Questions of fact.

1. There are no 'recent statistics' available to indicate that Islam is steadily gaining new adherents'. The latest statistics for Mozambique goes back to 1970, for Zimbabwe to mid-1970 and for South Africa to 1980. The results of the most recent South African national census (1990), which should be significant for demographic question of the impact of Islam on non-Muslims, is only due later this year.

2. The Cape Malay community is not 'sometimes referred to as Cape Coloured community' but form a sub-group of the latter. Furthermore, the community referred to as 'Cape Malay' is not of 'mixed African, Asian and European descent' but essentially from Asian descent. It also needs to be pointed out that these categories of 'Indian Muslims' and 'Cape Malays' are increasingly invalidated by migratory patterns and inter-marriage.

3. In a paragraph dealing with 'several important Muslim welfare organizations' three quarters of the space is given to the work of Dr Abu Bakr Asvat. Presuming that the article wants to highlight the Islamic component in social activism this is clearly misplaced;  Asvat never gave the impression of being a confessional Muslim or of being inspired by Islam. Significant as his concern for the sick may have been, he was no different from countless other doctors who offer self-sacrificing service in South Africa's townships. The suggestion that he was a pioneer whose work is an 'inspiration to other Muslim welfare organization and is increasingly being imitated by them' is a claim entirely unfounded and not even made by the organization to which he belonged, AZAPO.

4. Of the six 'notable Muslim leaders in the anti-apartheid struggle', among whom Nkrumah includes the present writer,  he is wrong on three accounts. i. While Asvat was certainly a notable leader there is nothing in his speeches or conduct to suggest that he ever thought of himself as a Muslim leader. ii. Babla Salogie and Ahmad Timol, both activists murdered by the South African police, were not leadership figures in any political or Islamic organizational sense of the word. There is also no public knowledge of their religious commitment. The first time that they are mentioned in the South African - commercial and alternative - press was on the occasions of their murders. Martyrdom may be a legitimate means to the elevation of leadership in religious discourse but one cannot suggests that such leadership was also exercised over a community as the article does. Secondly if martyrdom were to be a criteria for leadership status then there are numerous other candidates including Ebrahim Carelse, Abdul Karriem, Friddie and Yusuf Akhalwayah; all of whom were practising Muslims and, in the case of Akalwayah, deeply committed to the Islamic worldview.

My criticism in points number three and four may seem trite: I do, however, want to point out three issues:

I have seen these six names together in several publications (all by non-South African writers) and in the absence of any factual scrutiny they get re-hashed until it becomes established as history

Secondly, and more significantly, I resent a religious traditionalist dishonesty in claiming what is universal and appropriating it. ('Good people are actually Muslims/Christians although they themselves may not acknowledge it.')  Asvat, Timol, and Salogie were just good human beings. While a religious community may correctly feel proud that it has given birth to such individuals, it is incorrect for any community to claim them as a part of its exclusive heritage. The problem is further compounded when religious fundamentalists denounce these Muslim individuals for being moved by secular principles - as Qibla does - but then claims them upon their martyrdom.

The article omits mention of some of the most significant contemporary Muslim figures on the anti-Apartheid scene such as Essop Jassat, Rashid Salogie, Hassan Solomon and Ibrahim Rasool. Among them they share more than a century of active engagement against apartheid and decades of banning orders, detention and exile. In the list of notable Muslim leaders forwarded by Nkrumah only Cassiem's commitment and sacrifice possibly commensurate with that of these figures.

5. Referring to the list of organizations, the following inaccuracies should be noted:

i. The Muslim Youth Movement is not concentrated in 'Soweto, Kwazulu and Natal', Besides the fact that Kwazulu is an apartheid description for some parts of Natal, the MYM is, in fact, rather weak in that part of Natal and has a few individuals as members in Soweto. Its organizational strength is in much of urban Natal, the Witwatersrand and the Western and Eastern Cape. It is, furthermore, the only truly national Muslim organization with fully staffed offices in three provinces and a monthly newspaper.

ii. QMM is an abbreviation for Qibla Mass Movement and not Qibla Muslim Movement. While the organization has always described itself as a mass movement, it has always referred to itself as 'Qibla' and has never adopted the initials QMM.

iii. The Mustad afun Foundation is a a little known organization which has received three mentions in the local Muslim newspaper, Muslim Views. It has never been mentioned in the alternative or commercial press nor has it been mentioned in any studies by South Africans dealing with Muslims in South Africa.

iv. The Al-Hidayah Dawah Movement is not mentioned in any newspaper during the eighties nor is it known to exist. It may possibly be confused with a da'wah (proselytizing) project of a local mosque committee by the same name.

More significant than these factual errors is Nkrumah's omission of what - for the period under discussion - was arguably South Africa's largest, most active and up-front Muslim activist organization, the Call of Islam. In the period 1984-89 this organization received one thousand and seven hundred mentions in South African news reports alone, convened more than two hundred public meetings where attendance ranged from one hundred to eight thousand and was solely responsible for the organization of all Muslim 'political funerals'. In May 1989 the Call convened the first ever National Conference of Muslims in South Africa which, incidentally, was attended by all the (actual) organizations cited by Nkrumah. The National Convenor of the Call, Rasool, convened the historic 1990 ecumenical conference of two hundred and fifty religious leaders across the country and has accompanied Mandela abroad as an advisor on Muslim affairs. It astonishing, to say the least, that non-existent organizations should be cited as active major movements while the only movement which has received extensive coverage in ANC and other publications should be ignored.

6. Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi is not mentioned in any of the Qibla internal or mass publications. there is thus no basis for the assessment that 'QMM regards Mu'ammar Gaddhafi in high esteem as an exemplary Muslim'. During the bombing of Tripoli it was left to the Call of Islam to stage demonstrations outside the United States Information Centre in Cape Town and to conduct protest meetings in Wynberg and Lenasia. In Durban the MYM saw many of its members arrested in similar protests. Qibla's name does not feature in any newspaper reports covering Muslim response to the bombing.

Since its inception Qibla has  been inspired by the Irani revolution and have consistently tried to follow the line of the Imam (Khomeini). Like all fundamentalist groups, there is little scope for dual sources of inspiration in Qibla.

7. While it is correct that the Libyan-based Islamic Call Society finances the annual meetings of the Union of Muslim Councils of East, Central and Southern Africa, it is erroneous to infer that South African organizations are party to it. Two individuals - one Durban-based and the other Pretoria based participate in the conferences of this Union.

8. There is no documented proof of any Saudi Arabia and Libyan funds being channeled to South Africa via the Islamic Call Society. This story first emerged in a paper which erroneously suggested that such funds came into South Africa via the Call of Islam. Nkrumah seems to have confused this with the Libyan-based Islamic Call society. In the case of the Call of Islam, no Libyan funds were ever received by it for any purpose whatsoever.
 

A Question of Substance

While it is correct that 'by their embodiment of the Islamic ideal and the exemplification of the Islamic sense of fraternity and social justice, Muslims in South Africa have demonstrated that Islam is not the monster Eurocentric cultural perceptions tend to make it, Nkrumah's example is precisely that monster. It was the Call of Islam, and later the MYM which embodied principles of plurality, ecumenism, non-sexism and political tolerance.

The truth is that while religious fundamentalism may well be projected as a monster by western eurocentricism it is certainly experienced as just that by many other Muslims who do not share the religious worldview of fundamentalists. A few quotes from a typical Qibla publication 'Revolution Today, Justice Tomorrow' will suffice to make my case.

We cannot unite the oppressor and the oppressed because then we must unite the believer and the unbeliever... 'Our unity is a unity under Allah and his Rasul (Messenger).

All Muslims start off with the same kalimah (creed), the same Sunnah (Prophetic Precedent). In other words, with the SAME IDEAS, VALUES and IDEALS. That is, there is ideological unity.

What those who profess to be Muslims have lost is a correct UNDERSTANDING of Islam.

This has given rise to a host of 'Muslim academics'. We dare not call them 'academic Muslims' because the word Muslim does not require any adjective.

Islam declares war on racism and racialism. This is more than a mere battle of words. As proof we offer  Muslims as the only truly consolidated anti-racist force in the country. This has been historically maintained for three hundred years because it is an ideological unit and not a nationality, tribe and race or class.

Islam, the Deen (religion) of the oppressed, is the ideology of liberation against which any other 'ism' pales into insignificance. These isms are no threat to the Muslims at all - they are only of nuisance value.

Qibla ideology is evidently exclusivist, intolerant, takes an ahistorical and essentialist view of both Islam and the Muslim community and a rather dim view of the worth of non-Muslims. It is impossible to envisage anyone committed to religious or political pluralism welcoming this kind of rhetoric. Qibla had to operate within the political space created by the UDF and its allies. The dominance of this space in the Muslim domain by the Call of Islam on the one hand and the unwelcome stridency of its Khomeini-ist rhetoric on the other, ensured that it never grew beyond a small group of Muslim fundamentalist militants with no popular support among ordinary Muslims.

Nkrumah seems to have confused a solidarity of the marginalized and the symbiotic relationship between Qibla and the PAC with a general liberation movement welcoming of Qibla's militancy.