New Religious Actors in South Africa: The Example of Islamic Humanitarianism

Abstract

Islamic humanitarianism in South Africa represents new political, social, and economic horizons for the South African Muslim minority.¹ Its development in the 1970s was strongly linked to reformist and transnational Islamic trends. This essay will attempt to analyze current forms of Islamic aid from a sociohistorical perspective which takes into account the influence of religious globalization in the emergence of new Muslim actors as well as their relationship to the state. I will show that South African Muslims, especially those of Indian origin, initially entered into the humanitarian sphere with the goal of fostering Islamization and re-Islamization under the influence of international Islamic institutions. Then, in the 1990s, new practices of Islamic solidarity came to prevail in a context of economic liberalization, notably with the growing professionalism of South African Islamic NGOs. These latter would progressively link their Muslim identity to their identity as citizens, thus promoting the nationalization of Islamic associations and religious change.