"We're all finding places": ILM-SA and middle-class, Indian, Muslim women in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This profile focuses on the Institute for Learning and Motivation South Africa (ILM-SA) and its (co)founder Fatima Asmal's work as a community organiser and activist. Fatima is a public figure, Muslim community activist, journalist, producer of a recent documentary on Muslim Identity in South Africa, and founder of community organisation ILM-SA in Durban. ILM-SA provides an interesting lens through which to consider middle-class Indian Muslim identities in post-apartheid South Africa, as the organisation boldly and explicitly encourages (middle-class Indian) Muslims to live less insular lives, and also aims to promote inclusivity beyond the barriers of race and class. For ILM-SA and Fatima Asmal, Muslim women are often the key focus, and accomplished individuals are promoted in order to encourage Muslim women to actively participate in public life, within and beyond 'the community'.

This profile also explores ILM-SA and the views of Fatima Asmal, sometimes through contrast with other Muslim community organisations, in order to shed light on and ask preliminary questions around how her choices reveal, and give voice to, the possibilities and pathways available to Muslim women in post-apartheid Durban and South Africa. The author suggests that organisations such as ILM-SA offer a lens through which to see the (re)making of Durban's middle-class Indian Muslim community in post-apartheid South Africa.