Unwilling Umma: Histories of Exile and Islam Across the Indian Ocean

This project is an exploration of the life and memories associated with three key saints of the local Capetonian scene, and most notably Tuan Guru, set against a larger story of forced labour and exile in the Indian Ocean from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. As such, it will place the life of scholars and saints in dialogue with later stories of Egyptian nationalists sent to Colombo in the 1880s, or yet Malay laborers isolated on the Cocos in the 1920s and even detainees now held on Christmas island today.