Playing global: the religious adaptations of Indian and Somali Muslims to racial hierarchies and discrimination in South Africa

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I examine the role of religion in Somali and Indian Muslims' adaptations to South Africa's ethno‐racial political regimes from the country's colonial to its post‐apartheid eras. Somali and Indian Muslims created and drew on transnational dimensions of global Islam to contest the racial status imposed on their communities. Although colonial and apartheid legacies of ethnic separation, racial hierarchies and discrimination still mark the new South Africa, the new democratic state favours the development of autonomous religious communities that provide services and resources for their members. In this contemporary political context, Muslim solidarity helps Indians and Somalis to renew their religiously based adaptation to South African society.