Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia

This is a vivid and illuminating ethnographic account of an emerging force in contemporary Gambian social and religious life: the Tablighi Jama[at (TJ). Through the prism of five detailed biographical narratives, Janson evokes the everyday lived experiences of TJ activists embedded in the socio-cultural matrix of the Gambia. Her central objective is to dissect the ways in which youth, Islam and modernity – as distinct analytical concepts – intersect and coalesce in the lives of young Gambians seeking paths to piety through a contested arena in which tribal and reformist strands of Islam vie for primacy. Sensitive yet scholarly, Janson’s presentation is laudable for the way in which her micro observations – the raw field data – are consistently sutured to broader theoretical frames and a comprehensive body of scholarship on the phenomenon of resurgent Islam in several international contexts. What transpires is a multi-layered work of depth and texture that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which young women and men, inhabiting an ambivalent postcolonial space caught in the orbit of globalisation, appropriate and internalise religious experience.