By Dr Hisham A. Hellyer
“Cape Town was home to one such community. It’s perhaps ironic that such a beautiful exhibition of culture came about in a community that had been befallen by slavery, exploitation and apartheid before finally witnessing the beginning of democracy in 1995, with the election of the onetime resistance leader Nelson Mandela as president..”
By Dr Hisham Hellyer
“The allama, Shaykh Seraj Hassan Hendricks, returned to the mercy of his Lord on the 9th of July, 2020, in Cape Town, after decades of serving the Divine, His religion, and His Prophet. If not for the COVID19 restrictions, there would have been tens of thousands, undoubtedly, who would have attended his funeral prayer the following day at the mosque that his grandfather, the great Shaykh Muhammad Salih Hendricks, built in Cape Town, in the shadow of Table Mountain, a hundred years ago. Azzawia Institute, known as ‘Azzavia’ in local parlance, would have seen Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who would have known him as a father, a friend, a scholar, a teacher, a poet, and a shaykh of taṣawwuf. As for myself, he was all these things to me”
