An art that obscures: Baderoon regarding Muslims

  • Auwais Rafudeen University of South Africa

Abstract

[BOOK REVIEW]
Baderoon, Gabeba (2015)

Regarding Muslims: From slavery to post-apartheid.

Johannesburg: Wits University Press (2014).

ISBN 978-1-86814-769-4 pbk.

Pages xix + 207

“Praise be to God for making us forget”. These words, uttered by a White Helmets volunteer in Syria, is echoed in Gabeba Baderoon densely-layered Regarding Muslims in two ways. The shame of sexual violence and miscegenation associated with slavery at the Cape has led – and here Baderoon quotes Zoë Wicomb – to a “total erasure of slavery from folk memory” (p 88). But in a less salutary way, this forgetfulness is also characteristic of those who were the major beneficiaries of this institution. Colonists wished to forget slavery, and their representation of Cape Muslims – “Malays” – played a critical role in this forgetting. This is one of the main arguments that emerge from Baderoon’s book.

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Author Biography

Auwais Rafudeen, University of South Africa

Department of Religious Studies and Arabic
University of South Africa (UNISA)
Pretoria

Published
2017-07-11
How to Cite
Rafudeen, A. (2017). An art that obscures: Baderoon regarding Muslims. PINS-Psychology in Society, 53(1), 89-91. https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-8708/2017/n53a6
Section
Book Reviews