Witchcraft, Terrorism, and ‘Things of Conflict’ in Coastal Kenya

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the coastal Kenyan town of Malindi, where concerns about witchcraft and terrorism reflect and inform tensions and conflicts, which sometimes result in violence. The chapter argues that discourses about witchcraft and terrorism both provide a way of speaking about hidden enemies who are thought to covertly plot violence that disrupts social relations from within. State actors and others often attempt to expose these hidden enemies and formulate suspicions that particular groups may involve themselves in witchcraft or terrorism. In response, these groups strive to avoid engaging with particular material religious forms that are commonly associated with witchcraft or terrorism. In this way, discourses about witchcraft and terrorism may be understood to have a formative dimension, because they set in motion complex dynamics of exposure and concealment that shape urban environments and the material religious forms that take place in them. In these dynamics, particular material objects may become ‘things of conflict’ because they are commonly associated with witchcraft or terrorism, which link widespread fears about witches and terrorists to the actual people who engage with these things. The chapter demonstrates how these dynamics shape the material expression of Christianity, Islam, and indigenous African religiosity in Malindi in distinctive and uneven ways, since terrorism is often primarily associated with Islam, and witchcraft with indigenous African religious traditions.