Muslim Higher Education in the Southern African Region: From Secular Tertiary Institutions to Darul-’Ulums

Abstract

Like many of their counterparts in North America and Western Europe, Southern Africa’s minority Muslim communities have encountered various sociopolitical, cultural and educational challenges. As a result, they have opted to establish sociocultural and educational institutions with the specific objective of carving out a niche for themselves within the host countries in which they have settled. More importantly, they have created the educational institutions with the aim of reinforcing and holding onto their religious identity as Muslim minorities. Historically, some of these Muslim communities—including the ones in South Africa’s Western Cape and in Mozambique’s Northern Provinces—have been part of the region for more than two centuries, whilst in others—such as those in Namibia and Lesotho—Muslims gradually settled from the middle or latter part of the twentieth century. When one moves from one part of the Southern African region to another, one notes that the Muslim communities are not numerically strong as is the case in other predominantly non-Muslim countries (e.g., India and the United States). If one goes along with Kettani’s calculations, they only compose about 2 percent of the region’s population (see Haron 2012). But despite their numerical weakness in Southern Africa, they have enjoyed a relative degree of religious freedom.