Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar, I ask how a continuously stabilized notion of "dini" as singular, separated from a potential plurality of "religion", speaks back to the conceptual conditions of "intra-action" with which I have approached an ever-changing topology of "religion multiple".

Paper long abstract:

Asking about the interreligious dialogue during ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar, I was lectured that the required plurality of religions does not work for "dini" (Swahili, often translated as "religion") which is singular, and which is Islam. With the analytical language of Karen Barad (2007, now glossed as major work of "new materialism"), I pondered on this conversation and described dini and religion in a relation of "intra-action": from within their entanglement, the differentiation of dini and religion matters eliciting new possibilities for entanglements. Because dini and religion are made to translate into each other, their differences become pronounced. The conversation departed from my question about the interreligious dialogue, employed the common translation of religion as dini to then distinguish dini from religion, and finally to comment on Christians' take on "dini" which in that instance was infused with a notion of religion, linking back to the interreligious dialogue. This has allowed me to address the ambiguities of dini/religion's entangled differentiations, disrupting connections, and bounded fluidities in the context of global power dynamics. In this contribution I probe to go deeper: I ask how a continuously stabilized notion of "dini" as singular, separated from a potential plurality of "religion", speaks back to the conceptual conditions of "intra-activity" as I have employed it for addressing an ever-changing topology of "religion multiple" in Zanzibar. To what extent does the analytical engagement with relationalities and multiplicities preclude dini's singularity? What does dini's intra-actively established singularity teach?