Punching Above Its Weight: The Story of the Call of Islam

By Adli Jacobs

The Call of Islam, in many ways, was my youth. The year 1984, when the organization was founded, was also my matric year. Some of the first recruits for the organization came from my very own matric class; others were then recruited from my fellow first-year students at the University of Cape Town.

Besides me, the other three founding members of the Call of Islam were Ebrahim Rasool, Shamiel Manie, and Farid Esack. Rasool was not just a fellow founding member; we grew up together, and our parents served on the same mosque committee. Esack was my principal from the As Salaam College in KwaZulu Natal, where I studied Islam in 1983. Manie and I were fellow members of the Muslim Student Association that gave us our grounding in seeing Islam broader than just religious rituals.

Our circle before the founding of the Call of Islam met in the back rooms of our different family homes and when Esack hosted our get-togethers in his apartment. So we shared space, we shared money, and we even shared each others clothes. It was no coincidence that our first rally should be at Primrose Park mosque, Masjidus Sabireen, as Primrose Park (in the Western Cape, South Africa) is where Rasool and I lived. We grew up in that mosque, and we knew all its successive imams and, of course, the mosque committee.

Later, our first headquarters (for many years) would be the outbuildings of my parents home in Primrose Park, where we held our executive meetings, conducted our adult classes, and even made our banners. Allie Parker, our reliable and indulgent printer, had his printing works in a neighboring suburb in Greenhaven.

It was therefore tempting to write a story of the Call of Islam, which is a personal account.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496989963

Adli Jacobs

Adli Jacobs is one of the founding members of the Call of Islam, an anti-apartheid organisation affiliated with the United Democratic Front in the 1980s. He played a central role in the production of the Call's media, in its recruitment and training, as well as in forging the organization’s views and strategies. Today he continues to speak publically and write on issues addressing the transformation of the Muslim community. Since the Call of Islam, Adli has been a journalist, a design and layout artist, government communications manager, researcher, community radio broadcaster, as well as a magazine editor. He now lectures in journalism and media studies. Originally from Cape Town, he now resides in Johannesburg, where he enjoys playing his role as dad to his three blossoming daughters and son.

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© 2014 Adli Jacobs. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/03/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8995-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8994-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8996-3 (e)

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Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Acknowledgements

1 The Five-Step Manoeuvre

2 A Movement Is Born

3 The Call of Islam Says …

4 A Home-Grown Struggle Theology

5 Practice and Methodology

6 Let Latiefa Give the Final Remarks

About the Author

Foreword

Punching Above Its Weight, is a critical component of our collective South African memory. It is crucial that stories and histories should reflect the complete mosaic of what went into the defeat of apartheid and the claiming of our human dignity. The Call of Islam played a humble role in the defeat of the apartheid monster, but made a significant contribution to the breadth and identity of the liberation movement, and helped ensure that our post-apartheid identity would be nonracial, multicultural, interfaith and inclusive.

There is no more appropriate person to remind us of the role of the Call of Islam, than Adli Jacobs. He was a founder member, while only a matriculant, a leader at a very tender age, and showed that heavy responsibilities could easily coexist with youthful exuberance. He reflected deeply, thought maturely, spoke eloquently, wrote movingly, acted fearlessly, and endured stoically. Almost three decades later he shows that he can remember clearly and reflect profoundly.

This book is a concise account of the final phase of the struggle against apartheid. In crisp and efficient ways it links seismic global shifts to seemingly modest movements in South Africa. And therefore, the revolution in Iran had a profound impact on debates in South Africa about Muslims and their relation to the liberation struggle. On the other hand, the fall of the Berlin Wall determined the continued usefulness of the apartheid regime to Thatcher and Reagan and thus shifted the apartheid strategy from co-option with repression to negotiation with brutality by proxy.

By using the Call of Islam as an example, Adli gives us a rare insight into the mechanics of the United Democratic front. The UDF, from a distance, is often presented as a simple monolith that was the ANC in disguise. While it may have fulfilled this necessary function, to view the UDF instrumentally may well miss the minutia and detail of how to construct a movement in a context of repression, and how to manage the complexity of alliances and coalitions when disparate interest and ideological groups are brought together in a broad front. This is a lesson that, unless learnt, may lead to failure.

The Palestinians are certainly in need of this lesson. Had the Egyptian revolution understood how to construct and hold diverse people and tendencies together, the Pharoah may well have been banished for longer. And had the foot soldiers and leaders of the Arab Uprisings glimpsed how comfortably a Muslim organization, like the Call of Islam, found common purpose with Co-Religionists, Nationalists, secularists, Communists, and rather prioritised human dignity and freedom, then possibly the forces of counterrevolution would not easily have succeeded.

This book is also intended to serve as a model for other minority Muslim communities. In a post 911 world, where Muslim extremism and Islamophobia are mutually reinforcing phenomena, Muslim minorities face severe dilemmas. The Call of Islam illustrates that, under pressure, Muslims should integrate, not isolate; make common cause, not succumb to their own sense of victimhood; and build coalitions, not seek purity of belief or thought.

The book highlights the crowning glory of the Call of Islam when, with liberation imminent, all the main Muslim organisations were convened by the Call of Islam to inform the negotiating process led by Nelson Mandela, deliberate on the principles of the new constitution, and present to the future leadership of a free and democratic South Africa the particular aspirations and needs of a Muslim community that was only 1,3% of the total population.

For both Muslim minority communities as well as those Muslims who drove the Arab Spring, the Call of Islam may well be a prototype of what a society-centred Muslim organisation could be. In a world filled with research and analysis, nuance and complexity, there are those who choose not to apply any of these in their reading of the Muslim world. They see only moderates and Islamists. On this spurious basis, entire political theses and entire military strategies are based. The Call of Islam defies such simplicity.

When I spoke at the 25th anniversary of the Call of Islam in 2008, I reflected on this and came to the conclusion that:

The Call of Islam is an organisation that was militant but not violent; radical but not fundamentalist; and revolutionary but not extreme.

In the nuances of each of these binaries lie the possibility for Muslim movements across the world, who may live under occupation, despotism, military rule, extremism and other forms of rule that inhibit their dignity and distort their faith. Such regimes may require radical transformation and revolutionary change and may need to be confronted militantly. But in the latter parts of these binaries – violence, fundamentalism and extremism - often lies the seeds of their undoing.

Such subtlety can only emerge when there is a profound grappling with the sources of your faith. The author illustrates, at the hand of chapters of the Quran and episodes from the Prophetic Tradition, how the Call of Islam tried to understand the Divine intention. He further illustrates the fearless relationship between action and reflection that was the hallmark of the Call of Islam. This made every activist of the Call of Islam confident in their engagement with comrades of different persuasions, assertive with fellow Muslims who differed with our approach, and courageous when confronting the apartheid enemy.

It is a travesty that we have waited almost 30 years for the story of the Call of Islam to be told. I am happy that Adli has now done so. It may not be a perfect rendition of the history; a complete account of every debate, campaign or incident; or a personal recall of every brave and thoughtful member. But it fulfills a need.

In a world where some Muslims present us as backward by their example, and our opponents project us as barbaric in their propaganda, the least that this book will do is to say that in 1984, in the midst of an almighty struggle against apartheid, there emerged from a community that came to South Africa as slaves and exiles, who constituted only a small minority, yet from them the Call of Islam was born.

When it wasn’t fashionable yet, the Call of Islam said that men and women are equal in the sight of God – and promptly elected women into its highest leadership; the Call of Islam said that if God is one then humanity is one – and promptly affiliated to both a political front and an interfaith umbrella; the Call of Islam said that all creation reflect the majesty of God – and ensured that environmental justice would be the corollary of human justice; and the Call of Islam said that we are both Muslim and South African – and promptly immersed ourselves in accessible communication with our people and participated in the richly diverse cultural traditions of our nation.

May all those who have been touched by the Call of Islam be proud of Adli Jacobs and the work he has done. He has told our story. It is the story of our parents who, despite their fear for our safety, still joined us in struggle. It is the story of those who led us who, despite their own knowledge, trusted the insights we brought. It is the story of young activists who, despite their yearning for their passing youthfulness, came to the halaqat, organised the rallies, fought the police, distributed the pamphlets, and faced the consequences. It is the story of the Ulema who, despite our fearsome revolutionary fervour, trusted us sufficiently to open their mosques and their hearts to us. But above all, it is about the people who, despite not knowing the destination, nonetheless followed us and filled our rallies and marches, because they knew we would not take them where would not go ourselves.

Ebrahim Rasool, South African Ambassador to the United States

I

dedicate this book to

My parents, Ebrahim and Rugaya, who gave us in the organisation the space we needed when we needed it

Nelson Mandela, who, thank God, was able to control his own bitterness when he walked into freedom

Members of the Call of Islam who all sacrificed their youth so that SA Muslims could hold their heads up high in a new South Africa

My partner, Sadia, who urged and encouraged me to complete this book before it ruins our marriage

Introduction

The Call of Islam, in many ways, was my youth. The year 1984, when the organisation was founded, was also my matric year. Some of the first recruits for the organisation came from my very own matric class; others were then recruited from my fellow first-year students at the University of Cape Town.

Besides me, the other three founding members of the Call of Islam were Ebrahim Rasool, Shamiel Manie, and Farid Esack. Rasool was not just a fellow founding member; we grew up together, and our parents served on the same mosque committee. Esack was my principal from the As