Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss Cape Town’s Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM)’s program for eco-justice. It will explore the content of a few selected sermons delivered from its pulpit between 2011 and 2015, and then present a short description of the mosque's green practices implemented in the last decade.

Paper long abstract:

Founded in 1854, Cape Town’s Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM) has since the early 1980s established itself as a key platform in South Africa for the elaboration of a progressivist and liberationist Muslim discourse. Under the leadership of Imam Hassan Solomon (1980-1985) and later of Imam Abdul Rashied Omar (1986-), the pulpit (minbar) became the medium of a systematic political communication performed through Friday and Eid sermons (khutbas) by the imams, members of the congregations, and guest preachers. After the 1994 democratic turn, CMRM’s confrontational focus on the State and its apartheid politics left room to an inclusivist, socially engaged message centered on five interlinked dimensions: the empowerment of youth, jihad against poverty, gender jihad, interfaith solidarity and environmental justice.

This paper will focus on the latter; first, it will present a brief historical background of CMRM’s discourse, highlighting how the mosque’s interlinked dedication to scientific humanism and progressive politics has its roots deep into early twentieth century, when physician Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman (1872-1940) became the first Black South African elected politician. It will then take into exam CMRM’s program for eco-justice, formally started in 2011, when the mosque registered as an eco-congregation “committed to working for a more just and sustainable world in response to the wisdom of its sacred texts and teachings”. In order to do so, this paper will explore the content of a few selected sermons delivered from CMRM’s minbar between 2011 and 2015, performed by a diverse array of preachers that include the imam Rashied Omar, sociology of education Professor Aslam Fataar, gender scholar Nafisa Patel, medical doctor Rafiq Khan, and religious scholars Noor Salie and Sa’dullah Khan. Finally, it will present a short description of CMRM’s green practices implemented in the last decade.