ABDULKADER TAYOB, Islam in South Africa: Mosques, Imams and Sermons, Religions of Africa (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999). Pp. 187. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper

Extract

Tayob's study of the sermon is unique. This is so because, as he suggests, a unique approach grounded in the discursive traditions of Muslims themselves is called for when studying a religious symbol. That this symbol's religious and metaphysical dimension has not been sufficiently explored is the justification for this contribution on the sermon in Muslim societies. More than a ritual and disciplinary practice, Tayob's Friday sermon holds out many possibilities, and his privileged position as a Muslim, he reminds us, means that he is able to unpack the layers of the sermon from the inside out. The results of such an approach, we are promised, are far-reaching. It affords an opportunity to look at the position of the “mosque and imam traditions” within Islam, which he maintains is the missing link to explain the matter sufficiently well. It also serves the purpose of rethinking Quranic revelation. This is so because the Friday sermon as the most significant occasion on which the Quran is “re-cited” will now be recognized for performing the cosmological function of the original text of Islam. Eventually in this approach there is even salvation for the Quran from being a “bounded” book.