When Muslims marry non‐Muslims: marriage as incorporation in a cape Muslim community

This article, based on anthropological fieldwork in a township community in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2000, analyses genealogical data on the frequency of inter‐religious marriages in a coloured Cape Muslim community, and presents two Muslim marital narratives in order to illustrate what the limits of tolerance for atypical marital situations with regard to normative Islamic precepts may be in this specific Muslim community. I argue that the high frequency of inter‐religious marriages, as well as the high frequency of inter‐religious marriages involving Muslim‐born females, can only be explained by reference to a field characterised by socio‐religious fluidity, and by reinstating a notion of social agency of Muslim females in the organisation of their own marriages. I describe Cape Muslim identities as hybrid, and Islam as non‐determinative in the making of these identities.