Walking along a ridgeline that parallels Table Mountain, the majestic mountain around which Cape Town furls itself, I came across something most unexpected. It was a squat building with white-washed walls that had been painted aquamarine and yellow complemented by red-ledged windows. Most curiously, the building had three very prominent minarets. It was, I realized with a start, a mosque. I was self-conscious and embarrassed that I should question its presence in South Africa.
Why was I so shocked to see a mosque? I was more or less aware that South Africa is an overwhelming Christian nation. Both blacks and whites have, for at least the past few hundred years, worshipped the Christian God, even as they invoked his name for diametrically opposed causes. Nonetheless, I found it curious that the very idea of Islam in South Africa had never occurred to me before. Why, if there were Muslims, had I not seen the presence of radical Islamic organizations in any form?
Islam in South Africa, as in some other parts of the world, has become thoroughly secularized. This is not to say that they are less devout than their co-religionists elsewhere in the world. Rather, it is to say that they seem satisfied with the existence of a secular state and not interested in imposing sharia as the law of the land. Additionally, there seems to be little mainstream support for the imposition of poll taxes upon non-Muslims. Muslims in South Africa have developed a modern Islamic paradigm, the emergence of which may contain important lessons for other societies.
As early as 1913, under the leadership of Doctor A. Abdurahman, a series of Muslim Mission Schools began to appear in the Western Cape. Recognizing that the education at traditional mosque-schools was inadequate in a changing political economy, Dr. Abdurahman created these schools to provide both sound religious education and an adequate secular education to meet the modern demands of education. The Mission Schools co-opted the more traditional ulama leadership of the Cape and guaranteed that they would support the new approach by giving the clerics complete control over the religious curriculum. The creation of these schools cemented forever the notion within the Muslim population that traditional Islamic education did not provide sufficient teaching for modern South Africa. The reconciliation of a Western education system that provided the young the skills they needed to participate meaningfully in economic life with Islamic religious studies is central to understanding the accommodating Islam that exists in South Africa today.
In the emergence of the Muslim Youth Movement (MYM) in 1970, there exist many more illustrations of the uniqueness of Islam in South Africa. For example, the MYM was responsible for the introduction of an English translation of the Qur'an in South Africa. For many, it was the first time they had read the Qur'an with understanding. In madrasas it was and remains standard practice to teach the Qur'an by means of rote memorization to people without any capacity in Arabic. The ability to read and understand the Qur'an created a new sense of empowerment and the ability to approach the text critically and analytically for the ummah.
Once the floodgates of knowledge and understanding had been opened, the power of the ulama began to decline as the Muslim community argued amongst itself as to what exactly the nature of Islam should be. In contrast to traditional Islam, the MYM advocated a modern interpretation of the hadith. One MYM text famously stated that "there was no divinity in calico" in order to argue against the wearing of the white cotton khurta in emulation of the prophet. Another argued that the hadith, while sound, may not be entirely reliable and, in the absence of context, should be left alone entirely. Thus, the MYM drew sharp distinctions between sunnah which it believed were binding on all Muslims and those that it claimed were habitual sunnah that were culturally derived from Arab customs and not necessarily binding for South African Muslims. The understanding of the sunnah was a balance between the members' participation in broader South African society and their commitment to Islam. Although many Sunnis would regard such beliefs as heretical, it seems rather a reflection of a people adapting their belief systems in a process that emphasizes community-level collective decision-making and which emphasizes the exercise of man's greatest attribute, his mind.
Women were also emphasized under the umbrella of the MYM. One of the five guiding principles printed on all MYM publications was, "To make Muslim women an integral part of the whole programme." The parallel development of women was stressed and women were empowered through participation in both salah, or worship services, and in lecture series held at the mosques. Career guidance programs, community involvement projects, sports, and games were all incorporated into the mosque so as to make it into a community center in the figurative and literal sense of the word. Local level community empowerment and activism created the sort of social climate that would eventually contribute to the downfall of apartheid.
That the MYM played an active role in resisting and, ultimately, bringing down apartheid cannot be doubted. The growth of the MYM coincided with the strengthening of black activism during the 1970s and 1980s in South Africa. Indeed, there was an implicit connection between [them]. The MYM's search for an authentic South African and yet Islamic way of life mirrored the Black Consciousness Movements search for an authentic black identity in South Africa. Many MYM members were also members of the Black Consciousness Movement and the leading figures of that movement were very close with Ebrahim Jawdat, a founding member of MYM. By attempting to reconcile traditional Islam with their own experiences and interpretations of it as South Africans, the Muslim community found itself naturally allied with other groups of people struggling to craft their own sense of identity in a country that, today, has amazing promise and can rightly be called the rainbow nation.
Bibliography
Abdulkader, Tayob. Islamic Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement, UCT Press, Cape Town, South Africa (1995)
Islam in South Africa, as in some other parts of the world, has become thoroughly secularized. This is not to say that they are less devout than their co-religionists elsewhere in the world. Rather, it is to say that they seem satisfied with the existence of a secular state and not interested in imposing sharia as the law of the land. Additionally, there seems to be little mainstream support for the imposition of poll taxes upon non-Muslims. Muslims in South Africa have developed a modern Islamic paradigm, the emergence of which may contain important lessons for other societies.
As early as 1913, under the leadership of Doctor A. Abdurahman, a series of Muslim Mission Schools began to appear in the Western Cape. Recognizing that the education at traditional mosque-schools was inadequate in a changing political economy, Dr. Abdurahman created these schools to provide both sound religious education and an adequate secular education to meet the modern demands of education. The Mission Schools co-opted the more traditional ulama leadership of the Cape and guaranteed that they would support the new approach by giving the clerics complete control over the religious curriculum. The creation of these schools cemented forever the notion within the Muslim population that traditional Islamic education did not provide sufficient teaching for modern South Africa. The reconciliation of a Western education system that provided the young the skills they needed to participate meaningfully in economic life with Islamic religious studies is central to understanding the accommodating Islam that exists in South Africa today.
In the emergence of the Muslim Youth Movement (MYM) in 1970, there exist many more illustrations of the uniqueness of Islam in South Africa. For example, the MYM was responsible for the introduction of an English translation of the Qur'an in South Africa. For many, it was the first time they had read the Qur'an with understanding. In madrasas it was and remains standard practice to teach the Qur'an by means of rote memorization to people without any capacity in Arabic. The ability to read and understand the Qur'an created a new sense of empowerment and the ability to approach the text critically and analytically for the ummah.
Once the floodgates of knowledge and understanding had been opened, the power of the ulama began to decline as the Muslim community argued amongst itself as to what exactly the nature of Islam should be. In contrast to traditional Islam, the MYM advocated a modern interpretation of the hadith. One MYM text famously stated that "there was no divinity in calico" in order to argue against the wearing of the white cotton khurta in emulation of the prophet. Another argued that the hadith, while sound, may not be entirely reliable and, in the absence of context, should be left alone entirely. Thus, the MYM drew sharp distinctions between sunnah which it believed were binding on all Muslims and those that it claimed were habitual sunnah that were culturally derived from Arab customs and not necessarily binding for South African Muslims. The understanding of the sunnah was a balance between the members' participation in broader South African society and their commitment to Islam. Although many Sunnis would regard such beliefs as heretical, it seems rather a reflection of a people adapting their belief systems in a process that emphasizes community-level collective decision-making and which emphasizes the exercise of man's greatest attribute, his mind.
Women were also emphasized under the umbrella of the MYM. One of the five guiding principles printed on all MYM publications was, "To make Muslim women an integral part of the whole programme." The parallel development of women was stressed and women were empowered through participation in both salah, or worship services, and in lecture series held at the mosques. Career guidance programs, community involvement projects, sports, and games were all incorporated into the mosque so as to make it into a community center in the figurative and literal sense of the word. Local level community empowerment and activism created the sort of social climate that would eventually contribute to the downfall of apartheid.
That the MYM played an active role in resisting and, ultimately, bringing down apartheid cannot be doubted. The growth of the MYM coincided with the strengthening of black activism during the 1970s and 1980s in South Africa. Indeed, there was an implicit connection between [them]. The MYM's search for an authentic South African and yet Islamic way of life mirrored the Black Consciousness Movements search for an authentic black identity in South Africa. Many MYM members were also members of the Black Consciousness Movement and the leading figures of that movement were very close with Ebrahim Jawdat, a founding member of MYM. By attempting to reconcile traditional Islam with their own experiences and interpretations of it as South Africans, the Muslim community found itself naturally allied with other groups of people struggling to craft their own sense of identity in a country that, today, has amazing promise and can rightly be called the rainbow nation.
Bibliography
Abdulkader, Tayob. Islamic Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement, UCT Press, Cape Town, South Africa (1995)
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