Muslims constitute 1.43 percent of the population of South Africa, and Islam tends to generate stories within an international frame of “culture debates” or “dissent,” for example the women's magazine Marie Claire's interest in South African Muslim women's perspectives about scarves following the banning of headscarves in French schools. Otherwise, Muslim women rarely constitute the focus of media attention.

To understand current patterns of images of Muslim women in South Africa, one must look to longer histories of representation in the country. Islam…