Religious Re-Conversion: Mediations of Local Islamic Practices

Abstract

This chapter situates the role of Islam in the change process on the island. It narrates the mutations in the islanders’ religious identification as Muslims that were engendered by the mediation of Soqotrans’ religious practices by different political regimes demarcated into distinct historical periods. First, it highlights the paradoxical situation of Soqotra whose population was originally and predominantly Muslims, at least as of the eighteenth century if not prior to that period, had to be literally re-converted into their faith.