Paper short abstract:

Within the realm of healing in Zanzibar Town, embodiment of the “other” religion is ambiguous. While it constitutes the affliction it can also provide the means to counter it. This paper analyzes how concepts of “dini” and “religion” are employed to navigate healing in an interreligious setting.

Paper long abstract:

Do Christians take Islamic medicine? - Yes, of course. You see, when you have a Muslim spirit, even if you are a Christians, you need to take Islamic medicine as that is the medicine to which Muslim spirits react.

And when Muslims have Christian spirits, like in the Kibuki? - Ah, the Kibuki is something else…

Indeed, the Kibuki does not fit into the narrative that spirit possession constitutes an undesirable affliction requiring treatment. Lived relationships with Buki spirits (Christian spirits from Madagascar) do not identify the embodiment of an "other" as the problem, but rather as solution: spirit possession renders further afflictions manageable. With Kibuki interreligiosity is embodied to counter afflictions.

From my interlocutor's perspective, however, spirit possession as such is a problematic condition that in inacceptable. According to him, such a close bodily encounter with any "other", let alone a Christian spirit, enables one's body to enact forbidden practices - such as heavily drinking Brandy - for which one will be held accountable on judgement day. Interreligiosity is questionable enough, this embodied interreligiosity is unthinkable.

Yet, my interlocutor regarded Christians' ingestion of the Qur'an an appropriate measure to be taken in light of possible possession with Muslim spirits. The embodiment of a religiously "other" spirit (the affliction) is best targeted with the embodiment of the "other's" scripture.

Via analytically distinguishing the concept of "dini" (Swahili, see also Arabic dīn) from "religion" in Zanzibar Town, this ethnographically grounded paper explores how embodied interreligious relations need to be healed and constitute healing.