Continuity and change: The teaching and research of Islam in South(ern) Africa

Abstract

Despite being minority religious communities in the Southern African region, Muslims have carved out for themselves a unique identity within a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, and a multi-religious region. As a result of the variety of Muslim education programs and institutions that the community had set up over the past few decades its representatives made an interesting contribution towards the region. In the discipline of ‘Islamic Studies’, which began as a minor subject within the field of Oriental and Missiological studies respectively at the beginning of the 1960s, underwent remarkable changes by the mid 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s when fully-fledged programs were designed and mounted at specific Southern Africa's universities. The continuities and changes that took place from the mid 1970s onwards were as a result of the growing interest in this discipline. The essay's objective is to discuss the study and research of ‘Islam’ undertaken by individuals in the Southern Africa with special focus on South Africa where there have been major developments in the Muslim educational circles for more than a half a century (circa 1960–2010); it, however, employs ‘identity’ as a significant analytical tool in scholarship and the production of knowledge about Islam within the Southern African context.