Perceptions of Race Among “Sunni” Black Muslims in Laudium, Pretoria: Applying Insights of Talal Asad in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract A number of black Muslims have joined the Barelwi, locally called “Sunni”, networks in South Africa and it is their experiences of race that we wish to examine in this essay. We shall analyze experiences relating to race among three Black “Sunni” (Barelwi) Muslims in South Africa. Given South Africa's tumultuous apartheid past, race continues to play a determinative role in personal, social and political relationships in the country. In exploring the question of race in the Sunni environment, we are guided by the work of Talal Asad. For Asad, following Wittgenstein, it is important to appreciate a particular form of life (Sunniyat in South Africa in this case) and then structure one's questions of race in the light of that appreciation. Hence, we find that the answers proposed by our interviewees to combat racism proceed not so much from the well-known “political” solutions, but from a deeper existential and spiritual understanding of reality.