Black Islamic Praxes: Anti-colonial Theories & Inventions of Existence

Abstract

This research explores the intersection between Blackness and Islam to argue that Black African Muslims use their denominational practices to produce an emancipatory political change in their societies. This intersection gives Black Islamic praxes a focus to interrogate the meanings of the experience of being Black and Muslim in contemporary South Africa to develop an emancipatory political culture. The thesis centrally argues that a Black African Muslim is a unique subjectivity in the theory and politics of emancipation in contemporary South Africa and it posits that the meaning of Black Islamic praxes is tied to the development of a new subjectivity and a new thought of political culture in the postcolony. The thesis is a combination of critique, analysis, and prescription; it critiques and analyses the existing paradigms, power structures, and dominant narratives that marginalize Black African Muslims in postcolonial South Africa1. This work further argues that for Black African Muslims, politics does not only take place at the site of the State but they also operate at the level of thought and subjectivity. This uniqueness enables Black African Muslims to invent a new ontology and epistemology outside of the reigning Western world systems of domination and knowledge production. This denominational thought and subjectivity is expressed in the political and cultural discourses, sound, and literature. With South Africa, these discourses and expressions are directed at expressing the total disappointment in the absence of an effective emancipatory politics, because of the crassest forms of kleptocracy, and the poverty of our spiritual-material existence. These discourses and expressions when combined become a self- sufficient theory of emancipation, which offers a different but productive analysis of the social, political, cultural, and economic situation of postcolonial South Africa. We are living in a period of political and theoretical disorientation because of the failure to imagine a new intellectuality of politics and real emancipatory change. This work draws upon political theories of emancipation. It is broadly located within the discipline of political studies, but it also draws its material from black studies, philosophy, Islamic studies, cultural studies, music, and literature. The thesis centrally asks, what does it mean to be a Black African Muslim in 1 Settler Colonialism made it possible for the establishment of apartheid. This conclusion is sustained by the fact that colonialsm and apartheid subsisted on the explotation of blacks and violation of Blackness (ontology and episteme). Therefore, I regard apartheid as a pillar within a structure of settler colonialism rather than something different to settler colonialism. Hence, my use of postcolonal South Africa than the use of post-apartheid South Africa. contemporary South Africa? What is unique about the experience of a Black African Muslim subjectivity? What is the relevance of Black Islamic praxes for emancipatory politics?