Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how young people in Zanzibar negotiate tensions between traditional values, modernist processes and Islamic reformism in their quest for simultaneously respectable and fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses how young Zanzibaris negotiate tensions between traditional values, modernist processes and Islamic reformism in their quest for simultaneously respectable and fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships. While sexual pleasure for men and women is emphasized and expressed in extensive sexual education sessions, transformations of courting, sex and marriage expectations are at the centre of a tense debate about the decline of Islamic morality in the islands. Yet, rather than signalling a radical shift from arranged marriage based on pragmatic-practical considerations to what Giddens (1992) called 'pure' relationships based on love, these transformations show considerable continuities with the values on which previous marital relationships were built, including notions of respectability grounded in the concepts of haya (shyness, modesty) and heshima (honour, respect), but also pragmatic considerations (e.g. economic status, fertility), mutual compatibility, and romantic and sexual desires. The more significant shift, it seems, lies in an increasing demand for more individualised forms of decision-making, and a reconfiguration of expectations connected to intimacy and companionship.

I trace these developments through case studies of two Zanzibari women's quests for 'love' and sexual satisfaction: one middle-class girl of Yemeni origin who persuades her family to let her marry someone they consider unsuitable, and one HIV-positive divorcee who finds love outside of marriage, but finally succumbs to societal pressures. Focusing on sexual practice, I analyse how people forge new forms of intimacy by selectively drawing on local interpretations of Islam, essentialist discourses brought forward by Islamic reformists, and Western health and social interventions.