Epilogue

Abstract

The conclusion returns to debates about globalization, global Islam, and global terror, but links these overall concerns to the everyday lives of young Muslims in Lamu. This book challenges portrayals that concentrate on young Muslims’ supposed conflicting engagements with Western modernity. The conclusion therefore does not reflect upon “Islam and the West” and its transpiration in young people’s lives, but rather considers the moral urgency that underlies discussions of self-fashioning and embodiment in contexts of rapid change. The detailed discussion of language and self-fashioning that formed the focus of the book sought to provoke broader discussions of ethical living in contexts of change. The conclusion reflects upon how self-fashioning is always also a political project, whereby young people position themselves locally but also translocally in relation to a range of “others.” The ambiguity of social evaluations, and the uncertainity as to how “others” evaluate young people’s everyday practices, forms a central focus of this discussion.