Abdulkader Tayob

Politics and Islamization in African public spheres

Public Islam and Muslim publics provide a useful framework for understanding how technology and new social and political contexts have impacted discourses of religion in the public sphere. This article proposes that scholarly attention on Muslim publics has been guided by the different impacts of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Jurgen Habermas. Smith’s theory of reification has focused attention on the production of Islam(s), while Habermas’s work has focused attention on the production of new values for democratic politics. Muslim publics in Africa and elsewhere point to a diversity of engagements that call for more critical reflection and analysis. This article suggests that politics and Islamization are the main preoccupations of Muslim public debates in Africa, and should be the focus of comparative and historical analysis.

Salafis in Cape Town in Search of Purity, Certainty and Social Impact

Salafism has become part of a public discourse in Cape Town since the last decade of the 20 th century. Drawing on extensive interviews with a number of such Salafis and anti-Salafis, this article examines how this search was manifested and then negotiated within the local religious sphere of the city. This article confirms the view presented in the general literature that Salafism represented the aspiration of individuals who desired to chart an independent approach to Islamic practices. Nevertheless, by focussing attention on a number of individuals and measuring their successes, strategies and life-trajectories, the social dimension of Salafi practices is brought into sharp focus. Salafis were not only effective as lone figures who were prepared to break away from everybody; they were also involved in founding communities for their ideas. And in this regard, they could not escape the social contexts in which they found themselves.

Kadhis courts in Kenya's constitutional review (1998-2010): a changing approach to politics and State among Kenyan Muslim leaders

Debate over Kadhis courts in the constitutional review process (1998–2010) in Kenya antagonized relations between Muslims and Christians. Generally, Muslims found themselves on the defensive as some Christian groups mounted a sustained campaign against the place of Kadhis courts in the constitution. This paper presents Muslim responses to this public debate in the larger framework of Muslims in the nation-state. Since the 1990s, the Kenyan state was engaged in a search for a new politics. This paper turns to this question, and finds that beneath the rhetoric about Kadhis courts, Muslim responses were focused on politics. They were placing the Kadhis court debate within the larger question of how Muslims relate to the nation-state of Kenya.

Muslim Shrines in Cape Town: Religion and Post-Apartheid Public Spheres

This chapter is a close reading of public engagement over Muslim shrines (kramats) at Oudekraal outside Cape Town. These shrines are situated along a breathtaking drive on the Atlantic Seaboard of Cape Town, between the upmarket suburbs of Camps Bay and Llandudno. Between 1996 and 2007, the kramats were the subject of a legal battle and public debate between the state, the owner of the ground on which the kramat are founded, and various Muslim and environmental activists. In the post-apartheid public sphere the kramats were recon?gured as heritage sites located in environmentally sensitive areas. At the same time, it was also clear that the kramats revealed a Muslim public that extended beyond the boundaries and concerns of the national public sphere. This Muslim public was the product of intense contestation and diverse appropriation by various Muslim groups. This chapter argues that a Muslim public was invariably refracted through multiple engagements: with the state, among competing theological groups, and through religious activities and agencies that used symbols such as the kramat to create individual and social meaning.

Islamic politics in South Africa between identity and Utopia

ABSTRACT This article identifies three sites of Islamic politics in South Africa for closer and critical analysis and appraisal. It proposes that Islamic politics inscribed an idealistic vision for the future. It promoted a utopian vision that was by definition unattainable. Secondly, the paper argues that Islamic politics was preoccupied with representation, a relentless and somewhat impossible task of representing Islam and Muslims in the public. Utopia and perfect representation, then, were the chimeral quests of Islamic politics.

Negotiating Religious Literacy Between National Policy and Catholic School Ethos in Cape Town, South Africa

The South African National Policy on Religion and Education (2003) is designed to expose learners to the diversity of religious traditions that constitute the nation. The new policy replaces the mono-religious system of education promoted during apartheid. Since 1994, there has been extensive research on the background and theory of the new policy. However, there is insufficient empirical research on how the policy is implemented in various schools in the country. This paper uses the concept of religious literacy to explore this implementation in a state school founded on church ground. The article focuses on examining the meaning of religious literacy in relation to the policy and to this school. It shows that diversity education and personal development are the main goals of religious literacy in the national policy. It also shows how the Catholic school in question is equally committed to these goals, but with a distinctive meaning of nurture and socialization.

Al Fārūqī between the History of Religions and Islamic Theology 1

Abstract Ismāʿīl Rājī al Fārūqī (1921–1986) played a considerable role in the academic study of Islam as it was developing in North America in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper is a critical examination of how he employed the categories of religion and religious studies in his scholarly, dialogical, and Islamist work. The paper follows his ideas of religious traditions, their truth claims, and ethical engagement in the world. For Al Fārūqī, these constituted the main foundations of all religions, and provided a distinctive approach to the study of religions. Al Fārūqī was critical of the then prevailing approaches, asserting that they were either too subjective or too reductionist. He offered an approach to the study of religions based on a Kantian approach to values. Al Fārūqī’s method and theory, however, could not escape the bias and prejudice that he tried to avoid. Following his arguments, I show that his reflections on religion and its systematic study in academia charted an approach to religions, but also provided a language for a particular Islamic theology that delegitimized other approaches, particularly experiential ones, in modern Islam.

Bibliography Harald Motzki

This volume provides new insights into the transmission of the textual sources of Islam and combines this with the dynamics of these scriptures by paying close attention to how believers interpret and apply them.