REGARDING MUSLIMS, from slavery to post-apartheid

207 pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2014.

Gabeba Baderoon explores the 350-year archive of images documenting Muslims in South Africa and analyses how these images reveal the contributions Muslims have brought to the South African narratives of colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid.

"Drawing on the by now extensive scholarship on slavery at the Cape, Gabeba Baderoon guides us through the labyrinth of racial and cultural stereotyping which for centuries minimised Islam and obscured Muslims as actors in South African history. Intellecutally sophisticated in its explorations of material culture, iconography, and of media rhetoric, yet lively in style and engagingly personal in presentation, 'Regarding Muslims' is a welcome contribution to the revisionist project under way in South Africa." J.M.Coetzee

"This is the book we have all been waiting for - Baderoon mainstreams Islam in South African cultural history and produces a dazzling array of re-readings and re-alignments. This deeply original book inserts Islamicate intellectual traditions back into South African public life and makes us re-envision both. Written with the lucidity and imagination of a poet, this book helps us appreciate the multiple inheritances of South Africa and the intellectual riches that result from taking these seriously." Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor of African Literature, University of Witwatersrand and Visiting Global Distinguished Professor, New York University

Poet and academic Gabeba Baderoon is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University and an Extraordinary Professor of English at Stellenbosch University.