ABSTRACT
Malay Muslims had lived for many generations as a minority group within the predominantly Christian Coloured population. Far from being in the background, Muslim women in District Six were in the centre of activity, vocal in their authority and often conspicuous in their dress. The Cape Town community was proudly Muslim. Higher education at the segregated University of the Western Cape and other training centres allowed Muslim and Christian Coloureds to move in greater numbers into professional jobs, especially school teaching, where the Nationalist government needed Coloured teachers for Coloured schools. Malay Muslims have antecedents going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they came to South Africa as slaves and political exiles at the time of the first White settlers. Repostes come from both western critics of Islam and from more traditional Muslim writers who pick out particular Qur’anic verses and also Hadith that point to male authority.
