Global Religious History as a Rhizome: Colonial Panics and Political Islam in German East Africa

A Global History of Religion aims to trace connections, controversies, and contingencies in the emergence of “religion” as a global category. Its main intention is to de-center European epistemologies of religion by drawing out a more intricate global and plural genealogy. This is a very complex endeavour, however, especially when one leaves the realm of academic debate and considers the quotidian understandings of “religion” emerging in colonial encounters. Here one is often confronted by vast entanglements of practices, perceptions and politics, which need a historical methodology that foregrounds the plurality, complexity and historicity of all religious epistemes. Drawing on Deleuze’ and Guattari’s philosophical figure of the rhizome, this article sketches such an approach in a conversation between theory and historiographical practice, as it maps out a particular episode in the construction of “political Islam” in German East Africa.