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Paper long abstract:

During their whole life, Muslim women in Benin engage in seeking knowledge about Islam, drawing on a multitude of sources that at times reinforce, at times contradict each other. How to know what is the right knowledge emerges a question that is posing itself on a day-to-day basis and manifests in seemingly mundane interactions and situations. Carefully analyzing these moments, this paper looks at religious knowing as relational as well as situatively and contextually contingent. This perspective shows women as seekers, keepers and multiplicators of religious knowledge, constantly claiming religious knowledge that is being accepted, challenged, or rejected, thereby creating a dynamic scape of religious discourse that is too easily ignored in a script-centered understanding of Islamic knowledge.