"We Resisted When It Wasn't Fashionable" | Prof. Farid Esack on the Struggle Years (Part 2)
1h 34m | Sep 21, 2026"We resisted at a time when it was not fashionable." Everybody claims the struggle afterwards; very few were in it.
In the second sitting of this series, Shaykh Irshaad Sedick takes up the story where Part 1 left off: Farid Esack comes home from eight years in the madrasas of Karachi to a country about to catch fire. He joins the Muslim Judicial Council and drafts its constitution. He helps found the Call of Islam. He throws in his lot with the UDF — and answers the scholars of the time who said Muslims have no business in politics, and the movement men who said an alliance with non-Muslims dilutes the din.
At the centre of the episode is a story he tells here in full for the first time: the Salt River janaza of Ebrahim Carelse, a bystander shot by police in 1985. Ten thousand people marched under State of Emergency regulations, a crowd turned on a policeman, and a young mawlana threw himself over the man's body — and then had to decide whether to get up.
Then 1994, the Commission for Gender Equality, and in 2018 the Order of Luthuli — and what a boy from Bontheuwel says to himself when a president hangs a medal around his neck.
This episode contains testimony about police violence, torture and mob violence during apartheid. It is told plainly and without graphic detail, but some listeners may find it distressing.
Shaykh Irshaad and Professor Esack come from different worlds of learning and do not agree on everything. You do not have to agree with a man on everything to sit with him and honour what he has carried.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open
0:55 Introduction
2:11 Coming home to a country about to catch fire
9:52 Inside the MJC, and drafting its constitution
17:28 Shaykh Nazim, and how we remember people
21:23 Were the ulama divided about politics?
33:34 "Muslims don't get involved in politics"
37:40 Was there a moment you crossed over?
41:30 Why found the Call of Islam
45:42 What did the struggle actually cost?
51:32 The Salt River janaza of Ebrahim Carelse
1:17:23 1994: Commissioner for Gender Equality
1:20:13 The Order of Luthuli, 2018
1:26:15 "I do believe that I am a miracle"
1:31:15 Why he finds it hard to make du'a
1:34:07 Closing, and what comes in Part 3
ABOUT THE GUEST
Professor Farid Esack is a South African scholar of Islam, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, and one of the most widely read Muslim academic voices from this country. He served the Muslim Judicial Council, co-founded the Call of Islam, was Commissioner for Gender Equality in the democratic South Africa, and in 2018 received the Order of Luthuli in Silver.
ABOUT THE HOST
Shaykh Irshaad Sedick is a Cape Town–based Islamic scholar in the Shafi'i school, a hadith student, and the founder of Isnad Academy. He teaches full-time with SeekersGuidance.
Isnad Academy connects the global Muslim community to authenticated Islamic scholarship — live teaching, recorded courses, and conversations like this one.
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