Cindy Skach
This project involves an ethnography of the islands of the Comoros in the Mozambique Channel, the only territory of the European Union that is 99% Muslim. Currently, statebuilding there in the name of ‘modernity’ risks radicalizing Islam. Through formal interviews with key public officials, judges, lawyers and Islamic judges (cadis); through consultation of historical legal documents on the islands and in the Archives d’Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence; and through videotaped recordings of Islamic court proceedings on these islands, the project will chart the changing patterns and practices of Islamic and French republican laws and state institutions, paying special attention to the political coalitions favoring certain legal institutions, and advocating the abandonment of others.