ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the performance of prayer has been the critical means by which Islam has been localised, rendered central to the conduct and understanding of social relations in Mayotte, and conversely the critical means by which social relations have been Islamicised. It begins, however via a detour which provides two counter threads to the argument, an analytical one that refers to the question of conversion, especially as it has been set forth by Robert Hefner, and an ethnographic one from the neighbouring, closely related, and yet in some respects strikingly different picture to Mayotte found in northwest Madagascar. The chapter prefers to speak about ‘active participation in, or even better, about ‘acceptance of Islam rather than about ‘conversion to’ it. It addresses the localisation of Islam in quite another way. The chapter takes their significance to have lain, at least during the 1970’s in Mayotte, less in their semantic or referential content than in their performability.
