PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/30189 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-03 and may be subject to change. GLOBAL FLOWS, LOCAL APPROPRIATIONS FACETS OF SECULARISATION AND RE-ISLAMIZATION AMONG CONTEMPORARY CAPE MUSLIMS Sindre Bangstad isim dissertations isim / leiden Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Demonstrators in Cape Town at a rally in protest against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Photograph by O. Esack. Cover design and lay-out: De Kreeft, Amsterdam ISBN-13 978 90 5356 015 0 NUR 741 / 717 © ISIM/ Amsterdam University Press, 2007 Alle rechten voorbehouden. 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Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Mondiale stromingen, locale toeёigeningen: Aspecten van secularisatie en her-islamisering onder hedendaagse Kaapse Moslims Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Sociale Wetenschappen PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op maandag 10 oktober 2007 om 15.30 uur precies door Sindre Bangstad geboren op 08.12.1973 te Oslo, Noorwegen Promotores: Prof. Abdulkader I. Tayob, Universiteit van Kaapstad, Zuid-Afrika. Prof. Harald Motzki, Radboud Universiteit. Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. dr. H. Driessen Mw. dr. K. van Nieuwkerk Prof. dr. A. Moors Global Flows, Local Appropriations: Facets of Secularisation and Re-Islamization Among Contemporary Cape Muslims An academic essay in Social Sciences D OCTORAL THESIS to obtain the degree of doctor from Radboud University Nijmegen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus prof. dr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann according to the decision of the Council of Deans to be defended in public on Monday 10 September 2007 at 15.30 hours by Sindre Bangstad born in Oslo, Norway on 08.12.1973 GLOBAL FLOWS, LOCAL APPROPRIATIONS Supervisors: Prof. Abdulkader I. Tayob, University of Cape Town, South Africa Prof. Harald Motzki, Radboud University. Doctoral Thesis Committee: Prof. dr. H. Driessen Mrs. dr. K. van Nieuwkerk Prof. dr. A. Moors CONTENTS Contents Summary in English 9 Samenvatting in het Nederlands (Dutch Summary) 12 Citations 16 Abbreviations and Acronyms 17 Acknowledgements 20 A Note on Nomenclature, Spelling and Transliteration 25 1. Global Flows, Local Appropriations: Facets of Re-Islamization and Secularisation Among Contemporary Cape Muslims 29 2. Africanising Islam: Black African Conversion to Islam in Cape Town 61 3. Polygyny in Transition 99 4. La‘a taqrabuna al-zina and Beyond: Exploring The Narratives of Infection of Cape Muslims Living With HIV/AIDS 129 5. Asserting The Rights of Muslim Prisoners in a Prison in Post-Apartheid Cape Town 163 6. Global Flows, Local Appropriations: Islamic Rituals and Their Transformation in a Globalising Age 191 Conclusions: Theorising The Secular and The Religious in Secularising and Re-Islamizing Cape Muslim Communities 229 Notes 243 References 304 List of interviewees cited 344 Glossary 346 Appendices 353 Summary in English This dissertation, titled ‘Global Flows, Local Appropriations: Facets of Secularisation and re-Islamization Among Contemporary Cape Muslims’, anal- yses the impact of processes of general societal and political change in the South African post-apartheid society on contemporary Muslim communities in Cape Town, South Africa. It does so from a social anthropological perspec- tive, and is based on 15 months of fieldwork in 2003-04 and in 2004-05. Muslims in South Africa represent a small minority, with a mere 1,46 percent of the total population in 2001. However, Muslims in Cape Town, the historical heartland of Islam in South Africa, represent approximately 10 percent of the population. Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a process of secularisation, understood as an increasing differentiation between reli- gious and secular spheres, and as entailing a decrease in the the regulatory capacities of institutionalised religion on social and individual levels. This secularisation has been linked in particular to the new ‘modernising’ social and political elites of post-apartheid South Africa, and has been articulated in the predominantly secular and liberal Constitution of 1996, and the legali- sation of abortion, pornography and same-sex relationships, as well as the abolishment of the death penalty that it has ushered in. Since the elites of post-apartheid South Africa, and even more so its predominantly religious citizenry, are fractured in terms of their adherence to, and acceptance of, the Constitution and the liberal and secular normative framework it is mainly based on, post-apartheid South Africa can best be described as a society which is ‘ambivalently secular.’ This dissertation pursues the topic of the impact of societal and political change in post-apartheid South Africa on contemporary Cape Mus- lim communities from a variety of angles. The chapters of the dissertation present findings from ethnographic research on black African conversion to Islam in the black African townships and informal settlements of Cape Town, on Muslim women in polygynous marriages in underprivileged communi- ties in Cape Town, on Muslims living with HIV/AIDS in Cape Town, on the status of religious rights for Muslim inmates in a prison in Cape Town, as well as on public deliberations between reformists and Sufis in Cape Town on the appropriateness of certain Sufi rituals practiced at the Cape. These chapters shed light on the tensions as well as the re-align- ment between secularisation and re-Islamization in contemporary Cape Muslim communities. On the basis of the findings, I argue that processes of secularisation and re-Islamization must be seen as implicated in, and inter- 9 GLOBAL FLOWS, LOCAL APPROPRIATIONS linked with, one another. For instance, I demonstrate that prison ‘ulama’ in Cape Town have been able to draw on human rights notions and precepts enshrined in the Constitution in arguing for an expansion of religious rights for Muslim inmates. They have done so, in spite of the fact that the main- stream Cape ‘ulama’ are for all practical purposes opposed to many of the secular and liberal principles of the same Constitution, and many of the leg- islative and societal changes that they have resulted in. Cape Muslim communities are fractured by factors such as social sta- tus, class, ethnicity, gender and religious and political outlook. Secularisa- tion is often seen as a process engendered by general societal and political change, and in which Muslims are often cast as nothing more than hapless victims, rather than as engaging actors on their own terms. One of the points this dissertation makes is that processes of secularisation also emerge from within Muslim communities in Cape Town: it is difficult to understand the discrepancies between the normative models of the predominantly middle- class mainstream Cape ‘ulama’, and the actual practices of Cape Muslims in underprivileged townships and informal settlements, without reference to prior processes of secularisation understood as a decrease in the regulatory capacities of religious authorities. These are processes articulated through syncretic understandings of Islamic ritual among black African converts to Islam (who often mix elements of Xhosa ‘traditional’ understandings and Islamic understandings), through the fact that many polygynous marriages among Cape Muslims in underprivileged areas are contracted on the basis of extra-marital affairs, and the indications from research on Muslims and HIV/AIDS that sexual relations outside a marital context is relatively com- mon among underprivileged Cape Muslims. It can also be found in the importance attached to globalised human rights discourses by Muslim social activists, such as those working on HIV/AIDS. These are all developments which pre-date the emergence of a post-apartheid society, and which can therefore not merely be attributed to the present phase of secularisation. I argue that in the context of Muslim minority situations such as the one that Cape Muslims find themselves in, it is crucial to keep in mind that the term Muslim is for analytical purposes merely a