Muslims in Southern Africa

Abstract

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Disarming the xenophobic everyday: Muslim migrants and the horizons of urban mutuality in Durban

“…Amidst this plurality, diverse Muslim residents experience a sense of belonging to a single ‘Muslim public’, sharing certain aesthetic sensibilities and gestural routines that mediate and project a form of Muslim mutuality (Alhourani 2015: 115). Importantly, however, this sense of mutuality is still punctuated by dynamics of ethnic and racial distinction embedded in South Africa's social landscape (Sadouni 2019: 119, 156).…”

“…In doing so, he not only disrupts the sense of ‘ownership’ over Islam that many in Durban attribute to the Indian population, but also grounds his own claim to belonging to the city (as a constitutive part of the African continent). Indeed, this reflects a wider trend in South Africa in recent decades as African migrants, together with black South Africans, have increasingly asserted claims to an authentic Muslim identity, often cultivating new sites of Islamic expression and authority (Alhourani 2015; Kaarsholm 2011; Sadouni 2019). Ally's experience of being marginalized by Indian Muslims speaks to these frictions within the Muslim community, together with broader dynamics of racial and ethnic exclusion.…”

“…Despite these associations with a putative ‘Durban Indian mutuality’, we propose that Grey Street's urban everyday provides glimpses of a ‘mutuality yet to come’ that Chari anticipates, one that transcends these ethnic and national boundaries. As Sadouni (2019: 131) demonstrates in the suburb of Mayfair in Johannesburg, part of the ‘legacy of apartheid’ is a concern on the part of Indian South Africans for protecting ‘their investments in a place where they resisted forced removals and struggled to gain recognition of their rights as citizens’, just as Durban's Indian community fought for their right to inhabit the Grey Street Complex. The protective ‘welcome’ that Indian Muslims extend to Somali migrants in Mayfair rests on an expectation that they will ‘reinforce the economic activities and preserve the religious environment that the Indians had built over the last century’ (Sadouni 2014: 398).…”

“…However, they should also be understood with reference to wider dynamics of racial and ethnic exclusion as they materialize within the Muslim community. As Samadia Sadouni (2019: 73) demonstrates, claims to a Muslim identity by migrants (both African and otherwise) are typically received unevenly by Indian Muslims depending on their proficiency in Arabic and whether their country of origin is majority Muslim. These perceptions are compounded by the fact that, in KwaZulu-Natal, Islam has often been understood by Indian and black South Africans alike to ‘belong’ in some sense to the Indian population, having long served as a site for contesting and consolidating a sense of ‘Indianness’ (Kaarsholm 2011: 109, 112).…”