Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

R ace, Ideology, and Islam in Contemporary South Africa 2 5 5be the key focus of this chapter. The first group of Muslims arrived in 1658,soon after the first Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope. They were followedby a large number of Asian and African Muslim slaves owned by theDutch East India Company. In addition to these Muslims, the Dutch also exileda number of Muslim political prisoners from the Indonesian archipelagoto the Cape. Among them were a number of prominent religious figures whohad opposed various Dutch economic and political operations in the NetherlandsIndies (present-day Indonesia). The best-known of the exiles was ShaykhYusuf, a notable mystic teacher, who engaged in a campaign against Dutch incursionsinto the sultanate of Banten in West Java. Shaykh Yu s u f’s deportationto the Cape in 1694 has been marked as the first significant date in the historyof Islam in South Africa. The local Dutch governors treated the political prisonerswith respect but complained about the drain on resources that their maintenanceentailed. Meanwhile, freedom of religious expression was severely curtailed,and conditions of slavery did not provide much opportunity for theestablishment and development of Muslim religious life during this period.Some degree of religious freedom was granted a hundred years later whenthe British occupied the Cape in 1795. At that time, another Muslim politicalexile from the Netherlands Indies, Abdullah Kadi Abdus Salaam, affectionatelyknown as Tuan Guru, took advantage of this new atmosphere. After thirteenyears of exile on Robben Island, just off the coast at Cape Town, he establisheda religious school and an organized congregation of Muslims at theCape. His Awwal Mosque was founded at the turn of the nineteenth century,and as the Muslim community in Cape Town grew, the mosque attracted convertsfrom the local slave and freed black populations. The Awwal Mosque wasalso home to an elementary religious school that played an important role inthe foundation of the Muslim community. The Awwal Mosque and schoolmarked the first stage of Islamic institutionalization in South Africa, and by1820 it reported 491 “Free Black scholars and slaves” as members of the community(United Kingdom, Parliament 1968–1971).Although Muslims were first brought to South Africa under the aegis of Europeanimperialism, the establishment of Islam generated patterns of religiouslife in the Cape that extended beyond the interests of colonialism. Quite apartfrom governmental needs, Islamic practices in the Cape inscribed patterns ofcommunity life that created a unique sense of being Muslim. For example, theAwwal Mosque, with its prominent leader and popular school, served the socialand religious needs of the emerging Muslim community. Attending to theneeds of a slave society, the imam provided an anchor and a source of stabilityfor members of his congregation in a sometimes-hostile environment. Thes e rvices he provided included giving infants Islamic names on their seventhd a y, educating them in the basics of Islam, conducting Islamic marriages, andproviding for dignified Muslim burials. Always there at the rites of passage, the