By Neelam Rahim

The South African Black Muslims Conference held its second annual gala. The South African Black Muslim Conference was formed in 2019. Radio Islam speaks to Sheikh Zaid Langa,

“The conference started on the 16th and happened under very difficult situations, taking into consideration our challenges that we are facing economically as a country and people, the rise in inflation and all these things. So it was difficult for most people to attend, but at hand, they managed to pull it through. We had a precursor and we conducted our ulamah development program where we outline some of the development that we needed to put in place in order to develop our alarm so that they can function and optimize the township. It took the whole day and the main conference then started on Saturday, which ended on Sunday before the whole summer,” says Sheikh Langa.

“The theme of the conference this year was focusing more on economic development. We have this huge challenge of poverty as a nation as a whole, but more particularly among the black people and the Black Muslims. Focusing on the issue of economic development and seeing how to come up with ways and means to make sure that we take our people out of poverty. We should believe that if we have a certain segment of the Muslim community that is still deep in poverty, it derails the whole progress of Islam in the country, says,” Sheikh Langa.

“This can be explained from the Prophetic Hadith. If one part is sick and then it affects the whole body. So this is the situation that we find ourselves in,” he added.

“There were delegates from different parts of the country, from Western Cape, Eastern Cape, with Bombalana, with KV, including North West, not much, but we had about three or four products, that came from Northwest.”

Sheikh Langa also said that the next step forward is to implement the solutions that have been identified within the conference.

“One of the things, for instance, we identified a few workshops to run with our development alarm on various issues. For instance, we feel that our alumni in the township are not very much involved in the areas of mediation, be it medical mediation or whatever conflict that is taking place in the country. And this is a primary role of parliament, not taking away our legal infrastructure, but you get those communal mediation that you have. And we believe that this is one area where our running a whole lot of workshops to make sure that we empower other Ulamah.”

For more about this, listen to the Radio Islam podcast below.