Read it on IOL → SAMNET chairperson Faisal Suliman traces four hundred years of Muslim life in South Africa, and then asks the question that matters: why the sharp, unmistakable rise in Islamophobic messaging now, and who benefits from it.
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His argument, in short: the wave of Islamophobic content on South African social media is not organic. It is coordinated, and it is riding opportunistically on anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiment already sweeping the country. The framing of Muslims as the other sharpened after Israel’s invasion of Gaza and South Africa’s ICJ case — because demonising the messenger is the most efficient way to delegitimise the message.
The full text is reproduced below with permission of the author. First published in The Post and on IOL, 11 July 2026. The views expressed are the author’s.
Understanding Islamophobia in SA: Historical Roots and Current Implications
By Faisal Suliman, chairperson of SAMNET, the South African Muslim Network.
Islam has existed, and Muslims have lived, in South Africa for approximately 400 years, during which Muslims have participated in every single aspect of pre- and post-colonial, and pre- and post-apartheid societies.
By those who profess they belong to an organised faith group, Islam is the majority faith group in Africa and the third largest in South Africa after Christianity and African traditional religion.
Although Muslims make up approximately 2% of the South African population, our contributions, at a political, economic, academic and particularly at a social welfare and charitable level, have far exceeded our physical numbers.
By virtue of our physical dressing and outward grooming, Muslims stand out and are very visible and identifiable relative to adherents of other faith groups, and this may exacerbate the perception that Muslim illegal and undocumented immigrants are in higher numbers than the figures bear out.
Many Muslims are traders, retailers in particular, and are at the coal face of interactions with the vast majority of our black African brethren, especially in the townships and surrounding areas, as a historical legacy of apartheid laws and spatial planning.
The new wave of immigrants from the sub-continent and places like Somalia also brought in a trader class of immigrants, both legal and illegal, and these people too set up shop, literally, at the coal face of interactions with disenfranchised, unemployed black African communities who have not seen the benefits of the demographic dividend since 1994.
This too has made it easy to drive the narrative that Muslims in particular are taking over local jobs and opportunities.
Thousands of Israelis, who would all have served in some form of the IDF and who would have been part of the Palestinian killing machinery over the past 60 years, have poured into South Africa since 2024, but not a word is raised about this.
Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, head of the NGO Gift of the Givers, was hailed across all sections of South African society for decades as a true patriot and champion of the underprivileged until he spoke out against the Israeli genocide, after which we saw coordinated attacks on his integrity, patriotism, motives and religion, and attempts to suggest that his funding came from “suspicious and tainted” overseas funding.
The attacks on the religion of the newly appointed deputy minister of education bear the same hallmarks of Islamophobia. Leaders from the anti-immigrant movements disingenuously, deliberately and repeatedly use “foreign funded” when referring to local Muslim organisations, to also imply “sinister terror funding”.
Historically, the Prophet Abraham’s second wife, Hagar, was an African princess whose son Ismaeel is where the Arabs descended from, and she is buried right next to the holy Kaaba, Islam’s most sacred site, built by the Prophet Abraham and his son Ismaeel, may Almighty God’s blessing be upon all of them. One of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad (may Almighty God’s blessings be upon him) was Mariayah Qibtiyah, an African.
When the new Muslims in Mecca were being severely persecuted, the Prophet Muhammad advised them in 615 CE to migrate to Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia, to take refuge under the Christian Negus Ashama ibn Abjar, whom the Prophet described as a just king.
One cannot underscore the significance of the fact that Islam reached Africa as a point of migration before it reached Medina, Islam’s second holiest site and the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad.
Why then the clear and unambiguous increase in attacks on Muslims and Islamophobic social media messaging, and who benefits from this? Our analysis of the types and patterns of the social media messaging is that this is not organic but coordinated, opportunistically riding on the wave of anti-immigrant, Afrophobic and xenophobic sentiments sweeping our country. We have noticed a clear pattern that the framing of Muslims as the other increased after Israel’s invasion and its genocide against the people of Gaza, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel.
There has always been the Zionist strategy of framing the Palestinian struggle for liberation from the settler colonial entity as an “Islamist terrorist movement” of the other against the civilised white nation of Jews upholding Western values.
Redirection away from human rights issues and illegal land grabbing has been one of the cornerstones of the hugely funded, resourced and widespread Zionist propaganda machinery. Normalising the demonisation of Islam and Muslims slots seamlessly into the present architecture of anti-immigrant vigilantism.
Muslims are framed as foreign, unassimilable, economically competitive, and ideologically threatening.
Islamophobic campaigns intensify precisely because Palestinian solidarity has become too visible, too organised, and too successful at shifting South African public discourse.
When the government of South Africa takes Israel to the ICJ, when municipalities debate divestment, when grassroots BDS campaigns attract multi-racial, multi-faith support — these victories threaten those with interests in maintaining the status quo regarding Israel.
Demonising the Muslim community serves multiple objectives simultaneously: it discredits Palestinian advocacy by associating it with religious extremism; it diverts Muslim activist energy from external advocacy to defending themselves against domestic hate; and it weakens civil society solidarity by making it risky for non-Muslim allies to stand visibly with Muslims on Palestine.
The weaponisation of Islamophobia as a tool to silence Palestinian advocacy is clearly evident. Normalising hostility toward Muslims domestically reduces sympathy abroad for Muslim causes, which in turn benefits Israel.
The most effective strategy is not to openly defend Israel but to discredit the Muslim community’s moral standing to speak on Palestine. If Muslims can be painted as a fifth column threatening South African values and institutions, their advocacy loses credibility. Demonising the messenger delegitimises the message.
Possible sources of funding, networking and manpower for the Islamophobic campaigns could be foreign based. The strongest documented link is Israeli state money flowing into Christian Zionist advocacy on South African soil.
Proclaiming Justice to the Nations — a US-based Christian Zionist organisation, an anti-Muslim hate group — received direct funding from the Israeli government to run events in Johannesburg and Cape Town, working alongside local partners including the South African Zionist Federation and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.
Israel is investing significantly in relationships with African Pentecostal leaders through financial support and sponsored pilgrimages, using tours marketed as spiritual trips to reinforce pro-Israel narratives.
The same infrastructure model — money, access, narrative-shaping — could well be the nidus for social media-era Islamophobia campaigns in South Africa.
History is replete with the devastating consequences and pogroms resulting from the normalisation of the demonisation of the “other”, and “never again” has just become a cliché. The complicity of Western nations in the ongoing genocide of Gazans and the overall ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is so blatant it makes a mockery of Western civilised norms and values. Silence is complicity.
The looming municipal elections mean silence will be the political currency of the day: job opportunities and security, access to academic funding and grants, media engagements and networking opportunities will see silence by many in the media and academia about the rising Islamophobia, and some well-paid journalists, commentators, podcast hosts, political analysts and academics will even lend support for well-placed Islamophobic narratives.
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First published in The Post and on IOL on 11 July 2026. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of IOL or Independent Media.