Fashion, performance and the politics of belonging among Muslim women in Cape Town

Abstract

This thesis explores how the hijab fashion market has emerged in Cape Town and how Capetonian Muslim women are appropriating hijab fashion as a means of redefining themselves as Muslim South Africans instead of ‘Cape Malays’, the ethnic label given to Muslims in the Western Cape during the apartheid era. I argue that through self stylisation Cape Malay women are performatively rejecting the ethnicisation of Islam during apartheid. I show that ‘Cape Malay’ women are using hijab fashion to perform their ‘Muslimness’ in order to claim a positive and legitimate spot in the ‘rainbow nation’ as Muslims as a religious-cultural category, and not as ‘Malays’, an ethnic category, while simultaneously claiming their belonging to the global umma (Muslim community)