The Prophet in Our Veins: On the Scent, Sound, and Song of Cape Devotion

Introduction: Rabi al-Awwal and the Living Presence

Rabi al-Awwal has arrived — the month in which many commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. But beyond the formal gatherings and public sermons, there are other ways his presence is felt.

This blog reflects on three threads of remembrance: the Prophet ﷺ as a guide in our political struggles, a source of poetic longing, and a quiet presence in our daily lives — folded into our homes, habits, and inherited silences.

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I. The Constitution of Madinah and the Call of Islam: A Political Sunnah of Justice

In the 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa gave birth to many political and religious formations. Among them was the Call of Islam, a progressive Muslim organization that took inspiration from the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ example as a political and ethical leader.

At the heart of its formation was a sense that Islam was not simply a private affair, but a force for justice. The Prophet’s ﷺ Constitution of Madinah — a model for pluralism, shared civic belonging, and accountability — offered a living blueprint. In our reading circles and public addresses, we didn’t only study fiqh. We studied the Sunnah of justice, the Sunnah of solidarity, and the Sunnah of standing with the oppressed.

This legacy reached a milestone in the 1992 National Muslim Conference, where Muslims from diverse traditions gathered to imagine a future democratic South Africa. The Prophet’s ﷺ example was not presented as abstraction but as compass — guiding how Muslims might live in plural, equal dignity with others.

Today, the landscape is very different. There are Muslim judges, radio stations, political parties. But let us remember: these were not always guaranteed. Many of the freedoms now enjoyed were carried on the shoulders of those who took risk — and who understood the Prophet ﷺ not only as a man of prayer, but as a statesman of vision.

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II. Verse as Vessel: Poetic Devotion and Madīḥ

In the lands of Africa, madīḥ — praise poetry — has always been more than art. It is invocation, love-letter, protest, and memory. In my own work, I’ve found that poetry often says what footnotes cannot.

Take for example this poem, I Inherited Longing:

I did not see you with my eyes
But I knew you in my marrow.
Your name moved through my mother’s breath
and into the rhythm of my walk.

When they asked: “Who is your teacher?”
I said: “The one whose tears I drink
when I whisper salawāt.”

I did not inherit land.
I inherited longing.

This is not biography. It is embodiment.

Across Cape Town and Johannesburg, poets still recite verses that draw the Prophet ﷺ close — not as distant figure, but as intimate companion. This is how many of us came to know him: not through doctrine alone, but through dhikr, dreams, rhythm, and rhyme.

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III. The Prophet Among the People — Salawāt and Everyday Sunnah

If sīrah shapes our public imagination and verse stirs our hearts, then the most enduring presence of the Prophet ﷺ lies not in the pages of a book, but in the lived habits of South African Muslims. In Cape Town especially, his memory is invoked not only in grand commemorations but in the daily, quiet acts of care, courtesy, and devotion.

From the kettle always on the boil to the salawāt murmured in pre-dawn hours, the Prophet’s ﷺ legacy breathes through a tradition of service and subtlety. One sees his trace in janāzah preparations, in unspoken generosity, and in how the kitchen is cleaned before Maghrib. These are not mere habits. They are sacred echoes — practices with deep Prophetic roots.

Among the Cape’s most enduring spiritual inheritances is the Ratib al-Haddād, chanted for decades — if not centuries — in mosques and homes. This litany, associated with the Ba ʿAlawī tradition of Hadhramaut, Yemen, is recited rhythmically, often in gatherings after Maghrib or ‘Ishā’. Alongside it, a particular standing salawāt is recited with heartfelt rhythm, in the deep belief that the light and rūḥ of the Prophet ﷺ enters the space when we call upon him. This is not metaphor. It is presence.

The Cape is also home to a rare spiritual text: an Afrikaans Ratib al-Haddād written in Arabic script. In it, Kaaps-Afrikaans phrases — such as Onse Here is Groot and Help ons met die dode — appear with Qur’anic reverence. The tasbīḥ, duʿā’, and barakah of our forebears were carried in a mother tongue now often dismissed. But they knew what they were doing: encoding devotion into daily speech, transmitting Prophetic rhythm in a creole born of struggle and longing.

Perhaps most evocatively, the Riwayat al-Birzanji — a melodic storytelling of the Prophet’s ﷺ birth and life — is performed during Moulood celebrations. My sisters would sing the first Riwayah in rich melody, sometimes referred to as laaghoe, or in Arabic terms, maqāmāt. These musical modes carried not only tune but transmission, passing down a soundscape of longing across generations.

These gatherings — echoing devotional practices from South Asia, East and North Africa, and Southeast Asia — show that Cape Muslims are not an isolated outpost. We are part of a vast archipelago of Prophetic love, linked not only by history but by rhythm, breath, and remembrance.

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IV. Kramats and Cape Saints: Circles of Protection

If you trace a map around Cape Town, you will find sacred sites known as kramats — shrines of saintly Muslims, many of them exiled scholars or spiritual leaders, whose presence shaped the region’s barakah.

Among the most revered is the kramat on Robben Island, believed to be the resting place of Tuang Mahmud Moturu, a 17th-century imam from Indonesia exiled by the Dutch. According to oral tradition, he carried with him the Qur’an and the example of the Prophet ﷺ. Even Nelson Mandela is said to have visited the kramat while imprisoned — a quiet act of respect for the spiritual presence that surrounded him.

These kramats, stretching from Robben Island to Constantia, Faure to Bain’s Kloof, form what many refer to as a Circle of Islam, a protective perimeter believed by many Cape Muslims to spiritually guard the city. Even today, before departing for Hajj, many families visit these shrines to offer fātiḥah, seeking barakah and requesting the intercession of these tuangs — elder scholars and saints who represent a spiritual lineage of struggle, exile, remembrance, and return.

It is no accident that these saints were also poets, teachers, and bearers of the sunnah. Their legacies weave the political with the spiritual, the literary with the lived. They stand as embodied representations of Prophetic devotion: not merely followers, but inheritors — those who carried the scent, the sound, and the story of the Beloved ﷺ into the soil of the Cape.

These shrines are not merely gravesites. They are circles of remembrance. People visit with incense and duʿā’. Children are told stories. Salawāt is recited softly in the wind. In these spaces, the Prophet’s ﷺ spirit is invoked not as metaphor, but as living memory — guiding, protecting, witnessing.

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V. The Prophet at the Table

When guests arrive in Cape Muslim homes, the first word is often “Ahlan wa sahlan.” It means “Welcome,” but more than that, it means: “Come as one whose path has been made smooth.” This is the spirit of the Prophet ﷺ at the table.

Food is sacred here. When someone leaves for Hajj, families gather to recite salawāt and Qur’an. At weddings, a murmur of salawāt often follows the couple as they walk out — not choreographed, just habit. These are rhythms inherited, not invented.

One of the most fragrant practices is the rampies sny — the cutting and perfuming of rose petals and leaves in preparation for the Moulood. Elders and children sit together, scenting the petals with rosewater, folding them into small cloths, whispering praises. It is not performance. It is love.

The Prophet ﷺ is not only remembered here. He is welcomed — into the threshold, into the breath, into the heart of the home.

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Conclusion: The Prophet in Our Veins

We began with the idea that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is not a distant figure. Not only in the libraries, not only in the inherited manuscripts or well-attended Mawlid halls. He walks with us still — in our struggles for justice, in our poetry of longing, and in the subtle ways we greet, grieve, and gather.

In South Africa — and especially in the Cape — this presence is not always announced from the pulpits or debated in institutions. It is poured into tea. It is stitched into janāzah cloth. It is recited in whispered salawāt and sung in melodies passed down from mother to daughter, uncle to nephew.

The Prophet’s ﷺ legacy here has always been both principled and poetic — shaped by anti-apartheid resistance as much as by spiritual yearning. And in the rampies of Moulood, the maqāmāt of the Riwayah, and the rhythm of the Afrikaans Ratib, we find not just echoes of his name, but traces of his light.

He is with us — in scent, sound, and song. He is in our veins.

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PostScript

Here is a beautiful salawāt from Salat an-Nuraniyya of Ahmad al-Badawi; also called Salawat Badawi Kubra…

O Allah! Exalt, greet and bless our master and liege lord Muḥammad, the Tree of Original Light, the Sparkle of the Handful of Divine Mercy, the Best of All Humankind, the Noblest of Physical Frames, the Vessel of the Lord’s Secrets and Storehouse of the Sciences of the Elect, the Possessor of the Original Divine Grasp, Resplendent Grace, and Uppermost Rank, under whose flag line up all the prophets, so that they are from him and point to him. 

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