Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

2 5 8Islam i n World Cult u r e sSouth African Muslim men performing holiday prayers at the Gray Street Mosque in Durban.(Gideon Mendel/CORBIS)tween, on the one hand, hawkers and traders who supported the building ofmosques and, on the other, indentured workers whose religious life was governedby annual festivals imported from India. Among these festivals is thefirst month of the Islamic calendar, Muharram, in which the martyrdom of thegrandson of the Prophet Muhammad is commemorated. This has been a verypopular occasion for Muslims in South Africa to mark their identity. With thearrival of Soofie Saheb in 1895, such popular religious practices among IndianMuslims of indentured origins were promoted, and they have since becomepart of local Muslim religious life (Vahed 2001, 311, 319). However, the classlines demarcated between Muslims associated with mosques and communitiesoriented toward more popular festival observances have persisted among theSouth Asian population of South Africa to this day.Like their counterparts in the Cape, Muslims in Natal and the province ofTransvaal established mosques and schools to support their religious activities.The first mosque at Durban was founded in 1884, and that of Pretoria, the capitalof the Boer South African Republic, was established in 1887. It was SouthAsian Muslim traders who founded these mosques, after duly obtaining permissionfrom the colonial authorities. During the late nineteenth century, certainareas in Durban were set aside for Indian occupation, while the Boerrepublics instituted ever-more-draconian legislation limiting Indian participationin the community. For example, the Orange Free State completely pro-