Research Project

Living Religious Plurality in Uganda

My book project, tentatively entitled “Living Religious Plurality in Uganda”, explores possibilities for, and forms of, religious plurality and coexistence in present-day Uganda, with particular attention to how the legal -institutional parameters of the post-colonial state and authoritarian forms of governance have been affecting inter-religious relations “on the ground”. I explore these questions by privileging the perspective of Muslims who, as members of a religious minority, look back at a longer history of stigmatization and systemic marginalization on the part of Christian-dominated governments. By asking how Muslims relate to and push against the legal-bureaucratic boundaries set by the postcolonial regime of religious regulation, the book seeks to fill a lacuna in anthropological scholarship on religious diversity in Africa that, so far, has tended to focus mostly on the interpersonal level of identity constructions and daily interactions with religious “others”.