Programme for Professor Abdulkader Tayob's visit to Roskilde, Bergen and Copenhagen in April 2009

Public lecture at the Centre for International Studies in Citizenship, Democratic Participation and Civil Society (CIPACI), Roskilde University, building 25.1, Tuesday 21 April, 13-15:

Islamic Publics and Notions of Civil Society in Africa

Research seminar, Department of History, Archaeology, Religion and Culture, University of Bergen, Thursday 23 April, 12-14:

Islamic Education in South Africa Meeting the Demands of Change and Uncertainty since the 1970s

This study puts Islamic schooling between religious motivations and a variety of socio-political contexts since the 1970s. It argues that uncertainty (moral and racial) has directed middle-class Muslims out of state schools and into so-called independent schools. And furthermore, putative Islamic ideological foundations have been accommodated in the pursuit of secular excellence.

Seminar for the Indian Ocean network and the study group on religion in Africa, Centre for African Studies, Copenhagen University, Friday 24 April, 10-12:

Indian Madrasas in South Africa Serving Local and Global Aspirations

This is a study of an Islamic higher education institute in the province of KwaZulu-Natal closely connected to a local network of religious teachersthat draw inspiration from Deoband, India. At the same time, it hosts aglobal website of religious opinions (fatwa) that gives it global reach. A study of its context, and its virtual presence, provides a fascinating window to an Islamic trend in the Indian Ocean region.

Abdulkader Tayob is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, and the Director of a new research programme on ‘Islam, African Publics and Religious Values', dedicated to a critical and comparative study of Muslim publics in Africa since the end of the Cold War, and focussing on South Africa, Tanzania and Ghana. He is the author of Islamic Resurgence in South Africa: The Muslim Youth Movement (1995) and Islam in South Africa: Mosques, Imams and Sermons (2003), and the editor of Islam and African Muslim Publics (2007).

Story of the Voyage Colloquium 2 and 3 October 2008

Hosted by Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) and the Wits Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA)

Thursday, 2 October and Friday, 3 October 2008

For further information, please see WISER web site

Copenhagen lecture 11 September 2008

One of the Indian Ocean network's initiators and coordinators, professor Isabel Hofmeyr of the University of Witwatersrand, will be giving a keynote address to the Nordic conference in Copenhagen on Print Culture - 'Published Words - Public Pages' from 10 to 12 September 2008.

Isabel's lecture has the title 'Indian Ocean Pages: Port Cities, Printing and Publics'.

It will take place on Thursday 11 September from 14,45 to 15,30 in the Auditorium of the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Birketinget 6, DK–2300 Copenhagen.

Further information may be found at

Published Words – Public Pages

Johannesburg event 15 to 18 September 2008

Words on Water: India & South Africa in Conversation

Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand

The Origins Centre, September 15-18, 2008

Further information may be found at

Words on Water

Bergen workshop 18 to 19 September 2008

Workshop organised by the Nordic network on ’Islam in Africa’ on ’Radicalization and reform of Islam in Africa: Knowledge and institutionalization in a global context’, Bergen University (Unifob Global), 18-19 September 2008

Keynote speakers: Roman Loimeier, University of Florida, and R. Sean O’Fahey, University of Bergen

The emergence of radical Islam in Africa, as elsewhere, has activated the search for ’networks’, both for the agents of radical Islam and those who oppose it. The underlying assumption is that change (understood as a shift in both moral and social values, ritual and educational practice as well as organizational form) is transmitted through networks of various types. Furthermore, the arrival of the “modernist” (or Salafi/”radical”) preacher in African local contexts has also led to a perceived threat to locally based traditions, including Sufi practices which, at the time of its arrival, was considered reformist in nature.

This workshop will focus on the phenomena of reform and radicalization of Islam in Africa in contexts that are both regional and global, including transmission of knowledge to and from locations beyond Africa. The workshop will explore both historical dimensions, including Sufi reform movements and present-day developments.

Topics to be explored are:
* Religious reform and social change - local perspectives and global impulses
* Knowledge and embodied knowledge. Traditional Islamic education and modernist approaches
* The role of the preacher/teacher, including the use of media
* The nature and extent of knowledge transmission
* Locally based knowledge versus global trends
* Language as factor for knowledge transmission. The use of Arabic versus other languages

Registration deadline 15 August 2008, deadline for submission of paper abstracts 1 September 2008. Further information may be obtained from Anne Bang at Unifob Global – anne.bang@global.uib.no