Muslim Piety in the Context of Everyday Life Aesthetics and Devotional Engagement in Zanzibar

The presentation explores the interweaving of Muslim piety and sociality in the context of everyday life in Zanzibar Town. Approaching piety from the perspective of lived religion, it focuses on the way aesthetics in performance frame, but also provide potency to people’s devotional engagement. Ethnographically, attentive to rituals of the everyday, that is, healing encounters and enactments of protective remedies, the paper discusses how by articulatory efforts utterance, materiality and bodily movement merge in ways that may ease transmission of religious authority. By placing healing and protective remedies in the context of daily life and thus, as outcome of lived religion, the paper aims to draw attention to multiple and at times divergent ideas and aspiration regarding interpretations of Muslim piety.