Black Muslims feel shunned
Victims of racism reveal struggles
Nabeelah Khan used to think of her skin colour as a disability. Khan’s mother has both Zulu and Indian parentage and her father is Indian.
But Khan is not comfortable being called Indian because that label has caused “a lot [of] pain and difficulty”.
That inner conflict started when she was young.
At primary school in Lenasia‚ a largely Indian community in the south of Johannesburg, a fellow pupil told her that her hijab (head scarf worn by Muslim women) won’t hide the fact that she is a witch.
“Everyone laughed. But me‚ I died inside‚” the 22-year-old said. “Switch on the lights‚ we can’t see Nabeelah! My mother could use your steel-wool hair to clean the pots,” some pupils would say.
Khan told TimesLIVE that her urge to bleach her skin lasted unt il her Grade 7 teacher convinced her otherwise.
“I am brown. I have curly hair‚” she said proudly.
Nelisiwe Msomi has faced similar prejudice. Msomi recently took to social media to reflect on the racism black Muslims face on a daily basis.
The 24-year-old journalist aired her views after her religion was questioned by a shopkeeper in the Joburg.
“As I put my change into my purse‚ the shopkeeper asks me if I’m Muslim. Clearly‚ my hijab doesn’t give it away‚ so I respond positively. He asks, ‘Are you South African?’” Msomi wrote on her blog.
She felt a spark of rage when the shopkeeper further asked if she was married to a Bangladeshi or Pakistani man‚ to which she responded: “I’m not married.”
The shopkeeper responded: “How is that possible? You can only be a Muslim if you are married to a Bangladeshi or Pakistani man.”
She wrote: “It’s the same feeling of humiliation that I felt when a Pakistani man asked me to prove that I’m Muslim by reciting Quran [religious text] verses in a taxi a few years ago ...”
Msomi said she has watched her black friends leave the religion as mosques and Muslim festivals have become toxic places where blacks feel isolated by other race groups.
Racism was the last thing Vuyo Mokoena expected to encounter in a mosque.
Last year during the holy month of Ramadan‚ Mokoena
‘ Mosques and festivals have become toxic places ‘
and black Islamic scholars were at a Mayfair mosque when a fellow believer ordered them to leave. “We were going to spend 30 minutes tops there‚ but we were rudely confronted by Islam scholars and trustees‚” Mokoena said.
“Within a few minutes‚ they ordered us off their grounds‚ but I started to tell them straight [that] they are racist for preventing us from the house of Allah.”
The Muslim Judicial Council, through its general secretary Shaykh Isgaak Taliep, said that Islam categorically rejects all forms of racism and marginalisation of people.