Muslim fashions, Islamophobia, and Minister Cassim

The recent selection of young DA member Yusuf Cassim as Deputy Minister of Higher Education has triggered a lot of backlash online, from Jews, from Christians, and from secular whites with a skeef oog on Islam.

I don’t think this reaction, as daft and paranoid as it is, can entirely be boiled down to “Islamophobia” though. South Africa has had numerous Muslim politicians throughout the years, and these people have seldom drawn quite such a reaction.

But now there is someone in our political system now looks like the people on the television doing nasty things overseas. There is a certain way South African Muslims have traditionally dressed, and a certain way foreign Muslims have dressed, and the two never seemed to be the same to the local observer.

But in the same way that pro- and anti-Trump hysteria has poisoned the political discourse of the white minority, and American country music aesthetics have colonised the Boer, the globalisation of our civilisational streams is beginning to mix in their mutual suspicions and grievances.

Cassim, for his part, is a very normal moderate sort of man from all appearances, though perhaps somewhat more pious, but whether he realises it or not, he has been caught in forces beyond his control.

Changing fashions

The general public is used to a certain style of dress among South African Muslims, most of whom are from the Cape, and generally are clean-shaven and wearing a kofia, the little cylindrical cap you see here, on Ganief Hendricks, head of the rather radical Al-Jamaah party:

This look is rather typical of your local Bokaap “uncle”, a colourful 90s fashion that separated the old South Africa from the new – the kofia is often colourfully patterned, and shirts and trousers are normal. Most people are fairly comfortable with this image, as Islam has been around in South Africa for over 300 years, and most people have made peace with that. Even if one’s views are as abrasive as Hendricks’, it is generally seen as part of the normal flow of things.

I chose Hendricks mainly because he’s known for being a bit of a dangerous nutcase, whereas Cassim is a fairly studious and moderate sort of chap, by all accounts. Early Muslims, following Tuan Guru (1712–1807) wore a good deal of soft headdresses themselves, as this famous painting of him illustrates:

Tuan Guru, whose real name was Imam Abdullah ibn Qadi Abd al-Salam, was an Indonesian prince and Islamic scholar exiled to the Cape by the Dutch. He founded South Africa’s first madrasah in 1793 and the historic Auwal Masjid. The madrasah was the first in the country and was popular with slaves and the “Free Black” community (freed slaves – mostly Asians). It played a role in converting many Cape slaves to Islam.

The historic ethnic base of Cape Islam is Indonesian or “Malay”, descendants of 17th–18th century slaves and exiles from the Dutch trade empire. It was predominantly Shafi’i madhhab (one of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence), whereas modern Salafis generally skip all the traditional jurisprudential and theological writings, and go straight to literal interpretations of the Quran. The Cap also drew strong Sufi influences (mysticism) and local adaptations – more tolerant, and with blended cultural expressions. Dress was distinctive but local: men often wore red fezzes with suits or practical attire; women wore colorful dresses and traditional headgear like the medora.

This was brought to the Cape by the Kurdish scholar Abu Bakr Effendi, who arrived to find men and women in traditional Indonesia garb – loose or no head-coverings for women, conical straw hats or turbans for the men. Here is a rare 19th century photograph of a very conservative fashion:

What has agitated people in Minister Cassim’s odd choice of outfit, is that it calls to mind foreign radicals – the amamah (his soft turban) and the sort of dark, slick-fabricked thawb (the long, ankle-length garment worn by Muslim men). And yes, there are images of him dressed like a Saudi, but all Muslims must make pilgrimage, and it looks better to dress formally and fit in when you go.

These practices are not detailed in the Quran (which focuses on general modesty) but stem from the Sunnah – a set of practices based on the Hadith, a collection of apocryphal quotations of the Prophet, with varying degrees of doctrinal recognition. The core grooming rule comes from repeated narrations: “Trim the mustache and let the beard grow; be different from the polytheists.”

This was understood by early companions of the Prophet as a visible marker of Muslim identity. In the modern Gulf/Arab context, the amamah is a regional evolution of this traditional head covering. The specific contemporary “uniform” look (dark thawb, amamah, full beard and trimmed mustache) became prominent in the early 20th century revivalist movements, especially Wahhabism (the Saudi school of Islam) and later Salafism (a puritanical, reformist movement within Sunni Islam that seeks to “purify” the faith of Western influences and later innovations). Saudi influence (oil wealth, scholarships, dawah) helped globalize and standardize this style in the late 20th century.

This directly connects to changes in the Western Cape Muslim community over the past generation .

Institutions

Over the past 30–40 years, two major reformist streams have gained ground alongside (and sometimes in tension with) this traditional Shafi’i base. Salafism emerged publicly in Cape Town from the late 1980s/1990s via returnees who studied in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt (there are some estimates of around 150 such graduates in the Cape region by 2007). It stresses direct reliance on Quran and authentic Hadith, rejecting taqlid (blind following) of later madhhabs or cultural accretions seen as bid’ah (innovations).

One key vector is the Palestinian solidarity movement, where Saudi-influenced Salafism is widely practiced. The Palestinian movement has always found close allies in the ANC, whose UDF was a popular vehicle for Cape anti-apartheid activists during the ban on political opposition.

The arrival of the Salafis led to criticism of local Sufi practices: shrine visits, excessive celebrations, and dikhr (ritual recitations of divine names and praises) in favor of individual devotion and “pure” faith. For example, Shaykh Jameel Adam, a young preacher who critiqued traditional rituals, was barred from leading prayers at one Mitchell’s Plain mosque in 2003 for refusing dhikr, and promoting “restoring orthodoxy” through teaching and new circles. It fostered a more individualistic quest for certainty and purity.

The Deobandi reformist-traditionalist stream (often Pakistani links) arrived somewhat earlier. It is rooted in the Hanafi fiqh (jurisprudence school) but has a strong emphasis on Hadith study via darul ulooms (special seminaries). Institutions like Qaasim ul-Ulum (est. 1998 in Cape Town) are a good example. The Deobandis overlap with Salafism on visible piety but differ by remaining more bound to madhhab rulings and incorporating some devotional elements.

Visible changes in dress and attitudes directly reflect these theological shifts in the open. Men increasingly adopted full beards with shaven mustaches, thawbs, and soft head wrappings, moving away from the kofia and the more westernised clothing their parents wore. Women shifted toward stricter hijab, black abayas, and sometimes even niqabs, with traditional medora and colorful modering declining among younger generations.

Attitudes became more conservative and boundary-conscious: greater emphasis on separation, modesty, and global “pure” Islamic identity over localized Cape Malay syncretism. This created a more standardized, visibly distinct Muslim presence, and though Cape Malays always stood out a little, they were always seen as part of the social fabric. The new looks are much flashier and confrontational, drawing attention through their similarities to foreign radical movements.

Older mosques like Tuan Guru’s Auwal Masjid from 1794 have retained traditional Shafi’i-Sufi elements. Newer or reformed spaces feature more Hadith-focused teaching and gender segregation. New madrasas provide platforms for reformist thoughtm and foreign influences still play a key role. Salafi growth was fueled by Saudi, Yemeni and Egyptian scholarships and returnees, and the Deobandi/Tablighi networks are connected to Pakistan – both schools see a great deal of foreign scholarships.

Global rifts

This has created divisions in what was once a fairly homogeneous community, and also globalised the community to an fairly large extent. Palestine solidarity draws a lot of support, not only sharing ties from the old liberation movement solidarity from the Cold War, but increasingly because of civilisational rifts at the global scale, and international geopolitics.

Like all things, globalising Islam has shorn it of its local character, just as American influence has watered down Afrikaner and English cultures. And like the American import of Trump/anti-Trump hysteria creating unnecessary political divisions in the white community (over issues which often have little affect on us at home), global Islam has also produced visible friction.

Whether or not temperaments have changed, appearances draw suspicion. As the white minority imports the anxieties over Islamic migration in the west, the shifting appearances and behaviours of local Muslims trigger connections with the news content they consume online.

The Cape, unlike the vast majority of places in the world where Muslims and Christians live side-by-side, has little meaningful tensions to speak of. But as out politics become more globalised, and South Africans increasingly identify with foreigners who share civilisational characteristics, they will also increasingly import their conflicts, into a context where there is absolutely no need for it.