Regarding Muslims

de Gabeba Baderoon

"Regarding Muslims argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the development of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging. Baderoon explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, a set of images whose instability is revealed when more disquieting images burst into prominence during moments of crisis. Popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and rich seams of literature reveal the complexity and subtelty of contributions brought to the South African narrative by Muslims, especially in the post-apartheid period, in which artists and writers reclaim and subvert the gaze, and opt for intricacy and open-endedness as alternatives to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims."--Front-cover flap.