Oblique figures : representations of Islam in South African media and culture

Includes bibliographical references.In 1996 stories in South African newspapers about the group Pagad articulated a new vision of Islam. In this thesis I conduct a long reading of the ways in which Islam has been represented in South Africa to provide a context for analysing the Pagad stories. Drawing on Edward Said's Orientalism and later elaborations that emphasise gender, the thesis is attentive to the latent weight of fantasies of 'race' on non-fictional representations. In the introduction I look at the use of the offensive word 'kaffir' in colonial South Africa and contend that, in the context of slavery and the displacement of indigenous people, the proliferating use of the term functioned to recast indigeneity as misplaced and unfit, facilitating settler claims to the land. Through the example of this deformation of a word originally drawn from Islam, I show how the meanings and experiences of Islam are transformed by specific circumstances and histories. Islam arrived in South Africa when Dutch colonists brought slaves and servants to the Cape from 1658. The context of slavery and colonial settlement is crucial to the way Islam has been represented in South Africa. Muslim slaves were characterized as industrious, placid and picturesque. I contend in analyses of nineteenth century landscape paintings that the figure of the 'Malay' played a role in discursively securing a settler identity in the Cape Colony. This occurred through their 'oblique' positioning near the edge of the frame, where they appear to certify the boundaries of the settled space of the colony. I follow these readings of the picturesque vision of Islam by exploring instances of its underside - the discourse of oriental fanaticism