By analysing the case study of a young Muslim man's conversion within and between different expressions of Islam in the Gambia, this article challenges common understandings of conversion that see it as a transition from one form of religious belief or identity to another, as well as theories of Islam's place in Africa that distinguish between ‘local’ traditions and ‘world’ religions. The ethnographic case study illustrates that, for Gambian youth, conversion is not a unilinear path but entails the continuous making of moral negotiations and a preparedness to reflect on the ambiguity of selfhood – an inevitable result of the making of these negotiations.
AdraouiM-A (2009) Salafism in France: Ideology, practices and contradictions. In: MeijerR (ed.) Global Salafism. Islam's New Religious Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 364–383.
2.
AhmadM (1995) Tablīghī Jamā‘at. In: EspositoJL (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Vol. 4, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 165–169.
3.
AlidouOD (2005) Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
4.
AsadT (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
5.
AugisE (2009) Jambaar or jumbax-out? How Sunnite women negotiate power and belief in orthodox Islamic femininity. In: DioufMLeichtmanM (eds) New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 211–233.
6.
BaumR (1990) The emergence of a Diola Christianity. Africa60(3): 370–398.
7.
BayatA (2007) Islamism and the politics of fun. Public Culture19(3): 433–459.
8.
BayatA (2010) Muslim youth and the claim of youthfulness. In: HerreraLBayatA (eds) Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 27–47.
9.
ComaroffJComaroffJL (1991) Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South AfricaVol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10.
DarboeMN (2007) The Gambia: Islam and politics. In: MilesWFS (ed.) Political Islam in West Africa: State-Society Relations Transformed, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, pp. 129–160.
11.
DioufMLeichtmanM (2009) Introduction: New perspectives on Islam in Senegal. Conversion, migration, wealth, power, and femininity. In: DioufMLeichtmanM (eds) New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–18.
12.
DraméA (2009) Migration, marriage, and ethnicity: The early development of Islam in precolonial middle Casamance. In: DioufMLeichtmanM (eds) New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 169–188.
13.
DuttonY (1996) Amal v. hadīth in Islamic law: The case of sadl al-yadayn (holding one's hands by one's sides) when doing the prayer. Islamic Law and Society3(1): 13–40.
14.
EngelkeM (2004) Discontinuity and the discourse of conversion. Journal of Religion in Africa34(1–2): 82–109.
15.
FisherHJ (1973) Conversion reconsidered: Some historical aspects of religious conversion in Black Africa. Africa43: 27–40.
16.
FisherHJ (1985) The juggernaut's apologia: Conversion to Islam in Black Africa. Africa55: 153–173.
17.
FoucaultM (1997) The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom. In: RabinowP (ed.) Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: Vol. 1, Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, New York: New Press, pp. 281–301.
18.
FrederiksMT (2003) We Have Toiled All Night: Christianity in The Gambia, 1456–2000, Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum.
19.
GiffordP (1998) African Christianity: Its Public Role, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
20.
HamidS (2009) The attraction of ‘authentic Islam’: Salafism and British Muslim youth. In: MeijerR (ed.) Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 384–403.
21.
HardingSF (1987) Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The rhetoric of fundamental Baptist conversion. American Ethnologist14(1): 167–181.
22.
HastingsA (1976) African Christianity: An Essay in Interpretation, London: Geoffrey Chapman.
23.
HefnerR (1993) Introduction: World building and the rationality of conversion. In: HefnerR (ed.) Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 3–43.
HortonR (1975a) On the rationality of conversion, Part I. Africa45(3): 219–235.
26.
HortonR (1975b) On the rationality of conversion, Part II. Africa45(3): 373–399.
27.
JansonM (2014) Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia: The Tablighi Jama‘at, New York: Cambridge University Press/International African Institute.
28.
Jules-RosetteB (1975) African Apostles: Ritual and Conversion in the Church of John Maranke, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
29.
LambekM (1990) Certain knowledge, contestable authority: Power and practice on the Islamic periphery. American Ethnologist17(1): 23–40.
30.
LarkinBMeyerB (2006) Pentecostalism, Islam and culture: New religious movements in West Africa. In: AkyeampongEK (ed.) Themes in West African History, Oxford: James Currey, pp. 286–312.
31.
LastM (1992) The power of youth, youth of power: Notes on the religions of the young in northern Nigeria. In: D'Almeida-ToporH (ed.) Les jeunes en Afrique. La politique et la villeVol. 2. Paris: L'Harmattan, pp. 375–399.
32.
LaunayR (2006) An invisible religion? Anthropology's avoidance of Islam in Africa. In: NtarangwiMMillsDBabikerM (eds) African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice, London: Zed Books, pp. 188–203.
33.
LeBlancM-N (2000) From sya to Islam: Social change and identity among Muslim youth in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire. Africa70(3): 442–481.
34.
LeichtmanM (2009) Revolution, modernity and (trans)national Shi‘i Islam: Rethinking religious conversion in Senegal. Journal of Religion in Africa39: 319–351.
35.
LevtzionN (1979) Conversion to Islam, New York: Holmes & Meier.
36.
LoflandJStarkR (1965) Becoming a world-saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective. American Sociological Review30(6): 862–875.
37.
MahmoodS (2005) Politics of Piety. The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
38.
MainsD (2007) Neoliberal times: Progress, boredom, and shame among young men in urban Ethiopia. American Ethnologist34(4): 659–673.
39.
MarkP (1985) A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance since 1500, Berlin: Franz Steiner Verlag.
40.
MarsdenM (2005) Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
41.
MasquelierA (2007) Negotiating futures: Islam, youth, and the state in Niger. In: SoaresBFOtayekR (eds) Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 243–262.
42.
MasquelierA (2013) Teatime: Boredom and the temporalities of young men in Niger. Africa83(3): 470–491.
43.
MasudMK (2000) Introduction. In: MasudMK (eds) Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablīghī Jamā‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal, Leiden: Brill, pp. xiii–lx.
44.
MaxwellD (2002) A youth religion? Born-Again Christianity in Zimbabwe and beyond. In: TrudellBKingKMcGrathSNugentP (eds) Africa's Young Majority, Edinburgh: Centre of African Studies, Edinburgh University, pp. 185–205.
45.
MaxwellD (2005) The durawall of faith: Pentecostal spirituality in neo-liberal Zimbabwe. Journal of Religion in Africa35: 4–32.
46.
MeijerR (2009) Introduction. In: MeijerR (ed.) Global Salafism: Islam's New Religious Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1–32.
47.
MeyerB (1998) ‘Make a complete break with the past’: Memory and post-colonial modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist discourse. Journal of Religion in Africa28(3): 316–349.
48.
MeyerB (2004) Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic churches. Annual Review of Anthropology33: 447–474.
49.
Miran-GuyonM (2012) ‘Native’ conversion to Islam in southern Côte d’Ivoire: The perils of double identity. Journal of Religion in Africa42: 95–117.
50.
NockAD (1933) Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
51.
OsellaCOsellaF (1998) Friendship and flirting: Micro-politics in Kerala, South Asia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute4(2): 189–206.
52.
PeacockJL (1984) Religion and life history: An exploration in cultural psychology. In: BrunerEM (ed.) Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society, Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society, pp. 94–116.
53.
RafaelVL (1993) Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule, Durham: Duke University Press.
54.
Robbins J (2004) Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
55.
RobbinsJ (2007) Continuity thinking and the problem of Christian culture: Belief, time, and the anthropology of Christianity. Current Anthropology48(1): 5–38.
56.
RobbinsJ (2010) Anthropology, Pentecostalism, and the New Paul: Conversion, event, and social transformation. South Atlantic Quarterly109(4): 633–652.
57.
RosanderEE (1997) Introduction: The Islamization of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’. In: WesterlundDRosanderEE (eds) African Islam and Islam in Africa. Encounters between Sufis and Islamists, London: Hurst, pp. 1–27.
58.
RoyO (2004) Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, London: Hurst.
59.
SchielkeS (2009a) Being good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, fragmentation, and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute15: 24–40.
60.
SchielkeS (2009b) Ambivalent commitments: Troubles of morality, religiosity and aspiration among young Egyptians. Journal of Religion in Africa39: 158–185.
61.
SchulzD (2012) Muslims and New Media in West Africa: Pathways to God, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
62.
SearingJ (2003) Conversion to Islam: Military recruitment and generational conflict in a Sereer-Safèn village (Bandia), 1920–38. Journal of African History44(1): 73–94.
63.
SikandY (2002) The Origins and Development of the Tablighi-Jama‘at (1920–2000): A Cross-Country Comparative Study, New Delhi: Orient Longman.
64.
SimonGM (2009) The soul freed of cares? Islamic prayer, subjectivity, and the contradictions of moral selfhood in Minangkabau, Indonesia. American Ethnologist36(2): 258–275.
65.
SoaresBF (2010) ‘Rasta’ Sufis and Muslim youth culture in Mali. In: HerreraLBayatA (eds) Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and the North, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 241–257.
66.
SoaresBFOsellaF (2009) Islam, politics, anthropology. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute15: 1–23.
67.
StambachA (2000) Evangelism and consumer culture in northern Tanzania. Anthropological Quarterly73(4): 171–179.
68.
StrombergPG (1993) Language and Self-Transformation. A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative, New York: Cambridge University Press.
69.
ThomsonS (2012) Christianity, Islam, and ‘the religion of pouring’: Non-linear conversion in a Gambia/Casamance borderland. Journal of Religion in Africa42: 240–276.
70.
UmarM (1993) Changing Islamic identity in Nigeria from the 1960s to the 1980s: From Sufism to anti-Sufism. In: BrennerL (ed.) Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 154–178.
71.
Van DijkR (1999) Pentecostalism, gerontocratic rule and democratization in Malawi: The changing position of the young in political culture. In: HaynesJ (ed.) Religion, Globalization and Political Culture in the Third World, New York: St. Martin's Press, pp. 164–188.
72.
Van der VeerP (1996) Introduction. In: Van der VeerP (ed.) Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 1–21.
73.
WeissB (2008) Chronic mobb asks a blessing: Apocalyptic hip-hop and the global crisis. In: ColeJDurhamD (eds) Figuring the Future: Globalization and the Temporalities of Children and Youth, Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 197–222.
74.
WhitehouseH (1998) From mission to movement: The impact of Christianity on patterns of political association in Papua New Guinea. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute4: 43–63.
75.
WoodberryJD (1992) Conversion in Islam. In: MalonyHNSouthardS (eds) Handbook of Religious Conversion, Birmingham: Religious Education Press, pp. 22–40.
