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

R ace, Ideology, and Islam in Contemporary South Africa 2 7 5From the perspective of many progressive organizations, the committee wasmainly composed of individuals who supported more-traditionalist interpretationsof Islam. From the point of view of religious leaders, the committee appearedcertain to produce a bill that conformed to the constitution. Thus, itseemed that the committee was bound to disappoint both. And yet the committeeeventually produced a document that appears consistent with the constitution,agreeable to at least some members of the conservative religious bodies,and responsive to the concerns of women’s groups. The proposed act,therefore, demands an explanation of how the project committee was able toarrive at such a compromise between radical reform and tradition. The commi t t e e ’s approach seems to indicate a unique stance toward the constitutionand towards the general problem of the nonrecognition of Muslim marriages.By releasing a piece of legislation entitled “Islamic Marriages and RelatedAffairs,” the project committee apparently gave up the attempt to propose“legislation recognising systems of personal or family law” (Article 15.3.a.ii), asthe earlier Muslim Personal Law Board had done. Such an approach hadopened up ideological differences that could not easily be settled. They werereflections of global Islamic debates, for which there were no immediate resolutionson the horizon in South Africa or elsewhere. Instead, the committeeopted to develop the first provision for “legislation recognising marriages concludedunder any tradition” (Article 15.3.a.i). There is a subtle difference betweenthe two, and the constitution has an important disjunction (“or”) betweenthe two clauses. The earlier attempt of the Muslim Personal Law Boardwas bogged down in the development of a comprehensive s y s t e m of personall a w. According to Najma Moosa, also a member of the committee, nothingshort of a complete code would have been acceptable: “MPL should be codifiedinto a separate code of law which would form part of the statutory law ofthe South African legal system,” and the best solution lay “in codifying Islamiclaw and enacting a comprehensive bill or ‘uniform Muslim code’” (Moosa1998, 201, n. 36).By rejecting this approach, the new committee came to directly address thecritical problem of Muslim marriages in South Africa, a source of a great manysocial problems. Muslim marriages conducted by imams in the mosques werenot recognized until the promulgation of the constitution. Even in the newdispensation, however, effective court decisions were hamstrung in the absenceof legislation. In the apartheid days, as pointed out above, Muslim marriageswere considered “potentially polygamous” and hence repugnant to theWestern cultural norms adopted by South African courts (Moosa 1996b). Bychoosing to abandon or sidestep the ideological debate in favor of the actualneeds of the society, the proposed bill suggested a unique approach. The approachof the committee confirmed an important democratic principle ofworking from concerns and issues that directly affected people. The ideologi-