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SUMMARY:What Is Supreme about the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM
 )? Challenging the practices of representativeness amongst Muslims in Keny
 a  - Prof Hassan Mwakimako\, Pwani University \, Kenya
DTSTART:20170130T170000Z
DTEND:20170130T183000Z
UID:TALK69778@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:Over the last two decades\, representativeness – referring b
 roadly to the legitimacy criteria of representative organizations – has 
 become key to reform projects of global and local governance. For almost f
 our decades the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM) has been the mos
 t dominant Muslim representative group in Kenya. Despite its many challeng
 es SUPKEM remains the only widely recognizable and legitimate amongst othe
 r groups who often emerge to claim the role and authority to speak on beha
 lf of Muslims. How SUPKEM has managed to maintain this posture for so long
  has to do with its clever positioning of its claims to representativeness
  and the ambiguity of its meaning. While it often appears as a cure for th
 e legitimacy deficit of local Muslim religious organizations\, the usefuln
 ess of this notion in understanding Muslim politics in Kenya has hardly be
 en assessed. This discussion provides a socio-historical account of ‘rep
 resentativeness’ claims by SUPKEM\, the oldest umbrella organization for
 med to represent Muslim interests in Kenya. It discusses SUPKEMs evolving 
 ‘righteous representation’\; its major personalities\, its various ant
 ecedent\, opponents and antagonists to make three observations. First\, th
 e council remains a critical public forum for the articulation of a Muslim
  identity within a democratizing nation state. Second\; the council emerge
 d from a confluence of local dynamics and developments in the wider Muslim
  societies that shaped its distinctive organizational identity and\, three
 \; it’s a key precursor to the Muslims struggles in the face of modernit
 y\, marginalization and peripherization. These arguments rest upon a surve
 y of an impressive range of un-accessed and under-utilized archive publish
 ed by the council\, interviews with former officials\, their relations and
  a review of newspaper cuttings.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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