Islamic Resurgence In South Africa

"Judicious juggling of insider and outsider perspectives. [Tayob] brings real knowledge and experience of South African Islam. . . . Anyone interested in religion in the South African context as well as those interested in Islam in different contexts should be interested in this book."--Rosalind I. J. Hackett, University of Tennessee Until now, researchers on Islam in Africa have paid little attention to the continent's southern tip. In the first English-language study of the subject, Abdulkader Tayob examines the Islamic institutions of South Africa, tracing their development over the last 200 years, from the first European colony in the 17th century through British colonialism and apartheid. Beyond the institutions, Tayob also examines the sermons of South Africa's Imams as expressions of the country's Islamic faith. He argues that the sermons function both as symbols of the Word of God and as venues for contextual interpretations of the Qu'ran. The unusual character of South Africa, he maintains, has not only shaped the country's Islamic institutions but has also helped to define its Muslim identity. For outsiders to either Islam or South Africa, Tayob interprets the symbols of Islam, the overly politicized dimensions of South African Islamic life, and the sacred spaces within each community. Writing as an "insider" to the faith, he also reveals a rich history of Muslim institutions previously inaccessible to non-Moslems. Abdulkader I. Tayob is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, where he teaches Islamic studies and the history of religions. He is the author of Islamic Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement.

"Judicious juggling of insider and outsider perspectives. [Tayob] brings real knowledge and experience of South African Islam. . . . Anyone interested in religion in the South African context as well as those interested in Islam in different contexts should be interested in this book."--Rosalind I. J. Hackett, University of Tennessee Until now, researchers on Islam in Africa have paid little attention to the continent's southern tip. In the first English-language study of the subject, Abdulkader Tayob examines the Islamic institutions of South Africa, tracing their development over the last 200 years, from the first European colony in the 17th century through British colonialism and apartheid. Beyond the institutions, Tayob also examines the sermons of South Africa's Imams as expressions of the country's Islamic faith. He argues that the sermons function both as symbols of the Word of God and as venues for contextual interpretations of the Qu'ran. The unusual character of South Africa, he maintains, has not only shaped the country's Islamic institutions but has also helped to define its Muslim identity. For outsiders to either Islam or South Africa, Tayob interprets the symbols of Islam, the overly politicized dimensions of South African Islamic life, and the sacred spaces within each community. Writing as an "insider" to the faith, he also reveals a rich history of Muslim institutions previously inaccessible to non-Moslems. Abdulkader I. Tayob is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, where he teaches Islamic studies and the history of religions. He is the author of Islamic Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement.

While nearly one in every five people in the world today is Muslim, Islam is spreading most rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where one in three Africans today practices a form of Islam. Sub-Saharan Africa is today home to over 150 million Muslims. Although immensely varied, African Islam, the authors demonstrate, is defined by three overarching beliefs. First, African Islam is local Islam, with no ordained clergy or international body to regulate doctrine. At the same time, the importance of Islam as a source of communal identity, both within African societies and as part of the worldwide Islamic community, is a defining feature of the African Muslim worldview. Finally, there is a pervasive belief among African Muslims that the West is on a new crusade against Islam. At a time of growing interest in the worldwide expansion of Islam, the Islamic revival in Africa deserves special attention. With in-depth coverage of Islam in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Pride, Faith, and Fear provides both a general overview of African Islam and a detailed picture of Muslim politics--which are increasingly national politics--in some of Africa's most populous regions.

A remarkable drama is unfolding in the countries of North Africa (the Maghrib) as militant Islamic movements challenge the existing political order. Amid disenchantment at the failure of national leaders to resolve social and economic problems, the region has been rocked by demands for more representative and responsive political systems, and Islamic movements have won the upper hand in the battle for grassroots support. In Islamism and Secularism in North Africa, leading scholars from the United States, Europe, and North Africa explore the Islamic challenge. Drawing on the disciplines of political science, history, sociology, and anthropology, the contributors examine the relations between religion, the state, and political opposition movements in North Africa. Although the contributors show that the Islamic revival has been energized by the acute current problems of corruption, political exclusion, and pauperization, they also argue that its roots can be found in North African history, and that the Islamist-secularist divide reflects deep intellectual, political, and social differences that are not likely to disappear.

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of Islamic studies find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. A reader will discover, for instance, the most reliable introductions and overviews to the topic, and the most important publications on various areas of scholarly interest within this topic. In Islamic studies, as in other disciplines, researchers at all levels are drowning in potentially useful scholarly information, and this guide has been created as a tool for cutting through that material to find the exact source you need. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study of the Islamic religion and Muslim cultures. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.aboutobo.com.

The Deoband movement—a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam that quickly spread from colonial India to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and even the United Kingdom and South Africa—has been poorly understood and sometimes feared. Despite being one of the most influential Muslim revivalist movements of the last two centuries, Deoband’s connections to the Taliban have dominated the attention it has received from scholars and policy-makers alike. Revival from Below offers an important corrective, reorienting our understanding of Deoband around its global reach, which has profoundly shaped the movement’s history. In particular, the author tracks the origins of Deoband’s controversial critique of Sufism, how this critique travelled through Deobandi networks to South Africa, as well as the movement’s efforts to keep traditionally educated Islamic scholars (`ulama) at the center of Muslim public life. The result is a nuanced account of this global religious network that argues we cannot fully understand Deoband without understanding the complex modalities through which it spread beyond South Asia.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.