Keywords
conversion
religious minorities
African Diaspora
Buenaventura
How to Cite
Abstract
This article seeks to present and discuss some issues concerning the relationship between ethnic and religious identity in the case of the Muslim community of Buenaventura. It seeks to show that religious identity has not only been constructed in relation to ethnicity, but that both have served to generate mobilization strategies. To that purpose, based on narratives and typical acts of the Twelver Shia Islam, elements from the Nation of Islam have been kept, at the same time as myths and traditions have been reelaborated in order to adapt them to the bonaverense local vision. Such actions do not only refer to spiritual and collective identity pursuits, but they also allow the development of action agendas within the community. The data used in this paper comes from two fieldworks conducted in February and April 2011, as well as from the sermons (khutbahs) drawn up by the leader of the communityThe journal Memoria y Sociedad is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights.
Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.