The Question of Becoming: Islamic Reform Movements in Contemporary Ethiopia

Abstract

AbstractFacilitated by a new (since 1991) political climate, enhancing Muslim opportunities for religious expression, several Islamic reform movements have surfaced in Ethiopia. Under consideration here are the Salafi movement, the Tabligh movement and an Intellectualist revivalist movement, each of which was crucial for the reconfiguration of religious affiliation, and served as a channel in the search for belonging and coherent meaning. Discussing the movements' socio-cultural composition and their particular features, this paper pays attention to how issues of locality interact with translocal ideological currents and affect one another. Of particular interest in the Ethiopian case is the explicit avoidance of any political agenda, a distinct intermarriage with a discourse on ethnicity, where the latter has contributed to complex processes of constructing and demarcating religious- and ethnic-based boundaries. The paper thus seeks to demonstrate the complex interrelationship between global currents and local factors, all contributing to the heterogenisation of contemporary Islam.