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Each act of iḥsān loosens the chains a little more, creating spaces where life can be lived with dignity, justice, and shared humanity — even in the age of atrocity and Artificial Intelligence.
By ASLAM FATAAR
Introduction: Trauma in the long shadow of coloniality
To live with trauma is to inhabit a landscape where pain and endurance are not passing conditions but enduring companions. In every age, people have faced worlds structured to deny them dignity.
These are worlds shaped by what we now call coloniality, which are systems of domination that accumulate wealth and power through dispossession, exclusion, and the shaping of human worth according to a hierarchy of value.
In 7th-century Makkah, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ began his mission in a world like this. The Quraysh elite controlled trade routes, hoarded resources, and preserved power through rigid tribal hierarchies. Status was inherited, not earned. Those without clan protection were vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
In colonial Cape Town centuries later, a similar structural logic appeared in a new form. Dutch and British colonial regimes transported enslaved people from Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Madagascar, dispossessed indigenous Khoisan communities, and built a society where race, religion, and language were tools of control.
In both contexts, trauma was not an accident of history. It was the intended outcome of a system. Against this, iḥsān , which translates as moral beauty and ethical excellence, emerged as a disciplined, often painful way to live with dignity, care, and justice. It was never a simple formula. It was an orientation that had to be renewed daily, in the very midst of structures that sought to erase it.
The nature of trauma under coloniality
Trauma under coloniality has two faces. The first is structural: the laws, economic systems, and cultural narratives that strip communities of their rights, resources, and recognition. The second is personal: the deep internalisation of harm that shapes how people understand themselves and their possibilities.
Living with trauma means navigating both dimensions. It is to feel its weight in one’s body and spirit, while also recognising how it is woven into the world’s institutions. The colonial city, the segregated campus, each is a stage where trauma is both imposed from without and absorbed within.
Iḥsān in this context is not simply about private piety. It is the active cultivation of moral beauty in the public and relational life of a community. It creates spaces where dignity is affirmed, where care and justice are practised, and where trauma’s script is disrupted, even if the structures of harm remain.
The Prophet in Makkah: Trauma bearer and trauma transformer
The Prophet’s life in Makkah was marked by personal loss, social vulnerability, and the fierce opposition of a powerful elite. Orphaned at a young age, he grew up dependent on the protection of relatives. When he began to proclaim the message of tawḥīd — the oneness of God and the unity of human dignity — he directly challenged the moral and economic foundations of Makkah’s order.
The response was swift and brutal. His followers were tortured, ostracised, and in some cases killed. He himself endured ridicule, slander, and the sorrow of losing loved ones in quick succession. This was trauma both personal and communal, lived under the full force of a dominant order intent on silencing dissent.
The Qurʾān’s revelation over 23 years was not static. It came in varied forms, including parables, narratives of earlier prophets, direct commands, consolations in times of grief, each responding to the evolving situation of the Prophet and his community. This multi-modal revelation offered moral guidance, restored hope, and nurtured resilience.
The Prophet’s iḥsān in Makkah took many forms: protecting the vulnerable, speaking truth without malice, forming alliances across social divisions, and establishing norms of care and justice that defied the tribal logic of the time. These were acts that we would later recognise and co-opt into our “decolonial imagination”, planting seeds of a moral order not defined by lineage, wealth, or domination.
Colonial Cape Town: A world built on dispossession
When the Dutch East India Company established a settlement at the Cape in 1652, it set in motion a colonial order that would endure for centuries. Enslaved people were brought from Batavia, Bengal, Mozambique, Madagascar, and beyond. Indigenous Khoisan communities were displaced from their lands and forced into labour.
Colonial law restricted movement, worship, education, and assembly. The bodies, time, and futures of enslaved and indigenous people were controlled for the benefit of the settler elite. Trauma was embedded in every interaction from the auction block to the farm kitchens and ploughing fields, from the court to the church.
Yet within this harsh order, figures like Shaykh Yūsuf carved out spaces of moral and communal resistance. Exiled from his homeland, he gathered people in Zandvliet for worship, teaching, and solidarity. These gatherings were more than religious instruction. They were acts of collective unbinding, moments when the community could step outside coloniality’s definitions and remember themselves as more than subjects of empire.
A century later, Tuan Guru, imprisoned on Robben Island, wrote out the Qurʾān entirely from memory. He produced legal and theological works that would serve the Cape Muslim community long after his death. These acts asserted that knowledge, faith, and moral purpose could survive even in the most restrictive conditions.
Women’s labour and the matrilineal thread
The visible leaders of Cape Muslim resistance were often men, but much of the daily work of sustaining the community was done by women. They preserved languages, maintained oral traditions, and ensured that children learned the Qurʾān and the practices of faith.
Matrilineal kinship networks were crucial in holding the community together. In a context where men were often absent due to forced labour, imprisonment, or exile, women created webs of care that provided stability and continuity. Their iḥsān was enacted in daily rhythms: feeding the hungry, hosting gatherings, keeping alive rituals of hospitality, teaching the next generation. These acts, though often invisible in historical records, were central to the community’s survival and to the slow work of unbinding trauma.
Abiding iḥsān as a decolonial practice
To abide in iḥsān is to live with moral beauty in a world that continually tests it. It is not a withdrawal from struggle but a disciplined engagement with it. It acknowledges that change is often slow, that trauma can endure, and that victories are rarely absolute.
This abiding creates spaces where the colonial order does not have the final word. It is visible in community gatherings, in the patient preservation of moral traditions, and in the deliberate nurturing of solidarity. These acts do not abolish coloniality overnight, but they loosen its hold and prepare the ground for futures beyond it.
In this way, iḥsān becomes both a form of survival and a mode of resistance. It is decolonial not because it operates outside the reach of power, but because it continually redefines what it means to live fully and justly within, and ultimately beyond, coloniality’s grip.
Memory as a resource for unbinding
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Qurʾān’s revelation through multiple channels – sound, image, word, script, and action – offers a template for how moral traditions can evolve to meet changing circumstances while staying true to their essence. For a long time, communities dealing with trauma have been adapting in this way, reinterpreting the Prophetic legacy to suit their own situations.
Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidimensional memory is helpful here. It shows how the memory of one struggle can resonate with others, creating solidarities across different histories of harm.
At the Cape, the memory of enslavement is intertwined with indigenous dispossession and the Prophet’s endurance in Makkah. Together, they shaped a moral imagination capable of envisioning life beyond the structures of harm.
Memory in this sense is not simply recall. It is an active resource, a tool for moral formation and communal resilience. It allows communities to draw strength from past struggles while adapting to the challenges of the present.
Coloniality’s new frontiers in the age of AI
Coloniality has not disappeared. It has adapted to the globalised world, appearing in new forms: economic inequality, ecological devastation, mass displacement, and the governance of life through data and algorithms. Artificial intelligence (AI), while promising efficiency and innovation, can also reinforce and deepen systems of exclusion, concentrating wealth and decision-making power in ways that echo past empires.
If left to the logics of profit and control, AI risks becoming another tool of extraction, shaping futures that replicate the hierarchies of the past. An iḥsān-centred, decolonial future demands that ethical commitments to human dignity, ecological care, and justice shape technology.
This requires more than regulation. It requires the same disciplined moral stance that sustained the Prophet in Makkah, the Cape Muslims under colonialism, and every community that has sought to live with dignity under oppressive systems.
Conclusion: The unfinished work of unbinding
The struggle between trauma and iḥsān is ongoing. Coloniality persists, and the work of unbinding is never complete. Abiding in iḥsān is a deliberate choice, renewed daily, to live with moral beauty even in the grip of structures designed to erase it.
Unbinding trauma is gradual. It happens in acts of care that refuse to be extinguished, in solidarities that cross histories and geographies, and in the preservation and adaptation of moral traditions. These acts are not triumphalist victories. They are steps toward futures where coloniality no longer defines the limits of human possibility.
To live this way is to accept that the work is arduous, that setbacks will come, and that the full unbinding may be beyond one lifetime. Yet each act of iḥsān loosens the chains a little more, creating spaces where life can be lived with dignity, justice, and shared humanity — even in the age of atrocity and Artificial Intelligence.
- This is the plenary address, delivered at the International Research Training Group Spring/Summer School – Transformative Religion, hosted at Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University on September 12, 2025.
Aslam Fataar is Research Professor in Higher Education, Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.
