Press Release

Contact: Sheryl Hayes
Sheryl@virginia.edu
www.virginiafoundation.org
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive Charlottesville, VA
22903-4629
PH: 434-924-3296
FAX: 434-296-4714
For Immediate Release

“Millennialism on the Margins:
Islam and Religious Change in Colonial Western Kenya”

Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, VFH Fellow, discusses a Muslim movement in East Africa

Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, VFH Fellow, will present “Millennialism on the Margins:
Islam and Religious Change in Colonial Western Kenya.”  In her talk, Hoehler-Fatton will discuss her research on Islam and patterns of religious change in the Kenyan interior.    The event, part of the Spring 2006 VFH Fellows Seminar SeriesVisionary Voices in the Midst of Violence, will be held on Tuesday, April 11, 4-5:30 p.m. at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Hoehler-Fatton will present that amid the repression and brutality of colonialism, there emerged in western Kenya a Muslim millennial movement whose proponents proclaimed the imminent end of the world.  Traveling the countryside in 1926, a group of Luyia Muslims issued an urgent call to convert to Islam, for God’s chosen deliverer would soon arrive to exterminate all infidels, force Europeans off the land, and usher in a new age of Islamic supremacy.  Hoehler-Fatton situates this movement within African Islamic traditions, and within its own predominantly non-Muslim local milieu. She argues that Luyia Muslim millennialism was informed by regional patterns of indigenous spirituality and prophetic discourse that transcended ethnic and creedal boundaries throughout the East African interior in the 19th and 20th centuries.  By exploring change and continuity in patterns of faith on the margins of the British Empire, Hoehler-Fatton suggests new ways to think about religious transformations in our own turbulent times.

An Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Viriginia, Hoehler-Fatton is the author of Women of Fire and Spirit: History, Faith and Gender in Roho Religion in Western Kenya (Oxford University Press, 1996).  She directs the undergraduate program in her department and is currently completing a study on the introduction of Islam in the Kenyan interior.

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), based in Charlottesville, is a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the humanities, and to using the humanities to address issues of broad public concern.  The VFH Fellows Program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and private donations.

In all its programs, the Foundation works to make scholarship accessible; to promote understanding and discussion of enduring and contemporary issues; and to broaden the range of educational opportunities available to all Virginians.

VFH Fellows seminars are free and open to the public and are held at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 145 Ednam Drive, Charlottesville.  Presentations begin at 4 p.m. and are followed by refreshments and an informal time for discussion and questions.  

For more information on the seminar visit www.virginiafoundation.org/fellowships.  For directions to the VFH, visit virginiafoundation.org or contact aspencer@virginia.edu, 434-243-5526.  For media inquiries about the seminar topic, fellowships, or other VFH programs, contact Sheryl Hayes at 434-924-3296 or Sheryl@virginia.edu

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