70. “Mayor Welcomes Moulana,” Muslim News, 28 June 1963, 4. See also Rizvi, Tarikh-i Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband, 1:378–79. Rizvi says that Tayyib cleared up some “misunderstandings about the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband” in South Africa, but does not specify what those misunderstandings were.
71. The Muslim Judicial Council had been founded in 1945 as a body of ‘ulama to give advice to the Cape Muslim community and issue halal certification licenses, among other tasks. See Gerrie Lubbe, “The Muslim Judicial Council: Custodian or Catalyst?” Journal for Islamic Studies, 14 (1994): 34–62.
72. “Tumultuous Welcome for Moulana by Cape Muslims,” Muslim News, 9 August 1963, 1. According to the reports, he lectured on the theme of “remembering” (dhikr) in the Qur’an, as well as other assorted topics.
73. “Moulana’s Farewell Message: Praise for Cape Muslims,” Muslim News, 23 August 1963, 1.
74. The Irony of the Doeband [sic] Fatwa,” Muslim News, 8 April 1966, 26. Mohammed Makki, “Deoband Ulamas Declare South Africa a Darul Harb,” Muslim Digest, February 1966, 2–12; Ismail Abed, “A Refutation of the Deobandi Fatwa on Interest and Usury,” Muslim Digest, February 1966, 13–19; “Deoband Fatwa Rejected,” Muslim News, 11 March 1966; the April issue contained a large collection of furious letters grouped under the banner “THE DOEBAND [sic] BLUNDER.”
75. Ebrahim Moosa, “Ethical Landscape: Laws, Norms and Morality,” in Islam in the Modern World, ed. Jeffrey T. Kenney and Ebrahim Moosa (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012), 44. The fatwa from Deoband was ironic in other ways. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi had received a similar request in 1928 from a mufti in Hyderabad. The mufti, hoping for Thanvi to sign off on his fatwa, argued that the Qur’anic ban on riba applied only to commercial loans and that noncommercial loans were exempt. Thanvi delegated the task of responding to Zafar Ahmad ‘Usmani, who issued a blistering point-by-point rebuttal. See Zaman, Ashraf Ali Thanawi, 70–72.
76. Fatima Meer, “Interest and Dar-ul-Harb in Islam: A Preliminary Analysis of the Fatwa on Riba of the Muftees of Dar-ul-Uloom, Deoband,” supp., Views and News, 10 February 1966, 2.
77. Ibid., 10.
78. Ibid., 2.
79. See Shamil Jeppie, Language, Identity, Modernity: The Arabic Study Circle of Durban (Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2007).
80. Moosa, “Worlds ‘Apart,’” 220.
81. Muhammad Palan Haqqani, Shari‘at ya jahalat (Karachi: Qadimi Kutub Khana, 1975), 16–17.
82. Ibid., 26.
83. With the exception of a short section on Hanafi views on “knowledge of the unseen” (‘ilm-i ghayb). Ibid., 278–80.
84. Ibid., 531–39 (on munazara), 619–22 (on ‘urs), 689–732 (on various issues pertaining to the mawlud).
85. Views and News, June 1970. See also Goolam H. Vahed, “Contesting ‘Orthodoxy’: The Tablighi–Sunni Conflict among South African Muslims in the 1970s and 1980s,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 23, no. 2 (2003): 313–34, at 318–19; as well as Jeppie, Language, Identity, Modernity, 71.
86. Muslim Digest, August 1975, 19.
87. See www.sunnirazvisociety.com (last accessed 18 June 2018).
88. “Cape Town Tablighi Jamaa Declares Itself Wahabi,” Muslim News, 17 July 1970, 1.
89. Muslim News, 17 July 1970, 12.
90. On 27 April 1979, Imam Nazir Ahmed of Mooi River in Natal gave a Friday sermon (khutbah) in the mosque, siding with the Tablighi view that one should not read salaami (devotional praises of the Prophet Muhammad) inside the mosque. He was accosted by a group of angry congregants and then beaten. Cape Herald, 28 April 1979, 4. Another confrontation took place at the Grey Street Masjid in Durban on 22 September 1981. Three Muslim men were charged with assaulting seven others in a Tablighi–Barelvi dispute, but unfortunately the article does not report which side committed the assault. Natal Witness, 23 September 1981.
91. Muslim Digest, December 1988/January 1989, 4.
92. Kaukab Noorani Okarvi, Truth Wins: The Full Account of a Historic Challenge to Establish Truth as the Truth and Falsehood as the Falsehood (Durban: Maulana Okarvi Academy, 1991).
93. See Kaukab Noorani Okarvi, Deoband to Bareilly: The Truth (Lahore: Zia ul-Quraan Publications, 1996), as well as the same author’s White and Black: Deobandi-ism Caught Up in Its Own Web (Durban: Maulana Okarvi Academy, 1991).
94. Muslim News, 21 March 1980, 2. The Ghousia Manzil was established as a Sufi lodge for Qadiri Sufis, the silsila that Hazrat Sayed Zainul Abedien established in Cape Town during his visit in 1961. Many, if not most, Barelvi-oriented Sufis in South Africa are Qadiris, though many Chishtis and Naqshbandis are strong ideological allies. Speaking on behalf of the khanqah during its opening, Shaikh M.S. Dien vaunted the implicit political power of Sufism: “People in South Africa have the wrong idea of Tasawwuf and its power in propagation. Not only does the khanqah serve as a retreat but it is a centre where social and political activity is generated.”
95. Muslim News, 25 January 1985. Barelvi Sufi leaders in the community met at Ghousia Manzil khanqah in November 1984 to establish the Ahl-e Sunnat wal-Jammat, with Maulana Ahmed Mukkadam in charge.
96. Mahida, A History of Muslims in South Africa, 132.
97. Mohammad Akhtar Raza Khan Azhari, Azharul Fatawa (Bareilly, India: Idara Sunni Dunya, n.d.). This text is distributed in South Africa by Habibi Darul Ifta.
98. E.g., Ahmed Raza Khan, The Validity of Saying “Ya Rasoolallah,” trans. Durwesh Abu Muhammad Abdul Hadi al-Qadiri (Durban: Imam Ahmed Raza Academy, n.d.).
99. Ebrahim Muhammad, A Guide to Madrasah Arabia Islamia (Azaadville, South Africa: Madrasa Arabia Islamia, 2000), 6–7. For an overview of both institutions, see Dietrich Reetz, “The Tablighi Madrassas in Lenasia and Azaadville: Local Players in the Global ‘Islamic Field,’” in Muslim Schools and Education in Europe and Africa, ed. Abdulkader Tayob, Inga Niehaus, and Wolfram Weissem (Münster: Waxmann, 2011), 84–104.
100. See n. 43 above on the role of the Waterval Islamic Institute in translating many of these into English.
101. Mufti Muhammad Shahid, Qutb al-Aqtab Imam al-‘Arifin Shaykh al-Mashaikh Hazrat Aqdas Shaykh al-Hadith al-Hajj al-Hafiz Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Muhajir Madani ka safarnama-yi Afriqah o England: Ramadan al-Mubarak 1401/1981 (Karachi: Al-Maktaba al-Islamiyya, 1982), 40–41. On the middle-class appeal of the Tablighi Jama‘at in South Africa specifically, see Vahed, “Contesting ‘Orthodoxy,’” 317.
102. There are scores of these. Barelvi pamphlets in support of mawlud include, e.g., Mufti Akbar Hazarvi’s Meelaad-un-Nabie Celebration in the Light of Shariah (Laudium, South Africa: Soutul Islam Publications, 1999), published by (and read by students at) Darul Uloom Pretoria, a Barelvi Dar al-‘Ulum. Deobandi polemics against mawlud include, e.g., Majlisul Ulama’s, The Spreading of Confusion and Falsehood about the Tablighi Jamaat / What Is Meelaad? (Benoni, South Africa: Young Men’s Muslim Association, 1988).
103. Majlisul Ulama of South Africa, Meelaad Celebrations (Benoni, South Africa: Young Men’s Muslim Association, 1985), 9–16.
104. Abdun Nabi Hamidi, Yes, Meelaad Celebration Is Commendable (Azaadville, South Africa: Sunni Ulema Council, n.d.), 1–9. Hamidi has also responded to Deobandis’ critiques of loud zikr. See his Permissibility of Loud Zikr in the Masjid and Elsewhere (Johannesburg: Sarwari Qaaderi Publications, 2000). This is specifically a reply to Mufti A.H. Elias’ tract Impermissibility of Loud Zikr in the Masjid.
105. Hamidi, Yes, Meelaad Celebration Is Commendable, 12–13.
106. Young Men’s Muslim Association, Who Are the People of Sunnah? (Benoni, South Africa: Young Men’s Muslim Association, 1987), 3.
107. Ibid., 4.
108. Sunni Jamiatul Ulama, Confusion or Conclusion: Answer to “Who Are the People of Sunnah?” (Durban: Sunni Jamiatul Ulama, n.d.), 2–3. Saharanpuri, to clarify, listed a number of Deobandi complaints about the mawlud and said, “If the mawlud assembly were free of such things, how could we say that recalling the noble birth is impermissible and an innovation
[bid‘a]?” See chap. 2, p. 67.
109. Sunni Jamiatul Ulama, Confusion or Conclusion, 3.
110. Ibid., 15.
7. A TRADITION CONTESTED
1. For this event in the context of anti-apartheid activism, see Anthony W. Marx, Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
2. The literature on apartheid history is, of course, substantial. For an overview that places apartheid governance in its wider colonial context, see Deborah Posel, “The Apartheid Project, 1948–1970,” in The Cambridge History of South Africa, vol. 2, ed. Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
3. Muslim News, 25 June 1976, 1–2.
4. Gerrie Lubbe, “The Soweto Fatwa: A Muslim Response to a Watershed Event in South Africa,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 17, no. 2 (1997): 335–43, at 342.
5. See Ursula Günther, “The Memory of Imam Haron in Consolidating Muslim Resistance in the Apartheid Struggle,” in Religion and the Political Imagination in a Changing South Africa, ed. Gordon Mitchell and Eve Mullen (New York and Münster: Waxmann, 2002); as well as Shamil Jeppie, “Amandla and Allahu Akbar: Muslims and Resistance in South Africa, c. 1970–1987,” Journal for the Study of Religion 4, no. 1 (1991): 3–19.
6. See Muhammed Haron, “Muslim News (1973–1986): Its Contribution towards an Alternative Press at the Cape,” Muslim World 85, nos. 3/4 (1995): 317–32.
7. “Our Ulema and Injustice,” Muslim News, 14 March 1975, 2.
8. “Do We Not Protest?” Muslim News, 20 December 1974, 2.
9. Muslim News, 24 September 1976, 3.
10. Ebrahim Moosa, “Muslim Conservatism in South Africa,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 69 (1989): 73–81, at 75.
11. Sindre Bangstad, Global Flows, Local Appropriations: Facets of Secularization and Re-Islamization among Contemporary Cape Muslims (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 55.
12. Muhammed Haron and Imraan Buccus, “Al-Qalam: An Alternative Muslim Voice in the South African Press,” South African Historical Journal, 61, no. 1 (2009): 121–37.
13. Tayob, Islamic Resurgence in South Africa, 127–28.
14. Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, Islam for All, Islam Forever: Rally Manual (Durban: Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, 1983). “Jahili” (lit., “ignorance”) refers to the period prior to the revelation of the Prophet Muhammad. The word became prominent within twentieth-century Islamist rhetoric.
15. “The Ulema Should Lead,” Al-Qalam, December 1982, 2.
16. Abul A‘la Maududi, Islamic Way of Life, trans. Khurshid Ahmad (Durban: Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, n.d.). Khurshid Ahmad (d. 1932) is a politician, economist, and major figure within the leadership of the Jama‘at-i Islami, the political party founded by Maududi in 1941. See John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, “Khurshid Ahmad: Muslim Activist-Economist,” The Muslim World, 80, no. 1 (1990): 24–36.
17. See Qibla, One Solution, Islamic Revolution (Athlone, Cape Town: Qibla, n.d.); and Qibla, Eid Message: The Intellectual Roots of the Oppressed and Islam’s Triumph over Apartheid (Athlone, Cape Town: Qibla, 1992).
18. “Eid-ul-Fitr: Islam’s Triumph over Apartheid,” Muslim News, 24 July 1984, 17–22.
19. One example, among many, would be Hasan al-Turabi’s essay “The Islamic State:” “The ideological foundation of an Islamic state lies in the doctrine of tawhid—the unity of God and of human life—as a comprehensive and exclusive program of worship.” See Euben and Zaman, Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought, 213.
20. Qibla, Dimensions of the Kalimah (Athlone, Cape Town: Qibla, n.d.); and Achmad Cassiem, Quest for Unity (Cape Town: Silk Road Publishers, 1992), esp. 30–34.
21. Muslim News, 24 July 1981, 4.
22. Noah Salomon, For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
23. Cassiem, Quest for Unity, 81.
24. Jeremy Seekings, The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983–1991 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 29–48. To be sure, the tricameral parliament was the catalyst for forming the UDF, but the collaborations on which the UDF was based had been taking shape at least since 1976, as Seekings shows.
25. Moosa, “Muslim Conservatism in South Africa,” 75–77.
26. Al-Qalam, March 1985, 9.
27. From 1974 to 1978, Esack studied at the Jami‘a al-‘Ulum al-Islamiyya, established by Deobandi scholar Yusuf Binnori in Karachi in 1953, and then transferred to Jami‘a ‘Alimiyya Islamiyya, also in Karachi, where he completed his Dars-i Nizami degree in 1980, followed by Qur’anic Studies at Jami‘a Abi Bakr, also in Karachi (Farid Esack, email correspondence with author, 6 February 2018). I return below to the fact that Esack, one of the Deobandis’ major critics, was educated in a Deobandi institution and what this tells us about the movement more broadly.
28. Farid Esack, But Musa Went to Fir-aun! A Compilation of Questions and Answers about the Role of Muslims in the South African Struggle for Liberation (Maitland, Cape Town: Clyson Printers, 1989), 2–5. On the history of Call of Islam with particular attention to its efforts to organize Muslims across racial divides, see Jill E. Kelly, “‘It Is Because of Our Islam That We Are There’: The Call of Islam in the United Democratic Front Era,” African Historical Review 41, no. 1 (2009): 118–39.
29. Adli Jacobs, Punching above Its Weight: The Story of the Call of Islam (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2014), 31–33.
30. “Muslims Defy Ban,” Cape Herald, 8 January 1983.
31. “Islamic Iran: Local Ulema Sow Dissension,” Muslim News, 3 September 1982, 1, 4.
32. Fatima Meer, preface to But Musa Went to Fir-aun! A Compilation of Questions and Answers about the Role of Muslims in the South African Struggle for Liberation, by Farid Esack (Maitland, Cape Town: Clyson Printers, 1989).
33. “Message to the Oppressors and Their Supporters,” Muslim News, 21 September 1979; “Islam’s Freedom Charter,” Muslim News, 8 August 1980; “Revolutionary Manifesto of the Oppressed People,” Muslim News, 12 August 1983. On Muslim News’s role in the anti-apartheid movement, see Haron, “Muslim News (1973–1986),” 317–32.
34. “Where Do We Stand?,” Muslim News, 16 July 1982, 40.
35. Cape Herald, 28 April 1979, 4. The article reports, “The controversy is a long standing one which has split the Muslim community right down the middle, resulting in a series of violent incidents over the last few years.”
36. Natal Daily News, 23 February 1983.
37. Ebrahim Adam studied in India from 1959 to 1971, and at the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband from 1964 to 1969, becoming a Sufi initiate of Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlavi. When Kandhlavi and Mahmud Hasan Gangohi visited the Cape, Ebrahim Adam hosted them in Stellenbosch. Ebrahim Adam, interview with author, Pelican Park, Cape Town, 29 April 2010.
38. I have never been able to find a transcript or recording of the lecture. I corroborated the content of the lecture in my interview with Adam. On Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and revelation (wahy), see Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and Its Medieval Background (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
39. See the discussion of Ahmad Raza Khan’s Husam al-haramayn in chap. 3.
40. Siddiqui’s arrival was covered in Muslim Digest in 1952: “Our Patron Arrives in South Africa,” “Durban’s Great Welcome to his Eminence,” and “30,000 Cheer His Eminence in Cape Town.” Muslim Digest, August 1952, 5–22.
41. Adam commented on a statement of Siddiqui’s: “When I went to Arabia and envisioned it in scope and magnitude, I realized without a doubt that [Ahmed Raza Khan] was the Qibla of the non-Arab peoples.” Adam repeated the statement in his lecture and gave the following gloss on its meaning: “[The Barelvis] say Rasulullah is a Prophet unto the Arabs and Ahmed Reza Khan is a Prophet unto the non-Arabs.” Muslim Digest, March/April 1985, 19–20. These quotes, it is im
portant to note, come from an article that was critical of Adam, and they cannot be otherwise verified.
42. Muslim Digest, March/April 1985, 7–8.
43. Ibid., 16.
44. Muslim News, March 1985, 8b.
45. Al-Qalam, March 1985, 9.
46. Ibid., August 1986, 3.
47. The Star, 19 March 1987. The paper described the reasons behind the clash as follows: “The Deobandi Tabligh group disagreed with the Barelvi group which sought to spread the religion by singing praises to Mohammed. On Saturday, the Barelvi group went through the streets of Lenasia singing and advertising their gathering.” See also the discussion in Jacobus A. Naude, “A Historical Survey of Opposition to Sufism in South Africa,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Conflicts and Polemics, ed. Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999), 398.
48. Al-Qalam, March 1987, 1.
49. Muslim Views, March 1987, 2.
50. Al-Qalam, 4 April 1987, 6.
51. Muslim Digest, November 1986/February 1987, 2–3.
52. Muslim Views, March 1987, 8.
53. See Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, 186–87, for a discussion of Baz’s fatwa.
54. I say “allegedly” since I was not able to find a reprint of the fatwa myself. This claim comes from Sunni World, An Attack on Our Sunni Beliefs by the Wahabi/Deobandi/Tablighi Sect and Our Reply (Durban: Sunni World, n.d.), 7. For the academy’s response, see Imam Ahmed Raza Academy, “The Permissibility of Celebrating the Meelad-Un Nabi (saw): In Refutation of the Fatwa of Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Baaz of Saudi Arabia,” accessed 4 February 2018, www.sunnah.org/publication/salafi/mawlid_refute.htm.
55. “Mecca Ulema Should Reconsider Fatwa against Meelad-un-Nabie,” Muslim Digest, July/August 1982, 193.
56. “‘Meelad-e-Mustapha Conference’ in Durban,” Muslim Digest, January/February 1983.
57. “International Islamic Unity Week: Commemorating the Birth of the Greatest Benefactor to Mankind-Nabi Muhammad (S.A.W.)” (unpublished flyer, 16 November 1986), Islamic ephemera collection, African Studies Library, University of Cape Town.
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