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

R ace, Ideology, and Islam in Contemporary South Africa 2 7 7tions, failure to obtain permission for a second marriage is subject to a fine of50,000 rands.The project committee’s approach to these issues indicates a breakthroughin the broader debates over Islam and democracy. The earlier Muslim PersonalLaw Board did not simply break down on conflicting readings of theconstitution, for their differing readings of the constitution were signs of somedeeper misgivings relating to the place of Muslims and Islam in a seculard e m o c r a c y. This tendency was most evident in To f f a r ’s approach (discussedabove). While Muslims were enjoying the fruits of an open society and takingadvantage thereof, they were also exposed to a wide variety of modern interpretationsof Islam that regarded democracy as anathema. The dominant tendencyin that discourse rejected democracy as a man-made system that potentiallyor actually violated the terms of the s h a r i ’ a .These ideological challenges initially seemed intractable, as powerful Muslimgroups on the streets of Cape Town and allied voices in the media openlyadvocated a rejection of democracy and the South African constitution in thename of Islam. With Muslims constituting less than 2 percent of the population,others in the community saw the talk of an Islamic state as totally inappropriate.But as participants in a global arena where Islamic ideas wereshared, some Muslims who held such notions received support among somesectors of the Muslim community in South Africa (Esack 1988b; Tayob 1999a).PAGAD and PoliticsIn this context, the rise of one organization in particular has dominated theperceptions on Islam and democracy in South Africa in recent years. Since1996, the People against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) movement hasemerged as a powerful pressure group in the country. Even though PAGAD isnot a political movement in the strictest sense of the term, its ultimate motivationseems to be the vision of a religious or “theocratic” Islamic state. It was ostensiblyfounded to rid the Cape of the scourge of gangsters and drugs. Eventu a l l y, it is believed, PAGAD was infiltrated by Qiblah operatives hoping to leadan Islamist campaign against the new democratic order of South Africa(Rossouw 1996). A leader and one of PA G A D ’s principal speakers at ralliesand marches has been Achmat Cassiem, who felt that the promised Islamicrevolution of the 1980s had not yet advanced in his own country. Drawing parallelsbetween apartheid and the democratic state in its treatment of PA G A Dsupporters, Cassiem legitimized violence against the new government. Accordingto a leading journalist, Cassiem and the militant PAGAD members have noregard for democracy and its values: “Underpinning this is a conviction thatthe current government is as illegitimate as the past one [that is, the apartheid