Experience of Muslims in Southern Africa Muhammed Haron Contents Introduction ....................................................................................... 1 Southern Africa’ s Freedom of Religion Clause and the Muslim Communities ................. 3 Southern Africa: Case Studies .................................................................... 4 Angola’ s Muslims: A Struggling Minority? ..................................................... 5 Politics and Religion: An Adversarial Relationship .......................................... 6 State and its Muslims: An Ambivalent Relationship ......................................... 7 Botswana’ s Muslims: A Comfortable Community? ............................................. 9 BMA ’ s Efforts and Challenges ................................................................ 10 Muslim Institutions as Identity Markers ...................................................... 11 Muslim Welfare Organizations and Business Personalities: Performing Onerous Tasks . . . 12 Zambia’ s Muslims: A Successful Community? .................................................. 13 Muslims as a Minority: Its Makeup and Numerical Presence ............................... 14 Muslim Institutional Representation: From Sacred Spaces to NGOs ........................ 16 Muslim Political Participation: Internal and External Dimensions .......................... 17 Toward a Conclusion ............................................................................. 20 References ........................................................................................ 21 Introduction A glance at the Southern Africa’ s – here we refer to mainly Southern African Development Community (SADC) members though not all of them – geographical landscape shows that it has been and continues to be the home of a variety of religious traditions; apart from having been for a very long period the locale of diverse African religious traditions (ATR) that have also been termed “folk religion” M. Haron (*) Theology and Religion Studies, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: haronm@mopipi.ub.bw # Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 M. Woodward, R. Lukens-Bull (eds.), Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73653-2_80-1 1