Alamin Mazrui
Biographic Data
| ID | 222132 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alamin Mazrui |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Mazrui |
| SIGNATURE | MAZRUI A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Ohio State University |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-5947-310X |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Translation, Interpretation, and the War on Terrorism in East Africa
The American “war on terrorism” underscored the critical need for the study of some “critical languages” in American colleges and universities and their mobilization, sometimes through translation/interpretation for specific objectives of war and peace. This chapter focuses on two dimensions of translation/interpretation in the war against terrorism to win hearts and minds of real, potential, or imagined enemies and their supporters. One dimensio…
Geographic and Demographic Spread of Swahili
Originating from its relatively tiny native speaking population on the narrow East African coastal strip and its adjacent islands, the Swahili language today has spread throughout East and Central Africa to become the most widely spoken African language after Arabic. This chapter explores the various forces – trade, religion, education, wars, and urbanization – that have led to this momentous linguistic expansion over the years. In the process, t…
The Emerging Clinical Neuroscience of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review
The advent of next-generation sequencing technology, advanced imaging techniques, and cutting-edge molecular techniques for modeling ASD has allowed researchers to define ASD risk-related biological pathways and circuits that may, for the first time, unify the effects of disparate risk factors into common neurobiological mechanisms. The path from these mechanisms to biological treatments that improve the lives of individuals with autism remains u…
Ngugi: Reflections on his Life of Writing
Fanon in the East African Experience
Frantz Fanon's Les Damnés de la terre is the only one of Fanon's books to have been translated into Swahili, and it is among a handful of foreign-language texts to have more than one translated version in the Swahili language, in this case two. By the time the Swahili translations of Fanon were released, Fanon's ideas were already circulating widely in East Africa, especially through The Wretched of the Earth, Constance Farrington's English trans…
The Indian Experience as a Swahili Mirror in Colonial Mombasa: The Ambiguous Position of Sheikh Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui
People of Indian descent had long interacted with the Swahili of East Africa. This interrelationship became particularly momentous during British colonial rule that gave additional impetus to Indian migration to East Africa. In time East Africa, in general, and Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city, in particular, became home to significant populations of Indian settler communities. Motivated by an immigrant psychology and relatively privileged st…
Cultural Politics of Translation: East Africa in a Global Context
Introduction. 1. Language, Identity, and Translation in the Swahili Experience: Between the Bible and the Qur'an. 2. Translation and Foreign Relations: Between Tradition and Modernity. 3. Translating Fanon in Socialist Tanzania: Between the Wretched and the Damned. 4. Translation Post-9/11: The US Embassy Project in Kenya. 5. Translating the Law: Reflections of a Linguistic Activist. Conclusion. Appendix
Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses Edited by John Chesworth and Franz Kogelmann
Journal Article Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses Edited by John Chesworth and Franz Kogelmann Get access Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses Edited by John Chesworth and Franz Kogelmann (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014. ‘Islam in Africa’, 15.), xv + 281 pp. Price HB $156.00. EAN 978–9004250543. Alamin Mazrui Alamin Mazrui Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic St…
Postcolonial linguistic voices: Identity choices and representations
Postcolonial linguistic voices: identity choices and representations." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 34(7), pp. 750–751
Language Ideology, Translation/Interpretation, and Courts
A domain that demonstrates a particularly high incidence of the interplay between language ideology and translation/interpretation is no doubt the law court. The linguistically embedded power relations that are integral to the interactional process between various parties in a law suit often become accentuated when meaning has to be mediated between two or more language varieties through the agency of a court interpreter. Contrary to the common b…
Muslim spaces of hope: Geographies of possibility in Britain and the West
Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael * By Nathaniel DEUTSCH
Inventing America’s Worst Family is a brilliant and fascinating account of how the political construction of race in early twentieth-century America shaped and reshaped the public (re)presentation of the Ishmaels, a poor white family from Indiana. The study casts new light on the intersection of race and class, on the one hand, and race and religion, on the other, and how ‘scientific’ racism of the time exploited these social nodes in the continu…
Language and the Media in Africa: Between the Old Empire and the New
Peter Mwaura, former director of the School of Journalism of the University of Nairobi, has argued that ‘if the communication media [in Africa] are to be part of our culture as indeed all effective and meaningful communication should be – then they must use the local language[s] of our culture’. He concludes that there is a real sense in which ‘the medium of communication is also the message’. This position is one which is widely held in African …
Linguistics in a colonial world: A story of language, meaning and power
Linguistics in a colonial world: a story of language, meaning and power, by Joseph Errington, Oxford and Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2008, x + 199 pp., £50.00/$84.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4051-0569-9
Islam and Politics in Kenya
The Swahili literary tradition: An intercultural heritage
Swahili literature, broadly defined as that body of verbal art originally composed in the Swahili language, is a product of what Ali Mazrui (1986) has termed Africa’s triple heritage. It emerged out of a confluence of three forces: the indigenous tradition, the Islamic legacy, and the western impact. The indigenous contribution has, of course, featured primarily in the realm of orature; but, over the years, it has continued to affect the destiny …
Secrets: Farah's ?Things Fall Apart
Secrets: Farah’s “Things Fall Apart” Ousseina D. Alidou (bio) and Alamin M. Mazrui (bio) It has become quite common today to hear the African state being described as the “failed state.” Most African states are fundamentally without roots in the societies in which they find themselves. Institutional collapse abounds and, in its bid to survive, the failed state sometimes devours its own citizens—the rage of the castrated. The African state in plac…
The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience
Part 1 Global Africa: language an drace in the black experience - an African perspective African languages in the African-American experience linguistic Eurocentrism and African counterpenetration - Ali Mazuri and the global frontiers of language language and the quest for liberation - the legacy of Fritz Fanon. Part 2 Continental Africa: language in a multicultural context - the African experience language planning and gender planning language p…
The World Bank, the language question and the future of African education
L'enseignement en Afrique est traverse par une contestation portant sur l'anglais d'une part et les langues indigenes d'autre part. Les langues africaines ont ete marginalisees par la pression colonialiste creant ainsi une repartition inegale du pouvoir entre les personnes selon les langues apprises. Seuls quelques pays (Somalie, Soudan, Ethyopie, Tanzanie) ont reussi a etendre l'enseignement des langues indigenes au-dela de l'enseignement primai…
A tale of two Englishes: The imperial language in post-colonial Kenya and Uganda
Language policy and the foundations of democracy: An African perspective
Article Language policy and the foundations of democracy: an African perspective was published on January 1, 1996 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1996, issue 118)
The state vs. the academic unions in post‐colonial Kenya
In November 1993, the faculty of Kenya's four public universities went on a strike that was not officially called off until September 1994, in protest against the government's decision not to register their proposed union, the University Academic Staff Union (UASU). Despite many precedents from a number of other African countries, the Moi government has treated the idea of an academic union as an anathema to Kenya's body politic. Even after a lon…
Ethnicity and pluralism: The politicization of religion in Kenya
(1993). Ethnicity and pluralism: the politicization of religion in Kenya. Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Journal: Vol. 14, No. 1-2, pp. 191-201
Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon
(1993). Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon. Third World Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 351-363
Dominant Languages in a Plural Society: English and Kiswahili in Post-Colonial East Africa
Within the regional constellation of languages in East Africa English and Kiswahili have been the most influential trans-ethnic languages. The sociopolitical dynamics of these languages, however, have varied from one country to another along three interrelated parameters: (1) the confluence of indigenous, Islamic and Western traditions; (2) the divide, in power relations, between imperial, hegemonic and preponderant languages; and (3) the differe…
The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience
Part 1 Global Africa: language an drace in the black experience - an African perspective African languages in the African-American experience linguistic Eurocentrism and African counterpenetration - Ali Mazuri and the global frontiers of language language and the quest for liberation - the legacy of Fritz Fanon. Part 2 Continental Africa: language in a multicultural context - the African experience language planning and gender planning language p…
Dominant Languages in a Plural Society: English and Kiswahili in Post-Colonial East Africa
Within the regional constellation of languages in East Africa English and Kiswahili have been the most influential trans-ethnic languages. The sociopolitical dynamics of these languages, however, have varied from one country to another along three interrelated parameters: (1) the confluence of indigenous, Islamic and Western traditions; (2) the divide, in power relations, between imperial, hegemonic and preponderant languages; and (3) the differe…
The World Bank, the language question and the future of African education
L'enseignement en Afrique est traverse par une contestation portant sur l'anglais d'une part et les langues indigenes d'autre part. Les langues africaines ont ete marginalisees par la pression colonialiste creant ainsi une repartition inegale du pouvoir entre les personnes selon les langues apprises. Seuls quelques pays (Somalie, Soudan, Ethyopie, Tanzanie) ont reussi a etendre l'enseignement des langues indigenes au-dela de l'enseignement primai…
The state vs. the academic unions in post‐colonial Kenya
In November 1993, the faculty of Kenya's four public universities went on a strike that was not officially called off until September 1994, in protest against the government's decision not to register their proposed union, the University Academic Staff Union (UASU). Despite many precedents from a number of other African countries, the Moi government has treated the idea of an academic union as an anathema to Kenya's body politic. Even after a lon…
Ethnicity and pluralism: The politicization of religion in Kenya
(1993). Ethnicity and pluralism: the politicization of religion in Kenya. Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Journal: Vol. 14, No. 1-2, pp. 191-201
The Indian Experience as a Swahili Mirror in Colonial Mombasa: The Ambiguous Position of Sheikh Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui
People of Indian descent had long interacted with the Swahili of East Africa. This interrelationship became particularly momentous during British colonial rule that gave additional impetus to Indian migration to East Africa. In time East Africa, in general, and Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city, in particular, became home to significant populations of Indian settler communities. Motivated by an immigrant psychology and relatively privileged st…
Ngugi: Reflections on his Life of Writing
Language policy and the foundations of democracy: An African perspective
Article Language policy and the foundations of democracy: an African perspective was published on January 1, 1996 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1996, issue 118)
Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon
(1993). Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon. Third World Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 351-363
Ideology, Theory, and Revolution: Lessons from the Mau Mau of Kenya
Patrick Adams has depicted peasant reaction against colonialism in Africa (including the militant Mau Mau reaction) as somewhat spontaneous, conceptually parochial, and lacking ideological foundation. This view is, in fact, not uncommon and can be found in a number of historical accounts of the Mau Mau movement in colonial Kenya. But how valid is this conception of the anticolonial efforts of the peasantry in Africa? To what extent can we regard …
The Historical Imperative in African Activist Literature
No abstract
Roots of Kiswahili: Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Dual Heritage
No abstract
Ethnicity and pluralism: The politicization of religion in Kenya
(1993). Ethnicity and pluralism: the politicization of religion in Kenya. Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Journal: Vol. 14, No. 1-2, pp. 191-201
Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon
(1993). Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Frantz Fanon. Third World Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 351-363
Dominant Languages in a Plural Society: English and Kiswahili in Post-Colonial East Africa
Within the regional constellation of languages in East Africa English and Kiswahili have been the most influential trans-ethnic languages. The sociopolitical dynamics of these languages, however, have varied from one country to another along three interrelated parameters: (1) the confluence of indigenous, Islamic and Western traditions; (2) the divide, in power relations, between imperial, hegemonic and preponderant languages; and (3) the differe…
The state vs. the academic unions in post‐colonial Kenya
In November 1993, the faculty of Kenya's four public universities went on a strike that was not officially called off until September 1994, in protest against the government's decision not to register their proposed union, the University Academic Staff Union (UASU). Despite many precedents from a number of other African countries, the Moi government has treated the idea of an academic union as an anathema to Kenya's body politic. Even after a lon…
A tale of two Englishes: The imperial language in post-colonial Kenya and Uganda
Language policy and the foundations of democracy: An African perspective
Article Language policy and the foundations of democracy: an African perspective was published on January 1, 1996 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 1996, issue 118)
The World Bank, the language question and the future of African education
L'enseignement en Afrique est traverse par une contestation portant sur l'anglais d'une part et les langues indigenes d'autre part. Les langues africaines ont ete marginalisees par la pression colonialiste creant ainsi une repartition inegale du pouvoir entre les personnes selon les langues apprises. Seuls quelques pays (Somalie, Soudan, Ethyopie, Tanzanie) ont reussi a etendre l'enseignement des langues indigenes au-dela de l'enseignement primai…
The Swahili literary tradition: An intercultural heritage
Swahili literature, broadly defined as that body of verbal art originally composed in the Swahili language, is a product of what Ali Mazrui (1986) has termed Africa’s triple heritage. It emerged out of a confluence of three forces: the indigenous tradition, the Islamic legacy, and the western impact. The indigenous contribution has, of course, featured primarily in the realm of orature; but, over the years, it has continued to affect the destiny …
Secrets: Farah's ?Things Fall Apart
Secrets: Farah’s “Things Fall Apart” Ousseina D. Alidou (bio) and Alamin M. Mazrui (bio) It has become quite common today to hear the African state being described as the “failed state.” Most African states are fundamentally without roots in the societies in which they find themselves. Institutional collapse abounds and, in its bid to survive, the failed state sometimes devours its own citizens—the rage of the castrated. The African state in plac…
The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience
Part 1 Global Africa: language an drace in the black experience - an African perspective African languages in the African-American experience linguistic Eurocentrism and African counterpenetration - Ali Mazuri and the global frontiers of language language and the quest for liberation - the legacy of Fritz Fanon. Part 2 Continental Africa: language in a multicultural context - the African experience language planning and gender planning language p…
Islam and Politics in Kenya
Language and the Media in Africa: Between the Old Empire and the New
Peter Mwaura, former director of the School of Journalism of the University of Nairobi, has argued that ‘if the communication media [in Africa] are to be part of our culture as indeed all effective and meaningful communication should be – then they must use the local language[s] of our culture’. He concludes that there is a real sense in which ‘the medium of communication is also the message’. This position is one which is widely held in African …
Linguistics in a colonial world: A story of language, meaning and power
Linguistics in a colonial world: a story of language, meaning and power, by Joseph Errington, Oxford and Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2008, x + 199 pp., £50.00/$84.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4051-0569-9
Inventing America's Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael * By Nathaniel DEUTSCH
Inventing America’s Worst Family is a brilliant and fascinating account of how the political construction of race in early twentieth-century America shaped and reshaped the public (re)presentation of the Ishmaels, a poor white family from Indiana. The study casts new light on the intersection of race and class, on the one hand, and race and religion, on the other, and how ‘scientific’ racism of the time exploited these social nodes in the continu…
Muslim spaces of hope: Geographies of possibility in Britain and the West
Language Ideology, Translation/Interpretation, and Courts
A domain that demonstrates a particularly high incidence of the interplay between language ideology and translation/interpretation is no doubt the law court. The linguistically embedded power relations that are integral to the interactional process between various parties in a law suit often become accentuated when meaning has to be mediated between two or more language varieties through the agency of a court interpreter. Contrary to the common b…
Postcolonial linguistic voices: Identity choices and representations
Postcolonial linguistic voices: identity choices and representations." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 34(7), pp. 750–751
Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses Edited by John Chesworth and Franz Kogelmann
Journal Article Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses Edited by John Chesworth and Franz Kogelmann Get access Sharīʿa in Africa Today: Reactions and Responses Edited by John Chesworth and Franz Kogelmann (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014. ‘Islam in Africa’, 15.), xv + 281 pp. Price HB $156.00. EAN 978–9004250543. Alamin Mazrui Alamin Mazrui Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic St…
Cultural Politics of Translation: East Africa in a Global Context
Introduction. 1. Language, Identity, and Translation in the Swahili Experience: Between the Bible and the Qur'an. 2. Translation and Foreign Relations: Between Tradition and Modernity. 3. Translating Fanon in Socialist Tanzania: Between the Wretched and the Damned. 4. Translation Post-9/11: The US Embassy Project in Kenya. 5. Translating the Law: Reflections of a Linguistic Activist. Conclusion. Appendix
Fanon in the East African Experience
Frantz Fanon's Les Damnés de la terre is the only one of Fanon's books to have been translated into Swahili, and it is among a handful of foreign-language texts to have more than one translated version in the Swahili language, in this case two. By the time the Swahili translations of Fanon were released, Fanon's ideas were already circulating widely in East Africa, especially through The Wretched of the Earth, Constance Farrington's English trans…
The Indian Experience as a Swahili Mirror in Colonial Mombasa: The Ambiguous Position of Sheikh Al-Amin Bin Ali Mazrui
People of Indian descent had long interacted with the Swahili of East Africa. This interrelationship became particularly momentous during British colonial rule that gave additional impetus to Indian migration to East Africa. In time East Africa, in general, and Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city, in particular, became home to significant populations of Indian settler communities. Motivated by an immigrant psychology and relatively privileged st…
The Emerging Clinical Neuroscience of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review
The advent of next-generation sequencing technology, advanced imaging techniques, and cutting-edge molecular techniques for modeling ASD has allowed researchers to define ASD risk-related biological pathways and circuits that may, for the first time, unify the effects of disparate risk factors into common neurobiological mechanisms. The path from these mechanisms to biological treatments that improve the lives of individuals with autism remains u…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (17 works) · History (16 works) · African history and culture studies (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Colonialism (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (9 works)