: Youth Identity and Belonging in the “Zanzibar Diaspora””. The habilitation project, which emerged from the findings during the field research phases, then focused centrally on the contemporary translocal identity constructions of young people in the so-called ‘Zanzibar Diaspora’ (Zanzibari Omanis and Omani Zanzibaris), of which religious attribution processes are an integral part. Methodologically, the project relied on ethnographic research methods such as interviews and observations, but also on a dense analysis of social media spaces, also due to the Corona-related change in the research situation.

Publications:

Fay, Franziska: Ordinary Childhoods, Islam and the Everyday in Zanzibar. Journal of the British Academy [Special Issue: Searching for the Everyday in African Childhoods] (in preparation)

Fay, Franziska: Blending Belongings: Young Swahili-speaking Omanis and the Postdiaspora in Contemporary Oman. Arabian Humanities, Vol 15 [Special Issue: Oman Over Times: A Nation from the Nahda to the Oman Vision 2040] (under review)

Fay, Franziska: Living with Absence: Waiting Youth, Belonging, and the Contemporary ‘Zanzibar Diaspora’. Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies – Special Issue, Edited by Walker, Iain and Martin Slama. (forthcoming)

events

“Waswahili (Vijana) wa Oman na Dhana ya ‘Zanzibar Diaspora'”, Baraza la Kiswahili la Berlin (BALAKI-BE), ZMO (online) (2020)

“After Waithood? Contemporary Approaches to Research with Youth Across ‘Muslim Worlds’.” Organizer, International Workshop, Research Centre Normative Orders, Goethe University Frankfurt (2020)

“Youth Identity and Belonging in the Zanzibar Diaspora”, Presenter, Conference: Us and Them: Diasporas for Others in the Indian Ocean, Centre for Interdisciplinary Area Studies, Martin-Luther University Halle, Germany (2019)