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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Changed Circumstances for the Performance of Religious Authority in a Cape Muslim Community |
Author: | Bangstad, Sindre |
Year: | 2004 |
Periodical: | Journal of Religion in Africa |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 1-2 |
Pages: | 39-61 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | Islam Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Women's Issues |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1581480 |
Abstract: | In the Muslim communities of Cape Town, South Africa, religious authority is based on processes of designation in local communities. Increased access to higher religious education, and increased exposure to the diversity of local and global Islamic discourses as a result of general societal democratization and processes of globalization, leads to increased contestation over religious authority in Cape Muslim communities. As the rights to Muslim discourse are democratized, religious authority becomes more unstable. This article, based on fieldwork carried out between 1998 and 2001 in a coloured township south of Cape Town, argues that there has been a shift in the symbolic capital required of Muslim religious leaders from mastery of form to mastery of content, and suggests that the democratization of Muslim discourse has opened avenues to religious authority for Muslim females. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |